Page 7 of Fortress of Snow

Little Roger’s face was sober as he stared down at his mother.

“I am very sorry,” Berenger said, placing a hand on the boy’s shoulder.

“Where will I go?” The woebegone high pitch of the boy’s voice sent a pain straight to his heart.

“Do not worry. You will stay here at Strachleigh Castle. Lady Delia will ensure you are taken care of.”

The boy sat down and let his head rest on his dead mother’s shoulder. He patted her cheek and closed his eyes.

Knights did not cry, but Berenger had to blink fast to clear the wetness from his eyes, remembering his own mother’s death when he was hardly older than Roger. The death of any boy’s mother was a pain that boy never forgot.

“Can you stay with him a few minutes,” Berenger asked the healer, “while I go inform Lady Delia? I’m sure she’ll send someone to comfort him.” If he knew his sister, she would come herself.

“Of course.” The woman patted the boy’s shoulder with her wrinkled hand, pulling up a stool to sit beside him.

Berenger hurried out.

He climbed up the hill to the castle, thinking of how he might spend some time with the boy in the days to come, take him fishing in the stream or teach him to use a bow and shoot. He did not want the child to feel he was abandoned and forgotten.

Mazy started on her great adventure early in the morning after telling only a few of the older servants that she was going away and leaving the note for Warin. It would probably only take one day of travel to reach John, but she had never been that far from home in her life.

She mounted her horse and whispered, “God, please give us Your favor and protection.”

She rode to the end of the lane that led to her father’s castle, where a young man from the village was waiting for her.

She’d hired Piers, the son of one of the older servants, to travel with her. He was one of the few people in the village who owned a donkey that could be spared from the fields, since it was planting time. She had not dared to take a horse for Piers, knowing Warin would be angry she took a horse for herself. After all, everything belonged to Warin now.

Piers was young and strong from working in the fields, but he did not have the regal, confident bearing of a knight, or even one of her father’s guards. He walked with a slight stoop in hisshoulders, though he was only twenty-three years old, and he had a strange, slow gait. She worried he would not appear able to defend her should robbers attack.

It was only a one-day trip, she told herself. They would be safe enough.

“I have a long knife,” Piers assured her. “It’s quite sharp.”

Mazy had brought her knives as well. Keeping them close to her gave her comfort.

Her father had told her more than once, “Men are not to be trusted alone with a fair maiden, especially one as fair as you.”

“You only say that because I am your daughter.” She knew that all the fairest maidens in stories and ballads had gold or raven hair and were pale as milk. But her hair was brown and her skin was rather tan from all the time she spent outdoors in the sun.

“No.” He shook his head and looked very grave. “It is true, and you must be careful because of your beauty. You are young and innocent and do not know what men are capable of. You must promise me never to allow yourself to be alone with any of the guards.”

He had warned her about the guards, but not the male servants or their tenants. She thought it was because none of them had the confidence to even raise their eyes in her presence. For this reason, and because she knew Piers a little better than the other tenants, she was certain he would never harm her.

She had been careful to take only the small amount of jewelry her mother had specifically left her, and she brought only what belongings she could fit into two saddlebags. She hadalso brought some coins that her father had given her over the years.

Leaving the books behind was the hardest. Her heart ached as she gazed at them one last time. But they were too heavy and cumbersome, so she took only her Psalter.

Rain began to fall as soon as they started out. At first, Piers’s donkey kept up with the pace Mazy’s horse set, but after an hour, he became so sluggish that Mazy had to force her mare to slow down.

Soon the donkey began to bray. Then he stopped.

“Let’s get off the road,” Piers said, a raindrop sliding down the bridge of his nose, then clinging to the tip, refusing to fall. “He may just need to graze a little.”

They huddled under a stand of trees while the animals cropped some green grass at the edge of a field. At this pace, they surely would not reach their destination that day.

But she was on an adventure, she reminded herself. She tried not to focus on the fact that she was here with Piers and not her father, that her father would not be able to show her all the places he had spoken of. No, instead she would think about how she was escaping Warin and the dreadful future he was devising for her.

Around her was only a meadow, some trees, wildflowers, and a road, but she had never seen them before. They were new sights, and she could at least appreciate that.