The Scarlet Lion Read Free

up that ladder, he was fit to burst," he said in a low voice, glancing to make sure Richard was out of earshot. "If he's annoyed with you it's because he saw de la Bruiere dancing on the pick too and would have gone to his aid had you not beaten him to it. We had to pull him back—we couldn't risk both of you on the same ladder. The moment he saw you gain the wall walk there was no stopping him."
       "Better I should take the risk than him."
       "He didn't think so." With a nod to William, Mercadier strode after his paymaster.
       William sheathed his sword. He had answered Richard with robust assertion but, in the aftermath of hard effort, he was aware of aching, strained limbs and of the fact that before long he would mark his fiftieth year on God's earth. The sweat chilling on his body made him shiver. Stooping, he hauled the dazed constable to his feet and gave him into the custody of Mallard, telling the knight to keep him under close but courteous guard and attend to his scalp wound. When he turned round, Jean was holding out a cup of wine, his expression studiously blank.
       William took the offering with gratitude, drank thirstily, and wiped his mouth on his gambeson cuff. "When I was newly knighted and still wet behind the ears, I was involved in a street battle at Drincourt," he said. "The commander told me to stay back and let the experienced knights do their work—said I was too young and a hindrance, but I ignored him and forced my way to the front." He leaned on one hip, his left hand resting on his sword hilt, and drank again, this time more slowly. "I lost my horse, took a nasty shoulder wound, and impoverished myself into the bargain because I demanded no ransoms from the knights I put down. But we won and I lived to tell the tale." He gave a self-deprecatory smile. "I was a whelp then; I'm an old dog now, and unlikely to change my ways."
       "I'm wise enough to leave that kind of persuasion to the Countess," Jean said with a straight face.
       William laughed and started towards the stairs leading down to the bailey. "She'll boil my hide in oil when she hears about today's battle," he said over his shoulder. "Tell the men not to exaggerate too much for my sake."
       "I'll do my best, my lord," Jean replied with a rueful grin.
    ***
    Isabelle set the final stitch in the scrap of linen on which she had been working, secured the thread, and snipped it with her small silver shears. "There," she said to her fidgeting three-year-old daughter. "He's finished. What do you say?"
    Mahelt's little face lit up as she took the representation
    of a swaddled baby from her mother. It was the size of a man's thumb; the body made from whittled wood and fleece purloined from the spinning basket, then wrapped in a strip of linen. "Thank you." Mahelt gave her mother a smacking kiss and a fierce hug before dashing back to the corner where she had been playing with her poupées. Isabelle smiled with tender amusement. Mahelt might be little more than an infant, but already the maternal, nurturing soul was as fierce within her as the warrior spirit was in her older brothers, although she owned plenty of that too. She possessed a moppet made of soft cloth to nurse and cuddle, but this new, smaller addition was for her "family" of poupées, each one the size of a tent peg. They dwelt in a small carved chest by Mahelt's crib-bed and she played with them most days, chattering to them as brightly as a magpie and making up stories about them. They had briefly fallen out of favour when her baby brother had been born, but, fascinated as she was by Gilbert, once the immediate novelty had worn off, she had returned to her toys. Now she tucked the baby poupée gently against the arm of the mother one who sported a rose-coloured gown and long golden braids like Isabelle's.
       Isabelle brushed threads from her lap, rose to her feet, and went to look at Gilbert, now almost five months old. Despite his awkward birth, he