Amanda Scott - [Border Trilogy 2] (34 page)

Sibylla, watching Jed closely, said, “Have you aught else to tell us?”

He gave her a wary look, then licked his lips and said to Simon, “There is summat, aye, laird. That lad, Dand, wha’ our lads plucked out o’ the Tweed . . .”

“What about him?” Simon asked impatiently when Jed hesitated.

“He had an accident, sir.”

Sibylla felt a chill sweep through her.

“What sort of accident?”

“They said he were still gey weak from the river and from bein’ sick. He got up in the night, they said, and . . . and he did fall down the stairs, laird.”

“Mercy,” Sibylla breathed as tension gripped her. “How badly was he hurt?” Simon demanded. Jed grimaced.

“He’s dead, isn’t he, Jed?” Sibylla said.

Jed nodded, gave her another look, and then turned warily back to Simon.

Before either man could speak, Sibylla said urgently, “Where is his sister?”

Jed grimaced again. “We dinna ken, m’lady. Nae one has seen her today.”

“We’ll find her,” Simon said, reaching to touch her hand.

She said flatly, “We’re too late, sir. They’ve taken her.”

Simon stifled a curse and forced himself to say calmly, “What would Percy want with her, lass? Doubtless, she’s just upset by what happened. We’ll find her.”

“I hope you are right,” Sibylla said, her tone suggesting strong doubt.

Seeing Jed look from Sibylla to him and back in puzzlement, Simon said, “I should tell you, Jed, that the lady Sibylla has become my wife.”

“Then I wish ye both happy, laird. Welcome to Elishaw, m’lady.”

“Thank you.” Turning back to Simon, she said, “We must not dally, sir. I fear she is not here, but if she is, we must find her.”

“Jed,” Simon said, “did you see any bairn with the Percys when they left?”

“Nay, laird.”

“Were you on the gate yourself?” Sibylla asked him. “Aye, m’lady.”

Sibylla said, “Do you
know
Cecil Percy, Jed?”

With a wary glance at Simon, he said, “I canna say I do, my lady. But they did carry the Percy banner and had the laird’s message with his signature. I saw that myself. I recall, too, when that messenger came to beg the laird’s leave to visit.”

Simon’s first impulse had been to cut the questions short and find Kit, so he could sort things out about the boy’s death. However, Sibylla’s last question raised a new one in his mind. “Describe the man who called himself Cecil Percy, Jed.”

“Aye, sure, laird. He were as tall as ye, I’m thinking, and built much the same, too. Sithee, though, he wore a helmet coming and going, and I never did see him inside, because I ate my supper late in the kitchen.”

“Did you note what color his hair is?”

Jed thought before he shook his head. “Nay, sir. I’d guess it were brown, because his eyebrows were, but I canna say for sure.”

“Send men up to the lads on Carlin Tooth and the Pike to ask what they’ve seen,” Simon said, putting a hand to Sibylla’s back. “We’ll go inside now, lass.”

“Wait, sir,” she said. “Jed, did the men wear jacks-o’-plate or light armor?”

Jed’s eyebrows shot upward. “Jacks, m’lady.”

“And cloaks?”

“Aye, good, thick, long ones,” he said. “It were cold last night.”

“Come along, lass,” Simon said. “No one carried Kit out under his cloak.”

She did not reply, but another thought stirred him to turn back and say to Jed, “Tell those lads to come down from the peaks only if they’ve aught to report. If not, they must bide with the watchers. I want at least one man on each peak till I say otherwise. If one comes to report, send another up straightaway to replace him.”

“Aye, sir. D’ye expect trouble?”

“We’ll prepare for it just in case,” Simon said. “We’ve eased our watch on the peaks since the truce, so remind those lads to keep a keen eye at night, too.”

Urging Sibylla to the entrance, he saw the worried look on her face but said no more. He was certain that once word spread of their arrival, Kit would show herself.

Three hours later, at midday, they still had found no sign of her.

Tetsy and another maid had prepared Dand’s body for burial, and tears sprang to Sibylla’s eyes when she saw him. He looked pale and thin, and she strongly believed that his death had been no accident.

But when she said so to Simon as they dined, he patted her shoulder and said, “You’re letting your imagination run amok again. No one else has said such a thing.”

