The Longing (12 page)

He turned. “I have hardly thought of you at all, Susanna de Balliol.”

As she had thought might be the case. “And when you have?”

“In the beginning, ’tis true I hated and more deeply when I heard of…her death.”

“And now?”

“I have learned hate is destructive to one’s self. Though, at times, it can be exquisitely so, I do not indulge—at least, not for long.”

“I am glad. But still you do not like me and never shall, am I right?”

“Very likely. After all, it is not possible to know if ’twas loyalty or jealousy that guided you that day.”

Susanna drew a hand up her chest and closed her fingers around the pendant beneath her bodice. She knew what he believed she had done—the same Judith had first believed—but what did he mean by this? “I can make no sense of what you say.”

“Loyalty to one’s family, I understand well, Lady Susanna. Jealousy that is of such strength as that worked upon Judith…” He shook his head. “…not even from a girl not yet a woman.”

She longed to defend herself, to tell him it was neither, but as he said it was impossible to know if what he believed she had done was driven by loyalty or jealousy, he certainly would not believe that her only crime, and for which she had paid year after year, was betraying her brother—disloyalty to her own kin which should have earned
her
the name of Judas.

“Good eve, Lord Wulfrith,” she said and was relieved when the doorway emptied of his height and breadth. Now if only she could empty herself of him.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Such a scene was not tolerated in the great hall, though certainly it occurred outside it, most often upon the training field. They were lusty young men, each vying for a place among the others as they strained toward manhood. Here, however, they were expected to behave nobly, with restraint and manners. This eve, they had not.

Even more of a surprise than finding his hall in a shambles when he returned belowstairs was the one at the center of it all. Judas de Balliol.

The boy strained against Sir Elias’s hold, thrusting his body toward the one held by Squire Joseph—Squire Charles, recently elevated from the standing of page, though that honor could be reversed.

Knowing whatever had caused the altercation would not have if Wulfen’s knights had been present, rather than gathered in the barracks as they often did before the evening meal, Everard tried not to begrudge his men the well-earned break from their charges.

“What is this?” he shouted as he strode forward.

The excited voices of those surrounding the combatants quieted. Judas de Balliol, however, remained heedless.

“Say it again, knave!” the boy barked. “Say it and I will knock another tooth down your throat!”

It was no idle threat, Everard acknowledged as a path quickly opened for him. Though it was impossible to know the extent of damage to Squire Charles’s teeth, his mouth being a bloody mess, something had surely gone missing.

“Be about your duties!” Everard ordered, and the onlookers scattered.

As he drew near the combatants, he looked from the young squire who no longer required Joseph’s restraint, to Judas who yet required Sir Elias’s.

Everard had sensed that emotions ran fast and deep beneath the boy’s quiet exterior, but though he loathed the means by which such feelings had been plowed into one so young, he was encouraged. He liked this glimpse of Judas’s passion nearly as much as the vulnerability he had seen in his eyes—providing, of course, the boy had been sufficiently provoked to act as he had done against one who was several years older than he. And that was quite possible where Squire Charles was concerned.

Everard halted near the two, nodded at Joseph who promptly released Charles, then Sir Elias who hesitated. Rightly so, for Judas continued to strain, gaze fixed on the one from whom he wished to take more teeth. And he might have succeeded if not that Everard caught him by the neck of his tunic as he sprang past.

Hoping the boy could summon enough dignity that he would not have to be dragged from the hall, Everard said, “Charles, come!” and pulled Judas toward the dais beyond which the solar lay.

Just when he thought the boy would disappoint him, Judas stop struggling. Of his own accord, he landed his feet hard to the dais and crossed its span alongside Everard who released him only after they stepped into the solar past the heavy curtains Squire Joseph flung back.

“There.” Everard pointed to the large table across the room. “Sit.”

Rubbing at his neck where the tunic had cut into him before he had reclaimed his dignity, the boy crossed to the table and dropped into the nearest chair.

“And you,” Everard told Charles who had entered behind.

