Chapter 5: The Castle
Jubilee stared at the castle. She had been overwhelmed by the town; she was speechless at the sight of the castle. She'd never seen such a huge stone building before. King Richard lived there, with the Queen and the Princes; she wondered if she'd ever see them up close. Not likely. She turned for one last look back at Logan before following Robert out of a side door and out to the squires' training complex.
She was confused. She'd never felt anything for any man before; maybe a little flicker of attraction for David, but on the whole, she'd never met any male who captured her attention the way Sir Logan had. She knew the knights would have their own quarters inside the castle; she knew that she, as a squire-in-training, would have to live wherever squires-in-training were supposed to sleep. She might not see him for a while, and her heart felt like a heavy weight in her chest.
She was also uneasy. With so many people around, it would be harder than ever to hide her secret; but if she wanted her revenge, she would have to. Well, since very few people here had seen an Easterner before (she had seen people staring at her as they walked through the town) maybe she could claim it was against her people's custom to be seen unclothed. Hey, for all she knew, maybe it was. Her parents had never said anything about it, but she noticed her father never changed around the other men in the caravan. Sighing, she stopped in front of a heavy wooden door as Robert opened it, then walked through at his mute wave.
"And what have we here?" came a gruff voice. Jubilee swallowed hard and raised her eyes to the mountain of a man behind the desk in the middle of the room.
He was tall, maybe six and a half feet. He was just as impressive in breadth as he was in height. Jubilee had never seen a man so tall and so impressive-looking before; his arms were equipped with enough muscle to be the size of her legs! She stood in front of him, unable to speak even though she could hear Robert hissing at her to say something.
"Aye, come on, lad, I won't bite," the man said suddenly, and the face that Jubilee had been comparing to a statue carved in marble broke into a broad smile. The weathered skin at the corners of the brown eyes wrinkled into smile lines, and the lips stretched into a wide white crescent with one tooth missing in the front. The sudden contrast between the forbidding mountain of a man and the smiling, gap-toothed giant that now confronted her broke her out of her startlement and she smiled. "Lee," she said.
The giant grinned wider. "Lee," he said. "Well, short name for a short lad. Easy to remember. And which knight is sponsoring you in, eh? He needs to have his head examined for sending such a youngster in here."
"Sir Logan, and there's nothing wrong with his head!" Jubilee surprised herself by saying. "My village was attacked and everyone was killed. I was the only one who survived. Sir Logan took pity on me and he said I could come here with him and learn to be his squire, and eventually a knight."
The man sat down, pulling a piece of parchment toward him and scribbling something on it. "Sir Logan, hey? Looks like he's following tradition. Sending boys no bigger than he was when he first came." He smiled at her surprised look. "Oh, aye. Logan was the runt of the group we took in that year. Seventeen, and he already had a chip on his shoulder, a lot of muscle, and an attitude that made him the worst fighter. He never started the fights, but if there was trouble, he was in the middle of it. Half the gray hairs on my head came from your mentor." Jubilee looked at the man's head, which was balding on the top and salt and pepper on the sides and back, and smiled again. "Don't you turn the rest of that gray, all right?" he stood and looked at Robert. "Thank you for escorting the boy here. I'll take him from here." Robert nodded, turned, and gave Jubilee a wink before he left the room.
"I'm Francis, by the way," the man said, grinning that gap-toothed grin again. "I'm the Squiremaster around here. I take care of the boys training to be squires, and those who are squires and whose knights reside here. Don't worry, you'll see your friend Robert soon." He stood, patted Jubilee's shoulder and opened the door to the room. "Come on. Let me show you around."
Jubilee gulped as he led her down a series of corridors. She'd never been really good at directions, and this place was so big…she followed the big man through the maze of halls, almost stepping on his heels in her anxiety not to get lost.
They turned and went through a large, heavy door, and Jubilee blinked as she suddenly found herself outside, with bright sunshine beating down on her. The man paused just long enough for her eyes to adjust to the brilliance of the midmorning sun, and then strode across the dusty space and opened the door to a long, low building. Jubilee stepped inside.
The room was equipped with beds on either side of a central aisle, and each bed was accompanied by a chest at its foot. Each chest had a nail with a piece of paper hanging from it, and the papers had names written on them. Francis walked down the rows of beds until he found a bed and chest with no identifying tag on the nail, and speared the paper he had been carrying on the nail. Jubilee saw that it had her name, Lee, on it. So this was to be her bed and chest. This was where she would sleep. In a room full of boys. She gritted her teeth grimly. She'd just have to be careful not to change in front of them. There should be privies outside; she would change in one of them. "There's your bed," Francis said cheerfully. "Did you bring anything with you, except that sword on your back?"
Jubilee shook her head. All she had were the clothes on her back, which weren't even hers; they were Logan's; and the sword. She swung the sword down off her back and placed it carefully in the bottom of the chest; someday she would find the owner of that sword and run him through with it. Whatever she had to go through in this training school, and then going out on the campaign afterward, would be worth it if she could kill the man who killed her parents. "My village was burned to the ground," she said quietly. "There was nothing left."
