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."But your wounds haven't healed!"64Thomas Burnett Swann"They were just scratches really, and now you've cured them with yourPage 38 ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.htmlmedicine.If we stayed, we might never want to go.""I might never want you to go.""But don't you see, Lady Mary, we have to fight for Jerusalem.""You expect to succeed where kings have failed? Frederick Barbarossa?Richard-the-Lion-Hearted?Two little boys without a weapon between them!""We're not little boys," he protested."I'm a young swain-fifteen winters oldand John here is astripling who will grow like a bindweed.Aren't you, John?""Grow, anyway," said John without enthusiasm."But I don't see why we have toleave in the morning.""Because of Ruth.""And Ruth is your guardian angel?" I asked with an irony lost on the boy."Yes.Already she's saved our lives.""Has she, Stephen? Has she? Sleep now.We'll talk tomorrow.I want to tell youabout my ownson."I returned to the solar heavy of foot.It was well for Ruth that she hadchanged to a nightdress, joined the window seats with the necessary stool, andretired to bed in a tumble of cushions.Now she was feigning sleep butforgetting to mimic the slow, deep breams of the true sleeper.Well, I couldquestion her tomorrow.One thing I knew.She would lead my boys on no unholyCrusade.A chill in the air awakened me.It was not unusual for a hot summer day togrow wintry at night.Irose, lit a candle, and found additional coverlets for myself and Ruth.Herface seemed afloat in her golden hair; decapitated, somehow; or drowned.I thought of the boys, shivering in the draft of their glassless window.I hadnot remembered to draw the canopy of their bed.In my linen nightdress and mypointed satin slippers which, like all the footwear expected of Englishladies, cruelly pinched my toes, I passed through the hall and then thekitchen, tiptoed among the pallets of Sarah and her children stretched nearthe oven, and climbed a staircase whose steepness resembled a ladder.Lifting aside a coarse leather curtain, I stood in the doorway of my son'sroom and looked at the boys.TheyTHE MANOR OF ROSES65had fallen asleep without extinguishing the pewter lamp which hung from a rodbeside their bed.The bearskin covered their chins, and their bodies had metfor warmth in the middle of the bed.I leaned above them and started to spreadmy coverlet.John, who was closer to me, opened his eyes and smiled."Mother," he said."Mary," I said, sitting on the edge of the bed."That's what I meant.""I'm sorry I woke you.""I'm glad.You came to bring us a coverlet, didn't you?""Yes.Won't we wake your brother?"His smile broadened; he liked my acceptance of Stephen as his brother andequal."Not our voices.Only if I got out of bed.Then he would feel me gone.But once he's asleep, he never hears anything, unless it's one of his hounds.""You're really going tomorrow?""I don't want to go.I don't think Stephen does either.It's Ruth's idea.Shewhispered to him in the solar, when you and I were talking.But I heard herjust the same.She said they must get toLondon.She said it was why she had come, and why she had saved us from theMandrakes.""Why won't she trust me, John?"Page 39 ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html"I think she's afraid of you.Of what you might guess.""What is there to guess?"There was fear in his eyes.He looked at Stephen, asleep, and then at me."Ithink that Ruth is aMandrake.One who has passed."I flinched.I had thought: thief, adventuress, harlot, carrier of the plague,but nothing so terrible as Mandrake.Though fear was a brand in my chest, Ispoke quietly.I did not want to judge her until he had made his case.Hemight be a too imaginative child, frightened by the forest and now bewilderedwith sleep.He was only twelve.And yet, from what I had seen, I had thoughthim singularly rational for his years.Stephen, one might have said, wouldwake in the night and babble ofMandrake girls.Never John.Not without reason, at least
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