Chapter 22: The Candle in the Window

The Ashdown hold stood on a ridge of black stone, and the gate was already open when we rode up.

There were no banners and no trumpets.

There were about two hundred people standing in the bare yard in their winter coats, and not one of them was talking.

My father rode in front of me. He got down from his horse and stood with his hand on its neck.

"You can look up," he said.

I looked.

High on the north tower, one small window glowed yellow.

"Every night," my mother said beside me. "Since the winter you were taken."

"He climbed the stairs himself, and he wouldn't let anyone else do it."

My father cleared his throat.

"I'll put it out tonight," he said. "If you'd like me to."

"No," I said. "Leave it. I want to see it from the inside."

He turned his face away.

I saw his shoulders move, once, and nobody in that yard pretended not to see it.

Then the hold took me in.

A woman I had never met held my face in both hands and said I had my grandmother's chin.

A boy of about ten pushed a bread roll into my fingers and ran.

An old man told me I had been born in the room above the stable, in a storm, and had screamed the roof down.

My mother took me up the tower stairs herself.

At the top she opened a low door and stood back.

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