“She will pay you back, I will see that she will regret this day.”
“She is a wonder, the way she can twist people around her finger. The old alewife gave me the evil eye for daring to ask about her or imply the lad was in truth a woman.”
“Cait does not have me fooled. The moment my back is turned she is gone, out traipsing the countryside on a lark, dressed as a lad or servant, unprotected….again. How many times is this?”
“Five,” the knight said, ”If you count the time she dressed as a nun.
Douglas drew a gloved hand through his dark hair and scowled. “God’s Legs….if anything happens to her, Sutherland and my father will have my head on a pike.”
“Aye, Finn,” his friend said sarcastically. “Keep telling yourself ‘tis all about the earls’ tempers,” he paused. “And that you care naught a fig for her.”
“I care,” Douglas said briskly. “I care to make the little shrew regret disobeying my orders.”
The knight shook his head. “I would wager a year’s income—should your wife not steal it from me—that she is no longer in Inverness. She was most likely out the gates before we had gathered the men in their saddles. We have searched the town twice over.”
A look of pure determination washed over the face of Finn Douglas. “Then mount up and we will ride hard to Killencraig. I feel the sudden itch to beat my wife.”
“And come out the worse for it, I’ll wager. You are dealing with the Lady Caitrin. What do you suppose she will throw at you this time? You had good a lump from that apple. I would have never believed fruit could be an effective weapon. Mayhap we should store a barrel of them along the curtain walls.”
“I didn’t see it coming," Finn groused. "And stop grinninglike a fool. I know all too well this old trick of hers-- heaving of missiles. I'm familiar with her diversions.”
“Perhaps to protect your head, my friend, you might send a man ahead to clear out the sharp objects—and fruit--from the castle solar.” The man was laughing as he mounted and moved his horse to Douglas’ side.
“I intend to get my hands on her first…but I’ll remember to wear my helm.”
“And to duck.” Laughter followed the men’s comments as they rode off toward the town’s western gates.
Lyall stared at the dust swirling in the empty road, lost in thought. Finngal Douglas was heir to the earl of Dunkirk, a strong ally and sword-arm to Glenna’s father the king, and a man who was close friend to the most powerful noble outside the crown--the earl of Sutherland--whose tight ties to the English crown, to Ireland and the Norse made him untouchable by anyone, even the king’s strongest enemies. Sutherland also happened to be the king’s most loyal friend, his eyes, and his ears, and a man Lyall’s father had known well.
Before his father had been condemned as a traitor, both Sutherland and Dunkirk had come to Dunkeldon on the king’s business. Though he was merely a young lad at the time, Lyall still remembered their colorful arrival through the gates of Dunkeldon.
He had been more than curious about the king’s great earls, and so he had hidden in the galleries above the hall, hanging on every word as he watched the king's earls dining and drinking with his father, talking politics. When talk grew more intensely heated, they moved their conversations to someplace more private than the Great Hall.
Too young then, he had not yet honed his skill of listening at doors, back when the name he carried was not one of shame. A few years later, his ear pressed to doors was the way he could keep his single-minded goal before him. In time he learned all about manipulation and whether honor mattered in the GreatSchemes of man, and he learned about desperation, the dark shadow of which was now always with him.
Sutherland and Dunkirk were assuredly at the helm of whatever plan there was for the king’s return. But he knew little of Douglas, the son, except by reputation, acknowledged wealth, and word he was a man whose name garnered respect and reaction. He then remembered Mairi and his mother gossiping the last time he was at Rossie, some maelstrom regarding the recent wedding of Lord Finngal Douglas, the king's champion, to Sutherland’s ward.
Interesting…that Douglas was searching for his errant bride—a thought that gave Lyall a moment’s pensive pause where every muscle in his body stiffened as he suddenly pieced all of it together for the first time. Glenna and her hound, not Lady Caitrin.
Lyall stepped out of the alley and moved swiftly toward the tavern door. Inside, the crowded alehouse was darker than the evening sky and smelled of beer and burning mutton tallow from the candle pricks on the smoke-burnished walls. Barrels of mead and bigger hogsheads of ale were stacked up in back behind a thick, solid slab of oak that served as the board, where stood the alewife, as stout as her beer, with face flushed from a nearby coal brasier and the kitchen fire in the rear, looking as weathered as a dried apple. She moved with speed that belied her apronned girth, down the line of tankards filling each from a frothy ewer as she gave orders to her lackey.
Lyall crossed over toward an empty seat in dark corner, used his boot to pull out a chair from a squat table, the opposite side of which was set with a trencher of stewed meat and a half empty beer mug. Straddling the chair, he sat and stabbed his jeweled dagger into the tabletop.
The lackey came running over and set an ale tankard in front of him.
With a swift nod of his head toward the meat trencher, Lyall said, “I’ll have the same.” As the lackey moved away, Lyall drankfrom the pint, not realizing how thirsty and hungry he was until food and drink were both less than a cubit away and the scents were unavoidable.
Studying the room as he drank, Lyall searched for parties to question, besides the alewife. Since Douglas’ man had just questioned her, and apparently had trouble, Lyall understood he would need to choose most carefully. He did not want to raise too many questions. But still he needed to know how much time had passed since Glenna had been seen.
A freeman dressed in hood and gorget came scurrying in from the back, probably from the latrine, since he was busy adjusting his braies. He did not notice Lyall until he was already by his abandoned seat and he looked up and stared across the table as if hit. His eyes grew wide and his manner servile. Bowing slightly, he started to pick up his food with both hands. “I’ll leave, m’lord.”
“Stay where you are, man. Sit.” Lyall sheathed his dagger and pulled out his eating knife. “I welcome the company and will gladly share your table.”
The man sat and was saved from having to speak by the lackey who placed a steaming trencher of lamb stew in front of Lyall and refilled his ale before taking the ale pitcher around the other empty pints in the tavern. They both ate in silence as thick as their trenchers, but every so often Lyall caught the man staring at him over his food with wide, white eyes.
Lyall tore off some more bread and sopped up the stew, chewing, then he set down the knife. “I have only just come to town,” he said, easing into the conversation.
“Aye, m’lord. I, too, drove in with a wagon load from Drumashie just this morn. Left home the day before.”
