Chapter 41: Chapter 41

King Richard was almost as young as Armin himself. Maybe even younger. A smooth face, actually quite handsome, but something bothered him about the king.

Enrique sat next to him at the long table with a thousand dishes on it. Otherwise they were alone.

Armin had been kneeling in front of the king for almost ten minutes without being allowed to get up and slowly but surely felt humiliated. Soon he was so angry that he almost jumped up and left. But he was attached to the stupid skull on his neck.

"Get up, Sir Campbell." Richard said it almost casually, as if admonishing a dog to stop begging. He eyed Armin appraisingly.

Me too, buddy...

"Do you agree Enrique?"

The fat guy looked at Armin just as disparagingly.

Am I a damn horse or what's going on here!?

"Yes, Sire. I think I can agree with all of this without any problems. And he really is a Campbell?"

Who's still standing here and speaking pretty well, but still has no idea what the bloody game was being played.

He Armin was tired of groping in the dark. But as he threatened to lose his temper, he remembered the many times he lost it in his childhood and what his father had then drummed into him. So he tempered his temper.

"Do you doubt Our word?" Richard growled.

"Of course not but... He's very young."

"Does that bother you?"

"No. I agree."

Both signed a sheet of parchment and set a seal. Armin was just about to ask if he should now be broken in when a knight appeared to the left and right of him andguidedhim out.

They led him through the courtyard with the cobblestones on which the whirlwind had danced yesterday. Buckets and tubs full of exotic flowers stood on the castle walls.

Through the first gate they led him to a chapel. Pushed him in and locked the door in his back.

"Hey..." He pulled on the door. As expected, it didn't open anymore. "Hello!"

Armin threatened to throw a tantrum. Was he a bloody pawn? Any object you could just slide from A to B? And what was that weird arc earlier? Armin wasn't so naive that he didn't suspect that it had to have something to do with him.

"Come!" he heard Enrique before a new knight grabbed his arm and tried to drag him to the altar.

Altar!? For heaven's sake, no, damn it!

"What's that?" he snapped angrily and jerked himself away.

When the knight wanted to draw his sword, Armin had already put his blade to his throat. "I want to know immediately what kind of game is being played here, Enrique!"

King Richard came in and everyone fell on their knees. Only Armin refused. Participate in negotiations, fucked up! What was that snotty kid thinking!?

Until now he had been calm. He wasn't a man of many words. But at some point it was even enough for him. And now it was time.

Richard eyed Armin like an insect. "Are you lacking in respect, Campbell?"

"Respect?" Armin pretended to look around. "For what?"

King Richard's mask dropped and his face flushed with anger. "Let's get the barracks ready! When we get through this, let that bastard drown somewhere!"

Armin heard footsteps behind him, but couldn't react quickly enough and was dragged in front of a priest.

"Agree, my son." The fat oaf in the robe with the typical monk's haircut admonished.

"What the hell for?"

The priest raised a hand and slapped Armin. "No swearing here!"

Something in Armin's head switched off and the young firebrand tore himself free of the two burs on his arms. He struck one of the two knights in the nose, the other in the stomach, and whirled on the third as the other two grabbed him again and wrenched his sword from him. Armin was already wondering why they hadn't done it long ago.

King Richard raged. Armin suspected he would start foaming at the mouth at any moment. "Go ahead, dad! Now or you will regret it!"

The priest raised a finger menacingly. "Are you threatening a man of God? Don't you find that questionable even for a king?"

"A corrupt man of God, yes!" the king rumbled and stepped in front of Armin to grab his collar. "You will cooperate, understood! Don't make me bring you to it!"

Armin grinned and was tempted to spit in the king's face. "You may like me, sire."

Again the young man got a slap in the face. "Say yes!"

"No."

Richard clenched his fists and nodded to one of his knights. Suddenly Armin felt a hit on his temple and everything around him fell into darkness...

An English man grabbed my elbow and dragged me through the passage of the castle into the chapel. "Let go of me!"

But the man did not understand my language.

