Conquer the Night (39 page)

“Aye, we're running with the rebels!” she said softly.

A few hours later, they were ready.

Between the men and the horses, the cavalry and the foot soldiers and the pack animals, they filled the courtyard.

The commotion continued, despite a semblance of order. There were many good-byes to be said. Ingrid cried, parting from Gaston. Gaston was left as steward of the fortress, and Hamlin Anderson, one of the tenant farmers, was left as something of a sheriff. Hopefully neither of them would be an offense in the least to the powers that returned to Seacairn, be they English or Scottish.

Among Arryn's men, there were many who had formed friendships with the tenants and villagers of Seacairn. A few soldiers had fallen in love with farmers' daughters. There were promises, tears, hugs … and summer flowers thrown before the horses' hooves as they pranced in the courtyard.

Before leaving the castle, Kyra went down to the crypt.

She had never liked the crypt—she had never liked the dank, dark lower realm of the fortress in any way. But she carried a flaming torch ahead of her, and she went because she felt compelled. She had packed her father's cloak, rather than her own. His brooches, his rings, a little jeweled dagger he had worn for dress occasions. But she was leaving
him
behind, his home, the home he had given her, and though she knew that she had to leave, she could not help but feel a tug of pain for leaving this place behind.

She knelt before her father's body. “Pray for me!” whispered to him. “Pray for me.”

“Kyra.”

She spun around. Arryn had come down. He walked to her, drew her to her feet. “It's time; we have to ride.”

She nodded.

He glanced to her father's resting place. “He will fare well enough!” he said softly. “He rests with his sword at his side.”

“Aye,” she said softly.

“Come.”

Tears stung her eyes.

She refused to shed them.

He took the torch from the bracket where she had set it, and caught her hand with his free one. She left her father's grave and followed Arryn up the stairs.

Gaston was at the entrance to the great hall. Kyra hugged him and drew back without words.

“God willing, we'll meet again, lady,” he said.

“God willing, and God keep you, Gaston!”

She went out. Jay held her mare. She mounted and took her place in the line of men, baggage, horses, and foot soldiers. She saw Arryn mount Pict. He shouted a command, and they began to move.

She passed beneath the portcullis, and kept her eyes ahead. She didn't look back until they came to the crest of a hill.

The sun was setting. The fortress was bathed in a red glow. Seacairn was beautiful, caught in the dazzle of the sunset and the glitter of the river sweeping around the stone. She lowered her head, afraid that she would burst into tears.

“It is stone, my lady,” she heard, and she lifted her head. Arryn had ridden back to her. “You have left walls of stone behind, but you've left them to join with the soul of a people.”

When he rode on, Father Corrigan reined in at Kyra's side.

“Will I find the soul of a people?” she asked him, aware that he had listened to Arryn's words.

“If not, my lady, I believe that you will find your own.” He smiled. “A worthy trade.” He reached for her hand, and squeezed. “God bless you, Kyra.”

“Aye, and may He protect us all!” she said.

His smile deepened. “Ah, my lady, as I always say—”

“God helps those who help themselves?”

“Aye, 'tis true!” he told her.

“Um.”

“There is another saying.”

“Aye?”

“The lord God works in mysterious ways.”

“Amen, Father Corrigan.”

She looked at Seacairn against the setting sun one last time.

Then she turned and rode forward, and she did not look back again.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

The days on the trail were hard.

It took more than two weeks to reach London from Seacairn, and that moving quickly, with little baggage. She had traveled before, often enough. She had been to see the MacLeods, and that had often been difficult. In winter, sometimes the roads were entirely impassable. Rain could wash away trails, and baggage carts could slow down a party for days on end.

She had never traveled with an army before, an army intent on moving quickly, on reaching a goal—undiscovered by the English troops that were on the road as well.

