He searched my face and his expression hardened. In that moment, I felt the distance between our years, but the wisdom and experience of those years drew me even closer to him. “A life on the run is no life at all,” he said. “I refuse to make our love a shameful, secret thing.”
It made sense, certainly. But I didn’t see any other way. “So then tell me. What do we do?”
“We hold our ground. We stay here. We make a life here. I make you my bride here.”
What a dream that was. What a beautiful dream. “But how? What about my father? The church will never marry us without his agreement. The ways of things are as they are…”
I knew the laws because of my sisters. How a father had the right to decide the fate’s of his daughters I was unsure, but I was sure that the law was the law and I knew no way around it.
Bors came up on one elbow and I sank down into the pillows, gazing up at him. “Your father might object, but I don’t give a fuck. Men far more powerful than him owe me favors. A day’s ride will get me to the garrison, where I can get permission from the council of the clan. Their approval overrides his claim on you. Then there’s nothing your father can do to stop us.”
“I will come with you! We will go together.” I declared, but he shook his head.
“I’ll be faster alone. Besides, the moors are full of dangers, and the thought that I couldn’t protect you...”
“I’ll be all alone here, without you. I never want to be without you again.”
He pulled me closer and held me tight. “It’s two days’ sacrifice, three at the most, for a lifetime’s happiness,” he said. “Angelica will keep you safe while I’m gone.”
Even one day away from him seemed absolutely unbearable. I placed my palm to his chest and gazed up at him, admiring the strong angle of his jaw. “Let me come with you, please.”
He shook his head. “I won’t risk your safety out there. And there’s no way I’m going to make it look like I’ve kidnapped you more than I already have.” He took a step into me, sliding his hand down my hip. “No matter how badly I’d like to.”
I wanted to be his, lawfully or otherwise, and yet it was a debate I knew I couldn’t win—there was so much I didn’t know about the world and I deferred to his judgment, lacking any experience of my own.
With a heavy heart and full of worry, I washed his skin using the warm basin that Angelica had left outside the bedroom door. Then I helped him pack his things and saddle his horse, and as he kissed me goodbye on the front porch of the little cottage, he slipped his hunting knife into my hand. “For your protection while I’m gone,” he said.
“Come back to me.”.
“You’re my home,” he said, gazing down at me, making me almost woozy with need. “You are where I belong.”
After one more long, lingering kiss, he mounted his chestnut stallion, and I watched him ride down the King’s Highway, tears prickling my eyes, terrified that I would never see him again.
Sara
I stayed behind at Angelica’s, waiting for Bors to return as he promised. The moments were slow to pass, and I found myself checking the window over and over again to see if, by some strange miracle, he’d changed his mind and returned to me already.
“I promise you, he’s riding hell-for-leather to get back to you,” Angelica said. She sat at the big pine table in the center of the kitchen, with bundles of dried herbs and plants around her, ready to be made into poultices and other medicinal potions and salves. On the hob above the fire simmered something in an iron pot, bubbling up with steam, making the room smell of lavender and sage. “I’ve known him many years and I’ve never seen the look in his eyes I see when he looks at you.”
Though I wanted to believe what Angelica said, these feelings were so new and overwhelming that I didn’t know what to think. I sat down across from her and took a sprig of dried sage from the pile, plucking the tiny leaves off the stem. I was lost in my thoughts and found myself drawn back in time to the long summer afternoons when my sister Eden’s now husband was courting her, and she’d spend hours plucking daisy petals.
He loves me, he loves me not…
A noise from the garden startled both of us, lost as we were in our simple work. The crash of an overturning grain bucket was followed by the nervous clucks and warbles of her hens outside. Angelica raised her eyes to mine. “Are you expecting anyone?” She asked softly, in a barely audible whisper.
I shook my head and swallowed hard.
Angelica rose from her chair, careful not to let it squeak as she stood to look outside.
A flat-handed thumping on her door made my heart jump into my throat. And then I heard it—the awful sound of my father’s voice. “Open this door, whore! You’ve no right to keep my daughter. She’s my property!” He sounded enraged with drink and I was terrified of what he might do. I heard other male voices, too, and knew he wasn’t alone.
I pressed my hands to my face for a quick second, praying against hope that this was all just a nightmare. But I knew in my heart it wasn’t.
From the corner of my eye, I saw a shadow, moving quickly. A moment later, a fist-sized stone crashed through the window over the wash basin and landed with an ominous thud on the floor. “Open the fuck up,” my father roared again. “I’ve come to take back what’s mine, you wizened old crone. I won’t let you defile her with your morals, or your dark magic.”
Angelica pushed aside the rough woolen rug on the floor. She crouched low and wiggled two of the old pine floorboards free to create a space that was just large enough for a person to pass through. She pointed at the opening and I did as she’d signaled. As I lowered myself down into the crawl space below the house, I reached up and extended a hand for her to join me. But as soon as I’d suggested it, I knew it was foolish; Angelica clearly wasn’t even willing to abide such naivete, and within seconds the floorboards had been secured back in their place with the rug blocking the light from the knot holes in the floor. I crouched low on the cold, damp soil, listening to her footsteps and then the creak of the front door.
“Afternoon, lads,” she said. “So, the fresh mead at the tavern has gotten your blood up, has it? It’ll be six schillings each. But ten for you, Milo. Even a woman like me has her standards.” A pause. “And you’ll each have to wait your turn, I’m not as young as I once was.”
I heard a man’s laugh, then my father snarled: “You shut the fuck up!”
The hard thumps of boots on the floor told me that there were a number of men with him. For years, I’d been nothing but a nuisance, but now that I’d begun to grow into a woman, here he was with a mob of drunkards trying to take me back. It made me feel disgusting and ashamed.
“Speak, whore!”
“Twenty, then!” Angelica strained; her voice was hoarse and shallow from what I imagined was my father’s hand around her throat.
She was tough as nails, but one woman was only so strong against a group of men. I remembered then the knife that Bors had given me. It was heavy and cold in my pocket, its bone handle solid and intimidating in my palm. But it was useless to me and to Angelica both, and she wouldn’t thank me for revealing my hiding place.