Page 6 of King’s Knight

“That is Merewyn?” asked Alex. “Looks more like kin to the Welshman who is friend to my mother.”

The young bowman’s head jerked up. Alex’s words had carried across the bailey. Leaving his friends, he strode toward the slender figure in brown and green. As he did, the bowman bent down to pick up a quiver of arrows and a pale golden plait fell over her shoulder to touch the ground, a single concession to her femininity. Rising, she flipped the plait to her back and turned her appraising gaze on him.

“You have changed much, Merewyn,” he said, arriving in front of her. His eyes took in her alabaster skin and the blue-hazel eyes he had never forgotten with their golden flashes amidst the vivid azure blue. He supposed she was a woman now but any curves she possessed were hidden beneath the jerkin and loose hosen.

“So have you,” she said, her voice lower and more sultry than he remembered. “You are taller.”

He was tempted to laugh, but uncertain she had meant it as a jest, he refrained. There were many things she could have remarked upon, which would have pleased him more. He took her reference to his height as avoiding them. “You might have noticed I gained my spurs since last we were together,” he said, feigning offense at her failure to remark on his knighthood.

“ ’Twas not unexpected,” she said, her manner formal and distant. He sensed more than her attire had changed. Gone was the girl who had followed him about like a whelp, the vulnerable waif he had once defended. Before him stood a proud young woman who defied a woman’s place with her bowman’s garb. In her beautiful face, he saw a cold determination that had been absent when he had last bid her goodbye. What had happened? He was intensely curious but reluctant to ask while they stood in the midst of the crowded bailey.

“Alex!” Rory’s voice rent the air.

Alex turned to see his companion standing at the door of the manor next to the Lord of Talisand. His father’s chestnut hair had long been laced with gray but his body was still lean and well muscled. In his fifth decade, the Norman knight favored by the Conqueror and known for his prowess on the battlefield and his fidelity to both king and wife owned Alex’s respect. But with the Conqueror’s death and Alex’s knighthood, the Red Wolf rarely rode to battle. In recent years, it was more often Alex who led Talisand’s men.

Acknowledging his father with a raised hand, he turned back to Merewyn. “I must speak to my father, but I will look for you at the evening meal.”

“I am not difficult to find,” she said and abruptly turned and walked away.

He watched the solitary figure blend in with the men and women mingling in the bailey. Why had she never wed? There was no ring upon her finger and she was past the age when matches were made for young women.

* * *

“I bring news,” Alex said to his father and followed him into the hall, crushing fresh rushes beneath his feet, sending the pleasing smell of dried herbs into the air.

The great hall had been there when the Conqueror and his knights had arrived before Alex was born. His father once offered to replace it with another, but his mother would not hear of it. The cavernous chamber had been built by her father, the old thegn, and was still the place they most often took meals, reserving the castle for war and royal guests.

Bright with many windows open to the bailey, at night candles and the central hearth fire provided light. Most of Talisand’s men ate at two long trestle tables flanking the central hearth, but the place of honor, where his parents and their guests dined, was the table at the front of the hall set upon a raised dais.

With Rory and Guy on his heels, Alex moved farther into the hall where the aroma of meat roasting with spices wafted from the kitchens. “Dinner cannot be far off,” he said.

“But first I must have ale!” wailed Guy in dramatic fashion. “Else I will die of thirst!” Ever the jester, Guy gripped his throat and feigned a gag.

Rory cuffed him on the head.

Maggie, Rory’s Scottish grandmother and Talisand’s housekeeper, bustled into the hall from the kitchens, brushing loose strands of gray hair from her eyes. She reached up to straighten her headcloth that marked her a married woman. Once a blacksmith’s wife, she was now a widow. At her side, a serving girl carried a tray laden with cups, a pitcher of ale and a platter of bread and cheese.

Hands on wide hips, Maggie paused to look Alex and his two companions up and down. “Humph!” she remarked. “The three of ye look like ye rolled in the dirt. Ye’re in need of a bath, but, if yer father allows, have a drink and a bite to eat before ye get yerselves to the river to wash.”

Alex’s father nodded his assent, his lips twitching up in a smile.

“You missed us, Maggie, admit it,” Rory said to his grandmother, planting a kiss on her forehead, being careful not to touch her with his dust-covered mail.

“Aye, I suppose I did,” she grudgingly admitted, “though the wenches needed the rest.”

Casting a glance at Alex, Rory chuckled.

“We shall not be much of a burden,” Alex said. “The king would have us here but a short while.” He took the heavy tray from the servant girl. “Allow me to assist,” and carried it to one of the trestle tables.

Maggie followed the three of them to the table. They detached their scabbards and set them aside, swinging their legs over the benches to sit, eagerly watching the servant girl pour the ale.

The girl winked at Alex before returning to the kitchen.

He lifted the large cup and drank deeply. “Ah, that is good and just in time, Maggie. You must have heard us coming.”

“We heard ye all right, loud enough to raise St. Cuthbert, stirring up clouds of dust in the bailey. But ’twasn’t me who knew of yer coming. Maugris told us ye’d be arriving this day. I’ve had the kitchens preparing a feast all morning at yer lady mother’s direction.”

“Maugris. I might have known. So the wise one has been seeing visions again.” Alex had to wonder, did he have a vision of the king’s court at Westminster? Did he see the brothel it had become when the king did not entertain his earls and barons? The old Norman who had come with the Red Wolf from Normandy missed little. Wise in his pronouncements, Maugris’ words, be they caution or prophecy, were respected by all.