Fires of Winter Read Free

the door and down the wooden stair of the forebuilding, beginning to weep with relief when I heard sounds coming from the bailey.
    My tears of relief were shed too soon. What I had heard were the beasts—the dogs in their kennel, the horses in a small paddock and stable, and the few cows kept in the upper bailey pens for their milk. Usually there was a hog or two and a sheep being fattened for slaughtering. The last two were gone, already butchered and eaten, I suppose, and no more brought up because my father and his steward were both dead and there was no one to give the order. I did not think of that then, of course; I was simply overjoyed to see the animals alive, for I knew by instinct that someone must have been feeding and watering them. Most of my fear dropped away, and I thought of one of the grooms who lived with his wife and children in a hut near ours against the stable wall. He knew me and had always liked me, allowing me to “help” with his duties—which was more hindrance, I am sure—around the horses, and I believed he would help me now. Perhaps his wife would give me food.
    I received my first shock on the way to his hut. A man came out of the chapel, and I ran toward him in joy at seeing another person—but he screamed at me to stay away, and when I stood for a moment, too shocked to move, he cast a stone at me. I suppose he was sick and his cruelty was for my own sake, but at the time it was a terrible blow. I was to receive another, even worse. When I came to the groom’s house, his wife was sitting in the doorway.
    Before I could even speak, she spat at me, screaming, “Whore’s bastard, how dare you live while better than you died!” Then she began to struggle to her feet, gesturing menacingly, and added, “The lord is dead. He can protect you no longer.”
    That was how I learned my father was dead, and partly why I gave little thought to it. I was too shocked and frightened to do more than flee before the groom’s wife could reach me, terror lending speed to my feet. But I saw before I was halfway across the bailey that she could not follow, and then rage steadied me. I was sure my father had never protected me—at that time I had no idea of the effect of simply being the lord’s son—and I believed I had won the little favor I had received by my own natural skills. That was in a sense true, for if I had not shown a natural aptitude for riding and handling a sword, my father would have turned his back on me totally. But my rage was mingled with a new fear. I remembered the man who had thrown a stone at me and the physical threat implied by the gestures of the groom’s wife. Did those who survived blame my father for the loss of their families? Did they intend to revenge themselves on me—and on Audris, who was even more the lord’s child?
    I have long since learned that the woman was almost mad with grief and have forgiven her, especially since the notion she set into my mind, to avoid everyone in the keep, may have preserved my life and Audris’s by keeping us free of the sickness. The anger she woke in me, by reminding me of the praise of my tutor and the approving looks of so harsh a critic as my father, was also useful to me. It gave me the feeling that I was able—urged on by the pangs of hunger—to provide for myself and Audris.
    By then, I was near the kitchen sheds built against the wall of the keep. With the stealth natural to a small boy, whose curiosity often drove him to invade places, like the smithy, where he would not be welcome, I crept into the kitchen yard, keeping well inside the lengthening shadows. Seeing no one, I sidled into a storage shed, where I found a knife stuck into a round of cheese, as if someone had been about to cut a portion and been called away and forgotten. I finished the work, though it was not easy, the knife having rusted and stuck to the cheese. Still, I managed, and then