The foal, surprisingly alert for just a minute old, lifted his head and looked around. His bright eyes flickered with unusual acuity and with an eagerness that made Sybilla take a second look. He rolled himself upright, folded his legs beneath him, and boldly met her gaze. A whinny pealed from his throat, as if to say he would get up when he was damn near ready, but for now, he preferred to sit like the prince he knew he was.
Sybilla smiled. “Praise the saints, you’re healthy.” She splashed water on her freezing arm and mopped it dry with the hem of her chemise. “You are a fine colt, even marked as you are. I could not have hoped for better.”
She tossed her braid behind her shoulders, and nudged Etienne. “Go and fetch your mother. She’ll know what to do from here. I daren’t stay any longer.”
A pensive Etienne slipped out of the barn without bothering to close the doors fully. Through the crack, Sybilla watched him go, a boy on the verge of manhood. He raced across the snowy yard to the tiny mud-and-wattle house with a thatched roof and a crooked chimney. How his mother, the widow Margery, managed to feed all six children through the winter was a wonder, having not a penny or a man to help. They all might still starve to death. The April fields had not been planted, the ground still blanketed with a crusty mix of ice and mud. Even Sybilla was down to her last cabbage.
The foal floundered, struggling at his first attempt to stand. His muscles shook from the effort but, when at last he hoisted his gangly legs beneath him and stood squarely on all fours, he swung his head around and looked at Sybilla. His big round eyes filled with pride.
Sybilla grinned. She, too, had her pride. She was a free woman, cold and hungry, but free. Her parents, God rest their souls, had been freemen, too—her stepfather born that way, her mother blessedly released after years in servitude.
Sybilla took a deep breath, wondering how she would survive. If she could last another week or two, spring would be here. She’d planned to earn her keep by helping farmers with the foalings. But now what would she do? She’d been warned once already to cease practicing her trade.
“Mistress Corbuc,” the wiry Father Ambrose had yelled one sunny day last spring, when he’d found her with her arm inside a mare who struggled to deliver her twins. “The church bars women from the practice of surgery and ministrations on animals. It cultivates the keeping of familiars and cavorting with the devil. I forbid you to be a midwife to a horse. ’Tis indecent.”
Sybilla prickled. If she were caught tonight, they’d arrest her without witness or defense.
She put her hand to cheek, the place where they would hold the branding iron and burn the mark of a Separate into her skin…She’d seen it done to other women—heard their screams, and smelled the nauseating scent of burnt flesh. ’Twas even worse if they scorched to the bone.
Her stomach roiled at the recollection. God in heaven, she had to leave Cornbury––to go anywhere a woman with her skill was free to earn her keep.
A squeal erupted from the foal, jolting Sybilla from her dark thoughts. He pranced and nipped at the glittering snowflakes drifting through the roof hole. The sparkling white powder that dusted his finely sculpted head gave him a definite aura, a spirit-like quality not of this world.
He was different, though she couldn’t quite say why. But in that instant, she knew they shared a common bond. She would defend him with her life.
Heavy footsteps suddenly crunched across the frozen yard and headed toward the barn. Sybilla spun around and faced the door. Panic shook her heart. Those were not the feet of Etienne, or his mother!
Choking back a yelp, she shoved her arm through the sleeve of her chemise and dove beneath the feed trough. Shards of rotting wood snagged her scalp and cobwebs whisked across her mouth and lashes. She drew her knees to her chest and let the shadows fall across her face as she watched the scene unfold before her.
Men’s voices shouted. Hinges squealed and the barn doors swung fully open. A blast of wind blew powdery snow across the threshold and she watched as a knight, a stubby man with a rounded belly and an icy red beard, stumbled inside, his short mantle swinging like a bell. He surveyed his surroundings. “This will do,” he grumbled. He shoved his hood back, and brushed the snow off his shoulders and his red-topped head.
A second knight strode in past the first one, his cloak billowing around his powerful legs. The ice-glazed spurs at his heels glinted like crystal. His hood obscured the details of his features, but he was tall, towering, and the way he held his strong back, erect with assured purpose, suggested he was mayhap twenty five or thirty years of age—and the kind of man who could keep a woman safe—or destroy her.
He took a deep breath, expanding his hulking chest, his shoulders as wide as a church door. His presence filled the space around him like that of someone accustomed to taking and doing exactly what he wanted.
He rested his hand on the hilt of his sword as he turned his head slowly and scanned the barn. Stomping the snow from his booted feet, he strode toward the shadowy stall where Sybilla huddled.
She didn’t dare breathe.
The tall knight stopped, pushed off his hood and coif, and ran his fingers through his dark hair. He looked up and studied the column of snow that fell through the roof hole and spiraled down, swirling in the dim ray of light not two feet from Sybilla.
“’Tis a poor excuse for a barn, Simon,” he called across his shoulder, his deep voice resonating bravado. “But it keeps out the wind, and given that we’ve lost our horses, it matters not.”
“Hell to the devil, Guy. Hamon set us up. Those men were his soldiers, not common thieves. They waited for us and ’twas more than just our horses they meant to take. You should have finished off the one you pinned, not given quarter. Do you have to be so bloody noble?”
The tall knight ignored the comment and leaned across the stall boards. “Hah! There is actually a beast in here.” He offered up his open palm and clucked. “Old girl, would you like some company tonight?” He patted Addy’s neck while the foal, trembling on his spindly legs, took a few cautious steps and sniffed at the intruder.
The tall knight chuckled and let the foal lick his glove. “This one’s just hit the ground. Within the hour I expect.” He squatted and peered between the stall boards. “God’s teeth, Simon. Look at it! Four white socks and born in Cornbury. It’s him. My horse. Marked just like Morna said he would be.”
Simon squinted. “Blessed saints. Would you look at that?”
The foal nickered, flagged his tail and stared, unblinking, at the knights.
The tall knight stood and faced his friend. “I am not a superstitious man, but I do believe I have found my horse, the one who will help me on my quest.”
Sybilla’s breath caught in her chest. Her colt? His quest?
Simon grunted. “You of all people should know you cannot trust the Lady Morna. The colt’s got a white blaze down his forehead, like she said he would, but marked with four white feet, every horseman from here to France knows he won’t amount to much. You know that too, but you’ve had too much to drink.”
Sir Guy frowned. “Or Hamon’s robber-man-at-arms knocked me silly.” He rubbed his swollen cheek and studied the foal.
The wicked lump beneath his eye was so prominent it was visible even in the shadows.
Sir Guy spun around and slapped Simon on the back. “But I have a feeling about this colt. A feeling that I did not get with any of the others. This one is The One.”
Simon furrowed his brow. His small eyes darted ’round the barn as if he sensed they were not alone. “You said that about the Lady Constance, and Mary Tanner, and the butcher’s daughter, too. Proving that you cannot recognize a decent woman…or decent horseflesh either. This wobbly-legged farm colt is not The One. His rump is higher than his withers and his