Dragging his bloody mouth across the shoulder of his tunic, the squire tramped forward and took the seat farthest from Judas.

Everard followed but remained standing between the two. “In as few words as possible, Squire Charles, explain how I can leave an ordered hall and return a quarter hour later to find it a den of chaos.”

The young man glanced at Judas. “It was not—” He dragged his words to a halt, grunted. “Apologies, my lord, it began with me.”

That
lesson—to admit responsibility for his actions—had been the hardest for Charles to learn, so much that, on occasion, he still slipped. Everard was pleased he did not do so this time.

“I do not like the way he skulks about.” Charles jutted his chin at Judas. “Nor that knight who follows everywhere after him. And his name—Judas, he who betrayed our Lord, Jesus Christ. It portends ill.”

Judas rose so abruptly his chair teetered.

“Sit!” Everard commanded.

Tension in every line of his body, he slowly lowered to the edge of the chair.

“Are those the words that earned you a bloody mouth, Squire Charles?”

The young man held his lord’s gaze with difficulty. “They are the words I speak now.”

“What words did you speak
then
?”

His jaw shifted. “I said his father must have hated him to give him so vile a name.”

Everard’s insides tightened. He had hoped Judas’s attack upon the squire was provoked, but not in that way. “I am surprised you have your head about you, Squire Charles. Recite lesson one.”

The young man opened his mouth, frowned, and shot his gaze to the one who had bested him. “Forgive me, my lord, I do not see how it applies.”

Everard looked to Judas. “How many years have you, boy?”

Judith’s son drew a sharp breath, obviously as offended at being called “boy” as when Everard had chastised him for his impertinence during their first meeting. But that was what he was and would be until he learned there were places one did not dispense retribution, Wulfen’s hall being among them.

“I am ten winters aged,” Judas begrudged.

Everard returned his regard to the squire whose wide eyes reflected shock at the great disparity between them. “
That
is how it applies, Squire Charles.”

The color of shame crept into the young man’s face. It was one thing to fall to a peer, quite another to fall to one considered well beneath him. “I did not know,” he strangled.

“Now you do. But we shall save apologies for later when reflection allows them to be better meant.” He gestured for the young man to rise. “In the meantime, think well upon lessons one and six.”

“Aye, my lord.” He inclined his head and strode past.

“Squire Charles!” Everard called as the young man neared the solar’s curtained entrance.

“My lord?”

“I am pleased you have learned lesson three well.”

“I thank you, my lord.”

As Joseph drew the curtains aside to allow the squire to pass into the hall, Everard looked around and found Judas watching him, interest brightening eyes that had previously been full up with anger. But before the boy asked the question, Everard knew what it would be.

“What are these lessons? One…three…six?”

Everard lowered into the chair beside him. “Lesson one: prey not upon those weaker than one’s self.”

“I am not weaker than that knave.” Judas thrust a hand forward, the knuckles of which bore traces of Squire Charles’s blood. “’Tis his blood upon me.”

“In your case, that is so, but it has not been so with others, though Squire Charles makes good progress.” Everard gave that a moment to sink in, then continued. “Lesson three: take responsibility for one’s actions. Lesson six: think one’s words through ere spilling them.”

Judas became lighter about the mouth, and it appeared he might even smile.

Curious, Everard watched him more closely. “Those are among the lessons Squire Charles must learn ere he earns his spurs and can, by all rights, call himself a man.”

The boy nodded. “They sound much like my aunt’s lessons, though she does not number them.”

Everard could not let that slip past unexamined, for in order to counter Lady’s Susanna’s influence, he would need to know its extent. “What lessons are those?”

The boy considered him. Considered him some more.

“Tell me these lessons your aunt has taught you,” Everard said more sharply. And should not have, for Judas’s face closed up as if shutters had been thrown over it.

Everard grabbed hold of his patience and regretted, as he had often done these past days, that the tolerance he ever had well in hand should waver in the face of Susanna and Judas de Balliol.

“You make it difficult to help you, Judas.”

