Chapter 3: Lee
The sound of footsteps in the hall was what finally woke Sir Logan and the mysterious boy up. The kid looked dazed as he stared around the room, then his eyes fell on Logan and the gaze sharpened. The body tensed.
"Hey, I ain't gonna hurt ya," Logan said, holding his hands up in a non-threatening gesture. "I'm a knight. I'm sworn ta protect the weak an' defenseless, assist those who need help, and defend those who've been abused." He sat back in his chair as the boy relaxed a little bit. Just the tiniest bit. "My name's Sir John Logan. I serve in the court of King Richard."
"Lee," Jubilee said. Well, it was her surname. She was familiar enough with it that she wouldn't forget to answer to the name when she was called. And it could pass for a boy's name, where 'Jubilee' was an odd enough name for a girl, let alone a boy.
Logan stifled a sigh. Well, at least he'd gotten a name. "Lee. All right. Where'd you come from? Ya walked inta the common room downstairs last night all tired an' worn out, an' them clothes ya was wearin' looked like they ain't been washed in days. Yer parents know yer here?"
Jubilee's eyes filled with tears. Her parents. She'd been too busy trying to survive the last few days to think about anything beyond the immediate need to obtain food and shelter, but now that she had both, at least for a little while, grief at their senseless deaths pricked her like a sharp knife. "My parents are dead." She had to fight the tears; boys didn't cry. She'd have to start burying her emotions if she wanted to pass for a boy.
Logan saw the boy trying to fight back the tears. "I'm sorry," he said to the kid. And he was. The kid was too young to lose his parents. "What happened?"
Jubilee said, "A band of armed men came and killed everyone in our village." She decided she was going to keep details of the traveling entertainers a secret. Some people might remember them; they had been stopping at a lot of towns around here lately.
"What village?" Logan asked.
Jubilee had to think fast. She hadn't paid much attention to the towns' names. "Brooksmeet," she said.
"Never heard of it," Logan shrugged. "Is it very far?"
"I was walking for five days," Jubilee said softly.
"Then yer village must be in Duke Gilbert's lands," Logan said. "We're right on the edge o' Duke James's lands. 'F ya want, kid, we can go back, see if there's anyone left. I'm a knight in service ta the king; I can cross the Duke's borders if I have ta. That way, if the armed men come back, I'll be there ta protect ya. They ain't gonna attack the King's knight."
Jubilee shook her head. "They killed everyone," she said bitterly. "I couldn't bury them all before the wolves came. I had to leave. The men said something about the people of our town not having paid enough taxes and tribute to Duke Gilbert, and the Duke wanted to make an example of our town."
Logan was appalled. He had seen Duke Gilbert at the King's table during the annual midwinter gatherings; he'd always thought the man a cold, egocentric, selfish person who cared about nothing going on around him so long as he was getting what he thought he was due and he was happy. Logan had never liked the man; he was glad that he, as a King's Knight, reported directly to the King and didn't have to put up with the petty bickering and backstabbing of court politics. "Come on," he said, getting up from his chair. "Let's go downstairs an' grab somethin' ta eat." The boy got up and followed him out of the room.
Mistress Leeds brought them two bowls of porridge as soon as they sat down; Logan flipped her a couple of coppers for the stew, the breakfast, and then a silver coin for the room. The woman smiled at him, then vanished and came back with a thick slice of bread and cheese for the boy. "No charge," she said, ruffling the boy's hair. "Poor lad." She bustled off, and Logan applied himself to the bowl of porridge as the kid attacked the breakfast.
"Now, which way did ya come from?" Logan asked when they were finally standing outside the inn and the hostler was bringing up Logan's horse, a big bay gelding. Jubilee pointed off through the underbrush in the direction she had come, and Logan started walking his horse that way. She followed him.
They stopped at noon for a bite from Logan's saddlebag and drank water from a clear stream that meandered through the trees; Logan saw that keeping up with the horse was tiring the boy, and when they were ready to mount again, he said gruffly, "Kid, why don't ya get on the horse in front o' me? We'll make better time that way."
The kid shook his head. "I'm fine on the ground," he said. Logan blew out his breath in a sigh at the kid's stubbornness and mounted, starting off through the trees again. He'd have to find a horse for the boy to ride, if they couldn't find anyone who would take the boy in. He'd take the boy back to King Edward's castle and have him trained as a squire this winter, and next spring he'd take the boy with him when he went on the spring campaigns.
Jubilee's feet and legs were aching, and she would have welcomed a turn on the horse if she hadn't been sure that such close contact with the knight would have revealed to him her secret. If this knight found out she was a girl, it would be all over; orphaned girls were taken to the local convents to be raised by the Sisters. She would never be able to get close enough to the dark man to kill him. Revenge would be out of the question.
