Lion's Bride - Iris Johansen [21]
“But not as good as yours?”
She shook her head. “They lack imagination. A true artist designs as well as executes. The Damascenes are still doing the same embroideries they did a century ago.”
“How long have you been a craftsman?”
“Since I was a very small child. I can’t remember anything else. They first put me to knotting rugs, but my mother convinced him I would be better at embroidery.”
“Him?”
Every answer led to another trap. The only safety was in not answering at all. She turned away from the cages and moved toward the window. The grounds of the castle were not all stone walls and fortress, as she had thought. To the north stretched a long green, abounding with grass and trees, that fell off abruptly into a steep cliff. “You can see very far from this tower.” Her gaze traveled back to the mountains. “What are those houses to the south?”
“That’s the village of Jedha. All of the servants and soldiers here at Dundragon were brought from there. Dundragon was given to Ware as payment for services by a Frank lord who found this land too unsafe for his taste. When he went back to France, he took all his people with him, and Ware had to recruit his officers and soldiers from among the Muslims.” He shook his head. “The lords who hired Ware could use the excuse that any tool is justified when fighting Satan, but no one wanted to offend the Knights Templar by actually going over to the renegade’s camp. It’s a dangerous practice to ally yourself with the Temple’s enemies.”
“Yet you did it.”
“I told you, I had no choice. He belongs to me. Besides, living in the shadows with Ware has taught me as much as I learned from the Old Man of the Mountain.”
Shadows. But this day seemed bright and clear and without threat. “He surely should be back before dark.”
“Yes. If God wills.” He joined her at the window, his gaze fixed on the mountain. “If he’s not, I’ll go searching for him.”
Again that intimation of danger. She didn’t understand any of these people. Kadar, whom she had thought kind and gentle, had been taught by murderers. Lord Ware, whom she knew to be brutal and ruthless, had evidently risked much to seek out her mulberry leaves. Nothing was clear or reasonable in this new life into which she had been tossed.
But this disarray was better than the suffocating orderliness in the House of Nicholas. The serenity and concentration that abounded there were necessary to produce fine embroideries, but not the strictures of a cage. Here at Dundragon, she had more freedom, and once she left, the chaos would disappear entirely from her life. She would only have to be patient.
“You can trust us, you know,” Kadar said quietly. “We know what it is to be hunted.”
She could not trust anyone. She did not have the right when Selene was also at risk.
When she did not answer, Kadar turned away from the window. “It’s going to be a long day. Would you like to play a game of chess?”
“I don’t know how to play chess.”
“You prefer another game?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know how to play any games.”
“Ah, but games are very important. They stretch the mind and ease the heart.”
“I don’t need them. I have my work.”
He took her elbow and urged her toward the door. “I think you need them more than most people. Come, I will teach you chess.”
Ware finally found a grove of mulberry trees after noon of that day. It was not soon enough for him. He was hot, his head was aching and his temper correspondingly raw.
He sliced a huge branch off a tree with one stroke of his sword and watched it fall to the ground. He dismounted, then began plucking the leaves and throwing them into the basket.
Mother of Christ, he felt like a damsel picking flowers on May Day. This was no task for a knight.
How much was enough? Every time he bent down, his helmeted head felt as if it were going to roll off. He finished stripping the branch. He glowered at the contents of the basket; the leaves barely covered the bottom. He cut another branch and then another.
Enough. If that wasn’t sufficient, the damn worms could