She removed a simple surcoat from her father’s garments and set it aside for mending. When she lifted the lid on the final chest, her blood chilled.
She let the lid crash closed, turned on her heel, and strode from the tent. She spied her father talking to another knight at a camp nearby. He saw her coming, and strode forward to meet her.
“You’ve got the look of an angel preparing to fight the devil.” He spoke jovially as he approached, his strides long but his gait stilted due to his bad leg.
“Devil is the truth of it, since one has taken hold of you,” she said. “What possessed you to bring your arms?”
“’Tis a tournament, Elinor.”
“I know what it is, just as I know the cost of coming here. When I objected to this journey, you promised feasts and festivities. You did not say that you intended to compete.”
“No reason for a knight to go to a tourney and not compete.”
Her thinking exactly, and her argument fornot coming.
“You are thinking about this bad leg. It doesn’t bother me much, and I won’t be running a race.”
No, he’d be fighting with sword and mace against men half his age, none with a limp, or eyes that could no longer read their own names.
Even if her father had not been wounded in battle, even if he had not had his health ruined by months in a damp Frankish donjon, his age alone argued against competing. At two and forty, his strength and stamina had naturally declined.
“You have no horse,” she reminded him.
“I intend to get one.”
“How? We have very little coin. Barely enough for provisions, especially since everything will be priced too high so the townsmen can pluck the fat chickens that have taken to roost in their field.”
“Don’t you worry about how. I won’t be using the coin you have, either.”
“No, you won’t.” She had accumulated that money by working as a servant, plying her needle for others. They had travelled here with two other knights, both of whom would wear surcoats in the tournament that she had sewn.
At least she had a skill to sell. It had kept them in food and some semblance of honor. It would serve her after her father died, so she would not be destitute. She tried not to be bitter, but she heartily wished her father had not answered the call to defend the Holy Land. Some men made fortunes on Crusade. Others, like Hugo of York, came back to a life diminished beyond recognition.
The world of the tournament had enlivened her father’s mood, at least. He now grinned at her. “Once I win a few challenges, there’ll be enough money so you don’t have to sew again. There will be fat ransoms for the arms and horses I take as the winner in my jousts, enough to live well and make a dowry.”
She didn’t know whether to laugh, scream or cry. She walked away quickly, so he would not see that the last reaction had won. The mention of a dowry had undone her, and she plunged into their tent.
As the flap fell behind her, she halted in her tracks. The tent had an occupant. A man had entered uninvited. She wiped her tears so she could confront him as a knight’s daughter, and not a weeping child.
He stood near her pallet, his back to her. He seemed to be studying something. He was a knight, from the look of his fine green tunic and the breadth of his shoulders.. Tall and strong, and still lean in the way that spoke of youth. A knight in his prime. The kind of warrior who would either hurt or humiliate her father in the days ahead.
“Are you looking for Sir Hugo? He is not fifty paces from here. I should tell you that he will accept no challenges today.” Or tomorrow, if she had her way. Or the next day.
“I am not seeking him. I was looking for you, Elinor.”
Shock froze her. She knew that voice.
He turned. She just stared.
Memories flew through her mind. Wonderful ones, of girlish joy and childish games. The man in front of her had little left in him of the squire she had once known. The wiry strength had turned hard during their five years apart, and the beautiful face had found angles with maturity. The eyes had not changed at all, though. Blue and fiery. Stars few out of them when he was happy, and flames when he was not.
“Zander,” she breathed the word more than spoke it. She stood immobilized, while she relived another life.
Her past had found her at this stupid tournament, making her present all the more sad.
“I am not called that anymore,” he said while he watched her reaction. He did not expect a good welcome, but the sight of her brought him joy anyway. A lightness entered his soul while it briefly tasted the innocence of those days again, back when he truly believed in knightly honor and goodness and fighting for just causes. He ignored the soulful pain the nostalgia carried.
“I will try to remember that, Sir Alexander.”