She couldn't risk that. She'd sell her soul to the devil if she had to, to kill the man who had taken her father and mother away from her. And a convent! Jubilee flinched at the very thought. To have to wear the long black dresses, to have to sit and learn to sew and cook and all those things girls had to learn to be good wives. And later, she would either have to get married, or enter the convent as a nun. No, she didn't want that.
Logan stopped his horse an hour before sundown. Not because he was tired, but because the kid looked like he was going to drop over dead from exhaustion. He was slightly surprised at how well the boy'd held up so far; most of the boys he knew would have been whining and complaining about how tired they were by now. His last squire had been like that. Collan had been good, in his own way, and Logan had liked him; but the boy had also been a noble's boy, born to a life that, while not luxurious, had still not prepared the boy for life as a knight's squire. Collan hated having to hunt his own dinner, having to skin and cook the carcass and pack the leftovers to eat later. He hadn't been prepared to sleep on the ground when they hadn't been able to find a town; hadn't been prepared to be wet and cold and tired. This boy, however, seemed used to traveling, and Logan wondered if there were something Lee wasn't telling him. Well, that could come later.
They slept fitfully that night, and rose early the next morning. The boy tramped along steadily beside Logan's horse, silent and uncomplaining. Near noon, Logan started to nudge his horse into a slightly faster pace; would the boy start complaining, or ask him to slow down?
Jubilee noted the change in pace, and started to jog. This knight probably wanted to hurry with this, and get back to whatever he was doing before. She was taking up too much time. No wonder he wanted to hurry. Despite her exhaustion, she picked up her pace, trying to match the horse's gait. It was an effort, and before they'd been walking an hour she was winded and breathing hard, but she bit back her complaints and kept going.
Logan dropped his horse from the fast walk back to the easy amble they'd been traveling at. The boy was determined not to complain; Logan's respect for the boy went up a notch. "Kid, are ya sure ya wouldn't wanna git up behind me," he said finally, reining the horse in. The boy looked up at him, and Logan reached down for the boy's arm, and hauled the small body into the saddle behind him. Lee was small, and slight; Logan's horse could carry both of them easily. The kid reached back and grabbed the edge of the saddle with both hands, and Logan's puzzlement increased. The kid had known what to do before he'd said anything, so he must be used to riding double. He was also not a novice rider; he didn't bounce around on the horse's back like a sack of flour, like Collan had.
When they stopped for the night, the kid slid off the horse and went to collect wood while Logan untacked and hobbled the animal. By the time the boy had the fire fairly started, Logan had returned with a rabbit. "Hey, kid, ya know how ta skin?" he asked, holding up the bloody corpse of the rabbit. The kid grimaced, but reached out and took the bloody rabbit. Logan pretended to fuss with his blanket as he watched the boy skin and spit the meat. He was a little clumsy, and did the job with a grimace of distaste, but the meat certainly smelled good. "Yer good," he said suddenly, and the kid looked up and smiled a moment before returning his attention to the spitted rabbit.
"Seriously," Logan said when he'd finished the rabbit. "My last boy, Collan, hated cookin' rough, and also couldn't skin worth a damn. What was in them leaves an' stuff ya put inside the rabbit?" He'd seen the lad hunting for bits of grass and washed roots to fill the inner cavity of the rabbit with. The meat now had a unique flavor Logan couldn't place.
"Just some herbs my parents used to have me find so they could have food that tasted good," the boy shrugged. "Nothing fancy."
"It's really good," Logan said, smiling at the boy. The boy looked back at him, and then suddenly broke into a smile. Logan blinked, startled. The boy was pretty when he smiled. Could this kid be…a girl? Logan wondered for a moment, then scoffed at himself. A girl would have been whining and complaining by now; there was no way a girl would be able to put up with the rigors of trail life like this. Logan's own mother would have screamed in shock and disgust if his father had ever asked her to skin and cook a dead rabbit. No, this boy couldn't possibly be a girl.
They finished their supper and Logan crawled into his blanket. The boy was sitting by the fire, staring into the dancing flames, when Logan finally closed his eyes. And when he opened his eyes, the boy was still in the same place, though asleep. Logan tried to move as quietly as possible as he got up and went to take care of his morning ablutions, but when he got back to their little camp, the kid was awake. He nodded to Logan and vanished into the brush, presumably to care for his own bodily needs.
This day was a repeat of the day before, though the scenery sped by a little faster. The boy had consented to sit behind Logan on the horse this time, and they made better time. Logan urged his horse into a trot for a while, then dropped the horse back into a walk. Riding like this, they reached the outskirts of a clearing on the evening of the third day.
