LITMIR.BIZ

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would you have me do? I didn’t choose this life, I didn’t make it so that men are lords and women their servants.’

      ‘I would have you listen to your heart,’ he said. The lilt in his voice was like that of a travelling storyteller. ‘I would have you listen to your heart and see if it doesn’t bid you to love me, and come to me. And see then whether I would be your master – or whether we would live as two birds in an apple tree.’

      She laughed aloud like a child, throwing her head back in genuine amusement. He grinned back at her, watching the light play on her bare throat and pale skin.

      ‘Hedge sparrows in a gorse bush more like,’ she said. Her smile to him was suddenly warm. ‘I’d die of cold in your hovel and then you’d see sense and wed a girl who could bring you a dowry big enough to rebuild your tower.’

      He shook his head, suddenly serious. ‘Not me,’ he said. ‘I shall love only this one time. I shall love only you, in all my life. I love you; and if I can’t have you then no other woman will do for me. No other bride, no other love. No-one, from this day onward.’

      She was silenced by that pledge, by the seriousness of his tone. ‘David?’ she said, uncertainly.

      ‘D’you know what I would like?’ he asked.

      She stepped a little closer to hear his low voice.

      ‘D’you know what I would like above anything else?’

      She shook her head, her eyes on his mouth. Their faces were very close.

      ‘I should like to wear your glove on my lance tomorrow at the jousting so that they know, so that they all know, that whatever the hopes of your mother, whatever the usual way of doing things, that you are promised to me and I to you. They can rage then, or they can yield. I should like to carry your favour.’ He paused and gave her a little smile. ‘It is a fair exchange, Ygraine. You carry my heart.’

      ‘I don’t carry it where everyone can see it!’ she retorted. ‘I would be shamed before the whole castle, David. You’re a dreamer. You’ve been too long in the wilds of the north. You’ve forgotten what real life is like.’

      He nodded. ‘But what if we made a new real life? What if we decided on different rules, on marriage for love, on children raised in our home, not sent away for training as you were, as I was?’

      She shook her head slowly. ‘There’s no other life for me,’ she said sadly. ‘You can have your dreams, my David. But I have to marry as my mother bids me. I never asked for your heart. I never smiled on you more than courtesy commanded.’

      He put his hand forward and took her chin. He turned her face up so that she met his eyes. Her eyes were a deep blue, almost violet.

      ‘Liar,’ he said tenderly.

      The deep crimson blush came up from her neck up to her forehead and died away again, leaving her pale. He saw that her mouth was trembling as if she were about to cry, and he remembered that she was still very young, and that when she had first smiled on him he had been a friend, her only friend in the huge formal castle. And she had been a little girl.

      ‘We were both just children then,’ he said quickly. ‘You did nothing wrong.’

      ‘I was so lonely,’ she said. Her voice was very quiet, he could scarcely hear her.

      ‘I know,’ he said. ‘You were such a little girl to be sent away to learn your manners. I never knew how they could bear to part with you.’

      She flashed a look up at him, he saw her dark eyelashes were wet. ‘And you were the scruffiest squire any lord was ever cursed with,’ Ygraine said mischievously. ‘All legs and darned hose!’

      He nodded. ‘You were the only one in the castle more scared than me,’ he said. ‘I used to shrink like a mouse when my lord looked at me.’

      ‘And now?’ she asked. ‘Now you want to defy him, and defy his lordship my father, and all of them? You want me to love you in defiance of all of them? You’ve found a lot of courage from somewhere, little squire David.’

      He grinned. ‘I want us two mice to run away from this great trap. I want to steal you away to my tumble-down castle and show you the great northern skies which stretch forever. I want to take you to the seas where the waves come rolling in higher than a knight on horseback. I want to take you up to the tops of the hills where only the purple heather grows and only the golden eagles are higher. And I want to love you, Ygraine. I want to love you as if there were no such thing as marriage contracts and dowries and laws between a man and a maid. I want to fold you into my heart.’

      He broke off. She had been listening to him with her eyes on the stone floor beneath his boots. The silk trailing from her hat trembled slightly. She shook her head.

      ‘No?’ he asked.

      ‘No,’ she said very softly.

      ‘May I wear your glove inside my breastplate tomorrow?’ he asked. ‘No-one will know, Ygraine. And I am…’ He hesitated, then he told her the truth. ‘I am afraid.’

      She moved towards him at that, a sudden quick movement as if she would have reached for him, and held him, and loved him at last. But there was a rattle from the doorway of the great hall behind them, and she checked herself like a young horse wrenched to one side by a hard rein.

      ‘No,’ she said again. ‘Let me pass, David.’ She stepped past him and went towards the noise and the smoke and the brightness of the great hall where men feasted and drank because tomorrow was the tournament and some of them would be in danger, and many of them would be hurt.

      

      David was unlucky in his draw, he was matched against Sir Mortimor, a great weighty man who had once killed an opponent. David bowed to the lord and then rode past the box where the ladies were sitting. With his helmet under his arm and his brown hair all rumpled he looked very much like the young page who had befriended Ygraine when she had first come to the castle. He was wearing a white surcoat over his armour, Ygraine saw the tiny darn that she had sewn for him at the bottom. Their eyes met and he smiled at her as if he had not a care in the world. She smiled back, a smile of common politeness, from one acquaintance to another. That brief look had told her at once that he was afraid.

      If she had heard of a knight who was afraid before jousting she would have called him a coward and despised him. It was not part of the knightly code to know fear. If she had heard of a woman who lingered in a darkened hallway and listened to a young man tell her he loved her she would have called her shameless, and wondered how she dared. Ygraine shook her head. Nothing was as simple as she had been taught.

      The sun was very bright on the jousting ground, it flashed on the polished swords of the knights and glared into Ygraine’s narrowed eyes. The ladies’ box was shielded by a red and white striped awning, underneath it was as hot as a tent. Ygraine’s gown was tight, her high conical headdress made her neck stiff. She watched David’s horse trot away to the far end of the list. It looked a very long way to ride in the hot sunlight, in full armour. His page gave him his lance and David hefted it easily, testing the balance. There was no glove tied to the head of his lance. There was no glove hidden, tucked inside his breastplate over his heart. In the ladies’ box, sitting still, as she had been trained, with her stiff swanlike neck and her aching blank face, Ygraine gave a tiny shrug. She was not allowed to do anything that would damage her chances of marriage. David should have known better than to ask.

      Sir Mortimor had a great bay warhorse, which had seen half a dozen battles and a thousand jousting tournaments. His armour was well polished and dented in half a dozen places. He was an old man, more than forty, but hale and red-cheeked as a winter apple. When his squires heaved him up on his horse he guffawed like a master out for a day’s wolf-hunting. His surcoat was white with the bright red cross of an old crusader. David, at the other end of the field, put on his helmet. He did not look again towards Ygraine.

      ‘I don’t like young St Pierre’s chances against Sir Mortimor,’ Lady Delby said languidly. The awning

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