Page 28

1240 A.D.

T here was a war going on in the keep of Brython.

If Christopher, Arthur, and William de Lohr had anything to say about it, they were going to capture their cousins James, Vaughn, and Westley. Sons of Rebecca, their father’s sister, it was three determined boys against three determined boys.

The battle was on.

Eleven-year-old Christopher Titus de Lohr was at the head of it. The name Christopher after his grandfather, the name Titus because his mother had liked it. He went by the name Chris sometimes, the General other times. Whatever he was called, he was all de Lohr. As his father said, he was born a man.

And he was ready for his cousins.

He could hear them coming. They were on the floor below, listening to someone tell them to stay out of the way. It was moving day at Brython Castle, and Chris’ parents, Curtis and Elle, were moving their possessions out of the keep and into great wagons in the bailey. The king had decided that Brython should be given back over to the Welsh as part of a peace treaty with Powys, and, oddly, Gwynedd, and that meant the Earl of Hereford had to surrender the garrison to their Uncle Gruffydd. It wasn’t a hugely difficult transfer from what they’d heard from their parents, because Uncle Gruffydd was a good man, but it was more the fact that they had to move at all.

Brython had been their beloved home.

Chris and his brothers, Arthur and William, weren’t helping with the move at this time. They had been earlier, with smaller things, until the heavier items were moved and their mother had told them to go entertain themselves. So they were. They were going to entertain themselves by ambushing their cousins, who were coming up the stairs. They could hear Westley, named for their Uncle Westley and mostly called Mouse because he had brown eyes and brown hair and a little nose and moved rapidly, just like a mouse. James and Vaughn, the twins, were bigger and meaner than Mouse was. They were coming up the stairs with sticks they’d found somewhere. Once they hit the top of the stairs, the fight began in earnest.

Chris was the first one out of his hiding place, a toy sword in hand as he charged Vaughn and sent the boy to his knees. Arthur was next, a very big lad with red hair and a temper, who rushed out and kicked James in the shins. As James went down, Mouse saw William coming at him and screamed, rushing back down the steps and falling over the last few stairs so that he ended up at the bottom with scraped hands and a big bump on his chin. William was right behind him with a rope he’d stolen from the kitchen yard, and as Mouse sat at the bottom of the stairs and wailed, William tied his cousin’s hands together and started dragging him back up the stairs.

That was until Elle came up on the scene.

“William!” she gasped. “What on earth are you doing?”

William dropped the rope as his mother rushed over to untie Mouse’s hands. “Playing,” he said as innocently as a seven-year-old could. “We are all playing.”

Elle could hear the grunting and scuffling on the floor above. She looked at her son as if the lad was a hardened criminal, with horror, before shouting up the stairwell.

“Chris!” she said. “Arthur! Are Vaughn and James with you?”

The scuffling stopped immediately, and there was a long pause before Chris answered.

“Aye, Mama.”

Infuriated, Elle scowled. “All of you,” she shouted. “Come down at once!”

There was some hissing and shoving. She could hear that, too. Someone either tripped or fell. Then there was the marching of little feet, of boys coming down the stairs like prisoners coming down to face their execution. As Elle waited for the gang to arrive, Curtis appeared from the floor below.

He, too, had heard the wailing.

He pointed at Mouse.

“What happened to him?” he wanted to know. When he noticed William standing there, he suspected he knew the answer to his own question. “Ah… What have you been doing, William?”

William smiled at his father. “Playing, Papa.”

“Playing?”

“Aye, Papa. Playing. ”

Curtis happened to look at his wife, who was just pulling Vaughn off the stairs, but he saw what she was holding. “Why does your mother have a rope?” he asked.

William simply grinned and shrugged, entirely innocent of any wrongdoing, but Curtis knew that wasn’t the case. As he stood there and wondered how he was going to plead the case of William to his mother, Elle lined up Chris, Arthur, Vaughn, and James. Chris had a scrape on his face, Arthur had a bloodied nose, Vaughn had the beginnings of a black eye, and James was bloodied around the mouth. Curtis tried desperately not to laugh at the bruisers before him as Elle stood in front of the boys, her expression stern.