“Prithee, sir, stop dismissing everything I say without giving it a thought,” she said testily, her temper barely in check. “The way Jed Hay kept saying ‘they said,’ as he told us what happened, he clearly suspects villainy just as I do.”

“I don’t dismiss everything you say,” he said.

“You do it often enough, and something is amiss in all of this,” she insisted. “The least you can do is discuss it with me as if I had a brain in my head.”

“Sibylla, I have never questioned your intelligence.” Ignoring that tempting subject, she said bluntly, “Did

Jed Hay’s description of your Percy cousin fit the man you know? You asked for no other details.”

His temper had visibly bristled at her tone, but after a momentary silence he said calmly, “I don’t know Percy well, lass. But as I recall, he had hair just a bit darker red than Sym Elliot’s. That is why I asked the question. However, I don’t remember if his eyebrows were red or brown, so Jed’s reply was not much help.”

“What about their apparel?” she asked, eyeing him intently.

He shrugged. “They wore what Borderers wear— jacks-o’-plate, helmets, and heavy cloaks against the chill. There is nowt to question there.”

“Is there not?” she asked. “I’m told the Percys wear light armor like that which the French provided for many of our own Border nobles years ago. Wat Scott and others who were at Otterburn said Hotspur and many of the Percys wore it.”

He frowned. “You may be right,” he said at last. “But we’ve no proof that our visitors were other than Cecil and his lads, and we did expect them, albeit not so soon. I do recall enough about Cecil Percy to suspect he is not one who marches to my mother’s piping, so his early arrival need not mean much.”

“But whilst they were here, Dand died in a fall that apparently none of your own servants witnessed. And Kit vanished.”

“Sibylla, listen to me—”

“You say they cannot have spirited her out under a cloak. I say they may have if they dosed her with something to keep her still. Moreover, the very fact of this odd visit, added to her disappearance, tells me she
must
be Thomas’s missing heiress. Dand was just a lad trying to protect her. Sakes, but Fife must have called you to Edinburgh to get you out of the way for it. He arranged for those men to do as they did last night.”

“Godamercy,” Simon exclaimed. “What will you think of next?”

“If I am wrong, where is Kit? We have looked everywhere.”

“One must suppose she managed to slip out of the castle and went home.”

“But if Dand was not her brother—”

“You don’t know that,” he interjected testily. “In any event, I have never believed those two did not know where their home is, yet they said nowt of it to us.”

In truth, Sibylla had suspected the children knew where their people were, and she saw that Simon’s temper had frayed to near breaking. She did not want to fight with him. She wanted to find Kit and learn the truth about what the villains had done.

“If your visitor was honest, he had news for you,” she reminded Simon. “Should he not learn soon that our parties missed each other, and turn back?”

“If he inquires on the road, he will, although most folks would speak only of Buccleuch,” he said. His expression softened. “I’m sorry if I sounded angry, lass.”

“You did, aye, but I ken fine that you are unaccustomed to disagreement. In troth, you discourage it in much the same way that Fife does,” she added frankly.

“So now I am like Fife?” he said, raising his eyebrows.

“Aye, sometimes,” she said. “You display the same icy demeanor that he does when you are angry, and sometimes when you are not. You said Kit imitates me, after all, and youngsters do often acquire attitudes from adults they respect.”

“I don’t know about that, but I will agree that Fife behaved oddly,” he said. “Also, the Colvilles have been in this area searching for Kit. If they learned that we had a child here who
might
be their missing heiress, and if Fife saw some way he
might
somehow be able to use that as legal cause to seize Elishaw . . .” He paused.

“We need to learn more,” she said.

“We do, aye,” he agreed. “At the least, I must go to meet Percy if he does return, or send someone on to find him and bring him back.”

“Will you leave straightaway then?”

“Aye, and return for supper if I meet him before Hob-kirk as I suspect I will.”

Sibylla doubted that, but she encouraged him to make haste. “And prithee, take a score of good men with you, sir, lest you meet danger. I may fratch with you more than either of us likes, but I am
not
ready to be a widow.”

Simon left within the hour, taking his best tracker and a dozen men-at-arms.

Other thoughts had come to him as he got ready, thoughts he had not shared with Sibylla. He was sure she was wrong about Kit, but he suspected she was right about Fife, who had a network of agents to attend to his more secretive affairs.

