“I don’t know. Does it not concern you that no one questions our existence? Or, rather, your existence. According to the story, after we were born, a fire burned us. I heard that the bodies of two babies were found in the fire. If we were burned, how are we alive? And what happened to my mother? Dorothy said she was small and dark, with black hair and eyes. If that is so, then why do I have brows and lashes like a rabbit’s?”
“I am not a storyteller like you. Perhaps there are things those women do not know. They were babies themselves then—I think. They are not old enough to remember then, are they?”
“No,” she said tentatively. “It is all a puzzlement. But, whatever the truth, there is a feeling here that frightens me.”
“What do you fear will happen?”
She turned in his arms, her face to his. “I am afraid of losing you. I would die if I lost you. I do not want to live without you.”
Talis thought it was unmanly to say the same things to her, but he felt them. Holding her tightly, he said against her lips, “No one can take us away from each other. We are one, do you not know that? Do you not sense it?”
“Yes,” she whispered. “Yes, oh yes, but I am afraid. I am afraid people will not allow us to stay together.”
“Callie, my love, why would anyone want to separate us? Do either of us have great estates? Are either of us the child of a king and stand to inherit a country?”
“No,” she said, smiling. “We are not important.”
“True,” he said, holding her close to him. “We are not important at all and tomorrow I shall tell this man my father that you will stay with me always. If he tells me you cannot be with me, then we will go back to the farm.” Sometimes Talis had trouble thinking of John as his father; Will Watkins was his father and always would be.
For a moment Callie held her breath because she knew that Talis would keep this promise, and she knew what he would be giving up if he left this rich house for her. Talis hated farming. He did his chores but he had no interest in growing the best turnips in the county as Will hoped to do. Market days bored him. Talis was born to ride a horse and wear armor and he had always known that is what he was meant to do.
She could not, could not, allow him to give up what he was meant to do on earth. She had no doubt that, given the chance, Talis would become the greatest knight who ever lived.
“Why do you look at me like that?” he asked, his voice husky.
He didn’t wait for an answer; if she didn’t quit looking at him that way, they’d be on the stone floor in another minute. His head knew they should get back to Hadley Hall, but there were a few more hours until daylight and he couldn’t bear to leave her. It had been so very, very, very long since he had last seen her.
“Act as though you have some manners and turn round,” he said firmly, and when she was facing away from him, he said, “Tell me a story. I have not heard one of your silly old stories in a long time.”
“If they are silly, I will not bother.”
“All right then.” He didn’t say anything for a moment. “Did you know that there is a man who lives here who does nothing but tell stories? I have been told that he is very good. Very interesting stories.”
Immediately, Callie began to talk. “There was once a princess with five very jealous sisters. They were all very ugly but the princess was so beautiful. She had long golden hair, glorious golden hair. The most beautiful hair ever put on a human being.”
“And the most vanity,” Talis added.
“No, no, she was good and pure. Only others saw her beauty. She thought of herself as plain.”
“Humph.”
“And there was a prince,” Callie said.
“A handsome prince?”
“Oh no, not at all. Ugly as a toad.”
At that Talis started to get up.
“All right,” she said, “perhaps he was a little handsome.” For a moment she put her cheek against his chest, held his arms close to her body. “He had black, glossy curls, thick black lashes, and a mouth as soft as a baby’s. But his nose was too long and thin.”
“I am sure he had a perfect nose.”
“Perhaps. One day the princess—”
“No,” Talis said, “tell me more of what this divinely handsome prince looked like. Was he tall and strong?”
Callie’s first impulse was to tease him but then she smiled and picked up his hand and said, “He had beautiful hands, long fingers, very strong hands…”
27
Sir,” Talis said, his shoulders back, his head up. “I should like your permission to marry Callasandra.”
John was taken off guard at this. His son was just a boy. Why, just yesterday he had been in swaddling clothes. How could he think to marry?
Slowly, he turned from the table where he was inspecting the accounts his chamberlain had left with him. When a boy married, it changed him, made him put his energies into something other than what was at hand.
Never in his life would John have admitted to himself that he was jealous. He had just found his son; he did not yet want to share him with anyone. But at the same time he did not want to disappoint the boy. There was an independence about Talis that frightened John. His other children belonged to him, belonged to him body and soul. He could demand what he wanted of them, dismiss them or congratulate them as he felt and he knew they would be near him the next day.
But this Talis was something that John had not experienced before. He did not feel gratitude coming from the boy for having saved him from a life of poverty. John often felt Talis’s delight in his new life, but never gratitude. John wasn’t sure, but he thought that if Talis did not like what his father did, the boy might well take the girl and leave Hadley Hall forever.
“Yes, yes, of course,” John said, not wanting to directly tell the boy no. “I must of course speak to your mother first.”
