The Fire Star Read online

  Reeve stared straight ahead, his desire to display perfect courtly behaviour warring within him with a ferocious urge to face Sir Garrick. The knight had never accompanied Airl Buckthorn on his rare visits to Harding Manor, being left behind to keep Rennart Castle ticking over in the Airl’s absence. But Reeve had heard so much about the man in stories and songs that he’d built up a picture in his mind of what Sir Garrick looked like. And Reeve was currently picturing a dark-haired, broody man wearing an expression of displeasure.

  Reeve’s heart sank. That he needed to become a knight in order to stay in the kingdom of Cartreff was one thing. But he also desperately wanted to learn from the finest knight in the kingdom. Reeve’s father had agreed to the squiring arrangement against his mother’s objections that Sir Garrick was beneath the Norwood family socially, and Reeve was fairly certain his father had only agreed because he thought that Reeve would fail. In the baron’s eyes, Reeve had never been as good as Larien at anything. And if Larien had taken a sword to the stomach, what hope did Reeve have of even making it through his training? One knight was as good as another because Reeve would never amount to much anyway.

  ‘Tall enough, though,’ said Airl Buckthorn, breaking into Reeve’s thoughts. ‘Whippy arms by the looks of him. Good-sized feet. He’ll get bigger. Rhoswen held on to him for you.’

  ‘Hmmm,’ was the only response.

  Reeve felt heat wash over his face, and he finally gave in to the impulse to slide his glance sideways. It didn’t help much. If Airl Buckthorn was a solid silhouette against the stained-glass windows, Sir Garrick presented as a patchwork of shadows.

  ‘Rhoswen gave him glowing reports, so you can take it up with her when she arrives on the morrow,’ Airl Buckthorn continued, drawing Reeve’s eyes back to him. ‘Given that at this stage the heaviest thing he’ll have to carry is a plate, he’ll do enough to earn his keep.’

  Plate? Reeve tried not to frown at the Airl’s words.

  ‘Indeed,’ agreed Sir Garrick. ‘And a good thing, methinks. The weight of a sword might just about do him in.’ There was a pause before the knight’s voice came again. ‘I’m not sure about that hair, though.’

  Reeve blinked. What on earth could be wrong with his hair? Lady Rhoswen had always loved his blond ringlets. Even that odd peasant girl on the road had stared at them.

  ‘Ye-e-es,’ said Airl Buckthorn. ‘It will have to go. Lorimer, see to it.’

  ‘As you wish, your excellency,’ said Lorimer, and Reeve winced at the relish in the man’s voice. ‘Will that be all, your excellency? Sire?’

  ‘Yes,’ said the Airl with a wave. ‘Get him settled. Tomorrow morning will be soon enough to get him started. In the meantime, feed him up – let’s get a little meat on those long bones. And Lorimer –’

  The steward waited.

  ‘Less of the “your excellency”,’ the Airl said with a grimace. ‘Airl is sufficient – and shorter.’

  Lorimer bowed, though Reeve could see his lips pucker as though he’d sucked down a lemon, and Reeve waited a moment before turning to follow the steward from the room at the correct distance. As he walked towards the door, Sir Garrick spoke again, in a voice just loud enough for Reeve to hear.

  ‘Is he really the best you can do?’

  ‘Cream of the crop, according to Rhoswen – and who are we to argue?’ said Airl Buckthorn, not bothering to speak softly. ‘But let us talk of more important things. Tomorrow, the Fire Star will be here at Rennart Castle. In a few short days, you shall be wed. There is much to do.’

  ‘Indeed,’ Reeve heard Sir Garrick say as Reeve pulled the solid door behind him. He couldn’t help but take note of the undertone of gloom in the brave knight’s voice.

  ‘’Ave another, young sire – those first six barely touched the sides.’

  Reeve wiped a trickle of syrup from his chin with the inside of his sleeve and patted his stomach. ‘No, really, Mistress Agnes, I couldn’t fit in another morsel.’

  Indeed, the roiling sensation behind his belt suggested to Reeve that he should perhaps have foregone the sixth fig tart, but they had been so small and delicate – and delicious.

  ‘Call me Cook,’ said Mistress Agnes, tapping him on the head with her ladle. ‘Perhaps you lost your stomach with your hair.’

  Looking up into her kind, lined face, Reeve couldn’t help but blush.

