Chance Read Online Free PDF

flogging except a quietly continuing pain of spirit. For there had been no apology from Roddarc, nothing said between them of trust betrayed. No need for words, Chance had told himself. Forgive and forget. Better truth was that he was too needful to risk a quarrel with Roddarc. The young lord’s regard was all he had. The young tyrant …
    â€œI still bear the scars,” he said angrily. The old, buried dagger-blade of anger, all but forgotten, edging up in him, after all the years; why? Roddarc’s ice-pale face before his eyes.
    â€œYou think it is the easier lot,” the lord said, “to stand by and let a—a brother be beaten? You will scoff, Chance, but it may have been almost—harder for me.”
    Long habit is not easily broken. Chance did not quarrel.
    â€œYes,” he said, “there are punishments worse than blows.” How well he knew it. “And my lady knows it as well as you and I. If she fears, it is not for her body.”
    â€œShe knows full well I will never lay a finger on her to hurt her,” Roddarc said stiffly. “I did not touch her even today to wrest the story from her.” He stood up, his face stony. “But by all the powers, it will be many a long day before she sees my smile.”
    Chance stood up as well, trying to pierce that locked gaze with his own. “You’re no gentle lord, then,” he said. “Blows would be kinder.”
    But Roddarc only gave him a black look and strode out.
    He will be over it in a few days , Chance thought, or hoped, for he had no basis for thinking so. And at the back of his mind he seemed to hear still the yelling of dead Riol’s laughter.
    As summer warmed into high summer he learned what Halimeda had somehow feared but he, Chance, had never admitted: that Roddarc was capable of an icy and relentless wrath day in, day out, sustaining it and feeding it as he had never been able to nurture tenderness. And even though his demands were the same as they had ever been and his rulings in the court of law not unjust, all his people felt his mood and began to mutter under it.
    Every few days Chance went to see Halimeda.
    At first he found it hard to find excuses. Business had never brought him much within the fortress. Later, he simply went, not caring for sly looks or whispered comments, taking blackberries, a delicate flower found beneath the Wirral shade, a drinking noggin carved and polished out of oaken whorl.
    Halimeda needed none of these things, for she was a lady and had all she needed of baubles and good food, clothing and the gardens for roaming. But as her belly swelled with child, Chance sensed she needed his visits for nurture food could not give her. Though, truly, she was strong, all through the summer and early autumn, strong in body and steady in spirit, “bearing up well,” as the gossips would have it. With awesome strength, for one so slender, so young, so defenseless, Chance thought.
    â€œDoes my brother come to see you still?” she asked him when summer was hot and golden before autumn.
    â€œFrom time to time, yes.” Fleeing his own wrath , Chance thought.
    â€œMaybe there is still hope, then, if there is that much heart in him. I—sometimes I think he will never be a brother to me again.”
    â€œHe provides for you,” Chance said awkwardly, meaning, love underlies the silence . But Halimeda only pulled a face.
    â€œYes, he checks on me as he might on a well-bred birth in whelp, cursing me with his concern. He speaks to the servants, not to me.” She shrugged, dismissing the matter as out of her control.
    â€œHe speaks of you from time to time,” Chance added after a moment.
    â€œNone too kindly, I am sure,” said Halimeda with bitter amusement, and Chance could only keep silence.
    He sometimes took issue with Roddarc for Halimeda’s sake, but not too strongly, hoping to do more good if Roddarc continued to think of him as a