Candle in the Window Read Online Free PDF Page A

Alden, whose stick coerced, and she had Maud, whose salty
tongue converted cowering serfs into soldiers against filth. She
had Bula, whose guard-dog adoration convinced more than one servant
to cooperate with her wishes. Those three were worth more than a
dozen pikemen, but what she needed was a legion of knights. As Lord
Peter had hoped, spring followed fast upon the heels of the late
snowstorm and the time for a thorough cleaning rushed upon them. He
presented her the keys of the house with great ceremony, but the
serfs were sunk in sloth, without direction since the death of
William’s wife. They took a very human advantage.Led by the slovenly Hawisa, they displayed a sly
perversity when given Saura’s orders. Sometimes they
misunderstood them; sometimes they were terribly slow about
completing them; sometimes they remembered the different ways Anne
had ordered things done.
    Lord Peter endorsed her authority, but the warming
of the weather brought a miscellanea of work for him also, and he
seldom stayed within the walls of the keep. He did take the time,
however, to impress upon the churls the need for silence about
Saura’s blindness. Content with the alacrity with which they
obeyed him, Maud noted which servants helped enforce his command
and which ones gave him only bare obedience.
    Yet, if Saura had been able to tap William’s
still-towering authority, it would have expedited her housekeeping
chores.
    “ What in God’s
name possessed you to say such things to him? ”
    Everyone treated William as if he were ill.
Everyone treated him like fine glass, tiptoeing around him with
sympathy and pity, and not one person had any empathy. Their pity
blinded them to his robust health and his sharp mind, their pity
spoiled William for any useful chore. So what in God’s name
had possessed her to say such things to him? Merely an unthinking
desire to jolt him from his stupor and make him function again.
    She listened for a reaction from the lump called
William, but heard only grunts and curt commands. Nothing she had
said made any difference. Nothing she had said had reached him, she
decided.
    But the things Saura said had jolted William.
    For the first time since his accident, he was angry
at someone besides himself. Every warrior knows unavoidable
incidents occur in battle, but most warriors are not forced to face
such ghastly results of their accidents. Illness and infection he could face, had faced before. But this blindness! The poor fool of a priest
told him to resign himself to God’s will; only his own
humility would earn him the kingdom of heaven. In the same breath
the priest suggested God was using him for His own good purposes.
Good purposes!
    William cursed God. What kind of God would
humiliate him, handicapping him when he was most needed? The Isle
of England writhed in agony, rent by the struggle between Stephen
of Blois and Queen Matilda. Guilt haunted him for leaving his
father to supervise and defend their far-flung lands and castles.
Since his return to Burke Castle in a horse-drawn cart, he had
refused to set foot out of doors. And now That Infernal Woman
accused him of fear and weakness and uselessness.
    That Woman had stolen his guard dog and tamed it to
her hand, but she’d never do the same with him.
    “God’s teeth!” William slammed
his hand against the trestle table before him. That Woman was the
bane of his life. She brought the winds of change sweeping into the
fetid air of the castle and there was nowhere he could go to
escape. Unbidden, the thought slipped into his mind.
    Hide?
    Is that what he was doing? Hiding? Like a cowardly
ox, dumb and plodding unrelentingly toward the great
nothingness?
    “God’s teeth!” he swore again.
That Woman was making him think: think about his roles here, think
about what he could do to help his father, think about the son he
had forsaken.
    In the far reaches of his consciousness, her voice
and the activity it stirred commanded his attention.
    “Today we