Amanda Scott (41 page)

One interesting bit for the trivia crowd: While the English and many Continental countries surrounded their cities with walls that had gates that shut tight at night, the Scots did not. In the fourteenth century only Perth and Berwick had walls. They were the exception, and the reason those walls existed at all is that the English occupied both towns for extended periods in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries, and it was English military strategy that maintained them. Most Scottish towns simply relied on the neighboring castle or went without defenses.

With regard to descriptions of Edinburgh, I also relied on a drawing I have of the Castle as it looked from 1377 (when Robert II completed the great tower begun in 1367 by David II) until 1571–73, when cannon destroyed David’s Tower during a two-year siege. That tower stood over ninety feet high and comprised three floors of royal accommodations. It survives now only as a ruin consisting of part of the ground floor and a stretch of stone curtain wall. I also have a street plan of the royal burgh and Canongate from a few years later. Those two items helped a great deal.

As for the Stone of Scone, much of the detail I’ve used with regard to its history and likely fate, and its primary description, came from
Stone of Destiny
by Pat Gerber (Edinburgh, 1997). But I am also indebted to the great Scottish author Nigel Tranter for engaging my interest in this subject through many of his books. Pat Gerber’s work supports many details of its history and description in his books.

Mr. Tranter had done a tremendous amount of research on the Stone and was personally involved in the illfated 1950 attempt by Scottish Nationalists to take back the stone the English had carted off to Westminster Abbey. He and the others each kept a chip of that stone, and Mr. Tranter kept his “beneath a tiny silver replica of the coronation chair” (Gerber, 184). He thought it absurd that the English had mistaken an eleven-inch-high “lump of Perth sandstone” (
The Islesman
, Nigel Tranter, London, 2003) for the true Scottish Coronation Stone. I agree with him.

Hawthornden Castle is noted for the many caves in the hills around it, and men of the area did indeed use those caves as a base from which to harass the English and raid their supplies during the English invasion of 1335. Nearby Wallace’s cave, named for William Wallace, who may have taken refuge there, was also known then.

For more about the Templar treasure, I suggest once again the following sources:
Holy Blood, Holy Grail
by Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh (New York, 1982);
The Temple and the Lodge
by Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh (New York, 1989);
Pirates & the Lost Templar Fleet
by David H. Childress (Illinois, 2003);
The Stone Puzzle of Rosslyn Chapel
by Philip Coppens (Netherlands, 2004);
The Da Vinci Code Decoded
by Martin Lunn (New York, 2004); and
The Lost Treasure of the Knights Templar
by Steven Sora (Vermont, 1999). For more about the Assassins, see
The Assassins
by Bernard Lewis (London, 1967).

Thanks again to Donal Sean MacRae, Laird of Kintail and Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries (Scot) for his continued and much-appreciated generosity in sharing his vast store of knowledge about all things Scottish, particularly this time with regard to titles and historic customs and usage thereof. Also, for his annual haggis and Atholbrose cream, treats beyond compare.

As always, I’d also like to thank my terrific agents, Lucy Childs and Aaron Priest, as well as the world’s most exciting editor and speed reader, Devi Pillai.

If you enjoyed
Knight’s Treasure
, please look for
King of Storms
, the story of what fate has in store when quiet, habitually indecisive Lady Sidony Macleod meets a man who will turn her world upside down. It will be at your favorite bookstore in August 2007. In the meantime,
Suas Alba!

Sincerely,

http://home.att.net/~amandascott

About the Author

A
manda
S
cott
, best-selling author and winner of Romance Writers of America’s RITA/Golden Medallion and Romantic Times’ Awards for Best Regency Author and Best Sensual Regency, began writing on a dare from her husband. She has sold every manuscript she has written. She sold her first novel,
The Fugitive Heiress
—written on a battered Smith-Corona—in 1980. Since then, she has sold many more, but since the second one, she has used a word processor. More than 25 of her books are set in the English Regency period (1810–1820), others are set in fifteenth-century England, and fourteenth-, sixteenth-, and eighteenth-century Scotland. Three are contemporary romances.

