“Well,” she said thoughtfully. “I suppose general questions are acceptable. For example, what might your favorite food be?”
It was a very tame question, considering the depth of his character and life experience, but he went along with it gladly.
“I like a good roast of beef,” he said. “When I was a lad, we had a good deal of mutton and I cannot stand the smell or taste of it any longer. Beef is my favorite.”
“Mine, too,” Gavriella said. “Mutton always tastes like an old shoe to me.”
He chuckled. “That is very true,” he said. “That is something else we have in common.”
“Something else?”
“In addition to our distain of Gomorrah.”
Gavriella laughed softly. “That is a most important one,” she said. “It is certainly something I will not miss about this place when I return home.”
He looked at her, then. “Are you planning on leaving soon?”
Her good humor faded a little. “I am not certain,” she said. “My father sent me here to… to spend time with my aunt and cousins. To rest a little, mayhap experience different things that I would not experience in my village. He thought the change might be good for me. And you? Are you a permanent resident here?”
He shook his head. “I am not,” he said. “I had come on business for my father, but we are to return soon.”
“How soon?”
He looked at her, his gaze intense. “We were to depart tomorrow,” he said. “But now I am not entirely sure I wish to leave yet.”
A bashful smile played on her lips and she averted her gaze.
Andreas was completely enchanted.
They had reached an intersection of another major avenue, called Bridge Street, which led right to the greater London Bridge that spanned the Thames.
It was bustling with people.
“Hold tightly to me, my lady,” he said. “We enter the den of pickpockets and thieves. If they see you with me, they will be less likely to try anything unsavory.”
Gavriella looked at the bridge. It was lined with structures on either side of it, some of them precariously built, and it was jammed with people. So very many people. It was like looking down the throat of a mighty beast. She looked at Andreas rather nervously, but he smiled encouragingly.
Her grip tightened.
They began their foray onto the bridge, which was essentially just another neighborhood as far as neighborhoods went. There were people everywhere as they passed by men and women conducting trade right on the bridge. One man was selling baby chicks while still another was selling bundled herbs. People were coming out of their leaning homes to buy things from these street vendors as Gavriella watched most curiously.
“I will admit I’ve never actually come near this bridge,” she said. “It’s almost its own little city.”
Andreas was watching everything around him – every person, every move. He didn’t like the close quarters of the bridge. The knight in him was on high alert.
“It is,” he said, eyeing a vagrant who was sleeping against a wall holding a big, dull knife in his hands. “All of the troubles of a city, too, I am certain.”
Gavriella wasn’t entirely oblivious to what he meant. She’d seen trouble enough last year in Deadwater and therefore knew the meaning of trouble.
She moved a little closer to him.
“I’m curious,” she said, pulling her skirt away from a dirty man who wandered too close. “Is that what you see when you look at a city? Trouble? You said the same thing last night.”
The same man Gavriella had pulled her skirt away from was still too close and Andreas reached out a massive hand, shoving the man away by the head. He was evidently drunk and toppled over quite easily.
“I am a knight, my lady,” he said. “I’ve been taught to view the entire world from that perspective. Everything is potential trouble, everywhere. One must be vigilant.”
Gavriella watched the drunken man roll around on his back for a moment before returning her attention to Andreas.
“You have seen many battles, then? As a knight, I mean.”
He nodded. “Too many to count,” he said, eyeing her. “Are you sure you do not want to know my family name and where I live?”
She grinned, shaking her head. “There is no fun to it if you come out and tell me,” she said. “Let me continue to ask the proper questions and see if I can discover the truth for myself.”
He fought off a smile. “Very well,” he said. “You already know what my favorite food is. What else would you know?”
“Are you from Cumbria?”
“Nay. Are you?”
“Nay.”
“Yorkshire?”
“Nay. And you?”
“Nay. Where was your first battle, as a knight?”
He cocked his head thoughtfully. “As a knight? A nasty skirmish in Wales.”
She looked at him. “Were you injured?”
He shook his head. “Nay,” he said. “But I have seen friends and family injured in battle, or worse.”
“What was the worst battle you’ve ever seen?”
Andreas thought on that. There had been so many, some he still wasn’t ready to speak of. The battle in Wales that he had mentioned was one of them. His uncle, James de Wolfe, had been cut down and left for dead. In fact, the entire family thought the man was dead until he reappeared years later with no knowledge of his previous life. Andreas had been there on that horrible day, watching his grandfather as he’d held his uncle’s bloodied, beaten body and wept while Andreas and other de Wolfe knights fought to save themselves and him. It was at Llandeilo, something he tried hard to forget.
Therefore, he still couldn’t speak on it.
“Every battle is bad,” he said, glancing at her. “I cannot extrapolate the degree of one battle against another. Suffice it to say that I have seen many battles, all of them terrible, in my twenty years as a knight.”
“That is a long time to see such terrible things.”
He smiled faintly. “It is my vocation and the vocation of my father and grandfather,” he said. “There was never any question as to what I would become as an adult. I trained in some very fine houses and I have learned a great deal. I would wager to say that I am probably the smartest man in the world.”
He said it in an exaggerated way that had Gavriella giggling. “I would believe that,” she said. “I, too, fostered in an excellent home, but my reading education came from my father.”
“The man with the love of books?”
She nodded. “He has a great love of literature and poetry,” she said. “I must confess that when I was younger, I would act them out. The tale of Orpheus and Eurydice is my favorite.”
Andreas’ eyes squinted as he recalled the tale. “Where Orpheus goes into the Underworld to find her?”
“Exactly,” she said. Then, she sighed. “Imagine having someone who loved you so much that they would go into the Underworld for you. That would be a devoted love.”
“Indeed,” Andreas agreed. “But he lost her again when he disobeyed Hades.”
She shook her head. “I never understood why he did that,” she said. “Hades told him not to look at her as they were departing. Why would he disobey him?”