Free Hot Summer's Knight by Jennie Reid Page A

Gareth, thank you for everything.”  She stood on the tips of her toes and kissed his scarred cheek.  He was taken so completely by surprise, he did nothing.
    “I’ll meet you here again tomorrow.  Just after the noon hour, remember!” she called as she disappeared into the forest.
    As the last echoes of her voice faded away, Gareth stood on the river bank, a smiling statue.
    Eventually, the statue spoke.  “She kissed me!”
    If he’d had a hat, he would have thrown it in the air.  If a friend had been there, he would have hugged him, but his head was bare, and he was alone.
    “She kissed ME!” he roared instead, startling the river birds, and a deer who’d come to the water to drink.
     

CHAPTER ELEVEN
    Further up the valley, Berenice thought she heard someone shout.  She stopped, listened for a moment, heard nothing more, and kept on walking.  She didn’t hear the strange cry again, and after a while she convinced herself she must have imagined it.
    Her feet barely touched the ground.  She felt light, like a dandelion in the summer breeze.  She couldn’t seem to stop smiling.  She guessed it must be something to do with learning how to swim.
    The path wound through the forest, climbing all the time, until it reached the hamlet that clung to the skirts of the mill.
    It was the quietest time of the day.  Her only company on the path through the centre of the village was a mother duck and her ducklings, on their way home from the mill pond.  In one of the cottages, a baby cried, before gurgling contentedly into silence.  Even the mill was silent.  The grain had yet to be harvested, and the miller and his sons would be repairing his gears and cogs.
    She passed the mill, following the river, until she reached the narrow timber foot bridge spanning the fast flowing stream.  Checking her headdress and garments, she crossed the bridge to the monastery.
    She was feeling uncharacteristically nervous.  Until now, Odo had always been her brother first, and the Abbot second.  But the questions she planned to ask him today were far more serious than usual, and his answers could affect her happiness for the rest of her life.
    Taking a deep breath, she pulled the bell rope next to the solid timber door.  Far above her, the bell tolled.  She waited, and eventually the small hatch in the centre of the door opened.
    “Good morning, my Lady.”  The novice knew who she was; they all did.  Regardless of her relationship to Odo, she was the Lady of the valley.
    The heavy door swung inwards, and she stepped into the stone flagged corridor.  The novice led the way up stairs cut into the rock of the hillside, and ushered her into a small but comfortably furnished room.
    Several cushioned chairs and stools were placed at intervals around the walls.  Thick tapestries showing scenes from the Old Testament covered the stone walls, and a bowl of fresh summer fruit had been placed on the table.  This was the monastery’s reception room.
    As a woman, this one room and the stairway were all she would ever be allowed to see.
    The room had a single, unglazed window.  Crossing to it and looking out she could see the fields and the forest, and her castle in the distance.  How small and insignificant they all looked from up here.  She could understand why the monks had chosen this site for their retreat, well away from the temptations of mortal existence.
    She turned away from the window when she heard the inner door open.
    “Sister, dear, what a wonderful surprise!  To what do I owe this very great pleasure?”  Odo was a man of generous proportions, a dozen years older than Berenice.  His curling brown hair surrounded a tonsure permanently tinted pink from the sun.  It matched his face, which always seemed a little flushed, as though the stairs were a little too steep, or the road a little too long.  In truth, for Odo they often were.
    He’d been a fighter in his youth, and had amazed not only his parents but