“Not when you turn your back for barely a moment,” Alastair added.
“What about these clothes?” she asked, unrolling and laying out the heavily-padded, leather gambeson. “Can we sell them?”
“I cannot believe you took the poor man’s clothes,” Alastair said, trying to look serious but she could see he was having trouble. Her brothers could never scold her or even stay angry with her for long.
“Twas not the first time,” Glenna said easily. “And these clothes are anything but poor.” She took a roasted capon leg from a platter in front of them and bit into it, chewing as she added, “He left them beside his poor horse. Seems only proper that someone should relieve him of them, particularly when he seemed to care not a whit for any of it.”
Alastair shook his head. “Glenna… Glenna…What am I to do with you?”
“Did not Hercules say to the waggoner, ‘the gods help those who help themselves?’ ” She shrugged, picking clean a small bone. “I merely consider myself an apt student of Hercules--I helped myself. In truth, I doubted we could sell his shield, so I chose to leave it behind. The fool is lucky to have it.”
“Not when the man’s shield is what identifies him.” Elgin couldn’t seem to stop laughing; he had always been the cheeriest of them. “Can you see him? Bare-assed as the day he was born, making his way home with naught but a shield, one that tells the world exactly who he is.”
“Ah…but from what wee, wee bit I saw,” Glenna said pointedly. “The man didn’t have much to cover. His shield was more than large enough. Were I to really think on it, I believe his gold ring could do the trick.” She tossed the bone away.
Her brothers laughed out loud and she tried not to smile at her lie, but when Elgin, with tears of laughter in his eyes, snorted like a pig she lost her composure and giggled, the image of Sir Golden Himself with nothing but his emblazoned shield to hide behind was more humorous than even she could pretend to ignore. “You should have seen him, plodding through the water to catch me—truly, the man was a knight on a lost crusade.”
Elgin slipped on the gambeson, which hung off his shoulders, down over his hands, and the leather hem drooped near his knees. He trudged slowly around the room like a jester mocking the knight in the water in a sing-song voice, “Bring back my horse! Bring back my horse! You cursed thief!” He stopped suddenly and straightened, one hand in the air. “Know, lass, you must ransom my clothes, for I shall pay a fortune—five bags of silver and all my worldly possessions--to protect my poor ballocks---”
“Poor wee ballocks,” Glenna cut in.
“I stand corrected,” Elgin said, pausing before he flung his arms out to his sides. “To protect my poorweeballocks from the hot sun burning them to the color of embers if I am forced to walk bare-assed over the countryside.”
For the next few minutes they made jests about the man, and then Alastair stood and stretched. “I should feed the horses.”
“Sit,” Glenna said, pulling an apple from a bowl and slipping it into her pocket. “I will go. I want to check on the black.” Her dog was standing at the door, tail wagging, tongue hanging out of his big mouth. “Nay Fergus. Stay.” He whimpered and lay back down by the hearth, nose on his paws. She walked outside and paused.
To the west, the sun was finally beginning to trail down the sky, and the distant horizon was turning deep violet and gold. The narrow path she followed snaked over a hillock and down to where stables, like the stone cottage, were built into the slope and a wide wooden pen adjacent to the byre contained all the horses when they weren’t feeding or in their stalls.
Their father had bred and raised horses and sold them far away on the mainland, until the day he was thrown from a frightened gray in the paddock and killed. Her brothers Alastair and Elgin continued to raise both prime Gordon horseflesh and Glenna. So she grew up around horses, beasts ten times her size, yet she held no fear of them. Her gift: there was no horse yet she could not sweet talk and ride.
Glenna opened the gate to the outside paddock and crossed to draw water from the stable well, pouring it into the wooden water troughs, before she refilled the feed, waving the flies away from her face. She spoke to each of the animals as she searched the stalls for the hayfork, then turned quickly when she felt someone watching her.
From the last stall, the dark doe eyes of the black watched her. He whinnied and shook his regal head as she moved closer. “You are a great beauty,” she said quietly, stroking him as she pulled out the apple and let him nibble it from her palm.
“Look how gently you eat from my hand. You are no wild one, sweetness.” And she ran her hand along his coat. The curry brushes hung from hooks on the wall, so she took one and stepped inside the stall. “You are too fine a beast for a fool of a man,” she told him easily, brushing his glossy coat and humming. Soon words came from her mouth like honey, her voice lilting in the stable as she sang:
There once was a golden knight,
Who could not foresee his plight.
Across the heath-covered moors he rode,
Gallant, brave and so very bold,
Down he went to the sweet sea cove.
Abandoning his horse, in the water he dove,
The water was so very cool,
But the man was a fool…
Humming, she rounded the horse, brushing his coat, and the man came out of the shadows more swiftly than a snake striking, taking her from behind by twisting her hair around his fist. His bare arm pinned her hard against his warm, damp skin. He released her hair and leaned close to her ear. “Now who is the fool?” he hissed angrily and slowly pressed the prongs of a hayfork deeper into her neck
2
He had the thieving witch right where he wanted her. But angry as he was, he forced himself to remember she was the reason he was there. She began to scream and bite and kick, so he set the fork aside, shifted his grip on her and ripped the sleeve from her tunic. Were he less angry, the panic in her eyes would have stopped him, and he might have eased her mind. Clearly she thought he intended to ravish her. But he was in a foul mood, walking naked for too long in the hot sun, so he let her think the worst. She needed to be frightened and to understand who was in power after that escapade in the cove. He gagged her with the torn sleeve, grabbed the hayfork again, and with her squalling under his arm, he carried her outside.
