Chapter 1: July 2, 1213

Elizabeth was supervising the sweeping out of the winter rushes from the living quarters when she heard the horn from the gate. Mother had taken charge of the great hall and the rest of the keep, and Maria was "helping" Elizabeth.

"A raid?" Maria asked anxiously. Elizabeth missed the little sister who had greeted all the world with love the previous summer. Since then, winter raiders caught a peasant girl who had tended Maria on many excursions into the fields and villages. Maria still told of nightmares concerning the sword-chopped body. Elizabeth, who suspected that swords were not all that had penetrated the girl, kept her own bad dreams to herself.

"Never borrow trouble, little sister," she said. "Would raiders ride up to the gatehouse to announce their presence?" If it were a formal siege, she knew, they were in serious trouble. Her father, two of their three knights, and all but one squire were out hunting. How else would it have been possible for her to be in the knights' quarters?

"Argent, second quarter griffin rampant, gules," a man at arms bellowed, repeating the call from the gatehouse. Some offshoot of the Danclaven, then; the whole duchy knew the red griffin. "Ten riders, four on foot."

"Girls! Come down immediately!" Mother called.

"Is it war then?" Elizabeth asked. Those numbers did not sound like war to her. Besides, they were entitled to a week's warning.

"Worse," Mother replied. "We are provisioned for siege, but not for hospitality to the Danclavens." Far off the traveled ways, they gave little hospitality to any but their nearest neighbors and their liege lord, Count Descries.

"I want you girls to go upstairs on our side and dress in your finest."

"Yes mother. Come Maria, desirest thou to bathe first?" That was a safe offer, as Maria treated bathing as an ordeal to be postponed.

"Thou canst not have any of the baths. I shall have to offer them to our guests, to wash their feet at least."

"Mother, please look at me! Will wrapping my best clothes over this really impress?"

"Thou art right. Wash Maria as best thou canst and see to dressing her. I shall send a bath up before thou art to come down. Take thy time, and thou shouldst wear my blue pellison and thy silk bliaut. Now go! I have to greet our guests."

The servants being too busy preparing the space for the guests, Elizabeth was the one who arranged Maria's hair. Then, having been trained since she was Maria's age that no one can supervise work unless that person can perform it at need, she swept out the rushes on that floor herself. She needed the bath more than ever by the time a party of servants brought a tub and the buckets of water upstairs. Only old Helga stayed to bathe her.

While she was drying off, Mother brought three more maids upstairs. She dunked herself in the bath before being dressed hurriedly. "Take some care with her hair," she said before disappearing down the stairs. Having their orders, the four took some time with Elizabeth's hair. When they were done, half of it hung down her back weighted with a cloth-of-gold and pearl piece of Mother's. The other half was in counter-circling braids making a coronet on her brows.

She was already wearing a white linen shift that just covered her knees. They held the pellison while she put her arms through the sleeves. It was Mother's and the edges wrapped to her sides. They fastened a girdle around it so the bottom edge was raised up to her ankles. When that satisfied everybody, she raised her arms for the bliaut. They tied it so it fit tightly from her waist to just under her breasts. The looseness above that, she knew, implied an abundance which she did not yet possess.

Her father had objected to that the last time it was done, but she was careful not to mention that. It was long past time to show her figure; she would be fifteen, and marriageable, this month. The horn was sounding for dinner when she came downstairs. She scurried across the courtyard but did not reach the company until they had paused at the washstands.

"Ah," Father said, "the last member of the family. My lord and gentles, may I present my lady daughter Elizabeth? Elizabeth, this is Sir Karl of Danclaven, Sir Hector, Sir George. Frederik is squire to Sir George as Paul is to Sir Hector and Roger is to Sir Karl." She curtsied to them all, and noted their bows as their names were said. The last named squire was a boy, the first named one was an armiger who looked older than the first-named knight. Sir George and Sir Hector looked a little younger than Father, but appeared dangerous men to cross and used to command.

Sir Karl was tall, fair haired, and clean-shaven in the new fashion. She thought that he could not be much past twenty, although his face was grave for one so young. She shared ewer and cup with him at table. "And will we have the pleasure of thy company for long?" she asked.

