Chapter Five #3
Every foolish song she could think of was played and her audience loved every minute of it, and she grew bolder with each successive tune.
She began to walk a circle around the fire pit, singing her songs, some of which she repeated twice, and all the while men drank and cheered and threw coins at her.
At the end of each song, she would rush around the fire pit, collecting the coins, and thanking the men for their generosity.
She was enjoying herself quite a bit, and making a good deal of money, until the inevitable happened.
A man made a grab for her.
That was when the frivolity stopped and she screamed, beating at the man to release her and his colleagues jumped in to separate them. As she staggered to her feet, someone threw a punch at the man who had grabbed her. Suddenly, the table erupted in a brawl.
That was Juliandra’s time to exit.
As the entire hall deteriorated, she managed to dodge a few other grabbing hands and make it back to Megsy without any damage being done. The old servant grabbed her fearfully.
“We must get out of here,” Megsy said. “Hurry! Out the way we came!”
“Nay!” Juliandra said. “I came here to speak with Lord de Lara and I am not leaving until I do.”
“But…!”
“This will have been a wasted effort if we go now!”
Megsy wasn’t sure about any of it. She had a good grip on Juliandra, fearful that the woman would run off and leave her behind.
But she didn’t hold tightly enough because as the chaos in the hall was going on and knights were shouting at the men to stand down, Juliandra spied a servant and rushed over to the wench, asking her who Kevin de Lara was.
The wench pointed at a table next to the fire pit.
She indicated the only man that was still sitting at the table.
Evidently, he had been close by all along.
Juliandra made her move.
While everyone at the table was up, dispersing the fights that had broken out, Juliandra came up behind Kevin as he sat there, watching his knights as they knocked heads together.
The soldiers were drunk and unruly, which was nothing abnormal at a feast. Kevin didn’t seem particularly concerned with it, but he was watching the activity.
With the lute still in one hand and her coins in the other, she marched up to Kevin’s table.
“My name is Juliandra ferch Gethin,” she said. “You put my father in your vault for failing to pay a toll. You may have all of the coinage I earned tonight if you will release him to me.”
She was standing right next to him as she spoke and Kevin, perhaps a little too close, startled when she began to speak. Suddenly, he was out of the chair and on his feet, looking at her with an expression that suggested suspicion and disapproval until he realized who it was.
His features loosened.
“You are the singer,” he said.
Juliandra nodded, nervous now that she had gotten a good look at him. He wasn’t a tall man, but he was powerfully built, with big hands and big muscles. His upper arms were as big around as her waist and, suddenly, she wasn’t quite so confident in her demands of Kevin de Lara.
He was enormous and frightening.
“Aye, my lord,” she said. “And… and you are Lord de Lara.”
He simply nodded as his suspicious expression returned. “What did you just say? Something about a toll?”
Juliandra opened her mouth to reply, but a soldier suddenly landed on the table, bouncing across it.
Had Kevin not reached out and grabbed Juliandra, the soldier would have crashed right into her.
As she yelped fearfully, another soldier crashed onto the table, too close for comfort, and Kevin started to pull her away.
“This is no place for you,” he said. “Get out before someone takes your head off.”
But Juliandra dug her heels in. “I will not,” she said. “I mean no disrespect, my lord, but I have come here tonight for a reason.”
“Your reason was to entertain my men.”
Juliandra shook her head. “Not at first,” she said. “I came because I wanted to speak with you, but your men told me to come back on Tuesday when you hear supplicants.”
“That is true.”
“But I am not a supplicant. I simply want my father returned to me.”
He eyed her for a moment as he realized what she was saying and his disapproval returned. He didn’t like sneaky women.
“If they told you to go away, how did you get into the hall?”
“I told them I had come to sing for my meal and they let me in.”
He grunted unhappily as he realized the entirety of the situation. “So you smiled prettily, mayhap even flashed a soft, white shoulder at them, and they let you in,” he said. “Is that it?”
She shook her head. “Nay, my lord, I swear that I did not flash… anything,” she said. “That is something I would not do. I just want my father and took the opportunity to gain admittance to the castle to speak with you.”