  Cook laughed, clutching her worn apron as though to contain her mirth. ‘Look!’ she screeched. ‘Even the tips of his ears go red – and they’re so easy to see now!’

  Reeve blushed harder as the entire kitchen staff, right down to the pot boy, came to a standstill to stare.

  ‘Leave him be,’ came a voice from the other side of the long wooden table, where Neale of Broadfield, Sir Garrick’s other squire, concentrated on mopping up the syrup on his own plate with a skerrick of pastry. Reeve considered the dark, bent head opposite, surprised by the other boy’s defence – particularly given he’d barely spoken a word to Reeve since Lorimer had left Reeve under Neale’s supervision an hour before.

  But Neale hadn’t finished.

  ‘He’s suffering a great loss, you know . . . Dead attached he was to those curls.’

  As Cook roared with laughter, Reeve ran a rueful hand over the bristle on his scalp. Lorimer had taken Airl Buckthorn’s directive to ‘see to’ Reeve’s hair very seriously, taking to his blond ringlets with a pair of shears. The meticulously symmetrical bob that Lady Rhoswen demanded all male members of her household sport was gone, leaving behind barely a finger’s width of stubble all over. And it seemed as though the story of his haircut had spread like wildfire through the castle.

  ‘Ah now, don’t take on so,’ said Cook, patting Reeve’s shoulder, the flour on her apron leaving a white mark on his tunic as it brushed against him. ‘Right manly you look now. Just right for a squire to our Sir Garrick. You and Neale are quite the pair – him so dark and you so fair. You’ll make quite the splash in the wedding parade.’

  Neale popped the last bite of pastry into his mouth, his cheek working furiously as he chewed, appraising Reeve, his eyes cold.

  ‘Perhaps,’ Neale conceded, looking up at Cook before reaching across the table with sticky fingers and pinching Reeve’s cheek, hard. ‘But it hasn’t helped his baby face. Or the fact that he’s apparently a slow learner who needed two extra years as a page . . .’

  Stung by both the pinch and the remark, Reeve stared into Neale’s smirking face as the kitchen staff erupted into laughter around him. The other boy had made it clear from their first meeting that he didn’t think that Sir Garrick needed a second squire, going so far as to suggest that Reeve should simply ‘go back home’ to Lady Rhoswen.

  But Reeve had been at Harding Manor since the age of seven, with no one to watch out for him amid the hurly-burly, cut and thrust of daily life in a busy household. He had the feeling that Neale had taken one look at his blond ringlets and the face that Lady Rhoswen had always described as ‘pleasing’, and had decided that Reeve was weak.

  ‘It is difficult indeed to change one’s face,’ Reeve said now, keeping his tone even as he brushed the dusting of flour from his shoulder. ‘Which is more of a penalty for some than others.’

  Neale’s face darkened and twisted as the insult hit home, and Reeve stood up, allowing no hint of a smile to tilt his lips, even as the kitchen staff again erupted into howls of laughter. He would say no more at this time, particularly on the point of why he was a late-blooming squire, but he would stay on his toes around Neale, who was clearly protective of his position with Sir Garrick.

  For the past two years, Neale had been the knight’s only squire. Now, Neale would care for Sir Garrick’s arms and armour as Battle Squire. He would also act as Squire of the Body, assisting Sir Garrick in his chambers morning and evening.

  But, as Airl Buckthorn had hinted in his comment about ‘plates’, Reeve was to take over as Squire of the Table, serving Sir Garrick at meals, accompanying him in public duties.


  It wasn’t quite what Reeve had imagined when he’d spent hour after hour in the courtyard at Harding Manor practising with his sword, working on his horseriding skills atop a huge destrier or loosing arrow after arrow at the target set up on the green.

  That was okay for now, for Reeve had learned many things over the course of nine years at the sleeve of Lady Rhoswen. On the surface, his daily lessons in her household had been about chivalry, courtesy, etiquette and valour, but he had also absorbed many skills from simply watching the lady manage her servants and move through society.

  ‘The Carruthers are down on their luck,’ Lady Rhoswen would say, soaking her swollen feet after attending a pompous and expensive ball at the home of Lord and Lady Carruthers. ‘The artworks have been carefully rearranged to hide the gaps where they’ve sold off pieces – but you can never quite hide the darker wallpaper where they once hung.’

