All the knights smiled broadly, and a few of the servants sniggered. William felt his face flush bright red.
Mother took a sudden step forward and slapped Aliena’s face. Bartholomew moved to defend her but the knights restrained him. “Shut up,” Mother said to Aliena. “You’re not a fine lady anymore—you’re the daughter of a traitor, and soon you’ll be destitute and starving. You’re not good enough for my son now. Get out of my sight, and don’t speak another word.”
Aliena turned away. William released her arm, and she followed her father. As he watched her go, William realized that the sweet taste of revenge had turned bitter in his mouth.
She was a real heroine, just like a princess in a poem, Jack thought. He watched, awestruck, as she climbed the stairs with her head held high. The whole room was silent until she disappeared from sight. When she went it was like a lamp going out. Jack stared at the place where she had been.
One of the knights came over and said: “Who’s the cook?”
The cook himself was too wary to volunteer, but someone else pointed him out.
“You’re going to make dinner,” the knight told him. “Take your helpers and go to the kitchen.” The cook picked half a dozen people out of the crowd. The knight raised his voice. “The rest of you—clear off. Get out of the castle. Go quickly and don’t try to take anything that’s not yours, if you value your lives. We’ve all got blood on our swords and a little more won’t show. Get moving!”
They all shuffled through the door. Jack’s mother took his hand and Tom held Martha’s. Alfred stayed close. They were all wearing their cloaks, and they had no possessions other than their clothes and their eating knives. With the crowd they went down the steps, over the bridge, across the lower compound, and through the gatehouse, stepping over the useless gates, leaving the castle without a pause. When they stepped off the bridge onto the field on the far side of the moat, the tension snapped like a cut bowstring, and they all began to talk about their ordeal in loud, excited voices. Jack listened idly as he walked along. Everybody was recalling how brave they had been. He had not been brave—he had simply run away.
Aliena was the only one who had been brave. When she came into the keep and found that instead of being a place of safety it was a trap, she had taken charge of the servants and children, telling them to sit down and keep quiet and stay out of the way of the fighting men, screaming at the Hamleighs’ knights when they were rough with their prisoners or raised their swords against unarmed men and women, acting as if she were completely invulnerable.
His mother ruffled his hair. “What are you thinking about?”
“I was wondering what will happen to the princess.”
She knew what he meant. “The Lady Aliena.”
“She’s like a princess in a poem, living in a castle. But knights aren’t as virtuous as the poems say.”
“That’s true,” Mother said grimly.
“What will become of her?”
She shook her head. “I really don’t know.”
“Her mother’s dead.”
“Then she’ll have a hard time.”
“I thought so.” Jack paused. “She laughed at me because I didn’t know about fathers. But I liked her all the same.”
Mother put her arm around him. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about fathers.”
He touched her hand, accepting her apology. They walked on in silence. From time to time a family would leave the road and head across the fields, making for the home of relatives or friends where they might beg some breakfast and think about what to do next. Most of the crowd stayed together as far as the crossroads, then they split up, some going north or south, some continuing straight on toward the market town of Shiring. Mother detached herself from Jack and put a hand on Tom’s arm, making him stop. “Where shall we go?” she said.
He looked faintly surprised to be asked, as if he expected them all to follow wherever he led without asking questions. Jack had noticed that Mother often brought that surprised look to Tom’s face. Perhaps his previous wife had been a different sort of person.
“We’re going to Kingsbridge Priory,” Tom said.
“Kingsbridge!” Mother seemed shaken. Jack wondered why.
Tom did not notice. “Last night I heard there’s a new prior,” he went on. “Usually a new man wants to make some repairs or alterations to the church.”
“The old prior is dead?”
“Yes.”
For some reason Mother was soothed by that news. She must have known the old prior, Jack thought, and disliked him.
Tom heard the troubled note in her voice at last. “Is there something wrong with Kingsbridge?” he asked her.
“I’ve been there. It’s more than a day’s journey.”
Jack knew that it was not the length of the journey that bothered Mother, but Tom did not. “A little more,” he said. “We can get there by midday tomorrow.”
“All right,”
They walked on.
A little later Jack began to feel a pain in his belly. For a while he wondered what it was. He had not been hurt at the castle and Alfred had not punched him for two days. But eventually he realized what it was.
He was hungry again.
