"You mean throw Rowena over and convince him that I've changed my ways," said Lucas. "It might work. A lot can happen to a man while he's away at war. Cedric might believe that I've come to my senses. Then all I've got to do is convince him to throw his lot in with Richard when the time comes. That's not going to be easy."
"Well, if you wanted easy, what the hell'd you join the army for?" said Finn.
"It's a question I've asked myself frequently. I think I was looking for adventure," said Lucas with mock seriousness.
"Now's your big chance, son. Make the most of it."
"What'd you join for, Finn?"
"The tests said I had no aptitude for anything else."
"You think that's true?"
"I don't know. I've never done anything else."
* * * *
The banquet at the Castle of Ashby was a noisy affair. John sat in the place of honor at the tables in the great hall with Fitzurse sitting on his left hand and Bois-Guilbert upon his right. All around him, knights and barons were tearing into their food with both hands, ripping off drumsticks or lifting whole roast chickens up to their mouths. Wine ran down their chins and onto their doublets, gobbets of masticated venison were sprayed across the room as revelers erupted into laughter or shouted with their mouths full. Meat was tossed onto the floor for their dogs to fight over, tables were pounded upon, toasts proposed and drunk and curses shouted, oaths proclaimed and prowess boasted of.
It was all too much for de la Croix, who fled the banquet hall for a walk along the parapets. The scene was bad enough, but to her dismay, it seemed that she had gained an ardent admirer. In the absence of the Jewess, John had seen fit to grant Rowena the honor of presiding over the banquet. Cedric had reluctantly attended, along with Athelstane, and they sat there glowering while Normans made disparaging remarks about the Saxons. Clearly, Cedric had not wished to come, but his daughter had prevailed upon him, flattered by the attentions paid her by the men her father hated. Andre did not envy Cedric such a daughter.
What was worse, Rowena was blatant in her undisguised infatuation with the red knight, ignorant, as were all the others, of "his" true sex. She made cow eyes at de la Croix and made as if to swoon each time she glanced in her direction. She had contrived to procure for Andre the seat on her right hand, telling all other contenders for the same position that de la Croix deserved it, being the knight who had done the best against the white-garbed challenger. Once seated, Rowena took every excuse to create an opportunity for their hands to brush, for their thighs to come in contact. She had pressed with her knee and when that failed to provoke response, she had started rubbing Andre's leg with her foot. Failing in that, she sought to slip her hand between de la Croix's legs, at which point Andre fled, pleading dizziness as a result of the joust, for it certainly would not do for Rowena to grope about between her legs and not find what she sought.
Andre was not ashamed of being a woman, nor did she have any desire to be a man. Her decision to pose as a male had been one of simple pragmatism. In the society in which she moved, it was almost impossible for a woman to exist independently of a man. Certainly, it was impossible that she be treated as an equal and given the same opportunities as a man. Andre had lost her parents when she was only nine. They had been farmers. Her mother and her father had been hapless enough to slaughter a goat that had been contaminated. In the process of the butchery, they had breathed in the spores from the animal's hide. The same flesh, cooked, had not harmed the children, but for the parents, the die had been cast. Within a week, they had manifested the symptoms. Both had high fevers, their bodies racked with aches and pains as the infection spread. Their glands swelled, a fine red rash appeared, their blood pressure dropped and their lungs filled with water. They both became delirious, ranting for hours on end and hallucinating and finally, within another week, first the mother, then the father went into shock and died.
Thus, at the age of nine, Andre had become both mother and father to Marcel. She even tried to manage their tiny farm, but the children failed dismally. Leaving behind their simple home, and their parents, whom Andre had buried in the field, they started wandering, never knowing from one moment to the next what fate had in store for them or where their next meal would come from. Those meals were few and far between. They got by at first by stealing. Andre wasn't very good at it at the beginning and she often starved so that Marcel could eat, but she got better.
Their lives took a turn for the better when the orphans were taken in by an abbot who treated
them kindly and taught them how to read, giving them what little education both possessed. The demands he made on her young body did not seem too much to give him in return. When he began to make the same demands upon Marcel, Andre decided it was time to leave.
