The Conquest

  "What others?"

  "The other tournaments you've entered. Have you won all the prizes?"

  Severn looked at his little sister's eager face in the moonlight. He'd never attended a tournament in his life. His youth had been spent fighting the Howards. "Of course not," he said, and he watched Zared's face fall. "Rogan won some of them."

  Zared laughed. "They must be wonderful, with all the men in armor. They must look splendid."

  "No more of that!" Severn commanded. His voice lowered. "How am I to keep you safe and to prevent others from knowing your gender if you look calf-eyes at every strutting ass whose armor catches your eye?"

  "I have more sense than that," she hissed. "I would never—"

  "And what of Ralph?" he asked mockingly. "The poor boy thought he was beginning to lust after my brother."

  "Lust? Are you sure? What did he say?" She stopped at her brother's infuriating chuckle. "His lust is not my concern," she said haughtily. "He is naught to me."

  "Umm hmm," Severn said smugly. "You are to behave at this tournament. Do not make a fool of yourself, and do not dishonor the Peregrine name."

  "You honor our name on the fields, and I will do my part," she said, a bit angry that he'd think her capable of dishonoring their family name, but then she relaxed. "Tell me of a tournament. Are there many people there? Liana said the people wear beautiful clothes, that even the horses are garbed most wonderfully. Perhaps we should have taken the garments she had made for us."

  "Ha!" Severn said. When Liana had shown him an embroidered cloth that his horse was to wear he'd scoffed at her. What did it matter what a man wore when he fought? What was important was whether he knocked his opponent to the ground or not. "I want them to see me, not my horse," he'd told Liana, and he walked away. He wasn't going to let a woman tell him how to dress, nor was he going to let her know he had no idea what a knight wore to a tournament. And he wasn't going to let his little sister see his ignorance.

  "The men who can't fight need to dress up their horses," Severn said firmly. "I do not need to wear cloth of gold to make me a man." He took a breath and expanded his chest. "It is my experience that the better a fighter a man is, the less he has to dress as a peacock to impress others."

  Zared was thoughtful for a moment. She was sure her big brother was right—Severn and Rogan seemed to be right about most things—but there was still doubt in her mind. "If the other men's horses are dressed, will not the Peregrine horses look plain?"

  This had crossed Severn's mind, too, and a couple of times on the journey he'd wished he had taken the pretty garments Liana had offered him. The helmet with the plume on it or that black velvet cloak might have looked good on him. He caught himself. No, he thought, he was a fighter, not some London playactor.

  "The Peregrines will stand out as a haunch of beef on a table loaded with fancy sweets." He smiled as he said that, liking the image. "You will see, people will remember the Peregrines."

  Zared smiled in the darkness. "We need only Hugh Marshall to remember us so he will award you his rich daughter. Do you think your wife will be like Rogan's?" Her voice was hopeful, for she liked Liana very much and especially liked all the things she'd done to horrible old Moray castle in the past two years.

  Severn grimaced at his sister's words, for he hated what Liana had done to his older brother. He didn't like the way marriage had changed Rogan, the way it had softened him. Before marriage Rogan had been a man of fire, a man ready to fight, but since then he constantly preached caution. Instead of fighting he'd rather sit with his wife and listen to ladies singing. Now he found more pleasure in his little son's first steps than he did in training. Severn was sure that someday the Howards were going to attack and kill them all while Rogan was tickling his wife.

  "My wife will not be like Rogan's!" Severn snapped. "Now let me go to sleep, and no more of your foolish questions. You'll find out what a tournament is like when we get there."

  Zared didn't ask him any more questions, but it was a long time before she could go to sleep.

  The next day she stood watching the men pushing at the mud-jammed cart. They traveled with four knights, and four servants to do the mundane work, and two big carts full of armor and weapons and a couple of tents. Grazing under trees were Severn's precious warhorses, as well as the riding horses and the nags to pull the carts.