And even if he had, he probably wouldn't have done it anyway. I wasn't really afraid because we were still at my father's castle. But I still felt uneasy.

Because what happened here happened with Father's senses and it didn't necessarily have to agree with mine.

I heard swords unsheathing and stomping feet as we got to the door. Despite this, the man pushed it open as if he had expected it to be otherwise, and dragged me inside with him.

A man in a red cloak walked between two knights, also with English coats of arms, and hung his head. He was unconscious. I shuddered and looked around the room for father, whom I immediately spotted next to Richard.

"What's going on here!? What are you up to, father!?"

The man who grabbed me dragged me in front of the old and our castle father Bartos. I didn't like him because he was a hypocrite. I wasn't surprised he was here.

"Father!"

"Enough, Isabella." My father murmured in embarrassment, nodding to both the English king and the priest.

The unconscious guy was dragged in front of her.

The priest looked at Isabella. "Do you, Isabella, want to marry this man?"

A cold crept up my limbs. I knew something like this was bound to happen! "No!"

My father grabbed my hand and held a crop in front of my face. "Say yes, or I swear great evil on you!"

"Do it!" my voice sounded braver than what I actually was. "But no matter what you do, I'll never commit to this cause."

The young king folded his hands and grinned. "Then do it, Enrique. But here, if it's possible."

With a thud he fell to the ground and only woke up with difficulty. God... what was that? Slowly felt his head and already felt a kick in his side, choking him... Holy Bim Bam...

"No! No! Never!" someone yelled at him and he was kicked again. A pillow slammed into his small of the back...

"Never! Never! You won't touch me!" Strides the same voice above him.

Armin looked around briefly. Not a chapel but a bed...

A woman stood over him and continued to attack him with the pillow and wanted to kick again, when Armin grabbed his ankle in a flash and pulled.

"What in the gods name..."

Another blow. This time on the bump and he got dizzy. "Let go! Let go!"

Would you like that, wouldn't you? he thought grimly, tugging at the leg so that the owner fell on her butt beside him. wait until i get my hands on you...

She blinked for a moment and wanted to get up. But Armin grabbed his ankle again. "Sit down or I'll forget myself." He gasped.

It was dark around them, so he didn't know who he was threatening. He didn't really care either.

Grimly he got to his feet and felt a swaying from left to right and the smell of fish and salt water.

"Where are we?"

The lady was stubborn and said nothing. Fine too, let her just shut up her rabid mouth.

When Armin heard the splashing, a horrible thought crept up on him. He tilted his head back with his eyes closed. Please don't... Good lord, have pity on a fool like me!

He threw open the shutters to let in the sun and his suspicions were confirmed.

They were confined in a narrow and low little cabin. A bed stood in the middle and a thin bundle lay by the door. Otherwise nothing.

With the sunshine he recognized the lady. His heart raced at the next suspicion as he remembered where he had last been...

The lady was the dancing whirlwind who had looked so wonderfully carefree and was now riddled with anger.

Armin sighed. "Tell me I'm wrong..."

"How should I know what you're thinking?" snapped the Spaniard. The green of her eyes flashed and her skin flushed red on her cheeks. "But if you think we're married and imprisoned here before we've consummated marriage..."

She paused dramatically and Armin could no longer feel his legs.

"Then you are not mistaken, my lord."

"That damn bastard!" he threw up angrily, hit his head and slammed his fist against the wall. "First he lets me be fetched like a beast and then..." Armin was too humiliated to continue could speak.

The lady sat down on the bed and treated him with her utmost contempt. "You rude brutes aren't going to touch me, is that clear?"

More commands yes? Armin looked at her with the same contempt. His anger overwhelming and groundbreaking.

"I wouldn't want that even with gloves on."

"And how you're going to do that!" sounded a voice from outside. "Otherwise you'll stay here in the harbor until he's dead."

It was a little boy's voice that would have sounded familiar to Armin if he weren't so mad.

"Rico!" the lady fell on her knees in front of the door. "Open up boy, please."