The kid stood and looked out at the meadow that served as the common ground for the townsfolk's animals, and also as the camping area for the entertainers' wagons. They were all gone. Bandits, or maybe the armed men, had come back and taken everything, and torched the rest. The painted lady on the side of Jubilee's parents' wagon was unrecognizable now under the scorched blackness of the wood. The animals had been at work; here and there was a few bones, and she shuddered as she saw a skull with shreds of rotting flesh crawling with maggots on it. Whoever the person had originally been was gone, the features not even recognizable.
Logan stared at the devastation, and a cold rage built up in him. These were innocent townsfolk. The size of the burned area where their homes and shops had been was very small; they hadn't been a prosperous town. Wagons belonging to some traveling fair were parked outside of town, and Logan saw a good many corpses around them. So Duke Gilbert's men hadn't just punished the townspeople for their poor tithes, they had slaughtered anyone who happened to be there at the moment. Even a traveling fair, whose people probably had never seen most of these people before, hadn't been spared the duke's wrath. He shook his head. It was too bad that no adults had survived the massacre. If one had, Logan could file complaints with the King against the Duke on the townspeople's behalf and could challenge the Duke to a duel to right the enormous wrong that had been done these people. However, from the looks of it, no adults had survived, only one small boy. And he couldn't challenge the Duke on the boy's behalf; the boy hadn't reached the age of majority yet. Shaking his head at the unfairness of it, Logan went to find the boy.
He found the kid kneeling between two slightly mounded heaps of earth; freshly dug graves, Logan surmised. A cross made of two twigs lashed together with yarn was stuck into the top of each mound. "Mother and Father," said the boy quietly, sensing Logan's approach but not looking at him. "I had to bury them first." Logan, unable to think of anything to say, just stood behind the boy quietly as the boy paid his last respects to his obviously much-beloved parents. He was turning away, to leave the boy to his grief, when his foot hit an object half-hidden in the grass. Logan reached down and picked it up.
It was a sword. He inspected the thing, noting the faint but still visible old bloodstains left on the blade, and the quality of the blade. This was no local smith's work; Logan knew that even if he hadn't recognized the maker's mark on the hilt of the sword. The anvil stamped on the base of the blade, just above the guard, belonged to the sword maker attached to King Richard's court. Master Swordcrafter Robert Davenport, a distant cousin of King Richard, used the anvil as his maker's mark. Logan frowned at the device stamped into the grip of the sword; a large black raven carrying a spear in one claw and a shield with the letter 'S' on it. Its owner had been from a house old and noble enough to have its own coat of arms, Logan mused, but it wasn't one he recognized.
"The man who killed my parents killed them with that sword," came a quiet voice from behind him, and he turned to see the kid coming up behind him, the wide blue eyes fixed on the sword. There was such rage, such hatred, in those eyes. Logan sucked in a breath. Whoever this nobleman was, he'd better watch out for this small boy, because Logan figured as soon as this boy could handle a sword he'd be looking for his parents' murderer. The kid wanted vengeance.
He looked at the sword thoughtfully, then bent and picked up the scabbard, lying in the grass beside the sword, dropped and forgotten. Slipping the sword into its sheath, he looked at the boy thoughtfully. "Have you any other relatives who might take you in?" he asked the boy. The kid shook his head.
"I'll make ya a deal," Logan said, looking into those intense blue eyes. "Stay with me. I'll sponsor ya inta the Squire's trainin' program in King Richard's castle. You'll learn everythin' ya have ta know in order ta become a knight. After a suitable period o' time campaignin' with me, I'll submit yer name fer a position as a King's knight. By that time ya should have enough experience, and trainin', ta call out Duke Gilbert and his man fer the death o' yer parents, an' by the laws o' the kingdom ya get ta meet him in a duel ta the death. You'll have a chance ta get vengeance on the bastard who killed yer parents. How's that sound, boy?"
The kid looked up at him. "Really? You'd do that?" he breathed.
Logan felt suddenly uncomfortable. "Well, it ain't all that simple, y'know, yer gonna haveta work hard, an' train, an' yer pretty small fer a boy. Lots o' the other boys're bigger. But yeah, if it's what ya want, I'll do it."
"Yes," the boy said, his eyes glittering. "I'll do anything just to have a chance. I swore when I buried Mother and Father that I was going to kill the man who killed them."
"Then keep yer promise." Logan handed the sword to the boy, hilt first, and the boy took it, looked at it for a moment, then slung the sword by its strap across his narrow back. Logan mounted his horse, and the two of them turned and left the ruined, deserted town.