Michael glanced at the path that led to the gate. Sometimes, he looked at the babe he jiggled in his arms. Most of the time though, his attention was on the children running around the courtyard.

On summer days like this, the young children and the dogs owned the middle courtyard of Castle Clavius. They raced around in circles, climbed the walls as far as they could, played hide- and-seek, tussled over the whole area, and chased each other. While he watched, his brother Enoch tagged a younger girl named Naomi. She chased after him, treating the adults using the area as mere obstacles. One of the knights laughed and grabbed Naomi to swing her into the air, before setting her down and going on about his business. If Enoch was never the child that was picked up, neither was he often bullied by the apprentices. Most of the others were; the older boys were often jealous of the play that they had been taken from for duties in stable, kitchen, or garden.

The child in his arms cried hungrily. Michael offered her his finger to suck. That satisfied her for a moment, but he knew it would not satisfy her for long.

He had vague memories of playing like the toddlers in front of him. He had firmer memories of sitting with the other boys and girls in the great hall on dank Sundays to learn his letters and numbers. Like most older children in the castle, he knew his alphabet; like most, he had never gone on to read many actual words. Still, the subdeacon had drilled him in the Paternoster and Ave. He could read them as well as reciting them from memory.

A peasant woman found her way through the running mass. When she came up to him, she bared her full breast. He handed the babe over. After an instant of confusion, the girl sucked eagerly.

"Ah," the woman said, "that feels good. I buried my own yesterday, and his last two days he would not eat."

"She's acceptable, then?" Michael asked.

"I'll raise her as my own." If she survived and had no brother, and both of those chances were in the hand of God, then the babe would see a far happier future than she would have received as the daughter of her real mother.

Michael could remember what he'd seen of the life of the peasants.

At harvest time, the castle folk helped harvest and glean the lord's lands. There was a village through either gate, and the castle children gleaned together, one day in the upstream fields and the next day in the downstream ones. They met the village children, much more numerous than they, that way, Between castle and village, and between the villages of St. Anne's and Montant, there was some rivalry; but there was also a fair amount of friendship and many family connections.

Before the babe had finished her dinner, the horn blew for the first shift of the castle's dinner. "Follow me," he said. He led the woman into the inner courtyard, and from there into the great hall. He sat her between him and his father, to his right. His stepmother was to his father's right, just above him at the table. Since there were more men than women among the castle's commoners (although the ratio was more even than among the gentry) his stepmother could, by right, have been seated much higher. Michael, as an apprentice, should be seated much lower. Nobody raised those issues, however. Everybody was happy that his family sat together.

Even the woman who was with him treated Michael with a little coolness. The servants who brought the food were unfailingly polite, but they had no jokes to tell him. The gentry above the salt jested with each other and sometimes called things to the servants they recognized. No one ever had a jest for Michael.

It had been this way for a long time. When he and his friends grew old enough to leave the middle court, they had still run together.

He went to festivals with them instead of with his parents. They watched the knights and squires practice, and of course they attended executions and other punishments. At first, he had been proud of the central role his father played in these, wielding the lash or slipping the noose over the neck of the condemned, notching ear or nose as he had been ordered.

His companions enjoyed these spectacles, but they began avoiding his father as their elders did. They couldn't very well avoid him, but some of the familiarity in the way they treated him disappeared. Then too, they soon were apprenticed and began to associate with their fellows. He was apprenticed too, but his father had no other apprentice with whom Michael could associate.

In harvest times of still later years, one castle lad would often take a fancy to a particular peasant girl. He would work close to where she was during the long day, and -- after the day's work was done -- the two of them might slip away from the others into the dimness. But no peasant girl would look with favor on the hangman's son.

Michael looked closely at the woman beside him. Was she one of those girls back then? But no, she had probably been a bit older. One of the kitchen people put half a loaf on the wooden plate between them. He thought of cautioning her not to take any of the bread -- some peasants had made fools of themselves in the past. But she was busy with the babe. Then someone else from the kitchen ladled food onto the bread. He passed her the tankard of beer they shared.

The woman clearly enjoyed the castle food. When they both had eaten, he asked her, "Thy name?"

"Annette, daughter of Isaac, wife of Joseph."

Sir Karl pushed his trencher away. He took a final swig and passed the tankard to Lady Elizabeth. His father signaled Michael. This was his duty now, another step in his apprenticeship. He stepped out into the center of the Great Hall.

"Young Michael," said Sir Karl.

