Soon black-faced sheep could be seen grazing contentedly on the low rises, and dairy cattle munched on fathoms of clover speckled with yellow flowers. Scattered along the outskirts of town were perimeters of low stone fences and crofts covered in thick thatch, built of solid wattle and daub that sparkled in the sunlight with newly lime-washed walls, surrounded by freshly mown fields, one with a lumbering spotted sow and gaggles of children laughing, chasing.
A woman with her blue skirts tucked up into her girdle stood hoeing rows of turnips and onions, and another tossed feed to red-brown hens with feathers all-a-flutter as they pecked heartily at the ground near her wooden clogs. Off in the distance, men tilled the grain fields and others were bailing up huge rolls of fresh golden-green hay, while large-bedded hay wagons lined up to be loaded. Wagons stacked high with faggots cut from the forest for cook fires moved past the town’s perimeter ditches and disappeared into the bowels of Inverness. Everywhere she looked was another teeming eyeful. To see so many people caused a humming deep inside her. She was not so alone, and she smiled.
“Aye, ‘tis a sight, is it not?” Heckie said with admiration. “To see a holding where the lord and the sheriff don’t bleed all the wealth out of the land and its people. Even the likes of Munro the Horrible wouldn’t dare plant his greedy feet onto charter land of the king, Himself.”
Her smile disappeared. She didn’t know which name upset her more, Munro the Horrible or her father ‘Himself.’ She paused before speaking. “When the king Himself has been livingin exile for so many years past?” The words spilled like toads from her mouth. “What king does not rule his land?”
She could feel Heckie’s look without a glance.
“I would expect a laddie from Ross-shire to know more of how the winds blow,” he said quietly and pulled on the reins.
She stared at her hands in her lap, knowing she could not tell him the truth, that she knew little of kings and politics living not in Ross-shire but in the isolation of the outer islands, where rare news was more of the Norse machinations than much of their own homeland. That she was not a lad.
What would he say were she to pull off her hat, let down her hair, and declare she was the daughter of Himself?
Did that make her Herself?
If Heckie of Drumashie knew he was sitting next to the daughter of the king she suspected the news might actually render the man speechless.
She searched for a lie and settled on the truth. “I do not know much of the workings of politics and the rulings and rights of kings. I never dared ask why he is in exile, having lived with the belief that the king was so far from my place in the schemes of the world and therefore had nothing to do with me. I have only known that the king has been away for as many years as I have breathed this air.”
So Heckie explained the king’s exile, the great battle on the day she secretly knew she was born, and Heckie’s story made her understand betrayal on a grander scale than she would have ever thought she could fathom before the last few days.
“…. And later we heard that the great and lovely queen had died, with her newborn child, in a fire in the woods, while the king was taken prisoner, and none ever knew if it were the king’s enemies that got to her.”
From Heckie she heard of such tales of the treachery that for the first time she understood the thin thread of control and slim trust available to anyone with royal blood. He told her of the king’s cousin, who challenged her father’s right to rule throughhis mother’s line and with coffers of gold and silver from his many ransoms bought easy rebellion from some lords who swore fealty to her father, but behind his back plotted to oust him.
“He came back to Scotland once, Himself did,” Heckie said. “But a traitor was privy to the secret plans, and as the king and his men rowed ashore, the barons and their mercenaries attacked and he took an arrow deep in his side. On the ship was a man from Jerusalem who studied Eastern medicine, and he held the king together until they landed in Brittany. The French king’s chirurgeon brought him back from death throes, but his recovery was long and difficult. ‘Tis said he was betrayed by one of his closest friends…the name bandied about was Sir Ewan Robertson.
For a brief moment she wondered if she had misjudged her father. She still ached from her own experience with betrayal.
“There is fresh rumor brewing about. First heard a fortnight ago.”
“What kind of rumor?”
“That Himself is coming home.”
She knew the rumor was no rumor but the truth. Her father was coming back. Would his enemies again try to kill him? How could he ever trust anyone?
Heckie was watching her quizzically.
“I do not know what to say except it would seem to be folly for him to risk his life again. Why would he?”
“Because his blood is that of kings,” he said simply.
He spoke with honest reverence about her father and his courage, and his tone was filled with pride. She felt suddenly small, and for the first time she wondered at her blood. What did she carry beneath her skin that drove her and made up her being? So many unanswered questions.
They drove past the deep defense ditches lined with stone and into Inverness proper, where buildings huddled close together like foot soldiers, shoulder to shoulder, as if there were only bare enough plots of land for the four corners of each one.Up from the dirt street, a blanket of dust swirled around the ox team, dusting their black coats with a fine veil of red dirt.
That the thoroughfare was not muck-ridden was extremely rare.
From what Heckie said, drain gutters and cess channels were built behind the buildings, as they were in Edinburgh and London. And though there were dogs and pigs and chickens occasionally roving in the streets, there were far more people moving to and from the market crossing; it stood ahead them, where the crowds thickened and one could hear the hawking of goods, pipe and drum music, and the buzzing voices of trade.
Heckie turned the wain down a side street and stopped in front of a narrow, stone based building with blood-red painted shutters. A barber sign swung on an iron hook above the door, a thick oak timbered with red and white-lime painted trimwork. He assured her he knew of a stable where she could safely board and care for her horse and hound while she explored the temptations of the market. In exchange she would stay and watch the loaded wagon while Heckie took care of his tooth pain.
Glenna knew she could not stay in the town indefinitely—she would have to move onward—but the size and crowds of Inverness afforded her more anonymity than a village and she needed supplies. For a short time, perhaps a few days, she could lose herself here.
Lyall lost her trail again.He reined in and rubbed his brow, took a long deep breath before he glanced up through the trees at the sun to gauge how much time he’d already wasted.
