With Eric’s permission, they’d taken over teaching the recruits the finer points of handling swords and various weapons. Axminster had a well-stocked armory, so there were plenty of weapons to train with and the men took to it eagerly. Douglas and Jonathan had watched the first few days of the weapons training from the wall, noting that the sergeants seemed experienced with the more rudimentary weapons like the mace or the axe. They knew how to use a sword, but not like a knight did. Now the men were learning from elite knights and were quite excited about their lessons.
Even if those lessons were coming from an enormous and fairly terrifying warrior.
Jonathan was a knight’s knight. Blackchurch trained, he was more at home in a battle than most and, as it turned out, was an excellent teacher as well. He didn’t just tell them how to do it—he showed them. If a man didn’t do it correctly, Jonathan would show him how to do it correctly until the man got the hang of it. The men seemed to take to his teaching style, and after the first week of training, Douglas backed off and let Jonathan take over completely because he seemed to have a knack for it.
It was yet another thing that Jonathan was good at.
Truth be told, Douglas had been wondering from the start why Grayson had left Jonathan behind. A knight of his value should not have been discounted it so easily, and that’s what it seemed like to Douglas. The Earl of Norfolk had a quality knight in Jonathan de Wolfe, a man with training and the family connections, so a man like that should have been integral to the workings of an army like Norfolk’s. The last Douglas had heard, Jonathan had been in command of Arundel’s army, but the Axminster battle showed that he was taking orders from Grayson. Although Grayson and the House of de Winter were intertwined with Norfolk and Grayson was, in fact, an earl, it still seemed odd to Douglas.
He just couldn’t understand why men of that caliber had been left behind.
Because the House of de Lohr was tightly allied with the House of de Wolfe, as Douglas’ father and Jonathan’s father had been the best of friends years ago, Douglas and Jonathan had known each other virtually since birth. Jonathan was older than Douglas was, but they had always gotten along. He was glad to have Jonathan with him during his time at Axminster, but something seemed off with the man. Douglas couldn’t put his finger on it, but it was almost as if Jonathan was hidingsomething. That was the best way Douglas could describe it. On the surface, Jonathan was his usual self—humorous, dedicated, and principled—but there was something in his eyes that suggested there was turmoil just below the surface.
Douglas had been pondering that very thing for the past six weeks. Jonathan hadn’t spoken of anything out of the ordinary and Douglas hadn’t asked him, but he was curious. He supposed that if there was something Jonathan wanted to know, he would tell him.
Meanwhile, it was business as usual.
As the day began to wane, Douglas continued to watch Jonathan from the wall walk as the man continued the troop training in the central bailey, the one that stretched from the gatehouse to the inner bailey and the keep. It was an enormous stretch of dirt, grass, and outbuildings, and the wall that enclosed it was equally enormous. The wall walk at Axminster was so large, and so long, that it was nearly a half-mile all the way around it. As Douglas moved down the wall, alternately watching Jonathan on one side and the countryside on the other, he could see Eric and Isabel coming from the inner bailey. He lifted a hand to the pair, waving, and Eric lifted a hand in return.
Isabel, predictably, didn’t.
Douglas moved to the heavy ladder that gave access down to the bailey. There were towers with stairs, but those were mostly at either end of the wall, so he took the rather treacherous ladder down to the central bailey to save time. Eric and Isabel were still several feet away, heading in his direction, as Douglas went to meet them. Off to his left, Jonathan had his back turned to both Douglas and Eric as he abruptly stopped the trainees from the exercise they were engaged in.
“Stop!” he shouted, holding up his hands. Then he moved to the soldier nearest him and pointed to the man. “You there. Why are you holding your blade like that?”
The soldier froze, looking at Jonathan in confusion. “M’lord?”
Jonathan went to the man. “Lift your hand, but do not move it,” he said. “Show me how you are gripping that sword.”
Still puzzled, the man lifted his hand with the sword in his grip. Jonathan grabbed him by the wrist and held it up for all to see.
“Do you see the way he is holding this?” he said to the group. “See how high his hand is on the hilt? He is going to break a wrist or worse with the first serious blow he delivers.”
He made sure everyone could see it. As the group nodded, making sure they weren’t holding their swords in that fashion, Jonathan let go of the soldier’s arm.
“Who told you to hold a sword like that?” he asked.
The man was no longer puzzled, but now becoming increasingly mortified. “I have seen Sir Eric hold his weapon like this,” he said nervously. “Is this not right?”
Jonathan shook his head. “Nay, it is not right,” he said. “Only a fool would hold a sword like that. I cannot believe Sir Eric would hold his weapon this way. Are you certain?”
“Aye, m’lord.”
“Then he was wrong,” Jonathan said flatly. “I thought he did not teach weapons?”
“Not usually, m’lord,” the soldier said. “But this time, the sergeants were ill. Sir Eric did what he could.”
Jonathan simply shook his head as if Eric was the biggest fool in the world as he adjusted the man’s hand on the hilt. The problem was that Eric, now standing a few feet away with Douglas, had heard him. So had Isabel. Before Jonathan could say anything else that might slander Eric, Douglas cleared his throat loudly.
“Wolfie,” he said. “We have visitors.”
Jonathan turned around, seeing the very man he’d been speaking of right behind him, and by the look on Eric’s face, Jonathan knew he had heard him. Rather than pretend he hadn’t said what he had, he leaned into it.
He wanted to clear the air.
“Ah, le Kerque,” he said. “Just the man we have been discussing. I must ask you something. Have you taught them to position their hands so high on the hilt? I can only imagine you were misunderstood, but I want to clarify.”
There was something in Eric’s eyes that suggested defeat. Defeat and humiliation. He looked at the soldiers around them, all of them looking at him, waiting for an answer. It was true that he’d heard the entire conversation between Jonathan and the soldier and clearly heard Jonathan call him a fool, but he wouldn’t address it. He wasn’t confrontational by nature and certainly not with a knight of de Wolfe’s caliber.
