Page 91 of The Sun King's Noon

The road, having wound out of the morning’s farmsteads, opened into a long stretch flanked by grain fields. The barley stood tall here, up to a man’s shoulder, the heads bowed and swaying.

“Keep yer eyes sharp!” Master Clemens bellowed from the front. “Long grass, this. Nobody stray from the road, you hear?”

“Aye, Master!” came the scattered reply.

Richard felt Daisy pat the top of his head. “What is it, little one?”

The girl whispered, “The old lady is coming close.”

Richard frowned. “What old lady?”

Daisy clasped his temples and turned his head right. The field stretched out long and pale, but far back, where the grain thinned at the edge of a copse of trees, a figure stood—tall, hunched, cloaked in a black hood, with a staff in one hand. The figure was frozen, just staring.

Richard’s hand tightened on Daisy’s ankles. “It is only a farmer tending their fields.”

“She calls me,” Daisy said. “Every night. She taps on my wagon window. Mummy says it’s only branches. But it isn’t. I can hear her telling me to come outside.”

A shiver crept up Richard’s spine. A child’s imagination perhaps? Briony had been adamant at six years old that a monster lived in her closet, and Haldric had had to stage a wild fight to assure her the monster was dead.

Could this be more sinister? He was ill-informed of Estaran dangers. Perhaps, he should discuss with Master Clemens.

Richard glanced again into the field, but the figure was gone.

“You did well to tell me, Daisy,” he said. I should like you to tell your parents or me again, if she calls tonight. Will you?”

“Mm-hm.”

“Good girl.”

She tugged a strand of his hair gently and went back to humming.

The disquiet within Richard remained. To distract himself, he shifted to walk backwards and face Jeya. “I hear you wish to be a knight.”

She scowled, tucking her wooden sword into her belt. “What of it?”

“It is a noble dream.”

Her lip curled. “Well, only a dream it’ll ever be now.” She gestured at the stump of a shoulder, cut from where her dungarees’ sleeve stopped. “The king’s knights ain’t gonna want no circus kid. They’d laugh me out the gate.” Her jaw set. “And I’ve only the one arm. So that’s that.”

“One arm matters not,” Richard said, “if you make it twice as good.” He watched her eyes widen. “A knight is not a body, Jeya. A knight is an oath, and a discipline, and a heart that stays kind despite everything. You have a long way to go yet, but do not dismiss the notion so easily.”

Her throat bobbed. Fiddling with her sword’s hilt, she muttered, “But I’ve no teacher. I’ve watched some of the squires train in the towns we pass through. And I’ve seen a tourney where the knights fight till there’s one standing. I try to remember the way they moved, but I don’t know if I’m doing it right or wrong.”

From the head of the crowd, Kaelen’s bright laugh resounded.

Richard smiled. “Keep practising. A teacher will come upon you. I promise.”

* * *

For lunch,the procession stopped in the middle of a forest. The road here had narrowed to little more than a muddy ribbon between the trees, and on either side the woods rose thick and greenish-yellow, trunks packed close, branches knitting high overhead. A spring bubbled a little way off the road. The wagons had been drawn into a crescent, the horses unhitched and left to nose at the ferns, and already a long queue had formed at the cook-pot where soup was being ladled into bowls.

The whole place bustled with chatter and the clank of crockery. Dogs nosed at the slumbering bear, and Tilda was shrieking as Wren chased her around the wagons.

Richard let Daisy slide from his shoulders and scratched at his collar as breadcrumbs slid down the back of his neck. The little girl plopped down on the fallen tree trunk he’d claimed for their little group, swinging her legs and licking crumbs stuck to her fingers. She and the others had been fed earliest, handed hunks of bread while the wagons were still getting into formation.

“Well,” Richard said to the three boys pouting by his feet. “Is this not nice? All of us together. The sun. The trees.”

“It ain’t nice.” Pip yanked at the rope about his middle. “It’s the worst. Take it off.”