Unmoving, the young woman with the flat expression stared at them from more than fifty feet away. Her gaze found Jacob first, seeming to take note of his seat and the sword at his side. Then her eyes slid to Elena, and her expression did not change.
Slowly, her hand slid away from the linen and she glanced around quickly, as if looking to see if others were about, if anyone saw what she did.
She did not wave or call out, but shook her head once, quite deliberately.
Jacob brought the horse to a complete stop.
The woman’s mouth pressed thin, her eyes steady and intent, as she lifted her chin and pointed, not toward them, but inward, toward the heart of the village.
Jacob followed the line of her gesture.
Near the modest cottage at the center of the village, a pole had been driven into the ground, the earth still raw at the base. From it hung a strip of cloth—faded, frayed at the edges, butunmistakable. The English lion, painted red, dulled by weather but no less clear for it.
The woman shook her head again, more urgently this time. Her free hand closed around the child’s shoulder, drawing him closer. She stepped backward, one pace and then another, guiding the child toward the doorway behind her without turning her back on Jacob and Elena.
A bit desperately, before she disappeared, Jacob made a small, unmistakable gesture—two fingers curved, miming the act of spooning food to his mouth, showing hunger and need.
The woman hesitated, looking briefly annoyed, before she raised a single finger.
Wait.
She ushered the child inside and shut the door.
Jacob scanned the village again. A shutter shifted somewhere farther in. A shape moved behind a wall and vanished. The English standard stirred faintly on its pole, a dull flash of red against gray sky.
Time stretched, long enough that he began to wonder about the likelihood of her simply not returning at all, and Jacob began to feel particularly conspicuous out in the open as they were.
Then the door opened and the woman stepped outside alone. She moved quickly, half-running, as though each moment spent outside her threshold was a risk she meant to shorten. She did not come all the way toward them, stopping instead at the edge of her small croft. She crouched, set something down, and straightened at once, not looking at them once. She turned back immediately, skirts gathered in her hands, pace brisk and determined. In less than a minute, she was inside again, the door shut firmly behind her.
Jacob nudged the mare forward just enough to reach the jute sack she’d left. He dismounted, grabbed the pouch and returned directly to Elena and the horse, handing her the package beforehe climbed into the saddle again. Without a word, he turned the destrier and urged her into a swift trot to carry them back into the trees.
Once safely inside the trees, when he slowed the horse to walk, Elena pulled one hand from around his waist and unwrapped the offering.
“Oh,” she breathed, with a grateful sigh of breath. “A heel of bread, a wedge of cheese, and a handful of dried roots. Not much, but oh, how lovely,” she mused. “Bless her.” Her hand appeared in front of him. “Here,” she said, presenting what he supposed was half the bread.
He took the chunk and made quick work of it. Sadly, it did little to fill the voids in his gut.
They ate as they rode, the destrier picking her way carefully through the forest as it thickened.
Elena’s hand appeared again, with cheese this time, and then she coughed and laughed behind him. “Sweet Jesus, that cheese is awful.”
Jacob grinned, having thought the same thing, the cheese having nearly cemented itself to his teeth. “Dinna please the tongue, but satisfies the gullet,” he replied, voice thick with dry humor. He coughed and held out his hand for more, wincing as he did, reminded of the slash to his arm, which stung enough still that he feared it might be infected.
“My God, but that’s a crime against nature,” Elena determined, still speaking of the cheese, happily offering more to him from the side.
“The bread, at least, was honest,” he allowed.
“We should have eaten that last,” she suggested.
She shared the roots as well, dried neep—rough-cut pieces of dried turnip, chalky white and brittle, less pleasant than parsnip roots would have been but filling all the same.
“We should have saved the cheese,” Elena said after a bit. “We could have taken down birds in flight with that.”
Jacob grinned, still trying to dislodge cheese from his teeth. Unpleasant cheese aside, he did feel better.
No more words passed between them for a time, save the quiet sound of their chewing and the occasional creak of leather. Trees crowded closer; the sun climbed, but the growing density of the branches cast a greenish light over the forest floor.
At midday, they passed a tumbled wall, half-swallowed by moss and fern, and crossed a narrow and shallow burn that wound haphazardly through the forest. They made several quick stops, as they had previously, to see to private business and drink from the water before refilling Jacob’s skin.
