A Rose for the Crown Read Online Free PDF Page B

would not take any blame. You believed you were being loyal, because you love him so dear, but lying is not the way, Kate.”
“I don’t think I understand, Father.” John noted Kate did not deny his excellent deduction. “How could I be loyal without lying?” she asked.
“By owning up that the whole adventure was your idea, that you disobeyed your mam and that Geoff be too young to know better. Instead, you blamed poor Fenris, who be too clever to fall into an otter trap, in truth. I saw through your lie like through crystal.”
Huge tears of remorse rolled down Kate’s cheeks. John was so sorry for her that he pulled her onto his knee and comforted her.
“Mayhap explaining what not being loyal is the way. Peter denied Our Lord three times, remember?” Kate nodded. John went on, “Three times he said he did not know Jesus, because he was afraid. ’Twas a lie. ’Twas also disloyal to a man he had sworn to follow. Do you see?”
“I think so, Father.”
Then John took something out of the lining of his jerkin. “I think this may help.”
She had not seen the coin before and looked puzzled as she turned it over in her hand.
“It be an écu —French,” he said. “I carry it with me always, for it reminds me of a comrade who admitted to our commander that he had stolen it from a dead French man-at-arms.”
“Why would he do that? Why did he not just keep it?” She held the coin up and squinted through the hole.
“It was expressly forbidden to steal from the dead on the battlefield, though many a man did. He hid it inside his glove. The next day, I picked up his glove by mistake, and the coin fell out in front of the company. I stood staring at the coin, knowing I could be hanged from the nearest tree.”
Kate lowered the coin quickly, aghast. “Did you not tell them ’tweren’t your glove?”
“I said nothing, for he was my friend. As my hands were being tied, he stepped forward and told the truth.”
“Did he hang, Father?” Kate whispered fearfully.
Her father nodded grimly, remembering the awful scene. “Our captain commended us for our loyalty to each other and then gave me the coin to keep. My friend could have lied to save his own skin, but he chose the truth. You see, a few days earlier, he had been wounded in the thick of battle, and I had shielded him from further harm until I could take him to safety.”
“You were loyal to him then and so he repaid it. Be that the way of it, Father?”
“Aye, Kate,” John replied, as he carefully placed the écu back in its hiding place. “He did.” He rose, satisfied. “Come, it be getting dark.”
He walked off, leaving Kate with an indelible picture of the soldier jerking at the end of a rope.
M ARTHA WAS NOT WELL these days. Her fifth pregnancy did not feel the same as the others, and she put it down to her twenty-nine years. Her best childbearing years were past. If the truth were told, she had been dismayed to find she was pregnant again so soon after bearingMatty, whose birth had tired her beyond imagination. Matty had been a big baby and had caused Martha a long and painful labor. She had bled for several weeks following. It was only through the tender nursing of Kate and John that she had gained the strength back to bear the winter’s cold.
Despite her misgivings, she could not deny John’s advances on the night of conception. She presumed women everywhere performed their wifely duty with the same ambivalence and that women’s pleasure must come from the babies. Hers certainly did. She knew of the existence of harlots, who performed the act for money, and could not imagine allowing strange men to heave upon her in order to make a living.
Soon it would be time to tell Kate of womanly matters. The girl was maturing fast; her breasts had begun to bud, and her childlike prettiness was turning into beauty. Martha often wondered how she and John had produced such a jewel, and she glowed with pride every time she looked at her daughter. Matty had