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me what’s not here.”
    How deliberate writing is! How insistently it races across the page, and just as demandingly takes up again, top to bottom, bristling with command.
    â€œEven a cat could see what is not there, my lord,” I heard myself say. “The letter has no seal.”
    Nigel smiled. “It’s a warrant without the king’s seal. The king is in Italy, or Crete, or in Acre itself by now, Heaven willing. Alan thinks he can winkle you into his tong-and-coal confessional, where you’ll tell him anything he wants to know.”
    â€œYou’ll keep me to spite the Exchequer’s man?” I asked hopefully. “And keep Hubert, too,” I asked, equally hopeful. “Do you need two squires?”
    â€œGod’s blood,” said Nigel, almost a happy prayer. Every Christian was warned against swearing by Jesus’s limbs, and His face and His bodily fluids. And yet, I wondered—who could know more about the stripes and spear stabs of Our Lord than a knight-at-arms?
    â€œI like you, Edmund, because you have a lively glance, a fair appearance, and a strong arm.” He smiled. “Besides, a man can use two of everything,” said Nigel.
    That night the hall did not sleep. Dozens of candles burned bright, the perfume of beeswax in the air. Tanner’s wax was rubbed into straps, spear points filed to a shining point. Wenstan gave commands, and the shadows of servants flowed across the straw-covered floor. Sir Nigel sat in a corner, reading and conferring with a man-of-law, writing down instructions, and,, most important, creating a will.
    â€œShouldn’t you and I write down our wills?” said Hubert.
    â€œI own nothing,” I said. Only my bones and my blood, I did not add.
    Hubert had trouble folding all of his belongings into the way-pack, and I helped him. “This is a sprig of rue from my mother’s garden,” he said. “I promised to bury it near the Holy City. And here is a pendant my father gave me, in the shape of the Holy Cross. You see the little glass window—I’m to put a stone from the Holy City inside, and bring it back.”
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    I left the courtyard gate in the darkness, and passed the midden, curs snapping and growling over kitchen bones. I emptied a bucket of slops, urine and solid waste, onto the steaming heap.
    From a distance the hall was a stern place, its roof squared off, glints of firelight through the window slits. And tonight this countryside was even more bleak, only a few stars in the sky behind a caul of cloud. A north wind, I thought, with a promise of more rain.
    I glanced around, alive to the fact I was being watched. But there was no one, only the hedge mice scurrying, and the great oaks, lifting branches toward the night sky.
    I found myself wishing my mother and my father could see me as I was now, among Crusaders. Or that Elviva could see me.
    But it was true—I did hear a step. And another, someone close.
    I spun, and Rannulf had me by the arm. Startled, I dropped the slop bucket.
    â€œI owe you thanks, my lord,” I said, when I could speak.
    Most knights shaved their beards, and kept their heads round-cropped. Rannulf had a short, dark beard, and his hair was a tangle. The night was too thick for me to see the color of his eyes, but they caught the dim light and reflected it.
    He thrust a heavy iron object into my hands. My hands searched the cold iron of his helmet, and found the grievous dent.
    A blacksmith’s maul in one hand, the other holding an iron-smith’s tool, I plied my might against the stubborn dent. A small crowd could not keep itself from gathering, as word got around that although it was near midnight I was working to reshape the helm of Sir Rannulf.
    Rannulf’s eyes were pearl gray, and he folded his arms and watched me, leaning against the workshop bench. Few veteran swordsmen did not have a healed gouge or lopped finger on the shield side of their