Amanda is a fourth-generation Californian who was born and raised in Salinas and graduated with a bachelor’s degree in history from Mills College in Oakland. She did graduate work at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, specializing in British History, before obtaining her master’s in history from California State University at San Jose. After graduate school, she taught for the Salinas City School District for three years before marrying her husband, who was then a captain in the Air Force. They lived in Honolulu for a year, then in Nebraska for seven years, where their son was born. Amanda now lives with her husband in northern California.

ENJOY ANOTHER SIZZLING HISTORICAL ROMANCE FROM NATIONAL BESTSELLING AUTHOR

AMANDA SCOTT.

Please turn this page for a preview of

King of Storms

A
vailable in
A
ugust
2007.

Chapter 1

Holyrood Abbey Woods, Summer 1381

A
faint ring of ripples forming around the hitherto motionless fishing line was the first indication of interest from below in its neatly baited hook.

Holding the pole a bit gingerly, nineteen-year-old Lady Sidony Macleod stared at the rings as they expanded and multiplied in number. For what seemed to be at least an hour, she had been sitting quietly on a low, flat granite promontory that jutted into the loch without seeing a single fish, although the gardener who had lent her his pole had assured her that the abbey’s loch teemed with them.

Now she wondered if she ought to pull up her line and spare the fish. She did not really want to catch one. She had only accepted the pole because the burly, gray-haired gardener had offered it to her—and because it had seemed to give a greater sense of purpose to her stolen walk than mere escape.

Having a fish as proof of that purpose might prove useful, but having to carry one would be a nuisance. Her older sister Sorcha had always carried any they had caught on previous such expeditions at home.

“Are you sure I’ll catch one?” she had asked the gardener.

“Och, aye, m’lady,” the old man had assured her earnestly. “Likely, ye’ll catch a fine salmon or two to eat when ye break your fast on the morrow.”

Sidony had found it utterly impossible to refuse so kind an offer, so she had taken the pole, thanked him, and had accepted a small pot of earthworms as well, to use for bait. Then, crossing the back gardens of the three houses between Clendenen House and the abbey woods, and slipping through the hedge that divided them, she had strolled among the trees, finding the ground annoyingly boggy. But she had soon come upon the glassy, dark-green loch, and its serene beauty had drawn her nearer, making her forget all about the muddy ground.

With a gray sky overhead and trees that grew to the water’s edge, the area nearest the shoreline lay in deep shadows. A grayish green color in the center, the water darkened from there outward in a raggedy line matching the reflection of the trees until its color near the opposite shore looked almost black.

The temperature was mild, and the woods seemed unnaturally still, but she knew woodland creatures were silently watching to see if she posed any threat. She had followed the loch shore aimlessly until she had come upon the jutting granite slab. After so much damp earth, the clean-looking gray-and-white rock seemed to invite her to sit and drop her line. Her boots were heavy with mud, and the hem of the blue kerseymere skirt she wore with a matching tunic likewise bore evidence of the damp earth. But it was an old dress and not one for which she cared very much. She had put it on to play with her fourteen-month-old nephew and had chosen it because it would save any finer gown from grubby hands or spills.

Baiting her hook had been easy enough, thanks to many similar expeditions she had made with Sorcha. They had fished any number of burns and small lochs near Castle Chalamine, their home a few miles from Glenelg village in the Scottish Highlands. They had even fished from time to time from a coble on the sea—in the Sound of Sleat, which formed the western boundary of Kintail, in which Glenelg and Chalamine lay.

As she pictured the castle, its surrounding hills, and nearby Glen Mór with its swiftly tumbling burn and dense green shrubbery, a little sigh escaped her lips.

She had been away from home now for more than a year—too long.

