“Are you truly telling me you do not fancy a woman with a little fire?”
Curtis shrugged. “A spark, mayhap,” he said. “But I do not need an entire roaring blaze. In fact, did you see what happened to me earlier on the wall?”
Myles shook his head. “I did not,” he said. “But Amaro told me about it. Your knight told me that, somehow, you found yourself a Welsh warrior woman?”
Curtis sneered in distaste. “She foundme,” he said. “Just as I was coming over the wall, she hit me in the chest, and we bothfell about ten feet to the platform below. Foolish woman could have gotten us both killed.”
“What did you do to her?” Myles asked, trying not to laugh at Curtis’ utter insult at having been knocked over by a woman. “Is she alive to tell the tale?”
Curtis grunted. “I took her to Papa,” he said. “Let him deal with her.”
“Who is she?”
“I do not know,” Curtis said. “She kept saying the castle was hers, so mayhap she can tell Papa everything he wants to know.”
Myles lifted his big shoulders. “He knows something about unruly women,” he said. “He has daughters like that. In fact, he married one. But if you tell Mama I said that, I will deny it to my grave.”
Curtis smirked. “I will not tell her,” he said. But his smile faded when he saw his brother, Richard, whom everyone called Roi, through the open portcullis. The man was out in the destroyed bailey gripping a sandy-haired man who seemed to have trouble walking. “Who is that with Roi?”
Myles spied them, too. “I do not know,” he said. “But I will find out.”
Curtis nodded. “Go,” he said. “I am heading back to the wall. The last I saw, there were still pockets of fighting up there, and I want to quell them.”
Myles was already walking into the bailey as he waved off Curtis, who turned toward the eastern wall. He hadn’t taken five steps when he heard someone shouting his name.
“Curtis!” a voice boomed. “Uncle Curt!”
Coming to a halt, Curtis turned to see his eldest brother, Peter, heading in his direction. Following Peter were his two eldest sons, Matthew and Aaron. Tall and raven-haired Matthew was close to being knighted, while Aaron was a few years younger, nearly as tall, but had a few more years of squiringahead of him. Aaron was the fiercer of the two and looked more like a de Lohr, with his father’s blond looks, but he was quite disheartened to be a squire. Still. Walking behind them, and bringing up the rear of the group, was Peter’s brother-in-law, Asa ben Thad.
Curtis held up a hand in greeting.
“Well?” he said as the group drew near. “What kind of damage are we seeing on the western wall?”
Peter, though the eldest de Lohr brother, was not the heir. He was his father’s bastard who had come to live with the family before Curtis was born. Though no one had ever treated him differently, and he was very much a member of the family, the truth was that Curtiswasthe heir. Eleven years younger than Peter, he was the one who would inherit everything from his father, including the earldom, though Peter had earned quite an empire in his own right. Ludlow Castle was his property, among a few others, and he had wealth and prestige and a gorgeous wife, born a Jewess, though she had converted in order to marry Peter. Asa was Liora de Lohr’s brother, and Peter and Liora had several children and a happy life together.
There was no one on the marches more respected than Peter de Lohr.
“The western wall has folded,” Peter announced. His helm was off, his cropped blond hair streaked with dirt and sweat. “My men were able to get grappling hooks into the holes we opened up and have pulled themselves through. I came to see the damage from inside.”
Curtis swept his arm in the direction of the gatehouse. “Go,” he said. “I’m going to take a look at the wall walk. There was still some fighting when last I saw.”
“’Tis a fine victory, Curt,” Asa said, his blue eyes gleaming with the thrill of battle. “I shall long remember the damage of those rocks as they pounded into the western wall. Magnificent!”
He was grinning as he threw up his arms, mimicking the concussion of rocks and dust when the projectiles damaged the wall. Then he charged off toward the gatehouse with Matthew and Aaron behind him. Curtis and Peter watched him go, various stages of amusement on their faces.
“For a man who was not trained as a knight, I have never seen someone more enthusiastic about battle,” Curtis muttered, grinning. “I will never go into a fight again without Asa. The man is fearless.”
Peter chuckled. “He got a late start, that is for certain,” he said. “He would not come to fight with us until his father passed away, God rest his soul. All Haim wanted was for his son to follow in his footsteps and become a jeweler, but all Asa wanted was to become a knight. He is a man of two different worlds more than most.”
“He fights like he was born to it.”
“He wasnotborn to it.”
Curtis knew the story. Asa had been born Jewish, like his sister, but the man had been a fighter from a young age. It became a point of contention as he grew older between him and his elderly father, who had married quite late in life, so in order to keep the old man happy, Asa turned away from any hope of becoming what he really wanted to be—a knight—to become what his father wanted him to be. Haim ben Thad had passed away five years ago, and Asa showed up at Ludlow Castle shortly thereafter, asking to be trained as a knight.
It was his dream.
As it turned out, he was a very fine warrior, and although he’d not yet been formally knighted, and would not be unless he converted to Christianity, it didn’t matter to Asa. He fought with the knights, lived with them, and served with them.
