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held back.
    â€œIf you look like a squire,” said Wenstan, with difficulty, “if you look fighting-able, you may win our lord Nigel’s heart.”
    I had never held a sword, and I was surprised at how well it fit my hand. And yet, when I gave a cut at the empty air, I felt the strangeness of the weight, my body out of balance. Wenstan gave me a smile and shook his head.
    Someday, I swore to myself, I’d use a sword to whisk an Infidel’s blade from his fist, chop off the hand, the arm, and the head. With Nigel, Rannulf, all of them, looking on amazed.
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    Winter Star grew stoical at my touch, as I dabbed tree tar onto a cut on her knee, caused, Hubert said, by the horse running through the woods. “The horse was hoping I’d be brained by a branch. Which I was, nearly.” He had me feel a bruise like a dove’s egg at the crown of his skull.
    I sat at a stone wheel, working the pedal myself, grinding sparks from my age-gray sword. The housemen accepted my presence among them, as I took my time, happy to have my hands at work. I mended a girth-strap, to sling under a horse’s belly, as I understood it, and hold the saddle where it belonged. I reworked a new buckle for a hasp for one of the pleasure-women’s ivory lockets.
    The household brought me metal work, ivory crosses dangling by a frail link, tinker’s pots cracked after only the second boiling. All the servants save Wenstan were to travel to other masters once Sir Nigel left on Crusade. Only a few would remain to husband the place in its emptiness and keep beggars and outlaws from taking roost.
    It was understood by all that to leave for Crusade was to travel to one’s death—few Crusaders expected to return. There was sadness as well as eagerness to make things right in the air all afternoon, into the evening. The word was about that a moneyer’s apprentice and a hammerman was available, no work too fine. I blushed to mend the love lockets of the brazen ladies, keeping my hands alive so my thoughts could sleep. The cook’s carving knife needed a new rivet, a medallion of Our Lady needed a hook-and-hook, an easy way to attach a necklace, and strong, if the work is well wrought.
    Late in the day, when it was almost too dark to mend the bucket handle in my hands, Hubert leaned into the smith’s shop and said, “Sir Nigel sends for you.”

chapter EIGHT
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    Nigel sat at his table, paring a green apple.
    At his elbow was a document, walnut ink letters on parchment.
    â€œThis fruit should have been cider months ago,” Nigel said, handing me half the fruit, peeled entirely of its skin.
    I sat and took a bite of the mealy flesh.
    â€œAlan de Roche, the Exchequer’s man, has changed his mind,” said Nigel, giving a nod toward the paper on the table. “It seems Alan suspects there is a hidden trove of silver unaccounted for in your master Otto’s household. Dig and pry as they may, Alan is surprised at your master’s cunning. If Rannulf had not found you this morning, you would be in chains again, with hot coals being applied to your privy parts.”
    â€œIt was a blessing that Sir Rannulf discovered me,” I said.
    â€œA blessing?” He picked a fleck of apple skin from his tongue with some delicacy. “Perhaps. But it was no accident.”
    â€œThen I owe you my continuing thanks,” I said, my voice trembling.
    The fire spat and sighed in the hearth.
    â€œIndeed you do. The law is a knot. You are mine, now, breath and bone. If I want you.”
    â€œI am your servant,” I offered.
    He laughed. “Don’t be so sure you could master Hubert in a fight,” he said. “Small creatures can have great strength.”
    â€œLike a spider, my lord,” I said.
    â€œOr a cutpurse,” said Sir Nigel.
    The night was cold, even in the hall.
    â€œDo you see what’s missing? Scan this writing, Edmund, and tell