comfortably. ‘You’ll mend fast.’
‘Yes, sir.’ Alexander slowly chewed another sliver of apple, the taste sharp on his palate, and raised his eyes to Cerizay’s shrewd grey ones. ‘I want to earn my way in the world, not be a burden.’
‘Oh, you’ll earn your way all right,’ Hervi declared, ‘every penny of it.’ He spoke brusquely, his words a shield against revealing tender emotions.
Arnaud considered the younger man thoughtfully. ‘Can you fight?’
‘A little. I learned to use a spear and shield before I was sent away to Cranwell, and before he died, my father had begun to teach me the rudiments of swordplay, and how to ride like a knight.’
‘Aye, you weren’t a bad little horseman for a ten-year-old,’ Hervi acknowledged. ‘Of course, it depends how much you have remembered, and if you have any talent for the other skills.’
Arnaud finished his dried fruit and continued to study Alexander with slightly narrowed eyes. ‘Show me your hands,’ he said suddenly.
Obedient but mystified, Alexander held them out to him, palms upwards. There was scarcely a tremor now. A line of tough, blistered skin marked the labour of gripping a hoe and rake in the priory’s fields. His fingers too bore the rough texture of hard toil, but nothing could detract from their elegant symmetry. Arnaud took them in his, turned them over, pushed back the oversleeves and examined the long, scarred wrist-bones.
‘Takes after his mother,’ Hervi said. ‘There’ll never be any meat on him.’
‘He’s got time, and he is not as dainty as he looks,’ Arnaud answered judiciously. ‘See the strength of the bones here?’ He raised Alexander’s right wrist and presented it to Hervi like a horse-coper selling the points of a thoroughbred colt. ‘See the span here? Add some weight and experience, and here sits a competent soldier.’ He released the wrist. ‘How old are you, lad?’
‘He’ll be eighteen at the feast of St John,’ Hervi said.
‘So he will likely not grow any taller.’ Arnaud nodded.
‘He stands need to. His head’s already in the clouds!’
A faint smile crossed the older man’s face and he turned to his daughter. ‘Where are your knucklebones, child?’
As mystified as Alexander, Monday opened the small drawstring pouch at her waist, drew out the polished pig’s-foot knuckles with which she sometimes gamed of an evening, and handed them to her father.
‘Do you know how to play?’
Alexander nodded, his puzzlement deepening. Knucklebones was a game of speed, skill and manual dexterity. The bones were held loosely in the fist and then tossed in the air. The object was to catch them again on the back of the hand without dropping any.
‘Show me.’
Alexander glanced at Hervi, then back at Arnaud de Cerizay. With a shrug he took the bow-shaped pieces of bone and closed his fingers over them. If this was some strange form of initiation ceremony, then it was a simple enough test to pass.
Drawing a steady breath, he tossed the knucklebones lightly in the air and shot out his hand to catch. The sequence of movements was almost too swift for the eye to follow. Two knucklebones landed squarely. A third rocked on the edge of his hand but did not fall. Alexander tossed them again, this time centring them precisely, and then once more with the same result.
‘Go on.’ Arnaud gestured when he hesitated. ‘I will tell you when to stop.’
Time and again Alexander tossed and caught the bones, only dropping them once when Hervi moved on his stool and cast a sudden shadow over the play. At last Arnaud declared he had seen enough, and there was approval in his eyes as Alexander cupped the bones in his palm and returned them to Monday.
‘You have good coordination, lad,’ he commented, and smiled at Hervi. ‘Perhaps even better than your brother’s.’
‘Anyone can play knucklebones,’ Hervi growled. ‘Lance and sword and mace are different matters entirely.’
‘Oh, indeed they