The Priest of Blood by Douglas Clegg Page B

faster.
    I could not help but smile as I watched her. What was she celebrating? What happy circumstance had come to pass?
    I had been closing the swans up in a pen for the evening when I saw the blur of motion as she rode—for at first I couldn’t see even her lovely red hair but that it seemed like a trail of fire in the last of the sun. I cannot say that there is love at first sight, but I can say with certainty that there is something in the human soul that recognizes the kinship to another soul, even at a distance. This, I felt for her, though I knew little of her, nor was she my equal. Perhaps it was her beauty, which was unfettered and striking.
    She was my better in nearly every way, and I had no hope for her. A girl of her station and beauty would have been contracted to wed for many years—perhaps as early as birth, depending on how the baron conducted his estate. She had a spirit that none of her sisters possessed, for I had seen them, two others, tall and dour-looking like Roman Fates, ready to spin, measure, and cut their own destinies.
    But she was like a faerie princess, escaped from some goblin’s lair.
    Alienora de Whithors was her name, and I whispered it in my prayers at night once I’d heard it. It seemed exotic and spun of gold, that name, the evocation of an angel when I dared to say it aloud. She was not much older than I, and she sometimes laughed when she saw me herding the swans as she passed across the courtyard on her way to her own chores (for yes, even noblewomen had work to accomplish, for few were idle in those days, for idleness was believed to be, by some, the source of plague). To say that I found her enchanting would be an understatement. I had felt an intense, cruel heat when I chanced to see her. She destroyed me with a pleasant glance, and honored me when she ignored my attentions as she rode her pony along the fields or when she sat with her sisters at the windows overlooking the courtyard.
    My master forbade me to speak with her when he saw me glance her way. “She is betrothed to a nobleman older than even the baron. A man of wealth and power from the north. Know your place, Falconer, and you shall be content with the serving wenches, who are comely and handsome.”
    But one sight of Alienora could turn my thoughts to Heaven and Hell at the same time.
    My predicament became worse when I saw her speaking with Corentin, for I saw in him his plan, which was to gain her affection and improve his status in the baron’s household. He had used the monks to learn the rudiments of reading and writing to further his ambitions, and now he would use a pale young girl to continue on this journey to the stars. I felt as if I could read his blasted heart, and as much as I despised him, I could not help but recognize my own ambitions in his. He and I had been born out of fortune, and we lived in a world where fortune either smiled or scowled. There was not much to be done about it, unless one were clever. Corentin Falmouth was clever, and although I knew his heart to be that of an eel, I felt a pang of jealousy that he might win the young maiden’s favor before me. Although he would have no hope of marrying her, I hated to think that he might entertain a thought of seducing her at all. He would ruin her if she allowed him even to steal a kiss. He would take her maidenhead and her purity and dash them to the ground.
    This was a genuine fear of mine, for it was not uncommon for noble ladies to take lovers from among the household as it suited them, in secret. Only those of us who worked in the halls and fields would be the wiser, for those of noble breeding never seemed to be aware of these couplings. They lived as if what they did among the servants had no effect on their piety or chastity, and they did not see us as entirely elevated beyond the state of animals, to some great extent.
    I saw Alienora de Whithors as more pure than any other young lady of the household, even her pious sisters, and