Something Red Read Online Free PDF Page A

themselves, a low comfortable profane grumble. Their hair was cut in the bowl-shaped Norman fashion.One was an older man with the pewter badges of a sergeant; the other two were young men, large-framed, features marked with past batterings.
    “And where in Jesus’s own sweet name would I be if I’d landed on those rocks? I hate ’em all, and she’s the worst, the bitch, the sneak.”
    “Roger’s no luck with horses or women.”
    “Shut up, Olivier.”
    “That hammerhead lassie’s fooled you three times now.” Hob glanced sideways. The rasping voice belonged to the sergeant. “Next time, do you knee her in the belly before you pull the cinch, make her dump her breath, pull it tight. Elsewise she’ll have you in the muck of the road ten paces from the gate.”
    “Next time, do you ask for her hand in marriage before you tickle her belly.”
    “Shut up, Olivier. God take them all. I hate ’em. I had one step on my foot and half my toes were black for a fortnight. God rot them all. I’d rather march, if it weren’t so fucking cold.”
    “Roger, Roger. The lassie’s yours, you must settle her down. Just pull it tight next time. Knee her first, then pull.”
    Hob drew his knife and cut a slice of the rich dense bread from a loaf before him, and dipped it into the steaming heap of turnips and leeks on the trencher between his place and Jack’s. Eddies of smoke from the fire trench made him cough a little. Beside him loomed Jack Brown’s bulk, to anyone else a sinister figure. Eighteen months’ familiarity, Molly’s blessing, and the accepting nature of childhood: all had transformed Jack into an emblem of security rather than threat to Hob. As his stomach filled, as the hazed warmth settled about him, Hob grew sleepy and placid. He sagged against Jack’s broad right arm. The dark man turned him an enigmatic glance, but made no move to dislodge him.
    There followed a period of disjointed thought and dream. Suddenly Hob realized two things simultaneously: he had been at leastpartly asleep, and a late party was seating itself across the scrubbed board.
    Two well-favored men, blank-faced, their blond hair confined by jeweled nets, their trim and muscular forms clad in a livery of gold and green and white, were settling a small, aged woman into her seat, just across the board from Molly. The woman had the slow, careful movements of the very frail. She sat down sideways and one of her esquires lifted her feet over the bench and in under the table; Hob had a glimpse of silken escaffignons, Heaven blue, on tiny feet, peeping from beneath her robe.
    Hob had never seen such a handsomely attired person, and he sat up, yawning despite his kindled interest. He saw a delicate face, a long nose, and large light eyes, gray as the winter sea and slightly tilted, set amid a web of wrinkles; a lock of straight snowy hair escaped from beneath her wimple. Over a cotehardie of white linen she wore a quilted over-robe of green silk. About the cuffs, golden thread was worked into a repeating pattern of a great tree in which two birds perched, with sun and moon and stars above its canopy. Despite the robe she seemed cold, holding it tight at her neck and giving a little shiver from time to time.
    The two esquires now took seats to the right of the old woman. To her left was a man in late middle years, with a beard of gray brindle, black brows, eyes the blue of May skies, kindly and humorous: he radiated benevolence. His crimson robe, its blue hood thrown back, suggested a doctor of medicine; certainly he was some kind of scholar. He noticed Hob straightening up and yawning, and he smiled gently at the boy. Hob had an immediate and unusual sense of his friendship and warmth, and further, a feeling that he knew that Hob had been asleep, and that further still, it was a secret between the two of them, and Hob grinned at him, hardly knowing why he did so.
    Hob became aware that Molly, with her easy good humor, had introduced herself to