Glenna exhaled when she heard their footsteps wane, and she listlessly crossed the room, leaned against the small table, filled a goblet with watered wine and sipped it slowly to quiet her belly.
The baron’s mood grew increasingly foul the longer she refused to eat. She had told him the first night she started her fast that she would eat when he released Lyall from the cell, but not until then. He refused. The poor man had not butted heads with her yet. Her brothers could have warned him. Oh, where we they? If only Al and El would return with the proof of witnesses.
Her belly turned again. She stared down at it. How could something so empty make so much noise? She placed her hand on it and willed the idea of food away.
You can do this….
There was a slight and quiet tapping at the door and Glenna called to open. Mairi stuck her head inside, looked at Glenna, then quietly closed the door behind her. “Are you well?”
Glenna nodded.
Mairi pulled a bundle from her skirts and unwrapped it. “Come. Look here. I have bread and cheese and a little meat,not much but I saved you a duck leg, some cheese and a stewed apple from my own supper.”
The food called to her, as if meat and cheese and apples had soft and haunting voices singing,Come to me….Come to me….
Glenna spun around, eyes tightly closed, her hand up warding off the idea of eating, of even looking at the food. “I cannot!”
“Of course you can. No one need know.”
“I shall know,” Glenna said firmly. She could do anything for Lyall.
Mairi rolled her eyes. “Really, Glenna. From where comes this sudden need for valor?”
“You think I cannot starve Lyall free? I can,” Glenna insisted.
“Of course you can.” Mairi waved a hand as if to add ‘you silly goose.’ “But actually starving is not the point. The point is to make everyone think you are starving, in particular my stepfather Now come here and eat.”
“I cannot,” Glenna said, having eyes only for the food. “I must grow weak enough to swoon.”
“Lud!, Glenna, swooning is simple. You have done it once already.”
“Aye, but I did not know I was swooning.”
“Swooning is an art, not unlike your swift and thieving hand—which you still have promised to teach me, do not forget—now you will need some swooning practice. Here, watch me.” Mairi crossed over near the bed and flexed her knees. “The most important thing to remember is to position yourself so you will not be hurt when you sink or to make certain you have something to fall back on depending upon which method you choose. Something soft like this mattress is always good.”
“There are methods?” Glenna repeated.
“Aye. I believe the most realistic is to let your knees kind of turn to water and just sink to the floor like this—“
One moment Mairi was standing and the next she was on the floor, half on her back, arms fallen by her head and her lower body turned slightly, her knees bent.
Glenna burst out laughing and ran over to her. “That was quite wonderful!”
Mairi sat upright, eyes wide and grinning. “You liked it? Good.” She scrambled up. “Stand here, and you try. Remember to keep your breathing very shallow.”
“Can I eat first?”
Mairi grabbed the duck leg and handed it to her. “Eat this while I show you ‘the fall upon something’ method. This is for furniture or someone’s lap or a chair. You will need a more exact position, since you want to land on a bed or chair or a nobleman. As Glenna chewed on the duck leg, she watched Mairi who taught fall gracefully backwards on a chair, and then upon the bed. Glenna stood beside her, half-eaten duck leg between her teeth.
Mairi said, “Go!” They both fell back on the bed at the same time. Mairi began giggling and Glenna sat up and chewed on another bite of duck, brandishing the bone, both of them laughing
And that was when they turned together and saw Lady Beitris standing in the room watching them.
The cellarsat Rossi were built deep in the ground and held barrels of ale and mead made at the castle brewery, and an entire room of wines, many imported at great cost from Bordeaux, Bruges, Briones, and Crete. The iron gates at the cellar’s entrance were locked, and the anteroom, before the barrel storage rooms, served as Lyall’s cell. He lay sprawled on a straw pallet on a corner as he tilted to lips a clay jar of wine, Ramsey’s costliest from Malvasia, rattling the chains clamped onto his wrists and wincing as the manacle clamp caught and twisted the hairs on his arm.
He squinted inside the jar’s short neck. “Good stuff,” he muttered, since talking to himself was his only option. Then hedrunkenly toasted his missing stepfather and took another swig.
Footsteps echoed in the dark recesses of the stairs. The guard had been gone for some time, since he took away Lyall’s supper.
