Chapter Seven

Maria

There was once again silence between Nicolo and me as we travelled (having first tracked down the horses which, as horses will, gravitated to the nearest food) but it was a very different type of silence to that which had dominated the day before.

There was no longer a stiff awkwardness between us, instead it was an almost giddy silence, as if there were a secret between us about which we couldn't speak, even though we were the only two there. I couldn't look at my master without breaking into a grin and he would look back at me with a softly indulgent smile. I didn't understand it, but the roles of master and squire were gone and all that remained was the two of us—all that remained was Nicolo and Charlotte.

It would have been a lie to say there were no doubts in my mind. Not about what we'd done last night (I didn't regret it at all), but about what happened next and what last night had meant to him .

The main reason for those doubts was that I knew what last night had meant to me and how it had muddied everything I'd come here to do. Actually, that wasn't true—my feelings for Nicolo had been muddied far before we'd ever shared one another's bodies. And the muddiness had really taken firm root once I'd discovered what Balduin had been up to. Regardless, I was now of the firm mind that not only did Nicolo not deserve to die, but I would certainly not be the one to do it and, more than that, I now wanted to protect him against those who might try to end his life. Just how I would accomplish that, though, and whether or not I should tell him the truth about Balduin's injustice was something that continued to prick away at me. As did that little boy, still imprisoned in Balduin's secret room.

Making a conscious decision, I put the doubts aside. There was nothing I could do about them now. I would come up with a plan to rescue the boy as soon as we returned—that was at the top of my list. As to my other concerns… well, it was too early for such thoughts and internal debates. Besides, nothing was going to spoil the way I felt today, as if I was floating, buoyed up by something inside me that hadn't been there the day before. Who knew that a person's virginity could be such a heavy weight? Or maybe it was love that was lifting me up?

I inwardly shuddered at the thought.

‘Love'. That was a big word and the very idea of it scared me because its mere presence inside my thoughts pointed to the bigger picture—I'd not only gotten completely over my head with this situation with Nicolo, but I was now drowning.

I wondered what was going through Nicolo's mind. Although I'd gotten to know him fairly well in the last two months, I'd never seen him like this before, so relaxed, not constantly on his guard, an easy smile playing around his handsome features. And he'd never treated me this way before—as if we were, well… as if we were equals. Of course, I'd already noted how different he was outside of the Gath, but today that difference seemed even more pronounced. I liked to hope I had a little something to do with it.

I shot a glance in his direction and found his gaze on me.

"You're staring," I said, unable to hide my smile.

"I can't think of a good reason not to. I like the view."

He certainly said all the right things, but did he say the same to all his women? Was it just habit now? He was so experienced, did he know all the right things to say and do to make woman feel this way? There were those damned doubts again. Why couldn't I just enjoy the moment?

"There." Nicolo pointed ahead, to a little village we were coming upon, nestled in amongst the hills that had started to swell from the landscape like a warning of the steeper peaks beyond.

"That's where we're going?"

Nicolo nodded. "The village of Simnel. Unless I've read my map wrong." He paused and turned a considering look at me, as if he was deciding something.

I swallowed hard as I looked at him. "I don't believe you told me why we are traveling there."

He nodded, and I held my breath as I wondered if he would tell me the truth.

"I believe that's where my mother is."

"Your mother?" I repeated with a frown as inwardly I was smiling. He'd trusted me with the truth—and a truth that was very close to his heart. Granted, I'd figured that at some point he would tell me what the nature of this trip was about—but then I'd also figured that if he hadn't wanted me to know, he could have left me in whatever town we found ourselves in and traveled on to meet his mother on his own. For all I knew, that might still be his plan. I hoped not…

He nodded again. "My birth mother from whom I was taken when I was a child. That's what this journey was all about, Charlotte. I want you to know this beforehand because…" And then he seemed to lose his words.

"Because?"

He looked over at me. "I don't want to tell you just because I have to tell you; I want to tell you because I would like you to know."

"Thank you."

Yesterday, I'd gotten behind the mask of Master Nicolo, and now he was a changed man. I was sure of it. As for me? I'd never felt this way before—experienced such strange emotions. Usually I was cold, calculated and calm. And now… now it was as if an avalanche of feelings and emotions had descended upon me and I wasn't sure how to make sense of them.

