Chapter Six
The only reason Torran had awoken was because he needed to piss, badly. It was all of the wine he had consumed, lavished upon him by Lord Daniel and his servants. He had consumed a good amount of it and then he found himself waking up because he had to piss so badly.
Truthfully, he wasn’t even sure where he was.
He remembered being in a small hall inside the keep of Canterbury but at this moment, it was quiet, the sounds of snoring men around him, and he didn’t recognize where he was.
It took him a moment to realize he was looking at the horizontal view of a tabletop. He had fallen asleep on the table.
His bladder was killing him, preventing him from falling back asleep.
He tried to lift his head but it felt as if it weighed one hundred pounds.
It was swimming and heavy and throbbing, all at the same time.
He could hardly keep his eyes open. He looked around; he was still in the smaller hall only now it was empty except for his men.
Torran rubbed his eyes; he could see de Garr sleeping on the table next to him and the others – de Leybourne, d’Vant, de Poyer, and St. John were in various positions around the room.
De Leybourne was actually lying on the floor next to the hearth, surrounded by sleeping dogs, while d’Vant was in an upright position against the wall, seated on the floor near the hearth, and snoring his head off.
St. John and de Poyer were sleeping on the benches next to the feasting table, arms hanging onto the ground.
All of them, sleeping like the dead. Torran had never seen his men sleep so heavily.
Struggling against the urge to ignore his bladder and go back to sleep, he pushed himself off of the tabletop and, seeing the spot on the wood where he had drooled, he wiped at his face as he stumbled over to the hearth.
The fire was still blazing, still quite healthy, and he fumbled with his breeches, pulling them low enough so that he could expose his manhood.
So he stood there, pissing into the fire, feeling a huge amount of release and struggling to keep his eyes from rolling back into his head.
He actually had to reach out and support himself against the mantel, positive he needed the support to stand.
Never in his life had he been so tired. All he wanted to do was go back to sleep.
But he wanted a proper bed. He was sure that de Lohr had spare beds for them, somewhere, so he pulled his breeches back up, fastened them, and stumbled over to the hall entry.
The solar was just across the foyer and the keep entry was to his right.
The door was open, in fact. As Torran staggered across the foyer, heading for the solar in the hope of finding Lord Daniel there, he caught movement in the bailey beyond the open door.
The movement brought him to a halt. It was still light outside, so he hadn’t been asleep too long, and in the bailey beyond the keep entry, he could see several men standing outside, including Chad de Lohr.
The man was dressed in armor and his horse was with him, a big white thing with a fat arse, fully loaded with tack and saddlebags.
Torran had seen that horse enough during Evesham and previous battles, enough to know it on sight.
It was a curious sight down in the bailey but not a concerning one.
Torran had no reason to be concerned at all, but he did think that, perhaps, Lord Daniel was in the bailey because so many of his sons and men were, so he staggered over to the door, leaning against the stone, trying to shake off the extreme grogginess as he searched for Lord Daniel.
Finally, he spied the man as he emerged from a single-storied structure that was situated across from the keep, built up against the outer wall of Canterbury.
Daniel was pointing to Chad, or at least beyond the man, and Torran noticed the younger de Lohr brother, Perrin, walking up with a long-legged mare.
That horse, too, was fully tacked with a saddle and bridle and what looked like a traveling satchel strapped to it.
Still, Torran wasn’t concerned with anything.
He had no idea what was going on out there and, frankly, because of his overwhelming exhaustion, he didn’t particularly care.
All he wanted was a bed to sleep on and not a table.
But that all quickly changed when he saw Lady de Lohr and her daughter emerge from the one-storied building with a small, feminine figure between them.
Daniel went to take the figure’s arm, leading her towards the long-legged mare that had been brought to stand beside Chad’s horse.
It was clear that the woman was meant to ride the horse and, already, Chad was mounting his.
In that instant, Torran knew what he was seeing and instead of rushing out to prevent Chad from taking the de Shera woman out of Canterbury, which was clearly the plan, he rushed back into the small hall as fast as his wobbly legs would take him.
Shouts and shoves began to rouse his men, who were even slower to stir than he had been.
Only d’Vant seemed able to get to his feet; everyone else was fumbling about, useless.
Snatching his sword, Torran barked at his men to follow him out into the bailey of Canterbury.
*
The horses were prepared and so was Alessandria.
At least, that’s what Chad had been told.
His mother had sent him word to make sure the horses were ready and that was exactly what he had done.
His brothers had helped, however, giving him time to don his mail and prepare his equipment, but that hadn’t taken much time considering he hadn’t even unpacked since his arrival.
In fact, his possessions were still in the stables, having been removed from his horse by the grooms, and they were still in a neat bundle just inside the door.
That also included his precious broadsword.
Therefore, it had been a simple thing for Chad to pack his belongings back onto his horse and prepare himself for the ride to Isenhall. He finished securing the broadsword, the silver sword that David de Lohr had given to him right before he passed away, looking at the craftsmanship of the hilt.
He smiled faintly, running a finger over it, remembering that David had commissioned it from a local Canterbury blacksmith and had practically hovered over the man during the process of creating it.
At least, that was how Chad’s grandmother, Emilie, told the story.
David had insisted he’d done nothing of the kind but Chad tended to believe his grandmother.
David de Lohr, if nothing else, had been a determined and exacting man, especially when it came to the production of a weapon for his eldest grandson.
Chad’s memories lingered on his grandfather.
There wasn’t a day that went by that he didn’t think of the man somehow.
David had lived to Chad’s twenty-second year, but he hadn’t been particularly healthy for the last twenty years of his life.
He’d had breathing problems, and finally heart problems, and the physic had instructed him to rest frequently but David never would.
He was under the belief that any show of weakness or illness in front of his wife upset her, so he pretended he felt fine until one morning, he simply didn’t wake up at all.
David’s wife, Emilie, had found him cold in his bed with a faint smile on his lips, having passed peacefully away sometime during the night.
The great David de Lohr who, in his prime, had inarguably been the finest swordsman in all of England hadn’t died on the field of battle in a flurry of blood and glory.
He had died in his bed, a very old and very happy man.
To his wife, that had been a fitting end to his magnificent legacy and Emilie was quite positive that the smile was because, the moment he passed from life, David had been welcomed by his brother.
David had never emotionally recovered from Christopher’s death eleven years earlier so she had comforted herself with the knowledge that he was with his brother once again.
It was a thought that brought comfort to the entire family.
The de Lohr brothers were together once more.
Chad remembered the day his father had come to Lioncross Abbey, where he had been serving, bearing the unhappy news.
Daniel had escorted his father’s casket all the way to Lioncross Abbey so that David could be buried next to his brother’s crypt in the abbey’s small chapel.
Emilie had had accompanied her husband’s body, also, and one of the saddest sights Chad had ever seen was watching his grandmother and his Uncle Christopher’s wife, Dustin, kneel at the foot of the crypts of the great men they loved and hold hands as they prayed.
The two women who had married two of the most powerful knights in the realm looked small and old and fragile, but the truth was that they were stronger than any of the men in that entire room.
It was their love for Christopher and David that had made them strong, something that continued on until two years ago when they lost first Dustin and then Emilie within three months of each other.
It had been a terrible blow to the family but the women had each been buried in their husband’s respective crypts, finally with the men they loved for all eternity.
Their beautiful love stories had passed into legend.