I'm going anyway," declared Lady Isabeau de Lyon. "And you cannot stop me." It was a brave statement. Unfortunately, however, it did not come out very effectively.
Though the lady delivered her challenge with all the vehemence of one who believes devoutly in her cause, the defiance in her voice was sadly undermined by the unmistakably childish lisp that marked her piping tones. Isabeau's slight stature and the white-blond curls fairly dancing with affront atop her eight-year-old head did nothing to further her cause either. Nor did the normally wide, summer-blue eyes that now had narrowed mutinously to mere slits, or the rosebud lips that pouted stubbornly to underscore her determination.
Her companion was having none of it. "The devil I can't. Watch me."
At sixteen, Jared de Navarre was full of self-importance, the new growth of muscle on his youthful squire's frame and the fuzzy reddish down sprouting on his upper lip far outpacing the burgeoning of tact in his otherwise astute young mind. Jared grabbed for Isabeau's skinny arm, took hold despite her howl of outrage and her sudden fierce struggles.
The boy and girl fought a battle in miniature together on the dusty, rutted dirt road that led from the castle belonging to the girl's father to the prosperous nearby town of Lyon. As they strove, kicking up puffs of ochre dust and taunting one another, lazy summer insects droned by them, unconcerned by such petty bickering. Fragrant pollens, swept airborne from the wildflowers dotting the withering pasturelands on either side of the road by the ghost of a breeze, bathed both of them with particles of pale yellow, orange, and purple powder.
The top of Isabeau's bright curly head did not even reach so far as Jared's shoulder, but she held her own with stubborn determination, though her continued wriggling made her arm slowly redden in his grip. And then abruptly Isabeau seemed to tire of her escape attempts, and to decide it might be more prudent if she took another tack with Jared.
Growing still, her eyes widened winsomely, and she allowed moisture to sheen them until they resembled the clear-scrubbed sky after a storm. "Oh, please," she lisped prettily. "I can't bear to miss it. You must let me go - or come along with me, if you say I may not go alone."
But her captor, having known her practically since birth, was having none of these gentler persuasions either. Jared merely snorted and shook his head, rolling his eyes at her blatant attempt to cozen him. For the next several minutes, the girl's eight-year-old voice wheedled, pleaded, whined, and then demanded shrilly, but her companion held firm.
"Nay. I'm not going with you, Isabeau, and you most certainly aren't going alone. It's far too dangerous for a little thing like you, goose," he declared, tousling her flaxen hair with one sword-callused hand before she could duck it. "You'll stay right by my side today where I can watch you, as I promised your good mother I would while she and your nursemaid are both ill with the summer ague." The youth took his promises to both the master and mistress of the duchy extremely seriously, for they had taken him in and given him a home and a position of respect when his own indifferent parents would not. The welfare of their daughter was a responsibility the recently elevated squire did not intend to shirk. Still, he was not unsympathetic to the little girl's plight. Jared's tone softened, and he looked down upon her more kindly. "If you like, and you promise to remain out of the way, you may take a place under the oak tree by the practice field and watch my sparring with the other squires." By his tone, it was clear the youth thought he was bestowing a great honor upon his truculent charge.
Isabeau made a face, obviously not agreeing. "But Jared, you practice every day with the other boys in my father's household. I'm sure he wouldn't mind if you took one afternoon off while he's away at the councils in Paris. 'Sides, you know you can already trounce the rest of those boys with one arm in a sling." She grinned slyly, knowing her companion was not immune to flattery, his prickly adolescent pride always open to a compliment. "I think you should give the poor lads a day to rest after the last beating you gave 'em. That ol' fatty Tomas, for one, could use a week to recover after the way you thumped his brains with the flat of your sword the other morning. The lump on his head is as big as a magpie's egg!
"Besides," she wheedled, returning to the topic that truly held her interest, "don't you want to see the boy saint? Everyone's talking about him. They say he works miracles, conjures visions, heals the sick!"
"You want to see a vision?" Jared snickered. "You'll be seeing stars from Jocasta's clouting if you don't get back home to the nursery by dinnertime. And I doubt the gentle Lady Margery - saint that she is herself - would be any too pleased with your truancy, either, should you turn up late, dirty and disheveled after gallivanting about all day gawking at charlatans and penny-saints with the meanest of your father's villeins." The cynicism in Jared's newly deepened voice sat poorly with his open, handsome features and lucent amber eyes.
Isabeau's pout grew to nearly comical proportions. "I'm not worried about Joey," she scoffed. "Old Jocasta never catches me out; she can hardly see anymore anyhow. I could be all the way to Jerusalem and back again before she ever missed me. And as for Mama, I'm sure she'd understand why I have to go see that boy preacher today. Perhaps," she added, knowing how Jared worshiped and adored her admittedly wonderful mother, "if I asked him to, the holy boy might even bless a small token to make her well." The little girl paused to turn her luminous, pleading gaze on Jared once more. "Anyway, don't you want to come along? There hasn't been anything this exciting in our province in years!"
"I hardly think one lunatic shepherd boy and his ragtag band of followers constitute 'excitement,'" Jared replied loftily, unmoved by her entreaties. "And as for miracles, the only real marvel will be if they don't steal the shopkeepers blind and still end up begging at your father's castle gates before sundown."
"You don't understand anything," Isabeau sniffed. "That boy is the chosen of God," she stressed with a child's sincere sense of urgency. "I tell you, he's a messenger straight from Jesus! Everyone's saying so. He's going to take children just like us to save the Holy Land." Her gaze turned dreamy. "Think of the adventure, Jared! Going all that way to the East, battling the unfiddles for the love of God!"
