“And you risk his.”
Davyss sighed sharply and crossed his enormous arms. “So what do you want me to do? Talk to him?”
“He will meet you at the Temple Church in Blackfriars,” Lollardly told him. “I will tell my brother to get word to Simon that you will meet him at sundown upon the morrow.”
Davyss was staring at his feet. It was a long and pensive pause. But eventually he nodded, barely, and Lollardly took it as a sign. The old priest disappeared, heading back towards the abbey that had given the town its name as Davyss continued to stand there and wonder what tomorrow’s meeting would bring. He hadn’t seen Simon in some time and no matter what their politics, he missed his father’s friend. He wished again, as he had wished daily for many years, that things were different; that Simon wasn’t a rebel and he wasn’t the king’s champion.
He wished they were on the same side.
*
Devereux had beento London, once, with her father when he had traveled there on business. She had been eleven years old at the time and nine years later, it was bigger than she had remembered. As Davyss’ group entered the outskirts of London from the northwest, a massive settlement emerged with the blue ribbon of the River Thames running through it.
The de Winter war machine had brought six knights, including Davyss, one priest, three hundred men-at-arms and five wagons. It was a large group that traveled through the outskirts of London and people turned out to watch. Little boys stood by the side of the road, thrilled to see the knights, while women tried to garner the favor of the men who passed by. In acovered wagon with a fully armed escort, Devereux watched the little boys and loose women, waving at the children when they waved at her first.
One little girl with a few wilted flowers in her hand ran out in the road. She was holding the flowers aloft as she headed towards the carriage but almost got run over by Sir Philip’s charger. The child stumbled, fell to the road, and began wailing. Devereux leapt off the wagon before anyone could stop her and rushed to the child’s side.
The wilted flowers were scattered all over the dirt as Devereux knelt beside the little girl. She picked the child up from the road.
“There, there, sweetheart,” she crooned. “You are all right. Everything is all right.”
The child sobbed and held up her scraped elbow. Devereux smiled gently and pretended to take a good look.
“’Tis not too bad,” she assured the little girl. Then she began looking around for someone to help her. Her gaze fell on Philip, now off his charger and standing next to her. “I need some wine or ale and a strip of cloth; any cloth will do. Can you please bring me these things?”
Philip was in motion, snapping orders to a few men around them. The entire column had come to a halt and Davyss was making his way back from the head of the group, bellowing his frustration that they had stopped as he went. But Devereux was only focused on the child at the moment, not three hundred men who had come to a dead stop because of her.
Lollardly arrived at the scene before Davyss, watching the situation with curious eyes. Lady de Winter was so unlike any woman he had ever known that he paused just to watch her tend the child, her gentle manner and her sweet words.
The more time he spent watching her, the more he was coming to like her. His first impression of her as a rebelliouswench had not been her true nature; it had been the fear that had caused her to act like an animal. What he was seeing before him and what he had seen the day before, he suspected, was this woman’s true character. She was special.
When Davyss arrived and bailed from his charger, Lollardly put his hands on the man’s chest to stop his advance.
“What goes on?” Davyss demanded, flipping up his visor. “Why have we stopped?”
Lollardly pointed to Devereux, several feet away, cleaning the scrape of a peasant child. “Your wife is helping this child.”
By this time, Hugh had come upon them, watching the scene with impatience. “It is simply a peasant,” he grumbled. “She should not be wasting her time or ours.”
Lollardly shushed him. “Jesus tended lepers,” he reminded him. “Do you not see the noble self-sacrifice of Lady de Winter?”
Hugh fixed him with an intolerant look. “She is wiping away dirt from layers of dirt on a dirty child. There is nothing Christ-like about that.”
The big priest thumped Hugh on the neck, the only weak part in the armor the man was wearing. As Hugh yelped and rubbed the spot, Lollardly glared at him.
“You would do well to pay attention to your new sister, Hugh de Winter,” he hissed. “She is on the path to heaven. You could live for one hundred years and never know the same Godliness, you pathetic sinner.”
Hugh frowned and continued to rub his neck. “It is one peasant child in a sea of thousands,” he snarled as he turned away. “’Tis a waste of time and effort. The child will die before she sees her next birthday, anyway. Lady de Winter is not helping the child to live longer by wiping off a smidge of blood.”
As Hugh stomped off, Lollardly shook his head. “Your brother is unsalvageable, Davyss,” he lifted an eyebrow as helooked at the older brother. “But what of you? Is your new wife starting to make a mark upon your spirit yet?”
Davyss was watching Devereux as she finished tying the bandage in a puffy bow. The little girl seemed very pleased by it. He continued to watch her smiling face as she watched the child skip away, his heart softening for reasons he could not understand. He didn’t respond to the priest’s question as he made his way to his wife.
“Is everything all right, my lady?” he asked her pleasantly.
Devereux turned to him, a smile on her lovely face. She was particularly rosy cheeked this day, her humor far better than he had ever seen it. Since that morning when they had departed for London, she had been kind and sweet, and he was growing more and more enchanted.
“Everything is fine,” she told him. “That little girl was trying to give me flowers and tripped. I fixed her scrape.”