  Severn and the men had been working for an hour to clear the carts, and Zared watched them impatiently. They were very near the Marshall estate, and she was eager to get there and set up their tents. During the three days of the tournament all food was to be provided by Hugh Marshall. In the morning the procession would be held, and all the knights would ride their splendid horses before the stands to greet Hugh Marshall and his daughters.

  Zared wondered what the Lady Anne was like and how she would fit in with Rogan and his wife. It never crossed Zared's mind that Severn would fail to win Lady Anne's hand. She believed that whatever her brother wanted, he would get.

  Zared was the first to hear the rider approaching. She knew what she had to do. She gave a low, piercing whistle to Severn as she ran for a nearby tree. Grabbing the lowest branch, she swung herself upward.

  Sometimes it annoyed her that her brothers made her hide at the least sign of danger, but after her recent encounter with the Howards she was not about to be disobedient.

  Zared was high off the ground by the time the rider came by, and she gave a look of disgust to see some fool of a lady tearing below her. She'd lost the reins to the horse and was hanging on for all she was worth. Zared would have climbed down, but she didn't dare until Severn had called that it was safe.

  She looked through the branches at Severn and the men, swords drawn, ready to fight.

  Severn was muddy from head to foot, but Zared could see the way he looked at the approaching woman. That idiotic look he wore could only mean that the woman was pretty. She rolled her eyes, thinking she'd probably be up in the tree all afternoon while Severn wooed the woman.

  Zared watched without much interest as Severn ran straight at the horse. The horse reared, but Severn ducked the hooves to catch the reins.

  "He'll be killed!"

  Zared was so startled at the sudden voice from beneath her that she almost fell from her perch in the tree. Below her were three ladies and two men, all dressed in velvets and furs. She had been watching Severn so intently that she hadn't heard them approach, and she cursed her lack of wariness.

  "What does it matter?" one of the men said. "He's only some farmer."

  The other man turned. "His death will matter very much if…" He paused. "If my lady's gown is splattered with blood." They all laughed.

  Before she thought, Zared slipped the knife from her boot and prepared to jump. Some tiny bit of common sense stayed her. She sat rigidly and glared down at the people, trying to see their faces and memorize them.

  "Oh, look," one of the women said, "he has caught the reins. He's braver than any farmer I have seen. Do you think Lady Anne will reward him?"

  Zared looked through the leaves to the woman on the horse, but her back was to her. Severn's face looked even stupider than it had a moment before, so she guessed this Lady Anne was quite something to look at. She wished her brother's face didn't have quite so much mud on it because, from the way Lady Anne was leaning away from him, she didn't seem to find Severn exactly appealing.

  "Thank you," Zared heard Lady Anne say.

  "It was a pleasure to save such a beautiful neck."

  "Why, the insolent dog!" the man below said. "I'll teach him—"

  "He doesn't look as though he'd take kindly to a whipping, and have you not noticed those four buffoons lurking in the trees?" the other man said.

  Buffoons! Zared thought. She very much hoped the soft-spined men would face Severn on the tourney field the next day. They would find out he was no farmer!

  "Come to me on the morrow at the tournament, and I will reward you," Lady Anne said.

  "I shall
be there, and I shall collect my reward," Severn answered, eyes twinkling.

  She reined her horse away, and Severn went back to his men. Lady Anne rode back to the people under the trees.

  "Fine lot of help you are!" Anne snapped. "You left me unprotected with that… that…"

  "He seemed much taken with you, my lady."

  "I do believe he would have touched me if I had given him any encouragement." She shuddered. "As it is, I shall have to boil the reins to rid them of his touch."

  "He did save you, my lady," one of the women said softly.

  "I am aware of that!" Anne snapped. "And now I must reward him. What shall I give him?"

  "A bath?" one of the men said, laughing.

  Lady Anne did not laugh. "Perhaps, John, I should let you bathe him. You seem more fit for women's duties than for men's when you cannot help a lady in danger of falling to her death." She kicked her horse forward.

