The Knave and the Maiden

Sir Garren scratched behind the shaggy black ear and Innocent busied his tongue with the broad palm instead of Dominica’s face. Laughing, she turned back to The Savior, or whoever he was. “Did you have a dog as a child?”

“I don’t remember.”

At first she thought that he didn’t want to speak of his childhood. Then, the puzzlement in his voice hit her ear.

He could not remember. This was a man who had not been a child for a long, long time.

She watched in wonder as he patiently let Innocent’s pink tongue clean every one of his fingers. “How came you to know Lord William?” she asked, finally.

“He took me as his squire when I was seventeen.”

“Seventeen? A knight’s training begins as a child.”

“I had much to learn. My training was…interrupted.” The words came through lips narrowed by a harsh life.

“Interrupted by what?”

“I had just left the monastery.”

A shudder chilled her spine. Had he broken his vows? Was he an outcast monk? “Were you defrocked?”

“I was just completing my novice year. I had not taken my vows.” A haunted look lurked about his eyes. “All I could offer was a rusty sword arm, not even a sword.”

He gave me a new life, he said of the Earl of Readington, with the fierce loyalty men normally reserve for God. Even she knew how generous the Earl had been to take on a penniless, ill-trained squire. “Why did you leave the monastery?”

He was silent while the crackling fire shot a shower of sparks into the twilight sky, blue as if it had been ground from azurite. The first star blinked. “This was after the Death,” he said, finally.

She crossed herself. He had not answered, but she understood. Many strange events had come upon the land seized by that terror almost ten years ago. God had nearly destroyed the world. She still did not understand how the comforting God who spoke to her could let such a plague loose upon his people. “God punished us so harshly. We must strive to do his will each day so tomorrow will not bring such a punishment again.”

He shook his head. “We must strive to enjoy today because God may snatch us away before tomorrow comes.”

“But if He does, there’s a reason. There is always a reason for God’s plan.”

“Can you explain it?”

She searched his eyes, wondering whether God had sent him to test her faith. There must be words she could say to convince him of the rightness of God’s plan. “Sola fide.”

“What?”

He did not understand her Latin. She must have mispronounced the words. “By faith alone.”

Light from the fire flickered over his face. Shadows from his strong brows concealed his eyes. “You really believe that, don’t you?”

“Don’t you?”

The Miller brothers, one with a low voice and one higher, filled the silence with their harmonies. Faith is a trap for fools, he had said, this man who saved people but walked away from God.

“I believe,” he whispered, staring at the fire, “that we owe each other more than we owe God.”

She realized she had not breathed, waiting for his answer.

Day One: Faire weather. Walked until vespers. Pleasant land.

Lip out, Dominica watched the morning sun spill pink over the horizon. One sheet of paper lay atop a rock. Her letters, small and tight, filled the precious page edge to edge, as she’d been taught.

But were they the right words?

Just one day away from the Priory, she was farther away from home than she had ever been. She could not even name the place they had slept. Everything was fresh and unseen and untried and she was exhausted with the newness of it all.

The cheeping sparrows hopped close enough to touch. She must enjoy this time. These days. Write them down so she could remember later. When she would never be able even to speak of them without permission.

She wanted to write about how funny Innocent had looked chasing the rabbit and the way the young married couple walked holding hands and that she was worried about how tired Sister had seemed last night.

She wanted to write about him.

She dipped the quill into the ink and tapped out the excess.

Smooth straight path. Slept under stars.

Stars. How inadequate. Thousands and thousands of tiny candle flames lit by God. She could hardly bear to shut her eyes for the wonder of sleeping under such a ceiling.

She added a word. Many.

She frowned at her stingy parchment, a rescraped and reused scrap no one wanted any more, not good enough to copy God’s words. She had room for only a word or two to help her remember later.

What word would she choose for him?

The Savior was too blasphemous. Garren too personal.

The Man, she wrote.

She stared in horror, then struck through the words, blunting the point of her quill, hiding them with an ugly black blot, wishing she could blot them out of her mind.

