The Unveiling - Tamara Leigh (rooftoppers TXT) 📗

to the ground. Six turns more, she told herself as she perspired into her tunic, and she did not doubt Wulfrith would know if she cut it by one.

She searched him out and found him head and shoulders above a squire whose height made her look tall.

She frowned. A page? Aye, and there were more of smaller stature, some looking as young as seven or eight. Though it was not unusual for pages to train alongside squires, Annyn was surprised that Wulfrith trained the young boys himself.

By the time she made the last turn of the field, her tunic and bindings were damp and the latter chafed. Remembering Rowan’s warning, she clenched her hands to keep from picking at her discomfort. When she reached the entrance to the training field, she gripped her aching sides and bent forward.

She had thought herself more fit. Though nearly every day she exerted herself, either by chasing game through the wood or learning weapons with Rowan, this hurt.

Yielding to the need to sit—for a moment only, she vowed—she dropped to the ground, only to yield again and lay back on the scrubby grass.

Panting, she looked side to side. Her mount was gone. Had it been taken to the stables? What of the pack containing her scant possessions?

She curbed her worry with the reminder that neither was of consequence, closed her eyes, and listened to her breathing that, according to Rowan, was the surest way to calm it.

A cloud moved across the sun, offering sweet reprieve from its heat.

“You are not very fast,” said a dread voice.

Not a cloud, but Wulfrith. She peered up at him.

His eyes were reproachful. “You will have to do better if you are to don armor. Get up.”

Thinking him every foul name she could call to mind, she staggered upright and followed him to the training field.

Though those she passed tipped her senses with potent perspiration and made her long to cover her mouth and nose, she suffered through it to the center of the field where quarterstaffs were piled.

Wulfrith swept one to hand. “Choose.”

He would test her himself? She ground her teeth. To plant a dagger in him was what she wanted, not to play at fighting.

“Braose!”

She grabbed a staff and turned. “You are to train me, my lord?”

He put a two-handed grip to his quarterstaff. “All start with me. All end with me.”

“And in between?” She placed her hands too near as Jame Braose might do.

Wulfrith’s gaze fell to them. “When you have proven yourself worthy to train at Wulfen, you will be assigned a knight to serve.” He stepped forward, gripped her right hand, and pushed it down the quarterstaff.

His touch jolted, and it was all she could do not to wrench away.

“Hold it so.” He jutted his chin. “Now show whether you are a boy or a man.” He raised his staff, lunged, and was on her before she could counter.

She bent beneath the blow to her shoulder and grunted out her pain. Though Wulfrith had surely exercised restraint, it was not gratitude she felt but a deepening desire for revenge.

“Not worthy,” he taunted. “Come again.”

Forgetting the inexperienced young man she was, she lunged.

This time their staffs met at center, but as Annyn congratulated herself on deflecting his blow, he arced his staff and slammed it against the knuckles of her left hand.

She cried out, loosed the quarterstaff, and hugged her throbbing hand to her chest.

Curse his black soul! Curse his loins that they might never render forth another like him. Curse—

“Not worthy. Arm yourself!”

She retrieved the staff, fended off his next assault, and became the attacker. The staffs crashed between them, but Wulfrith was solid. Nearly chest to chest with him, assailed by his strong, masculine scent, she looked up.

He looked down. “Not worthy. You fight like a girl.”

Fanned by the hot breath of revelation, Annyn forgot her pain. Did she fight like a girl? Did he see Annyn Bretanne? Or was this part of her training? Surely the latter, for she hardly fought like a girl. Indeed, she had forgotten Jame Braose and put Rowan’s training to good use.

“I fear I am at a disadvantage, my lord, for surely you are two of me.”

His lips curled. “Mayhap three.” He thrust her back.

Affecting the untried person of Jame Braose, she staggered before coming at him again. However, further pretense was unnecessary when next their staffs met. For all of Annyn’s training, her skill was as water to his wine.

He turned his staff, met hers, pushed back, met again, pushed again, and knocked her so hard to the ground that the staff flew out of her hands.

Bottling her cry of pain, Annyn dropped her head back and showed him her hate.

“We will use that,” he said. “Anger makes a man strong.”

As it was said to make him strong?

“You but need to learn when to use it and to what degree, little priest.”

His reminder of who Jame Braose was cooled her expression of hatred.

“Now the pel.” He turned.

The pel? And what else?

As Annyn rose, she saw the field had emptied. Gauging by the lowering sun, the supper hour neared. And she was alone with Wulfrith—of certain advantage were she capable of working vengeance without stealth.

“Braose!”

Muttering beneath her breath, she tramped after him.

He stood before a wooden post set in the ground. “Your sword.” He extended the one he held.

