“His honor demands it. His anger does too. When he finally returned to our tent last night, he again told me what happened, only with more detail. I would have used that knife on you myself when I heard it all.” She took the thread from him and set down the half penny it cost. “Now I must go. I have sewing to do.
“Wait.” He pointed back to the silk. “Can you sew that?”
“Of course. It would take a much finer needle than I have, but I can sew it so well that no one would see the stitches.”
“Then I want you to make a veil with it, such as women wear over their hair. I will pay you to do this, of course.”
She walked over and lifted the bolt of silk. Its end fluttered down, rippling like water. She set it down on the counter. “You want a veil of crimson silk?”
“It is for a lady I know.” He addressed the mercer. “She needs fine needles, and silken thread too.”
Two needles appeared, so thin Elinor could barely see them. She lifted one. Steel, not iron. Expensive.
She told the mercer how much silk to cut, and soon she had a little stack of goods. The price, when given, almost made her swoon. Zander plucked the coins from his purse.
Apparently, he had found the woman he wanted to bed.
“I will need it by Thursday,” he said. “Take this as payment now.”
He held out his palm with some coins. It was too much. Such a veil was a simple thing. She need only finish the edges. She took a few pennies, then tucked the goods in a cloth sack she carried. She wondered if his favored woman would think this a special gift, or if she already possessed so many silk veils that she would not be impressed.
“Then that is settled,” he said. “Now, come with me, and we will settle something else.” He took her hand and led her out of the shop and toward the church.
She tripped after him, annoyed. “I must return to our camp. I cannot be seen with you or my father—”
“Yes, your father. It is he who we must talk about.” He continued walking until he reached the church. He dragged her to the little yard behind it and swung her around, so she landed on a bench with a thump.
Expression firm, mouth tight, he stood above her with his arms folded over his chest. “Had it been anyone but your father last night, he would be dead now. Do you understand that? I do not take such insults from any man. No knight would. We would have met last night, and no one there, not the priest and not Lord Yves, would have stopped it.”
“Perhaps you would be the one dead.”
He looked to heaven. “Elinor—”
“He would have been fighting for his honor, his life. Such a cause can give a man new strength.” She narrowed her eyes on him. “I said that he told me again what happened. Last night he talked of nothing else. I daresay he never slept, as he was so angry at the memories.”
“What did he tell you?”
“How he joined the call of king and God and went with Richard and his men to the Holy Land. You were one of them. His comrade in arms, from the same household.” She spoke the last with a sneer of disbelief. “He said that in the battle for Acre, you and the others left him behind, wounded, to be killed by the Saracens. It was his good fortune, he thought, to be found by that Frank instead. Only that man saw a way to make a small fortune by demanding money to let him return home.”
Flames in his eyes now. She had angered him. She didn’t care.
“There are battles you win and those you lose, and we won that one because Richard changed the strategy when our position became weak. It was time to retreat and move elsewhere,” he said. “We did not leave him. I had him with me. I was taking his weight on my shoulders because his leg wound meant he could barely walk on his own. He slowed us down, but not a man there thought to leave him.”
“He would not lie. If you had him, how did he come to be alone on that field?”
“He broke away from me and turned back. We would not go back with him and could not wait. But we did not abandon him, Elinor.”
“I don’t believe you. Why would he turn back?”
He just looked down at her. Finally, he said “Perhaps, he wanted to die in God’s cause.”
Would her father do that? Think martyrdom was preferable to life, if it meant certain salvation? Some men might, but she did not believe her father would. She did not think he went on Crusade to die.
Zander’s firm statements, his anger and his manner, led her to doubt what she had learned about that day. Yet her father had been just as firm last night. Furious, in a state worse than she had ever seen before. She had to beg him not to return to the castle and throw down a gauntlet.
Zander stood before her, with that face sculpted by angels, watching her with those astonishing eyes. Either he was lying, or her father was. There was only one side for a daughter to choose in such a circumstance.
She stood. “I will make the veil for your lady, but we will not talk again. My loyalty is to Hugo of York. I am his daughter, and it is he I must believe.”
