Page 123 of The Champion

“Good.” He was relieved by that one reprieve, “because I don’t want to ask the child who is mother is. Did you by any chance ask?”

“Aye.”

“And?”

“He says Elizabeth.”

Once more he was almost struck dumb by her words and the boy’s claims. “Your Elizabeth?”

“Aye,” Rowena said, her eyes troubled.

Oh, this didn’t bode well for him. The last thing he needed was for Rowena to think he had been with one of her ladies. “But I never touched her. Never. I swear it.”

Rowena touched his arm, her gaze tender. “I know, Stryder. Believe me, I know.”

Relieved that Rowena was being reasonable and not screaming at him for seducing her friend, Stryder knelt down before the child and took the small medallion from Rowena’s hand to study it.

It was indeed his father’s emblem. One he had carried with him into the Holy Land when he wasn’t much older than the boy in front of him.

Stryder closed his eyes as he remembered the day they had been taken into captivity. He had forced this emblem into Damien’s hand.

“Tell them you are my brother. They won’t hurt you if they think you are no one of consequence.”

Damien had curled his lip in disgust. “But I am of consequence.”

Even so, Stryder had forced Damien to take his necklace. Damien had grabbed it from him, and Stryder hadn’t seen it since. In fact, it had been years since he even thought about it.

The boy licked his lips as he looked from his medallion to Stryder and then back again.

“Are you my father?” the boy asked him in Arabic.

Stryder was afraid to answer that question lest this be some sort of trick the assassins were using against him and his men. And if it was, he would kill whoever toyed with an innocent child in this manner.

“Where did you get this?” he asked the child.

“My uncle gave it to me.”

Stryder cocked his head as he looked up at the child. “Your uncle?”

“Aye. He was from a place called France. We came through there to get to here, Nana said, but she didn’t know where exactly my uncle lived when he was a boy. He used to tell me all the time about France and my father and how the two of them used to play pranks on other boys and on their cook. Do you have your own cook?”

Stryder shook his head at the boy as he tried to keep him on topic. “And what specifically did your uncle tell you about your father?”

“That my father was the bravest knight in all the world. He said that one day I would find him, and that my father would take care of me, just as he tried to take care of my uncle. But my uncle said he was a bad boy and didn’t listen to him. He told me that the devil always comes for little boys who don’t listen to their elders.”

Stryder thought about that. The more the boy spoke, the more his uncle sounded like Damien, but that was absurd. As much as Damien hated him, he found it hard to believe the man could ever say anything kind about him.

Never mind, tell an innocent child tales of their boyhood together.

“And your mother?” Stryder asked. “Why didn’t you live with her?”

He looked up at the old woman.

“She was taken from him, my lord, as soon as he was weaned,” the old woman answered. “He doesn’t remember her.”

“And, his uncle?”

She shrugged her thin shoulders. “He was taken away three years ago under protest. We know not what happened to him.”