My Cherished Enemy

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“I cannot do this, my lady! I—I fear they will find us and we will both be killed, the babe and I!"

The high thin voice belonged to a young girl of no more than sixteen summers. Her body was stout and tall for her age; she came from hearty peasant stock. She knelt in the rushes before the Lady Elaine, the woman she had served as long as she could remember.

"Gerda, you must!" Elaine spoke sharply, a tone Gerda had heard but rarely. "If my son is to be saved, it is you who must save him. You must flee this keep and take Peter back to Sedgewick." Her eyes briefly sought the sunken gaze of the woman who lay abed, Lady Claire Chandler, but it was Gerda to whom she spoke.

"We are marked, all of us here. You have seen with your own eyes the bloodlust of our attackers. They spare no one—not the farmer in the field, nor women or children. I prayed it would not come to this, but they know not yet of you or Peter."

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