In the Time of Kings (19 page)

“I won’t argue that point.” Descending the stairs, Henry grunts each time he unbends a knee. With only a single tunic on over his leggings, the spread of his paunch is more apparent than usual. On level ground, his stride evens out. He stops two steps away and extends a hand out toward Alan. “But if you’ll loan me your sword, I’ll be the one to test my son, see how far he’s come since I taught him how to fight.”

That isn’t true. Duncan was the one to teach Roslin how to fight, practically raised him. Still, Henry had survived decades of battles, including Bannockburn. Old or not, he’s experienced. I barely know how to parry.

“We were on our way into the village, my lord,” Duncan says in a vain attempt to rescue me.

“It can wait.” Gruffly, Henry hooks a hand beneath my armpit and drags me into the middle of the bailey.

Someone lays a sword in his hand. Alan’s squire is pulling a padded jerkin over Henry’s head and strapping a shield to his arm. Then the same squire lifts the shield from my grip, guides my arm through the straps and tightens them.

I swallow back a volcano of vomit and close my eyes, trying to summon the spirit of Errol Flynn and imagine myself as Robin Hood. But when I open my eyes again, the only thing I’m aware of is the sensation that my knees have turned to water and are going to buckle beneath me at any moment.

Henry taps the flat of his blade against my shield to get my attention. “You look like death already.” He lumbers back several steps and raises his shield to just below eye level. “Go on. Strike the first blow.”

I don’t move. Just stare at him as his face clouds over in frustration, a storm of anger and aggression brewing behind his gray eyes. He wags his sword at me tauntingly. “What’s the matter with you, boy? Forget everything you were taught?”

For a moment, I am ten years old again.

––––––––

M
y dad wallops me in the upper arm with the back of his leather baseball glove. So hard I’m sure I’ll have a bruise there.

“What’s the matter, boy? Forget everything already?” he says in a mocking tone.

I rest the bat against my knees and rub at the place where he smacked me. It’s throbbing. I can feel a lump forming. If another kid on the playground had hit me like that, I’d have tattled on him to the teacher. But he’s my dad. Who am I going to tell?

“Pick up the bat now, will you? And quit looking like you’re going to cry.” He turns around and stomps back to the mound, muttering as he goes. “Good Lord, at this rate, you won’t even make bat boy.”

I don’t remind him that Little League was his idea, not mine. I wanted to join the Young Scientists’ Club that Mrs. Harnish advises. They’re at the planetarium in Ft. Wayne today, looking at constellations and moon rocks. It’s probably air conditioned there. I’m here, roasting in the sun, standing on a patch of dirt that makes me cough every time a dust devil blows across the infield, while my dad pelts me with fastballs and yells at me for not paying attention.

I hoist the bat onto my shoulder, bend forward and squint into blinding white sunlight. I hear the ball slam into the chain link cage behind me. It rolls to my feet, so I pick it up and lob it back to him.

“That was a strike,” he says. “One more and we’re done. I’m not going to waste my time if you won’t even try to hit the ball.”

“I didn’t see it. The sun’s right behind you.”

“I didn’t see it,” he mimics in a sing-song voice. “Christ, boy, do you think the major leaguers tell their managers that? No, they get fired, lose everything they own because they don’t have a job anymore, and then they end up robbing convenience stores and going to jail.”

I fail to see how me not being good at baseball will land me in jail, but somehow it makes sense to him.

“Now cock the damn bat like I showed you,” he says, repeatedly tossing the ball in a little arc, catching it in his mitt and rolling it back to his right hand, “and swing when the ball comes across the plate. Don’t just stand there like a zombie, for crying out loud.”

A cloud scuttles across the sun and for a moment I can see everything clearly. He pounds the ball into the pocket of his mitt, eyes me sideways, spits at the ground. He might look more intimidating if it weren’t for that donut of fat hanging over his belt. He steps out wide, brings his other knee up as his right arm cranks back, then snaps forward.

A blur of white hurtles toward me. Suddenly, I’m fixated on the crosshatching of red stitches as the ball spins on its axis. There’s a brand name stamped on its surface in big swirling script, but it’s marred by gouges where Ivanhoe’s teeth have punctured the leather during numerous sessions of fetch.

