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The door opened on a wall of heat and noise.

Peat-smoke sat in the rafters. I involuntarily coughed.

The common room was one long space, a packed-earth floor, a hearth at the far end, two rough tables, and more people than I wanted to count. Men with wet cloaks. A woman stirring a pot. The roar of the falls came through the walls as if the river were in the room with us.

Torin put me a little behind his left shoulder and spoke to the innkeeper in a low run of Gaelic and Scots. More than once he had to ask the innkeeper to repeat himself, and tugged his ear, his face focused on the innkeeper’s face.

Torin pulled a coin from his purse and it changed hands. The man’s eyes went to my skirts, then to Torin’s bruised face, then back to the coin.

We were a disaster, but we blended in pretty well. Torin paid extra for the privacy of our own room. “But we canna eat in there: rats — I hae seen one already.”

I gulped, and blinked, hard.

The innkeeper’s boy led us through a passage that leaked cold air and pushed open the door on a narrow chamber at the back of the house. There was one low bed of boards and straw, a stool, and a hook on the wall. It was basically a store house, smelling of onions and damp grain.

My face screwed up.

Torin was correct, here there would be rats. Possibly medieval plagues.

30

ALEXANDRIA

1308 - THE INN AT DOCHART HAS A BOLTING DOOR (AND RATS)

Inside the room, Torin dropped our bags to the ground. Dude jumped out, took a stroll around, and began sniffing the back corner.

Torin said, “Careful, cat, medieval rats, they might be bigger than ye think.”

Torin took the heavy bar and dropped it across the door from the inside. We were barricaded in while a raging, dark-ages party carried on right outside.

I was so freaking grateful for the private room to sleep in, even with the scurrying sounds. I was doubly grateful for my cat. He would keep the pests from our gear. He jumped onto a table in the room as if he were done already, his tale flicking, our loyal guard.

Torin arranged our valuables into one bag and slung it on his shoulder and put out an elbow, gallantly. “Ye ready tae go tae the Great Hall tae dine?”

“This has been such a romantic honeymoon.”

“Aye, nothing but the best, for my princess.”

I laughed, taking his arm. “The food will be terrible and the wine watered-down, but we can hold hands on the table by candlelight.”

“Yer eyes sparkle in the candlelight, they will distract me from all the other horrors.”

He pulled up the bar across the door and opened it, and it was like my head blowing back from the chaos. It was loud and raucous and smelled thick, like a…? Actually ‘thick’ was the best I could come up with. This place needed some serious Febreeze.

We took seats at the common table and Torin hooked the bag over his knee in the shadows under it. The meal came to our table first: a thick broth with barley and a little mutton, coarse bread, and ale that tasted of the barrel.

We ate quickly.

We spoke to no one, but the crowd was growing drunker, staggering, slurring. No one asked our names or where we were headed, and Torin just stared straight ahead, laughing occasionally in a good-natured way. I couldn’t believe these people were already this drunk, it was barely dark, but then again, how long would the candles last? With no electricity they started day-drinking early, I supposed.

A man near the fire was already asleep on a bench, his head lolling while everyone loudly talked around him, until he finally listed over. The crowd quieted, waiting, as he swayed and then crumpled to the floor.

Everyone cheered.

Torin chuckled. “First man down, ye almost done, Princess?”

“Why are you calling me Princess now?”