The closest Simon had come to being part of the network was some years before when he’d agreed to ask his brother Tom, a talented lute player, to serve as minstrel in Isabel’s household, so Tom could keep an eye on her for Fife.

Thinking of those agents, and the supposed raiders throwing the children in the river, he recalled the rider Dand had described, whose meeting with the raiders had hurried them all away shortly before Simon and his men arrived on the scene.

Simon realized the raiders might easily have taken cover then and followed his party back to Elishaw. If they recognized the Murray banner, they might just have watched and reported to the Colvilles or Fife that he had saved the children.

If Fife
was
involved in the affair, one thing was certain. His motive was more complicated than just to make sure of Simon’s continued loyalty to him.

Sibylla did not believe Kit had left the castle voluntarily. But much as she believed the strangers were responsible for the child’s disappearance, she could not be sure they had taken her with them. Accordingly, she summoned the housekeeper and Tetsy to organize a more thorough search.

“I want every kist and cupboard turned out,” Sibylla said.

“Mercy, madam,” Tetsy said. “I didna say nowt wi’ the master here, but if them men last night didna find her, how can we?”

“Do you mean to say they were looking for Kit?” “One came where we sleep. But she wasna there, and he didna believe I knew nowt. I were so afeard, I fainted dead away. When I awoke, he’d gone.”

“Look again, anyway,” Sibylla said. “We must be sure she is not here before the laird will do more to find her.”

As she left them, she felt a niggling sense of something she or someone else had said that was not right. She had sensed the same thing, talking with Simon, but she could not recall what had caused it then either.

Annoyance with herself reminded her she had been irked with him because he’d interrupted her in the midst of telling him that they’d looked everywhere for Kit, offering the information as proof that the visitors must have taken her.

But they had
not
searched everywhere. And she had not tumbled to that fact even when Simon had suggested Kit might have slipped out of the castle unseen.

Descending to the kitchen, Sibylla noted that two scullions were still working at the far end of the kitchen. The bakehouse chamber, however, was empty.

Without hesitation, she stepped into the alcove, shifted the latch hook, and began to open the door to the tunnel. It met immediate resistance, heavier than the small sack of walnuts she had set against it before.

“Kit, it’s Lady Sibylla,” she murmured. “You’re safe now, love. Come out.”

The sound of a gusty sob from within brought a huge sigh of relief.

“No one else is with me, lassie,” Sibylla said. “Come quickly.”

If Kit did not come quickly, she emerged before anyone walked into the bakehouse or past the archway.

“Be the laird vexed wi’ me?” she asked in hushed accents.

“Never mind that,” Sibylla said, drawing her toward the stairway. “And don’t say another word until we reach my chamber.” She had little hope that they would get that far without meeting anyone, but the Fates, for once, were kind. Reaching the door to her room, she pushed it open and almost walked into Tetsy.

“Och, m’lady, ye found her! Where was she?”

“That is not important now,” Sibylla said. “I do need to talk with her, though. Prithee, go and tell the others we’ve found her.”

“Aye, mistress, but I’ve turned out all them kists. I’ll just put everything—”

“Go along. Kit will put those things away.”

“Aye, sure, mistress. She ought no to ha’ hidden herself that way, and so I hope ye’ll tell her.” Giving Kit a stern look, Tetsy hurried out and shut the door.

“She’s vexed,” Kit said dolefully. “I like Tetsy. I’d no want her to be angry.”

“She will come around,” Sibylla said. “How did you find that place?”

“I saw ye . . . you, the night you went through the wall,” Kit said. “You thought I was asleep, but I did no like the kitchen wi’ ghosts dancing on the walls as they do.” She shivered. “And when ye went through the wall, ye didna come back, so I came here and slept. When I woke, ye were here! Be ye a witch, m’lady?”

“Nay, but why did you hide there, Kit? Did you not hear us calling for you?”

“Did ye? I didna hear,” Kit said. “I kept yon door off the latch for a time, but then I heard men calling me, and I feared they’d see it were . . . was open. So I shut it. Then I was gey afeard to open it again, nae matter how fearsome it got inside.”

“But why did you hide?” Sibylla asked again.

Tears sprang to Kit’s eyes. “ ’Cause the b-bad men hurt Dand,” she sobbed. “He ran from them, but a big ’un caught him at the stairs and swung him over them, saying he’d better tell them. When Dand wriggled to get free, the man just let go.”