Kevin started to say something but the rolling pair of fighters on the table crashed onto the ground and rolled right into Kevin’s feet. As he teetered off balance and kicked them away, Juliandra lifted her borrowed lute and smashed it over the head of one of the fighters.
He fell like a stone.
“Now,” she said breathlessly as she turned to Kevin. “Will you please release my father from your vault? He has done nothing except fail to pay your toll. I will pay you right now if you will only release him.”
He was looking at her in surprise, but the blue eyes were glittering. There was some humor there at a woman who had the wherewithal to bash a man in the skull like she had and then act as if it were all quite ordinary, as if she did it every day. She may have been tiny, but she was fierce.
He took a closer look at her.
“If I do not, are you going to smash a lute over my head?” he said. “What did you say your name was again?”
“Juliandra ferch Gethin.”
“You speak English perfectly.”
“My mother was English.”
He lifted his eyebrows. “That explains it,” he said. Someone else crashed over the table near them and he reached out, grasping her by the elbow to pull her away. “This room is deteriorating and I have no desire to get caught up in it, so for your own safety, come with me.”
“Where are we going?”
“You came here to discuss your father. I suppose I should give you the courtesy since you protected me from those fighting soldiers.”
He turned and walked away. Greatly surprised that he should be concerned for her, with a touch of humor on top of it, she held out her hand to Megsy, quickly motioning the woman with her. She scooted after Kevin as Megsy limped after them both as fast as she could move.
They departed the hall and ventured into the cold, crisp night, with a clear sky above and a blanket of stars strewn across the heavens.
Kevin had big legs, as powerfully built as the rest of him, but they moved very quickly for not being particularly long, and Juliandra had to run to keep pace with him.
There was no chance for Megsy to keep up, but Juliandra saw the old servant following at a distance. She knew that Megsy wouldn’t go far even if she lost sight of her. On they went into the keep, that enormous structure with the turrets at the top.
Kevin took the wooden stairs to the entry at the first level and Juliandra followed.
Before she entered, her last look at Megsy showed the woman barely halfway across the bailey.
More concerned for the release of her father at that point, she entered the cold, dark keep, catching sight of Kevin as he disappeared into a doorway near the entry.
Juliandra followed.
She walked into a chamber that smelled heavily of smoke and tanned hides.
Looking around, she could see that there was an array of hide-bound furniture in the richly furnished chamber.
There was an iron bank of tapers dripping fat onto the floor, but it gave off a good amount of light.
As she stood by the door and looked around timidly, Kevin went over to a large table that was neatly stacked with vellum.
“Close the door,” he told her.
Juliandra shut the door, although she wasn’t entirely comfortable doing so.
It wasn’t proper for her to be alone in a room with a strange man, but Megsy was probably already within earshot, so she took some comfort in that.
As if a crippled maid could save her from the powerfully built knight over by the table.
It was a false sense of security, but she held on to it.
The more she looked at him, the more imposing he became.
He was looking over some sheets of vellum on his table, finally lighting a pair of tapers on the table so he had more light with which to see. He was on the second sheet when he came to a halt.
“What’s your father’s name?” he asked.
“Gethin ap Garreg, my lord.”
Kevin continued reading what was in front of him for a moment before finally speaking. “Your father refused to pay the toll at the toll booth on the Guilsford Road,” he said, eyes on the vellum. “He was turned away and then he tried to run across a field to get around the toll booth.”
Juliandra sighed heavily. “I know,” she said regretfully. “His manservant told me. He said that Da refused to pay for a road he had been traveling on his entire life, so he tried to go around and was captured for it.”
Kevin glanced up from the vellum. “You do realize that I do not keep all of the tolls.”
She cocked her head curiously. “I do not understand.”
“I give half of them to the local churches to feed the poor,” he said. “Half of those tolls support those who cannot support themselves. I do not keep all of the money.”
By her expression, it was clear that she hadn’t known. “That is generous of you,” she said. “There are many poor along the Marches, for I see it daily. I give alms to the poor myself nearly every Sunday. I did not know that was what the tolls were for.”
He was still looking at the vellum. “Your father knew,” he said. “My men reported that they told him and he still refused to pay.”