"Alas, no," he said in a deep, pleasant voice. "We must leave in the morning. Sir Benedict Descries was a squire of my father's. He was very friendly to a young boy at that time. I am on my way to pay my respects to him on his name day. It is the first such occasion since I was knighted, and the celebration is in the castle of his father the Count."

"Our loss is thy gain. I hear that the valley is at its most beautiful this time of year."

"So I have heard, but the scenery pales before what can be seen here." She looked around the hastily-decorated great hall incredulously before realizing that she had been paid a compliment. Then she decided to make her error into policy.

"Thou givest our poor decorations great honor."

"Oh, thy keep is a pretty enough setting, but the imperial court itself would not be worthy of the jewel it holds."

Elizabeth felt very warm. The fire was close and Mother's pellison contained more fur than she was used to. Even so, she suspected that the company contributed as much to that feeling as the clothing. She looked down at the ewer. She had been taking the coarser bits of meat off the chunk of bread to leave the dainty ones for the guest; he had obviously been doing the same for the lady. She took a bit of meat anyway, and chewed it slowly.

Her father rescued her. "Glad as we are for your company and happy to serve guests of my liege count, I cannot believe that we are on the direct route to Castle Descries from anywhere."

"Well, my lord, nowhere that honest men dwell. But I asked Sir Hector to show me the south side of the mountains. He has been this way before, and has been showing me the roads."

"I hope," Elizabeth found herself saying, "that thou dost not go too far into the forests. They are infested with reivers." Then she bit her tongue. He would think her casting doubt on his valor.

"Indeed they are," was his only answer.

"That is why we are in haste now," Sir George put in. "We crossed the trail of a small band of those bandits, and it took us three days out of our path to catch them."

"I will give a trial to those miscreants as thou didst ask," said Father. "Really, no-one would have minded if you had hanged them out of hand."

"It would have been abrogating thy rights, my lord," said Sir Karl. "The swordplay was one thing; but once those four surrendered, it was a matter of doing justice. And the right of doing justice on thy lands is not mine."

Elizabeth watched the party of ten ride out from the castle after a hearty breakfast the next morning. Her parents waited until after dinner, though, before discussing the visit with her. Sir Daniel, Father's seneschal, stayed with them. The old knight was more than second-in-command of the castle; he was the family's most trusted adviser. "Well, Elizabeth," Mother asked, "What didst thou think of Sir Karl?"

"A very worthy knight, from the little that I saw, and very gently spoken." If she had volunteered an opinion of a knight, Father would have upbraided her for making the comment. A positive answer, however, seemed quite safe.

"That is all very well," said Father, "but they will want Festmauer, and I have two sons and another daughter." Festmauer was a small stronghold on the Spait river which Father held from a baron. Her brother William was Father's castelan there. What it had to do with the visit, she could not tell.

"If they want Festmauer," said Sir Daniel, "they will find a way to have Festmauer. Far better that they have Festmauer as a dowry than as a conquest." Which explained what it had to do with the visit, and why she was here. "I would suggest that thou offerest it as a fief from thee."

"Even so," said Father, "Baron Guy will not like that transfer."

"He will not. But neither will he object formally, and he will attend the wedding." Apparently her casually polite statement that Sir Karl was a very worthy knight was her acceptance of the engagement. "He does not want a quarrel with the Danclavens. That could cost him his own castle, ducal fief or no ducal fief."

These were weighty issues, not to be decided quickly. The talk went on for another hour, and was not concluded even then. As to her own mind, it was even less settled.

Elizabeth wanted to be wed and mistress of her own hall; her body had begun whispering to her of unexplored mysteries well before it began bleeding eight months before. Neither her interest in the religious life nor her never-expressed infatuation with one of her father's previous squires -- now Sir Henry -- had lasted long. There was no competing interest, and Sir Karl had been impressive and well-spoken. She could easily grow to love him. A daughter-in-law of the Viscount of Danclaven would have more social prestige than any other match that she could envisage. And there was safety, besieging a Danclaven-held tower at the edge of Danclaven land was an undertaking which even a ducal army might shun. He was young, as well; she did not think that she would like sharing the bed of an old man as he decayed, and many young wives did that.