"I would like to, Isabella. But the king insists on getting the sheet or he'll cut your throats."

Armin shrugged his shoulders. Otherwise he wasn't so careless with his life. But when his inherited stubbornness kicked in, he didn't care. "Go ahead, Richard. Your plans would be ruined anyway. Whatever you want to look like..."

The lady, Isabella, glared at him over her shoulder.

"Please, Isabella. Do whatever you have to do. But don't let anything happen to you."

Armin could see Isabella's ice coat melting. "Oh, Rico... what are you doing here anyway?"

"I... snuck up to beg you both... Please don't let him kill you!"

Armin remembered who the boy was and at the same moment thought of his little brother Jacob. Now if he would beg at the door so that he could see him again...

Isabella got up and suddenly looked at Armin very insecurely and shyly. "Rico, go back to shore."

They heard footsteps moving away. Then Isabella sat on the bed and clenched her hands into fists...

Rico was just a page. Some lout in the castle. And yet his words had left an echo. Because I didn't want to die. And I wasn't broken or done with this either.

How bad can it be? It will be bearable, I assume strongly.

When I looked up again, the Englishman was still standing at the window, staring at my fists. "I see you've made a decision?"

I nodded and laid back. "You may begin."

Then it was quiet for a long time and I felt ridiculous.

Did I really just say that? How stupid that must have sounded. And it didn't have the desired effect either, because the guy continued to stand still.

I looked at him angrily. "Excuse me? Would you like to start today?"

"Do you think I'll let you dictate what I do?" he growled so softly that the hairs on my arms stood up.

"I beg your pardon?"

Suddenly pulled out a dagger and came towards me. What was he up to? But I'll be damned if I showed him my terror.

He knelt between my legs, pulled my skirt aside and gave me a playful wink. Only then did I realize that I had probably made a face.

But was I to blame!?

He scratched it into my thigh with the dagger, just a hand's breadth above the knee. Then he grabbed the sheet and pressed it to the wound.

"What..."

The Englishman grinned. "I won't let anyone tell me what to do, dearest. Not even by the king."

I looked at him from my knees.

"Why do I cut your knee and not a finger, for example? I could put it in writing that Richard suspects this and will give you a close look.

Then the devil take me. I was impressed. I hadn't thought of any of this.

The guy pushed my legs aside and sat on the edge of the bed. He casually leaned against the footboard and studied my troubled expression. A wicked smile with an adorable dimple appeared.

"You may tell me your name." He teased. And, reckoning that I wouldn't, he continued. "My name is Armin Campbell. Englishman, as I'm sure you know. And I don't have a cent left Land. Nothing."

"That's not entirely true. At least not now."

He raised an eyebrow. "May I know what you mean?"

"The king will give you a reason, he said. The document is there in the bundle. Your sword is there on the ground."

Armin looked down next to him and sighed furtively. "I see... There you go, then I have a country."

I sat up and tugged at my skirt nervously. Until Armin leaned towards me. "So, Lady Isabella." My face grew hot at his presence, but I kept my expression straight. "How do you speak English so well?"

"My wet nurse was English."

He nodded his approval and leaned back again. "Thank God, otherwise this would be a lot more embarrassing."

A smile involuntarily stole onto my face. "Because it's embarrassing enough?"

He just grinned slyly which reminded me of a wolf. Then he tilted his head back.

"Are we waiting for?"

He grinned. "You want everyone out there to think I only have five minutes?"

I didn't quite understand. But please, if he had a reason then we'll leave it at that.

Enrique and King Richard had actually checked Isabella for lacerations. When he wanted to look under your skirts, even that lousy priest objected. So the king took his sheet and shooed Armin and his wife to England from the barracks where the marriage wasconsummated .

Just as the Spanish port disappeared on the horizon, it began to get dark. Young Isabella sat on the deck and stared stiffly out to sea.

Armin could only guess how she felt. And though he hadn't fully digested his own humiliation and anger, he still felt sorry for her. Leaving home to travel to a foreign land with a strange man must have been difficult for a woman.

