Amanda Scott (34 page)

During the previous two days, while Rob and Henry had explored the caves beneath the castle, she and her helpers had tidied the upper floors and raked all the old rushes from the hall. Now she was replacing them. The two maidservants had mixed rosemary and other herbs with clean, dry rushes collected from tenants whose business it was to dry them in the rafters of their crofts or cottages, and two gillies were distributing them carefully from threshold to threshold.

“Don’t pile those too high,” Adela warned one lad who was raking them into place. “We don’t want straw spilling over the threshold onto the stairs.”

“Aye, mistress.” But even as he spoke, he moved away from the doorway, and Archie hurried in, his pleasant features creased in a heavy frown.

“Mistress, there be dunamany horsemen coming, five score at least.”

“A hundred men? From what direction?”

“North,” he said. “They be riding fast and nearly upon us.”

“But who can they be?” Even as she asked the question, she knew it must be the Earl of Fife. Other than the Sinclairs, the Earl of Douglas or—and most unlikely—the King himself, few noblemen rode with such large tails.

“Tell them to bar the gates, Archie,” she said quickly, recalling Rob’s instructions. “If the riders stop here, have our men say that Sir Robert has ridden to Roslin and they should seek him there.”

“Aye, m’lady, I’ll tell them,” he said, turning on his heel and hurrying away.

Noting that all work in the hall had stopped and that her four helpers were regarding her nervously, Adela said, “Back to work, all of you. I mean to finish our cleaning today so we can move on to other tasks I have in mind to furbish this place up. When Sir Hugo and his lady return, I want the results to make them stare.”

Three turned back to their work, but one lad hesitated, looking more nervous than before.

“What is it?” she asked.

“What if they get in?” he asked.

She raised her chin. “If they do, we will greet them with civility and welcome them to Hawthornden in Prince Henry’s name, of course. We are not barbarians here, whatever they may be.”

He nodded and returned to his raking. Although she was glad that her words seemed to give him more confidence, they had done nothing to ease her own concerns. It was all very well for Rob to say he would hear in good time if Fife were on the move, and would return at once. But as she had no idea where he and Henry were and realized they could be wandering around in tunnels and passageways underground, his words brought no comfort to her now.

She told herself she had no cause to worry, because the men had barred the gates and Fife would ride on to Roslin where the Sinclairs would deal with him. But her confidence had evaporated. The waiting would be easier, she thought, if she could just see what was happening outside the wall.

Remembering Rob saying that one should know one’s own ground, she wished she had taken time to explore the ramparts more carefully. Doubtless there was a vantage point there from which one could overlook the main entrance.

On that thought, she gathered her skirts and began to hurry to the stairway, but as she reached it, the main door on the landing below banged open and running feet came up the stairs. Recognizing steps of one man, she stopped to wait for him.

“M’lady,” the gasping lad said, “Archie Tayt did say to tell ye it be me lord o’ Fife, but he’s no riding wi’ just his own banner, mistress. Them devils be riding under the royal banner, Archie says.”

“I don’t care what flags they wave,” Adela snapped. “Don’t let them in.”

“Aye, sure, but that makes for a wee difficulty, Archie says. It be treason, he says, to defy a royal command.”

“But surely his grace the King has not ridden here from Edinburgh,” Adela said. “And it cannot be a royal command unless he is with them.”

“D’ye think Archie should tell that to the Earl o’ Fife, m’lady? The earl thinks he
is
King, Archie says, and he wouldna hesitate to level the charge against Prince Henry, all his commanders, and every man wha’ obeys them. Archie says—”

“Tell them to admit the earl if he insists on it,” Adela interjected.

She was thoroughly sick of hearing what Archie had said, but they had underestimated Fife and she could do nothing about that now.

Even if Hawthornden’s gates were strong enough to withstand determined effort to breach them, she dared not put Henry or Rob in the path of a charge of treason. Not when she was certain that Fife would delight in hanging Rob, even if he lacked enough courage to hang Henry.

“We need not admit them all,” she added. “Tell Archie Tayt that if the earl insists on seeing for himself that Sir Robert is absent, he may do so, but that his lady is here alone and would prefer that most of his men remain outside the gate.”