It was very shortly after that that she took to passing as a boy. It made things easier, although not by very much. They traveled constantly, stealing what they could to see them through. They both learned how to fight and they survived, although the odds against them were incalculable. Then they met up with Sir Giles.
Andre never knew Sir Giles' full name. Giles, himself, was no longer certain what it was. A knight errant who had taken one blow to the head too many, Giles was addle-brained without any hope of recovery. He imagined himself to be upon a quest and, indeed, when he had set out upon his journey from wherever it was he came, he may have had some purpose in mind, but he could no longer remember what it was. Though he was a lost soul, Giles was a gentle man who had brief periods of relative lucidity interspersed with fugue states. He was a sad knight, barely able to take care of himself. Frequently, he forgot to eat and he was given to experiencing extremely painful headaches. In spite of this, however, he was supremely functional when it came to exercising his fighting prowess. It was as though his body could remember what his mind could not. Whenever it came to practicing his knightly art or speaking of it, something inside him clicked and, for a time, he was almost normal.
He had not seen through Andre's deception and he took her and Marcel at face value as two orphaned boys out on their own. They touched a chord of sympathy within him and he made them his squires and proceeded to instruct them. It was a touching, symbiotic relationship. They took care of him, and he gave them protection. When it came to instructing his two young squires in the art of combat, Giles was a relentless taskmaster. He transferred the feverish intensity with which he sought to grasp his past into his teaching and he rode them hard. Marcel, a delicate young boy, was ill suited to such work and he pleaded with his sister to run away from Giles; but even then, Andre understood that the knowledge being imparted to them had no price and that it was an opportunity that would never come again.
Although Marcel did not display much of an aptitude for knightly skills, Andre responded to the training well and quickly. She learned how to control a horse while in full armor, though Giles' armor was extremely large on her and she could barely move about inside it without his assistance. She learned how to use a crossbow, how to fight with a broadsword, which she had not even been able to lift at first. She was almost constantly in pain from the demands placed on her young and undeveloped muscles, but she was possessed of intense determination. As time passed and she grew, her muscles became stronger. She became concerned when she noticed that she was beginning to develop as a woman, but the fact that she was never meant to be voluptuous, coupled with the response of her muscles to the highly intense training, resulted in her developing a body that aided her in her deception. Her breasts, though firm, were small and easily, if uncomfortably, concealed. Her shoulders, though not as broad as those of many men, were nevertheless much broader than the standards of beauty dictated for women. Her arms were large for a woman and her legs did not have the coltish slimness indicative of indolence. Where women of the day were soft, Andre was hard. Where their skin was smooth, Andre's was rough. In short, as a woman, Andre de la Croix was too mannish to attract very many men and, indeed, she would have intimidated them. But in the aspect of a man, she gave the impression of possessing a studied, languid grace, a trim and compact body and a youthful prettiness that gave her a very boyish quality and frequently made others underestimate her.
When Giles succumbed to pneumonia, Andre and Marcel buried him in the forest and Andre took his horse and arms for her own. She applied the skills that Giles had taught her and improved upon them, selling her services to anyone who could afford to pay. In time, she was able to improve upon Giles' ill-fitting armor by commissioning an armorer to craft a suit especially for her. There were many knights involved in the Crusades and they proclaimed this by wearing the cross upon their chests and shields. Andre instructed her armorer to fashion a cross as a device for her, as well, only to make it different from those worn by the Crusaders. The armorer gave her a fleury cross and reversed the colors of the Crusaders from red on white to white on red and the red knight, Andre de la Croix, was born.
As she stood outside upon the parapet, feeling the cool evening breeze upon her face, Andre considered the unlikely part that fate had chosen her to play in the scheme of things.
She wished she understood more about the intrigue she was involved in.
"It is time for us to talk," a voice said at her side.
She jerked, startled. She had been all alone upon the castle wall mere seconds ago and the hooded stranger had appeared at her side as if out of thin air. It was not the first time he had so surprised her.
"Would that I could learn to move so swiftly, or with such silence," she told him. "Where did you come from?"
"That need not concern you."
"What do you want, then?"
"I want you to perform a service for me. You will listen carefully and follow each of my commands to the letter. I will not tolerate refusal or failure on your part. You—"
"I am not one of your serfs," said Andre.