Remembrance

“Oh, is that what’s bothering you?” Talis asked. “The fact that I haven’t been to visit you? I have been very busy lately. You know, the duties of helping all the ladies with their sewing and whatnot has taken so very much of my time. I do hope you forgive me.”

  “I do not own you,” she said, trying to keep anger from her voice. “And you do not own me. Do whatever you want. Right now, I would like for you to leave us. I am with a man who understands that I am a woman.”

  At that she pulled Allen’s arm tightly to her side and looked up at him with what she hoped was a loving expression.

  With some effort, Talis managed to put his body between the two of them. “My father has given me the assignment of protecting you and I must obey him. What do you say that we look at the bookstall?”

  Allen laughed. “I do say, young Hadley, you know nothing about women.” Perhaps he wasn’t as tall as Talis, but he was older and more experienced. “Women like excitement, something like bear baiting, not books. Women’s minds were made for romance and love, not for what is found in a book. Is that not right, my dear?” he said as he raised Callie’s hand toward his lips to kiss it.

  “Oh, I do beg your pardon,” Talis said as he practically fell onto Allen, nearly knocking him down and preventing the kiss. “Someone pushed me.”

  “Clumsy bastard,” Allen muttered under his breath, dusting himself off from where he had slammed into a man carrying a bag of flour.

  “Again I beg your pardon,” Talis said sweetly, “but I am not a bastard. My father is Lord John Hadley. Pray, tell me again who your father is.”

  Allen gave Talis a malevolent look, since his own father was not the rank of John Hadley.

  “Allen, please,” Callie said, “pay him no attention. He is trying to make you angry. Let us enjoy ourselves and pretend that he is not here. Come, look at the cloth merchant.”

  Behind them, Talis groaned. “Who wants to look at cloth on a day like this? There are men walking a rope over there, and there are many things to eat.”

  Callie whirled on him so fast her hair spun around and hit Allen in the face. “For your information, other men are not as selfish as you are. Sometimes a man takes a woman out and does what she wants to do. Other men are not as selfish as you are. Right now Allen would love to look at the silks and velvets, would you not, Allen?”

  “Well, I, ah…”

  “There, you see, Mr. Son-of-a-lord Hadley, he wants to look at cloth. If I wanted to stand there all day and do nothing but look at those silks, Allen would love to be with me. Can someone like you understand such unselfishness as that?”

  Talis had no idea on earth what Callie was talking about. He was beginning to think an evil spirit had overtaken her body. The Callie he knew would rather look at books and rope walkers than piles of cloth. So what was different today?

  When Callie saw that Talis had no understanding of what she was saying, her fists tightened and she turned away from him. “Come, Allen, let us go watch the bear baiting.”

  “But that will make you sick,” Talis said from behind her, and there was real concern in his voice. “You hate to see animals hurt.”

  Again, she whirled on him. “You make me sick! You with your ideas that you own me and know everything there is to know about me. You know nothing about me. Absolutely nothing. I happen to like bear baiting. It is a sport of skill and daring and adventure and Allen knows that I am a woman who likes excitement. I am not the dull, lifeless, prim little virgin you seem to think I am. Now, I want you to get away from me. In fact, I never want to see you again in my life.”

  Allen couldn’t help smiling at that, for this Callie was getting prettier by the minute. When she was angry, her cheeks flushed and her eyes were bright with emotion. When she was like that, she was almost a beauty.

  It looked as though at last her words had had some effect on this boy Talis, for when Callie started walking again, he stayed behind. Allen had to run to catch up with her.

  Confidently, feeling that he had won a woman in a verbal joust, Allen said, “The bear baiting is that way.”

  She looked up at him with horror in her eyes. “I have no intention of watching a bear and dogs fight each other. I hate blood sports.”

  “But you said—You told that boy that—I thought you—”

  “Can you never finish a sentence?” she said in an aggressive way. “What is wrong with you and why do you think that a woman has not the intelligence to read a book? Do you think we women waste our lives as you waste yours lounging about under a tree all day watching me hoe a garden? Is that what you think of me?”

