Tied to a tree in the woods, Skye whinnied softly and Glenna pulled out a handful of oats and let her eat from her hand. Her horse had been waiting there most of the night. She secured on her packs and ran back the way she had come. She entered as quietly as she had just left and slipped into the room, where Montrose was slightly snoring in his drug-induced sleep.
No…she was wrong. It was not Montrose who was snoring.
She took down the torch and moved to the dark corner, where Fergus lay on his side, snoring,….next to the over-turned beer tankard. Had it not been half full? Now there was not even a puddle of liquid. She squatted down and whispered harshly, “Fergus!”
No response.
She shoved his body, shook him. “Fergus!”
Her dog was drugged. She groaned miserably and sank her head into her hands, just sitting there, feeling a little lost and defeated.
What had she done?
Lifting her head up, she glanced at him again, the slow riseand fall of his furry chest, lying on the floor as stuporous as was Montrose himself. She sat there for long moments, each one essential to the success of her escape, knowing she had made a muck of things.
This was perhaps her only chance on the journey to run. She stared long and hard at Fergus. She prided herself on out-thinking people, on proving she was smart. The best thing for her own survival would be to grab the bag of food and leave. And break her heart. Running away without her dog was not an option she would consider, no matter what was the best move.
Without another heartless thought, she lifted him into her arms…Lord, but he was heavy, and floppy, and awkward—dead weight—and positioned him over her shoulder like a wheezing sack of oats, dipped her knees slightly to pick up the bundle of food, and she made for the door.
Pausing, she looked back and whispered, “Sweet dreams, Montrose.”
Lyall’s mouthwas as dry as the deserts of Outremer, and tasted oddly sweet and bitter, as if he had drunk bad heather ale. He rolled over--a monumental effort-- and groaned, his body like dead weight and stiff, muscles aching up and down his limbs and back with the merest of his movements, the way one ached after sleeping in one position all night.
His hand and arm were numb; he flexed his fingers, staring up at the blurred beams above him. His head throbbed and was not much better than his numb hand.
Where am I?
He shook his head and blinked several times, adjusting to the dark, and could make out the carving in the thick wooden beam overhead, a familiar psalm for pilgrims:Thy help comes from the Lord, Maker of Heaven and Earth.
He was at the Abbey at Beauly. Under that beam he hadknelt by Glenna, held her down during her deliriums and prayed over her to a God he'd had little communication with since he was ten years old.. He sat up and glanced opposite him, where her pallet was empty. Thinking she must have gone out to the privy or taken the hound out, he tried to clear his head, knowing he needed to get up. It must have been near dawn and any moment he expected to hear the bells of Matins.
Today they were facing another long ride, but in the windowless room, he had no idea if it was yet close to sunrise or past it. He stretched, pulling his muscles tight, then relaxing and wiping his face. Odd how he felt as if he could fall back asleep. Even after his most drunken of nights, his head had never pounded like it did now, thundering across his scalp like horse’s hooves.
He pushed himself up and the room swam. He swore then scratched the back of his head. Out of sheer stubbornness he stumbled to the laver, filling it from the ewer and splashing water on his face.
As he toweled off his face, the bells rang…the bells rang the number for Terce, late…midmorning. The towel slipped from his hands, and he glanced over at the empty corner, where last night she had stacked her packed possessions. He was out the door in a heartbeat.
Before long all was clear. Glenna, it turned out, was nowhere to be found. The orchard ladder was left on the ground near the south wall. No horse. No hound. He looked around him and cursed himself a fool. His ‘wife’ had taken off sometime during the night, and he was forced to leave the abbey with great speed and a lighter purse (much lighter considering one bag of marks was missing), less a substantial sum to the abbey to pray for his heartless soul.
On horseback outside the gates, he winced up at the blurred sun, which added to his blinding headache, but all he could see clearly was the vision of her talking to the monk in the herb garden. So much for all his long well-thought stratagems. She had outwitted him, and if he weren’t in a temper athis piss-poor self, he might have paid silent homage to her actions.
There was no doubt in his throbbing head and unlikely sluggishness that the little witch had drugged him. As he knelt by his horse outside the abbey wall and touched her trail marks in the soft wet ground, followed them into the woods and tracked the deep, sunken hoofmarks heading away to the south.
What was that she had said when she was fevered?Applecross, Dingwall, Suddy, Cromarty, Plockton, Garve, Kyle, Avoch, Knockbain, and Wester.
So he knew where she was not, and knew, too, that when he found her—and find her he would—there would be hell for her to pay.
There would behell for his stepson to pay when he found him.
Smelling of horse and dust, driven by lack of sleep and anger, Donnald Ramsey took the castle stairs at Rossi two at a time. He crossed the solar, pushed aside the thick brocade curtain to the bower, and stalked into the open room looking for his wife, who was not there. Maids were busy scouring coal smoke from a stone wall and, on hands and knees, cleaning the flagstone floor. One turned from the wall, saw him, and dropped her bucket to the floor with a clatter. The others turned in unison, looked at his face, and quickly curtseyed.
“Where’s Lady Beitris?” His voice sounded like thunder.
One woman paled while another gaped, open-mouthed. He seldom shouted.
“She has gone out to the kitchens, my lord.”
He swore and left the room, ran back down the stairs and across the open bailey to the cook sheds. Inside was absolute chaos, which was appropriate considering his last couple of days. Kitchen lackeys were beating out a spreading fire near the woodlarder, leaving him unnoticed, while the cookwas shrieking that whole place would be up in flames and ‘my lord would hang them from the towers and rip off my thumbs.’
