The Nethergrim (7 page)

Edmund could not have asked, could not have dreamed in a thousand nights for a better moment. He nearly let it slip by, so amazed he was at its perfection. He took a breath. “Well, if you want, I would be happy—no, I would be honored, deeply honored, if you—”

She looked up at him. His mouth went dry.

“Ah—Katherine, isn’t it?”

Katherine gasped and leapt to her feet. She curtsied. “My lord!”

“Not a lord yet.” Harry waved a hand through the air. “I was just speaking to your father, Katherine. What a day this must be for him!”

Edmund sat staring at the space where Katherine had just been. Tom awoke, blinked up at Harry and scrambled out of the way without being noticed.

“I have not seen you in some time, Katherine—it must be years, I think.” Harry stood Katherine’s height, or perhaps slightly taller. His bright hazel eyes seemed to flash golden in the sun. “Was it at a winter feast?”

Katherine stammered, and curtsied again at his side. “I was eleven, good squire.”

“Yes, that’s right, we had your father up for that, and you came along.” Harry’s boots were fashioned of fine kid leather, and his clothes seemed made to mold to his frame. “We played a game of chase-about behind the hall with some other children. I seem to recall you played a little trick on me that day.”

“I’d hoped you’d forgotten, good squire.” Katherine flushed bright red.

“How could I forget? It took me days to get that gunk out of my hair!” Harry laughed—Edmund would have liked to pretend it was false and snobbish, but it was neither. “You were such a little imp back then. You’ve grown.”

Katherine stared at the ground. “Everyone says that.”

“I wonder if they mean it the way I do.”

Katherine looked up at Harry. The mooning look on her face made Edmund sick.

Harry seemed to notice Edmund only then. “Oh.” He arched one elegant brow. “And who is this? Your friend?”

“Yes, good squire,” said Katherine. “This is Edmund Bale. My friend.”

Edmund scrambled off the boulder and bowed. “Good squire.”

“Ah, yes, from up in Moorvale, are you not? The innkeeper’s son.” Harry leaned down to smile over Edmund with his hands behind his back, acting for all the world like Edmund was a child who wanted a pat on the head. “Do you know, I was just telling our noble guests that we have the best archers in the kingdom right here in Elverain, and the best archers in Elverain hail from the village of Moorvale.”

Edmund nodded. “The best, good squire, no question.”

“And so, young Edmund,” said Harry, “when is your turn?”

Edmund blinked. “Turn?”

“In the archery tourney!” Harry tapped the longbow in Edmund’s hands.

Edmund gaped—first at the bow, then at Harry. “Oh. I wasn’t—”

“Come, come,” said Harry. “Let us have a sample of your deadly skill.”

“My deadly—?” Edmund swallowed hard. “Yes, good squire.” He turned and shuffled out onto the field. He took his place in line, shooting looks across at Harry and Katherine whenever he could.

“You must be proud of your father, Katherine.” Harry’s voice carried across the open field. “And we are all grateful for the work you do—John often says that the horses he sends us are as much your handiwork as his.” Katherine seemed to be turning pink at his side.

Edmund stepped up to the mark and gauged the wind. He looked around him at the gathered crowd, and saw almost every one of the neighbors who stood next to him week after week at archery practice. He tried to remember all that they had shown him. The stance comes first. Plant your feet shoulder width apart and stand with equal weight on each leg. Your toes should line up to the bull’s-eye. Nock the arrow between your first two fingers, but don’t pinch it or you’ll throw off your aim. He sighted down to the target—maybe he could do this after all.

“Miss! Miss, miss, miss!”

Edmund glanced over to find Geoffrey and his stupid little friends lined up along the trees. They passed along the chant to children Edmund did not know, who took it up without knowing or caring why it was right and good that Edmund should miss the target.

“I saw you earlier, when I was holding court down in the square.” Harry drew in at Katherine’s shoulder. “I’m glad I found you again.”

If Katherine made a reply, it was too breathless for Edmund to hear. He gauged the distance—one good shot would draw a cheer, draw Katherine’s eye. One good shot.

“Tonight we do honor to your father, so I think you should sit in a place of honor as well.” The nervous, hopeful tone of Harry’s voice made it grate all the worse in Edmund’s ear. “I will arrange for you to sit with the nobles, at the high table.”

Edmund did his best to pretend he was deaf. Put your other hand on the bow with the grip right at the base of your thumb—that was next. He drew back. A bull’s-eye—please, just once.

