The Robber Knight's Love

40. The Duties of a Lady

Ayla stood in the doorway. Her face was calm and unemotional. For a moment, Reuben saw her eyes move to him. Then they looked straight forward again, and she moved to her chair, to take her place at the head of the table.

“Greetings, my friends, my vassals” she said, in a voice as unemotional as her features. “I have called you together to give you grave news.”

“Oh, great,” grumbled Burchard. “We're being besieged, our military leader has just been buried, and we're all likely to die in the near future. Don't think of anything to cheer us up, please!”

Ayla silenced him with a look. She clearly was not in a mood to joke.

A shiver ran down his back as Reuben remembered what he had told her, in his room, after the funeral:

“You must tell them. It must be you.”

“Why me?” Tears had run down her face in rivulets. She had stopped pounding on his chest, but only because she didn't have the strength to do it anymore.

Reuben's anger dwindled. He had been angry, terribly angry—she had called him a liar, called his loyalty into question after everything he had done to prove it! But then, as she had started to attack him, as he had felt her in his arms, fighting, crying, trembling, he had realized that it was not really him she was calling into question, but her own beliefs. Her own way of seeing the world.

During the entire siege, her belief in the loyalty and love of her people had given her strength. Now that belief was crumbling, and her strength along with it.

“Why me?” She repeated, her voice only a painful moan. “You discovered it. You tell them!”

“Me, tell your vassals that one of their own is a traitor?” Reuben's lips twitched in a humorless smile. “They aren’t even sure who or what I am, let alone sure whether they should trust me. They wouldn't believe a word I said. And if they did know who I truly am, they would want to kill me on the spot. No. You must do this. You must tell your commanders that there is a traitor among us, because if there is anyone they will believe and put their trust in, it is you.”

“But Reuben... We can’t have a traitor in the castle. It can't be. It simply can't be.”

“Saying that it can't be doesn't change the fact that it is, Ayla. I'm sorry.”

“Reuben... hold me. Please, just hold me.”

“I will. I will.”

He had held her through the night as she cried into his chest. She had gotten less sleep that night, which was perfectly calm and quiet, than during any of the nights when the enemy had kept them awake with their infernal racket. Her enemies had not managed to break her spirit. Had her own people now done the job?

Looking at her as she sat at the head of the table now, tall and proud, not a single drop of moisture in her sapphire eyes, Reuben sincerely doubted it. He marveled at her. He was a strong man, in fact he had never met anyone stronger, and Ayla was just a slip of a girl compared to him. But the inner strength she displayed now took his breath away.

He might be the most terrible warrior in the entire Holy Roman Empire, but she was more than a warrior. She was a general.

There was silence around the table.

“So?” Burchard finally asked. “What is it you've got to tell us?”

Reuben continued to look straight ahead at Ayla. Their eyes met again and she nodded. He nodded back, hoping that this small sign of affection would give her strength.