Prologue
Invergarry
24 years ago
Nicholas MacPherson screamedas loud as his two-year-old lungs let him. Someone smacked his rump hard with one hand while continuing to haul Nicholas around the flames by his ankles. He sobbed and cried longing for his mother while strange men spoke over him and finally tossed him over someone’s saddle. He fell into a deep, blessed sleep until they arrived in Berwick, where he was thrown into the hands of the kitchen scullions. He was put to work immediately with washing in the kitchen or fetching what was needed. He had no mother to cry to at night or after a beating to his rump and to the backs of his thighs for disobeying or performing a duty incorrectly. Still, he cried but no one comforted him.
Until a nurse called Berengaria rescued him from the darkness of despair and loneliness and brought him a fire.
The fire’s name was Julianna.
Chapter One
The kingdom of Northumberland
Winter
The Year of Our Lord1322
“Can you repeatwhat I have told you so far, Miss Feathers?”
Julianna put down her quill and blew on the words then read them. “Margery, I hope you are well. I have heard…” She picked up her quill again, dipped it into her small jar of ink and waited for him to continue.
He smiled, exposing a row of missing teeth. “I have heard,” he continued, “of an opportunity.”
She blew out a silent sigh and wrote what he said.
Since leaving the abbey four months ago, this was what she did for coin to stay alive and see to her purposes.
Her father had been the Governor of Berwick, Viscount of March, before Robert the Bruce’s men had seized the castle and all lands around it. Her father, gone, slain by the Scots’ sword, as was everyone else she’d known, including villagers and castle servants.
She didn’t want revenge for the attack. She wanted her life back from the aftermath of it. She wanted enough coin to find William Stone, her father’s servant, and Berengaria, her nurse. She hadn’t seen either one in years.
She used her skills in the arts, singing in taverns or painting outside inns along the coastline in the summer, and this, penning letters for others in order to see to her needs. She even delivered some letters, which was what she was doing for Archie Sommers at present in a tavern on the north coast of Northumberland. She traveled often and was always available somewhere to be a messenger.
“…employment that might suit you, Sister.”
She wrote, dipped then wrote again.
“The Earl of Rothbury needs a governess for his child,” he continued. “I hear he is paying quite handsomely.”
Julianna looked at him through the corner of her eye and waited, her heart suddenly racing. Rothbury.
Her ear tilted toward him. It was completely unlike her to take information meant for someone else and use it for her gain. But Lismoor Castle was in Rothbury—and she could use the coin.
“There are conditions, of course,” he said, watching her write. “You must be available at all times.”
Did she just feel Sommers’ breath on her? She cringed and moved further away. He inched closer.
“Sir,” she said and dipped her quill. “If you come any closer or try to touch me in any way, I will stab you in your eyes.” She lifted her sharp quill and pointed it at him. She wasn’t sure she could make good on her threat. Hopefully, she wouldn’t have to. Thanks to the abbess, her ink was laced with a special herbal poison that, if pricked into the skin by her quill, would almost immediately put its victim to sleep. Or kill him, depending on how much poison had been injected.
The tips of Julianna’s knives were laced with the poison, as were the tiny stingers of wasps and the tiny fangs of spiders forged to metal rings and bracelets so that she could prick the skin of any threat with ease.
All such adornments and poison blends, from the work of a Reverend Mother who lived on the moors.
Still, idle threats about an abbess would not stop him. Jabbing his eyes out sounded like something a madwoman would say, so she chose that. “Do you think I travel alone without any knowledge about hurting or killing my enemy?”
She crooked her mouth at him and a red curl sprang forward from beneath her forest green woolen hood. She had pulled the unruly mass of locks into a tight bun in the back of her head earlier, but she was afraid it was going to burst free of its pins and spill out all around her.