  “No, I…I mean, I—”

  “Yes, what do you mean? Come on, tell me. Speak up.”

  Allen took a deep breath. Were it not for all the money Lady Alida was offering him to stay with this girl, he’d walk away now. Let Talis have her, and with his blessing. The two of them deserved each other. “Would you like a cup of wine?” Allen asked, eyebrows raised. “Or perhaps I could buy you a wagon load of intoxicant and you could bathe in it.”

  To his consternation, Callie burst out laughing. Allen had spent his life trying to win women, so he’d kept his sarcastic remarks to himself. Sweetness won women, not hateful, stinging phrases, so he was shocked when Callie laughed at his spiteful remark.

  He had no idea that his remark was exactly like something Talis would have said to her. When she was in a bad mood, he always proposed outrageous things to do to sweeten her up, such as drowning her in honey, or boiling her in sugar syrup. One hot day when they were twelve, she had been too saucy for his taste, so he’d tossed her into a wagon load of peaches, saying she needed the nectar to mellow her temper.

  All Allen thought when he made her laugh was that he was indeed a very clever fellow.

  Several feet behind them, Talis ground his teeth; his nails cut into his palms as he made a fist. He knew when Callie was really laughing and when she was not. Until now her attention had been on him, on Talis. He knew she did not like this white-haired popinjay. But as soon as they were out of his hearing, she laughed at what he was saying. Really, truly laughed. Laughed in a way that, until now, only he had been able to make her laugh. Not Will or Meg or anyone in the village of the place he still thought of as home had ever made Callie laugh like that. Usually, she stayed close by Talis and looked to him for everything, shared everything with him.

  But obviously, now she preferred someone else to him.

  The hell with her, Talis thought. If she did not want him, he did not want her.

  With every muscle in his body rigid, he turned away from the two of them. Let them have each other, he thought. Let them spend eternity together.

  He was so stiff with anger that when he tripped over the obstacle in the path, he nearly fell on his face. He did not have his usual ease of movement, his usual swinging walk; he didn’t even have his sense of balance.

  “Sorry,” Hugh Kellon said, for it was his foot that Talis had tripped on. But his tone implied that he didn’t mean the words. “Why are you rushing about? It’s a beautiful day, there are lots of pretty girls here, but you look as though you’re ready to start a war.”

  “I must go,” Talis said stiffly. “Excuse me.”

  “No!” Hugh said sharply, then softened. “Stay with me. I need the company.”

  “I must return,” Talis said, each word forced from teeth held tightly together.

  “Isn’t that your girl?” Hugh asked, nodding toward the figures of Callie and Allen, walking through the crowd, arm in arm.

  “She is not mine,” Talis said stiffly. “Now, if you will excuse me, I must leave.”

  “Pride is a very good thing,” Hugh said loudly, making Talis turn back. “One should always have much pride. Pride is the backbone of a man.”

  “Yes,” Talis said, glad someone understood. “Pride is very important to a man.”

  “Most important,” Hugh agreed heartily. “Pride has always ruled my life and I can swear to the fact that I have always
kept my pride. Throughout my life I have kept my pride. No matter what happened, I have always retained my pride.”

  “It is good for a knight to do so,” Talis answered, his back stiff, refusing to look after that deceiver, Callasandra.

  “Yes,” Hugh continued, “when I was your age, I kept my pride no matter what, just as you are doing now. In fact, I was just as you are now, even to the fact that there was once a pretty little redhead I was in love with.”

  At Talis’s raised eyebrow, Hugh chuckled. “Oh, I didn’t tell her I was in love with her. No, of course not, that would not have been manly. But I loved her; I dreamed of her, couldn’t sleep for thinking of her. I watched her even when I couldn’t see her. Can you understand a feeling like that?”

  “Yes, I can understand such a feeling,” Talis said softly, thinking that Callie was incapable of feeling such a thing. Why had he not noticed before that she was fickle and unfaithful? That she could not sustain a love when it was tested?