“Sakes, mistress,” the lad said, his eyes widening. “D’ye think ye should—”

“Go,” she said, pointing back down the stairs. “And hurry!”

But as he obeyed her, she heard the familiar sounds of arriving horsemen—hoofbeats, male voices, and the squeak and clink of harness—and she knew it was too late to stop Fife had she tried. One hundred riders could not possibly all fit in the courtyard, but they would easily prevent the gates from being shut.

Recalling Rob’s orders to avoid any dangerous confrontation that she could avoid, her first inclination was to turn and run. But one look at the four frightened faces of her helpers dissuaded her.

“All of you, leave the hall at once,” she said. “If you know a way to leave the castle without meeting those riders, do so.”

No one stirred, and she realized they probably knew nothing about the sally port and that even if they did, most if not all four would be afraid to use it.

“Just go upstairs,” she said. “I will speak to his lordship when he comes.”

“M’lady, ye shouldna do that,” the same lad who had spoken up earlier said. “The Earl o’ Fife be a gey wicked man, they say.”

“Don’t argue with me. Just go.”

Mentally sorting through the options she had, she could think of only one that might afford her any chance to escape.

Hearing boots on the stone steps, she straightened her shoulders, drew a deep breath to steady her nerves, and prepared to act the proper hostess.

The first person up the stairs was Fife himself, his hand on the hilt of his sword, the weapon half out of its scabbard.

“Faith, my lord, you’ve no need of weapons here,” she said, curtsying. “Did our people not inform you that Lestalric is at Roslin today?”

His gaze swept the hall before narrowing and coming to rest on her. Smoothly and without so much as a polite nod, he said, “Art here alone, lass?”

The wave of fear and nausea that surged through her then told her that, whether she had thought so at the time or not, her abduction had indeed taught her to recognize evil when she was in its presence. Standing by Fife, she knew she might well be in the presence of the devil himself.

“Lady Adela?”

Forcing her gaze from the earl, she saw that he had not come alone.

The chevalier de Gredin, his smile as charming as ever and showing no sign of injury, stepped across the threshold into the hall.

Chapter 18

R
ob stood beside Henry and looked skeptically up the steep north slope of what at best he’d have defined as a lushly verdant, narrow, quarter-mile slice into the west bank of the river North Esk’s gorge. From the top of the glen’s innermost point spilled what Henry insisted must be Adela’s waterfall, if indeed the symbol she had pointed out was meant to be one.

“It is still spring, Henry,” Rob protested. “If this thin rivulet is as heavy as it gets, I don’t see how—”

“Don’t scoff,” Henry said. “I have seen it tumbling, sending froth and spray into the air. And, more to the point, this flow never dries up. That of any other likely nearby stream does. Just look at those great slabs of rock yonder, too. If I wanted to conceal a cavern entrance …”

Rob saw what he meant. The three slabs, all taller than he and Henry, stood upright, looking at first glance as if precariously balanced. But closer examination revealed that all three stood solidly unmovable. They would need the shovels and other equipment they’d brought.

They had left the horses on the narrow fishermen’s track along the west bank of the river, and had walked into the trackless glen, following its barely noticeable watercourse. Had Henry not known where to go, Rob doubted he would have found the place for days. Trees near its opening formed a canopy thick enough to obscure the size and depth of the glen, and dense shrubbery clustered at the base of the trees. Thus, the whole looked and smelled like an ordinary patch of damp, herbal-scented woodland. The western side of the gorge was not as steep or as sheer as the eastern side, but it was still impressively precipitous.

As Rob stood frowning at the three rock slabs, Henry chuckled. “Sakes,” he said, “did you expect them to topple at your touch? If your grandfather helped hide something here, it was forty to forty-five years ago, when he and his friends were capering about, harrying unsuspecting English invaders. Anything so easily tipped would be lying flat by now, the hiding place revealed to anyone who looked here.”

“Aye,” Rob said absently, still eyeing the rocks speculatively.

“I did not ask before what you think lies hidden here, knowing how you feel about secrets,” Henry said. “But unless you think you can send me away if we do find an opening here, you may as well confide your thoughts to me now.”