She hadn't known what to expect at night. With her father, traveling to London, she'd received lodging in the homes and manors of other nobles, or upon occasion a tent had been raised for her, and appointed with all necessities that could be managed. Fires had been lit, food had been cooked, she'd been warm, she'd slept on a mattress.

Not so now.

There were no fires; they slept in the woods. Someone was always on guard. The first night she bedded down on her saddle by Father Corrigan's side, but in the middle of the night Arryn came to her, took her hand, and led her down by the little stream near their encampment. There, amongst the rocks and the trickling water, they made love with no words exchanged. They bathed, shivering. She stayed with him, sleeping with his warmth, his chest her pillow.

He had come for her again the second night.

Their food was cold and sparse, though water was plentiful. They rode for endless hours. She never complained. As she lay against him the second night, he asked her, “Don't you miss the down of your pillow?”

“No. The nights are beautiful.”

And I am with you
.

She was careful not to say such words.

“You are a true outlaw,” he told her, and that was all.

During the day, she mostly rode near Father Corrigan, since their party was so big. Arryn and his close advisers, the men she had come to know the best, rode ahead, often testing the trails far in advance. The English were out there in the thousands.

There were the pack animals to be seen to as well—and the foot soldiers, the supplies, and the women: the laundresses, and the women who rode just for the men. She had not known there were so many. She mentioned the number to Arryn.

“Some are wives and daughters,” he told her.

“Most are not.”

“Where there are men, there will be women,” he said simply.

And she did not sleep quite so well that night. She had been warned not to care for him, and she had fallen in love with him. Aye, she followed him now … just as the camp followers did. Their trade was really no different.

The journey was long and tedious. Summer rain washed away one trail, and they had to go back. Some of the wagons bogged down in a stream, and it took an afternoon of heavy work to dig the wheels from the muck.

Yet in time the landscape began to change to rock and cliff and gorge, with thick, heavy forests teeming in the valleys between the rising undulations of craggy, rugged land. Still, she thought it some of the most beautiful landscape she had ever seen. Brooks traveled through rock and forest, creating delightful sounds in shaded copses. The richness of summer was all around them, with wildflowers sprouting everywhere.

At different times along the trail, certain of Arryn's men would ride on ahead. They would return, riding hard, and when they did they would speak with Arryn alone, but rumors would go about the camp. They had barely avoided Cressingham's men; they had skirted the bulk of the army; Wallace was ahead of them; de Moray was behind them. They rode on. Arryn himself left their convoy for a few days' time, and they were difficult days for Kyra, for though his men were kind and respectful, she often found his cousin John watching her with speculative eyes. Arryn was careful; he said little to her. But he was convinced that she rode with them by choice, and not to seize any piece of information she might hear and flee to the English with it.

Swen and Jay had departed with Arryn, so Ingrid kept close to Kyra. Ingrid, who had loathed the invaders with a passion at first, was now trusted as if she had been with them all along. But then her love for Swen was great, and so visible always, in her huge blue eyes. Ingrid had blossomed with marriage; she was a cheerful companion, despite their circumstances.

But she was a loud snorer.

Swen was louder, so Ingrid had told her, which set them just fine together, they were a bit like the music of the pipes—sometimes very loud and discordant.

But lying near Ingrid's side, Kyra was unable to sleep. And she felt uncomfortable, ill, as if she had eaten bad meat or cheese, or even bread that had grown too moldy, which, of course, was possible, since what they ate had been dried and smoked, and they so seldom chanced a cooking fire that it seemed a long time since she had eaten because she wanted to, and nothing tasted very good.

Ingrid's snoring became too much. She rose from her bed of blankets and her saddle pillow and started down closer to the water, suddenly wretchedly ill. Shaking, she bathed her face in the icy brook water and felt much better, and found herself thinking that it would be horribly ironic to die from a terrible disease when she fought so hard to survive the men and circumstances that so threatened her life.

The night breeze lifted, cooling her face. She sensed a sound in the darkness and turned quickly. John Graham was there.