She wanted to be a mother, she could see the joy (and power) which that brought; but she remembered Mother's suffering from the birth of Robert. Her baby brother had been quite reluctant to enter the world. And she was not sure that she was ready to be a wife; her body could whisper of mysteries all it wished, she could dream of running a household, but a wife was property of her husband in a very intimate way. Father, Mother, William (and, for that matter, the seneschal) could order her about; she served the Count on his annual visit and helped to bathe his knights; but those orders were far from her. She had seen Sir Karl once; did she wish to give control over her body, possession of her body, intrusion into her body, to him?

"Mother," she asked a few days later, "did Sir Karl truly ask for my hand?"

"There was nothing that definite, daughter. Indeed, it may have been as they said. On a trip they caught some reivers; they handed them over to the lord of the land on which they had caught them; they continued on their trip. Certainly the guest-gifts they gave us were some of the arms of that band. But think a minute. This was a friend of the count's son, he could have made a report to the count of his doings and been praised for it. They trailed the party from a burned village on the lands of Baron Hugh, returning them there would have brought great praise. It is likelier that they planned to stop here all along, and thou mightest well be the reason for those plans. Thou hast seen him, he has seen thee, wert thou well satisfied with him?"

"I just feel..." she waved her hands.

"Well, we may have heard more than they said. But, if they do offer, waving thy hands will make no difference."

At one time, she had ridden the shoulders of Sir Daniel as often as Maria did these days. Their relationship had been much more formal this past year. The seneschal's duty, even so, was to give advice; and she knew that he would not lie to her. "My lady Elizabeth?" he greeted her. The "my lady" in front of her name had once been a rarity from him, saved for the most formal occasions and the most outrageous teasing. Since the first time that she bled, however, he had never omitted it.

"Sir Daniel, I seem to have a suitor whom I have seen but twice. What knowest thou of this Danclaven?"

"This one was knighted recently by the Duke's son," he replied. "I saw him not all that much more than thou didst. The family is well known, and he seems to fit the reputation."

"But thou hast more knowledge of that reputation than I do. What I remember of the tales before the fireplace is all about war. I am not in danger of being besieged by the Danclavens, but of being wed to one of them. What say the stories about that?"

"Little enough. Which, after all, is good news. The first of the family to hold Castle Dan wed the widow of the previous holder and then her daughter. No one suggests that the women wished to wed the slayer of the husband or father. Recent generations, however, have had no rumors about their marriages except for a good many widows joining the cloister. If the family had the habit of locking up their wives or beating them unmercifully, we would have heard." Beating one's wife to a reasonable degree, she knew, was within the husband's right.

"The Danclavens have," he continued, "as thou sayest, something of a reputation involving sieges. No castle that they held has fallen to siege. They have taken more by siege than any count in the duchy. A more remarkable fact is that we speak of this family as a unit. There is no story of the son making war against the father or the younger brother against the older. These facts work together; who besieges a Danclaven wars with the Danclavens. And it goes the other way; they can always find some fief for any of that name, even cousins. And that is possible because their holdings have increased as rapidly as their family."

Sir Daniel had a great deal more to tell. He spoke of the family's reputation for tightfistedness, including a total aversion to dice. Many said that the Danclavens were much more calculating than a good, reckless, knight should be. Not to the point of cowardice, he hastened to add; Danclavens led the rushes that went with their successful sieges. Many felt that their sergeants, mounted men-at-arms, were better trained and better armed than base men were entitled to be. "Even so," he noted wryly, "no lord who can levy the Danclavens ever excluded their sergeants."

He gave Elizabeth much more information than that to ponder, but she thought that it did not really deal with the point of her worries. Sir Karl would probably be a brave-but-prudent knight, not overly generous, respectful of the church but careful of his interests relative to church lands, and vicious towards reivers. That was all well and good, but what sort of husband would he be?