"My lord, I present Annette, daughter of Isaac, wife of Joseph. Thy serf in the village of Montant. She has accepted the baby Catherine, daughter of the prisoner."

"Very well, Michael. Annette, doth thy husband agree with this."

"Yes, my lord. Our only question was whether the babe would suck."

"Very well. Father David, record that she has accepted the babe. Heinrich, make sure that a cartload of firewood is delivered to her hut. It's a new babe, after all."

"My lord is kind," the peasant woman said. And, indeed, he was. She had undoubtedly had one gift of firewood on the birth of her son already.

"Master Jakob," said Sir Karl.

"Yes, my lord," said Michael's father.

"It will be tomorrow."

Michael returned to his seat.

"Tell the prisoner when thou feedest her," his father said.

"Yes, father."

Michael smiled to see the peasant woman take the trencher the two of them had shared with her. The peasants ate porridge more often than bread; half a loaf soaked in juices -- juices of meat as much as of the vegetables -- would seem a luxury to her.

He gathered two trenchers and filled a tankard with beer. Two knights were walking past.

"I don't blame Sir Karl for his judgment," said one. "What was his choice? I do blame the merchant."

"Peter," said the other. "The merchant, Peter. She did try to steal his purse; his dagger too for that matter. What dost thou expect a merchant to do?"

"A man, merchant or no, would have dealt with the matter differently. If a whore tried to take my purse and pulled a dagger on me, she would learn that men have more weapons than they carry in their sheaths. I would have taken the dagger back, and made her very sorry. I would not have called someone else to deal with her for me. Him? He got cut, and he called down the sergeant."

"Yes, Sir William, but thou art a man of thy hands."

"I thank thee."

"This was a mere merchant. He didn't have thy skill. Probably it was the first time that he had ever seen a dagger pointed at him."

When they had passed, Michael nodded to the guard at the trapdoor. The guard took the bar off and lifted the trap. Michael carried the food down the ladder.

The prisoner was chained in back. "Dinner," he said when he reached her. She took one loaf of the bread in her free right hand and passed it to her left to eat. "A peasant woman has agreed to raise thy daughter," he said.

"These," she gestured towards her breasts, "are full. It is past time to feed Catherine."

"The woman has milk. She lost her son recently."

"That solves Catherine's problem; it does not solve mine."

He'd seen her feed her babe, someone had to watch whenever she was not alone. He remembered that fullness, that roundness. He remembered, too, seeing her naked if only at a distance.

When the Bishop had visited the castle (and the town) this Eastertide, the town celebrated his arrival with a tableau of the seasons. She, well along in pregnancy, had portrayed Autumn. The actresses were all naked, and all, of course, taken from her profession.

"That will not be a problem for long." He had to be blunt; his father had ordered him to tell her. "Thou wilt hang tomorrow."

"I shall not hang." He had heard words like this before, denial of the obvious. But her tone was bitter, not hopeful. Then he realized that she was being literal. As a woman, she faced the garrote, not the noose. "I don't want to die slowly."

"I don't think thou wilt." His father knew what he was doing, and -- unless Sir Karl ordered otherwise -- his executions were clean and brief. Still, Michael had only participated in hangings, not garottings, since becoming his father's apprentice.

She finished the loaves in silence. In the same silence, she opened her bodice. When he had been much younger, his mother had taken him to the old great hall when the women bathed.

There, he had been surrounded by naked women and their youngest children. One week, he was suddenly intrigued by all those breasts and the glimpses of the flesh between the women's legs. His mother, already heavy with Enoch, had not mentioned anything to him, but the next week his father had told him that he was too old to go with the women. He went down to the river with his father and the other men.

Since then, he had distant views from the crowds witnessing tableaux. He had discreet glimpses of mothers or nurses feeding their babes. Since his father's remarriage, he slept in the great hall, and saw women (what women slept there) service the serving men. Knights slept in an inner room, and the women joined them there when summoned.

This, however, was an intimate view. He watched her openly.

When her full breasts were freed, and their long nipples pointed right at him, she continued. She removed her drawers, and pushed them onto the chain around her right ankle. She lay back and gestured to her breasts.

"These are very full." He was afraid, and fascinated. "Couldst thou help me?"

He couldn't resist. He walked over to her and bent down. His hand reached out and touched her. The breast was full, and firm, and so smooth. Rather than resisting him, she caressed his face with her free hand. She reached behind his head and pulled him towards her breasts. He knelt down.