Nobility Chapter 28
Rebekah’s breath shuddered as she took a tentative step over the threshold. Daniel watched her gaze fall upon the dead face for barely a heartbeat. What was left of her color drained, but she didn’t appear to be entirely overcome by revulsion. Even still, she turned back to Captain Hector rapidly, angling her head so the corpse could not appear even in the corner of her vision.
“That’s Walthar. He was a tumbler and juggler. We just called him Walt because he felt Walthar was too old-fashioned…” Rebekah’s words came out in a rush, then faltered. Daniel suddenly felt the weight of her statement before descending the stairs to the cellar: These people had been her friends, and their betrayal was scarcely two days old. Even though all her fellow players must have chosen to join the plot against Lord Aidan, the girl couldn’t have any way of knowing which ones had betrayed her, in particular, or might have spoken up in her defense before she was shuffled off. It asked too much of Rebekah to simply dismiss them all as murderers and accept one’s suicide without any feeling.
The miller’s son summoned up his courage before Hector could order the hesitating Rebekah to continue. “Captain,” Daniel called, “might we remove this discussion to a place of purer air?”
Hector relented with a forced nod. “I see no reason why not. Rebekah, you must accompany me to an audience chamber where I can conduct a proper interrogatory, along with Lord Aidan if he wishes to participate. Page Daniel, your master awaits you on the drilling green, I believe.”
Daniel felt loathe to abandon his role of Rebekah’s protector, but the captain’s tone brooked no argument. He nodded his agreement, then followed after Rebekah who worked to stay on Hector’s heel as he relit his candle and quickly ascended the steps. At the head of the staircase, two stout servants waited, and they asked the captain if they were now permitted to remove the body. Hector replied in the affirmative, barely breaking stride as he led Rebekah away. The page followed the maid with his eyes as the pair disappeared into a side chamber before leaving the great hall by the tall, double doors and stepping into the bright sun of midmorning. Outside the keep’s shade and thick stone walls, the day was grown hot, and Daniel could feel a sheen of sweat forming on his forehead as he strolled about the green looking for Sir Reuben. He spied the errant knight in the tilt yard around the side of the keep, in the direction of the stables. Reuben stood at ease, speaking with two other men in Lord Aidan’s livery. When Reuben spotted Daniel’s approach, he made some closing statement with a decisive nod, and the men walked away toward the stable. Catching Daniel’s eye, Reuben pointed toward the center of the jousting tilt where the young page then spotted sets of sparring equipment leaning against the chest-high barrier. Taking Reuben’s meaning, Daniel crossed the tilt yard to the spot.
“What were you talking to those men about?” Daniel asked when the knight came within earshot.
“The diligent master smith must needs keep many irons in the fire,” Reuben replied, “while his apprentice may struggle to attend merely to one. Trust, Page Daniel, I will keep nothing from your knowledge which you would find it edifying to know, nor burden you with truths not useful for your pressing tasks.”
Daniel scowled. As a commoner, one of the laity, and even as a youth (though his childhood had nearly reached its end), the refrain that his thoughts were too simple to understand the deeds of his betters took a constant place in his world, going back as far as he could remember. He scoffed for a moment, to a blat of low brass from the sword, that at least others dismissed his questions more succinctly than Sir Reuben. Still, tolerating such condescension for so long hadn’t trained him to accept it without rebellion, even if he could rarely risk expressing it. “Trust?” he snapped before he could stop himself. “I’ve known you all of a day.”
The lanky Sir Reuben looked sidelong and down at Daniel, hesitating a moment as if waiting for his page to end his comment with a title or some other acknowledgement of station, but he replied then without insisting upon it, his voice low. “And in that day, Daniel, I swear before Almighty God I would have laid down my life for you, and I always will. Can you believe that?” Reuben placed his right hand on his page’s shoulder.
Daniel stared into Reuben’s ice-blue eyes, noting the clear, unadorned verbiage the knight used only when he meant his words to be taken as serious as life and death. Daniel knew Reuben was more clever than he let on, but to change his manner so completely by guile alone would mark him as a master manipulator, and such men in Reuben’s station did not content themselves to wandering the lands without honor or possessions. The boy nodded his acceptance of Reuben’s oath.
“Good!” the knight replied, clapping Daniel on the shoulder. “Since you are so gracious as to entrust me with your very life, it is only most natural that you would assent to place in my care something as trivial as your brain. After all, a knight’s foremost duty is assuredly to act, not to think.” Daniel noticed the twinkle in Reuben’s eye.
“Very well, Sir Reuben,” Daniel replied, pointing to the assembled training equipment. “I’ll trust the planning to the ‘master smith’…for now. Teach me how to act.”