So he took a handful of grapes in a bowl and a cup of sweet wine and joined them. Her fair skin looked beautiful in the dim light, her fine brown curls in front of her ears looked just as bold as the lady herself.

She didn't look at him, seemed petrified and stared into the distance. The waves pounded on the barracks, the wind was calm and Armin couldn't find the words. The moment was almost incongruously idyllic.

"Would you like something to drink?" he tried to approach her. But she didn't react. He pushed the bowl on the railing a little closer to her. "When did you last eat?"

Again she said nothing. Was she breathing at all? Did she hear him? He just stood there for a while. Stared into the distance with her. Concentrated on the ebb and flow, the sound of the waves and the footsteps of the sailors. Then he noticed that Isabella had a single big tear sliding down her cheek.

Under the orange sky, he almost didn't notice her. At least she didn't notice. He gently wiped her away and immediately she jerked away from him without looking away or doing anything else. Just a single defensive gesture.

Armin sighed, turned away and took a few steps back. He was neither angry nor offended. He was at a loss.

Ever since he'd seen that desperate tear, one question had bothered him. How could he help her when he was the problem? The cause of her loss?

Just as he was about to go to his cabin, Armin heard a bang and angry voices. When he turned around, Isabella was no longer sitting in her place. Ten sailors were standing in front of them, staring spellbound at the railing.

"For heaven's sake..." growled Armin and pulled his precious sword from his belt, leaned it against the nearest wall and ran towards the men heaved his body over it...

The sea was freezing and it felt like a thousand pinpricks. I felt a terrible cold burn on my back. Even when I caught my breath and started swimming like mad, I didn't get any warmer.

Still, I had to go back. All this could only be a bad joke. Father would never do that to me and just sell me. Never...

The sun had finally set, only the moon was shining and giving me light.

Suddenly my ankle was grabbed. Whoever it was took an immediate kick. You mustn't stop me. You mustn't!

An arm landed around my waist and pulled me to a chest.

How hysterically Isabella began to rotate and scream on Armin's chest. "Let go of me right now!"

"Now stop it! They will drown or freeze to death! Whichever happens first!"

But Isabella seemed to be in shock and kept struggling while Armin tried to swim back in the Black Sea. Which was difficult with a screaming and kicking lady.

But he made it. The sailors lowered a rope with a noose. Armin put one foot in the sling and let himself be pulled up while Isabella hung on him silently. Looking confused at his chest.

Back in the barracks, Armin got really angry. He grabbed one of the sailors by the collar and dragged him a few steps toward him.

"What was that, hey!? Just watch a lady try to drown herself!"

The young fellow, definitely older than Armin, shook his head unperturbed. "What should we do, my lord? We just saw them appear when you jumped in."

"Well, because that's what you're supposed to do when someone falls overboard, right!?"

Just as the sailor was about to say something again, things got restless on the small ship. Isabella was already back on the rail, yelling at the sailors she was trying to hold off and kicking them to keep their distance.

"None of this can be true." Growled Armin and quickly walked up to the men, pushed them away roughly, grabbed the approaching foot and tugged at it. As so often that day...

Isabella gave up and stared at Armin angrily. "Let go!"

"Sorry, dearest." He growled, grabbing her hips and throwing her over his shoulder. "But I've had enough!"

Isabella wasn't even surprised. She immediately started screaming and kicking him in the stomach and slapping his back. He tensed his muscles and gritted his teeth, trying not to give her a hard smack on the backside with an iron fist.

Under the gaze of his useless sailors, he stomped to the small storeroom. On the way he grabbed some ropes and straightened his stubborn wife with a back.

With the door, he kicked open the low double doors, dropping Isabella hard onto the sack of flour. Her protest lasted only a second before she tried to throw a tomato at him but missed.

The barrel was full. Armin finally had no more patience. He threw the ropes at her feet, braced his arms against the wall behind her, and came threateningly close to her. Only reluctantly she fell silent.

A drop fell from the ends of his hair in his forehead.