"Well, I'll see if the castle's washerwoman has got any clothes that the page has outgrown for you," he said. "For now, well, let's take you along to the classes." They left the squires' barracks, and went back in the main part of the castle. "This hallway," Francis said, indicating the long hall that they had just come down, "Will probably be the only place you will need to see on a daily basis, except the dining hall. All your classrooms are here, and weaponry and equitation classes are held outside, in that dirt square between the sleeping barracks and the castle. You'll be assigned a horse for the equitation classes."
"But I already know how to ride a horse," Jubilee protested.
"You may already know how to ride a horse, youngster, but can you swing a sword and ride at the same time? Can you handle a lance and ride at the same time? Can you duck an opponent's sword and still stay on the horse?" Francis's voice was kind, but his face was serious. "You've heard of the war we're having right now with King Gallas, now, haven't you? If your mentor's wintering here, then that means he's going out with the king in the spring to the war. You'll be expected to wait on him, clean his equipment and gear, and follow him wherever he goes. You may need to get involved in the fighting, which is why you're taught now. Everything we teach you here is for a good reason, boy, and don't forget that. Some of the pages and nobles' sons who attend the squires' classes, especially the weaponry and equitation ones, might sigh and make faces from the tedium of the courses, but a true squire wants to serve his knight to the best of his ability. To do that you must learn everything we teach you here, and learn it so thoroughly that you can do it almost on instinct, in your sleep, or even in the middle of a battlefield with the screams and shouts of dying men around you. Only then can you become a knight. And if I catch you making the stupid faces at your teachers that those foppish nobles' sons make, I'll tan your hide myself. Got me?" Jubilee nodded seriously. "Good. Now, here's your first class." He tapped on a heavy oaken door, and opened it. "Excuse me, Sir Handel," he said to the man pacing in the middle of the classroom. "I have a new student for you. This is Lee, Sir Logan's new squire." He gave Jubilee a gentle push into the classroom.
Jubilee stumbled forward a few steps, and froze. The classroom was equipped with rough wooden benches in rows down the room, and the boys were seated five to a bench. She did a quick count; there were six benches, though only four were being used currently; that meant that there were twenty boys here as trainees. There were two rows of boys in the front wearing a plain brown tunic, leggings, and boots; all of them were the same. Two of the boys on the next bench wore the red and gold livery of a servant; Jubilee guessed that they were the pages from the castle. And the last eight wore rich clothes of very fine cloth; Jubilee figured immediately that these were the 'noblemen's sons' she had to watch out for.
"Well, Lee," said the kindly-looking man in the front of the class. "My name is Sir Peter; I teach reading and writing and figures. Kindly come in and have a seat." He surveyed the benches. "As you are a trainee, we shall put you in the trainee's section. George, if you would move a little down on the bench, there are only four of you, Lee should be able to squeeze in the end there." A dark-haired boy obligingly moved over, and Lee sat down on the end of the bench, feeling self-conscious. The boys were dressed neatly in the brown tunics; she was wearing a faded beige one (well, it might have been white once under all the stains) and pants that were dark with travel dust. She gave the boy next to her a tentative smile, but the boy just stared at her harder. She bit her lip and looked down as a slab of wood and a piece of wood burned black at the tip was handed to her. Some sort of writing instrument, she figured; she drew a line on the thin slab of wood, and then rubbed at it with her finger; the marks came off easily. Of course they'd use something that could be used over and over again; parchment and quill pens were too expensive to waste on trainees. "Thank you, Francis," Handel nodded to the big man. "I'll have one of the boy's group mates take him around the rest of the day." Francis grinned, nodded amiably to the knight, then nodded to Jubilee and made his exit.
"Now, back to what I was saying," the man said, and took a piece of burned stick and wrote on the big, smooth slab of wood behind him. "Basic figures. I want all of you to copy these down and figure them out. When you are done, I want you to bring your work up to me, and I will check to be sure your answers are correct. Lee, do you know how to do these? Do you need me to explain them?"
Jubilee looked at the numbers on the board. Her father and mother had taught her to figure already; she needed to know how much money she earned, so counting, multiplying, and dividing were the first things she was taught after writing her name. And she knew she was lucky she knew it, too; most girls were taught only what they needed to know to become good housewives. Her parents had taught her everything she needed to know in order to care for herself if something happened to them. She felt tears prick her eyes at the thought of her parents, and shook her head, indicating she was fine with the figures, and bent her head over the problems she was copying and working out. They were easy, and she finished soon. While the others were still writing, some counting on their fingers, she had a chance to examine the boys around her.
She was the only Easterner; she supposed that accounted for the stares. They were also all bigger than she was; although, she supposed, the only ones close to her age were three of the well-dressed boys in the back of the room who were pushing and jostling each other, and two of the tall trainees in brown. She was seventeen; and easily equal to the age of any of them there, which would have given her a distinct advantage. But unless a boy was 'thick', his voice would have changed by the time he was seventeen; and she didn't look like a seventeen-year-old boy either. She barely looked like a seventeen-year-old girl, either, even before her hair was cut. Here, she had to pretend she was thirteen. She'd never pass for a 'thick' boy; if she wanted to do that she'd have to drool and wet herself! And she was not doing that.
