To Touch The Knight Read Online Free PDF Page B

little loose on him. The plate armor was a new thing and he was surprised Tancred had some.
    â€œNo doubt due to our Lady of Lilies again, but how does a princess from Cathay know of these things?”
    Hector whickered softly, as if in agreement.
    â€œAnd that sword of his, my lad—it has a wicked point. I have not seen such a blade before today. ’Twill be most deadly earnest in combat: a sharp tip to stab through slits in armor. I wager that is our lady’s influence, also.”
    Ranulf patted Hector’s flank and began to groom his haunches, motioning to his squire to groom the horse’s other side. Questions bit at him like fleas: Was she truly from China? Did women really dress that way there? How did she know of metal and swords? Why was she not at the court of the king?
    Lady Blanche was a true and sprightly lady but the castle of Fitneyclare was, in brute terms, small and old. Lady Blanche and Lord Richard were not swimming in wealth: the joust was here because London was filled with pestilence and the nobility scattered. He himself would not have come had it not been that the tourney, any tourney, was his life these days. He knew that the prizes would be small.
    Why, then, would a princess of the East come here?
    Deep in thought, he placed his own helm on his head—he would not ever fight in another knight’s helmet—and covered it with the trinkets Sir Tancred had used in his costume. It gave him particular pleasure to thread and pin the princess’s tokens to his chest where she would be certain to see them. Why not? Today he fought as an unknown knight, and Olwen would have understood.
    Even so, he tucked one of Olwen’s seed pearls into his glove, feeling less disloyal as the smooth bead settled into the hollow of his palm. He was used to fighting with something of his wife’s snug against his skin.
    A memory of them cuddling scorched through him, twisting in his heart. Longing to blot out the pain, he mounted Hector and straightened in the saddle, desperate to begin. Any challenge would do, and as proxy to Sir Tancred—no, Sir Dew of the Moon—he had plenty.
    â€œStay here. I will carry the spare lances,” he had told Edmund, knowing that otherwise he would be recognized by his lanky squire. He wound a cloth about his helm, hiding his face, and spurred his borrowed horse to gallop to the place of battle.
    Beneath him Hector caught his mood and snorted, racing smoothly now as Ranulf gave him his head.
    Let it be that knight with the badge of white and red fist. Let me know him again, even if he fights in the costume of a nun. Let it be him.
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    Edith touched her gloves, ensuring that they were snug and covered her hands. She knew this was a nervous habit, but after months of artifice and pretense, she was still fretful in the company of ladies.
    Men held no fear for her. She had made her costumes to distract men. The silks and rarer cottons she and those of her company wore were truly from the East, brought back by her sailor grandfather and hidden by his wife, who had considered them too exotic. Edith, aware she had a gift for seeing shape and lines, the whole appearance and function of a thing, had imagined her princess costumes as she might have done a sword or a mace—as a vital weapon. She had conceived them in the same deadly serious manner as she would have created a dagger.
    â€œYou have a knack for it,” Teodwin had remarked once, “as I have for tents and garlands, it seems.”
    Teodwin, the former grumbler and loudmouth, was right. Cutting a gaudy figure in purple silk, he was more active, agile, and happy than Edith had ever seen him.
    Even his weeping sores had cleared up. But then, leaving the serfdom of the fields had released something in each of the former villagers, and all her people had discovered new talents. The world of chivalry was an enchantment to them: “It is as if we are living in a story,”