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As ever, I’m struck by the ease at which she’s taken to this journey. A woman raised to be queen, and yet she’s not once complained about the lack of a bed. She’s laundered her own gown, even learned how to skin a rabbit. A task I’d been surprised Hilla wanted to learn.
“Not long.”
She turns back and sits up in the saddle, and looks around us. There is nothing to see now, but beyond the ridge in front of us . . . I look forward to her reaction at seeing d’Almerita. The walled town, host to Castle d’Almerita and the capital of Meria, is not far from us.
Resting back against me, she says nothing. We ride in companionable silence, and I wait. She’s seen d’Almerita before, but with a child’s eyes. Mayhap she will not be as awestruck as I was when Baldric and I first climbed this ridge. For a boy who’d never left his home, it had been a remarkable sight indeed. I can easily recall my feelings from that day.
Hope. Trepidation. Wonder.
Saved from the streets and brought to the greatest town in all the Isle. That boy had been scared too, but not for long. Not three years later I returned from a visit to my mother an entirely different person. No longer a boy of ten and nine but a man who’d learned how to never be afraid again.
“Oh my.”
Indeed.
Even from this distance, the blues of the Merian Sea glitter behind the walled town, Castle d’Almerita rising high above the other buildings.
“Tis beautiful.” Hilla leans forward. “So much more than I remember.”
Although her own home is as spectacular in some ways, the colors here, oranges and reds and whitewashed stone, are very different than in Edingham. As we traveled south, the days have become warmer and warmer. Flowers that could be found here alone bloom all around us.
From this distance, the turmoil Meria now faces is hidden.
“You are sure about this?” she asks.
Unlike these past weeks, I’ve many allies in Meria. Baldric’s son among them.
“Aye,” I reassure her as we move once more, confident in the well-defined plan. “You will be safe here, Hilla.”
Last eve she bathed in the lake near where we stayed. Resisting the temptation to go to her, to be assured she was safe even though none were close by—indeed we never did see reivers again, or the men from Craighcebor—I finally convinced myself the desire was a selfish one.
And not the first selfish thought I’d had these past days.
Riding with her. Sleeping near her. I’m ready for this torture to end. No stranger to women, both before and after I was recruited, although not since I took my “vows,” tis plain enough I need to put distance between myself and this particular woman.
Another man’s wife.
Hilla refuses to be presented to the king in “such a state” and I need information, so as we ride into the city gates, I steer us toward another inn rather than the castle. Protocol forbids strangers here, but there is no help for it. Circumstances force us through the winding streets into an alley more well-preserved than some main roads in other towns.
When we reach the back of the building and dismount, I tie my horse to a post.
“Why do we wait? I thought you mentioned a tavern?”
Even though we are on the outskirts of town, too many people mill about. Hilla peeks over my shoulder to the sea in the distance. No wall separates the water and d’Almerita here. The cliffs beyond us are a natural barrier all along the coast.
“Back to not speaking,” she mutters.
I smile inwardly. Silence unsettles Hilla.
As the lone straggler leaves our alley, I knock four times in quick succession, followed by a fifth knock.
After a peephole opens, and then promptly closes, the door swings open I grab Hilla’s arm and pull her inside.
Although it appears as any other tavern, Ale and Bedde is anything but.
“Come with me.”
Weaving through tables of men who do not glance at us, men as trained as I am to see without seeing, I steer us to a set of stairs in the back. Climbing them, my heart pounding in my chest for having Hilla in here, knowing I’ve no other choice, we make our way to the end of the corridor.
