Escape from the Past Read Online Free PDF Page A

knockout: high cheek bones, cornflower blue eyes and skin like chiseled marble beneath light blond hair, arranged in elaborate braids around her head. I sniffed. Contrary to most people, the blonde smelled sweet as if she’d bathed in rose petals. I looked sideways and noticed that Bero quietly spoke to the girl. Maybe she was his girlfriend.
    “Juliana, make haste,” the maroon-clad woman said. “It is late.” Despite her words, she kept chatting with the beautiful blonde. But Juliana straightened and grabbed her sack. She stepped behind the wide-hipped woman, her head bent.
    At last, the two women stopped talking. The blonde looked at me and nodded ever so slightly while Bero had lowered his gaze as if he were counting his crops.
    “I thought you wanted to be a squire,” I said, staring after the three departing women. “The way you act, nobody will ever know.”
    Bero looked at me as if he wanted to attack. “What makes you the master asudden? You show up out of nowhere, talk like an outlander and now you want to tell me how to become a squire. You don’t even
know
the Lord.” Bero spat into the dust. Without a word he grabbed an armful of carrots and slipped across the path to talk to the man selling bread.
    Another customer showed up, an older man in tattered robes who looked like a servant. Unsure what to do, I repeated what I’d heard.
    “One Heller for ten leeks, fifteen carrots or five onions.”
    The man nodded and asked for all three. I counted them out and was about to collect when Bero pushed past me and grabbed the coins. Within the hour, our buckets emptied to a handful of roots.
    Neither of us spoke as we walked back to the hut. It was true, I thought. I didn’t have a clue, but I also noticed that Bero was way too demure to impress the fancy lords. I’d read enoughabout the feudal class system and knew that lords couldn’t care less what their serfs were up to, except providing all the goods so that the lords lived like kings.
    “By the way, who’s that young girl with the brown eyes? She’s hot. She your girlfriend?”
    Bero frowned. “How’d you get that idea? She wasn’t sweating. What’s a girl…friend?”
    “I don’t mean warm, I mean…” I offered, but Bero looked ticked off again. I’d have to explain
hot
girls later. “A
girl
friend is someone you like a lot. A lover. I saw her winking at you and you two whispered like you had some big secret.”
    Bero sighed and shook his head. “Lackwit. She’s my sister and handmaiden to Lady Miranda. She hates it, but we have no choice. At least she has enough to eat and learns a few things. She might find a husband.”
    I decided to ignore the lackwit for now, whatever that was. “Who’s the other woman? The blonde with the pretty mouth?”
    “Lady Clara. She’s married to a blind knight.”
    I shook my head. This world was getting weirder by the second. Nothing made sense.
    “What do you mean the way I act?” Bero said. They’d arrived at the hut and stashed baskets and bread on a shelf.
    “I mean I don’t know much about this squire thing,” I said. “But how are you going to catch their attention if you constantly duck and hide? You’ve got to do something that makes them interested in you, gets their attention. Something good.”
    “Like what?”
    “Don’t know. Tell me more about squires. How does it work?”
    “You find a knight and serve him. You study horse and sword, learn to fight and then, maybe one day, you’re a knight, too.” Bero’s eyes looked dreamy all of the sudden. His mouth, pressed thin in stubborn defiance most of the time, had turned into a half smile as if he were already living as a knight. “I practice when I have time.” He rummaged in the corner andreturned with a stick shaped into a crude sword.
    “That knight guy we saw, Lord Werner, looks like a cool dude. You should go talk to him.”
    “Ha,” Bero said. He walked across the tiny room, wielding his sword in a mock attack.