"Un-fiddles," indeed. She couldn't even say the word right, let alone explain its meaning, the youth thought with a snort. "And what do you know of adventures and war and infidels, missy?" he asked archly, stressing the proper pronunciation just to point out Isabeau's ignorance.
Born in the small independent kingdom of Navarre to the southwest of Lyon, with Muslims of various sects maintaining several enclaves in nearby Spanish sovereign territory, Jared had a much clearer idea of the nature of said "unfiddles" than did his wide-eyed charge. But in her current state of mind, he didn't think Isabeau would listen if he told her that in his experience they were all disappointingly, thoroughly human, different clothing and customs notwithstanding.
"You wouldn't know a Saracen if one pinched you on the bottom," was what he settled for, not above enjoying the opportunity to lord his greater knowledge over the little girl he loved - and loved to torment - like a sister. "And prithee do tell, my brave warrior lady: Just how do you plan to fight these dreaded infidels when and if you do ever find them?" he teased, taking her arm once more and waggling it back and forth between them to show what slight strength was in the muscles. "You can't even lift a sword, you silly girl, for the sake of our Lord or anyone else. You've no idea what you're talking about, wanting to listen to that boy preach a lot of nonsense about holy vows and crusade. You've never seen true fighting."
Isabeau snatched her offended arm back. "You've never seen real fighting either, O noble chevalier," she snorted. "Practicing against the quintain scarcely counts as striking a blow for our Savior."
Jared fought the urge to tweak Isabeau's sun-freckled nose. "You've been listening to Father Jervis again," he pronounced with debate-ending finality, her newly rabid proselytizing a clear echo of the family prelate's beliefs. "He's the one who's got you in such a lather over this crusade business."
Isabeau's face fell as the truth of that statement came home to her. Perhaps she really didn't know as much about the ideals she was so glibly spouting as she should. After all, she'd only been introduced to the concept of holy war yesterday…
With her knees slowly numbing against the cold stone floor of the family chapel during matins that morning, she'd listened raptly to the good father as he sang the praises of the boy Stephen, a twelve-year-old shepherd from Cloyes-sur-Loir to whom, it was being said, God had granted a sacred vision. The boy was now traveling the countryside and speaking to all who would listen, gathering followers his own age and even younger to aid him in his quest to free Jerusalem from the unbelievers.
Before Father Jervis had brought word of the wondrous shepherd boy who'd descended with his human flock upon their peaceful little corner of France, it had never truly occurred to Isabeau to wonder about the lands that lay across the sea, or the people who inhabited them. Her world had always been bounded by the thick stone walls of the stately castle in which she'd been born, and the woodlands, vineyards, and sheep pastures of the fertile territory surrounding it. Until yesterday, Isabeau's days had been full enough with chasing her favorite playmate about the bailey, and driving him to distraction as often as she could. The greater world outside those walls, with its constant wars, political machinations, and fervid religious movements, had never captured her fickle attention much before.
Still, now that she knew of it, she wanted to see the boy saint from Cloyes preach more than she'd wanted anything since… She thought back - since last Christmas when her mother had promised her a hound puppy!
Thousands upon thousands of children were rumored to have gathered around young Stephen already, spurred on by his promises that when they reached the coast, the seas would miraculously dry up beneath their feet, providing a clear path across the Mediterranean to their destination in the Holy Land. Jerusalem itself would throw open its gates for the self-styled "crusade of innocents" when they came to it, or so the shepherd claimed. Stephen himself was said to ride at the head of the throng upon a golden-canopied cart the others had made for him, and he had vowed to enter the sacred walls borne upon it.
Isabeau wanted to see that more than anything.
Images of the wondrous conveyance she'd heard about caught fire and burned in Isabeau's fevered imagination. After all, she was the daughter of a duke, and she didn't have anything nearly so grand in which to ride about! Indeed, she thought, miffed, she was barely allowed to try the reins on the tinker's pony cart, and that only when Jared or one of her father's guardsmen was watching. Any boy who had such a chariot all his own must indeed be special. To miss that spectacle would be tantamount to… well, she didn't know what could be worse than that.
Nothing ever happened around here, Isabeau thought mulishly - nothing she was allowed to take part in anyway - and she was tired of waiting to grow older before she was permitted her own adventure. Jared was allowed far more freedom than she was. If he'd wanted to go, no one would have stopped him. It wasn't fair, and she wouldn't stand for it! After all, why should her betrothed get to do so much more than she did?
* * *
On the practice field two hours later a perspiring Jared de Navarre, firstborn son of the wealthy but distant Lord Sebastian, castellan of Navarre, aspiring young knight and promised future husband of the even younger Lady Isabeau de Lyon, paused in his latest bout with the unfortunate squire Tomas to wipe the sweat from his eyes. He'd just given the other boy a thorough pummeling, and he couldn't help but glance over to the side of the field, where his fiancée had earlier reluctantly settled herself beneath the oak tree, to see if she'd appreciated his manly prowess. But clearly, she had not.
She was no longer there. Jared's blood ran cold, the sudden chill of dread freezing his innards. Without a word, the terrified squire dropped his blunt-edged training blade and took off down the road toward Lyon.
Behind him, the slower, stockier Tomas wheezed painfully and lurched to his feet. "Where are you going.…" he started to call, but the other boy was already little more than a trail of dust far away down the sun-baked road. Tomas looked on in puzzlement for another moment, watching the afternoon light glint off Jared's mail coat as he disappeared, then shrugged and decided to be thankful for the moment's reprieve. If he were wise, he told himself, he would use the time to practice for their next bout.
He couldn't know that there would be no more sparring matches between himself and the far more skilled young de Navarre. Jared would never fight for mere practice again.
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