Lionheart A Novel - By Sharon Kay Penman Page 0,204

Setting the comb aside, he looked around for his hoof pick. Finding it on a nearby bench, he turned back toward Fauvel, only to halt in horror, for Anna was no longer sitting at a safe distance; she was in the stall now with the stallion, a battlefield destrier bred for his fiery temperament.

“Anna, do not make any sudden moves. Slowly back out of the stall.”

She looked astonished, and then amused. “No danger! Fauvel . . . he knows me,” she insisted, and held out her hand. The horse’s nostrils quivered and then he plucked the lump of crystallized sugar from her palm, as delicately as a pet dog accepting a treat from a doting mistress.

Richard exhaled a deep breath, for he of all men knew the damage a destrier could inflict upon human flesh and bones. “Do not push your luck, lass,” he warned, torn between anger and relief. “Stallions are as unpredictable as women. I’d rather not have to tell my wife and sister that you were trampled into the dust because of my carelessness.”

The expression on her face indicated she was clearly humoring him. But after giving Fauvel one last pat, she slipped out of the stall. Taking her place, Richard saw that she’d untied the stallion’s halter and he resecured it, swearing under his breath. It was only when she giggled that he realized she’d understood his cursing. “Your French seems to have improved dramatically since we left Cyprus, Anna.”

She smiled impishly. “I learn French long ago, when my brother and I are hostages for my papa in Antioch. But after we are set free, he wants us to speak only Greek, so I forget a lot. . . . It comes back now I hear it all the time.”

Richard busied himself inspecting Fauvel’s legs. When the stallion raised his hoof upon command, he pried manure from the frog with his pick, looking for any cracks or signs of injury. Joanna had told him that Anna occasionally talked about her mother, who’d died when she was six, and her brother, who’d not long survived their arrival on Cyprus, but she never spoke of her father. Richard had no desire whatsoever to discuss Isaac with her. Yet the image of her sneaking into the stables to give treats to her father’s stallion was undeniably a poignant one. He supposed he could let her visit Isaac at Margat Castle if it meant so much to her. It would be safe enough to sail up the coast now that Saladin’s fleet had been captured at Acre. “Do you miss your father, Anna?” he asked at last, hoping this was not a kindness he’d regret.

“No.”

The finality of that answer took him by surprise. He made no comment and, after some moments, she said, “My papa . . . he is good to me. But he is not good to my mama, to Sophia, to others. His anger . . . it scare me sometimes. . . .”

Richard could well imagine it did. What was it Sophia had said at Kyrenia . . . that Anna had not had “an easy life”? His silence was a sympathetic one, but she misread it. “Malik Ric . . . you think I am not a . . . a dutiful daughter?”

The incongruity of this conversation was beginning to amuse him. “I’d be the last man in Christendom to lecture you about filial duty, Anna. Ask Joanna sometime about my father and me. As far back as I can remember, we were like flint and tinder.”

Pleased that he was not disapproving, she eagerly obeyed when he asked her to hand him a sponge, and watched in fascination as he cleaned around Fauvel’s ears and muzzle, for she could not imagine Isaac ever grooming his own horse. “May I ask you, Malik Ric? They say you lead your men south. Why not toward Jerusalem?”

“It is too dangerous to head inland from Acre, lass, and too long, more than one hundred fifty miles through the hills of Ephraim. If we march along the coast toward Jaffa, my fleet can sail with us, carrying all the provisions we’ll need. Best of all, Saladin cannot be sure what target I am aiming for, Ascalon or Jerusalem.”

When one of his knights entered the stables soon afterward, he found Richard kneeling in the dirt outside Fauvel’s stall, drawing a map for Anna with his dagger as he explained that Ascalon controlled the road to Egypt. The man didn’t even blink,