“You won’t be out of place at all, I promise. Sit next to me; we can talk about horses. It will be such fun—and, later, if you like—” Harry moved in for the killing stroke. “Katherine, may I have the honor of asking you to the first dance at the feast tonight?”

Edmund loosed his arrow. He had already sunk his head before it landed in the dirt, yards away from the target.

“Me?” Katherine sounded near to losing her voice. “I would—that would—yes, please, good squire!”

“Ha!” Geoffrey hopped up and down from the sidelines. “Good one, Edmund!” His friends laughed long and loud.

No one else said much—most grown-ups were not so cruel. It all had the feeling of a bad dream, though Edmund could not remember a particular dream so perfectly bad. He thought for a moment that he might as well strip off all his clothes and stand naked in the field, just to make it all as horrible as possible.

Harry looked out to the archery field. “Oh.” He turned to Katherine. “Your friend is not a very good shot, is he?”

Edmund felt a nudge at his back. “Er, you do have another go.”

“Forget it.” Edmund slumped off the field. He looked up at Katherine and found her still turned to Harry, her eyes shining wide, a spot of flush on each of her cheeks. The ache was more than he could bear.

He found Tom on the other side of the walnut tree. “I’ll walk home with you if you like.”

“What about the feast, though?” Tom turned as he passed. “Aren’t you going to the dance?”

Edmund could not bring himself to answer. He watched the ground at his feet, nudging through the crowd without seeing them, and it was only by the sound of following footsteps that he knew that Tom had come along to walk home at his side.

Chapter
6

P
apa, your guard is low.” Katherine twisted up her arm to take a strike on the edge of her shield.

Her father parried her counter. “Have mercy on an old man!” He sprang back a step and switched his stance.

It was too late in the year and in the day to be warm, but the sun had broken bright above the clouds. The dull thwack of wooden sword on sword returned in echo from the wide country all around. The horses grazing down in the pasture had long ceased to pay the noise any mind. The longer Katherine sparred, the deeper she got into the shift of stances, lunges and blocks, the closer she came to forgetting for a moment the horror of the night before.

“You’re getting sweaty, Papa.” She jammed a thrust down her father’s sword to the crossguard. “Would you like a rest?”

John knocked her blade wide. “That’s odd, child. I was just about to ask you the same thing. Arm straight, now—you’re falling out of stance.”

“Ha! As you like, then.” Katherine came on, swinging high across the shoulders, meeting each parry and driving her father back over the top of the hill. John gave ground past the splay-limbed oak at the summit, stumbling over the roots and seeming barely able to stave her off—but never losing his smile.

She read the trick a moment too late.

Her father drew her in, then planted his foot and broke her advance, stumbling no more. “Out of stance, child. Too eager for the kill.” He did not fake his hard breathing, though—she had gotten very close. She wove and ducked, giving ground in return until she found her balance.

“Hello up there!” The voice floated up the hill from afar.

Katherine and her father stepped apart, then dropped their guards. Two figures rode proud horses up the Dorham road—the first of them young and straight of carriage, the second riding sidesaddle in long skirts. The first rider dismounted to open the pasture gate—Katherine gasped and threw her sword aside.

John shaded his eyes to squint at the approaching figures. “Who’s that?”

“Harry—Harold, Papa.” Katherine unbuckled her shield and let it drop in the grass.

“With his father?”

“No, his mother.” Katherine tried to brush the dust and bits of grass from her tunic, then looked herself over. No good, no good—sweat stains on her breeches, mud on her boots. She reached up to push errant strands of hair into her braid. A little voice in her asked her why she bothered, but she could not help herself.

John set his sword against the trunk of the oak. “Don’t worry so, child. We raise and train their horses for them—they do not expect us to be so very clean.”

Harry came first up the hill, astride a dun stallion Katherine had helped to birth six years before. He turned to call behind him. “Here they are, Mother!” He slipped down from the saddle. Katherine kept her head inclined, watching the grass at his feet. A silence yawned and dawdled past.

“You are most welcome here.” Her father filled the gap. “I trust you enjoyed the feast?”

“I did—very much,” said Harry. “Did you also?”

“It was an honor, good squire.”

“Oh, good. That is very good. And—your daughter?”

Katherine could not bring herself to say a word. Her dreams had died far too hard.

