Page 18 of Peregrine's Call
“You never forgot how to live in the woods,” he said when she came back from the stream.
“Never will,” she said cheerfully. “Cecily says I’m still feral.” As soon as she mentioned Cecily, though, her eyes clouded and she sat down on her bedroll. “She’s going to be worrying about me. I should have left a message.”
“You didn’t tell anyone?”
She shook her head. “I didn’t want to be stopped.”
“You could have left a written note.”
“I thought about it, but…I didn’t.” She looked ashamed. “Everyone will be so angry at me.”
“They’ll save some rage for me,” Tav guessed.
“No. When we get back to Cleobury, I’ll take all the blame. Don’t worry. You’ll be safe from Alric,” she said.
Don’t worry. It was rather sweet how she was offering to defend him. As if anything would deflect Alric’s wrath once he found out what happened.
She yawned then, covering her mouth with the back of her hand.
“You should get some sleep. I’ll stay awake.”
“I think we’re safe enough,” she said. “A person would have to be mad to be out in these woods when they could be somewhere safe inside walls.”
That describes you perfectly, Robin, he thought but didn’t say out loud.
Robin curled up in her bedroll, pulling the blanket up over her head so she was just a little mound next to the fire. Her hip rose highest, but she was a small woman, and surprisingly delicate in form, almost like a bird. It was her personality that made her seem so dominant.
She was much easier to deal with when she was sleeping. Tav shook his head at the thought because it immediately made him think of less innocent reasons for him to see her sleeping.
He really had to stop thinking of her in that way. He deliberately turned himself so his back was to the fire and the sleeping woman. He stared out at the woods. The fire’s glow illuminated the nearest trees, but beyond that, the world was dark. A few dry leaves rattled in high branches whenever the wind picked up. Owls hooted to each other. Then a low, dark shape of some creature emerged as it passed into the firelight for a moment. Tav saw large yellow eyes staring back at him.
Then the creature dashed off. He heard the sound of a splash an instant later as the creature dived into the stream to be safe from the interlopers in its domain.
As Tav watched the woods, he thought of how he ended up here. It all started with meeting Lord Denis.
Octavian encountered Lord Denis in Jerusalem. The Frankish lord had gone on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, bringing along his wife—a somewhat unusual decision, but Lady Muriel was a devout woman who had endured some painful personal tragedies in her life. The couple hoped that a penitential visit to the holiest of places in Christendom might absolve them of whatever sins cost them the lives of their four children.
Denis and his wife stayed at the very monastery where Tav was living when they arrived in Jerusalem, and that was how Octavian first met the man he’d eventually serve as a knight.
Octavian spoke Aramaic, Latin, a little Greek and Arabic, and some French. Languages were like games to him—he could pick up the rudiments within days. He’d also trained with Brother Benuic, who’d been a soldier before he took the cowl. Octavian had a natural athleticism that fit well with Benuic’s instructions in knife and sword fighting. The result was that his education prepared him very well to live on his own no matter where in the Levant he chose to go.
He could have remained at the monastery. A part of him was drawn to the order of religious life. But at seventeen, he was far too restless to make that choice. The bald brother Marcus had given him the best advice—the church was eternal, and would always be there to welcome Octavian. But the world was wide, and God would not be displeased if Octavian wished to see it for himself.
On the monks’ recommendation, he’d been hired to escort the lord Denis and his lady safely around the city for the few months they planned to stay. During that time, he’d gotten to know both of them quite well. As it turned out, he was the same age as their youngest son would have been if he’d lived, even sharing the same birth month. Lady Muriel took that as a sign and treated Octavian much more like a relation than a hired hand.
One evening, Octavian defended Denis from thieves while the pair returned from a late mass. The small gang thought they’d cornered a rich, lazy tourist and his paid guide—who they assumed would abandon his employer as soon as a blade was drawn. Octavian had instead drawn his own knife and rushed the attackers, shocking them with his ferocity. They’d fought back because a gang’s reputation would suffer if they ran at the first hint of resistance. But Octavian fended them off long enough to get Denis to a safer location, even though he was wounded in the fight. He still bore the scar—a slash along his upper right arm. The wound, thank God, had not gone deep. It bled copiously, but the infirmary monk had cleaned and bound it well.
Denis was impressed by Octavian’s quick action and character. The bond between them deepened the longer Denis and his wife stayed in the city. Tav took them not just to the well-known holy places, but also to shrines and other places of interest throughout the area. Their collection of pilgrim medals grew accordingly, and in Bethlehem, Lady Muriel said she prayed to Mary and heard the Mother of God tell her that her children were awaiting her in heaven. The lady had collapsed with joy, and had to rest for hours before she was ready to leave the shrine.
When Denis decided that it was time to return to his own land, he extended an offer to Tav. Tav’s gift for languages, along with his ability to fight, would make him a valuable addition to Denis’s retinue. Out of gratitude for Tav saving his life, he promised that he’d not just employ Tav as a man-at-arms, but see that he was trained as a knight with all due speed. Some men didn’t become knights until they were well over thirty, but Tav was knighted in Paris at the age of nineteen—all due to Denis’s insistence.
He struggled with the honor, feeling unworthy of it. He nearly died in an early battle, except for the timely intervention of a slightly older knight who stepped in to defend Octavian’s weak side during the fight. It didn’t matter that Tav didn’t know the other man’s name or his lord. They finished the day after fighting back to back against an assault by one of Maud’s forces.
Afterward, the man introduced himself as Alric of Hawksmere, said that it was clear Octavian needed a bit of watching over, and then brought him into a circle of friends—a tight-knit group of soldiers—that Octavian remained with ever since. When he might have met death on the battlefield, he instead found a new life.
And now, he was riding north with the ward of his oldest friend in England. The irritatingly astute ward, who asked the same sort of questions he’d been asking more and more. Why didn’t he go back? Why didn’t he search for more clues to his past?
He wanted to. Tav always wanted to know more about his parents and where they came from, and why they chose to leave their own homes. Perhaps he came from a whole lineage of wanderers. Perhaps there were aunts and uncles and cousins who’d welcome his stories.
