A Knight's Vow Read Online Free

are the womenfolk
of this castle? Aside from yourself, of course. Are they all in
the kitchen?”

    Alyson looked up at him and smiled. “At this hour I should
think they and the children will all be asleep in the store room
downstairs-it is warm and dry there, and is one of the safest
places in this keep. As you know,” she added hastily.
    He gave her fingers a gentle, reassuring squeeze. “Then
lead me on very quietly past the store room. I have no wish to
alarm them or disturb their rest. I am still hungry, so a visit to
the kitchen will do very well.”
    He always had been famished, Alyson thought fondly,
before her wits caught up with the rest of what he was saying.
“There has been no real cooking for the last few days,” she
said hastily. “All food has been moved within the keep-there
will be nothing for you to eat”
    “But we can talk freely there and I know I will find something in the cooks’ house” Guillelm grinned, driving two attractive and unlikely dimples into his tanned, lean face. “I
always did in the past”
    Apprehensive about their talking freely, Alyson went ahead
of him down the stairs, across the back of the great hall to the
huge oak door that led out of the keep into the bailey.
    Before she could draw the bolt, Guillelm did it. “I can
manage for myself.” Pulling his cloak from his shoulders, he
swept it around her and said gruffly, “It is still raining.”
    “Thank you” Ridiculously pleased at wearing something
of his, even though it trailed past her feet, Alyson hurried
down the outer staircase.
    As they passed the rough tents huddling close to the keep
and sheltering bailey walls, their feet slopping in the mud and
puddles, she heard Guillelm mutter another string of oaths in
the language of Outremer.

    “I am sorry for this,” she began in a low, shamed voice that
was almost lost in the sweeping, chilly drizzle.
    “You have nothing to be sorry for,” Guillelm answered,
stepping over a soggy, broken sack of beans spilled across
their path. “Though in truth,” he added, looking round the
dark, empty and eerily quiet bailey, where there were no fires,
nor indeed any signs of life within the tents, “I thought that I
had left such sights as these behind me in the Holy Land. Is
this the silence of hunger?”
    “Of sickness and weariness. Some brought the sickness
with them or, I am sorry to say, caught it here,” Alyson answered, relieved that he understood. Peering into the rain, she
pointed past a cart, left stranded in the bailey with a shattered
axle. “The kitchen is over there, the low timber building.”
    “That is new since I was here last,” Guillelm remarked, offering his hand to Alyson to steady her as she deftly skirted
a wide puddle of water. “How long have these poor folk been
here?” he asked, as Alyson tried to ignore the disturbing
prickle of delight the touch of his fingers gave her, like a
spark to kindling.
    “A few for over a month” Her people mostly, who had
come with her when Lord Robert had bluntly told Alyson that
she was no longer safe in her father’s manor at Olverton Minor
and that her stubborn refusal to leave and join him at Hardspen
was putting others at risk. “Most arrived in the last ten days”
    “After my father died, the Fleming increased his raiding on
those who were left with no protection,” Guillelm said grimly.
    “Yes” She heard the sudden squeal of a rat and gathered
the folds of Guillelm’s cloak closer to herself, touching the
eating knife tucked through her belt. In the past few days the
rats had grown more daring but so far, through shouts and
stamping, and even in one case, in the stables, brandishing
her knife, she had kept them at bay.
    Guillelm reached the kitchen several paces ahead of her and he shouldered open the door, which had swollen with the
water. There was no one inside-the young kitchen lads and
scullions who usually curled up snug in the ashes