“There was no need to come up so far, Harold.” Lady Isabeau crested the summit on the back of a pure white palfrey. “If you wish for a tour of your father’s stables, you need only command our servants to come down and show you them.” She was neither young nor old, neither fat nor thin. She wore her hair bound in an elaborate headpiece ten years out of date.

“My lady.” John bowed low. Katherine curtsied behind him, her hands held out to lift imaginary skirts.

“John Marshal.” Lady Isabeau glanced around her at the weapons lying scattered in the grass. Her face pinched in disapproval. “How long have you been training your daughter in swordplay?”

“Since she was eight, my lady.”

“For what purpose?”

John Marshal looked up at her, then down. He made no answer. A pained look crossed Harry’s face. Katherine flushed in hot misery.

“Well, Harold, here you are. Your father’s training stables—your stables, one day.” Lady Isabeau wheeled her horse around. “John, walk with me. I want your advice on a few small matters.”

“My lady.” John stepped out to follow down the hill. Lady Isabeau made him jog a bit to catch up to her horse.

“I’ll just stay here, Mother.” Harry turned to call after them. “To take in the view. Shall I just stay here?”

“Do as you like, son. Have the girl fetch us some refreshment.”

“Yes, Mother.” Harry watched them go, then looked at Katherine, once and again. She could not bring herself to fake a smile in return.

Harry shifted away under the oak. He picked up the practice sword that leaned against the trunk. “So—are you good?”

“We just pass the time this way, me and Papa—when we’re done our work for your noble father, of course.” Katherine wanted him to go. She would never have dreamed that she could wish for such a thing, but she did.

“Come, then.” Harry motioned that she should retrieve the other sword. “Let us see.”

Katherine could think of no excuse. She picked up her sword, but held it limp at her side, her fingers curled loose around the hilt.

Harry laughed. “You can’t fool me—I saw you up here. I know you are better than that!” He made a playful lunge. Katherine turned the blow by reflex despite her surprise.

“That’s more like it!” Harry tried again, coming forward with a series of slow, lazy swings placed deliberately off target, followed by a single close swipe aimed to just brush Katherine’s side. Katherine parried each strike with ease, batting the last one wide and returning with a checked riposte. She found herself in stance, up on the balls of her feet and treading light. She found Harry smiling at her over the guard of his sword.

“Now—shall I tell you why I came here today?” Harry tried for a backhand stroke, but led the move so far ahead with his foot that Katherine saw it coming all the way in.

The proper counter would have had her blade up in his face. She settled for a simple parry. “Why, good squire?”

“Call me Harry.” He advanced, dodging to jab along her side. “I came today to offer my apologies. I am a bad dancer, you see.”

“But it was my fault.” Katherine blocked across the center. “I’m the one who stepped on your foot. I’m the one who knocked Lady Tand into the minstrels.”

Harry leaned in across their pressed blades. “It was my lead, and my fault.” His eyes were the color of a field of summer wheat. “I was nervous.”

“Nervous? Of me?” Katherine leapt back and took up her stance. “Then you don’t find me—strange?”

“I find your guard very hard to get through.” Harry tucked a strand of hair behind his ear. The flush of action made him even more handsome, if such a thing were possible. Katherine searched his face for some sign of mistaken intent or cruel jest, but found only hopeful intensity. She had much less trouble reading his style of swordplay. He knew most of the basic stances and strokes, but did not know how to move between them. He played it all so much by rote that she could almost count out his swings for him. She could not help but guess that the knights who trained him must have let him off easy.

“But I’ll bet you don’t know this move!” Harry tried another lunge, more direct than the last. Before Katherine knew what she was doing, she had wound her blade over his and jerked it hard aside, ripping the sword from his hand to send it spinning off the top of the hill.

Her stomach sank.

She had beaten the boy that she adored—not just beaten him, but disarmed him and shamed him. She had made him look like a clumsy oaf—again. He turned to watch his sword land halfway down the slope.

“That was an accident.” Katherine dropped her sword, then made a fool, an utter fool of herself trying to curtsy again. “Just bad luck, that’s all.” Wisps of hair fell messy around her face—she breathed like a cow. The urge to turn and run into the woods consumed her.

“That—” Harry turned to her agape. “That was wonderful!”

Katherine looked up under her lashes. “It was?”

“We should have you training Father’s knights!” Harry’s face showed not a trace of bitterness. “I’ve never seen such a move!”

“Papa taught it to me. He learned it from Tristan.”

