Captured by the Warrior. Meriel Fuller
husband such as Edmund. ‘I’ve been with you before,’ she reminded him. ‘I—’
Fabien stopped her sentence with a hand on her arm. ‘Aye, you’ve come with me to the village or to some minor skirmish between two landowners.’ His blue eyes, set in his tanned, weathered face, regarded her gently. ‘Your skills are excellent, daughter, but I would not lose another child on the battlefield.’
Alice stepped quickly around the table, coming to her father’s side. ‘Don’t speak like that, Father! We don’t know that he’s dead!’
‘We’ve had no news for two years, Alice. What am I supposed to think?’ His quiet burr hitched with emotion as he recalled his son, Thomas. He smothered a deep sigh, unwilling to show the depth of his true feelings to his daughter.
‘I miss him too, Father, but until we hear definitely, I cannot believe that he’s dead.’ Alice’s voice held the edge of conviction. ‘Look, you need me with you; I’ll wear some of Thomas’s clothes. Nobody will have any idea.’
Fabien laughed, patting Alice’s hand. A sense of elation crowded into her chest; she knew she had won.
To the south of Ludlow, the lands belonging to the Duke of York stretched away in a series of low, folded hills, green and fertile. Balanced on the edge of slopes, or flat in the valley bottoms, the fields were small, bounded by hawthorn-sharp hedging and narrow, stony lanes. High on one of the ridges, where the west wind blew the horses’ tails into fans, dark strands against the clear blue sky, two riders sat, almost motionless, surveying the land spread out beneath them.
‘Ah, it’s great to have you back in England!’ One of the horsemen, Richard, the Duke of York and cousin to the King of England, slapped Bastien companionably on his back.
‘I thought I’d come home for a rest!’ Raising his visor, Bastien grinned at his friend, the metal of his helmet cold against his cheek. He hadn’t even returned to his own manor, having been waylaid by the Duke as they had passed through Ludlow.
Richard gave a swift snort, his square-shaped face set into a scowl. ‘’Tis unlikely we’ll have much rest with that feeble-minded cousin of mine in charge of the country. He’s let the land go to the dogs, the barons are feuding under his very nose, and what does he do? Nothing!’ His dark hair, untouched by grey despite being Bastien’s senior by ten years, stuck out in tufted spikes from under his helmet. ‘I need to see the King, Bastien, to talk to him, but his Queen protects him like a child. She won’t let me near. The only way is to openly challenge the House of Lancaster in battle.’
Bastien shrugged his shoulders. ‘So be it, my lord. My men are willing and ready, although they are tired from the long march home.’ As he was, he thought wearily. Yet he sensed the frustration, the annoyance emanating from the Duke, and understood his motives.
Richard ran a critical eye over Bastien. ‘Still not wearing full armour, I see.’
Bastien openly shunned the body-plate armour worn by most knights, preferring to wear just chainmail over a padded gambeson with a steel helmet. By contrast, Richard wore a full set of plate armour that had been made especially for him: breast and back plates, articulated steel gauntlets covering his whole arm, and leg pieces attached to the front of his shins by leather straps.
Bastien adjusted himself in the saddle, the leather creaking with the movement. ‘Plate armour is too heavy, it weighs me down too much.’ The tint of a far-off memory laced his voice, the familiar whisper of guilt licking along his veins. After all these years, he just couldn’t forget.
‘So you said in France, young man,’ Richard chided him. ‘I’ve told you before, you take too many risks.’
‘And you move too slowly, laden down with all that steel,’ Bastien teased. ‘Admit that I’m quicker and faster than you in a fight.’
Richard smiled. His friend’s prowess on the battlefield was legendary. ‘Just make sure you don’t get yourself killed by your own foolhardiness.’
‘I’ll try not to,’ Bastien replied, dropping his visor down. But in truth he didn’t really care.
Alice helped her father erect the tent beneath a line of beech trees; their distorted, knotty roots afforded some shelter from the north, and the ground, though rough and sloped, was reasonable once she had kicked the stones out of the way. The stained white canvas flapped and strained in the breeze, the guy ropes pulling insistently against the heavy stone that held them taut. Securing the door flap back with a leather tie, Alice stood for a moment, surveying the land below her. Over to her right, moving across the flat river valley that was the declared battle site, the Lancastrian army marched purposefully, their red tunics glowing in the rising sun, flanked on either side by knights on horseback. Outriders held banners aloft, triangular pennants flapping the colours of King Henry.
Fear bunched in her mouth. Through the shifting mist drifting from the river, she could see the Yorkists, mostly knights on horses, spread out in an imposing line along the opposite slope—hundreds of them. She closed her eyes, and ducked back into the tent to where Fabien laid out the tools of his trade.
‘God in Heaven, Father, there’s so many!’ Panic threaded through her voice.
Fabien surveyed his daughter critically; she had made an excellent job of disguising her sex, but his heart clenched with the risk he took by bringing her.
A large, leather hat completely covered her bright hair, the brim pulled low to shade her delicate features. Her brother’s cote-hardie was long on her, but did not look out of place, and the intricate pleating that fell from the shoulders, front and back, did much to hide her feminine curves. A thick leather belt secured this over-tunic loosely on her hips, and the hem fell so low, that only a glimpse of her fustian braies could be seen. Somehow, she’d managed to walk in Thomas’s big leather boots; they reached her knees, already dirty with mud.
‘Do you want to go home?’ he asked at last.
‘Nay!’ she shook her head vehemently. ‘I shall stay…and help you!’
‘That’s my girl!’ Fabien smiled back at her, hearing the courage in her voice.
For the next few hours, against the echoing backdrop of the battle raging in the valley below, against the shouts and the clashing of armour, they worked, patching up the soldiers and knights that were brought up the gentle slope. For that was all they intended: to stabilise any injury and to stop the bleeding, enough so that each man could be taken back to the safety of the castle. Alongside Fabien, Alice worked slowly and patiently, murmuring a question or a comment to her father now and again. Immersed in her work, she barely lifted her head when Fabien told her he was needed to attend to some soldiers on the battlefield.
‘Stay here until I come back,’ he entreated softly, slipping out through the canvas. Alice nodded vaguely in response, her tongue between her teeth as she concentrated on stitching up a long gash in a soldier’s arm.
The sun had risen to its highest point by the time Alice could take a rest. With nobody in the tent, she whisked off her hat, rubbing her face with one hand, trying to erase the stiff, exhausted feeling from her skin. A rawness pulled at her eyes; clapping the hat back on, she reached for the leather water bottle behind her and took a long, refreshing gulp. Replacing the cork stopper, she realised the sound from the battlefield had become noticeably subdued. No longer could she hear the roar of men as they rode into attack, or the clash of steel against steel. Yet it had been a fair while since her father had left the tent—did he still tend the injured?
Alice stuck her head out through the canvas flaps. She had to go to her father, to find him, but the thought of tip-toeing through a field loomed before her as a daunting prospect. She gritted her teeth—think of Thomas. He would go to their father, he would find him. But Thomas was not here; it was her responsibility.
The spongy earth pulled at her boots as she advanced stealthily. In front