The Knight's Broken Promise

by Nicole Locke

  He felt he was being sized up and resisted the urge to move away from her. The look was too piercing and too knowing for a child.

  ‘I have some water in a skein. I doubt it is much warmer than the stream.’

  Grabbing a spare tunic, he poured the water. It was still icy cold from the night.

  She walked in front of him, but her head was bowed. He suddenly didn’t know whether to hand her the tunic or tend her himself. She didn’t give him any instructions.

  Crouching before her, he gently wiped away the blood before pushing aside her hair and pressing the tunic against her eye.

  ‘This needs to stay there to reduce swelling. You tell me when it gets warm.’

  She gave a slight nod and her hands pressed the tunic to her face. ‘’Tis warm,’ she said immediately.

  He suspected it felt like fire against her battered face, but she neither cried nor complained. She just kept looking at him. He put more water on the tunic and lifted it to her face. She wasn’t blinking and he again felt she was assessing him.

  He glanced around the camp. He neither heard nor saw any sign of Gaira or the rest of the children.

  ‘It’s my fault he won’t speak,’ she whispered.

  He continued to look over her shoulder, but his focus sharply returned to her. ‘Why do you think it’s your fault?’

  ‘I lied to Gaira. Will you tell her?’ she said more quickly. ‘She’d be terribly upset if she knew.’

  ‘I think it’d take a lot more than a lie to upset Gaira.’ He should know. He had personal experience with telling her lies. He doubted anything could dampen her spirit.

  He waited, but Flora did not continue. He felt something was in a fragile balance. The whole forest seemed to have become unnaturally quiet. He could barely remember if he had ever been a child, but he did remember what it took to tip the scales. Trust.

  ‘I swear to keep your secret.’ He wondered how the words emerged from his memory. But he suddenly remembered how often he had said those words when he was a child.

  Her whole demeanour changed and relaxed as if what he said was the password she had been looking for. ‘Oh, it’s not my secret. Not really.’ She started to remove her hands and he took the tunic.

  ‘Gaira thinks we hid in the forest, but that’s not true,’ she said, her voice no longer tentative. She acted as if they had always been confidantes. ‘We were there in the village when it happened.’

  Dear God, he had had no idea. He wrung out the warmed water and kept his eyes averted in case he’d scare her away with his sudden emotions. This was a strong secret she held and he had to seem calm for her sake.

  ‘We heard the pounding horses crest the hill and like ants from an anthill they flowed down towards Doonhill.’ She pulled in her lip and gently sucked. ‘Lit torches waved high above their heads. The fire’s light flashed against their pointed swords. Everyone started running towards the lake or into their homes. Papa was one of the men who grabbed an axe and ran towards them. I dinna see what happened to him because Mama was dragging me into the house.’

  Robert put more cool water on the tunic and pressed it against her swollen eye. His hands shook. She raised her own hands to press it there with him.

  ‘At first they left the children alone. It was just our parents, but they dinna stop. They dinna stop with my Mama. They dinna stop.’ She breathed in. ‘Then a man came for me.’

  Robert let go of the tunic. He didn’t want this secret.

  ‘He dinna get me,’ she continued. ‘Creighton surprised him. He grabbed Mama’s cauldron and hit the man over the head. The man fell on me. I couldn’t move. He was heavy.

  ‘Creighton pulled him off me and pushed him into the fire climbing the walls of our home. I watched the man catch fire. I think he was already dead.’

  She kept the black fabric against her face and the excess cloth spilled to cover most of her face and body. Still her exposed eye never wavered from him and he was helpless to pull his gaze anywhere else. Even in self-preservation.

  ‘Creighton grabbed my hand and we started running out of the hut. Alec was running and screaming in the street.’

  ‘They were killing all our friends now. I couldn’t move. But Creighton grabbed Alec and ran us all up the hill and into the trees.’

  She let the fabric fall from her face and he automatically took the tunic. His hands were shaking too badly to pour the water.

  ‘I know why Creighton won’t speak. ’Tis because he killed that man.’ With the fabric gone, there was nothing there to catch her flowing tears.

  His throat dried—his eyes stung.

  ‘He won’t talk.’ She shook her head. ‘’Tis as if he’s gone somewhere, like Papa and Mama, and I can’t reach him.’

  Her eyes, the colour and vastness of the sky, framed her bruised face and they looked to him as if he could help.

  He couldn’t find his voice. So instead he took her bare hand, which felt colder and smaller than before. She didn’t flinch as he slowly pulled her slight body closer to his. He felt too large, too clumsy for her little frame, but she seemed to know what he was trying to do. She climbed into his lap and laid her head upon his shoulder. It took all his concentration to force his hesitating arms to lower gently around her.

  ‘This is a great secret you told me, Flora,’ he whispered.

  He felt her nod on his shoulder.

  What he needed to say next would not only affect her life, but his. If he thought he felt clumsy with his comfort, he knew he’d be clumsy with his words.

  ‘I think Gaira needs to know this secret, too. She’ll want to know if you suffered any hurt.’

  ‘But he dinna hurt me.’

