“I’m well enough, Much. Needn’t fret,” I told him. “Are the menfolk well?”
He nodded. “Yes. Hugh Morgan’s trying to make one of the knights wed Aggie after some improprieties, which is entertaining, but the food is almost gone. We won’t last till Christmas, much less the rest of the winter.”
“You should see the feasts they have here. It’s enough to make you sick.”
He smiled at me. “It doesn’t take much to make you sick, Scar.”
It were meant to be funny, so I laughed.
“What’s it like, being one of them?”
“A noble?” I asked. He nodded. “I’m not, I don’t think. I don’t talk right. I for certain don’t look right. They all think I’m off and mad and contrary.”
His grin sloped sideways in a silly way. “You are all of that.”
“Are we talking about me?” John asked, coming up my other side and wrapping his arm round my back. “Look at the little lady we have here,” he laughed, looking at my clothes. “Where’s your knife?” he asked.
I frowned, shrugging him off, but I showed him the one I hid along my back.
Much laughed. “But where’s your second knife?” he asked.
Leaning on the rail again, I said, “My boot. But ladies ain’t supposed to show their ankles.”
John guffawed at this, leaning beside me and tucking his hat down low, and Much did to match. I wouldn’t never tell them as much, but with them on either side were the closest I felt to right in the past days.
Thoresby were next up, and getting himself onto the horse he looked frail and old. He weren’t—he were bare older than my father, and I remembered my father strong and young. But his armor were too big and his face were too grave, and my chest were strapped tight with fear for him.
The herald blew his horn and called out Thoresby’s name, and Wendeval’s came up behind it. I sucked in a breath.
“Not good?” John asked, raising his brow to me.
“If you knew how to joust, he would be a fair likeness to you,” I told him. “I saw Wendeval last night. He’s a big bruiser.”
John scowled. “I’m not just a bruiser,” he muttered.
The horn blew again and the horses launched forward. Thoresby didn’t sit well, didn’t hold the lance well, didn’t move well. “Christ,” I hissed. “It’s a damn wonder he’s riding in a straight line.”
“And this is our champion,” John said.
I hit him.
They crossed lances, and Thoresby’s lance glanced off Wendeval’s shoulder, shooting up and launching from his hand.
Wendeval’s lance struck Thoresby’s ribs, ringing with the impact but glancing rather than holding. His lance dropped, and pages ran out to get the fallen weapons.
The riders trotted back to their places and were handed up another lance.
“He’s going to lose,” John said.
“Shut it,” Much snapped at him as the horn blew.
John shrugged, and my fingers curled into the wooden fence as the horses’ strides shook the ground. Wendeval’s form were stronger, better, his arm high and lined to his shoulder, his body balanced over the horse.
Thoresby, if anything, looked worse.
Several more pounding hoofbeats and they met on the field. Wendeval leaned out and struck, his body like a strange, stretched version of John throwing a punch. Thoresby moved late, the lance hurtling toward him overfast, like he were fixed and couldn’t much move.
The ball head of the lance struck dead in the center of Thoresby’s armor, not with the clangs that the glancing blows made but with a low, hard boom.
The horse thundered on, but Thoresby were still, hanging in the air for breath after breath as his horse charged forward without him. Then his body twisted, light flashed from his silly, useless armor, and in a spinning mess he clattered to the ground, a still, twisted heap.
I ducked under the fence and ran.
Thoresby weren’t moving when I got out there, a healer a breath behind me. Thoresby’s arm were tucked under him at an ugly angle, and he uttered a groan.
My heart lurched to life in my chest. Jesus. He were alive.
The healer rolled him over and started checking him, and I sat by, kneeling on the frozen ground as more people clustered round. The crowds parted for Lady Thoresby, and I stood to meet her.
She were looking at her husband. “It’s done, Scarlet,” she whispered to me. “He can’t fight with his arm like that.” She glanced at me, her blue eyes full of water. “And I won’t ask him to.”
A cold, empty chill snaked round my spine to pool in my belly. I gripped her hand. “I know. I know. I’m sorry.”
She gripped back. “Find some other way, Scarlet. You always do.”
Her hand fell from mine, and she went forward with her husband. The crowd shifted and moved as my chest went tighter. Gisbourne would be sheriff, and all these people … all these people would suffer for it.