“Today is an important day at Brython,” she said. “And what do I find? Six boys trying to kill one another. What have we told you about that? Chris? What do you have to say for yourself?”

As the oldest, Chris knew he’d take the brunt of his mother’s rage. His father was standing a few feet away, but he knew the man was utterly powerless against his mother. It had happened too many times before. Therefore, he knew how to handle his mother.

With logic.

“We were practicing, Mama,” he said.

She frowned. “Practicing what? Death and mayhem?”

He shook his blond head. “We are traveling to Monmouth Castle,” he said. “It is a long journey. We were practicing in case we are attacked along the way. We must be prepared to fight off the outlaws who will attack us.”

Elle’s eyebrows flew up at her son’s original excuse. “Is that so?”

Chris nodded seriously. “Aye,” he said, daring to look at his father. “Papa said we must be ready to fight.”

Elle turned to Curtis, who now found himself the object of her disapproval. He scowled at his son. “Many thanks, lad,” he muttered wryly. “Now she will take a stick to me .”

Elle wouldn’t let him get away so easily. “Did you really tell them that?”

Curtis sighed. He decided to confess everything and hope for the best. “I did,” he said. “It is a long journey to Monmouth Castle, and I did tell them that we should be prepared, but I did not give them permission to beat each other bloody.”

Elle shook her head reproachfully at her husband before turning to the boys. “Mouse, stand up,” she told her nephew. “All of you will go to the kitchen yard and wash off your faces and hands. Clean yourselves up. Then you will go to the great hall, sit down, and stay there. Do not move until I come to you. And keep your hands off one another. Am I clear?”

The boys nodded solemnly. Elle pointed to the stairwell, a silent gesture to get on with it, and the six of them slipped away, hissing and whispering angrily as they headed down the stairwell. That left Elle and Curtis standing alone. Once the boys were out of earshot, Curtis broke down in giggles.

“God’s Bones,” he muttered. “They remind me so much of my brothers and me that it is frightening sometimes.”

Elle was fighting off a grin. “They are just like the lot of you,” she said, trying to sound disgusted. “But mark my words—one of these days, someone is going to be seriously injured. They play far too roughly with each other.”

Still chuckling, Curtis went to her and wrapped her up in his arms. “You must let them be true to themselves,” he said, kissing her cheek when she tried to turn away. “I know you do not like to hear that, but it is true. They must learn and they must grow, but they can only learn by doing.”

Elle was trying to avoid his seeking lips but she wasn’t trying very hard. “I do not think ambushing each other is learning,” she said. “That is Asa’s fault. He has encouraged them to do that.”

Curtis finally managed to kiss her on the mouth. “That is because he only has two daughters,” he said. “The man lives for a good fight, so he finds it in our boys.”

Elle couldn’t keep the smile off her face after that. “ Uncle Asa,” she said, shaking her head. “Who knew they’d have a Jewish uncle?”

“One who likes the thrill of battle, no less.”

She chuckled. “But he has made an excellent addition to our house, hasn’t he?” she said. “Who knew he would find another Welsh lass to marry in the end?”

Curtis nodded. “It is a good thing he did, for I do not know what I would do without him and his sword,” he said. Then his hand found her gently rounded belly. “Speaking of sword, mayhap this one will be another girl. Then we’ll have three of each, and we’ll only have to worry about the boys because the girls will be perfect.”

She thought on her blonde, curly-haired daughters. “Mary and Valeria are angels,” she agreed. “Although Valeria is more like the boys. She certainly has your grandmother’s spirit, from what your father says.”

Curtis couldn’t disagree. Their daughters were five years and four years old, respectively, and absolutely the apples of his eye. “She will ride into battle with me someday, just like her great-grandmother,” he said. “Where are the girls, anyway?”

“Where do you think?” Elle said wryly. “They are with your father, attached to him by invisible cords. When he is around, I hardly see them.”

