One of his henchmen came close to the edge. Over her head, dangling from a hook in his hands, was a twitching snake. She could catch glimpses of the distinct pattern on its back and she stopped breathing.
“Drop the adder!” Munro ordered, his face intense.
The snake fell on her, still twisting in the air, its cool skin across her neck and shoulders and she panicked, flailed in the pit and scratched her arms on the rough stones sticking out of the walls. She began crawling up the wall, desperate to get away. She heard the snake hit the dirt just as the light disappearedand the trap door had closed on Munro’s vile and wicked laughter.
"I am Glenna Canmore! I am Glenna Canmore! My father is the king!"
The footsteps didn't stop....
"I am Glenna Canmore!"
....They merely disappeared.
She hung her head for a hearbeat, then kept crawling upward, her back pressed to one side of the pit and her feet against the other. Her heartbeat thrummed loudly in her ears and in her chest.
Below was the adder. She could hear it moving in the dirt.
Above was the bolted trap door. Trap…trapped. It was so dark her eyes could not adjust to see anything. Her back ached from the pressure of the jagged rocks, but she dared not relax, wedged as she was she was safe from the adder.
She took long deep breaths and focused on her position. In time, her mind wandered. If she fell, how many snakebites would it take to kill her?
If only…if only…
Her concentration broke and she slipped a bit, but pressed so hard against the wall the rocks felt like knives in her back. She gripped her knees, willed away the pain in her back, and prayed for the strength to stay as she was, prayed for the power of lust to overcome the guard who had promised to come back.
Lyall adjustedhis rough woolen hood and shifted, tugging at the tight peasant’s tunic that pulled at his arms and chest whenever he moved. He snapped the reins and drove the heavy, creaking wain stacked with firewood up to the posts of the manor.
“Where is Cam?” The sheriff’s man asked casually.
“Broke his arm, he did. I am Frang, his brother,” Lyall said,his hands tightening slightly on the reins of the ox team pulling the wagon. Cam was, in truth, tied to a tree up on the rise above the glen.
“Pull your wain to the side and stack the wood there,” the guard said without question and he pointed beyond the gates and around to the back side of the manor house.
Lyall steered the team as told, his gaze darting, taking in the number for guardsmen, the rear gates, lackeys and workers moving about. A groom lugging buckets of water to the stables. The hot iron smell of a smithy. Baying, barking hounds in the kennels and screaming peafowl in pens next to the chickens. He jumped down from the wain as a tall, willow-thin older woman came outside from the open kitchens, eyeing the load of firewood and then eyeing him.
“Where is that Cam?” she said and held up a hand not waiting for an answer. “Foolhardy he is. The mon cannot hold his beer.” She placed her hands on her hips. “Ye look brawny enough to carry wood, mon. Stack it there. When yer done ye can bring some logs inside and stock the wood boxes.” With that, she disappeared inside.
He needed to find Glenna. But the yard was bustling with guards and workmen. Lyall grabbed the woodman’s gloves from the plank seat but they did not fit his hands, so he tossed them aside and unloaded the wain barehanded, stacking wood, watching and studying the place until the bed was almost empty and his hands and clothes were filled with splinters, wood dust, and dried flecks of old moss.
As he brushed off his tunic, he looked up. A milkmaid with her milk pails hanging from a wooden yoke was coming towards him. As she passed by him, she struggled and milk sloshed onto the ground. She gave a soft cry, her creamy skin flushed and her eyes panicked. He steadied the yoke, lifting it easily off her shoulders before she spilt the whole lot of it.
The maid thanked him sweetly and looked up at him as if he were God Himself, and Lyall thought he had found his means ofinformation. He had watched them bring Glenna in, but where they were keeping her?
“Where is Cam?” The maid asked shyly, eyeing him up and down.
“Broken arm,” Lyall said and changed the subject. “Where do you want this milk? I shall carry it for you.”
“Here,” she said, opening a large oaken door. “Follow me.” She went down some stairs that led to a cold room beneath the ground floors. He carried the milk and set the buckets down.
Inside the dark room, Lyall easily got the information he wanted from her. A poached chicken, a hound, and some lad the sheriff tracked down in the high forest. One relief--Glenna’s guise was safe--until the maid went on about how she pitied the young boy who would be used so cruelly by the sheriff.
“I heard the boy is locked in the pit,” she told him.
“The pit?” he asked. “What is this pit?”
“ ’Tis a dirt hole with trap door.”
“Have you seen it?” Lyall asked.