“I am not running to the English,” she told him.

“I came to see to your welfare, not to accuse you of such evil.”

“Oh?” She stared at him skeptically. “You mistrust me completely and dislike me, and you don't think that I should be here,” she told him.

He walked over to her; she almost jerked away when he went to touch her, but she held still, eyeing him warily. He smoothed her damp hair back from her face. “On the contrary, my lady, I don't dislike you. I admire you tremendously.”

“But you don't trust me.”

“It's the mere fact of your birth.”

“Well, you can rest easily for the night. I'm not running out to find Lord Darrow or any other Englishman at the moment. I'm not feeling well enough to be a threat to anyone,” she told him dryly.

“So I see, my lady.”

She arched a brow. “So … you've come to enjoy my distress?”

“I've come to see to your welfare, as I told you before.”

“I'm fine, I think. I'm afraid some of our food has rotted.”

“Is that really what you think?”

“Why are you playing this game of a thousand questions with me?” she demanded, aggravated and unnerved. The cousins were close, she knew, and both fiercely dedicated to their goal of freeing Scotland from Edward's yoke. She had seen John Graham with others in the hall; he could be polite, courteous, charming … but he always watched. She didn't care what he thought of her, she tried to tell herself. But she did. He was Arryn's closest kin.

He shrugged and smiled. “There are simply other possibilities, my lady.”

Aye … there were. She felt her cheeks flood with color, and she was startled by the rush of pleasure that filled her with the bare suggestion that she could be carrying a child.

She looked away from him quickly. “It's too soon to know for certain,” she murmured. Ah, being John, maybe he wouldn't think so. He might well assume that if she carried a babe, it could belong to Darrow. But she didn't intend to fight with John, or make any show of protesting her innocence. Arryn would know….

Except that she didn't want Arryn to know. Not until time had passed, not until this hint of possibility could become certainty. And even then ….

His wife had burned to death while expecting his child.

And more than that, they would all march off to battle, and from there nothing was certain, nothing at all.

“You should get some sleep,” John told her. “Shall I escort you back to camp?”

She nodded. “Aye, thank you.”

In the days that followed she felt him watching her, always. He was attentive and courteous, seeing to her needs. He came to her in the evening with fresh berries, cheese from a lonely farmstead, buckets of fresh water.

“John, you needn't be so kind,” she told him. “There is nothing certain.”

“Not in this world,” he agreed.

“And you still consider me a danger.”

“Aye, that I do.”

“If you knew Kinsey …”

“I know of him, lady, and that is enough.”

She looked away from him, angered.

“Arryn feels that you are in danger from him.” he said. “Only a madman, lady, would blame you for what has occurred. And only a madman would dare violence against you, or even turn from you! But then again, I have heard that he is a madman, and the concept of mercy is far beyond him. But what of the king? What of other Englishmen you have known in your life, what of all that you believe? Can you have changed sides in this bloodbath?”

“John, you should have heard Ingrid when Arryn's men first seized the castle. She called all Scotsmen heathens, barbarians, savage bastards. But watch her now! She is a child of the forest, riding hard, ready to help out in any circumstances; why, she coaxed some of the draft horses to pull a wagon out of the mud the other day. She has become a rebel through and through. She loves her Swen, and is devoted. You trust her; why not me?”

He smiled. “‘She loves her Swen'!” he quoted. “What of you, my lady? Do you love Arryn?”

“I was strictly forbidden to do so,” she told him quickly.

“And you obey his orders?”

“I am a well-behaved captive, of course.”

He laughed softly. “Nay, lady, not you!”

“John, you mustn't say anything to him.”

“About your being a well-behaved captive?”

“About the possibility that I'm having a child.”

He was quiet for a moment. “Kyra, we're going to battle against an army serving Edward of England. The best archers in the world. Trained swordsmen who are veterans of wars in France and Wales. We all may die.”