The King's Champion. Catherine March

over. Have no fear for him.’

      Ellie nodded, relieved for Troye’s sake, but this news did nothing to ease the pain in her heart. Then she said goodbye and touched her heel to her horse’s flank, cantering off as her father called out for her to hurry along.

      

      The journey home to Castle Ashton in Somerset took four days, and while they seemed the longest days of her life, as she struggled to come to terms with the empty space within her heart, she valued the time spent in the saddle that kept her busy. When they reached home there would be time enough to be alone with her thoughts. The prospect filled her with a dull gloom, for always she’d had hope for the future, a future that she would spend with Troye, but now all hope had been taken from her and she was left with…nothing.

      Tired as she was by the long hours of riding on country roads, the summer heat and dust almost unbearable, she lay awake at night. She slept in a tent with her parents, and listened to her father snore, her mother occasionally moaning at him to turn over. She wondered where Troye was sleeping tonight, if he was still in the Tower, if he had a comfortable bed and had been given a meal…and then tears slipped silently from the corners of her eyes as she realised that she must banish all thoughts of Troye, for he belonged to another.

      

      Yet as the days and the weeks passed, and still she continued to think of Troye, her heart would not easily accept the firm advice of her mind. The stubborn creature insisted that all its love was reserved for only one man—Troye. No matter what she was doing, whether it was working on a tapestry with her mother, distilling herbs with her Aunt Beatrice, hunting with hawks in the fields with her father, always thoughts of Troye came to her unbidden. At night he was still the last image on her mind, and the first when she awoke.

      To make matters even harder to bear, she could tell no one of her feelings. How could she confess to even one as understanding as her own mother that she loved a man she barely knew? A man that had never so much as kissed her and one that was married to another. It hurt beyond measure, to think of him with this unknown woman, that all this time he had loved her and there had never been any hope that she, Ellie, would be the one he would love. She wondered what his wife was like, this Jewess, and concluded that she must be very beautiful and very clever indeed to have captured the heart of the King’s champion.

      

      Summer faded into autumn and the leaves dried upon the trees to gold and bronze, fluttering down to the ground all around Castle Ashton. The wind rose and the dark grey clouds of winter came down from the north and brought with them flurries of early snow. Ellie retreated into silence and, though it was noted that she seemed to be pining, her appetite greatly diminished and her eyes having lost their bold sparkle, it was assumed by her family that she missed her brother and she merely passed through the moods and vagaries that afflicted youths as they evolved from child to adult, from girl to woman.

      Ellie indeed wrestled with her emotions, swinging from one day to the next with a determination to forget all about Troye and then desperately longing for a miracle that would somehow bring them together. Quite how this would happen she had no idea. On days when she was determined to break the hold Troye had upon her heart, she flirted outrageously with any young man that came to Castle Ashton, arousing her mother’s alarm and her father’s ire. And yet when these young men departed, having gained not so much as a kiss from the saucy little Ashton girl, Ellie would retire to her chamber. There she would fling herself down upon her bed, racked with such great sobs of tears that she feared her ribs would crack. However hard she tried, her heart compared all men to Troye and found them sorely lacking. They did not look like Troye, or smile like him, or have the timbre of his voice, or his manly smell.

      Her attempts to find new love failed and she lapsed into solitude, seeking balm for her soul, convinced that she would never love again. Convinced that for some unknown reason she must wait. She could not fathom why she felt this stubborn need to wait. Wait for what? For Troye? How could that be? she demanded of the stars in the sky, as she stood at the open window of her chamber and gazed up at the heavens, with an aching heart.

      

      When spring came, her father insisted on a grand feast with music and dancing to celebrate her seventeenth birthday on St George’s Day. He invited all the local gentry, especially those with eligible sons. But by now Ellie had resigned herself to loneliness and unrequited love and would have nothing to do with any of them. Lord Henry was incensed at the waste of time and coin, as she refused to even hear of any offers made for her hand in the days following.

      

      It was Lady Beatrice who noticed how eagerly her little niece ran to any messenger with a letter from Rupert in far-off London. It did not escape her attention that it was news of Troye de Valois that Ellie so eagerly sought. They had heard, of course, that Troye was released from prison, having spent a mere ten days within its confines. The King fined him five hundred marks for his insolence and then banished him from Court for a year. In effect, he sent him home to spend time with the wife he so dearly loved and for whom he had been prepared to risk all. When Ellie had heard this she was at once relieved that Troye was out of prison and safely home, and yet a twinge of jealousy warred with admiration for a man who could so dearly love a woman, even if that woman was not herself.

      Lady Beatrice tried to talk to her niece and explain that time was a healer and that her feelings of pain and rejection would pass; that one day Ellie would meet another and all would be well. Ellie simply nodded, and smiled, and turned away. There came little news after that, except that Rupert, and therefore Troye, went away on campaign to Scotland. She shuddered to think of the experiences they would have fighting against the Scots, who, from all accounts, were barbaric savages. After some months Rupert sent a note to say that Troye had been grievously injured, had been relieved of his duties and sent home to his family in York to recover.

      Eleanor was surprised at the pang she felt, after all this time, her concern for him, for his pain and suffering, and to think of him with the wife who nursed and cared for him. She could not endure any such thoughts. She tried to banish them by devoting herself to occupations of one kind or another: tending plants in the herb garden that she and her aunt had created at Castle Ashton, and on rainy days she stayed in her chamber writing out a transcript of the Bible, each page beautifully and painstakingly decorated with intricate illustrations. Under the guidance of their priest, Friar Thomas, she worked diligently and he announced how pleased he was with her devotion and even began to drop hints to Lord Henry that he had fine hopes of Ellie finding her vocation as a nun, much to his lord’s displeasure.

      

      Yet another winter and another spring passed and then came a surprising change to her solitary existence. Remy St Leger rode over from Hepple Hill with glorious and most unexpected news—Beatrice was with child. There was great celebration, for they had kept the news quiet until they were certain that this time Beatrice would carry the child and already she was well into her second trimester. They were all overjoyed, for a child of their own had been the one perfect blessing to crown the love that Remy and Beatrice had shared these many years. Bearing a child so late in years for a woman of Beatrice’s age was a risky matter, but all was being done to safeguard the health of both mother and child and she would remain at Hepple Hill until after the birth.

      Ellie decided that she would be of more use to her aunt if she went to stay with her at Hepple Hill, and with the blessings of both her parents she set off a few weeks before the baby was due to be born. While Beatrice was forced to lie abed, bored and frustrated and yet desperate to sustain the life of her unborn child, Ellie assumed the day-to-day tasks of running the keep. She made sure that her aunt received fresh, nutritious meals every day and supervised all the preparations and accoutrements needed for the birth, and for the baby. It kept her busy, and helped to pass the time, time being the essential element needed to help heal the heartache she suffered.

      When the birthing day came, despite Beatrice’s fears and Ellie’s inexperience as midwife, the baby was born with little trouble, a beautiful lusty boy, healthy and fair like his father. The ecstatic parents named him Tristan.

      Ellie could scarce bring herself to leave Hepple Hill and her soft, sweet-smelling, cuddly