Pembury looked up from his bread. “Who?”
“Mistress Elizabetha.”
“What questions do you mean?”
“About the opposition.”
“You were truthful in your answer.”
Tate lifted a resigned eyebrow. “Aye, but minimally; I did not mention that Isabella and Mortimer hold all of Windsor Castle and her wealth. That is the heart of the kingdom. And if we are to oust them, we must strike at the heart.”
“I thought that was what we were doing.”
The squire’s soft voice entered the conversation. Tate looked at the youth, breadcrumbs on his fuzzy face.
“The more I go to these little towns, the more I realize that a rebellion must encompass far less than armies and knights intent on destroying each other,” he explained to the lad. “We must take control of Mortimer and Isabella on a much smaller scale. Balin Cartingdon’s outspoken daughter was correct in some aspects.”
“Which ones?”
A distant look crossed Tate’s face. “By feeding the beast of rebellion, we could destroy everything. Sometimes a largeroperation is not the better tactic than a small, precisely planned one.”
“Will we go back to London and re-think our strategy?”
The squire’s question was posed with curiosity more than anxiety. Tate passed a glance at the knights before answering. “What would you suggest?”
“We still need support. And we need money.”
“True enough; which is why my inclination is to stay the eve in Cartingdon, negotiate for the sale of the sheep with Balin’s daughter, and then make our way back to London. I worry being gone overlong. Much can change in a short amount of time.”
“That is a wise decision,” Pembury said. “Without you in London, Mortimer lulls himself into a false sense of security. I never thought it was particularly prudent for us to have left the city in the first place.”
Tate looked at his squire, reading the boy’s concerned expression. He downplayed his knight’s comment. “It was necessary,” he said simply. “But for now, let us eat and enjoy this moment of peace.”
The squire went back to eating only when the knights did. A group of minstrels struck up a lively song and soon the entire tavern was bouncing. It was a good moment of relaxation for them to remember; the future, Tate suspected, would hold few.
CHAPTER TWO
“They call himDragonblade,” Ailsa Catherine Cartingdon danced around the table in the large hall of Forestburn Manor, the Cartingdon home. “Have you heard, Toby? Dragonblade!”
Ailsa was ten years of age, a frail girl with golden curls. She had an energetic mind, sharp and inquisitive, but a weak body that kept her in bed a good deal of the time. She was always ill with something. It had started at her birth when her mother suffered a stroke whilst in labor; Ailsa was born blue and Judith Cartingdon had nearly died. Only by God’s grace did either of them live through it.
“Aye, you little devil, I have heard it,” Toby said. “But you must not say anything to him. Perhaps he does not like the name.”
Ailsa stopped her excited dance. “Why not?”
Toby shrugged, putting the last touch on the mulled wine. “It does not sound very flattering.”
Ailsa resumed her dance, ending up lying on top of the table. “And do you know what else I have heard?”
“I am afraid to know.”
“I have heard that Tate de Lara is the son of King Edward the First. They say that he was saved from his savage Welsh mother by the Marcher lords of de Lara, who then raised him as theirown. He is the half-brother of King Edward the Second and was there when the king was murdered. And some say that Queen Isabella asked him to marry her, but he refused, so she took Roger Mortimer as her lover instead.”
“Where do you hear such nonsense?” Toby lifted her sister off the table.
“From Rachel Comstock’s mother. She knows everything.”
Toby made a face. “Rachel Comstock’s mother thinks that she is God’s blessing to all of Mankind and constantly reminds us of how she was a lady in waiting for King Edward’s mother’s sister’s cousin by marriage. Truth be told, she was probably just the privy attendant.”