  Zared stayed in the tree and stared after the people for a long while. So that was the Lady Anne, the woman who was to become her sister-in-law. She didn't seem very promising as a woman who would make the Peregrine lives easier, as Liana had done. In fact, the woman seemed like a real shrew, a mean, ill-tempered shrew.

  "Can you not hear me?"

  Startled, Zared looked down at her brother as he grinned up at her.

  "I have called you, but yet you sit there." He turned away to lean against the tree as Zared climbed down. "Did you see her? She is beautiful. She is as beautiful as a rose."

  Zared dropped to the ground. "Roses have thorns."

  "What does that mean?"

  "I was but stating a fact. You said she's like a rose, and I said roses have thorns. Maybe beauty isn't all there is to a woman."

  "And you know so much of women and life?" He was smirking at her.

  "More about women than you seem to."

  He looked as though he would get angry, but then he ruffled her hair and grinned. "I forget how young you are. Come, help us make camp."

  "Camp? But tonight we go to the tourney grounds, and tomorrow we ride in the procession."

  "We will ride in the procession as planned, but I do not want the Lady Anne to see me before we enter. She will be most surprised when she sees that it is I who saved her."

  "Hope she has her reins washed by then," Zared muttered. "Are you sure?" she asked, louder. "Maybe she won't be so glad to see you. Not as glad as you think."

  Severn put his hands on her shoulders and wore the expression of an older, much wiser man talking to a simple but well-meaning child. "You could not see her face. The way she looked at me…" He chucked her under the chin. "There are things men and women share—a look, a gesture—things you do not know, but which I as a man of some experience do know. The woman—ah, well, how can I put it? The woman wants me."

  "For what? Scrubbing her horse? Look you at yourself. She could not see your face for the mud. She will not recognize you in the procession if you are clean."

  Severn dropped his hands and his patronizing expression. "Do not talk to me of things you do not know. I know what I saw in the woman, and I saw lust. Now get to the camp as I said."

  Zared obeyed her brother. Maybe he was right. Maybe Lady Anne had looked at Severn with lust, and she only said those things to her people to make them believe she didn't like a man who was covered with mud. She shrugged. She was sure Severn knew much more about ladies and tournaments and lust than she did.

  Chapter Four

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  Zared sat on her horse with her back utterly rigid. She was sure that if she didn't remain absolutely stiff, she would fall into a heap of tears.

  Before her, on his war horse, sat Severn, wearing sixty pounds of armor, and she couldn't tell what he was thinking or feeling. Around them, huddled close, were the men who had come with them, but outside their group was a laughing, jeering crowd of peasants.

  That morning Zared had ridden proudly behind her brother, proud to carry the eight-foot-long Peregrine banner, but as they neared the Marshall estate and the field for the tournament they had halted.

  Before them rode long lines of gorgeously attired knights. Their armor, partially covered with fur-trimmed, richly embroidered garments, was painted with beautiful designs, or else had been dipped in silver and flashed in the sunlight. Plumes or models of beasts and fowl decorated the knights' helmets.

  Zared gaped at the men and boys before her, then looked at the Peregrine group. Severn's armor was dented and rusted, and his horse wore only a saddle, no sparkling cloths. The armor his men carried was in even worse condition, and as for Zared, her old tunic was threadbare in places and dirty most everywhere else.

  "We cannot enter the procession," she whispered to Severn.

  He threw up his face guard and glared at her. "Fine clothes do not make a good fighter. You are a Peregrine—remember that." He slammed down his guard and turned away.

  Yes, I am a Peregrine, she thought, and she straightened her spine. Severn would beat them all in battle, so what did clothes matter?

  Severn raised his hand, and the Peregrine knights fell in behind him as they started riding toward the tournament grounds. Along the road the peasants, who had come from many miles away to see the spectacle, had stopped to gape in awe at the sumptuously clad men.

  When they saw the Peregrine knights they pointed and laughed. Zared kept her eyes straight ahead, not daring to look at them. What did they matter? she thought. Only the coming games mattered.

  At the entrance to the grounds all the participants halted, and a Marshall herald called off the name of the first challenger to go before the Marshall family and the king.

