“Och, nay, ye will be riding. I have a wee sturdy pony for ye and an old habit One left behind on her last visit home.”
“Sister Beatrice,” she muttered, unthinkingly correcting him in a way that had become almost a tradition. “I am to pretend to be a nun?”
“Only until ye reach this mon Innes. Ye can claim to any who ask that ye are on a pilgrimage.”
Ilsabeth followed him to where a placid Highland pony awaited. While Humfrey turned his back, she changed into the nun’s habit. She knew it was a good disguise. Most people saw the nun’s attire and did not look closely at the woman wearing it. Rolling up her clothes, she moved to put them into one of the saddle packs and was a little surprised at all she found there.
“I have been verra weel supplied,” she murmured.
“Ye ken weel that your father has always been prepared for nigh on anything and everything.”
Recalling the many times her father had made them all practice fleeing some enemy, she nodded. “I had just ne’er thought there would ever be a real need for such practices.”
“Nay. I ne’er did, either, but am sore glad right now that we did them.”
“Do ye go to join my father now?”
“Nay.” Humfrey grinned. “I go to take up my work in Walter’s stables.” He nodded at Ilsabeth’s surprise. “A fortnight ago one of the Murray lasses sent word that she had seen a danger draw near to us, that she was certain there was a threat close at hand. Weel, your father then made certain he had one of his own get as close to all of his neighbors as he could. I have a cousin who is a Hepbourn and he got me work in Walter’s stables. T’was too late though. I had only just begun to suspect something was amiss. Ne’er would have guessed it would be this.”
“Nay, nor I.”
Humfrey kissed her on the cheek. “Go. The soldiers will be busy at our gates for hours yet. Put as many miles as ye can between ye and them.”
Ilsabeth mounted the pony and looked at her cousin. “Be careful, Humfrey. ‘Tis clear to see that Walter doesnae care who he uses or kills to get what he wants.”
“I will be careful. Ye, too. And do your best to see that the bastard pays for this.”
“That I swear to ye, Humfrey.”
Ilsabeth’s mind was full of Walter’s betrayal as she rode away. His betrayal and her own gullibility. She did not understand how she could have been so blinded to the evil in the man. Her mother had told her she had a gift for seeing into the heart of people. It had obviously failed miserably. The man she had thought to marry was a traitor, a killer, and saw her whole family as no more than lowborn thieves, vermin to be rid of. How could she not have seen that?
She also bemoaned the lack of information she had. For all she had overheard there were still more questions than answers. Just how did Walter, David, and whatever allies they had think to kill the king? Why did they even want to? Power? Money? She could not think of anything the king might have done to make Walter want him dead.
The more she thought on the matter the more she realized she did not know Walter at all. The worst she had ever thought of him was that he was a little vain, but she had shrugged aside any concern over that fault. He had a fine, strong body, a handsome face, beautiful hazel green eyes, and thick hair the color of honey. One glance into any looking glass would tell the man he was lovely so she had told herself that a little vanity was to be expected. But vanity could not be enough to drive a man to plot against his liege lord, could it? Did Walter have the mad idea that he should be king?
As the evening darkened into night, she discovered one thing she did not think about was her own heartbreak. Her heart ached but it was for her family, her fear for them so great at times that she could barely catch her breath. It did not, however, ache for the loss of Walter, not even when she looked past the shock of his betrayal and the fury over what he had done to her family.
“I didnae love him,” she said, and the pony twitched an ear as if to hear better. “All this, and I didnae even really love the bastard.Jesu,my family is running for their lives and for what? Because foolish Ilsabeth let herself be wooed into idiocy by a pair of beautiful eyes?”
The pony snorted.
“Aye, ‘tis pathetic. All I feel is a pinch of regret o’er the loss of a dream. Nay a dream of that lying bastard, but of having my own home and some bairns to hold. I am one and twenty and I was hungry for that. Too hungry. The greed to fulfill that dream was my weakness, aye?”
With a flick of its tail, the pony slapped her leg.
“Best ye get used to my complaints and my blathering.
We will be together for at least three days. Ye need a name, I am thinking, since ‘tis clear that I will be babbling my troubles into your ears from time to time.”
Ilsabeth considered the names from all the stories Sister Beatrice told so well. Although she preferred horses, good strong animals that could gallop over the moors and give her that heady sense of freedom, she had a lot of respect for the little Highland ponies. She wanted to give this one a good strong name.
“Goliath,” she finally said, and was certain the pony lifted its head a little higher. “We will just make certain Walter’s snake of a cousin, David, doesnae get near ye with a sling and a stone.”
She looked around at the moonlit landscape and tears stung her eyes. Her family was spending the night running, finding places to hide, and keeping watch for soldiers. If any of them got caught they would face pain and humiliation, perhaps even death, before she could save them. It was so unfair. Her father had done his best to return honor to his branch of the Armstrong family tree and it did him no good. One whisper from Walter, one dead body, and everyone believed the worst of them.
Her father’s insistence that everyone knew how to run and hide, speedily and silently, now made sense to her. All those well-supplied hiding places, all the intricate plans for scattering his small clan so far and wide it would take months to find any of them now revealed a foresight she had never seen or understood. Sir Cormac Armstrong had always known that the stain his parents had smeared the clan’s name with and the many less than honest cousins he had could come back to haunt him no matter what he did.
“Oh, I shall make Walter pay dearly for this, Goliath. Verra dearly indeed.”