  Lies and deception were her favourite things to winkle out, and she delighted in sharing her findings with Reeve. ‘Did you notice how she paused before answering every question?’ Lady Rhoswen would ask when a kitchen maid had been discovered stealing precious honey. ‘Honest people don’t do that.’

  On another occasion, a young stableboy had come undone during questioning about an injured horse. ‘His lips were saying no, but did you notice that almost imperceptible nod?’ Lady Rhoswen asked Reeve later. ‘Our bodies are sometimes more honest than our minds.’

  Lady Rhoswen’s daughter Anice hadn’t understood her mother’s interest in what Anice called ‘a lowly squire’, but Lady Rhoswen had laughed. ‘It amuses me,’ she said. ‘Reeve is a good student, and you never know when such an eye for detail will come in handy.’

  One of the more useful tips she’d ever given Reeve, however, was to watch people’s feet. ‘If I am talking to someone and I wish you to interrupt me with a message,’ she told him with a tinkling laugh, very early during his days at Harding Manor, ‘my feet will be pointed away from the person, to one side, almost as though I am ready to escape.’

  Right now, the anger in Neale’s face told Reeve that it was time for his own feet to be leaving the kitchen. ‘Thank you kindly for the fine meal, mistress,’ he said to Cook. ‘But now I must prepare to assist Sir Garrick at table.’

  Cook’s bushy eyebrows flew up. ‘I thought you weren’t to start until the morrow,’ she said. ‘I could use an extra pair of hands here, what with the wedding feast to prepare and all.’

  ‘No time like the present,’ said Reeve, with a smile and a courtly bow, ‘and I’m sure Neale will be happy to assist, given Sir Garrick will not require him until much later.’

  Ducking out through the kitchen door before Neale could respond, Reeve considered the evening ahead. He’d decided to appear at table on his first night to prove to Sir Garrick that he was a worthy squire, an asset rather than the liability the knight seemed to believe he was.

  As Reeve mounted the stairs that would take him to the labyrinth of long stone hallways that stretched to his room, which was tucked away in a corner of the west wing, he went over his plan. Reeve would change into a fresh tunic, one that was not wrinkled from the road and sprinkled with goat hair and the fine reminders of his haircut, and would be standing beside Sir Garrick’s chair ten minutes before the evening feast was scheduled to begin.

  Tonight was a special dinner indeed, he knew, for it was the last night that Sir Garrick would have at Rennart Castle before his bride-to-be arrived the following day.

  It was an interesting time to be entering a new household, and Lady Rhoswen had told him to keep his wits about him.

  ‘You will have not one new person to manage, but two, and my niece Cassandra can be . . . strong-willed,’ she had said to him with a sigh during their last, low-voiced conversation. ‘It is not the best time for you to begin, but Airl Buckthorn will not be dissuaded from this idea to give Sir Garrick a squire as a wedding present, and it was the opportunity I have long awaited for you.’

  Reeve grimaced now as he approached the solid wooden door of his room, slipping inside and bolting it behind him before letting out his breath with a whoosh as he flopped on the bed. His head throbbed, and Reeve wondered if it was exploding with all the new things he’d taken in since his arrival at Rennart Castle – or the tension he could feel buzzing within the walls.

  He’d often felt like this after a day negotiating the various personalities and politics of Harding Manor, but Reeve had a very bad feeling that Rennart Castle would prove to be even more difficult. Indeed, hadn’t Lady Rhoswen often said that one reason she preferred to stay at Harding Manor, a short distance away, was to avoid managing the ‘household wars’ at Rennart?

  Staring up at the swathes of deep-red velvet draping the top of his four-poster bed, Reeve realised that he needed to learn the ways of this castle quickly – or suffer the consequences.

  Tonight would be his first test.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Standing behind Sir Garrick’s chair at the top table, Reeve kept one eye on his master’s pewter mug and one on the rowdy scene unfolding in front of him. Although the back of Sir Garrick’s carved wooden seat was tall, Reeve was taller – a fact for which he was very thankful, since it allowed him to keep wary watch on the long table of house knights and minor lords on the right-hand side of the Great Hall, all of whom seemed determined to drain the castle’s ale stores dry.

  ‘Brantley is in his cups again,’ muttered Sir Garrick as he cleaned the last of the gravy from his trencher with a thick piece of bread.