Rob had realized that he must do so and had been expecting the request if not an outright command. Nevertheless, still fearing his suspicion was wishful thinking, he told Henry only what he had told Adela about the long-ago confrontation at Lestalric. But Henry was as quick as she had been to follow his thinking.

“Sakes,” he exclaimed, “you cannot believe the Stone has been sitting here ever since Edward I invaded Scotland!”

“Nay, but I do think they might have moved it here later,” Rob said. “The likeliest time would have been during the 1335 invasion, when they realized Edward’s grandson meant to try again to conquer Scotland and find the real Stone.”

“So you believe Edward I knew he had the wrong one.”

“Aye,” Rob said. “Why return and take Scone Abbey apart if he did not? Doubtless loyalists expected more such depredations when Edward III came.”

“Would it not have been foolish to move the Stone right into his path?”

“’Twas scarcely in his path here in the gorge,” Rob protested. “The road to Edinburgh from the Borders lies miles east of here, through Selkirk.”

“But just to bring the Stone south of the Firth would have been foolish.”

“Without knowing the circumstances, who can judge anything as foolish?”

While they continued this mild debate, Rob began examining the edges of the three slabs closely, brushing dirt away from the central stone that seemed to hold the others in place. Dirt clogged all the crevices, and plants had taken root.

“I’ll fetch the shovels,” he said.

“I’ll go with you, because we might as well bring the torches and ropes, too,” Henry said. “We may need them, and I’d as lief no curious fisherman wonder why our ponies carry shovels and torch sticks, be they ever so well disguised.”

Since the only disguise was plain canvas wrapping, Rob agreed that the sooner the implements were out of sight, the better. Silently, he followed Henry along the narrow, barely trickling stream bed they had used before. Both men wore daggers and carried their swords in scabbards on belts slung across their backs.

A quarter-hour later they returned, and ten minutes after that, Rob said, “Look here, Henry. I think this must be a hand grip of some sort along this side.”

Making an effort to appear undisturbed by the calculating way the Earl of Fife looked at her, Adela said in surprise to de Gredin, “Did we not hear that you had suffered grievous injury, sir?”

“In troth, my lady, I thought myself sped to God’s waiting arms,” he said.

“He’s fortunate to have recovered quickly,” Fife said. “Where is Lestalric?”

“Surely, the men on the gate told you he is at Roslin, my lord.”

“They said as much, to be sure. But if you ken the news from Edinburgh, I’ll wager he does, too. He must know he will have to answer for his crime.”

“What crime?”

“Sakes, woman, you must know he’s the one who attacked de Gredin, doubtless out of jealousy for his attentions to you, and your unseemly flirtation with him. I fear you’ll find that women of your ilk are not welcome in the royal burgh.”

“Women of my ilk?”

Hearing the chill in her voice, she reminded herself to tread lightly. She had strapped her new dirk in its sheath to her leg, but it could not help her against Fife. Striving for calm, she said, “I know not what you mean by such words, sir.”

He sneered. “Do you not? How, then, do you come to be living here with Lestalric? Or am I mistaken, and does some other lady—an older kinswoman of yours, perhaps—reside here with the two of you?”

He terrified her, yet she could still think clearly. It occurred to her as she was about to tell him she and Rob had married that it might be wiser to affect blank, innocent astonishment instead, especially with de Gredin there. If the chevalier cared for her, he might prove more useful if he did not learn his cause was hopeless.

So, instead of uttering the words that sprang to her lips, she widened her eyes and said, “No other female is here save a pair of maidservants, my lord. Do you think I require a chaperone whilst in
your
presence?”

Hearing a hastily muffled sound, she suspected she had tickled de Gredin’s sense of humor but hoped he would not display it to the earl. She doubted that Fife had a sense of humor.

He said, “Don’t be impertinent, lass. When do you expect Lestalric’s return?”

“Mercy, it is not for me to expect him, sir. He will return when he returns and no earlier. He may arrive at any moment, but if you want to see him sooner, you should ride toward Roslin and meet him on the way.”

“I warrant we’ll see him soon enough,” Fife said. “Meantime, I must ask you to ride back to town with us.”