He must be more than a man. For if he were only a man, she might be only reacting to him as a woman.

Alone in the shelter of the small grove before the day’s journey began, Garren thought about his plan. He did not know whether it was a good one.

He took the tarnished, dented silver reliquary from around his neck. Unwrapping the scrap of leather tied around it, he pulled apart the slender, silver tube. Inside, he had hidden three goose down feathers he would exchange for feathers from the shrine. Somehow. When no one was looking.

He thought again of just giving William the goose down. After all, there must be enough true feathers of the Blessed Larina to fly to heaven. Most relics were frauds. William would never know.

But a promise made to William bound him more tightly than an oath made to God.

A branch snapped and he pulled his dagger.

Dominica stood transfixed, staring at the feathers nestled in their white linen shroud. The skin behind her freckles paled. Then, she looked at him, blue eyes so piercing he feared she could see him plucking the goose down from the aviary dust.

“It is a blessed feather from Saint Larina’s wings,” she whispered. “The wings God gave her.”

Well, what harm would it do to a girl who already believed sola fide. She must not know his real plans. “Yes, yes it is.” He lifted a finger to his lips. “But you must tell no one.” He rocked the feather as if it were a precious child. “I’m to deliver it to the shrine, but the fewer who know, the better. You understand.”

Her blue eyes, already wide and round, grew larger. Both eyebrows lifted. One, he noticed, arched like a bird’s wing. The other ended as if the wing had been broken. “Where did you find it?” Her whisper’s echo turned the grove into a chapel.

“I am not free to tell you.” he intoned, mimicking a priestly monotone. “You understand.”

She smiled with a sigh that sounded like relief. “I knew you were special the minute I saw you in the Prioress’s office. I had a warm feeling, like when I pray in front of the stained glass window.”

I had a warm feeling too, he thought, but it had nothing to do with prayer.

She uttered some Latin words, solemnly.

He blinked and nodded, trying to look as if he were striving to remember the exact chapter and verse she recited. Even at the monastery, he had been a poor student.

“That’s ‘Give all honor to God’s messenger,’” she said, with a self-satisfied grin. “I wrote that one.”

“You what?”

“Well, sometimes, I put the words together into sayings of my own.” She ducked her head. “Please correct me if I get it wrong.”

He nodded, sagely. No reason for her to know the limitations of his Latin.

He nodded to the cloth. “You must tell no one about the feathers,” he said. No need to spread another fable about his special link with God.

She peered at them, but kept her hands behind her back. “A relic carries all the power of the saint. It can work a miracle.”

Miracles. The girl believed in miracles. “Have you ever witnessed a miracle like that?”

“I know all the stories.”

“What if they are only stories?”

“How can you ask that?”

“There are more pilgrims than miracles.”

“God helps those who believe.”

“So if you aren’t cured it’s your fault because you didn’t believe, not God’s because He doesn’t care?”

The fierce blue eyes flashed. “There are many miracles. There’s the miller’s son who drowned but was revived by Thomas of Cantilupe and the monk who wrapped his swollen arm in Becket’s stole and was cured and…”

“And the miraculous resurrection of The Earl of Readington at Poitiers,” he said.

“Yes. It was a miracle, what you did.” She reached for the feather, her finger hovering above it, as if it were giving off heat. “May I…may I touch it?”

You may pick it up and throw it on the ground and stomp it in the dirt from which I plucked it, for all the holiness it carries, he thought, jealous for a moment that she looked at the feather with the kind of desire a man would like to see directed at him.

“Touch it gently,” he said.

“I have a very important request of God.” She impaled him with her eyes. “Will the Blessed Larina help me?”

He knew how God answered prayers. He had begged God for his parents’ lives. God answered no.

“God listens to our prayers,” he said, bitterly. “He just may not give us the answers we desire.”

She nodded, sighing. “That’s what Sister Marian says. That’s why I want Larina’s help. Sometimes, God needs a little push.”

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