"Enough, ma'am." He snarled. His father, the Black Knight, would probably be proud of him. His expression was as scowling as it ever was , I'm just stressed."

Isabella mockingly twisted her mouth to say something, but Armin glared so ominously that she preferred to remain silent.

"Unlike many of my relatives, I have no problem hitting my wife. So don't take that chance again."

Armin could see him challenging something in Isabella with this cheeky lie. He recognized stubbornness when he saw it. In a family like the Campbells, that was easy to learn. Unlike his male relatives, Isabella looked so incredibly attractive that Armin wanted to fix his point of view on another white...

He smiled slyly and grabbed her chin. Softer than she had suspected. "You might think you have an easy time with me. But you don't seem to have any idea who the red knight is."

Isabella only twitched slightly and her chin was free again. A gentle blush covered her cheeks. She was probably just realizing what kind of madness she had been up to here.

Armin grinned arrogantly, grabbed the ropes and left. He looked at her again.

"Good night, dearest."

Then he locked the door of the small shed with the rope and collected his sword again.

He grabbed his coat and wrapped himself in it. Then he leaned against the railing next to the pantry and grinned in disbelief.

Did I just lock my wife in a shack? he wondered, laughing to himself. Can I do it that easily? Or is it wrong..?

Then there was a rumble behind the small door and he heard his wife swearing wildly in Spanish and decided: It wasn't wrong. It was spot on.

Armin didn't let Isabella out again until he woke up the next morning. Armed with some bread and jerky, he opened the two doors and looked down at his wife.

Her brown hair hangs over her shoulders and chest, her green eyes stared at him and her dress, which she had worn to the dance in the courtyard, was dusty.

"Good morning." He sounded more cheerful than he was. With a blank expression he handed her breakfast. "England is only an hour away at most. Don't you want to come out?"

Briefly her gaze slid from his face to his legs and back again. "So I don't have to go to the Tower of London from here?"

Armin made a grinning face. "Don't be so bitter. I had to avoid becoming a widower before I really came of age."

After all, he was only twenty and still a year away from coming of age.

Isabella looked down at her food. "I am sorry. I don't know what got into me."

Armin didn't intend to go into it any further. He made a little room at the door and helped her out. Together they sat down in the same spot where they had been standing yesterday.

Isabella sighed loudly. "What's England like?"

"I think quite nice. Unfortunately, I haven't gotten that far yet."

"Why? I thought you were a knight?"

A shy grin appeared on his face.

"Yes, but only for half a year. Before that I was a squire, as it is, and was always where my employer was. And this one was always with his former employer."

"And he wasn't particularly adventurous?"

"He had better things to do."

Isabella's brow furrowed and she looked at him questioningly. He raised a shoulder.

"He's got kids and a little bit of land that he quite happily and unabashedly runs like a farmer."

"Who now? Your employer or his employer?"

Armin laughed to himself. "Whose."

"Doesn't anyone have a name?"

"Syman and Arin."

At his father's names, Isabella chewed her bread in concentration for a moment. "Armin Campbell. Campbell... Arin."

Armin waited, because apparently his wife had an idea who Arin was. And it didn't surprise him. With an English wet nurse.

"The Black Knight, surely Arin Campbell isn't..."

"Quite right, Milady Isabella."

Her eyes lit up for a moment. "Incredible..." She smiled shyly. "And Syman was your employer?"

"You know him too?"

"If you know the one, you know the one. Somehow..."

Armin thought of his grand cousin and smiled. “The two don't take a step without each other. There was a time when it made me jealous."

A small giggle came from the Spanish lady. "Why? Was Arin careless with you?"

"On the contrary. But by the time I was about eight, Syman was eighteen and had far more rights than I did."

Isabella giggled again, almost laughing this time, and Armin felt like a hero at the thought of cheering her up a little.

"How unfair! And what does an eight-year-old boy do to change that?"

He thought about his funniest memory and almost laughed like he did when he was a boy. “In England it is customary to celebrate some kind of fertility festival. For a goddess or a good harvest, what do I know."

