After a moment of listening he realized that the apprehension he felt came from inside the tent and not outside. He threw back the cover and went to stand over Zared. She made no sound, but he knew she was crying. He sat on the edge of her cot and pulled her into his arms, realizing as soon as he touched her that she was still asleep. Did she often cry in her sleep? Did she always cry so silently?
He held her body, wrapped only in one thin layer of linen, against his bare chest and cradled her to him. Like the child she was not far from being, she snuggled against him, her hot tears wetting the mat of hair on his chest. If he had not felt her unbound breasts pressing against him, he would have thought her to be a child.
He held her securely while she cried, stroking her hair and wondering what made her weep so in her sleep.
Severn had awakened before Tearle. He knew his sister cried, for she often wept in her sleep, just as her mother had done, but he didn't go to her. He lay awake, silent, ready to go to her if she needed him, but he did not try to stop her weeping.
When he heard the man Smith stir, then saw him rise from his cot, Severn put his hand on the sword by his cot. What was the man doing sneaking about at night? When Smith went to Zared Severn almost drew a knife on him, but he hesitated and watched as Smith pulled Zared into his arms.
At first Severn gaped in astonishment. How had he heard Zared's weeping? No one except Severn knew how she cried in her sleep. None of her other brothers had ever been aware of Zared's tears, yet that man had heard.
Severn relaxed against the cot as he watched the two shadowy figures. Liana, he thought. His sister-in-law knew more than he had given her credit for. She had chosen Smith, perhaps knowing he was the right man for Zared.
Severn watched Smith hold his sister, and he remembered all too well those years when Zared's mother had cried. His brothers had hated hearing the woman's loud unhappiness, and in their way they had tried to comfort her. For a year or so they had allowed her to cry and had not complained, but in the second year of her marriage to their father they had told her to cease. Their words seemed to make her cry more.
It was Severn who had made an effort to stop the woman's tears. He was already a big, sturdy boy often years, and his own mother was long dead, but his stepmother's tears awakened a need within him. At night he would creep down the stairs and go to her room and climb in bed with her. Her own child, Zared, the only daughter born to his father, had been taken from her at birth. She used to cling to Severn, hold him so tightly he thought she might break a rib or two. But in the end she did not hurt him; in fact, he found he slept better on those nights when he slept near her.
He had been very afraid of what his older brothers and father would say when they found out that he had gone to comfort a crying woman, but his stepmother had never told anyone, and during the day, on the rare occasions when he saw her, she made no reference to the fact that sometimes he came to her.
Yet sometimes he'd find a piece of fruit in his room, or perhaps a sweet beside his bed. And in 1434, when he was so ill, she had sat up day and night nursing him, feeding him mugs of hot broth and spoonfuls of vile-tasting herbs. He hadn't fully recovered his strength when she went off with his father and his oldest brother William to Bevan Castle.
The Howards had laid siege to Bevan Castle, and she had starved to death there. His stepmother, his father, and William all dead at the hand of the Howards.
Afterward Severn and his remaining four brothers had decided to raise Zared as a boy to protect her from the Howards. Perhaps it was the memory of that poor, crying woman starving to death that had influenced them. They could not bear to think of their failure to protect one weak female. Perhaps Zared's pretty face with its long lashes, her bright hair, her smiling ways, reminded them too much of their failure.
There were times when Severn knew they were working Zared too hard, but a year after Zared's mother was starved by the Howards Rogan's first wife was taken prisoner. Severn shut his eyes in memory, for the fight to get her back had killed both Basil and James.
When there were only three brothers left Rowland, then the eldest, had doubled his vigilance against the Howards, and the brothers' training had also doubled. Rowland intensified his watch over Zared, forcing her to train as hard as her brothers. If he saw even a hint of softness in her, he stamped on it.
When Rowland was killed by Howard's men four years before, both Rogan and Severn had been devastated. Rowland had been their guiding light, the foundation of what was left of their family.
It was after Rowland's death that Zared began crying, just as her mother had done. The first time Severn had heard it he'd thought it was the ghost who haunted Moray Castle, but on the second night he got up to see who it was. Zared, half asleep, half awake, lay in her bed on a wet pillow. She was thirteen years old, but she felt frail to him when he pulled her into his arms. She had begged him not to tell about her crying, and he'd sworn he would not.
After that she didn't cry aloud, but sometimes he went to her and saw that she cried while she was sleeping. At first he thought her tears were from grief—she had seen many deaths in her short life— but he came to realize there was more than grief. He suspected that Zared didn't know why she cried, but he guessed that she was lonely, as deeply lonely as a person can be.
Severn had once mentioned to Rogan that he thought perhaps it would be all right to allow Zared to show that she was female. But while Rogan pondered the idea Oliver Howard had kidnapped Rogan's wife Liana, and the Peregrine vigilance had been renewed.
For Zared's own safety she had to remain in disguise.
Looking at Smith holding Zared, Severn smiled. To him, Zared was so obviously female that he could never believe that others believed her to be male. He and Rogan always teased her because she got angry like a wet cat, all claws and hisses. Yet the men who worked for them never seemed to question who the young lad was. As far as he knew, no one had ever guessed that Zared was a girl. Even Liana, his smart sister-in-law, had had to be told.
Until Smith. The man said he had known from the beginning that Zared was female, and Severn believed him. He knew Liana would not tell anyone outside of her ladies. She knew too well the danger the Howards posed to Zared's safety. Yet the man had known.
Severn watched Smith put Zared back in the bed and then go to his own cot. If Zared were to marry and go away with her husband, she would be out of the Peregrine-Howard war. She could live elsewhere in peace and contentment. She could wear pretty gowns and let her hair grow down her back as it had when she was a child. Severn thought he'd like to see his sister as a sister, with a fat baby on her hip and a smile on her lips. It would be pleasant to see her doing something other than beating boys at sword practice.
He smiled again. It looked as though Liana had chosen well.
Tearle awoke early, but not as early as the Peregrines. They were already out of the tent, and he could hear low voices outside and the splash of water. The sound of water reminded him of Zared washing Colbrand the evening before. Already, before he was even fully awake, he could feel his anger rising. He pulled on his stockings and started to pull his linen shirt on over his head, but he paused. Perhaps it might do Zared some good to see another man besides Colbrand.
He went outside the tent, bare from the waist up, yawning and stretching. Severn was sitting on a low stool just outside the tent, also bare from the waist up and Zared was washing his back.
"Good morn," Severn said to Tearle, and he smiled at him.
Tearle didn't look at Zared but instead smiled at her brother. "You are ready to fight this day?"
"I fear I have not brought enough lances to cover all that I will break this day," Severn said, boasting.
Zared poured cold water from a basin over Severn to rinse the soap away as he ran a rough and not-too-clean cloth over his body.