And he was ready for his cousins.
He could hear them coming. They were on the floor below, listening to someone tell them to stay out of the way. It was moving day at Brython Castle, and Chris’ parents, Curtis and Elle, were moving their possessions out of the keep and into great wagons in the bailey. The king had decided that Brython should be given back over to the Welsh as part of a peace treaty with Powys, and, oddly, Gwynedd, and that meant the Earl of Hereford had to surrender the garrison to their Uncle Gruffydd.It wasn’t a hugely difficult transfer from what they’d heard from their parents, because Uncle Gruffydd was a good man, but it was more the fact that they had to move at all.
Brython had been their beloved home.
Chris and his brothers, Arthur and William, weren’t helping with the move at this time. They had been earlier, with smaller things, until the heavier items were moved and their mother had told them to go entertain themselves. So they were. They were going to entertain themselves by ambushing their cousins, who were coming up the stairs. They could hear Westley, named for their Uncle Westley and mostly called Mouse because he had brown eyes and brown hair and a little nose and moved rapidly, just like a mouse. James and Vaughn, the twins, were bigger and meaner than Mouse was. They were coming up the stairs with sticks they’d found somewhere. Once they hit the top of the stairs, the fight began in earnest.
Chris was the first one out of his hiding place, a toy sword in hand as he charged Vaughn and sent the boy to his knees. Arthur was next, a very big lad with red hair and a temper, who rushed out and kicked James in the shins. As James went down, Mouse saw William coming at him and screamed, rushing back down the steps and falling over the last few stairs so that he ended up at the bottom with scraped hands and a big bump on his chin. William was right behind him with a rope he’d stolen from the kitchen yard, and as Mouse sat at the bottom of the stairs and wailed, William tied his cousin’s hands together and started dragging him back up the stairs.
That was until Elle came up on the scene.
“William!” she gasped. “What on earth are you doing?”
William dropped the rope as his mother rushed over to untie Mouse’s hands. “Playing,” he said as innocently as a seven-year-old could. “We are all playing.”
Elle could hear the grunting and scuffling on the floor above. She looked at her son as if the lad was a hardened criminal, with horror, before shouting up the stairwell.
“Chris!” she said. “Arthur! Are Vaughn and James with you?”
The scuffling stopped immediately, and there was a long pause before Chris answered.
“Aye, Mama.”
Infuriated, Elle scowled. “All of you,” she shouted. “Come down at once!”
There was some hissing and shoving. She could hear that, too. Someone either tripped or fell. Then there was the marching of little feet, of boys coming down the stairs like prisoners coming down to face their execution. As Elle waited for the gang to arrive, Curtis appeared from the floor below.
He, too, had heard the wailing.
He pointed at Mouse.
“What happened to him?” he wanted to know. When he noticed William standing there, he suspected he knew the answer to his own question. “Ah… What have you been doing, William?”
William smiled at his father. “Playing, Papa.”
“Playing?”
“Aye, Papa.Playing.”
Curtis happened to look at his wife, who was just pulling Vaughn off the stairs, but he saw what she was holding. “Why does your mother have a rope?” he asked.
William simply grinned and shrugged, entirely innocent of any wrongdoing, but Curtis knew that wasn’t the case. As he stood there and wondered how he was going to plead the case of William to his mother, Elle lined up Chris, Arthur, Vaughn, and James. Chris had a scrape on his face, Arthur had a bloodied nose, Vaughn had the beginnings of a black eye, and James was bloodied around the mouth. Curtis tried desperately not to laughat the bruisers before him as Elle stood in front of the boys, her expression stern.
“Today is an important day at Brython,” she said. “And what do I find? Six boys trying to kill one another. What have we told you about that? Chris? What do you have to say for yourself?”
As the oldest, Chris knew he’d take the brunt of his mother’s rage. His father was standing a few feet away, but he knew the man was utterly powerless against his mother. It had happened too many times before. Therefore, he knew how to handle his mother.
With logic.
“We were practicing, Mama,” he said.
She frowned. “Practicing what? Death and mayhem?”
He shook his blond head. “We are traveling to Monmouth Castle,” he said. “It is a long journey. We were practicing in case we are attacked along the way. We must be prepared to fight off the outlaws who will attack us.”
Elle’s eyebrows flew up at her son’s original excuse. “Is that so?”
Chris nodded seriously. “Aye,” he said, daring to look at his father. “Papa said we must be ready to fight.”
