I stood there with him at the crack of dawn. He kept chatting and directing his comments at me but I was paying no attention to him. I was thinking. Of my mother. I came out of the trance when the door opened in front of us. We were meant to be meeting an old friend; however, when the doorway revealed my father I was too gobsmacked to speak. David noticed the distress on my face.

'Father? What're you doing here?'

'I could ask you the same Wendy'

'I'm here to see Henry'

'I'm afraid Henry…is no longer with us'

My face dropped and I felt my eyes well up with tears. They hadn't been this full since my mother had passed. Her last dying wish had been that I married and soon after she passed and most girls would be married by thirteen here, yet I was but twenty-three and still unwed. My father wanted me to marry…a man of respectable taste; however, in his eyes, my suitor wouldn't come soon, even though I had been asked more than ten times. My father had suggested I marry someone like David; but he had not yet asked for my hand. I'm not as young as I used to be. In my mother's opinion if I wasn't wed by fifteen then I would never be. But my father's opinion differed in that he thought of me as a rose and all I needed was the correct suitor and I would bloom. They'd had many an argument over it; and the last time I'd heard the word married was when my mother passed.

My father heard a crash from behind him and ushered us from the house. We got to the street where we saw several French army members.

'Go! Inform the king! Do not return!'

We turned to run.

'And Wendy…'

I turned back to face my father.

'…get married won't you. I give you my blessing to whoever it may be'

A shot fired and my father fell to the floor dead.

'Father!'

'Wendy, no! Come on! We have to go!'

I went to run to him but David grabbed my hand and dragged me away.

We reached the edge of town where we found two horses. One was a snowy white; the other a deep chestnut brown. I mounted the white while David mounted the brown and we took off towards the king's home.