The Seeker - Isobelle Carmody [112]
I found myself seated some way down the table and apart from Kella. On either side, the men spoke only a few polite words to me. Their eyes said they shared Erin’s attitude. It was funny, in a way. If they had known I was a Misfit, I would be far more despised.
A while later, Erin’s voice rose above the buzz of talk. “Father, I am only saying that this desire to bond the armsmen is going too far. Surely you want to maintain some sort of standard. Yet you permit grubby gypsies to dine with us.” I had no doubt she had raised her voice deliberately.
I stood abruptly. “Lord, my father told me enough to make me admire Henry Druid, but I will not be insulted by a painted doll!” There was a gasp from some of the men, and Erin’s pouting mouth fell open in astonishment.
There was a long silence. I did not take my eyes from the Druid’s, but I was not to hear his reply since someone had begun to clap.
“Well done, Lady Erin. I salute you for your wit,” Gilbert said. He raised his mug to Erin. “I feared our gypsy girl had lost her tongue.” He drank deeply, and a few hardy souls around him laughed.
Erin’s face filled with rage, but the Druid laid a restraining hand on her arm. I wondered at Gilbert’s recklessness. It was clear he had some rank in the camp, but now I wondered exactly what his position was.
He grinned at me down the length of the table, but I did not smile back. Beside him, Erin’s eyes glittered with malice. Perhaps Gahltha’s cynical comment that poisoned trees bore poisoned fruit was right, for I suspected the Druid shared his daughter’s prejudice.
I finished my meal, ignored by my companions. I had a fierce longing to be back at Obernewtyn, where people were judged by their actions rather than their ancestry. Rushton would laugh to know how much I hungered to be home. With a painful lurch of my heart, I realized I missed him.
A young boy and an old man played a merry dance tune on a drum and a small flute. I was not surprised to see people rise to dance. I had never learned how. Orphan homes did not organize such frivolous pursuits. On both sides of me, the seats were empty, my dinner companions having deserted me for less controversial partners. My outburst had made me doubly an outcast despite my finery.
I looked up to find Gilbert standing beside my seat. “Come, let me see if you dance as well as you talk.”
I lifted my chin. “I wonder you dare ask a gypsy to dance.”
Gilbert frowned. “Hatred of gypsies is a foolish, unfounded prejudice that I do not share.”
“It seems you are alone in that. Who are you, that you can safely voice such unpopular opinions?”
“I lead the armsmen. The Druid values my expertise. But I am known for my outspoken nature. It has not got me killed so far.”
I smiled a little despite myself. Another place and time, I would have liked the bold armsman as a friend. But the knowledge that he was the leader of the Druid’s fighting force made me nervous. His kindness might be no more than a strategy to put me off guard.
Gilbert slid into the seat beside me. “I am my own fellow. Dance with me,” he invited softly.
I found I did not want to hurt his feelings with a plain refusal. I lifted the hem of my skirt and showed him my scarred legs and feet. His face tightened at the sight of the scars. “And I made you walk back to camp. Why didn’t you say something?”
I smiled and shrugged wryly. “You didn’t seem the sort to worry about a prisoner’s feet.”
“Then we will talk,” he said firmly. “You may direct the course of our words.”
The opportunity was too good to miss. “Tell me how you came to be here.”
Gilbert smiled and obliged. It proved an unexpected tale.
He had been born to a seafaring family in Aborium, but his father had been taken by slavers and his boat sunk. As a child, Gilbert had worked as a harbor laborer to support his mother and sister, until they died of a plague that swept the coast one year. Weary of the sea and lonely,