I don’t remember him at all,” Conn said, wiping up the last drops of his stew with a heel of soft bread. “I try and try, but it doesn’t matter.”
“Father left when you were three,” I said quietly. “How could you remember him?”
He’d joined Baron Jorian’s army when it left to fight in one of the king’s foreign campaigns, and half a dozen other men from our village had gone with him. They had no weapons or training; they were porters, cooks, and diggers of trenches.
My mother had begged him not to go, but he wouldn’t listen. “I’ll come home with pockets full of silver,” he’d said.
But what happened instead was that he never came home at all.
“What was he like?” Conn asked.
My mother abruptly got up from the table and went to stand by the fire. She twisted her hands in her apron and her eyes shone with unshed tears. She’d never stopped missing him, and I knew that part of her believed he was still alive. That he was lost somehow, somewhere, and he didn’t know how to get back home to us—but that someday he would.
I couldn’t have convinced her otherwise, even if I’d tried.
If we’d had a body to bury, maybe that would’ve brought her some peace. If she could lay her hands on him one final time before committing him to the earth.
I remembered him perfectly, and I missed him horribly. But not as much as I missed Mary, buried in an unmarked grave outside the castle walls. Buried next to Otto, my would-be husband.
“Was he very big and very brave?” Conn asked. “Was he ugly like Vincy’s pa?”
I took his hand in mine. “He was very brave indeed,” I said. “He was tall and thin, with a long, black beard. He had a big, deep voice, and he used to sing us songs. Would you like to hear one?”
Conn nodded eagerly. My mother turned her back to us, and I could see her shoulders shaking.
I took a sip of ale and sang.
Fair was the evening time and still the sun shone bright
Upon the wood, upon the field, upon the brave young knight
His sword gleamed silver and his horse was fleet, no worry creased his brow
He thought not of war but of the sweet maid free and the love she did avow—
I stopped. “I’ve forgotten what comes next,” I said. “But it’s about a noble knight who loves a girl from a nearby village.” A girl who’s beneath him, I didn’t say. A peasant.
“She dies,” my mother blurted.
“Right,” I said. “I guess that’s what happens.”
“They meet again in heaven, though,” Conn said, insistent.
“Yes, you must be right,” I said. “Anyway, it’s time for bed. You’ll sleep well tonight, won’t you, with your full, fat belly?”
Conn nodded. His eyes were heavy already. “But where’s my soldier?”
“Your what?”
“My wooden soldier! Merrick found him in the cart—there was a whole pile of them. Vincy got one, too.” Conn began to paw frantically among the tattered blankets. A moment later, he pulled out a small, intricately carved knight. When he held it up and gazed at it, his face shone with delight. “There you are,” he said, and he hugged it to his chest.
The baron had thought to include toys for the village children? I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes.
I went to bed not long after Conn. Sometime in the middle of the night, I woke to the sound of fists on the door. Rising from the rough mattress, I walked past the dead fire as fear trailed icy fingers down my spine. “Who is it?”
There was no answer. Grabbing the knife from the table, I opened the door. It was Ryia. She was bathed in cold moonlight, and she was holding her little baby in ragged blankets.
“She’s gone,” she screamed, thrusting the bundle toward me.
I didn’t understand what she was talking about. Then I looked down and saw the baby’s lifeless face.
“John’s fever—choking—gone—” Ryia was crying so hard she could barely speak. I pulled her into my arms. I felt her dead baby against my chest. Grief and horror pierced my heart.
“I loved her so,” Ryia wept. “My Sophie, my little Sophie.”