The boy put his head to the side. “You have not said how you intend to do so.”

Patience.
“I shall send a missive to the queen requesting an audience so that I may stand witness to your claim to Cheverel.”

He nodded. “As you should.”

Everard stiffened, but he tempered his next words, for though anger was the means by which to coax some into opening themselves wide, it seemed more likely to close up Judas tighter. “You have much to learn about respect.”

The boy shrugged. “I know how to feign it. That is sufficient.”

As taught by his aunt? “Then you choose not to feign it with me.”

Annoyance flashed across the boy’s face. “You do know ’tis not a favor you do me in agreeing to support my claim? If you are my father, you owe it to me to set things right. If you are not, still you owe it to me.”

Past the ire sparked by the boy’s words, Everard grudgingly acknowledged the truth of what Judas said. No matter that he had never done more than kiss Judith, those kisses shared with another’s betrothed had led to this day.

He sat forward. “This is the last time I shall say this. You were formed from de Balliol blood, not Wulfrith. Though that you have come seeking my help is evidence I bear much responsibility for the place in which you find yourself, it is not because there exists a possibility you are my son. You, Judas de Balliol, are rightfully born, not the result of a man cuckolded. Now you must needs begin behaving as the rightful lord of Cheverel.”

There. More spots of vulnerability in the boy’s eyes. And a sheen of tears he was not quick enough to conceal with the lowering of his gaze.

“That is settled, hmm?” Everard asked.

He jerked his chin.

“Good, then here is your first lesson: address one’s betters with respect. And that begins with me, your lord.”

Judas’s chin snapped up. “A lesson?
My
lord?”

“Aye. While we await word from the queen, you will train here at Wulfen, beginning on the morrow.”

“I did not come here for training.”

As Lady Susanna had pointed out. “Regardless, you will avail yourself of all we can impart during your stay. And, I vow, you will be all the nearer to becoming a man.”

Judas stood. “Where is my aunt? I would speak with her.”

“You will not.”

“Why?”

Everard stood and looked down upon him. “You are now under my protection, not a woman’s, and I say you are done hiding behind your aunt’s skirts.”

Anger again, glittering in the boy’s eyes.

“You must learn to exercise self control,” Everard said. “Indeed, that is lesson two.”

The boy took a step back. “You think I do not know how to control myself? Be you assured, I do. I simply choose not to when it suits me.”

Just as he chose not to show Everard respect. “And when does it suit you not to control youself?”

“When my actions are justified, and I know it likely I will prevail.”

Everard frowned.

“I have learned when to stand and fight and when to walk away no matter how much I long to hit something very hard.”

Another lesson taught by Lady Susanna? “As you longed to hit Squire Charles when he besmirched your name?”

Judas’s nostrils flared. “I know well what the name stands for and why it was given me, but I am done with being made to feel ashamed. If Squire Charles and others wish to believe my name is who I am, all the better, for they put themselves at great disadvantage if they think to know me by way of five letters.”

Everard did not smile, though he was tempted. In some matters, anger was, indeed, a way to coax the boy out of himself—just not where Lady Susanna was concerned. If Everard read him right, Judas was bent on protecting the one who had raised him. Not much more than ten, but only in years.

Everard inclined his head. “Well said, Judas de Balliol, and that will be all.”

The boy frowned. “What of my aunt?”

“This conversation is at an end. Now go and, while you make ready for supper, think on all we have discussed, for on the morrow your training will be far different from anything you have experienced.”

It was clear he wished to argue, but he pushed his shoulders back, turned, and crossed the solar.

There was one more thing. “Judas!”

The boy turned. “My…lord?”

Near enough. For now. “Tell Sir Elias I would speak with him.”

The boy nodded and slipped into the hall.

As Everard awaited the knight’s arrival, his thoughts drifted to where he did not wish them to go. Though they had done so throughout the day, he had turned them back for their promise to disturb him. Now, however, they slipped past his defenses and he saw again Lady Susanna strain to reach the cup, heard her sob when she could not.