"Bought! Do you not mean that he held them enfeoffed?"
"Nay, for he is a squire, not a knight. But you have the gist of it," she said bitterly. "If he died without heir, his lands reverted to Sir Dunmore, or his heir."
Geoffrey wondered at the bitterness, but was sure he would learn the reason for it. "Surely there was money enough for a wedding also."
"Aye; he wed the prettiest lass in the village—or so he assured me, though my mother denies it..." For a moment, her face lapsed into a fond smile that was tinged with longing, but stern discipline quickly erased it. "He built a large house, for her to fill with children. I was the middle child of five, and the older of the two girls—but there were two brothers elder and one younger, so I learned early that a girl must stand up for herself, or be pushed aside."
"And you were not of a temperament to be pushed aside."
Quicksilver smiled with relish. "No, I was not."
"Surely you did not learn swordplay from chastising your brothers!"
"No, but they did afford me great practice at fighting with my bare hands."
Geoffrey remembered his own childhood. "Thus it is with brothers and sisters, when they are small."
"True," Quicksilver said, "but my father saw, and determined that I should never be at their mercy. He gave lessons in swordplay to all his children, not the boys alone. He also taught us to fight with wooden knives, and quarterstaves, and taught us archery."
"Your mother must not have been pleased with such unladylike pursuits."
"She was not. She retaliated by teaching us all to clean and cook, reminding us that we were, after all, of peasant stock, and that his sons might yet be glad of a few skills that would make them more valuable to their lord, as stewards if as nothing else."
"Or as squires," Geoffrey said softly.
Quicksilver nodded, gazing off into the past. "So he noted; so he told them when my brothers complained of having to do 'women's work.' Father told them of his labors for Sir Dunmore, told them so often that they ceased fussing to avoid his lectures."
Geoffrey grinned, feeling a bond with boys he had never met. "It does not sound like a noisome childhood."
"Oh, it was not," Quicksilver said softly. "Noisy, perhaps, but never noisome. We quarreled and we played, we fought and we rejoiced—but there was never true bitterness or enmity. However, every childhood must end." Hers had ended when her body underwent the magical transformation into womanhood. She blossomed into amazing beauty, and the village boys took notice. "I loved the life I lived," she told Geoffrey, "though your fine court ladies might sneer at it as provincial and boring—but I could think of no higher purpose than to become a wife and mother, like all the grown women I knew; I could think of no greater vocation than that, for it is the making of people and the rearing and training of their minds and souls, and surely there can be no life that serves a higher purpose."
"No, indeed," Geoffrey said, awed, "when you think of it in those terms. Yet you seem to have been called to a vastly different role, damsel. Why did you not marry?"
"Why, because I was revolted at the thought of climbing into bed with any of the boys I knew!" she told him. The boys, of course, had not been revolted at the thought of climbing into her bed—and they set about trying to achieve just that.
CHAPTER 4
"Come, sweeting!" one callow swain breathed, clasping her sharply to him one moonlit night. "You are not so far above me in birth that you should look down your nose at me—and am I not a fine figure of a man?"
"If you can call an 'eight' a fine figure!" Angrily, Jane tried to push him away. "You are far too round above, Lumpkin, and rounder below!"
True, but he had too much bulk to be easily pushed away, and he laughed, almost nauseating her with bad breath. "Come, I know you jest! We are alone, here in this moonlit wood, and who is to know if we share a kiss?"
"Share your own kisses, then!" Jane hooked a foot around Lumpkin's ankle and shoved hard as she kicked back. Over her would—be lover went with a squall, and Jane was away, fleeing down the moonlit path. By the time he had climbed to his feet and come lumbering after, she was gone from sight.
She never told her brothers, though—she knew what they would do to the uncouth youth, and did not wish to see any of them tried for murder. After all, accidents could happen. Besides, Jane was quite sure she could handle any one such lumpen suitor by herself.
But she had not bargained for three of them to catch her alone, nor in her own father's wood!
Her first hint of their presence was the stifled chuckle from the thicket. Instantly, she was on her guard; still, she was somewhat surprised when a hulking plowboy stepped out from the underbrush in front of her, grinning and asking, "Well, now! And what is such a pretty morsel doing alone in the woods at night, eh?"
"Coming from tending Granny Hacken, who is sick abed!" Jane snapped. "Step aside, Rogash, or this 'pretty morsel' will stick in your craw!"
"Oh, I think not," Rogash said easily, "not when there are three of us to take you in small nibbles. Shall we taste, lads?"
"Aye, we shall see if she is as hot a dish as she seems," Lumpkin chuckled from behind her, and "Not hot, for she is a sweeting," said the nasal voice of a third village boy whom Jane recognized as Barlein.
"Would you seek to harm a virgin, then?" Jane managed to keep her voice steady, masking the anger that covered the fear.
"Virgin!" Rogash sneered. "Nay, what virgin would be abroad in the wood by night, and alone?"
"A virgin who has mercy on a poor old woman, and stays to see her asleep before she leaves to go to her home! But even if I were only a virgin who likes to follow the song of the nightingale, you would still be most wrong to accost me!"
" 'Accost,' forsooth! What a grand word, for a lass who is only the daughter of a squire who was born a peasant!" Rogash nodded to Lumpkin and Barlein. "Let us 'accost' her well then, lads."
"Hold, fools!" Jane snapped. "I have three stalwart brothers, who will flay the hides from your backs if you dare to touch me!"
"Not when they learn you were not a virgin," Lumpkin said, gloating, and Rogash added, "For no virgin comes by night to the woods where men might lurk."
Jane knew her brothers would never believe such a charge; she knew they would very probably kill these three clods; but she also knew that would be far too late for her. There was, however, a strong chance that her brothers and father were already abroad searching for her, so she screamed as the three youths closed in. Jane screamed again as she stepped inside Rogash's reaching hand to slam a small fist into his gut with all her strength, screamed once more as he folded over his pain and she whirled away from him to lash a kick into Barlein's stomach. She missed; the kick went low, and Barlein crumpled with a gargling scream. Somehow, though, Jane felt no guilt about it.
But Lumpkin's fist slammed into her cheek as he snarled, "Vixen!" Pain seared through the side of her face, stabs of light obscured him from her, and she leaped back but not fast enough; his rough hand closed over her arm, yanking her off her feet. The ground rushed up to slam against her, but training came to her rescue—she tucked her chin in as she fell so that her head did not strike the ground. In fact, she managed to fall on her side, reached out to grasp the leg in front of her behind the knee, and pulled as hard as she could. She must have hit something she didn't know about, for Lumpkin screamed, a high and whinnying cry, as he toppled. Still dazed, she managed to push herself to her feet, her head clearing enough to see Rogash just beginning to get his breath back, glaring murder at her as he straightened—as much as he could.