To Alec's great relief, the next weeks were busy, pleasant, and totally devoid of any sort of misunderstanding or rancor. At times, he felt he was the luckiest man in the world—whichever world it happened to be.

It came as no surprise at all that his roommate and Mrs. Green soon became thick as thieves. What did surprise him, though it ought not have, was that the two immediately began bunking together in Alec's former bed. They were even decent enough to pitch in and craft a comfortable new mattress for his makeshift cot.

Mrs. Green was a wonder. She had grown up in rural England in a different time and knew a great many things that Alec did not. As the niece of a vicar of narrow straights, she knew her way around a farmyard, from milking the goats to tending to their various garden plots. She was familiar with the use of a fish trap and lure, knew how to make thread from flax, and was able to make good use of the spinning wheel and loom that his roommate had brought along. They soon were producing a steady supply of fine and beautiful cloth.

Mrs. Green finally broke down after the first month and insisted that they give his roommate a name, even if it was just a name that she and Alec could use between them. Since he was fond of referring to the woman as his "friend," Mrs. Green offered that they should call the woman Amie, the name for "friend" in French, a language at which the English woman excelled.

And Amie she became.

Of course, Amie didn't know that she had a name. The woman seemed thoroughly immune to the patient attempts of Mrs. Green to teach her the most basic rudiments of communication. But it soon became obvious that Amie positively gushed at the other woman's attention. Alec and Amie had gotten along wonderfully when they were alone, but the two women were like magic together.

Alec half suspected that the two had become lovers but said not a word of it. Once or twice a week, the women would make their way into the forest and come back an hour or two later with mushrooms, roots, or berries. There was always something sweet and blissful about them when they returned.

And from time-to-time, Alec would awaken to the faintest of noises in their darkened cottage late at night, noises that were suspicious but not definitive signs of lovemaking. He concerned himself not one iota.

Was he jealous? He was a bit envious for the first few days following his realization. But that quickly passed. It very soon became apparent that their pairing lifted an enormous weight from his shoulders. He sometimes would catch himself, quite unconsciously, looking at one or both of the women the way a hungry wolf might. He fancied women, plain and simple, and the two were unusually comely and agreeable.

But he was old enough to realize that, despite his occasional lustful thought, tranquility was a gift far, far more important than passion. He wasn't 100 percent certain that the two had become lovers, but, if they had, he wished them nothing but the best.

Quite by design, he did end up spending more time with both of his roommates. They were together each evening for an hour or so between dinner and bedtime, he took 30 or 40 minutes each day at lunch just to chat with Mrs. Green (what a blessing that was), and each morning he rose early for an hour or two of swordplay with one or both of the women.

The swords that Amie had brought with her from her old homestead were designed to be used with two hands and were predominantly cutting weapons. Amie trained him with heavy wooden swords of roughly the same weight and dimensions to make quick, hard, and decisive cuts. In her hands, the weapon seemed less for fencing and more for execution. It was a brutal and abrupt sort of brawling that she showed him, but there was nothing hot-blooded about it. For Amie, using a sword was a thing to be done with the same disinterest and lack of passion as using a knife to cut the throat of a goat or a chicken, an operation he'd seen her do more times than he could count with absolute cold-blooded indifference.

Mrs. Green had learned to use a blade with a single hand—all of the blades they had in the cottage were light enough for such manipulations—and was even adept at wielding a light sword in one hand and a dagger in the other.

Her brother, the oft-mentioned Captain Carter, hadn't taught Mrs. Green how to fence. He'd taught her how to fight. And she was remarkably good at it. Her way was not quite as cold and ruthless as that of Amie, but there was a single-minded determination in everything she did to put steel in flesh. There was very little extraneous bullshit in their training.

But there were lots of bruises, deep and painful bruises. Over the first month, it was all Alec could do to keep his two teachers from whacking, slapping, stabbing, and jabbing him with homicidal intent. His body during those weeks was a patchwork of bruises, welts, and even a few cuts.

The severity of the training wasn't anything he hadn't experienced before, and he generally enjoyed the process, but he hadn't expected the two amiable and softspoken women to be such ruthless taskmasters.

Slowly, though, ever so slowly it seemed, he began to get better. After two months or so of regular walloping, he managed to leave the practice area with but a single bruise. He marked the period as a victory.

"Don't look so full of yourself." Mrs. Green had a way of reading Alec that sometimes was unnerving.

"You didn't beat me black and blue today. I think I deserve to feel good about myself."

She gave him one of her worldly smiles. "Don't feel too good. Captain Carter would have taken the starch out of you for even a faint suggestion of happiness."

Alec leaned up against a small bench they'd put in place. The place really was a home now. "He couldn't have possibly been that hard on you."

"He was far stricter on me than he was his own fighting men."

"Because he thought you might quit?"

She sat next to him, a wistful look on her face. She now talked about her brother in the past tense, often with some small hints of sadness. "Perhaps. But I rather prefer it was because he loved me."

"Pardon?"

She looked full at him. "Life isn't a story book. There isn't always a man to protect you. You know," she said, "the captain wouldn't even teach me the sword at first. He insisted I first learn how to kill a man with a dagger."

"I beg your pardon!" It was such a shock for Alec, who had heard many such startling things from Cressida Green.

"No, it's true," she said. She continued in a deep voice, her effort at sounding like a man, "It's far more likely a woman will have a knife at hand than a sword or a dagger. Learn to fight first with what you have."

"And you did?"

"And I did," she admitted.

"Show me."

"I will ... but not today."

"What's today?"

"Today is the fields, with Amie."

"The fields?"

"We're bringing in the rice on the northern field today."

"How do you know?" he asked. "Have you learned to speak with her and not told me?"

"No. There are other ways to communicate."

"Such as what?"

"I just watch what she does—how she gathers tools, the things she sets aside, and the condition of the fields."

"So, it's time to harvest?"

"It is. Tomorrow, I'll teach you about using a dagger." The woman hesitated a moment. "You should instruct me how to work iron."

Her words nearly caused him to pause. Instead, he stood and put his shirt back on. He gave the lovely woman a long look.

Mrs. Green was strong for her size. Her ability to wield a 30-inch blade with a single hand said that. But she was barely 5 feet and couldn't have weighed too much more than 90 pounds. (She was, she had once told him, a woman of normal proportions in her time, as difficult as that was to credit.)

"Do you see any men standing in line to volunteer?" she said, again anticipating his thoughts. The woman was often that way. She continued. "We are alone here. Should anything befall you, there is much Amie and I would have to do without."

"I don't intend on anything happening to me."

"No one ever does."

It was then that something hard and heavy struck Alec in the head. It took but a moment to recover himself. There was no blood, and he felt more shocked than truly harmed. Looking about, he caught sight of Amie, who had been tending to the animals near the barn. There was a look on her face that he'd never seen there before.

He followed her gaze to a point on the far side of the stream, about 80 yards distant. There, under the morning sun and just barely concealed amidst the trees, was a line of mounted men making their way slowly down river.

All were armed, and on their bodies glistened the unmistakable color of golden armor.