The Stolen Queen by Lisa Hilton

and my heart opening inside me to suck it in. For a few moments I froze, clinging like a beetle to his back. I would be thrown again, and his hooves would crush my skull like a nut. I had not thought such speed possible. It terrified me, and I tried weakly to pull him back, knowing that my strength was no more to him than a fly’s. He wouldn’t stop, and I couldn’t stop him. Slowly, I felt myself meld with the thud of Othon’s huge heart between my legs and we became one creature, weightless and sure as an arrow, just as I had dreamed, so that I felt nothing but his blood in mine and mine in his, not riding but swooping through the wind like a kite until the valley closed and I had to come back to myself, reminding him with the lightest tug on the bit to pull up short before he plunged us both over the hill’s edge. Indeed, I nearly flew over his head like a windfall, but I had ridden through my fear. I was gasping and laughing, senseless, yet never had I felt more vividly alive. As I bent over Othon’s dampened neck, my own face was wet with tears.
    â€˜Thank you,’ I murmured. ‘Thank you, thank you.’
    Tomas cantered up behind us, I had forgotten all about him. ‘I knew you could do it!’
    I grinned at him, proud and fierce, my hair tumbling into my eyes and my face burning with pleasure. ‘I did, too.’
    We galloped, over and over again, until Tomas saw that the sun was low and made us turn back. He let out a leading rein for Othon and settled me against his chest, my legs demurely to oneside, and I fell asleep against him, my nose full of leather and horse sweat and the strange blood-like tinge of the balm, rocking slowly through the green lanes back to Lusignan.
    All that summer and into the autumn until the weather turned and the rain came, I rode out on Othon each day. I was diligent with my prayers and my sewing, my music and deportment so that Agnes could have no cause to forbid me the release I waited for each afternoon. Tomas found a plate coat that had been made for Hal when he was about my age and persuaded Agnes to let me wear it over my gown, saying it should protect my back if I fell. He also gave me a pair of Hal’s leather britches, which I slipped on under my gown, and which we didn’t mention to Agnes at all. Lord Hugh seemed delighted with my new accomplishment and presented me with a falcon, a delicate merlin with deep blue feathers, a set of silver jesses and a gauntlet traced in silver thread. I was allowed to accompany him, dressed in one of my best silks and nodding along placidly on my side-saddle, when he hunted with his guests. I liked best, though, to go out with Tomas, and better still to leave him to doze and whittle in the shade while I explored the allées of the forest alone with Othon. I longed to bathe and comb him myself, but of course Agnes could not allow that, so I begged scraps of parchment from the clerks and twisted them into paper flowers to decorate his stall and made a picture of myself with a finger dipped in soot so that he should not be lonely for me in the night. I gave no thought to Hal, or my marriage, or what was happening in the world beyond the castle. I no longer listened in doorways or heeded the whisperings of theguards. All I wanted was to be alone in the woods with Othon. But then the leaves turned from green to yellow to brown, and when the forest was bare and we had kept the Christmas feast at the castle, a message came that my father was coming, and with him the English king.

CHAPTER FOUR
    I WAS BOTH GLAD AND SAD AT THE NEWS OF MY FATHER’S return. Glad because I should see my papa again, and sad because Hal had remained with him, learning the duties of Angouleme, which would one day be his in right of his marriage to me, and their coming would bring the marriage close. I was curious, though, to see John, brother of the great Lionheart, the last of Queen Eleanor’s unhappy sons. My father