The Warrior's Princess Bride. Meriel Fuller

every sighing whisper through the grass, her mouth dry with the thought that the English would return. Once dark had fallen, she had crept through the narrow alleyways and side streets before running swiftly over the rough moorland to the farmstead.

      A low moan from the pallet on the other side of the cottage drew her attention. The straw in the linen pillow rustled beneath her hair as she turned her head from the wall to look over at the huddled form. All she could see of her mother was a strand of silvered hair coiling out from the top of the blanket, the rest of her slender figure hidden by the covers. Tavia chewed on her lip, fervently hoping her mother would be better this morning. She had awoken many times in the night to the sound of her mother thrashing about on the mattress. When Tavia had gone over to try to settle her again, her mother had pinned her with a wild, disorientated gaze, scarcely recognising her own daughter.

      ‘What! Still lying a-bed, chit?!’ Her father pushed himself through the doorway, scattering raindrops as he pulled off his hat. He strode over to Tavia’s pallet in the corner, grabbing at her shoulder through the thin stuff of her linen chemise, wrenching her upwards. ‘Time you had the pot on!’

      Tavia shifted into a sitting position. She hunched her knees upwards, drawing the frayed woollen blanket up to her chest, clutching her arms about her calves. She rubbed her face with her hands, trying to eradicate the tiredness around her eyes. ‘I’m sorry, Father.’ She murmured an apology, having no wish to argue with him while her mother still slept. Normally, she rose with the dawn, lighting the cooking fire in the middle of the cottage, and starting to make the big cauldron of porridge for when her father came in from the fields.

      ‘If you don’t rise now, I’ll give you something to be sorry for,’ Dunstan growled. Leaning over, he pulled sharply on her long braid that fell like a glossy dark red rope down the centre of her slim back.

      ‘Ouch!’ She rubbed her scalp, turning wide eyes up to him.

      ‘Up!’ Dunstan spoke abrasively, jerking his thumb in the direction of the unlit, blackened hearth.

      Tavia shook her head, trying to clear her mind and concentrate on her chores. Throwing back the covers, she swung her feet to the floor, pushing her toes into leather slippers. The toggle had broken off the right-hand shoe, making it difficult to walk in. She fumbled for her underdress, folded neatly on a stool beside her bed, silently thanking her mother for saving the fine piece of wool to make the garment. It was the one item Tavia owned that came close to luxury, and she relished the feel of the soft wool against her skin. Wearing this underdress, her bliaut, made of a cheap, coarse weave, did not aggravate her skin. She dragged the heavy gown over her head, fastening it on each side with leather lacings.

      ‘Where did you run to yesterday?’ her father asked gruffly, as Tavia finally placed a steaming bowl of porridge before him. She folded her arms over her chest, unwilling to tell him the full events, unwilling to hear on her own lips that she had never been more frightened in her whole life.

      ‘I went to the church,’ she muttered. ‘I thought it would be the safest place.’ Her top teeth nibbled at the rounded fullness of her bottom lip.

      ‘Well, you could have thought to come back and help me with the ox-cart.’ Her father shovelled a spoonful of porridge into his mouth, his beady, red`rimmed eyes roving over her slim frame, almost with disgust. ‘I had a devil of a time trying to reach home on my own.’

      ‘I wanted to make sure it was safe before I left the church,’ she explained hurriedly. She turned back to the fire to hide the fear in her eyes, remembering how she had stared as the wide oak door had closed behind the soldier, that giant of a man, and how she had stood, frozen, unable to move, for a long, long time.

      ‘More,’ Dunstan commanded, shoving the empty, porridge-spattered bowl over the uneven planks of the table. She ladled the white, sloppy mess into the bowl and handed it back to him, grateful for the small routine chores that made her feel normal again, grateful for her father’s familiar rough treatment of her.

      ‘We’ll travel to Kelso on the morrow, take the wool there,’ her father announced suddenly, belching. ‘I made no coin yesterday because of the attack.’ His eyes narrowed. ‘And I expect you to stay with me this time.’

      Tavia whirled around, the spoon in her hand spattering white gobs of porridge on to the brown earth floor. ‘But, Father, it’s not safe!’ She quailed at the thought of travelling to town again. ‘All these attacks!’

      Dunstan brought his fist crashing down onto the bare, worn planks. ‘You’ll do as I say, girl! I always knew you were lily-livered, just like that useless piece of womanhood lying over there.’ He poked a finger at her mother’s limp form on the pallet.

      Tavia jutted her chin in the air, placing the spoon carefully down on the table and moving to her mother’s side, resenting her father’s accusation. She touched her mother’s forehead; the icy coolness of the skin came as a shock after her mother’s high temperature in the night. Tavia frowned. What was the matter with her? Suddenly her mother lurched upwards, her body snapping wildly from one side to the other, as she crossed her arms over her chest to claw at her shoulders with desperate fingers. ‘Get them off me! Get them off me!’

      ‘Shh! Calm down!’ Tavia whispered, sitting down on the side of the pallet and trying to draw her mother’s body into the circle of her arms.

      ‘My whole body is itching, it’s on fire,’ Mary moaned. Tears gathered in the corners of her wide blue eyes, as she concentrated on her daughter. ‘Help me, Tavia, please.’

      Tavia jumped up, shocked at the deterioration in her mother’s condition and whirled around. ‘She needs a physician, Father. She can’t go on like this.’

      ‘Costs money,’ Dunstan spat out through a mouthful of porridge. ‘And coin is one thing we do not possess.’ He glared at her, the flesh on his face pinched and blotchy. ‘If only you had made more effort with Lord Greaves, then all our troubles would be over. We’d be living the life of a noble family if only you’d wedded him.’

      Lord Greaves! Tavia recalled the bent, arthritic creature at least twice her age, eyeing her covertly in the marketplace on several occasions. He had been the last in a long line of potential husbands lined up by her father, rich woollen merchants who visited the stall on a regular basis, men who showed an interest in the weaver’s daughter.

      ‘He didn’t like the colour of my hair,’ Tavia replied, sweeping her father’s dirty bowl and spoon from the table, and plunging them in a pail of cold water to wash them. She scrubbed viciously at the clots of sticky porridge, the icy water stinging her hands.

      ‘And not just that,’ Duncan added. ‘Just look at you, so thin, scrawny. Men want women with a bit of flesh on them; they want sons, all of them. You don’t look fit to breed, girl.’

      Tavia’s eyes darted to the gloomy corner as her mother moaned, restless on her pallet. ‘Surely we must have a few coins saved?’ She turned to her father in despair, the cloth between her fingers dripping on to the packed earth floor.

      ‘Nay! I told you! Can’t you use some of your herbs on her?’

      ‘Nothing is working.’ Tavia shook her head, thinking of all the different tisanes and poultices she had made up for her mother over the past few days. ‘Nothing works.’

      ‘Slut can die for all I care,’ Dunstan muttered into his beard.

      ‘What did you say?’ Tavia gaped at him, incredulous, unbelieving at the savage words she had just heard. Tossing the cloth into the pail, she stepped over to the table, thumping it with her small wet fist to get her father’s attention. ‘How dare you speak about my mother…your wife…in such a way? We need money, Father, and we need to send for a physician… now…today.’

      Her father smiled, a narrow, mean curling of his lips. His pale, watery eyes were blank. ‘You’ll get nothing from me. Either of you.’

      Tavia leaned her head against the ridged, nubbled back of a tree, and sobbed, hopelessness ripping through her chest like a knife