Remembrance

“Most important,” Hugh agreed heartily. “Pride has always ruled my life and I can swear to the fact that I have always

kept my pride. Throughout my life I have kept my pride. No matter what happened, I have always retained my pride.”

“It is good for a knight to do so,” Talis answered, his back stiff, refusing to look after that deceiver, Callasandra.

“Yes,” Hugh continued, “when I was your age, I kept my pride no matter what, just as you are doing now. In fact, I was just as you are now, even to the fact that there was once a pretty little redhead I was in love with.”

At Talis’s raised eyebrow, Hugh chuckled. “Oh, I didn’t tell her I was in love with her. No, of course not, that would not have been manly. But I loved her; I dreamed of her, couldn’t sleep for thinking of her. I watched her even when I couldn’t see her. Can you understand a feeling like that?”

“Yes, I can understand such a feeling,” Talis said softly, thinking that Callie was incapable of feeling such a thing. Why had he not noticed before that she was fickle and unfaithful? That she could not sustain a love when it was tested?

Hugh continued. “One day when I was on the training field, she came to me, her red hair gleaming, and very haughtily announced that her mother was planning to marry her to another man. She said that if I wanted her I’d better speak up. And she said an odd thing. She said, ‘I will fight for you if you will fight for me.’ I wanted to tell her that I wanted to marry her more than anything else in the world, but there were a lot of boys around me and I was too proud to say such tender words in front of them, so I told her I didn’t have any idea what she was talking about. You see, I knew that if I’d told her I loved her in front of the others, they would laugh at me and my pride could not bear their laughter.”

“What did you do?” Talis asked, trying to act as though he were just being polite to an older man’s ancient story, but he was somewhat interested. But, truthfully, what could someone as old as Hugh know of love?

“I kept my pride, of course. What else could I do? I had no other choice.”

Talis thought that was a rather simplistic way of looking at the matter. “You could have told her you loved her. The boys would get over their laughter.”

“Ha! What was I to do, fall down in the mud and kiss the hem of her skirt and tell her that I loved her more than life itself? Those boys would have laughed at me forever. They never would have stopped.”

Talis was silent for a while, thinking of this. “What happened to her, to your red-haired girl?”

“She married the man her mother chose for her and they now have two boys, and three daughters with red hair like their mother.”

“And you have never married?” Talis asked.

“No. I never again loved anyone as I loved her, so how could I marry another? True love comes only once in a lifetime.”

“And what happened to those boys who you feared would laugh at you?”

“I have no idea.” Hugh chuckled. “But I know they remember that Hugh Kellon was a man of great pride.” He slapped Talis on the back. “So, see, boy, I am telling you that pride is the most important thing in the world. Let these other timid creatures, like that Allen Frobisher, do without their pride, but let us true men keep ours. Let the boys like that Frobisher walk beside that girl Callasandra and carry her packages. Let him buy her useless gifts. Let him hear her girlish squeals of delight. That is not manly, not prideful. You should continue as you are: aloof, distant, detached, imperious. Yes, you should continue acting as you are. You look like a young lord, too high and proud for anyone. Who cares about a silly girl’s laughs, her touches, the way she looks at a man with eyes full of love? You are above such as that, are you not? You are too good, too proud to make an ass of yourself in front of all these people and let the girl know that she is more important to you than all the pride in the world. Yes, indeed, you are better than that. You are—”

Talis burst out laughing, at last understanding what Hugh was saying, what the point of his story was. “You think I am being a fool, don’t you?”

“I think that pride makes a cold bedfellow. That girl loves you, but you have spent much time with other women of late and she thinks you no longer love her.” Hugh liked the idea of Talis thinking he was a sage of great wisdom, but he was just telling Talis the problem as Will had told him.

Talis looked through the crowd. Callie was so far away now he could hardly see her. Will had said the same thing that Hugh was now saying, but then Talis had just laughed. Callie was always thinking that he, Talis, didn’t love her. But in the past, when she had hinted at such nonsense, Talis had usually answered her with physical action rather than with words. The idea that she was anything less than his reason for living was so absurd that at the mention of such a thing, he would pick her up and toss her in a creek or a wagon full of fruit, or even onto a low-hanging tree branch. The first time he had thrown her in the cow pond, when they were about five, Meg had threatened to thrash him. But Callie had stepped between him and the switch and said, “Tally loves me,” and she’d not allowed Meg to touch Talis.

“Go on, boy,” Hugh said softly. “Don’t ask me why, but women love men who make asses of themselves over them. You can knock twenty men off their horses in the joust and the woman you want to impress won’t look at you. But slip on an apple skin and fall down a flight of stairs and she will in all probability fall in love with you.”

Talis laughed again, knowing that now Hugh was telling the truth.

“And, boy, whatever you do, tell her you need her. It is what they most want to hear.”

Talis gave him a look that asked, Why? but Hugh only shrugged in puzzlement. “Go on, act as though you are the village idiot. Pride is a lonely friend.”

“But Lord John—” Talis began. “The other girls will…” He trailed off as he realized that he had been about to do just what Hugh had once done. “Yes,” he said, “I can see the problem.”

As Talis started to walk away, he turned back to Hugh. “Was there really a red-haired girl?”

“Yes,” Hugh said and there was honesty in his voice. “And I didn’t fight for her.”

35

This is going to be easy, Talis thought, thinking about getting Callie back. Of course, she cared nothing for that white-haired braggart she was following around. So maybe Talis hadn’t been paying a great deal of attention to Callie lately—for which he had honorable reasons. But then she’d not been spending time with him either—for no reasons at all.

There was some part of him that knew she would have been with him if she could have, but she’d been given the task of working in that odious garden during the day. Talis had visited her a second time, accompanied by four of the women from the household, but Callie had not reacted as he’d hoped she would. She had not shown any of the temper he knew she had; she hadn’t fought for him. In fact, she had been downright disdainful of him and his trail of richly dressed women. “Do they dress you? Do they bathe you?” she had said to him. “If I wish it,” he’d answered, doing his best to raise her temper.