Page 23 of Peregrine's Call
“Can you speak Latin?” Ada asked Robin.
“I was dressed as a monk, but I don’t know Latin,” she confessed. “Octavian does.”
Octavian drew his sword and knelt. He held the sword so that the point touched the earth and the hilt formed a cross. He spoke a prayer in Latin, then a few more simple lines in English, committing the body to rest and commending her soul to Heaven. Ada was crying, but silently. She clasped her hands together and kept her eyes on the grave.
Robin put her hand on the girl’s shoulder. “We’ll let you say goodbye to your mother alone. Come back to the house when you’re ready. We’ll take care of the grave afterward.”
Octavian stood up again and sheathed the sword. Robin had never seen him look more like a perfect knight. She followed him from the gravesite to the house. At that moment, she would have followed him to hell.
When they were all back in the cozy house, Ada looked more at ease. The burial ended her more acute sufferings, and now she looked at both Robin and Octavian with curiosity.
“Why is your skin so dark?” Ada asked.
“Because I was born in a place very far from here where many people have dark skin. My mother and father both did.”
Ada nodded at his explanation. “What’s the name of your home?”
“The city is called Aleppo, and it’s in the Holy Land.”
Her eyes rounded. “Really? How far is it from here?”
“Very far. A thousand miles or more, and across the Middle Sea.”
She surveyed him with a bit of incredulity. “Why did you comehere?”
He laughed. “Because here is where my path took me. For now.”
“I’m glad.” She took his hand. “I prayed every night for help, and now I have help. From a real knight, and a false monk. I suppose God thinks that will be what I need.” She smiled at Robin. “It’s all right to pretend things if it’s for a good cause.”
Robin smiled back. “I couldn’t put it better myself.”
Chapter 9
Ada had fallen asleep whileeating her supper. Robin prevented her from going face-first into her meal, and Octavian picked her up and walked her to the bed in the corner of the cottage. The girl looked tiny and fragile in his arms.
“She’ll sleep till noon tomorrow,” he predicted when he rejoined Robin.
“She was exhausted,” Robin agreed. “Trying to save a farm, while mourning her mother, and just being a little girl…it’s impossible.”
“She can’t stay here.”
“No. We’ll have to take her somewhere she can be cared for. The village church, or a nearby manor house. They can send a message to her brother or sisters, and one of them will know what to do. Anyway, she shouldn’t come back here. It’s too isolated.”
“You sound very certain.”
“I grew up on a homestead like this,” she confided. “My parents worked hard to carve an assart out of the wilderness. They farmed it, and raised livestock, and managed the surrounding forest so we had firewood and lumber. I helped my father more than my mother because I loved being outside, and I had no brothers. Just two younger sisters. So I did whatever Papa needed—I helped fix things, I set traps for rabbits. I was happy.”
The last part she hadn’t meant to say, and it felt like too intimate a confession. What did it matter if she was happy or not?
Octavian was listening closely. “What made your parents live so far from others?”
“Because they wanted to live on their own terms without some reeve telling them what to plant or which animals to slaughter for a lord’s table.”
“But without a lord’s protection,” he pointed out.
Robin nodded sadly. “So they learned too late. One day in spring, a band of men came to the door. They claimed to be foresters for the king—but they were just bandits. My father tried to send them away, but he was only one man, and there were six of them. Two men rushed my father. He yelled at me to run. They didn’t even capture him. They just stabbed him with a dagger. I ran. They killed my father and I just ran away.”
“That’s what he told you to do,” Octavian said.