Her light-blue eyes welled, and a tear spilled down her cheek just as the pole jerked hard enough in her hand so that she had to grab it with the other as she tried to scramble to her feet. Since she no longer had to consider whether to catch the fish or not, she concentrated for the next several moments on not falling into the water and not stepping on her skirts as she lurched awkwardly to stand upright.

The fish did not want to be caught. It was bigger than she had expected and was fighting the hook. Wishing she had thought to borrow a net as well the gardener’s fishing pole, and realizing how near she had come to losing the latter in the loch, she clung to it now, finally dragging the fish onto the rock in a halfhearted hope that it would break loose and swim away. As hard as the poor thing had been fighting, she wished she had not caught it at all and wondered if she might be able to extricate the hook and just let it go.

Remembering a similar instance with Sorcha when her older sister had said the fish would likely die anyway, and might linger in pain for days before it did, Sidony knew she could not do that. Instead, when it lay flopping feebly on the granite, she picked up fist-sized rock and resolutely ended its life just as Sorcha had done on that other, long-ago day. It was, she knew, the right thing to do.

Staring at the dead fish, she heaved another sigh and looked for a stick she could put through its gills and mouth to carry it. The first broke with the weight of the fish, and the second was too large, but she found a patch of ivy and looped a long stem through one gill and its mouth, carefully knotting her loop to make a handle.

Telling herself that she had been very clever, and that she did
not
want to catch another fish, she picked up the gardener’s pole with her left hand and turned back toward Clendenen House.

That is, she thought she had turned the right way, but a few minutes later, she knew she was lost. She had seen no track, and aside from noises of woodland creatures that had evidently deemed her harmless, she heard nothing.

Had the sun been shining, she might have been able to tell what direction to go. Sorcha could always tell by the sun, although Sidony was not certain how she did it, because she had never thought to ask. She did know that the sun set in the west, though, and perhaps it was late enough now to tell by its angle which way that was if only one could see it. At all events, she had watched it go down the previous night and recalled that it had done so on the Castle side of Clendenen House.

Perched as Edinburgh Castle was on its own craggy hilltop at what she believed must be the northwest end of the royal burgh, it was easy to see from everywhere— everywhere, that was, except her present location.

She was not concerned, though. It was as if she were getting an extra bit of freedom, and someone would find her eventually if she did not find her own way out of the woods. The abbey bell would ring for Vespers, and she could follow its sound. From the abbey, she easily knew her way back to Clendenen House.

It occurred to her that by now people might wonder where she was, because she had been gone for quite a while. Someone might be annoyed that she had not said where she was going, but she had not wanted to wake her sister or their hostess, or disturb the men, and she could scarcely have helped getting lost. In any event, if someone did come looking for her, she would get back that much sooner.

Perhaps if she whistled a little tune … That way, when someone did come looking for her, he would hear her. Ladies were not supposed to whistle, and she was sure that one of her elder sisters—Adela, certainly, or Cristina—would condemn such behavior instantly. But Adela was at Lestalric Castle, more than a mile away, with her six-month-old daughter, Anna, the latest addition to their family. And Cristina was even farther away at her home in the west on the Isle of Mull. The only one of her sisters presently at Clendenen House was Isobel, who was pregnant again and soundly sleeping.

Sidony did not know many tunes, but she whistled anyway just to hear herself. Since it was one of her few accomplishments, it did seem unfair that ladies were not to do it, which meant one usually whistled only when one was alone. She wondered, as she often did, who made up the rules of life.

If it were up to her, she would not be so strict.

Just then, the abbey bell began to toll. The sound resonated through the woods, but although not the least whisper of a breeze stirred, the tolling seemed to reverberate all around her. The last echoes were dying away before she realized the sound had come from a point directly off her right shoulder.

As it faded to silence, she heard the snuffling snort of a horse, not far away.

Falling instantly silent herself, and stopping in her tracks, she opened her mouth to call out, then realized she might be hailing a complete stranger. Sorcha’s husband, Sir Hugo, or Adela’s husband, Sir Robert of Lestalric, would shout her name. That the rider remained silent indicated a stranger.