Callie followed Edith and the other two, but she knew that her heart was in the courtyard below.
26
What ails you, son?” John Hadley asked Talis as the boy toyed with the food on his plate. John rarely allowed the boy out of his sight, which was why he had him eating in his private chambers instead of with the others in the Great Hall. At the first meal they had shared, Talis had asked that his brothers be allowed to sit with them. Talis had thought it odd that a father would choose one son over another, and, besides, he liked the company of Philip and James.
“How do you expect to grow if you do not eat?” John asked.
“Has he not grown enough?” Philip said, half teasing, half in jealousy at the way his father treated this new “brother.” “All the horses scream in fear at the very sight of him.”
At that statement, John drew back his hand, ready to cuff his son for his insolence, but Talis laughed and reached for another roll of white bread. He missed Meg’s cooking, her table laden with simple food, undisguised. In this house he sometimes had trouble figuring out what food was, as even cheese was sometimes formed to look like beef. “And shall we saddle a grasshopper for you, little brother?” Talis asked. “Or a garden snake so your feet will not drag the ground?”
Startled, John dropped his hand.
“And what of you, brother?” Talis said, looking at Philip, whose hands shook from the exertion of the day.
“Me?” Philip asked, never wanting attention focused on him at best, and never around his father.
For a moment, Talis studied Philip, looked at his shaking hands, at the circles under his eyes. The three of them slept in a bed together and he knew all too well how much Philip coughed during the night. “Tomorrow we shall compete,” Talis said. “I will take both of you on. If either of you unseats me, both of you shall spend the day on your backs under a tree. If neither of you can unseat me, then I will nap under the tree while you train.”
The two young men looked at Talis as though he’d lost his mind. Their father would never allow such laziness.
“Come now, don’t look so glum. I will not snore too loudly as the two of you train in the sun. Hugh will leave you all in the dirt. Tomorrow I shall be ready to spend the night dancing and you will be too tired to stand.”
John chuckled at this, as Talis reminded him of himself at that age, so cocky and sure of himself.
It was Philip who understood what Talis was doing and for a moment the beginnings of love filled his eyes. He had done what he could to make their father understand that James could not train every day, that he needed rest. Philip knew that tomorrow, early, Talis was going to be landing in the dirt and James would “win” the competition and therefore spend his day resting under a shade tree.
“You!” Philip said. “You have the finesse of a butcher. You could never unseat someone with my training. Tell me, Talis, on this farm of yours, did you by chance ride cows?”
“I’ll—” John began, but Talis cut him off.
“I was as good a farmer as I will be a knight,” Talis bragged. “I raised chickens so big that I rode them. Of course I had a problem when I jumped fences with them as their feathers got into my mouth. But I solved that problem by selling the feathers to be used for logs for building boats. Chicken feathers float, you know.”
At that, even John laughed, and for the rest of the meal, he ate in silence, listening to his sons taunt each other. It seemed that with each day that passed the gloom was lifting from the house. John had always believed that his happiness lay in having his own true son, and this beautiful, strong, intelligent boy was proving him right.
But it was by the evening of the fifth day that John began to notice that something was wrong with his precious son. At first his exuberance had known no bounds. He had teased and laughed and pushed himself to show his strength with a weapon. He was untrained but he was extremely talented.
Off the field, his teachers had raved about his knowledge of the arts as well as the sciences. They said that only James had been a better pupil. John dismissed this; what did it matter what his w
eak son learned? He would be dead in a short time so John refused to give the boy any part of his heart.
But Talis was another matter. Here was a boy worthy of love.
So what was wrong with him? John wondered. It was as though something was draining him. When John had expressed a concern that perhaps the boy was tired, Hugh had snorted. “How can a sixteen-year-old be tired? At his age did you not train all day and wench all night? I know I did not sleep at his age.”
“Then what is wrong with him?”
Hugh had no idea. They had been given a clue to Talis’s problem when Talis easily knocked Hugh to the ground and insolently placed his foot on his chest. In that moment, Talis had certainly not lacked energy. They had, of course, noticed that young Talis wanted to impress the girls hanging from the window, but all boys wanted that so they’d paid no attention to it.
Tomorrow would be nearly a week that Talis had been with them, and during that time John had made sure that every moment of the boy’s time was taken up. Talis had not been left alone for a breath. John wasn’t sure what he was frightened of, but he seemed to fear that Talis would disappear if he were not supervised and guarded at every second.
Now, after dinner, John started to walk the boys upstairs to their chamber, Hugh close behind them.
It was on the stairs that John came close to finding out what was plaguing Talis. Coming down the stairs were a gaggle of his daughters—he did not bother himself to tell one from another; they were all alike to him.
Suddenly, as though a spell had been cast upon him and he could not move, Talis halted on the stairs, his eyes wide, as though he were seeing something not quite of this world. Across from him, against the wall, one of the girls also stopped, her face a mirror of his.
At first the two of them, the girl and Talis, did not touch, but the way they looked at each other was something that John had never seen before. No, it was more than something one could see; it was something that could only be felt. When the two of them looked at each other, they seemed to fill the air with a charge, like on a summer’s day before a lightning storm.