Her fingers brushed his as she turned them around the hilt, and she felt her blood rush. How curious hate was—

The tip of the sword hit the ground, and she stared down the blade’s length before realizing she had been given a blade twice the weight of others. Though she knew such swords were used to develop muscles and grow one accustomed to wielding weapons, Rowan had never pressed her to swing one.

“Are you hungry, Braose?”

Dare she hope he might forego this exercise? “Indeed I am...my lord.”

“Then the sooner you take the pel to ground, the sooner you may fill your belly.”

All the way to ground? Though she supposed she ought to be grateful the post was not thick, she hated Wulfrith more.

She took a step back, closed her other hand over the hilt, and heaved the sword up. It was not the pel she struck once...twice...a dozen times. It was the image she summoned of Wulfrith. She hacked until her arms trembled. And still the post was not halfway felled.

Throat raw from labored breath, she lowered the sword.

“You have much anger for one promised to the church,” Wulfrith mused.

She looked to where he leaned against the fence. How was she to respond? As Jame Braose. “Were your own destiny snatched from you, you would also be angered.”

He arched an eyebrow. “So I would.” He strode from the fence and advanced on her. “Finish with the pel and come to the hall. You will pour wine at table this eve.”

When was she to eat?

She thought he meant to pass behind her, but he paused at her back, leaned in, and said, “I promise you, Jame Braose, we will turn that anger of yours to good.”

His warm breath on her skin made her shiver. Her good, not his.

She heard his footsteps retreat. When she was fairly sure he was gone, she looked over her shoulder. Only she remained on the training field, and somewhere out there, Rowan.

With a grunt, she raised the sword and swung. The blade bit, causing the wooden post to shudder and chips to fly. If it was a pel Wulfrith wanted, a pel she would give him.

Across the darkening of day, Garr looked down from the battlements to the young man on the training field. Though Braose’s arms and shoulders surely raged, he continued to swing the weighted sword.

He was not as expected. Though years from a man’s body, he was not fragile and fought well for one who had received little training in arms. And the anger that colored his eyes!

It reminded Garr of the anger he himself had known as a boy. But Braose’s seemed to go beyond his loss of the church. Indeed, it was as if directed at Garr himself. Because Garr stood Stephen’s side and the little priest turned heir had gone to Henry’s side? That the young man’s father had not told in the missive sent two months past beseeching that his son be accepted at Wulfen.

As for Jame’s impertinence, he dared mightily when it had been told he was acquiescent. As for face, he was nearly pretty, his skin smooth and unblemished and lacking any evidence that a beard might soon sprout.

There was something else about him that bothered. Though Garr was trained to the eyes, that well of emotion more telling than men’s lips, something dwelt in the young man’s hate that could not be read. But soon enough he would come to it, Garr hoped, for his reading of men’s eyes had failed him once. Only by God’s grace had it not cost hundreds of lives.

He shoved a hand through his hair. Though nothing was certain in life, there was merit in going to the eyes to truly know a person—rather, a man, for could one truly know a woman? And would one wish to?

Bothersome creatures, his father, Drogo, had often said. But they were useful, for without them there would be naught, Garr conceded no more than his father and grandfather had done. Still, truth be known, he had never come nearer a woman than through the ease of his loins, and only with harlots.

At the age of four, Drogo had taken him from Stern Castle to begin his training at Wulfen. It had been the same for the two brothers that followed, never knowing much of their mother or sisters beyond the once, sometimes twice-a-year visits. Women were a bad influence, Drogo had told. They weakened a man’s heart when it needed to be strong. Thus, as it had been for the generations before Garr—men who knew women only for the lusting and getting of heirs—so it would be for the generations to follow.

Garr looked one last time at Jame Braose. Whatever it was about the young man, he would discover it. Silently cursing that he was late to prayer, he swung away.

When the irony of his blaspheming struck, he raised his eyes. “Forgive me, Lord.” Such was the difficulty of even putting one’s thoughts to women. Always they turned a man from his purpose.

CHAPTER FIVE

Hot and sticky from her bindings out, gait unbalanced by the pel beneath her arm, Annyn stepped into the great hall.

She paused at the sight that did not greet her: slopping tankards, overturned benches, filth-strewn rushes, facedown drunkards, dogs warring over bones. There were none of these things that ought to abound in a place absent of women.

Squires and pages moved quietly among the tables as they served peers and superiors. As for the manners of those who partook of the meal, spoons did not drip above trenchers and food did not color the beards of those whose faces were of an age to bear whiskers. Voices were tempered, and, unlike Annyn, all those within wore freshly laundered tunics and hose and their heads were bare of caps.

It was hard to believe these were the same ones who had labored on the training field. Hard to believe this was of Wulfrith’s doing. But they were and it was. Unless she had