“What is this word?”
“Neeca,” she said, swallowing.
His brows crunched. “Why did you write that?”
A lump lodged in her throat and she shook her head, neither able nor willing to speak.
He put his hand on her chin and forced her eyes to his. “Why, Neeca?”
Unable to add lying to her list of sins, she told him. “Because you called me that.”
“It was so important?”
She pursed her lips and nodded, braving his eyes. He looked at the parchment again, following the words with his finger, hovering over the last few. “And what did you write of last night, Neeca?”
She bit her lip. He was too close, too close to knowing how important he had become.
He cupped her head in his hand and tilted up her chin to force her to meet his eyes. Even her lips quivered, wanting to feel his again….
The Knave and the Maiden
Blythe Gifford
To Don and to Daddy I wish you were here to enjoy it.
Thanks to Julie Beard, Michelle Hoppe, Lindsay Longford, Margaret Watson, Pat White and all the members of Chicago-North RWA.
Without you, I would not be here.
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter One
Readington Castle, England, June 1357
“God brought me back from the dead, Garren,” William said. “You were His instrument.”
Garren looked at his friend, lying in his bed with the hollow cheeks of a corpse, and suppressed a snort. When William, Earl of Readington, sprawled among the scattered bodies on the battlefield at Poitiers, God had not lifted a finger.
Now, watching the candlelight waver in benediction over William’s pale face, Garren wondered whether he should have, either. Death in the French dirt might have been kinder.
But Garren would fight God for William’s life as long as he could.
“You were the only one,” William said. “The others left me for dead.”
Or left him for live French prisoners they could ransom.
But William was not dead, although there had been days Garren was not certain the Earl lived. As the victorious troops traipsed across France and finally sailed back to England, William existed in an earthly purgatory, alive because Garren forced water and gruel and prechewed meat between his teeth. “I was just too stubborn to leave you.”
“More than that.” Between each word, William gasped for a breath. “You carried me. On your back.”
“You and your armor.” Garren smiled, tight-lipped, swinging a mock blow to William’s shoulder. “Don’t forget the armor.”
Readington’s family had rejoiced more over the return of the armor than its wearer. While the rest of the English knights carried home booty, Garren carried only William. Carried William and left behind the wealth that had been the promise of the French campaign.
It had all seemed worthwhile as William gained strength. But in the weeks since his homecoming, the retching had started. Some days were better, some worse. Now he lay on a deathbed curtained in red velvet, high in a tower overlooking a countryside of damp, fertile earth he would never ride again. His hands curled into useless claws. He ran red or brown all day from one end or the other. Servants changed the bed linens, a futile task, but a sign of respect. There was little else they could do.
At least, Garren thought, William could die in his own bed.
“One…more…thing I must ask.” His cold fingers clutched Garren’s with the strength of death.
I gave you life, what more can I do? Garren thought, but as he looked at William, just past thirty and unable to rise from his bed, he was uncertain whether life had been such a valuable gift.
“Go on the pilgrimage for me.”
Pilgrimage. A prepayment to a God who never delivered as promised. A journey to a tomb that sheltered the bones of a woman and the feathers of an angel. “William, if God has not yet cured you, I doubt the Blessed Larina will.”
“I will pay you.”
Garren snatched his hand away. He had given up virtually everything for William, gladly. All he had left was his pride. “You can find fools aplenty to be your palmer on the journey.”
Pain wrinkled William’s face. His left arm cradled his stomach, trying to hold back the next bout of retching. “Not…trust.”
Garren mumbled something meant to be soothing, neither yes nor no. He cradled William’s bony hand in his large, square ones. How far they had come together since William had taken him on, a seventeen-year-old no one else wanted, much too old to start training as a squire. Everything he