"And that as a born Englishman, sir?"

Armin laughed. "That's not the point, listen! Well, I was eight and of course I was allowed to come along. A festival where a child can pretty much do whatever they want without the parents really noticing. But when it gets dark, the children have to go."

His beautiful bride leaned forward with interest. "Why?"

"Because the young men take wives and disappear into the bushes and the next day they both act like nothing happened."

Suddenly, Isabella shot up straight, smiling broadly, as if she hadn't seen this coming. "Never! I thought... Are you serious? Don't fuck me, you hear?"

God, is she beautiful when she's so boisterous, he thought, trying not to stare at her.

"I'm serious! And as parents are, my mother didn't want me to notice it too badly and my father sent me back home. No problem until I realized Syman was allowed to stay."

"I guess that didn't make you happy then?"

"God, I was angry. It was a bottomless injustice in my eyes. I started an argument with my father and made him so angry that I also had stable work. The next two weeks. And I hated and still hate this damn job."

He saw his father in his mind's eye. As he stood in front of the big campfire in the middle of the village with a storm-clouded face and looked down on him. Arin had been patient for a long time, but his son just wanted to know exactly where the end was once again.

Armin laughed to himself again. "Well, I knew I shouldn't tease him any further and risk a beating. So I stomped home cursing so reprehensibly that a minister would have dropped dead if he had heard me."

Isabella laughed and looked at the horizon where the morning sun finally rose. "How sweet."

"Well, my dad probably meant something else when he went to bed the next night."

Isabella made curious, conspiratorial eyes. And Armin thought he could definitely conspire with her more often. She seemed to harbor no less boorish ideas than he did.

"I collected the whole next day, anything that had a thorn or could pinch or scratch. When my parents thought I was already asleep, I lay in wait and waited with my booty until my father went on his typical tour. I snuck into my parents' room, put snapping turtles, crabs, nettle,...everything I found on his bed and hid."

The Spaniard had eaten and bit her thumb, grinning. "Gosh... my father would have killed me!"

Armin remembered how his father crept into his room in the dark, only a few breaths later he heard a crack and a suppressed scream.

"You wouldn't believe how I had to hold myself back from laughing out loud when my father, the dreaded black knight, almost rabidly and cursing stomped out of the room, past me and stomped into my room. After all, it was the middle of the night and he hadn't seen me."

Armin remembered exactly the goosebumps that came over him when Syman grabbed his collar with a candle and could hardly hold back his laughter.

And he would never forget his father's look. Not even a brown bear would have frightened him more at that moment.

"Father's look was so sinister, so uncharacteristically angry, that even Syman kept his mouth shut. You must know my father is a proud man. And when a man puts on an act like that, it doesn't have a lot to do with pride."

Isabella laughed out loud and infected Armin.

"Was it very mean?"

Armin grimaced painfully at the memory.

"He was hardly meaner, I can tell you that. Sometimes when I remember it, I still feel the punches."

Her bright hearty laugh rang out again.

Armin had the feeling that he had done everything right and was all in all quite at peace with the morning.

Except for his parents and Syman, no one knew about the story. And it surprised him that Isabella took it up with such ease and without derision. He had been afraid she would mock him.

The port was already in the immediate vicinity when Armin got up. "Finally."

Isabella walked with him to her, actually his, cabin.

"Tell me more. Please!"

"Another time." He took the small bundle, tucked the small certificate up his sleeve, and looked around again.

Sword, bundle, certificate, Spaniard,... everything there.

"You know, my childhood in Spain was probably not as... cheeky as yours. But I think I can tell you how Rico made life hell for his big brother."

Armin took her hand, glad to have broken through what appeared to be a wall. "How about you first tell me how our wedding was?"

For a moment she actually seemed to consider saying no. Then she nodded and gave him a daring look.

"And after that I want to hear more about the Red Knights."

Armin smiled just as slyly.

But you don't seem to have any idea who the red knight is he had said. And she didn't seem to have forgotten it.