“Come on, Eoos.”
The horse whinnied and tossed its head.
Eoos stepped closer to the horse. ”He’s beautiful.” He stretched out his hand and the horse pushed its nose against his palm.
“He remembers you,” Kit said.
A strange longing rose in Eoos as he ran his hand along the horse’s nose. He wanted to remember. He focused, but nothing came to him. He scowled, frustrated.
“We have to get the grain, Eoos.”
The horse whinnied and tossed its head again.
Eoos nodded and backed away from the animal, following Kit into the barn.
Kit moved to the rear of the structure and disappeared inside one of the stalls. As Eoos followed, a reflected light caught his attention and he glanced into one of the stalls. A full set of plate armor lay on the ground. “What is this?”
Kit looked out from the last stall. “Your armor.” He hurried over to Eoos. “It’s amazing, isn’t it?”
“It shouldn’t be on the ground, it will rust.” As soon as the words left his mouth, he wondered how he knew that. But there was more. “The suit needs to be cleaned and set upright, off the ground.”
“I don’t know how to clean it or I would have,” Kit admitted.
“Like this.” Eoos moved into the stall. He grabbed a cloth laying over the side wall and picked up the helmet from the ground. He stared at it for a long time, trying to remember how he knew to clean it. He ran the cloth over the dirt on the metal helmet, and it came away. “It needs to be cleaned immediately because you can’t use water on it.” He scrubbed the dirt from the base and moved upward. Again, he paused to stare at it. As a knight, wouldn’t he remember his own helmet?
Kit came to his side with a cloth in his hand. “You just scrub?”
Eoos nodded and moved the cloth back and forth over the metal.
Kit took one of the gauntlets in his small hand and started working on it.
“It’s hard work to clean armor,” Eoos said.
“I would spend all night cleaning it if I could. Not too many knights come through here. Well, except for the Bishop’s men. And Mom told me to stay away from them.”
Bishop’s men? “Doesn’t the village have a lord? What about his men?”
“Naw. The bishop is in charge here. He protects the village. Well, everyone except for the children.”
Eoos looked at the small boy. The child put all his effort and concentration into cleaning the gauntlet. “Why doesn’t the bishop protect children? It would seem to me that children and women need the most protecting.”
Kit pursed his lips. “Maybe. But that’s not how the bishop sees it. I had a friend named Rafe, we played together a lot when I was little. Sometimes, we played knights.” He smiled, but slowly his grin faded. “And then, his time came and I never saw him again.”
“His time?”
Kit nodded. “Five summers.”
“What happened to him?”
“The bishop took him.”
Eoos scowled in confusion. “Where did the bishop take him?”
“I don’t know. I never saw him again.” Kit scrubbed harder.
Eoos watched the boy. His innocent brow was marred by a frown. He seemed so vulnerable.
“It is Luke’s time tomorrow. The bishop will come for him.”