  Zared had assumed that the procession was just that, a parade of men riding before the Marshalls. But what she saw made her mouth fall open. She was as awed as the peasants.

  The first knight to enter was named Grenville. He was dressed in black velvet over armor painted gold, and he was surrounded by half a dozen young pages also wearing black and gold. Before him went four trumpeters announcing Grenville's arrival. Behind the trumpeters were fifteen pretty young girls wearing saffron-yellow gowns, baskets in their arms as they spread rose petals on the ground for Grenville's horse to tread upon.

  "The horses will make a mess of the roses," Severn said, and Zared joined him in his ridicule. She wanted some way to feel superior, but as Zared looked about and saw merchants dressed better than the Peregrines she wished she had not been allowed to attend the tournament.

  As the procession continued Zared realized that Grenville's show had been one of the tamest. Some men entered with plays being performed before them. Others had entire orchestras. One man had a long, flat wagon pulled by six beautiful black horses, and on the wagon was a man dressed as St. George who was trying to slay a twenty-foot-long green dragon that hissed at him.

  With each entry Zared sank a little lower in her saddle. Perhaps if she closed her eyes and wished hard enough she would find herself safe at home, away from the humiliation she was going to face. The people in the stands were applauding each entrant as he rode past. Would they laugh when the Peregrines came by?

  "You!"

  Zared turned to see a boy near her own age looking up at her. He was holding a lovely tunic of red velvet up to her. "What is this?" she asked.

  "It's from my master," the boy said angrily. "He said to give it to you."

  Charity, Zared thought, and the steel returned to her spine. "Tell your master I want nothing from him."

  "From the look of you, you need everything."

  Zared didn't think what she did, but she took her foot out of the stirrup and hit the boy in the chest, sending him sprawling.

  "Behave yourself!" Severn bellowed at her, taking his anger about the procession out on her.

  "But he offered me—" she began, stopping when she saw a man bend to help the boy from the dirt. He was the most beautiful human she'd ever seen: blond hair, white skin, blue eyes, armor of silver that was draped with white silk
embroidered with silver roses.

  Zared's mouth fell open as she stared at the man.

  "Forgive my squire," the man said, and his voice flowed over Zared like hot honey. "I sent the tunic. I thought perhaps, through an accident, all of your garments were lost. I meant only kindness."

  "I… we…" Zared could only gape, not able to say a coherent word. She didn't know men could be so beautiful.

  "We need no charity!" Severn bellowed at the stranger. "We have all we need to fight. I am no popinjay who must wear flowers in order to fight," he said sneeringly.

  The boy whom Zared had knocked down turned into a fighting cat. "You know not who you speak to!" he yelled. "This is Colbrand. He will knock you off your horse before you enter the lists."

  "Jamie!" Colbrand said sharply. "Leave us."

  The boy Jamie gave Zared a defiant look, then turned away. "Forgive him," Colbrand said to Severn. "He is young, and this is his first tournament."

  Severn didn't answer, just glared.

  Colbrand smiled at Zared, and she nearly fell off her horse. His smile was like a ray of sunshine on a rainy day. "I did not mean any offense. Good luck to you all."

  She watched as he turned away. He bolted into the saddle of a white horse that was clothed in white that had been embroidered with more silver roses.

  She was still gaping at him, her chin down about her waist, when Severn hit her on the shoulder so hard she almost fell out of her saddle.

  "Get that look off your face," he growled.

  Zared tried, but it wasn't easy. She watched Colbrand enter the procession. Before him went six men carrying hand-held harps. Behind them came six more men with trumpets. Then came six knights on white horses carrying Colbrand's weapons. Colbrand rode alone, his squire and more retainers behind him.

  All of Colbrand's people, from musicians to knights, wore white and silver. Zared thought his group stood out splendidly from all the colorful spectacles that had gone before him. She sighed, for not only was he beautiful, but so were his horse and his clothes and his—

  "We ride," Severn said, and Zared could tell from his voice that he was angry. She straightened. It was better to get it over with, she thought.