  Hugh continued. “One day when I was on the training field, she came to me, her red hair gleaming, and very haughtily announced that her mother was planning to marry her to another man. She said that if I wanted her I’d better speak up. And she said an odd thing. She said, ‘I will fight for you if you will fight for me.’ I wanted to tell her that I wanted to marry her more than anything else in the world, but there were a lot of boys around me and I was too proud to say such tender words in front of them, so I told her I didn’t have any idea what she was talking about. You see, I knew that if I’d told her I loved her in front of the others, they would laugh at me and my pride could not bear their laughter.”

  “What did you do?” Talis asked, trying to act as though he were just being polite to an older man’s ancient story, but he was somewhat interested. But, truthfully, what could someone as old as Hugh know of love?

  “I kept my pride, of course. What else could I do? I had no other choice.”

  Talis thought that was a rather simplistic way of looking at the matter. “You could have told her you loved her. The boys would get over their laughter.”

  “Ha! What was I to do, fall down in the mud and kiss the hem of her skirt and tell her that I loved her more than life itself? Those boys would have laughed at me forever. They never would have stopped.”

  Talis was silent for a while, thinking of this. “What happened to her, to your red-haired girl?”

  “She married the man her mother chose for her and they now have two boys, and three daughters with red hair like their mother.”

  “And you have never married?” Talis asked.

  “No. I never again loved anyone as I loved her, so how could I marry another? True love comes only once in a lifetime.”

  “And what happened to those boys who you feared would laugh at you?”

  “I have no idea.” Hugh chuckled. “But I know they remember that Hugh Kellon was a man of great pride.” He slapped Talis on the back. “So, see, boy, I am telling you that pride is the most important thing in the world. Let these other timid creatures, like that Allen Frobisher, do without their pride, but let us true men keep ours. Let the boys like that Frobisher walk beside that girl Callasandra and carry her packages. Let him buy her useless gifts. Let him hear her girlish squeals of delight. That is not manly, not prideful. You should continue as you are: aloof, distant, detached, imperious. Yes, you should continue acting as you are. You look like a young lord, too high and proud for anyone. Who cares about a silly girl’s laughs, her touches, the way she looks at a man with eyes full of love? You are above such as that, are you not? You are too good, too proud to make an ass of yourself in front of all these people and let the girl know that she is more important to you than all the pride in the world. Yes, indeed, you are better than that. You are—”

  Talis burst out laughing, at last understanding what Hugh was saying, what the point of his story was. “You think I am being a fool, don’t you?”

  “I think that pride makes a cold bedfellow. That girl loves you, but you have spent much time with other women of late and she thinks you no longer love her.” Hugh liked the idea of Talis thinking he was a sage of great wisdom, but he was just telling Talis the problem as Will had told him.

  Talis looked through the crowd. Callie was so far away now he could hardly see her. Will had said the same thing that Hugh was now saying, but then Talis had just laughed. Callie was always thinking that he, Talis, didn’t love her. But in the past, when she had hinted at such nonsense, Talis had usually answered her with physical action rather than with words. The idea that she was anything less than his reason for living was so absurd that at the mention of such a thing, he would pick her up and toss her in a creek or a wagon full of fruit, or even onto a low-hanging tree branch. The first time he had thrown her in the cow pond, when they were about five, Meg had threatened to thrash him. But Callie had stepped between him and the switch and said, “Tally loves me,” and she’d not allowed Meg to touch Talis.

  “Go on, boy,” Hugh said softly. “Don’t ask me why, but women love men who make asses of themselves over them. You can knock twenty men off their horses in the joust and the woman you want to impress won’t look at you. But slip on an apple skin and fall down a flight of stairs and she will in all probability fall in love with you.”

  Talis laughed again, knowing that now Hugh was telling the truth.

  “And, boy, whatever you do, tell her you need her. It is what they most want to hear.”