“Of course he did! Well—” Harry bowed. “I am squarely beaten, and cry mercy! Will you come down with me? My dear mother grows cranky if she goes too long without her wine.”

• • •

Katherine threw on a dress and pulled a brush through her hair in the wood-and-thatch cottage she shared with her father, then poured out his whole store of wine into a flagon. She dug three goblets from the trunk by the door and left the house, rounding the stables to find harry alone by the paddock, leaning on the fence to watch the yearlings at play just beyond.

He beckoned her over. “Now, you must tell me, what is the name of that horse over there?”

Katherine poured a goblet full of wine. “He doesn’t have a proper name yet. We just call him Indigo.”

Indigo cocked up his head at the sound of his name. He chewed a mouthful of hay, then dropped down for another.

“I have never seen his like.” Harry leaned on the rail to watch. “Who is the sire?”

“Break-spear, out of Sir Ranulf’s stables at Thicket.”

“The dapple gray with the black mane? About sixteen hands—white on his lower legs?”

“Yes, that’s him. One of Ranulf’s favorites. We’ve had him out once or twice for some new blood.” Katherine held out the goblet. Their fingers drew across each other as he took it, leaving warm shocks that ran up her wrist.

“A fine match, if I am any judge.” Harry turned his gaze across the eastern pasture to the mares with their foals and then the older colts—each in his own paddock, each on his way to becoming a horse of war. “It must be a good life, here. So simple.” The wind touched across his brow, ruffling his hair as though it loved him, as though it meant to caress. She tried as hard as she could not to simply stare.

Indigo ambled near, munching on some grain. Katherine reached out to stroke his neck, to bring herself back to earth while she still could.

“Look at that stride.” Harry dropped his voice in awe. “Such a horse comes once in a lifetime, if that.”

“I’m training him for you.” Katherine blurted it out.

Harry turned in surprise.

Katherine had no choice but to go on. “When we pass the warhorses on to the castle—I know we don’t get to choose where they go, but I’ve been hoping you would be the one to take him.”

Harry looked long at Katherine, then at Indigo. “Do you know—that’s the kindest thing anyone has ever done for me.”

“It is?” Katherine could not hide the note of disbelief in her voice.

“I know you might laugh to hear it, but it is not always so grand being the only son and heir. Sometimes I—” Harry shook his head. “No. I have no right to complain.”

“You could visit us here, to get away from things.” Katherine hugged the flagon to her chest. “You could visit anytime!”

He relaxed into a smile that pierced her through. “I would like that. Very much.”

They stood inches apart, eyes to eyes. Words tumbled in Katherine’s head, but nothing came out. The ground seemed very far away.

He reached out. She let a hand slip from the flagon and laced her fingers into his.

“Harold!”

They jumped apart. Lady Isabeau stooped through the doorway of the stable behind them.

“Oh—Mother. Hello.” Harry bobbed his head. “We were just looking at the horses.”

“Were you.” Lady Isabeau approached the rail. Katherine offered her a goblet of wine and retreated with a fumbling curtsy.

“Katherine Marshal.” Lady Isabeau sipped, then grimaced. “It grieves me to learn that you are yet unmarried.”

Katherine felt relieved that it was not her place to answer back. She kept her gaze averted.

Harry coughed. “Mother—you might know that peasant girls often marry somewhat older than ladies of noble blood.”

“A shameful practice. Dangerous to a woman’s virtue.” Lady Isabeau turned on Katherine. “We hold your father in high esteem. He is a good marshal—we have had no complaints about our stables these twenty years. The horses he breeds and raises are superior. He is never out of account. Such a man deserves a daughter who honors him.”

Katherine made a strangled noise. “Yes, my lady.”

“Have you a suitor?”

“No, my lady.”

“Time passes. Think on your father’s love.”

“I do, my lady.” Katherine raised her face. “Every day.”

“Harold is a good son.” Isabeau bored a look into Katherine. “Our only son. We have great plans for him.”

Katherine felt the urge to stare her down—but then her father stepped from the stables with Harry’s saddle in his arms. She remembered her station in life, and who owned the farm where she lived. She curtsied. “My lady. Please forgive me if I gave offense.”

Lady Isabeau dropped the goblet in her hands. “Come, Harold. I think we have seen enough of this place.” She passed on toward her waiting horse.

“Mother.” Harry turned with an outstretched hand. “Mother, we were only talking!” Katherine took the saddle from her father and hurried over to Harry’s horse, grateful for something to do besides stand in misery.