By which he took to mean that he could draw the proper lesson from his own silent welcome. The noise died down, and he watched her looking out the window. No, perhaps this was not the mother of the woman who healed him. Lady Eluned was no taller than any woman, and he had a sudden memory of his lucid day in that peasant hut. The woman, her back to him as Madog ap Rhys handed her a stone jar. That nameless lady was nearly as tall as the man, and nothing like the delicate-boned Lady Eluned.

As if she read his mind, Lady Eluned spoke from the window without turning to him. “The woman who healed you was not my daughter. I don’t know who that woman was.”

He felt a relief that was as intense as it was unexpected.

She looked out the window, rain beginning to fall, smiling to herself as if he’d said something amusing. “You have never met my daughter, my lord.”

And with that, he took his leave of her.

Gwenllian looked down on the yard from the tower room. The men were sparring, testing each other with steel. They looked small from up here, but she could see well enough to judge Philip’s thrust, Gwyn’s reaction to Richard Cryg’s sudden spin to strike at the shoulder, Vincent and Tegwarad and the others watching from the side.

He was there, too. The present lord of Morency stood to the side, waiting his turn. Madog would keep it from boiling over, this mundane exercise that became something else now that Lord Ranulf had determined that he was well enough to match blades and test his strength.

“Madog has given him a tourney sword,” she said over her shoulder, though she knew her mother would not concern herself overmuch with the men’s exercise. “Any who go against him will have blunted weapons as well.”

It would be more prudent to give them all wooden swords, she was sure. It was only last summer that Ranulf of Morency had killed Gaillard Renfry in a sparring match. A terrible accident, it was said. But it was said, more discreetly, that to see Morency with a sword was to know he had perfect control and left nothing to accident. The whispered doubts about Renfry’s loyalty to the crown ended with his sudden death, while the whispers about Morency only intensified. But whether it was misadventure or evil intent, he could not kill with a blunted weapon. Besides, the men who would test their skill against his would scorn abundant caution.

She didn’t tell her mother that she wanted to be out there with them, that she wanted above all to watch the famed Lord Ranulf wield a blade, any blade. It made her feel like a child again, watching the men from the solar window, wanting to be closer so she could see how it was done and who was best.