I have sisters.She was not the only daughter.
How could she have sisters? Did the king hide all his children? She laughed then at the madness of it all before she grew thoughtful. If she were the eldest, then they could not have shared a mother. If she was hidden away, they must have been, too. Could they be as rough and wild as she was?
Or was she the only pawn, the eldest, the man called de Hay had said, and supposedly worth something to the father who had never met her and worth all that much more to his enemies.
If there was one thing she would never allow herself to be, it was a pawn.
Lyall’s eyesremained locked on the empty spot at the top of the stairs where Glenna had disappeared, and told himselfthat regret was for those who had a conscience, and he never claimed to have one. Why then did he have the urge to draw his sword, grab her, and die if he had to, fighting to get her away from this place to which he had brought her?
Long ago, he knelt and avouched to a life of honor, only to have his honor questioned again and again because of the name he carried—his father’s black legacy. He was the son of a man who had no honor, and in time, he learned there were not enough vows in the world to change the dishonor of his name.
Around him, men’s voices pierced his consciousness.
“The armorer overcharged me. I threatened to take his fingers one by one if he were to act the fool again.”
“…came walking out of the hayloft after the milkmaid only to have her young brother conk him out with a barrel stave.”
“’Aye…the best piece of horseflesh I’ve ever cast these old eyes upon. ‘Tis a smaller, swifter breed of palfrey, bred in the west, on the isles, from Barb bloods and another desert breed. I would give a year’s wages for one.”
Lyall cast a quick glance over his shoulder. Frasyr’s man at arms was the one lusting after one of the rare bloods, those the Gordons raised, smaller, swifter breeds of riding mounts like Glenna’s Skye.
A vision of the island swam before his eyes--fields covered in heather, Glenna riding with her romping hound, her laughter or a challenge…all that was left in her wake. So bright was the image, so strong the sound her voice, that his breath caught. His clothes felt suddenly small, and he tugged at his tunic as if he could cover up what he was feeling—the most intense sense of loss. Part of him wanted to sink into the ground.
In a shadowed corner, de Hay was talking with Frasyr. Meanwhile some of the guards were beginning to sprawl out on wooden benches and pallets, some went abovestairs as pages brought lavers for washing and thickly frothed ale for them to drink themselves to sleep. Before him a maid with a ewer of thick brown ale ran into a bustling squire who precariouslybalanced a flagon of wine on a tray and had not been paying attention. Brown ale went everywhere, and the two began bickering until they were quieted by a sharp command.
“I will have a word with you, Robertson.”
Light from a candle suddenly appeared at his shoulder. De Hay was standing next to him, and he took a goblet of wine from the squire and demanded Lyall follow him from the hall.
Inside a private chamber with plenty of candlelight, Huchon de Hay sat down in a chair at a wide hewn table and set a coffer before him and unlocked it. Without looking up he said, “Is she as simple-minded as she appears?”
“More so,” Lyall lied.
“Then your task cost you little trouble to earn this.” De Hay held out a parchment. A thick gold ring with a mark Lyall had never seen was on his long fingers.
Lyall steeled himself to look into his eyes and appear passive. When unrolled, the papers revealed a sealed and witnessed document bequothing all of Dunkeldon and its lands, borders, crofts and income and tax fees from the village of Dunwood and the nearby Tay crossing to Sir Lyall Robertson and his heirs.
Lyall’s hands shook slightly as he read it.
De Hay stood. “Dunkeldon is yours.”
“Aye,” Lyall said, lingering in his own hopelessness, unable to know how to act or what to do next. He half-expected the parchment to burn its image into his palm. He finally held in his hand all that he had craved for more years than he had lived on Dunkeldon lands.
“You may go,” de Hay dismissed him, and Lyall walked out to the great hall. As he walked away without purpose, he realized the place stank of burning mutton and sweat, ale and wet, fetid rushes. The stink grew stronger. He needed fresh air. Smell was his only sense, and it was acute and overpowering.
Had someone touched him, he doubted he would feel it. Had the Devil himself arisen there before his eyes, he would not haveseen him. Had the ground opened up and the screams of Hell surrounded him, he would not hear them.
The coward in him wanted to run, an urge he had felt often in his lifetime but never admitted or acted upon. He didn’t have the courage to be a true coward. He walked on, feeling nothing, yet wondering if betrayal carried a stench.
Outside, he headed straight for the stable, saddled and mounted his horse, paid the guard a pretty sum to open the gate, and rode out, only to have to bribe the castle ferryman to barge cross the lake. The wind was picking up overhead, and it blew water from the white-capped lake into his eyes and face, and rocked the wooden raft so hard he had his hands full calming down his high-spirited horse.
On the opposite side he eased his skittish mount off the rocking raft to soft ground, and he kept along the edge of the lake as the wind calmed down, and in time, so did his horse. At a break in the trees, he dismounted and his horse was happy to eat grass. But Lyall’s state of mind was in turmoil as he paced across the damp grass in the dark.
Dunkeldon was his. After all the time and the pain and disappointment. After keeping his eye on the prize with a single-mindedness that had gone on for so long, eventually he drove himself from the hearts of his family.
What price so dear one pays….
He was alone in the grand quiet of the moment he had waited for, yet there was great noise inside his head he could not shake off.