  Talis gave him a look that asked, Why? but Hugh only shrugged in puzzlement. “Go on, act as though you are the village idiot. Pride is a lonely friend.”

  “But Lord John—” Talis began. “The other girls will…” He trailed off as he realized that he had been about to do just what Hugh had once done. “Yes,” he said, “I can see the problem.”

  As Talis started to walk away, he turned back to Hugh. “Was there really a red-haired girl?”

  “Yes,” Hugh said and there was honesty in his voice. “And I didn’t fight for her.”

  35

  This is going to be easy, Talis thought, thinking about getting Callie back. Of course, she cared nothing for that white-haired braggart she was following around. So maybe Talis hadn’t been paying a great deal of attention to Callie lately—for which he had honorable reasons. But then she’d not been spending time with him either—for no reasons at all.

  There was some part of him that knew she would have been with him if she could have, but she’d been given the task of working in that odious garden during the day. Talis had visited her a second time, accompanied by four of the women from the household, but Callie had not reacted as he’d hoped she would. She had not shown any of the temper he knew she had; she hadn’t fought for him. In fact, she had been downright disdainful of him and his trail of richly dressed women. “Do they dress you? Do they bathe you?” she had said to him. “If I wish it,” he’d answered, doing his best to raise her temper.

  But her temper had not been raised. Instead, it was Talis who had been angered. “What is wrong with you?” he’d snapped at her.

  She gave him an arch look, as though she knew exactly what he was trying to elicit from her. “A woman will die for a man who wants her, but she will do nothing for a coward.”

  He hadn’t understood her meaning, but he had been enraged by her tone. He’d ridden away and stayed away from her, sure that soon she’d come to him and beg his forgiveness for calling him a coward. But Callie had not come to him to beg his forgiveness, and when she didn’t, Talis had found that with each day his strength faded. Mere weeks ago he was the strongest man at Hadley Hall, but now he found himself looking at each shadow, wondering if Callie could be hiding there. All day he wondered what she was doing up on that hill with that…that person who stayed near her. At night he knew that she cried. If she was so unhappy, why did she not come to him? Why did she not do what the Callie of old did when he flirted with the gypsy girl? Then she had knocked over a food stall onto his head.
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  Right now, all Talis wanted was to get things back to the way they were. He wanted the strength Callie gave him. That was absurd, of course, since his strength could not possibly depend on her presence, but it seemed to.

  What could he do to win her back, he thought. Something quick and simple, something not much trouble.

  As he wandered through the fair, he saw a man with some trained monkeys ready to step onto a stage to perform. He and Callie had once sneaked away from Will to watch just such a man who had been traveling through the village. While Will’s back was turned, Callie had stolen a bucket full of Will’s best vegetables from the stall and taken them to the monkeys. And while she was feeding them, she had laughed in delight at their little pink hands clutching at her fingers. She had said silly things, such as they needed love and she wished she could take all of them home with her. To which Talis had replied that they wouldn’t be much use to anyone if she did own them—unless she could train them to milk cows, a chore Talis hated.

  Now, standing there and looking at the man and his monkeys, on impulse, Talis said, “I want to buy one of your little apes.”

  At that the man laughed and said that none of them were for sale, that there wasn’t enough gold on earth to make him part with one of his beloved monkeys. Thirty minutes later, Talis had given the man every coin Lord John had given him since he’d arrived at Hadley Hall, and he was also minus some beautiful embroidered gloves Lady Alida had given him. But squirming under his shirt was a small, young monkey. (At first the man had tried to palm a toothless old creature off on Talis, but he’d not spent his life on a farm and learned nothing.)

  Feeling very confident, Talis made his way through the crowd toward where he knew Callie was walking with that emaciated Frobisher. Talis was sure that all he had to do now was present the monkey to Callie and she would fall into his arms and everything would once again be all right. They would leave this fair and go to her hill and sit there and do nothing. She could spend the afternoon telling him stories and peeling peaches for him. And he’d like to tell her about his latest escapades in training. It would be nice to have her tell him he was great and strong and brave, as she used to do.