***

Peasants scurried this way and that as we rode into Simnel. I realized they were as intimidated by me in my fine squire's costume, my sword buckled to my side, as they were of Nicolo. I wanted to say ‘ I'm just like you ', but that was condescending, and probably untrue.

"We're looking for Mistress Maria," said Nicolo to a terrified man behind a fruit and vegetable stall, who hadn't run away with everyone else for fear of abandoning his marrows.

It didn't escape my notice that Nicolo had said ‘ we're looking ' not ‘ I'm looking '. That was the difference between today and yesterday. If my own feelings had changed and my emotions were on high, I had a feeling the same could be said for Nicolo. Perhaps not to the same extent, but there was very obviously something different between the two of us. Whatever distance, whatever ice had existed there before, it was all melted now. And I couldn't be happier.

The man opened and closed his mouth a few times.

"Relax, friend," smiled Nicolo. And there was another difference between him here and him in the Gath. Back home, Nicolo lived on his reputation for ruthlessness; he called no man ‘friend' but the prince who was truly anything but.

"You mean Maria?" suggested the grocer, catching on quickly.

"I do."

"Ranolf's wife?"

The flicker across Nicolo's features was almost imperceptible, but I saw it. He had perhaps not thought about what his mother might have been doing for the last two decades—mothers perhaps are always frozen in time, the same as the last memory one had of them. I had no memories of my own mother so I didn't know.

"Perhaps. I don't know anything about her family."

"She… errr…" the man stumbled.

"She's not in any sort of trouble," Nicolo clarified. The nobility of the Gath did not, I guessed, get to Simnel very often, and when they did, it was probably seldom good news.

Nicolo's words seemed to calm the poor man a little at least and he pointed down the muddy stretch that the locals presumably called a street.

"Straight down there, aye, take a right at the pine an' you'll see Ranolf's place on the edge o' town wiff the pen o' goats out front."

"Thank you."

Nicolo turned Proteus to follow the man's instructions. I followed behind. He rode more slowly now, weighed down by anticipation I imagined; fear of the unknown. He'd never thought to see his mother again, believing her dead all this time, for the meeting to go badly would probably be worse.

"Are you alright?" I asked in a small voice.

"Always." A flash of the old Nicolo. "But I'm very glad you're here with me." And then the new.

Towards the outskirts of Simnel, a single, tall pine tree stood, as if in defiance of the village itself, daring someone to cut it down. We turned right and hadn't gone far before I saw Nicolo stiffen in his saddle.

Up ahead was a two-story wooden house, comfortable and weathered, expanded here and there over the years, patched and mended; a lived-in house, a Home . In front of it was a garden filled with vegetables and a fenced off area in which six or seven goats gamboled in that loose-jointed way goats do. At the present, they gamboled around the figure of a woman who was holding a leather bucket, from which she cast out scraps for the goats to eat.

She looked up as we approached. The bucket dropped from her hands.

Looking back, it sometimes seemed to me as if I remembered nothing of that reunion between mother and son, and yet it seemed simultaneously to be seared into my memory. Perhaps I recall only the broad strokes, or the feel of it rather than the events themselves. I saw Nicolo leap down from his horse, half in a hurry, half apprehensive. I saw his mother's faltering strides as she recognized the violet-eyed child who'd been taken from her, now grown into a strong and impressive man.

I saw the steps stop as emotion overcame her and her knees buckled, and it was only then that Nicolo rushed forward and vaulted the fence to catch his mother as she fell. And I saw their arms clutch each other, and I heard words (though I can't recall what they were) between wrenched sobs.

Then my memory takes me to my horse, whom I'd secretly named ‘Amber' for the flecks in her eyes, as I dismounted, tied her up and patted her down. I then did the same for Proteus, so he wouldn't wander off in search of food. I focused on the animals so I wouldn't intrude on the private, personal moment that played out behind me, while the goats picked at the spilled scraps then nudged their owner on the off-chance she had more.