She didn't want to seem like she was trying to outshine the other boys, so she waited for the first couple of boys to go up and come back with their corrections before she went up. One of those noble boys were leaving Handel's desk as she approached his desk; he gave her a hard glance as he walked past her back to his space on the bench. Handel looked at the neat copying and figures, glanced at the answers, and smiled. "All correct," he said. "Please have a seat until the others are done."
She smiled at her work as she went down the aisle back to her seat, and sat down. After a moment, she felt an uncomfortable prickling at the back of her neck, and turned her head to see who was staring at her. It was the boy who had preceded her to the desk. He stared at her as he got up and walked back up to the desk in front of the room. Sir Handel looked at the wooden board, shook his head, and sent the boy back to his seat with an admonition to try again. He stared at Jubilee as he walked back to his seat. She blinked at the look of frustrated anger in his eyes.
The boy went up again a few moments later, and this time when Sir Handel shook his head again, the boy broke the silence of the room. "I am not going to go back and do it again," he said scornfully. "I want you to tell me the answer. I don't know why Mother wanted me to take this stupid class anyway; I wanted to go hawking instead. I don't need to learn to figure; I am my father's first-born son. I'll have stewards to keep track of the household accounts for me."
Sir Handel's voice was even. "I will not tell you the answer; you will need to figure this out yourself. Yes, when you are the head of your family, you will have stewards to do your household accounts as well…but you will want to check them as well, in case your steward cheats you, or takes more than he is entitled to." This silenced the boy; he went back to his seat on the bench and bent over the figures again.
Jubilee was immensely relieved when the distant sound of a bell sounded somewhere in the castle. All the boys put down their charcoal sticks and wooden slates. "Lee, Thomas, Philip, James, Timothy, Robin, David, Charles, John, Joseph, and Andrew, you may wipe your slates clean. The rest of you who have not yet gotten all the problems worked out, write your names on the top of your slates and stack them here. We will work on them tomorrow." The ten students (including Lee) who had been told to wipe their slates did so, and they all filed past the knight's desk. Slates that still had work on them were in one pile, clean slates went on the other.
Jubilee paused outside the classroom door, wondering where she was supposed to go, and what was happening now. The pages were going one way, the nobles another. She finally started uncertainly after the group of brown-clothed figures.
The last one in the group turned and smiled. "Oh, I forgot," he said. "Hey. I'm Robin. That's Thomas, and this is John. Joseph, Michael, Vincent, Timothy, David, and Charles. We're all squires in training." He smiled at Lee. "You're Lee, right?" Jubilee nodded.
"So which knight is your sponsor?" Robin asked. "I'm Sir Lowry's squire."
"Sir Logan," Jubilee said.
A ripple ran around the crowd of boys as they resumed walking to…wherever they were walking. "Sir Logan?" Thomas broke the silence. "He swore he'd never take another squire after Collan left."
"And one so little, too," Robin said. "Not to down you, kid," he said with the patronizing air of an older brother. "It's not that that's a bad thing, really, but you're so little. Let me warn you right now. Nathan-that's the boy who had a fit in front of Sir Handel—he's one of the nobly-born who think we're beneath him…will take an interest in you. He and his crew are a bad lot. Last year they got on Sam's…that's my big brother's back about his hair, and they sneaked up on him one night and cut it all off. His hair's the same color as mine, by the way." Jubilee looked at the boy's bright, flaming red hair, and nodded. She could see how he must get teased for that. "He won't pick on me this year; Sam's squire to Sir Ronald, and Ronald's the King's personal guard. He knows if he picks on me Sam will tell Ronald, and Ronald will tell Nathan's dad, the Duke of Albany. And the Duke will have a fit. But he might pick you. You know, you're almost too pretty to be a boy; he's sure to pick up on that. Maybe you should cut some more of your hair a different way so you don't look so girly." He flushed. 'I'm sorry, I didn't mean that to come out the way it sounded…"
"Hey!" came a voice from the hall, and the boys turned around. Jubilee's heart leaped. It was Logan. "How ya doin', kid?" he asked as he caught up to her and the boys.
"We're showing Lee how to get to the dining hall," Robin said. "He just had his first class."
Logan nodded, not paying attention to the boy. He was looking at Lee. "Ya pay attention ta yer teachers, eh?" he told Lee. "Don't be like them silly noble boys?" Jubilee nodded, her mouth dry, and Logan pushed open the door to the dining hall. There was a cluster of tables along a high dais at the top of the room where the King and the nobles would sit; another, larger group of tables where the nobles, knights, and squires would sit, and, at the back of the room, the tables where the servants and trainees sat. Jubilee found herself sitting between Robin and Thomas, and Robin swept a plate off a pile of the ones the servers were passing around for her. Then the serving platters were passed around, and they started to eat.