  ‘At least some are celebrating your last night as a free man, even if you are not,’ said Airl Buckthorn, leaning back in his own velvet-upholstered chair and grinning at Sir Garrick, who was now staring glumly into his own drink. ‘Good grief, man, you’ve barely touched your meal. Eat something or Cook will be wailing her offence into her stew pot.’

  Standing as still as a statue, Reeve nonetheless strained forward with every fibre to hear Sir Garrick’s response. The man had seemed down-in-the-mouth since arriving at the feasting table, which was groaning under the weight of a full roasted boar, whole baked fish, golden-crusted pies of fruit or game, round loaves of bread and three different wheels of cheese.

  Reeve felt his belly rumble beneath his pristine tunic. The fig tarts were already feeling like a memory and it would be hours before he could follow them up with something more substantial. At least the noise in the hall was so deafening that no one was likely to hear his hunger pangs – not even Sir Garrick, the back of whose head was just inches from Reeve’s stomach.

  ‘It’s not that I’m not grateful to my lord for the honour of marriage,’ Sir Garrick began.

  ‘Not this again!’ Airl Buckthorn groaned, waving away a servant who was trying to place a dish of stewed pears on the table before him. ‘You will not do better than this match, Garrick.’

  Reeve could see Sir Garrick’s shoulders tighten under the fine linen tunic he wore. Reeve had no idea why the knight should be so tense about his own marriage, but his duty as a squire was to help the man if he could. Reeve stepped forward to offer Sir Garrick the thick napkin he had at the ready, knowing the knight would appreciate even the smallest amount of time to organise his thoughts.

  Sir Garrick took it, pressing it carefully to his lips and thereby hiding his face for a moment. He handed the napkin back to Reeve, signalling his gratitude with the slightest lift of one eyebrow.

  Reeve stepped back, suppressing a smile. He had done the right thing in choosing to present at the table that night. Sir Garrick had looked surprised to see him but had said nothing, and Reeve had gone about his duties as seamlessly as he knew how.

  ‘It is not a question of the brilliance of the match, your excellency,’ Sir Garrick said now to Airl Buckthorn. ‘More a question of one’s readiness for marriage.’

  Reeve’s ears pricked up once again. Lady Rhoswen had hinted darkly several times that Sir Garrick’s forthcoming nuptials were less about Sir Garrick’s future happ
iness and more about the Airl’s aspirations, but had never explained why.

  ‘She is a noted beauty,’ said Airl Buckthorn, gulping down a large mouthful of ale. ‘My brother-in-law had many offers for her, even as the youngest of my four nieces, even as his fortune dwindled.’

  ‘Indeed,’ said Sir Garrick. ‘So many that he accepted the poor, dear, departed Sir Alfred Dumfries.’

  ‘Not so long departed,’ Airl Buckthorn quibbled.

  ‘Not long after acceptance,’ Sir Garrick shot back.

  There was a pause. ‘What’s your point?’ barked Airl Buckthorn, his face red.

  Sir Garrick turned back to his pewter mug, taking a long swallow. ‘You know she wouldn’t have accepted me if she wasn’t desperate.’

  Airl Buckthorn’s expression cleared and he clapped the knight on the back with a hearty guffaw. ‘She didn’t accept you, fool,’ he said. ‘Her father accepted me, and very grateful he was, too. Cassandra has been left too much to her own devices since her mother – my only sister, I remind you – was taken by consumption ten years ago.’

  ‘I remain sorry for your loss – and hers,’ said Sir Garrick after a pause. ‘But the fact is that the castle is rife with scuttlebutt that Cassandra believes she is marrying down – she of noble birth, me of conferred honour.’

  Reeve had to cough to hide his sharp intake of breath. He had heard the rumours, even at Harding Manor, but had thought such talk confined to areas far from Sir Garrick’s ears.

  ‘Well, she is,’ said Airl Buckthorn, matter-of-factly, and now he gestured to the servant bearing the stewed pears, who placed them before the Airl. ‘And, given she is past twenty-five years of age and her former betrothed did not make it to the altar, my beloved niece Cassandra should be happy not to be collecting dust on a shelf for the rest of her natural life. What of it?’

  A loud burst of laughter from the lower table drowned out Sir Garrick’s next words, but did nothing to hide Airl Buckthorn’s reaction.