But her mind was elsewhere, her mind was on a moment she'd dreamt of for twenty years, a moment she never thought would come and yet for which she never ceased to hope. I didn't even know how long they remained like that, close together in an embrace that had to make up for so many lost years.

I left them to it and went to explore Simnel.

That did not take so very long as Simnel was a cruciform village, based along and around two, broad, intersecting streets, then sprawling out into homesteads and farms around its fringes.

Once I became tired of everyone staring at me in fear from behind their shutters or simply running away from me, I headed out of town, towards the forest that spilled down from the hills and provided the village with its wood and game.

I liked the quiet of the pine forest, and the sweet, sappy smell of the needles underfoot. For a woman who'd never been out in the country before, this was an adventure but also a revelation. I had no idea that anywhere so very beautiful and so very peaceful existed. On cue, a deer trotted into my path. Like every other resident of Simnel, it took one look at me and ran off the other way.

At the edge of a clearing, I could hear water, and I followed the sound until I reached a break in the trees and gasped at the spectacle before me. A small lake, as smooth as glass spread out before me, fed by a waterfall that tumbled from the hillside, splashing down in a shower of spray. A few feet from me, a stately heron stalked through the shallows, narrow head twitching this way and that in search of its prey. With a darting gesture, it plunged its beak into the water and emerged with a fish. It gave me a smug look and flapped off.

Finding a comfortable spot, I sank down to the grass and listened to the quiet. Nature is never silent, there's always water, wind, the rustling branches, the buzzing insects, the twittering birds and the discreet background whispering of some animal you can't see but which is definitely there. But it can be sublimely quiet too. I'd thought the court garden to be a little slice of paradise, but I now realized this was what it was trying to copy, and it failed on every level.

This was real. It was true.

Inevitably, my mind drifted to the pair I'd left behind and I wondered what Nicolo and his mother might be talking about, if either had found the strength to talk. Would it be awkward after so long a gap? Or would the natural bond between them cross the divide of all those years? I was happy enough to leave them to find out for themselves.

What would this reuniting with his mother mean for Nicolo? How would it tell upon his future? His plans? Would it change him beyond the changes I'd already witnessed in him? And would those changes continue when we returned to the Gath or would I resume my role as his ‘squire'?

The thoughts made me wonder about my own future, which had always been so certain, laid out for me by the people who had brought me up. And they'd done a good job—at least I thought so. My childhood had been a happy one. But it was designed to put me on the path to a future that no longer felt like it was mine. I wasn't sure what my future looked like, but I was open to it having other possibilities now. Maybe it didn't all need to be planned out in advance.

Obviously, I wasn't going to kill Nicolo. If I was being honest with myself, looking back at the number of excuses I'd made over the past two months, that had probably been the case for quite a while already. Perhaps I'd never planned to kill him. And perhaps it wasn't all because of the feelings I had for him.

I had the skills, but maybe there was something within me that made me inadequate as an assassin. Maybe the actual act of killing a person, when it wasn't a fair fight, was beyond me. That certainly closed out ‘assassin' as a viable career choice.

Not killing Nicolo would undoubtedly lead to some problems down the line, but right now, with the sun on my face and the sound of rushing water calming my mind, I was inclined to leave those problems for another day.

It wasn't just that I no longer had even the slightest inclination to kill Nicolo, I now found that I could not imagine my life without him. I'd been lying here thinking about what the future might hold for him, and I found that what I most wanted was for his future to include me, because mine seemed empty without him.

Yes, we'd only shared one night of intimate passion and it was silly to now be mapping out a life together, but I couldn't help how I felt and I couldn't ignore those feelings that seemed to have been brought to the surface by the quiet peace of my surroundings.

Opening my eyes (I wasn't one hundred percent certain when I'd closed them) I looked around at the panorama of nature. This wouldn't be such a terrible place in which to build a future. It only needed one thing to make it perfect, and it was probably time for me to head back and see how that ‘one thing' was getting on with his mother.

As I walked back, the pine forest seemed to whisper to me, begging me not to leave. I heard the sound of ducks having a minor argument back at the lake, of squirrels dashing along branches, always in a hurry, and the constant, earnest chatter of the birds. And I felt as if they were saying one thing: don't go.