“For three years, I wasn’t allowed to utter a single word. Now, I was being given a chance to speak, and for a split second, I almost didn’t answer, and then I realized I had nothing to lose. I’d already doomed my entire village, so I looked up at him, and staring him straight in the eye, I said, ‘From you, you hedge-born goat.’”

Ruby shot Bennett a quizzical look. “Um…hedge-born?”

“Oh, sorry. It’s medieval slang for someone that’s of low class, even below that of serf or a slave, and back then, your status was everything.”

“So you insulted him.”

“In a big way.”

“What did he do?”

“He laughed.”

“What?”

“He threw back his head and laughed. Of course, I was still waiting for the shoe to drop and his fist to meet my face, or worse, a dagger across my throat to end it all, but instead, he sat there quite amused for what seemed to be forever. Finally, he steepled his fingers and looked down his nose at me. And then he asked me a question, and then another, and then another.”

Enthralled, Ruby’s eyes remained fixed on Bennett. “What kind of questions?”

“About the poem and about how I knew how to speak Italian, which I didn’t. I’d just repeated what I’d heard, using the accent he had used when he was teaching Edward. This quizzing must have gone on for twenty or thirty minutes before Max abruptly got to his feet and ordered me back to my cell. I did as I was told, and I remained there for that night and the next, dreading when the door would finally open, and they’d drag in my neighbors one at a time to meet their death. Instead, on the third night, two servants walked in carrying buckets of water and a handful of clothes. They set everything down and instructed me to wash properly and put on the clean clothing, and after they left, that’s what I did. Until that night, they had never given me enough water for a proper wash. A half bucket a day was all I got, so it wasn’t until I drank my fill when I’d use what remained to clean myself. The clothes I wore the night of my capture were the only ones I had, so washing them and the two blankets I’d been given took a bit of ingenuity. And without a comb or a brush, my hair, which at the time reached my waist, was always tangled. I was quite bedraggled, actually, and I suppose that’s the way Max wanted me to be, so I was more than a little confused about the new clothes. They weren’t exactly new, but they weren’t threadbare or covered in stains, and putting them on almost made me feel human again.