Chapter 2: Sir John Logan
She awoke slowly.
The agony in her shoulder was a burning pain that spread up and down her side, from her ribs up to her skull. She wanted to scream, but foremost in her mind was the thought that some of the soldiers might still be around, so she gritted her teeth and forced her cries back down.
She lay still for a long time, listening. All she could hear was the sound of birds chirping, and the usual sound of the animals going about their business. Desperate to know what had happened, she levered herself up, gritting her teeth from the pain, and then grabbed the arrow shaft sprouting from her shoulder. She clenched her teeth to stifle her cries as she wrenched it out of her shoulder.
The effort almost caused her to pass out from the agony. She lay back against the leaves of the bush, ignoring the way the thorns scratched at her face, hands, and legs, and wept with anguish for a long time until the pain faded off to a manageable level. When she could finally move without having stars swim in her eyes, she climbed to her feet and started to walk.
As soon as she broke out of the tree line she saw the flames. The men, before leaving, had torched every building in the town, andeverything was going up in flames. The wagons were lying on their sides, their contents spilled out on the ground, pawed through and every precious, valuable thing taken from them.
And everywhere there were bodies. All of them still, too still, unmoving, and the smell of blood was thick in the air. Flies were already gathering around the bodies, and Jubilee fell to her knees on the ground and threw up. The sun was just rising now; she guessed that she'd been unconscious moist of the night, since it had been dusk when the armed men had come.
Finished heaving up every last bit of food in her stomach, Jubilee climbed wearily to her feet and started walking. Her eyes roved helplessly over the bodies as she walked past them; she recognized the town's healer, lying on her face with her back sprouting three arrows. A little further on was the minstrel and his wife, who was the town washerwoman; and here lay the cooper, the cobbler, and the town seamstress. Jubilee's eyes filled with tears as she saw the sword-swallower, lying dead with his sightless eyes staring up at the blue sky overhead; and here was David and his twin, and their parents, dead of sword slashes to the belly. Jubilee choked back her sobs as she walked past the Mvembas, the parents dead and the girls lying there with slashed throats and flipped-up skirts, the marks on their bodies mute testimony to the abuse they'd suffered before they died. Madam Sajadi hadn't been spared; neither had anyone else Jubilee knew, from the caravans and the town. She fell to her knees numbly before the bodies of her parents, blinded by tears. "Mother," she sobbed. "Oh, Mother, Father, please wake up, please…" but they would never get up again, and she knew it. Getting heavily to her feet, she went to the small storage building behind the healer's home.
She was still bleeding from her shoulder; sluggishly, but she was still bleeding. She got her shirt off with some difficulty, cleaned the wound as best as she could with water from the stream behind the shed, then took the long lengths of rag that the Healer used for bandaging and wrapped her shoulder as best as she could with them. The sun climbed higher, and brought with it the summer heat. And with the heat, the flies multiplied and the bodies started to smell.
She searched the smith's shop, and found the shovel he used to heap hot coals on the fire. It was heavy, but she could handle it. Dragging the shovel outside, she started digging.
She started at every noise, every sound, afraid that the men would come back, but they never did. Jubilee dug her parents' graves first, tears streaming down her face as she lowered them into the shallow holes she had dug.
"Oh, Mother," she sobbed in heartsick anguish as she laid her mother carefully in the shallow grave that was all she had the strength to dig, "Mother, I don't know what to do, now. I don't know where to go. I hate him, Mother, I hate the man who did this…" In her mind's eye the swarthy visage of her parents' murderer leered at her. "He'll pay for this, Mother, Father, I swear, he'll pay for this…" She carefully removed the sword from her mother's side, and her eyes stared at the blade, stained with her father's blood and her mother's blood. "I will kill him for what he's done," she said again, with steel in her voice. "I promise, Mother, Father, I'll kill him. I don't know how, but I'll kill him." Suddenly determined, she unpinned her braids and grabbed the naked sword blade in her bare hand. She used it to hack her hair off close to her head, and dropped one braid into her mother's grave, and one in her father's grave. The hair, matted with both her mother's, her father's, and her own blood (the blade had cut her palm when she grasped it) was a silent testimony to the determination of the white-faced, trembling girl who started to shovel dirt over her parents' bodies. Then she went grimly out to the meadow outside of town and started digging again.
There was no way one wounded girl could bury everyone that first day, and when dusk fell and she could no longer see what she was doing, she retreated to that storage building to sleep. While she had been digging, she had found the loaf of bread and cheese that she'd hidden behind the tree the previous evening, and she had eaten it slowly, savoring every bite. She was furiously hungry, but the houses had all been burned, and she had no way to make any more. When the food ran out she would either have to forage or she would have to leave and find another town.
