Remembrance Read online

  Beside Dorothy was Joanna, twenty-six, the plainest of the sisters, and threatening to run away with one of the gardeners if her father didn’t find her a husband. In one bold moment, she had said this to her father. John had merely looked at her and said, “Just so it’s not the head gardener’s boy. I need him.” Joanna had gone running from the room in tears.

  “He is the most beautiful creature I have ever seen. Is incest truly a mortal sin?”

  “Joanna!” Dorothy said, trying to act as though she were aghast, but actually working hard not to smile.

  Callie went to the window to look out. Below them she saw Talis, a gleaming sword in his hands as he rammed it toward a man twice his age and half again his size. Talis was struggling with all his might to down the man while John sat on a horse and looked on, a faint frown on his face.

  “I don’t think Father is so pleased with him,” Edith said, coming to look out the window. “I heard that for all his size, he isn’t very strong. Philip unseated him yesterday.” She was speaking of her weak-lunged younger brother.

  At just the sight of Talis, Callie’s legs nearly folded under her. Some part of her seemed to fly out the window to be with him. Two days seemed like twenty years. She did not just miss him, she felt as though someone had cut her body in half and taken away the half containing her heart.

  As though he knew she was watching him—which he did—Talis turned and looked up at Callie. For all that Callie had recently been told all sorts of idiotic things about the proper conduct of ladies, she dismissed everything she’d heard as she leaned so far out the window, she nearly fell. “I am here,” she shouted, waving her arm at him. “I am here.”

  Callie’s unladylike shouting almost brought the people of Hadley Hall to a halt. No one had hardly heard the girl speak since she’d arrived; it was easy to forget she was there.

  Below, John was especially annoyed that his precious son should be so distracted by the pale girl, and he thought of reprimanding her that night. But John was not prepared for the change that took over Talis when he heard Callie’s voice.

  When Talis turned to look up at Callie, Hugh Kellon, the seasoned knight he had been struggling with (the man was having no trouble beating Talis’s awkward, weak, untutored thrusts), started toward his back. He meant to show the young whelp that girls should not distract a man from the important business of life.

  But Talis knew that Callie was watching him, and when the man came at his back, Talis whirled in one brilliant flash and attacked the man, driving him backward. Within seconds, the man was on his back in the sand, Talis’s sword at his throat.

  Ever the showman, Talis put his foot on the man’s chest and raised one arm toward the sky as he looked up at Callie, who immediately began applauding him.

  It would be difficult to know who was more surprised: John or Hugh Kellon, the man who now had Talis’s foot on his chest. For a moment, rage went through Hugh, rage at his humiliation, rage at the arrogance of this young pup for his foot and his bravado. But then Hugh saw the humor of it all. It had been a long time since he had performed great feats to impress a girl.

  Removing his foot, Talis turned to give a bow to Callie and to the two other young women who were politely applauding him.

  Edith pulled the three of them away from the window. “Have you no shame! Really! You’re acting like harlots. And with your own brother, too!”

  “He’s not my brother,” Callie said, as always letting everyone know that she and Talis were not blood relatives.

  Edith looked at Callie standing between her sisters Dorothy and Joanna and she could see the very strong family resemblance. But she turned away, not wanting to acknowledge what she saw. Her parents had told her that the young man was her brother and this hoyden Callie was not related to her. That was good enough for her.

  “Come, all of you. There is a music lesson in the solar.”

  Callie followed Edith and the other two, but she knew that her heart was in the courtyard below.

  26

  What ails you, son?” John Hadley asked Talis as the boy toyed with the food on his plate. John rarely allowed the boy out of his sight, which was why he had him eating in his private chambers instead of with the others in the Great Hall. At the first meal they had shared, Talis had asked that his brothers be allowed to sit with them. Talis had thought it odd that a father would choose one son over another, and, besides, he liked the company of Philip and James.

  “How do you expect to grow if you do not eat?” John asked.

  “Has he not grown enough?” Philip said, half teasing, half in jealousy at the way his father treated this new “brother.” “All the horses scream in fear at the very sight of him.”

  At that statement, John drew back his hand, ready to cuff his son for his insolence, but Talis laughed and reached for another roll of white bread. He missed Meg’s cooking, her table laden with simple food, undisguised. In this house he sometimes had trouble figuring out what food was, as even cheese was sometimes formed to look like beef. “And shall we saddle a grasshopper for you, little brother?” Talis asked. “Or a garden snake so your feet will not drag the ground?”

  Startled, John dropped his hand.

  “And what of you, brother?” Talis said, looking at Philip, whose hands shook from the exertion of the day.

  “Me?” Philip asked, never wanting attention focused on him at best, and never around his father.

  For a moment, Talis studied Philip, looked at his shaking hands, at the circles under his eyes. The three of them slept in a bed together and he knew all too well how much Philip coughed during the night. “Tomorrow we shall compete,” Talis said. “I will take both of you on. If either of you unseats me, both of you shall spend the day on your backs under a tree. If neither of you can unseat me, then I will nap under the tree while you train.”

  The two young men looked at Talis as though he’d lost his mind. Their father would never allow such laziness.

  “Come now, don’t look so glum. I will not snore too loudly as the two of you train in the sun. Hugh will leave you all in the dirt. Tomorrow I shall be ready to spend the night dancing and you will be too tired to stand.”

  John chuckled at this, as Talis reminded him of himself at that age, so cocky and sure of himself.

  It was Philip who understood what Talis was doing and for a moment the beginnings of love filled his eyes. He had done what he could to make their father understand that James could not train every day, that he needed rest. Philip knew that tomorrow, early, Talis was going to be landing in the dirt and James would “win” the competition and therefore spend his day resting under a shade tree.

  “You!” Philip said. “You have the finesse of a butcher. You could never unseat someone with my training. Tell me, Talis, on this farm of yours, did you by chance ride cows?”

  “I’ll—” John began, but Talis cut him off.

  “I was as good a farmer as I will be a knight,” Talis bragged. “I raised chickens so big that I rode them. Of course I had a problem when I jumped fences with them as their feathers got into my mouth. But I solved that problem by selling the feathers to be used for logs for building boats. Chicken feathers float, you know.”

  At that, even John laughed, and for the rest of the meal, he ate in silence, listening to his sons taunt each other. It seemed that with each day that passed the gloom was lifting from the house. John had always believed that his happiness lay in having his own true son, and this beautiful, strong, intelligent boy was proving him right.

  But it was by the evening of the fifth day that John began to notice that something was wrong with his precious son. At first his exuberance had known no bounds. He had teased and laughed and pushed himself to show his strength with a weapon. He was untrained but he was extremely talented.

  Off the field, his teachers had raved about his knowledge of the arts as well as the sciences. They said that only James had been a better pupil. John dismissed this; what did it matter what his w