“Yes, sir,” Talis said, his face breaking into a radiant grin, his happiness fairly lighting up the room. Then, trying to calm himself, he left the room, running down the stairs. In his exuberance, he practically knocked the prim, proper Edith to the floor, but, easily, he caught her in his arms, and kept her from falling. Then, to her disbelief, he kissed her hard on the mouth. A kiss, to him, of brother to sister, but to Edith a kiss such as she’d never had from a man.
Talis continued his run down the stairs, making one leap to hit the bottom of a tapestry hanging above the stairwell, then running out the door.
On the stairs, Edith’s sisters Dorothy and Joanna were open-mouthed in their astonishment at the way Edith was staring after Talis. Edith considered herself above any man. According to her, the reason she was twenty-nine years old and not married was that she had never found a man to her liking. But now, judging by the look on her face, she certainly did like Talis!
When Joanna gave way to a giggle, Edith pulled herself to her full height and started up the stairs, trying her best to regain her dignity. But at the top of the stairs, she could not keep herself from looking out the window to see that glorious creature run across the courtyard.
Turning back, she tried to keep her face straight. “Come, there is work to do.”
“Yes, Edith,” Joanna said, and behind her back, she exuberantly kissed the back of her hand, then mocked Edith’s straitlaced walk down the corridor.
“Of course he should marry your daughter,” Alida said to her husband. It took all her willpower to remain calm. She must not allow her husband to see that her heart was pounding in her throat, that her breath was wanting to come rapid and harsh.
“My son,” John said sternly, his brows knitted together, emphasizing the point that Talis was his.
Alida knew that she had to tread carefully, but she also knew that she could not be a coward. If ever she had to think quickly, this was the time. It did not matter about her, but her children’s future depended upon what she did in the next few minutes. Her first instinct was to laugh at her husband. What an old fool he was to think he could
pass off that dark boy as his son. He was a thin man, she was a thin woman and together they had produced eleven thin, pale children. Who did he think was going to believe that in the midst of these blonds he had produced an olive-skinned, black-haired, black-eyed giant?
As rapidly as possible, Alida tried to think. There were many reasons that she could not allow this marriage to go through. A marriage would ensure that John would leave everything to this boy who was not his son, and she could not bear to see her own sons disinherited.
There was something else that only she knew: She had at most two years more to live. Months ago she had begun coughing blood, just rusty smudges, but enough to alarm her. She had not allowed any of her maids to see this but had instead gone to an ancient old woman who had looked into Alida’s eyes, then looked into a bowl of grease-stained water and told her of the future. She had foretold Alida’s death within two years and she had predicted that someone not of her blood would gain all that belonged to her sons. But the old woman had explained to Alida that predictions were what could happen. What did happen was based on what people did to alter the future. In other words, if Alida did nothing, when she died, everything would go to a boy who was not of her blood.
And now, armed with this information, Alida meant to change the future. She was not going to see all that her family had worked for, all that her husband had built, given to a boy who was of no relation to her.
“Come, husband,” she said sweetly, “you and I know the truth and you must look at the facts. The boy looks like Gilbert Rasher. Put the boy amid that dreadful man’s sons and you would not be able to tell them apart.”
“Then it is good he is to marry my daughter,” John said, anger rising in his throat. “Do you mind, woman, that I can send you from this house, that I can—”
Alida knew she must not betray her fear. “Yes, you can, but do you not see that I want the same as you do? I want the boy to marry our daughter also. He is good stock. I am sure he will give the girl many fat, healthy sons.” She nearly gagged at these words, at pretending that she was as obsessed with sons as her husband was. She had given him two boys who were intelligent and sweet natured. That they could not lift the back half of a building did not seem to her to be a detriment.
“My concern is Gilbert Rasher,” she said loudly, making herself heard over the anger that was closing his ears. “Do you not worry that that man will come forward and claim his son? He was never paid for the boy, remember? After the…the fire, you refused to give him the payment you had promised him. He wanted a daughter for a wife as well as land.” She had to pause as she remembered that John had promised the odious man Peniman Manor—her manor.
Alida could see that John was listening to her now and she went on rapidly. “If Rasher were to come forward and claim the boy and he were married to your daughter, he could cause great trouble. He could demand an enormous dowry from you for the girl. He could petition the queen about the way you have said the boy is yours and it is easy to see that the boy is not.”
At this John’s hands gripped the arms of the chair. He did not like her insinuation that he could not have produced a son like Talis. It was, of course, her fault that he had not. Had he married a stronger woman, a more robust woman, she might have given him the son he needed. Conveniently, he forgot that Talis’s mother had been small.
Alida went to him, knelt by his chair, and put her hand on his. She wasn’t as pretty as she had once been, but she still had pretty ways and she knew how to look up at a man as though he were the bravest, strongest, et cetera, man on earth.
“You must make sure it is safe before you marry the boy to your daughter. You must have something in writing, a document sworn to in secrecy. You must pay Rasher for the boy, make amends to him for what happened so many years ago. You know, don’t you, that Rasher has lost two of his sons to accidents?”
