she said.
“I sympathize with your circumstances. I’m certain your mood will improve when you come to know my Lord and Master, Thomas of Gastoncoe. A more honourable man you are never likely to meet.”
“Honourable?” Mabel shouted indignantly from the cart. “What’s his purpose, stealing a wife away from her husband?”
“I know on the surface of things it’s easy to assume the worst in his actions,” answered Kent. “But there’s more to it than meets the eye. Lord Thomas has a daughter, barely twelve years in age, who now lies gravely ill with the same enigmatic and untreatable affliction that robbed him of his wife, whom he loved ever so dearly. It’s said that, of late, this Lady whom you chaperone, the lovely Lady Sylvanne, has come to dominate his thoughts so thoroughly that he believes she alone holds the key to the salvation of his daughter. It was for this reason he wished to consult the Lady.”
“Does he not have physicians?” asked Mabel.
“He has consulted as many as could be sent for. All have failed him. Wife dead, daughter waning and wasting away, one day he gave a most unexpected order: Bring Lady Sylvanne to me, says he, but to attain her, refrain from violence as much as you are able. Deliver her in good health and good spirits, using the powers of your persuasion.”
“Powers of persuasion?” Mabel repeated incredulously. “Since when is starvation persuasion?”
“It’s the fault of her own husband in his obstinacy,” Kent retorted. “From the beginning our two hundred could have easily stormed and overpowered that ramshackle excuse for a castle, with its no more than twenty able-bodied defenders—”
“Twenty-six, plus some boys who were willing, but deemed too young,” Mabel corrected him.
“Our master’s orders were to avoid bloodshed at all cost. He felt that his prize, if gained by bloodshed, would thereby be disposed to hate him, and would be no prize at all. You may or may not know it, but he sent emissaries several times to the Lady’s husband, begging simply for a meeting and a chance to speak privately with her. But all petitions were rejected, out of jealousy and mistrust.”
“That’s a husband’s right,” Mabel asserted. “It’s his duty, in fact, to shield his wife, to keep her close, housebound. He can’t be lending her out like an ox at ploughing time.”
“She’s not to be compared to an ox, that one,” Gwynn interjected. “More like a doe, with her big eyes and quiet demeanour. Our Lord will be well pleased to possess her, whether or not she knows anything of wondrous spells or miracle cures for the daughter.”
“Tomorrow will bring us answers,” said Kent. “What say you m’Lady? Any special aptitude for healing the sick or curing the lame?”
Sylvanne, silent all this time, turned and glared at him with such a fiery rage in her green eyes that he feared she might be a witch, or a demon. As if spooked by her seething emotions, her stallion reared up and shook his mane furiously. Kent leant over to take the reins, calling out calming words to soothe his favourite mount, but the horse was in a lather and wouldn’t be pacified. “This is quite out of character,” he said. “Perhaps he needs a feed. Next stream we cross we’ll stop for water and grazing.”
“Thank the Lord for that,” said Gwynn, shifting uncomfortably in the cart. “I fear the sores of my feet have been replanted on my poor arse.”
11
Meghan was at her desk in her little cubicle on the eleventh floor, scrolling through the font choices of a new design software, when Jan stepped in and asked, “How are you doing?”
“Not great.”
“Poor thing. How’s Betsy?”
“I haven’t told her about Seth and baby on the way, if that’s what you mean. One thing at a time. I think she’s got a crush on our neighbour.”
“Your neighbour. The drunk?”
“The same.”
“I saw him once, the day you moved in. He waved over the fence. I thought he was kind of cute. Shaggy and cute.”
“In the daylight he can be charming, it’s at night he’s trouble.” She told Jan all about the picnic table incident, and couldn’t help but laugh, describing how she’d watched two drunken lovers zipped in their sleeping bag tumble off the table into the dirt. “They were rolling around on the ground like cats in a sack, going ouch ouch ouch, but in a silly, giggly way, and then they wriggled out, and I swear to God, steam was coming off their bodies.”
“They were