Candle in the Window by Christina Dodd Page A

Peter followed, and stopped. “Coming,
William?”
    “Not now.” The golden voice contained
no emotion.
    “You didn’t say much
tonight.”
    Saura ground her teeth at the father’s
oblivion to his son’s pain and his clumsy attempt to repair a
mistake he didn’t know he’d made.
    “It didn’t bother you, did it, that we
discussed things you….” His voice trailed off.
    “Nay, Father, I’m fine.” William
sounded weary, slurring his words slightly.
    “We didn’t mean to.”
    Maud rescued the moment. “Come on, ye old
fool,” she said. “I’ll put you to bed.”
    “But—” Lord Peter sounded
amazed.
    “Come on!” She jerked him by the elbow
and he stumbledafter her, heeding her wisp of
an explanation and giving over his protests.
    Saura waited and listened. As she had instructed,
serfs cleared the tables and left the room, the slow shuffle of
their feet indicating their curiosity. She rose from her stool and
gestured, and the shuffle transformed into a stampede.
    Satisfied that every man and woman would sleep
elsewhere this night, she stroked Bula’s ears for courage and
strolled to the table. Pulling out the bench beside her lord, she
asked mildly, “What are you doing?”
    “Lady Saura! What a surprise,” he
mocked. “How amazing that you would be the one to keep me
company in my misery.”
    She was silent. How she hated that cultured
modulation of French, that refined accent he affected to convey her
lesser status.
    “What am I doing? Why, dear madame, dear nun,
I am drinking.”
    “And stinking?”
    Now he was silent, releasing at last a very small
laugh. “How clever you are. Almost clever enough to be a
man.”
    Her hands clenched the edge of the table until her
knuckles cracked. “Cleverer than this man. Smart enough to
know getting stinking drunk will never bring a change for the
better.”
    “Ah, but it will. For tonight, I am
happy.”
    “Are you?”
    “Indeed,” he said, too quickly.
    “And in the morning?”
    “I have a hard head. I never bring my dinner
up. I’ll feel fine in the morning.”
    “But will you still be blind?”
    His cup clanged on the table and ale splashed her
hand.“God’s glove! Blind drunk
tonight, blind in the morning, what difference does it make?
I’m only half a man, anyway.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “I can’t fight, I can’t defend my
lands, I can’t order the education of my son in the knightly
arts, I can’t keep a squire, I can’t ride a real
man’s horse.”
    “What’s done is done, and the egg
cracked cannot be mended. As you told them earlier, you can keep
accounts, you can sit in judgment.”
    “I’m not a man, I’m just a
monk.”
    The pity, the clogging pity, brought her to her
feet. The bench crashed behind her and her fist sent his ale mug
flying. Her normal serenity disappeared behind the wave of
disappointment and fury, and she roared in a voice that rivalled
his own. “You’re blind? So? You want to know what
trouble is? I’ll tell you what trouble is. Athele’s a
widow and her last son has died, and she carries sixty years.
She’s got no teeth and no way to support herself and pain
twists her joints, and half the village thinks she a witch because
she’s lonely and her mind wanders and she mutters to herself.
That’s trouble.” She paused, breathing hard. Somewhere
in the back of her mind, she was amazed at her temerity, her lack
of control, and her rage.
    But she didn’t want to stop. The anger of all
her years roiled in her gut and demanded an outlet, and she
shouted, “You want to talk about trouble? Maybe Geoffrey the
Miller has an excuse for to pity himself. A band of reavers crept
into the mill and stole wheat and tied him to the side of the water
wheel. Dear God, they’ve had to amputate his legs. He’s
going to live, and he’s happy. He’s grateful, but
he’ll live with pain the rest of his life, every
day.”
    Leaning her hands against his chair, she bent and
put her face to his. “But the