It occurs to me a moment too late that the ball is coming straight for my head. The sound it makes when it impacts with my skull is a muffled thud, like someone whacking at a watermelon with a rubber mallet.

I’m on my back now, looking up at the sky. I see stars, but not the kind in the planetarium, fixed pinpoints on a dome of black, or even the night sky, twinkling far away. It’s daytime. The stars are big, very big, flashing and colliding in a kaleidoscope of color. Gradually, they begin to fade. But instead of blue sky and sunlight, I see him, standing over me, looking very unhappy.

And my head hurts like holy hell.

“Get up,” he says. “You’re not bleeding.”

The world is spinning around me wildly. I try to lift my head, but the edges of my vision start to go black. My head hits the dirt again. I wait for the feeling to pass, blink hard, but I’m still too dizzy. “I can’t.”

“Then just lie there.” He picks up the bat, pounds it against home plate once and kicks a clod of dirt at me, just as I close my eyes. It strikes me in the cheek. “I’ve given up on you. You always were a lost cause.”

LONG, LONG AGO

Blacklaw Castle, Scotland — 1333

“G
et up. You’re not bleeding.”

The toe of a boot strikes me in the cheek, hard. I open my eyes to see Sir Henry above me, hands on hips.

“Should have given you up to the priests when your mother died, lost cause that you are. Little good you are to me.” He spits at the ground, inches from my face, grunts, and stomps away.

Duncan blocks my view, his hand outstretched. Clasping his forearm, I sit up and slide the shield from my arm. There’s a lump near my temple the size of a golf ball. “What the hell just happened?”

All around us, men are laughing, prodding each other with elbows.

“The truth?” He glances over his shoulder. Sir Henry, his weapon sheathed, is striding toward the armory, Malcolm and Alan at his side. “You stood there like a dolt. Didn’t even draw your blade. So he hit you with the pommel of his sword.”

I draw my knees up, bury my head in my hands.

Duncan sinks to his haunches before me, his joints cracking. “Could you at least not make my job impossible? I taught you before when you were a foul-mouthed stripling, I’ll teach you again, wilted flower that you are. Now,” — he gives me his hand again, helps me to my feet — “let’s take it easy, shall we? How to defend yourself would be a good place to start.”

“I’m only wasting your time.”

“What irritates me is not your lack of skill, Roslin,” he snaps. “It’s your lack of a spine.”

I look down at my boots. He’s right. Retreating into my shell like a turtle is my only line of defense. The problem is I don’t know how to change that. It’s hardwired into my brain.

The clanging of metal rings like a discordant pealing of bells. Several circles of mock fighting have reformed. My hands are shaking. My stomach has been turned inside out. I don’t belong in this world, not by a long shot. But if I don’t become a part of it, it’s going to get nothing but harder for me.

The crowd in the bailey is thinning. I look toward the stables, expecting to see Duncan, but he’s not there. Then I see him — heading back toward the door to the great hall. I dart around a group of men who shake their heads at me and I’m followed by a wave of guffaws and mumbled insults.

That isn’t the worst of it. A cold whisper brushes over the back of my neck. I glance up at the east tower. There, framed in shadow, is Mariota, a hand braced to either side of the window in which she stands. I can’t read her face from here, but I know what she’s thinking — that she could have done far better for a husband.

More than having disgraced Sir Henry, it mortifies me that she saw it all. I turn away, a familiar cloak of shame surrounding me.

This world is different. Turning the other cheek, proclaiming myself a pacifist — that doesn’t cut it here. It matters what she thinks of me. More than I’d like to admit.

I catch up with Duncan just as he reaches the top step to the hall. “Teach me how to fight, Duncan.”

“I have been trying, day after day. So far not with any measure of success,” he says with his back to me. Several moments lapse, before he turns around. He too is disappointed in me, and it tears at my soul. “For weeks now, I have dragged you to the woods before half the castle has risen for the day, done all I can to make you stronger, quicker, more persistent ... taught you how to balance your weapon, how much weight to put behind each blow, how to watch your opponent’s eyes and stance, where a man’s weaknesses are — and at the first opportunity to prove yourself,” — he stoops his head and lowers his voice — “against a half-lame old man, you don’t even try to defend yourself. Why?”

