They entered a huge hall with a stunning hammer-beam ceiling that rose majestically overhead. The plaster walls were covered with every manner of arms and armor, ready to be used in case of trouble.
Tables were set up, covered with huge platters of food, richly dressed people laughing and talking as they ate. At one end was a raised dais, two ornate chairs set in the middle. In the smaller of the two chairs sat a once-pretty woman who was now soft and past her youth. In the larger of the two chairs sat a boy, maybe older than Talis, but not much. He was tall, thin faced, underdeveloped, and when he saw his father, what pleasure there was on his face disappeared.
It did not take much to bring the diners to a halt. John Hadley was not known for his generosity. He wanted people to eat and get back to work. When he was away, the household was much more relaxed and everything was easier.
Now, they could not believe the happiness on his face. With long strides, he went straight toward the head table where his wife sat, one of her sons on either side of her. John did not so much as offer a greeting to his two sons, who looked at their father as though begging for approval. The people saw Lady Alida’s hand go out to touch the sleeve of her eldest son. For all that John cared nothing for his imperfect sons, his wife loved them very, very much.
“Behold, wife,” John said, as though he were a performer at a fair announcing the magician’s coming act. “I have found our true son.”
With a great flourish, he stepped back so everyone could see Talis and Callie standing in the middle of the room.
In England, the classes were divided in every way: clothing, houses, even in food. People who could afford it ate the most expensive food, which was meat and sugar. Upper classes separated themselves from lower classes by never eating vegetables if they could help it: Peasants and animals ate vegetables. Eating fruit raw showed that you could not afford a cook to stew the fruit in a sugar sauce. Brown bread with the bran still in it showed you could afford only the cheapest grain.
The Hadley house was rich, with the inhabitants living on meat, white flour, and sugared pastries. As a result, they suffered from what the continentals called the English Disease of blackened, loose, rotting teeth. No amount of cleaning could compensate for the sugar-laden diet.
Callie and Talis had been raised by farmers on a diet of vegetables, little meat, fruit eaten raw from the trees, and sugar eaten so seldom they hardly knew the taste of it. Added to their diet was a lifetime of physical activity—running, climbing over fences, chasing chickens.
The result of all this was two people of dazzling good health: strong bones, lithe muscles, glistening white teeth, hair that shone from good health and sunshine. They stood straight and strong, their limbs supple and glowing.
Talis with his dark handsomeness, Callie with her blue-violet eyes and hair to her waist, looked like a couple from a fairy story: the knight and his maiden fair.
All eyes were drawn to Talis. He looked like every man’s dream of a son: healthy, strong, tall, broad, his dark eyes gleaming with intelligence. What he did not look like was John Hadley’s son. John was a tall man, broad shouldered, but his was not a body that carried much weight. In his youth, his hair had been red and his skin white; sun burned him, it did not tan him. There was no doubt that his sons now flanking his wife at the table belonged to him: They were slighter versions of John. But now, this young giant standing next to John looked like a bear beside a golden-haired deer.
But, of course, no one dared say such out loud.
Alida tried her best to remain calm. Even though she was seeing the end of her life, the end of her children’s lives standing before her, she tried to remain calm. But the emotion was too much for her.
She tried to rise, to offer her hand in welcome to this boy who was laying claim to what belonged to her children, but she could not. The moment she stood, the blood left her head and she fainted.
She had no idea that Talis, ever quick in an emergency, leaped across the table and picked her up into his strong young arms before she hit the floor.
Speechless, the audience looked at him as he held Lady Alida, her arms hanging limply at her side.
“Sir?” Talis asked, looking at John, wanting to know where he was to take the woman he held.
Had there been any part of John’s heart that did not already belong to Talis, this incident would have claimed it. “Come, son,” he said. “I will show you where to take her.”
Pandemonium. That’s what broke forth in the Great Hall when Alida fainted after the announcement of her son’s return from the grave. People began talking at once, everyone speculating on what had happened and what was going to happen. Anyone who knew, or thought he knew, anything about the events of sixteen years before was in great demand as a speaker and considered a font of knowledge.
As Talis carried her up the stairs, Alida awoke from her stupor long enough to say to her oldest unmarried daughter, “Keep her busy.” Then, with one more look at the dark young man carrying her up the stairs, she lapsed back into her swoon.
It took Edith, the eldest, a while to understand who her mother meant when she said, “her.” If there was anything less interesting than yet another unmarried woman in the Hadley household, one would be hard pressed to discover it.
After Edith did figure out who her mother meant, it took her a while to find the girl. She was so close to the young man who was their new brother that Edith couldn’t at first see her.
Dorothy, the youngest of the unmarried daughters, standing behind Edith, looked at Talis hanging over their mother’s bed and gave a great sigh. “Why does he have to be our brother?” she said, tears of exasperation in her voice.
“Be quiet! He’s too young for you anyway,” Edith, ever practical, said.
At that Dorothy gave a nasty little laugh that said what all the daughters thought: She’d take any man she could get; none of them were too young or too old, too anything.
Edith didn’t allow herself to think about what was going on around them, nor did she look at her new brother. Edith took her responsibilities very seriously. “Come along,” she said to Callie, and when Callie started to protest, Edith took her firmly by the arm and began to pull her from the room.
As Callie was being forcibly led from the room, she looked back at the crowd of people around Talis. Immediately, his head came up as he frowned at her, not wanting her to leave. But before he could say anything, Alida gave a groan that sounded as though she were dying.
“My son,” Alida said. “My son. It is a miracle.” With amazing strength for one so weak, she pulled Talis’s head down toward her own. “Let me look at you.”
By the time Talis could pull away from her, Callie was gone.