“I saw it once, not much bigger inside than an ale barrel, and ‘tis in a round room deep inside the manor, close to the master’s chambers. Some say for his convenience.” She paused. “I am not allowed inside, except in here and the kitchens.” She looked down, clearly ashamed of her limits.
“Were I sheriff, a pretty lass like you could roam the whole of my manor,” he said kindly.
Her expression was open—the sweet, carnal invitation in her eyes. There was a time when he would have taken this maid because that was how men proved their manhood. A youthful ideal—one that changed drastically when he stared down at the broken body of his young wife.
He reached out and touched her jawline. “You are a lovely lass.”
She cocked her head and looked at him with an odd expression, curious. Then she smiled tenderly. “Another holds your heart.”
Her words made him immediately uncomfortable. He shook his head, denying what she thought.
" 'Tis the truth. Whether or not you choose to believe it.”
“Hullo! Worthless woodman! Where are ye?”
“ ‘Tis the cook,” she said. “Go. Hurry. No one should see us.”
Lyall went up of the stairs. The cook stood near the woodpile with her arms crossed. “There ye be, mon. Come. Fill yer arms with wood.” She clapped her hands impatiently. “Come. Come!”
He carried in armloads of wood to stock the kitchen fire boxes, before he volunteered to take wood to the rest of the manor and into the master’s chamber, receiving for his good offer, exactly what he wanted: directions to the sheriff chamber inside the manor. Arms piled with wood, he moved toward the chamber.
Munro was slumped in a chair, his chin resting on his chest, either asleep or drunk or both.
Lyall quietly lay the wood near the hearth and he left the room, moving down the opposite hallway until he opened the door and found the round room.
A red-haired man lay face down on the floor, dead or unconscious. Lyall caught the rise and fall of his shallow breath. Unconscious.
He crossed the small room to where the trap door was open and grabbed a candle from the wall prick. He knelt down, holding the candlelight and he looked down into the pit, where a snake stared back at him with yellow eyes.
19
Glenna hung down from the manor wall, her arms scraping against sharp stones as she dangled there. Looking down, she adjusted her hands, her weight pulling and making the stones cut into them, too.
Take a deep breath and let go.The ground looked far, far away. The guards walked slowly around the manor but still she had little time.
Let go…
She could feel her hands began to slip and closed her eyes, praying for courage. The sound of Munro’s wicked voice echoed in her head and she saw the vivid image of a coiled adder in a dank pit.
A moment later she hit the ground hard, her bones ringing on impact, and then she was running across the grassy field and sliding down over the next slope, tumbling out of sight and rolling over rocks and into bushes, numbed by fear. She got up running her heart beating in time with her swiftly moving feet and her breathing grew harsh.
Behind her, no shouts came from the manor for the guards to run after her, but she kept her ears sharp, expecting with her next breath to hear them shout and begin the chase.
Still, there was no sound but the pounding of her feet and heart. At the arc of another hill and where the terrain went flat, she turned and glanced back, then stumbled on a willow root and fell hard, biting her tongue. Pain shot up her ankle and she tasted blood, but she scrambled up and hobbled toward a skeletal copse of trees ahead of her.
With the cool, dark shadows of the rowans around her, she bent down, hands on her knees as she tried to catch her breath. Soon her lungs had filled and stopped burning, and she slowly straightened, resting her hand on a tree trunk with rugged bark. Nerves raw, she looked back.
No guards streamed out from the gates. In the distance, sheep calmly grazed, the mill’s waterwheel slowly turned at the river beyond, and the valley looked quiet and peaceful and nothing like the place of evil she knew it to be.
She took a long deep breath. It was over, yet her heart still beat like the drums of Morris dancers and in her mind she could still taste the dank scent of the pit; she could still feel the presence of that snake almost as if it were there with her now; she could still feel Munro’s voice. The shaking overtook her, uncontrollable; it started with her hands. She stared down at them as if they belonged to someone else.
You escaped…The words echoed in her head like a monk’s chant.You are free…you are free….
Laughter boiled up and out of her. Relief. She stumbled deeper into the woods. Away. Farther away, and her frantic, odd laughter was the only sound around her. She sagged back against another tree as if her bones had turned to eel jelly.
Eyes closed, she leaned her head back, and her laughter suddenly changed and she was crying, hard, shuddering, wracking sobs. She wrapped her arms around herself, sliding down the tree into a puddle, and just sat like that, crying in the woods as she rubbed her ankle and rocked and hiccupped and silly tears spilled shamefully down her face like water from the mill wheel.
It lasted a long time—her misery, her fear, her relief. Rampant emotions she couldn't control