  Oh, aye, he did. Just the thought of it sent anger coursing through Robert. ‘It frightened you, though, didn’t it?’

  She nodded.

  ‘Gaira loves you and she’d want to know about your fright.’

  ‘She’d be mad at me for not telling her.’

  ‘I think she’d understand why you didn’t.’ He paused. ‘Will you tell her?’

  He could feel her struggling with the thought. ‘I’ll try.’

  She still didn’t want to tell Gaira what had happened to her. Gaira was the one with the loving heart and the soft touch. Gaira would have known what to say to her, how to comfort her. Yet she had told him, a hardened warrior. An English soldier.

  ‘Flora, why did you tell me this?’

  She pulled away so she could look at him. He could have imagined it, but she looked younger. It was as if, in her telling, she’d become a child again. Her eyes, however, began to hold that speculative gleam again.

  ‘Gaira says you’re a soldier,’ she said.

  ‘I am.’

  ‘You’d understand why Creighton is the way he is,’ she said.

  He didn’t follow. But she continued.

  ‘I can’t reach him. He has gone to some place I’ve never been, some place Gaira’s never been, too. I doona understand it and that’s why I never told Gaira, because although she would try to comfort us, I do not think she’d really understand.’

  She lowered her eyes and started to pluck at the fabric of her dress that was bunched between them. ‘Creighton killed someone. God’s probably terribly mad at him. I told him God would understand. That there would be an exception for him going to hell.’

  Her reasoning was with a child’s innocence. Who was he to tell her there were no exceptions? He was a warrior. He fought and killed because he wanted no exceptions. He wanted to go to hell for what he had become, for what he had done in the past. He didn’t want to tell her that. But what could he tell her?

  She moved and plucked at his tunic. He didn’t know why she did it, but her fingers were near his heart and he felt every pull of the fabric. ‘I want my brother b
ack. I think he’s punishing himself by not speaking.’

  Creighton’s anger made sense. He wasn’t just angry at Robert for representing the men who’d killed his family and home. He was mad because he’d been forced to kill. He doubtless thought he was damned for eternity.

  He cleared his throat. ‘By what you told me, his actions saved you and Alec.’

  ‘I told him that!’ she said, relief clear in her voice. ‘I even told him it’s similar to what you did for us yesterday. You killed that man because he attacked us. Yet you speak. You killed, but you haven’t gone somewhere where we can’t reach you.’ She jerked her head up and scanned his face. ‘You’re not going away from us, are you?’

  He hadn’t planned on being here at all. But he was and it was his own feet that had carried him.

  He brushed one of her locks away from her face. It was so light and soft he hardly felt it against his calloused fingers.

  ‘I’ll talk to Creighton, though I can’t promise what will happen. But I’ll try.’

  She smiled. It wasn’t a tentative or gentle smile, but reached from ear to ear and lit up her entire face.

  ‘Then it’s as good as done. Because all your trying so far has come true for us, Robert of Dent. I...I believe in you.’

  The quick yet gentle stab to his heart took him by surprise and something tight within his chest released.

  He nodded once. ‘I may as well start now.’

  She scrambled out of his lap and was already running in the opposite direction of the water. Her loosened plaits waved like banners behind her. He had never seen her run before.

  ‘Flora?’ he called out to her.

  She stopped and looked back at him expectantly.

  ‘I’m staying. I’ll not be going away from any of you.’

  She gave a quick wave and skipped as light as a child and just as accepting of the future.

  He was rooted to the spot and didn’t think he could lift a foot. He wished he could feel as light as she. The words had come easily to the surface as if they had been there the entire time. The promise he’d be there for them, that he’d care for and protect them, had just skipped out of him before he’d even thought.

  It was a promise he vowed never to give again. The last time he’d given it, he’d failed. Since then, filled with pain and regret, he had merely existed.

  Yet he’d made the promise again. Already the resolution of it was freezing through his veins and enclosing his heart with the icy heat of determination. For he knew...he knew. If he broke it again, he’d make sure he’d die this time.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  He found Creighton by the stream. He was throwing sticks and watching as they swirled and bumped over rocks.

  ‘You should try rocks.’ Robert rooted around and found a flat one. Then, arcing his arm, he let it go. The rock skipped three times.

  ‘I used to do this when I was around your age. I had a friend who could make it skip five times.’

  He searched again, found another rock and handed it to Creighton. The boy didn’t move, but Robert could see his eyes shift to the rock. He held it out for a while, but Creighton didn’t take it.

  Flipping the rock up, he threw again. It skipped twice. ‘I never could make it skip past three. I went to the water again and again, but I never got past three skips.’

  Robert picked up a handful of pebbles and threw them. They dotted the water like fat rain drops.

  ‘But I was better at our sword training. I made sure to be. He had the advantage of being older and having a better upbringing and equipment, but we trained together and I practised. I made sure to get up before my friend and went to sleep after he did.’

  He rubbed the back of his neck. ‘It was the same to us, the throwing of rocks and the sword practice. It was just games for two boys.’

  ‘Eventually our practice increased and we didn’t have time to throw rocks any more. The practice became more serious, but it was a game still. It was a way to compete and laugh in our exuberance. It didn’t stay that way for long.’