She was going to leave anyway. With her hair cut, she could disguise herself as a boy. A boy could get work at the Duke's castle, and once she began to work there she was sure she could figure out where the dark man slept. It would be a simple matter then to slip into his room and slit his throat while he was sleeping. She would be caught, of course; the Duke's men would never let her leave the castle alive; but she didn't care what happened as long as she took the dark man to hell with her. She didn't know his name; but she knew she would recognize his face if she ever saw it again. Every detail was indelibly burned into her memory.
She slept uneasily that night in the healer's storage shed; she could hear the howls of wolves and other wild creatures as they feasted on the bodies that still lay around the burned-out town. She had buried everyone important to her first; her parents, David, his twin, and their parents, and the Mvemba girls; Madam Sajadi, the sword swallower, and the caravan master and his wife. When she woke up the next morning, she was met by the sight of more wolves than she could count; they hadn't left when dawn came. They wouldn't leave such an abundant source of food. Terrified, Jubilee sneaked past the wolves and headed into the forest, knowing there was nothing else she could do in the ruined town.
She walked for days, unsure of where she was going. She didn't dare use the road; what if the armed men were walking along and they found her? She didn't want to risk being killed when she had no way to take the dark man with her. Hunger was an ever-present pain in her belly; a gnawing, empty feeling that she had no way to assuage. She stretched the loaf of bread out as long as she possibly could, eating only when she got to streams. By drinking water between every bite, the bread in her stomach swelled with the water and she could fool her stomach into thinking it was full.
The days were long, and the nights were uneasy. Afraid that some wild animal would corner her (she was still wearing her old tunic, and the bloodstains in it did still smell to her) she climbed a tree every night and slept in their fork. She couldn't go completely to sleep, however; if she relaxed completely she might fall out of the tree. So she dozed fitfully, waking with a start every now and then.
Five days after she had left the ruined town behind, she noticed wearily that the trees were thinning. She rounded one large oak, and looked down on a sleepy little town. This one was much more prosperous; there was an aura of almost palpable well-being. Jubilee, weak from hunger and exhaustion, dragged herself the short distance out of the tree line and out into the main street running through the town. Gathering all of her strength, she made it the last few yards to the door of the town's tavern and pushed the door open.
She got a vague glimpse of a lot of people sitting around at the tables, and dug into her pocket for the few coppers she had salvaged from the wreckage of the caravan's wagons. She stepped into the room, holding the coppers in her fist, and gasped out, "Hungry…please…" and then she passed out, dropping to the floor like a felled tree.
Sir John Logan was the first one to react. He'd stared, along with everyone else, when the door had opened and the ragged, skinny, dirty urchin had walked in. Pulling his eyes away from the skinny body, he'd looked up at the face. The boy's bright blue eyes, such a contrast to the dark, matted hair, had looked dazedly around the room for a moment before the cracked, swollen lips had muttered the word 'hungry'. Then the lad had fallen over, and still no one moved or said a thing.
Except him. He'd taken an oath to protect and help the helpless, and that was what he was going to do. He crossed the room quickly, bent over the lad, and lifted the boy's slight weight in his strong arms, honed by years of battle and swordplay. "Mistress Leeds," he nodded at the woman who kept the tavern. "I'll take the boy up ta my room. Will you send yer servin' girl up with a bowl o' stew, please?" He turned around, ignoring the stunned looks on the faces of the guests of the inn, and mounted the stairs to the sleeping rooms above the common room.
He nudged the door open with the toe of his boot, walked in, then closed the door with a push from the same foot. He put the boy down on the cot, turned and lit the candle in the room with the flint he always carried, and turned to look at the boy.
Young, certainly. Too young to be away from his parents. The face was too thin, as were the exposed part of the arms and legs, and the clothes, which had once been fine, were now travel-stained and dirty. With more than dirt, he realized, looking at the great rip in one shoulder generously stained black around the hole. That was blood on the shirt, if he wasn't mistaken. And a hole like that wouldn't come from a sword, that was plainly an arrow. Logan growled. Who would be shooting an arrow at a little boy? He reached for the thin material, planning to rip it in half so he could look at the clumsily-bandaged wound.
The boy's hand came up and closed around his wrist. The grip was surprisingly strong, for someone so exhausted. "Hey," he said. "I just wanna take a look at yer shoulder."
