Free The Best of Men by Claire Letemendia

question some years ago, if I remember.”
    “Then I take it there is no impediment?”
    “Not as far as I’m aware.”
    “Laurence, I can only assume that you have led a rather loose life in the past. Were you ever infected?”
    He laughed, genuinely amused; he might as well be a prize bull for breeding, which in fact he supposed he was. “Not that I’ve ever noticed, though my good luck amazes me.”
    “I beg of you to put an end to such debauchery, in view of what is to come.”
    “
Casar, casar, que bien, que mal
,” he remarked, knowing that she hated to hear her mother tongue and that the old Spanish proverb, a wry comment on matrimony, would annoy her just as much.
    She frowned at him severely. “You shall marry, sir, for my peace of mind and for that of his lordship. And one more thing.”
    “Yes?”
    “Elizabeth also told us that you do not want to serve in Thomas’ troop. If this is because of some foolish past rivalry between you, remember that he was a boy of nineteen when you last saw him. You will find him altered. He has been a most dutiful son to us, in your absence. He and his wife, Mary, stayed here at Chipping Campden after their wedding last year, though they would no doubt have preferred to establish their own household. Your father granted them a manor and some acreage near Gloucester, but as we had begun to lose all hope that you would return, we thought it best that he become acquainted with the business of the estate.”
    “Of course,” Laurence said. Poor Tom, he reflected; the prize had just been snatched away.
    “It will comfort his lordship to know that you and Thomas are together, if circumstances require you to fight. That is all,” she concluded. “You may go now, and break your fast.”
    “Thank you,” he said, forgetting to bow to her as he left. He was still thinking of his brother.
II.
    He had been fifteen, and Tom almost ten. One afternoon in very late summer when rain prevented him from going to the river to bathe, he had escaped to his other favourite place, for both contemplation and a solitary, forbidden pleasure to which youths of his age were much addicted. The tall barn had been built for storing grain but was dilapidated and empty; he liked to sit on the topmost level, from which a platform extended so that men could toss sacks of corn down into the waiting carts. It provided an excellent view of the fields beyond, stacked with bales of fresh hay.
    As he arrived, the sky cleared and rays of sunshine began to filter through the disappearing clouds. He went onto the platform, took off his doublet and shirt and lay back to bask in the heat; and he had just slipped a hand lazily below the waist of his breeches when he saw Tom clamber out of the barn.
    “So this is where you hide!” Tom exclaimed.
    “Go away,” Laurence said, snatching out his hand and sitting up. Tom was forever tagging after him, being more and more of a nuisance with his incessant questions and his desire to ape everything that his older brother did.
    Tom peered over the edge of the platform. “Would it kill you if you fell? I’ll bet it would, unless you landed over in that haystack.”
    He chattered on and on in his grating childish voice, so to silence it Laurence asked, “Shall we see?”
    “You wouldn’t dare,” Tom said.
    As though a powerful drug had been released into his system, Laurence strode to the edge, feeling a weightlessness in his body that convinced him he could fly or float in the air.
    “No!” shouted Tom, but Laurence had already sailed off.
    He fell, squarely, in the midst of the nearby haystack and rolled down, laughing and exhilarated until he glimpsed his brother’s silhouette against the sky. Horrified, he jumped up and ran to catch Tom as he leapt, and they both collapsed together in a panting heap. Tom suffered a broken ankle and a few scrapes and scratches. Laurence was unharmed, though ridden with guilt at his own heedlessness. As punishment, he was