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“I dreamt,” she said, “of the day I learned my parents were killed.”
“A dream you often have?”
How did he know? She finished the food he’d given her, only for it to be immediately replenished.
“Aye,” she admitted.
“How were they killed?”
The very idea of telling him would have seemed absurd a few days earlier. None knew of what she was about to share. But Guy was different.
His cause was her own.
Popping the last bit of meat into her mouth, she reached for the skin. After a long swig of ale, Sabine shifted away from the tree and toward her unwitting husband.
It was time for a bit of truth.
“I suspect they were murdered.”
Guy recoiled.
“My father once served as marshal for the king in his youth, at Holgate Castle. When the king was a prince, of course. Even then, my father despised him. Knew the kind of king he would become. The son of a minor baron, he had little land and even less coin. But he had my mother, whom he met at Holgate. And he had me.”
Guy listened intently.
“One day, a dear friend of my father’s nearly broke down our door with his knocking. I remember it well—the sound awoke me from a deep slumber. He was less than a day’s ride ahead of the sheriff’s men, coming to arrest him.”
“To arrest your father? For what offense?”
“Plotting with Robert Fitzwalter against the king’s life.”
Guy had obviously not expected that answer.
“He and my mother fled to Lispen Castle in County Durham. I was sent to Lord Burge, my father’s overlord, despite begging to go with them. But my father insisted it was too dangerous. There was brief discussion of my mother coming with me, but Burge would never have accepted her. As it was, he resisted taking me as his ward but was shamed into doing so.”
“Burge knew why your parents fled?”
She nodded. “Nay. Though he despises John as much as any Northern lord, he would never participate in an open rebellion against the king.”
She took a deep breath and forged ahead.
“Less than a fortnight after arriving at Dunham Castle, I stood in the hall as Burge delivered news of their deaths to me. They were apparently in an accident of some sort. The details have always been murky. I suspect the king’s men found them.” Sabine tucked her legs up under her. “The dream,” she finished weakly.
“I am sorry, Sabine.”
Something about the way her name fell from his lips brought forth tears. Sabine had cried for so many days she’d felt hollow by the time she arrived at Holybourne. The emptiness had only retreated due to her desire to escape.
He reached over, wiping away the single tear more tenderly than a mother comforting a newborn babe. Certainly not the reaction she’d expected from the hardened mercenary. Pulling back, Guy sat against the tree.
“You are the daughter of rebels,” he said, more to himself than to her.
Sabine smiled for the first time that night.
“Nay, husband.” His wide-eyed expression every time she said the word, as if the reminder startled him, made her want to use it more. “Not just the daughter of rebels. You’ll not be rid of me until I’m able to do my part in this mission of yours.”
His eyes widened.
“John is my king too,” she finished, willing him to understand. To accept her support. Not to relegate her, as Lord Burge and the nuns had done, to a role she was not destined to fill.