Those incredible blue eyes pinned him with a glare. "I can take care of myself," said the high-pitched voice. Logan frowned. The kid's voice hadn't started changing yet. How old was he, ten, twelve? Thirteen, at the most, Logan guessed. Not old enough for his voice to have changed, and certainly not old enough to be on his own.
"Coulda fooled me," he said to the boy, but the boy didn't let go of Logan's wrist. Logan finally sat back, withdrawing his arm, and the boy let go of him, but continued to eye him warily. Logan stared at those blue eyes and those long feathery eyelashes (pretty-boy eyelashes, Logan thought). They looked at each other for long moments.
The sound of a tap on the door interrupted their staring contest, and Logan got up to open it. "Your stew, sir," said the homely young girl on the other side of the door. Logan reached for the tray with the wooden bowl of stew on it and nodded curtly to the wench, then closed the door as she headed back downstairs.
The boy was sitting up in the bed, eyeing him warily as he put the tray down on the side table next to the guttering candle. "Well?" Logan said after a moment. "Aren't ya gonna eat?"
The boy looked at the tray with the steaming stew in it. Logan had eaten here before, and while it wasn't the best stew he'd ever tasted, it certainly wasn't the worst. The smell coming from the bowl had to smell pretty good to the kid, who looked like he hadn't eaten a decent meal in a while. "Go on, boy," Logan said, sitting down in a chair. "Eat it while it's hot. It'll taste worse cold."
Still keeping an eye on him, the boy held out one hand, palm open. Logan saw the small copper coin sitting in it, and took the gesture for what it meant. "Naw, don't want it," Logan said, waving it away. "Ain't like one bowl o' stew's gonna make a difference, one way or another." The boy folded his fingers around the coin and shoved it back into a grimy pocket, then picked up the bowl and started eating with single-minded intensity. Logan casually turned away, rummaging in his saddlebag until he came up with another shirt and a pair of trousers. Logan was a short man; the boy, for all his apparent youth, was tall for his age. "I'm goin' out ta tend my horse," he said, tossing the shirt to the boy. "Ain't got no wish ta see yer privates, lad, so get them smelly things off and change into those clean clothes. Then we'll talk." He left the room.
Jubilee put her spoon down in the empty bowl and stared at the pants and shirt. She had woken up here, with this stranger touching her, but apparently she had woken up before he found out her secret. But he had bought her food, and now was giving her clothes…She reached for the clothes, suddenly eager to shed the clothes she was wearing. Slipping into them, she grinned slightly. They were a little on the big side, but that was all for the better; they hid the faint but noticeable outward curves of her hips and the cloth across her chest binding her breasts flat. She had kept herself fairly clean while traveling through the forest; the last thing she'd wanted was to get an infection in her shoulder and die. She'd kept the bandage rinsed and clean; kept her chest wrapping clean; but there hadn't been a way for her to wash her clothes. She'd soaked them at intervals in the streams she passed, but it hadn't been enough to keep them clean.
She shucked the dirty rags and adjusted the binding on her chest, making sure that a casual look at her wouldn't show the binding, then took a strip of cloth from her old shirt and twisted it into a cloth rope, fastening it around her waist to keep the pants on, and sighed as she kicked the dirty clothes aside. Maybe she could persuade the stranger to let her keep these new clothes; she could give him the coppers she had in her pocket to pay him for them. Sighing, she sat down and waited for him to come back in. Her stomach was full of the stew, which, after five days of eating grubby roots and stale bread, tasted delicious to her; and as she sat there, sleep overcame her, and she slipped off into dreamland.
When Logan came back into the room, he saw the boy changed into the fresh clothes, the dirty ones were in a pile in the far corner of the room, and the kid himself stretched out on the bed, sound asleep. Logan eyed him for a moment, an odd smile tugging at the corner of his lips, then sat down.
The poor kid had to be exhausted, to fall asleep like that. Logan smiled. The boy was comely, almost pretty; and pretty boys tended to become toys for the wealthy. Was this boy a runaway? Had the master of the house gone hunting him, and had him shot? Logan ground his teeth at the thought of anyone doing that to a kid. Well, if the kid didn't have anyone looking after him at the moment…Logan's squire had just made knighthood, and had gone off to serve in Prince Stephan's court. Logan hadn't had a squire in a few months; maybe if this boy was amenable to the idea, he could take the boy with him and enter him into page and squire training, and eventually make him Logan's squire. Otherwise, a boy that pretty was going to become prey to the many predators out there.
Yes, it was a good plan. Logan leaned back in his chair, propped his chin on his chest, and drifted off to sleep.