Claiming Her

*

BRAN RAN INTO WALTER in the darkened stairwell. He almost plowed him over and tumbled down the stairs, but Walter’s hand gripped his shoulder and stopped him from falling. Then it dug in and pinched around the fabric.

“Where have you been, boy?” Walter demanded.

“About,” Dickon snapped vaguely, tugging to be free, but Walter’s fingers pinched harder; he was a good pincher. Dickon cast up a derisive, bitter, but defeated look. “You’re not going to turn me in, are you?”

Walter frowned. “I may well, if you do not answer to my liking.”

The light of oil lamps in the stairway made Walter into a towering, monolithic shape.

“Where were you just now?” Walter’s disapproval flowed down from his lofty, clerical heights. Dickon despaired of ever being half as tall as the egg-domed steward, which was half the reason his dislike bloomed so strongly. The other half was the manner in which he treated her ladyship.

And yet right now, Walter was the closest thing to a friend he had.

“Visiting my lady,” he muttered.

Walter’s hand tightened on his shoulder. “And?”

“She wants me to bring her her sword.”

They stared at each other.

“And then, to…to…surrender myself.” Shame laid his voice low.

Walter made a sound that, were it anyone else, he’d have interpreted as sympathy. His bony fingers loosened on Dickon’s tunic, then he went so far as to make the almost sympathetic sound again and pat his shoulder. Dickon gaped in surprise.

“Well,” Walter said, “better do as she bids, and turn yourself in.” At Dickon’s mutinous expression, he became again a disapproving clerical summit. “Ere they find you themselves, boy, and learn you what a true barbarian is.”

Dickon scowled. “They’d never find me.”

“They would if you keep pinching eggs from beside the kitchen door.”

Dickon’s jaw dropped as Walter turned and started down the stairs.

“You left the eggs?”

Walter seemed not to hear him. “You have a few days of liberty yet due you, as the master has just ridden off for town. See that you make yourself useful during it.”

Dickon started down the stairs after him. “How?”

“Collect more eggs.”

*

WITHIN THE HOUR, another round of emissaries had ridden out.

Aodh was out fast on their heels with his own contingent. Cormac and fifteen others rode at his side as the golden sun sent long rays over the tops of the walls, making the shadows retreat down in the baileys.

As they intended to win the town, and not conquer it, they bore few weapons and several heavy chests.

Ré stood on the wall just above the portcullis gate, in command of the castle in Aodh’s absence. As he passed under, Aodh stayed his horse.

“Station a guard at her door the entire time I am gone,” he ordered.

Ré nodded.

“Free the rest of her household. Not the guard, but her servants.”