Never If Not Now - Madeline Hunter Page 0,1
space spanned by the tent. “Put those chests there.”
Two townsmen lugged in the chests and dropped them. One turned with his hand out. She gave him one of her precious half pennies. The townspeople were charging high amounts for their labor, and she resented how much had been demanded for simply moving chests off a cart. If this continued, she and her father would be living in a ditch after this madness was done.
She examined her home for the next week. The tent needed mending, and one of the chests looked ready to fall apart after its days on the cart that brought them here.
She had already noticed that many of the visitors to this tournament displayed more wealth than she would ever see for herself. Women in fine gowns strolled down from the castle, their feet in high pattens and their hair adorned with headdresses made with luxurious fabrics. The parade had been earlier in the day, and she guessed it had been an incredible display of everyone’s best garments and the knights’ full pageantry.
She did not envy the good fortune of the women now passing along toward the lists, but she would rather not be the poorest among them. Bad roads had made them late to arrive, but at least it had caused them to miss that parade, and the grand feast last night at which expensive clothing would have been expected.
She threw open her chest. She held up a blue dress and considered whether she could improve it before the grand feast when the tournament ended. A bit of embroidery inside the long open sleeves might help, and some new lacing on the side, but nothing could mask that the lightweight wool had been well worn over the years.
One by one she checked the contents of the other chests. She removed a crucifix and set it near her father’s pallet. An old little painting of the Virgin Mary, brought back from Crusade by her father, went near her own. She set out pots near the tent’s flap, so they would be handy for cooking, along with a basket for gathering fuel and also some bladders to collect water from the river.
She removed a simple surcoat from her father’s garments and set it aside for mending. When she lifted the lid on the final chest, her blood chilled.
She let the lid crash closed, turned on her heel, and strode from the tent. She spied her father talking to another knight at a camp nearby. He saw her coming, and strode forward to meet her.
“You’ve got the look of an angel preparing to fight the devil.” He spoke jovially as he approached, his strides long but his gait stilted due to his bad leg.
“Devil is the truth of it, since one has taken hold of you,” she said. “What possessed you to bring your arms?”
“’Tis a tournament, Elinor.”
“I know what it is, just as I know the cost of coming here. When I objected to this journey, you promised feasts and festivities. You did not say that you intended to compete.”
“No reason for a knight to go to a tourney and not compete.”
Her thinking exactly, and her argument for not coming.
“You are thinking about this bad leg. It doesn’t bother me much, and I won’t be running a race.”
No, he’d be fighting with sword and mace against men half his age, none with a limp, or eyes that could no longer read their own names.
Even if her father had not been wounded in battle, even if he had not had his health ruined by months in a damp Frankish donjon, his age alone argued against competing. At two and forty, his strength and stamina had naturally declined.
“You have no horse,” she reminded him.
“I intend to get one.”
“How? We have very little coin. Barely enough for provisions, especially since everything will be priced too high so the townsmen can pluck the fat chickens that have taken to roost in their field.”
“Don’t you worry about how. I won’t be using the coin you have, either.”
“No, you won’t.” She had accumulated that money by working as a servant, plying her needle for others. They had travelled here with two other knights, both of whom would wear surcoats in the tournament that she had sewn.
At least she had a skill to sell. It had kept them in food and some semblance of honor. It would serve her after her father died, so she would not be destitute. She tried not to be bitter,