Dragonblade Trilogy - 01 - Dragonblade Read Online Free Page A

twelve-year-old Toby. As a result, the girls were inordinately
close.
    Supper was mutton,
boiled and sauced, marrow pie, a pudding of currants and nuts, and bread made
from precious white flour. Ailsa kept trying to steal pieces of bread and Toby
would shoo her away. The cook was an elderly woman who had been Toby’s wetnurse
years ago. The kitchen of Forestburn was low-ceilinged to keep in the heat and
mostly constructed of stone; therefore, on a cold day, it was the very best
place to be. But on a day like today, with the added stress of an important
visitor, Toby was sweating rivers. 
    “Suppertime is near,”
Ailsa could always judge by the rising of the bread. It happened at the same
time, every day, without fail. “Do you suppose Dragonblade will be here soon?”
    Toby put the last
touch on the finished marrow pie and wiped the beads of perspiration on her
forehead. “I told you not to call him that,” she told her sister. “And, aye, he
will be here soon. I must go and change my clothes.”
    Ailsa followed her to
the second floor of the manor. Her father had received license several years
ago from the barons of Northumberland to build a fortified house to protect his
family and farm. It was a stone structure with battlements, but no protecting
walls other than the heavy wooden hedge fence that surrounded the immediate area
of the home. There was a great hall, a solar, and the kitchen on the ground
floor, while the upper floor held three large rooms and another smaller room
used for bathing and dressing. Ailsa and Toby shared a room, their mother had
one room, and their father another.
    A servant helped Toby
strip off her clothes. While Ailsa lay upon the bed and continued her musings
about their alleged royal relations, Toby went to the smaller adjoining room
and stood inside the great iron tub as the servant poured buckets of warm water
over her body to rinse off the sweat. Scraping off the excess water, she then
doused herself in rosewater before drying off and dressing in a surcoat of
emerald damask, set with a scoop-necked collar of white satin and embroidered
in gold thread. Her luscious hair was braided, left to drape over one shoulder.
Ailsa got off the bed and danced around her as the servant put the finishing
touches on her hair.
    “Do you suppose
Dragonblade will marry?” she asked.
    Toby sighed heavily.
“Ailsa, if you call him that one more time….”
    Ailsa kissed her cheek
and hugged her neck, careful not to ruin the hair. “Sir Tate, I mean. Would it
not be fancy if he married you? You could live at Harbottle Castle.”
    “He will not marry me.
He was married, once, so I was told.”
    “Where is his wife?”
    “I heard that she
died.”
    Ailsa looked sad as
only a child can. “He must miss her, do you suppose?” From the downstairs, they
heard the front door bang open, a signal that their father had returned home.
Multiple voices indicated guests and Ailsa began to jump up and down. “They are
here, they are here!”
    “I shall greet them,”
Toby leapt off the stool with the servant still fussing with her hair. “Go and
see to Mother, Ailsa. Make sure she is tended to before you join our guests.”
    Ailsa protested. Toby
took her by the hand and led her to the door of her mother’s bower. The old
woman, hearing their voices, called out.
    “Toby!”
    It was a bellow, a
barely recognizable word. Toby, knowing by the tone that her mother’s mood was
not good, bade Ailsa to stay outside. It would not have been healthy for the
child to go in. With a breath for courage, she ventured into the dark, musty
bower.
    It was like a chamber
of horrors, a dusty, smelly, cluttered mess. Rats hid beneath the bed, waiting
for the scraps of food that the invalid woman would drop. Judith Cartingdon had
been a lovely woman once. But ten years of bad health, the inability to walk
and the near-inability to speak, had turned her into a caricature of her former
self.  When Toby came near the bed, Judith