How can I explain childhood trauma to a medieval warrior? I can’t. Besides, it doesn’t matter anymore. The old tactics aren’t going to work here. What am I going to do — run away? Tempting, but I’d have to leave Mariota ... and Duncan. I couldn’t do that. They’re the only ones who make this ordeal bearable.

“Your problem” — he jabs a thick finger at my sternum — “is that you don’t know what you’re fighting for. You get up every day and go through the exercises because it’s easier than turning me away or risking your father’s wrath. Call it what you will. It’s cowardice when done for those reasons.
Nothing
matters to you. You’re simply biding your time. But for what? As I see it, you’re sure to die in the end — because you won’t so much as raise your sword in your own defense.” A pair of young women descend the steps, passing curious glances at us. Duncan nods resolutely. “You’re right, Roslin. You are wasting my time. I have better things to do. I could go back home until I’m needed. I could train men more willing and capable than you. I could rest my weary bones and dull my troubles in ale — even that would be a better use of my time.”

The weight of his words burrows into the deepest hollow of my gut. I’ve chosen to be invisible, while waiting for my problems to magically disappear. I begged Duncan for lessons only to pass the time and partake of his company. I did it to avoid Sir Henry’s disagreeable manner. And to have an excuse not to spend time with Mariota, no matter how much she intrigues me. Because even now, I still hope that I’ll wake up back in the time and place I came from and that Claire and the baby will be all right.

How much longer can I live in denial like this? Until I meet my fate at Halidon Hill? Why not just throw myself from the sea cliff right now?

No. I won’t. Because I want to live. And maybe someday, know what it is to love again.

His body twists as he turns to go, but I grab his arm. “Teach me, Duncan. Teach me how to fight, so that I can live. I won’t waste that chance. I swear to you.”

Lifting his face to the sky, he mutters something about ‘God’ and ‘a promise’. Then he looks down his nose at me. For the first time I notice there’s a distinct crook in it, like it’s been broken more than once.

He snorts at me. “Very well. We’ll go to the sheep meadow today, out beyond the mill. There’s an old tithe barn there that will shield us from view.”

Minutes later, we’re standing before the stables. A groom tromps out, leading two saddled horses. When we pass beyond the outer gate and are on the road to the village, I clear my throat. “Just how long would it take you to teach someone how to really fight, the way you do. From scratch?”

Duncan wrinkles his furry brow at me. “From scratch?”

Right. Another anachronism. “I mean from the beginning. Someone with no experience.”

He sets his gaze ahead, sighs. “Years.”

“Is it too late for me to join the priesthood then?”

“It is if your name is Sinclair.”

We ride in silence awhile longer as we go through the village. It’s no more than a few single story houses, a mill by the creek and a tiny church that couldn’t hold more than thirty people. When we reach the far side and are nearing a pasture where sheep are grazing idly, Duncan finally speaks again. “You’re his only son now, you realize that? He may not live to see William’s boy grown. You’re all he has.”

“Yeah, I know. But why does he have to be so hard on me?”

“Maybe that’s the only way he knows how to prepare you?”

“That hardly makes it right.”

“Somehow I don’t think begging you would work very well, either.”

At the edge of a grove of trees, Duncan dismounts and unstraps his shield from the saddle. As I pull my sword from its scabbard, he instructs me to set it aside. Then he unties another sack hanging from the saddle and takes out two blunted wooden swords.

“Here.” He tosses one to me, grinning. “I’ll take it easy on you today, but I can’t promise you won’t get a few bruises.”

I test the wooden sword with a few swipes and square up.

Duncan fits his arm into the straps of his shield, then pauses, a far off look in his eyes, like he’s remembering something. “He was a different man before your mother died. It changed him, hardened him.”

“If you say so.” It comes out harsher than I intend, but it’s already said. I have a difficult time imagining Henry being anything but bitter and resentful. I heft my shield, brace myself for the first blow. This time, I’ll watch, be prepared. And I’ll remind myself
why
I’m doing this.

“He loved her, deeply. He does you, as well. He’d give his life for you, whether you think it or not.”

“I find that hard to believe.”

“Believe it. Every day you spent in Beaumont’s captivity drove him deeper into despair.”