  Robert thought hard about how to phrase politics to a mere nine-year-old. ‘There was this young girl whom both England and Wales wanted for their own political reasons,’ he continued. ‘They fought about her until Edward decided Wales didn’t need to be a separate country any longer. Then my friend and I went to war.’

  Finding another flat rock, he rolled it between his fingers. ‘That was nothing like a game.’

  Creighton neither moved nor acknowledged Robert in any way, but he was listening. Robert just hoped what he was saying made sense.

  ‘It was not a huge battle, maybe only a couple of hundred on each side. The day was blue, the field green, I think there were some trees at our backs.’

  ‘Both sides ran to the centre of the field and suddenly a man stood in front of me. Every instinct in me demanded to stay alive and every bit of training demanded I not flee. In order to accomplish both, I extended my sword.’

  He stopped rolling the rock and pressed the thin edges of it deep into his palm. ‘He sliced his sword towards my chest. I easily blocked it. With a simple wave and thrust at an angle different from training, he was dead. I had no more than the span of a breath to parry from the next man.

  ‘But even in the heat of it, when my senses were crisp, I remember feeling disbelief. As though what was happening couldn’t possibly be. How could I do something so easily and men were falling dead around me, as though they had never existed?’

  He threw the rock in his hand. It sliced into a wave and was gone. ‘I confessed to a priest later that night, drank heavily and woke the next day with a crashing headache, spurs for my boots and a sense I’d never be the same again.’

  He breathed in deep. He didn’t know what more to say, how much detail to relay. Creighton had seen enough horror at Doonhill and he didn’t want to add his own horror to that.

  So he stood there, not wanting to throw more rocks. The water rushing its course seemed unnaturally loud in the silence.

  ‘What happened to the girl?’ Creighton’s voice was higher pitched than what Robert was expecting. But he was only nine. Only a child, who had experienced a man’s nightmare.

  ‘She was sailing from France to Wales when Edward captured her ship and held her prisoner.’

  ‘Did she die?’

  Robert kept every muscle still. He didn’t know what he had done to receive the gift of Creighton speaking and he didn’t want to change the circumstances.

  ‘No, he released her and she married and had a child.’ He didn’t conclude she had died in childbirth.

  ‘I’m unclean.’ Creighton’s words were rushed.

  Robert looked over. Creighton’s eyes were fixed fiercely beyond the water to the shore on the other side.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘If I speak, I’ll just taint everything around me.’

  ‘You’re speaking to me.’

  ‘Aye, but you’re unclean, too. I saw what you did to that man. It is all the same. My mama and papa were hacked like reeds. And they fell just as suddenly.’

  Robert crouched down, but continued to stare ahead just as the boy did. ‘There is a difference in what those men did to your home and what I have done on the battlefield. Your family was innocent and should not have suffered the way they did. They did not ask for this war.’

  He continued. ‘The men I met on the battlefield were trained to fight. They came to the field knowing they could die. They agreed to the war, the pay and the outcome.’

  ‘But they’re still dead,’ Creighton argued. ‘They’re all dead. What’s the difference?’

  Robert hadn’t spoken this much in years and he knew he was bound to fall short at some point. This was one of those moments.

  ‘Sometimes a boy or ma
n cannot avoid making a hard decision. Sometimes there is no other option available, no other person to take on the burden. It just comes down to us and what we’re going to do about it.’

  ‘I dinna mean to kill him.’ Creighton gave a gasp of breath that cracked. ‘I knew he was bad, but I just wanted him to stop.’

  ‘But you were scared and angry and if you didn’t hit him hard enough he’d not only hurt Flora, but come after you.’

  Creighton nodded and bowed his head.

  Robert placed his hand on Creighton’s shoulder. The boy met his eyes. His forehead was furrowed, but his eyes were still dry. A world of guilt and regret weighted his slight shoulders.

  ‘It is not for me to forgive you or to make it endurable.’ Robert gentled his voice. ‘That is between you and God. Sometime in the future, you will understand what you did was very brave and your sister and Alec would be dead if not for the hard choice you made.’

  Creighton’s face reddened and crumpled an instant before his eyes filled with unshed tears.

  Without thought, Robert hugged the boy. He didn’t have any more words to help Creighton. He still wanted to convey to the boy that he’d feel safe again, that it was all right to be a child. He had no idea how to do it, so he tightened his hold; the boy’s cries increased and it was a long time later when they stopped.

  After another pause, Robert cleared his throat and loosened his grip. ‘Have you ever skipped rocks?’

  The boy pulled away and ran his arm across his face. ‘Nae.’

  Robert looked around his feet until he found what he was looking for. ‘Aye, then.’ His voice cracked, he cleared it again. ‘The important thing is to find a smooth, flat rock like this here. Can you do it?’

  The boy stopped rubbing his face and nodded. Then slowly, he looked around on the ground until he came up with one of his own.

  * * *

  It was probably no more than an hour later when he and Creighton returned to camp. Gaira, Alec and Maisie had returned. Gaira had her lap full of Maisie and Alec was doing a crazy dance with Flora. All the girls were laughing.