WHAT WAS NEXT was bolder and more amazing than anything I could have imagined.
Our victory was complete, but it came at a great cost. Thirteen of Stephen's mercenaries lay on the ground, but we had lost four of our own: Apples; Jacqui, the stout and cheery milk woman; a farmer, Henri; and Martin, the tailor. Many others, like Georges and Alphonse, nursed messy wounds.
When the smoke cleared, the body of the Tafur I had fought with the lance was nowhere to be found. He had not died after all.
In the ensuing days, we extinguished the fires and bade good-bye to our brave fallen friends. For the first time in anyone's memory, bondmen had stood up to a noble. And to the fear that we could not defend ourselves simply because they were rightly born and we weren't.
Word spread fast. Of the fightand the lance. People from neighboring towns came to see. No one could believe it at first. Farmers and tradesmen had stood up against a noble and his men.
Yet I did not join much in the celebration. I spent the next several days in a troubled state atop the hill. I couldn't work on the inn. I had to make sense of what had happened. That I had picked up the lance from the dying priest's hand in Antioch. That, penniless, I now held a prize worth kingdoms. Why had I been chosen? What did God want of me?
And a deeper dread hung over me. What would happen next-when news of the battle reached Stephen's ears? When he learned that we possessed the prize he so desperately coveted. Or when word reached Baldwin in Treille.
