Chapter One
"There was a girl I knew, once," Wat offered lowly.
The warm, fire-lit silence made his murmur unusually loud. Chaucer's quill ceased its fierce scribbling against the dry, scratchy parchment. All faces, orange with firelight, turned to him and the spacious tent suddenly grew smaller.
"She used to cook for the Duke of York," began Wat uneasily, with a nervous twitch of his mouth. Kate smiled back in a gentle way, being the typical woman, and Wat wished that it didn't feel like there was ice caught in his throat. He sniffed.
"I miss her like… the sun misses the flower," he barely managed before dissolving into rather embarrassing sobs.
Roland's large hand gave his shoulder a rough pat. "'S all right, mate," he muttered. "Let it out."
"He's fine," muttered Geoff, busily scribbling about flowers and the sun.
Wat hiccupped and Kate made a sympathetic click with her tongue, watching him with a sad smile. Wat felt his ears burning and turned away, muttering now about how he shouldn't have said anything.
Damn that Git-Self-Proclaiming-Writer and his impressed contortion of his mouth, like Wat had finally said something poetic. He hadn't punched him recently, Wat realized.
"Let it out," said Roland again.
But Wat was done. He had thought about her enough, in his opinion. It wasn't his fault he was so upset over her. She really was an excellent cook.
Wat stuffed another handful of hay into the porous wooden wall. Satisfied, he flopped back onto his lumpy, thin straw mattress. Usually there weren't any fleas in the straw because the dog had died months ago.
The room he lived in was directly above the horse stalls, so the smell was nothing pleasant, but Wat was content. He took care of the Duke's horses alongside Thomas, an attractive, broad-shouldered boy one year his senior. Wat was a tall, scrawny, and awkward boy of nineteen years. His nose was long and crooked and his unruly red hair never stayed down.
Wat winced as he reclined on the uncomfortable mattress. His back and sides ached from another day's work. He was just beginning to shut his eyes when the rickety ladder protruding from the stalls began to squeak, and a particularly cocky-looking Thomas swaggered into the tiny room.
"What are you grinning about?" Wat fired with a smirk of his own. He sat up a little straighter at the sight of company. The day had been dull and full of strenuous work.
"I've found her," announced Thomas. "This is the one I'm going to make my wife." He leaned against the wall and said without modesty, "Well. She doesn't know it, of course, but she will soon enough."
Several months ago Thomas's younger brother wrote to announce that he was engaged to the blacksmith's daughter. Ever since, Thomas felt that his brother being married was a competition that he was losing; every girl he saw seemed to be the potential wife.
"Well, who is it?" fired Wat. The reason why Thomas hadn't yet spouted her name was beyond him. Prolonging suspense was not his forte.
"She hasn't told me her name," said Thomas thoughtfully, rubbing the rough stubble on his strong jaw. It sounded as if asking for her name had just occurred to him.
Thomas's winking gaze studied him, analyzing. Then, as if Wat had passed a test and was deemed suitable enough to lay eyes on her, Thomas said, "Come, I'll show you."
"Right now?"
"Yes, right now, you half-wit!"
Wat's legs were sore but he still followed Thomas down the ladder and outside, muttering. Thomas spoke the whole way of how this girl had been working in the kitchens for nearly six months now, and Thomas's seeking eyes had not landed on her until today.
"I don't suspect she comes outside, much. She's very… withdrawn."
Wat opened his mouth but Thomas was going on, his handsome face glowing with a smile. "The head cook asked her to slaughter a chicken today and—you should have seen her, she honestly turned green! She just sat there—" Thomas leaped in front of Wat and walked backwards, facing him and said with dramatic interpretation, "holding the knife forlornly, in her delicate hands."
Wat rolled his eyes, grinning.
Thomas said, "But I waited around the corner until the cook left. And, you'll love this, I took the chicken out back and did it for her!" A proud grin was smeared across his face, as if he had done something exceptionally heroic.
"Well that's simply romantic," Wat grumbled and rolled his eyes. "Handing over a beheaded bird with a pretty grin. I'll bet you swept her right of her feet."
Thomas punched him in the arm and Wat winced and said indignantly, "Ouch!", but Thomas was sneering, "She said thank you, if you must know. And besides—"
"How's she possibly expect to work in the kitchens if she can't kill a bloody bird?" interjected Wat with a scowl, and Thomas returned it with a frown of his own.
"She'll learn in time. I suppose as her husband that should be my job, but what if I've fallen ill? Don't worry, though, I've already got it worked out—I'm going to come to the kitchens tomorrow with an already dead chicken, or a tree branch, and let her practice."
Wat thought this idea was beyond incredibly daft. "Oh, yes, chickens and tree branches, very similar." He could tell by the silence that Thomas was growing annoyed, so he asked, "But you love this girl and you don't even know her name?"
"What is a name," said the broad-shouldered boy theatrically. The subject of love Thomas left unspoken as they neared the kitchens and Wat could smell the warm, embracing scent of bread. His stomach growled. Crickets were chirping loudly in the end-of-summer twilight.
Thomas had been this way with nearly every girl he'd met, or seen, over the past year. The last had been the daughter of a visiting Baron. Thomas had barely uttered a word to her before she stuck up her nose and pranced off on her white horse with a ridiculous name like "Stunning" or "Magnificent." Thomas spent the next few weeks fawning every time her silk-clad foot stepped out.
Wat was hardly expecting anything of this kitchen wench; it didn't take much for Thomas lately. He would have rather died than to see his seventeen year-old brother wed before him. All Wat could really think about was if there was any way to take some of that delicious-smelling bread.
They reached the kitchen scented of flour and oils. It was so warm inside that the door was left open to the dusk, and as Wat and Thomas grew closer the panging of copper pots and pans drowned the crickets out. Thomas gave Wat another roguish grin and they peered inside, through the steam.
He did not have to point the girl out.
She was at a table near the back corner, fiercely cracking eggs into several small bowls. Her skin was startlingly white but fair, though there was dirt smudged across her cheek and the bridge of her nose. Her large, round eyes were narrowed in concentration. Her face was round and lips very plump, though they were pursed in concentration and above them was a thin line of perspiration. Her hair was wrapped tightly in a starched cloth. A heavier overseer with wiry hair continuously narrowed her small watery eyes at her, judgingly.
Suddenly the girl glanced to the doorway and her eyes went to Thomas. He grinned widely and she flushed, ducking her head.
"So?" Thomas's eyes, intent like those of a prowling cat, never left the top of her head. "What say you, Wat?"
He shrugged his bony shoulders but found that his tongue was suddenly very dry and very glued to the roof of his mouth. Thomas leaned against the doorframe and stayed for several moments, before the overseer saw them and shouted them away. Though there was no way she hadn't heard, the girl did not look up.
Thomas and Wat trekked slowly back to the stable in the purple-and-gray light, Thomas grinning all the way. Wat had forgotten about the bread. He didn't feel very hungry any more. In fact there was an almost unpleasant fluttering in his stomach.
Thomas snapped, "Wat!" for what didn't sound like the first time. He jerked his red head up in his direction.
"Huh?"
"You still haven't told me what you think."
"Oh."
Thomas sighed. "Well?"
"N-nice. It's nice. She's nice, I meant." Wat thought that he was lucky enough to be walking straight; doing so while talking was asking too much. Thomas continued to speak but his words were barely heard.
Wat found that he couldn't sleep very well that night.