Curtis grinned. “He adores them, and the feeling is mutual,” he said, but his smile soon faded. “But I will be honest when I say that I wish he had not come.”

Elle knew what he meant. Christopher hadn’t been well as of late—not terribly so, but enough to worry his sons, who fretted like women sometimes when it came to their beloved papa. Putting her hands on his face, she kissed him before letting him go.

“Your mother says he would not stay away,” she said, taking him by the hand and leading him toward the stairwell. “She says he has been feeling well enough, and this is a big move for us, so he wanted to be part of it. He’s well enough if he’s simply sitting down and not trying to exert himself.”

Curtis was still greatly saddened. “He’s very old,” he said. “The physic says his heart—”

“His heart is fine,” Elle said, not wanting Curtis to drift into the melancholy that so often consumed him when speaking of his father’s deteriorating health. “He is here and he is well enough. Be grateful for that and spend as much time with him as you can, Curt. In fact, find the boys and take them to your father. He will want to hear what they’ve been doing.”

Curtis sighed heavily and nodded. “He will,” he said. “Those six make him laugh.”

“They make me crazy.”

Curtis smiled weakly at her. “Admit it,” he said. “You love every minute of it when you’re not swatting behinds.”

She tried not to smile but wasn’t doing a very good job of it. “I must have been mad when I agreed to let Rebecca’s sons foster here,” she said. “How is it we have raised such wild animals?”

He shrugged. “I cannot speak for Rebecca, but in our case, look at their parents,” he said. “Our boys were bound to be battle-born, my love. There was no way around it.”

That was true. Elle paused before taking the stairs, looking around the floor, at the landing and the doors. Behind those doors were chambers where memories had been made for the past twelve years.

It had been a wonderful place to bring up a family.

“We have had good times here, haven’t we?” she said.

He paused, too, looking at the doors, the walls, the windows around them. “Aye,” he said, putting his arm around her shoulders. “Violent children notwithstanding, it has been a place of dreams. I am going to miss it.”

There was more of an impact for Elle. She moved away from the stairs, walking to the area where the boys had been lined up. She reached out to touch one of the stone walls, remembering all of the things that had happened at Brython since she had been part of the place.

“I go back a very long time here,” she finally said. “The first time I saw it, I remember thinking how intimidating it was. But also how proud I was that it belonged to the Welsh, even if it wasn’t Welsh-built.”

“It was Norman-built with Welsh stone,” Curtis said. “Those mystical blue stones that the Welsh seem to revere so much.”

She nodded, leaning against the wall and looking at him. “Blue stones to protect the gate to the Otherworld,” she said. “There’s so much about this castle that is legendary and mystical, but so much about it that is simply normal in an everyday sense. The sounds of our children, for example. Our five bright, beautiful children who carry the blood of Welsh royalty and English nobility. They are the new world. I never forgot what your father said to me those years ago about that, but I also didn’t truly believe him until Chris was born. Then I saw it.”

“What did you see?”

She smiled. “Something you said to me once,” she said. “ Open your eyes to the world around you, and I promise you will not regret it. Do you remember that?”

He smiled in return. “Of course,” he said. “And did you open your eyes?”

She nodded. “I did,” she said. “And you were right. I did not regret it.”

Curtis chuckled softly, going to her and putting his arms around her. It was true that they were leaving Brython for a new de Lohr post, the great and mighty Monmouth Castle, as part of the de Lohr expansion along the marches, but they were leaving behind a place that was precious to them both.

Years ago, Curtis had come to Brython with the intention of conquest. What he’d found was so much more than he bargained for. He had conquered a castle, but what he received in return changed his life forever. A firebrand of a woman who refused to surrender, who had fought him every step of the way, and who had finally become his all for living. To him, that was the legacy of Brython.

Open your eyes to the world around you, and I promise you will not regret it.

He had opened his eyes, too. Elle had done that for him.

Much like her, he didn’t regret it, either.

* THE END *