Over the years she had kept up with Gilbert Rasher and his brood of foul-mouthed dirty sons. They had tempers and strong bodies, and, with their father’s admiration, the boys bullied and berated everyone. Twice, people had grown sick of the “boys” and killed them. After the eldest had been found with his throat slit, Gilbert had demanded an investigation. Every person who had even the slightest reason to hate his son was to be brought before him.
It was said that the queen’s laughter had echoed off the palace walls when she was told how one hundred and twelve people had been brought before Gilbert Rasher, all of them having valid reasons for wanting to see his son dead—and that was just the people who had not been able to flee the countryside when his death was announced. Gilbert had been enraged when, later, the queen had ordered that no one was to be hanged for the crime (Gilbert had decreed that seventeen men and three women were to be hanged for the killing). The queen said that any man who had made that many enemies had not been murdered but justifiably executed.
Alida did not tell her husband that she had been told that, when he was drunk, Gilbert sometimes blamed John Hadley for all his misfortunes. He said that all his “bad luck” had started that night when the babies had been born and later died in the fire. According to him, if he’d received all that John owed him—he never said what John owed him for—he would have been able to make himself into a rich man. As it was, his crops had failed, not because he taxed his peasants to the point of hunger, but because he had never received payment from the rich John Hadley.
No, she did not want to tell John any of this. If her husband’s obsession with having a son made him blind to all else on earth, so be it.
“If he is married to”—John swallowed, not wanting to admit that Talis was not his son—“to my daughter, then he will be tied to me.” Forget money, forget about inheritance, he thought, the truth was, he liked the boy. In the short time he’d been there, the boy was already changing things in the house. Several times in the last two weeks Talis had made John laugh, had made his other sons laugh. John knew well enough what the boy was doing when he pretended to have “contests” so he could lose and thereby give the weak-lunged Philip a rest. John knew what Talis was doing when he talked at length of James’s great learning, talking of how he, Talis, was not so good in lessons as his brother.
But even though John knew everything, it only made him feel better that Talis cared about others so much. And what was more, John was beginning to look at his sons differently. Perhaps James’s head was worth something. He’d asked the boy to look over the accounts, something that had always bored John, and the boy had found many errors.
“Talis is a good boy,” John said, even liking to say his name.
“Of course he is. He is the best. All your sons are good; they have a good father.” For a moment Alida held her breath, wondering if he was going to believe this.
But then John said, “Yes, they are. In their own way, they are all good.”
At that Alida almost burst into tears. At last, she thought, all her work was coming to fruition. For many years now she had done all that she could to show her husband that his sons were clever and well worth his effort. But now, just when she was making him believe that, here was this boy taking all that she had done away from her sons. This boy, with his glorious physique, with his sparkling eyes, his easy laughter, was overshadowing her own sons. Soon all that she had worked for would be eclipsed by that boy. Soon he would take all from her sons.
It did not occur to Alida, nor would she have believed it if she’d been told, that Talis, with his laughter and good nature, had done more in two short weeks to make John like his sons than Alida had managed in twenty years of bullying. Alida was always trying to make her sons into what John wanted them to be. Talis pointed out to John what they actually were and that their talents were quite useful.
“Now,” Alida said sternly, “you must plan for the future. You want the boy and so do I. He is intelligent and he is strong. He will do well at managing the estates when we are gone.” Gilbert Rasher’s estates, she thought. She had not had any contact with the boy hers
elf, not since the day when he had arrived and carried her to her bedchamber, but Edith kept her informed of what was going on. Edith said he was cocky, too sure of himself, but…Here, Edith had put her head down and blushed. Even cold-blooded Edith had been won over by the boy.
It annoyed Alida that the boy was liked by one and all, as that made everything harder. It was not that she wished the boy harm, it was just that she wanted him out of her family. From what she knew of Gilbert Rasher, he had need of a boy like Talis, a boy with at least a shred of decency about him who could put those bankrupt estates of his in order. Yes, actually, getting rid of the boy would benefit all of them.
“Do you think the boy should spend so much time with Callasandra?” Alida asked.
John turned a blank face toward her, having no idea who she was talking about.
“Your daughter. The one this boy wants to marry.” John still looked a bit blank, and he obviously did not have any idea why she was mentioning this girl. “Yesterday Edith reported to me that Callasandra had defied her most impertinently. I was going to speak to you about it. I have given Edith the care of this girl, as she has the most unsuitable education I have ever encountered. She can neither sew nor play any music.”
Alida did not bother telling her husband of Callie’s knowledge of Latin and Greek, as well as of mathematics, not that she wanted to hide such a thing, but because she knew her husband would not be interested in this.
“It seems that two nights ago Callasandra slipped out of bed and stayed away all night.” She raised her eyebrows at her husband to let him know what she thought their daughter was doing. “She did not return until morning and her corset and hood were missing. Later one of the gardeners found both of them in a field near the old castle.”