bring wine, while the women heaped onions and olives dressed with olive oil into wooden bowls to stay the men's hunger and buy them the time to add more vegetables and beans to their family's own meagre pottage.
The Crusaders picked suspiciously at the proffered bowls. Then one scooped up a handful of olives and angrily threw them at Raffe's head. 'God's arse, what are these, sheep droppings? Are you trying to poison us?'
Raffe wiped the drips of oil from his face. 'They are the fruits of the tree, very good to eat.'
The man stared at him then roared with laughter. 'What are you, a maid or a man? I do declare I've never heard a girl's voice come from a man's body. Did your mother think to dress her daughter like her brothers to protect you from our ravishings?'
The others joined in the mocking laughter, for a moment forgetting their impatient demands for food. Even Raffe's own brothers giggled. Gerard alone didn't laugh, but met Raffe's dark eyes with his own sapphire-blue ones. His face creased in a grimace of pain as if he had felt the barb himself.
'Are you the maid's mother?' the knight asked. 'Tell me what you have bred here, for she's the mostly comely maid I've seen yet in this household, and I think I've a mind to warm my bed with her, if you've nothing better to offer me.'
Raffe's mother regarded her son with disgust. 'Do what you like with him, for he's neither man nor woman, and has brought us nothing but shame.'
'In that case, I'll throw him back, mistress. Once when I was a boy, I pulled a fish from the river that was covered in a furry white wool. "What's this?" I said, "Mutton you can eat on a fish day, now there's a miracle." But when I tasted it, it was fowl and I was as sick as a drunkard all night.'
The others snorted with laughter, but it only reminded them they were hungry and they roared again for food, banging with the hilt of their knives on the wooden table. Even the pottage did not satisfy them and they demanded meat. When Raffe's father protested they had none, two of the men went to the byre where the hens were roosting and returned with five of them dangling from their fists, their necks wrung. Raffe's mother wept as she plucked them.
The family spent the night huddled together in the byre while the Crusaders occupied their beds in the house. Raffe did neither. He could not sleep and wandered alone among the olive trees under the star-filled sky. What the Crusader had said had glanced off him like a deflected lance blade leaving only a flesh wound, nothing more. He'd swallowed such jibes ever since he had returned to the village. He scarcely separated the pain of each remark any more, for they merged like bruises. No, it was not the Crusader's laughter that made him punch his fists over and over again into the trunk of the olive tree. It was the burning pain of his mother's words that was tearing him apart from within.
'Can you beat a man with as much strength as you can strike that tree?'
The voice startled him and he turned around searching for the source, and eventually saw a man sprawling on the ground in the darkness under an almond tree.
'I can beat any man to pulp,' Raffe boasted through gritted teeth.
'Then don't wreck your hands on an enemy you cannot overcome. Ride with us, and try your strength on men who can be beaten.'
Raffe's face burned with anger. He took a step closer. 'Can you fight as well as you can mock? Get up and face me.'
'I have no wish to fight you.' The man held out one open palm towards Raffe. 'I am Gerard of Gastmere, and I don't mock you, my friend. I'm serious. I have no squire to ride with me.' He chuckled. 'Or rather I do, but I couldn't prise him from the arms of a doe-eyed beauty he discovered the first night we landed on these shores. I suppose I could have forced him to come with me, but I would have no man ride by my side or drink with me in a tavern who does not want to be there with his whole heart. So I told him to stay until he wearies of her or her of him.' He laughed again, an open, honest laugh and