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remembered almost nothing of his childhood before he had been sent to foster with Harlech’s family. The smallest and thinnest of boys, Beau hadn’t dared to utter a word to anyone.
    Preoccupied with his own training, Harlech had barely noticed Beau until one afternoon in the lists, when some of the older boys had come looking for Beau. That day it had been seven against one, and yet when the tussle ended and the dust had cleared, every squire lay huddled and moaning in the dirt.
    Harlech had tethered his mount and walked over to where Beau stood, his battered face tight and his bruised hands fisted, his back pressed against a hay bale. “Well-done. Who taught you to fight?”
    Beau spat out some blood, but his eyes never strayed from the boys he had knocked down. “Priests.”
    “Huh. I shall have to attend church more often.” Harlech gave him a measuring look. “Go and wash up. Mother hates to see evidence of our labors at her table.”
    Beau jerked his chin toward the fallen. “What about them?”
    “I expect they’ll be too busy now,” Harlech said, eliciting new groans from the fallen. To one of them, he said, “Do remind me, Master Thaddius, what is the price for a squire who loses a challenge?”
    The older boy hung his head and muttered, “Shoveling out stalls for the stable master.”
    “Ah, yes.” Harlech smiled. “Shit for shit.”
    “Do you remember Squire Langston?” Beau now asked Harlech as he stowed some extra shirts in his traveling case.
    “Thaddius the Thickhead?” Harlech chuckled. “God in heaven, Beau, I have not thought of him in seven lifetimes. Why have you?”
    “He died at a tourney in France when he was but twenty,” Beau said. “He took a lance through the heart. He couldn’t afford the proper armor, but still he rode. I thought it brave of him.”
    “Stupid, more like,” Harlech corrected. “Thaddius was a braggart and a bully who thought himself ever invincible. ’Twas what killed him in the end.” He cocked his head. “You were never friends with Thaddius.”
    “Do you recall the day in the lists, when he and the other squires came to thrash me?” As Harlech nodded, Beau said, “I did not come to the evening meal because I was bloodied and beaten. I went to the stables and shoveled out the stalls with them.”
    Harlech made an impatient sound. “As angry as they were? They might have smothered you in shit.”
    “They hated me because I was small and thin andalone.” Beau closed the case and fastened the straps. “I had to show them that I was no different.”
    “And did you?”
    “I took a few more cuffs that night, but none in earnest,” Beau admitted. “I have never been one to lead others, Harlech. If not for you, Thaddius might have become my friend and guide. I daresay I would have followed him to France, and died a mortal death as he did.”
    “But you followed me into the Templars, and off to Crusade, and back to England again.” Harlech’s expression turned pensive. “Where I, your good friend, gave you the plague that took us both to the grave.”
    “As well as the immortal life I’ve lived since we clawed our way out of them.” Beau shrugged into the black leather jacket he wore when among mortals. “For a long time I believed we were cursed by God for our sins. But the modern world has changed my thinking, and now I am persuaded to believe it is as Cyprien’s leech would have it. We were changed by the strangeness of that plague, not divine condemnation. It was not punishment, but accident.”
    “You have been thinking too much of late.” The captain folded his arms. “So what if it was chance? Would you have rather died on the wrong end of a lance, as Thaddius did? Is that the real reason you’ve given up wenching? Why you spend so many nights hunting alone? Some manner of atonement?” He peered at him. “Have you taken to excessive praying, or drinking animal blood?”
    “No. I have no desire to make myself into a