In the Time of Kings (16 page)

“Perhaps,” Alan says calmly, seizing the moment, “we should have attacked Balliol when he first set foot in Scotland, rather than wait until he surrounded Berwick?”

His message is clear, even to me: Archibald’s response was too slow and will ultimately cost them.

“We would have been outnumbered three to one,” Archibald says, “had we advanced on him two months ago. I’ve already sent word to every corner of Scotland. If even half answer — and I know they will — we’ll outnumber the English handily.”

“That could take weeks yet,” the man beside me says. I cringe as everyone glances in my direction.

“It will.” Archibald scoots his chair back and stands. He’s not a tall man, or big, or even loud, but there’s a tranquility and thoughtfulness about him that makes others listen to his words, maybe even trust him. I do and I barely know the man. “They’ll be amassing east of Edinburgh at Dunbar.”

“Close to Blacklaw,” Alan says.

“Sir Henry Sinclair will see to it that supplies are kept in order.” There’s a pause and it takes me a moment to realize that Archibald is waiting for me to look at him. “Sir Roslin, you will carry my instructions to your father. Wait there until it’s time to march on Berwick. I’ll set up other gathering points, so our numbers are not known to the English, but Dunbar will be our main one. We’ll talk soon, Roslin.”

I nod, hoping he’ll move on to something else. And hoping even more strongly that the next time I go to sleep, I’ll wake up in 2013. I can always hope. Although so far hoping hasn’t amounted to much.

––––––––

I
linger on the edge of belonging. Present, but not really a part of the goings-on. An older woman in servant’s rags glances at me as she gathers up empty bowls and cups from the tables in the great hall after the noon meal. Her look is one of deference and something else — unworthiness? Not mine, hers. As if she considers herself less deserving of respect. A boy scampers by hugging pitchers of ale. His mannerisms are those of someone who’s fearful, who is never sure when the next backhanded correction will come at him. And yet other servants appear content with their duties, competent and eager to please. Then there are the men surrounding me: highborn nobles, lesser knights, and all their squires and pages, and some of the more seasoned warriors who’ve earned their positions through bloodshed ... What a fascinating lot they all are.

There’s a lot to learn from just watching people: who holds sway, who’s a follower, who serves who, who’s indifferent to personal politics, who has purpose —

Purpose. So far it’s other people who seem to know what my purpose here is. I don’t have a clue. My plan is simply to fit in long enough to return to where I came from. That was a moment to moment thing at first. Now it’s day to day. My spirits are sinking. It’s like being thrown into a race, knowing you have to finish, but having no idea how far away the finish line is. I need something to take my mind off this senseless craziness. Or someone — and I know just who to look for.

Later that afternoon, I find Mariota as she’s leaving Beatrice’s solar. ‘Solar’, that’s a new word for me, or at least a new meaning. I take it to mean the room where women gather to gossip, which is reinforced when they begin to depart in murmuring clumps. Kind of like the faculty lounge at the university whenever there’s a rumor flying around of a professor-student fling or a hint from the dean about staff reduction.

A pair of women whispering back and forth fall quiet as they pass me, then ten feet later they sneak a look in my direction and begin to whisper again. I half-wonder if they aren’t talking about me. Actually, I
know
they are. I’ve never been the paranoid type before, but I seem to be the object of a lot of curiosity and conjecture around here.

Mariota hangs back near the doorway, nodding as Lady Beatrice Douglas speaks to her, although her eyes keep flitting to me. Finally, it’s Beatrice who turns around and waves to me.

“Sir Roslin,” she calls. “Do come in. There’s a fire in the hearth still. It will take the chill from your bones after last night’s rain.”

“Thank you, but ... I thought Mariota might like to take a walk outside. I’ve had so little chance to talk with her.”

“Of course,” she says. Smiling faintly, Beatrice gives me her hand. It takes me a few seconds to realize I’m supposed to kiss it, but I do. “When you’re done, I’d like to steal her back for a few hours. The boys have missed her sorely. She was such a good nursemaid to them when they were younger. She’ll make a wonderful mother to your own children one day soon.”

After Beatrice and Mariota exchange a flurry of kisses, I find myself alone with Mariota. I don’t know what to say or where to begin. Apparently, neither does she. So I turn and start walking. We make our way through a short corridor which connects to the main hall. Malcolm is there, clutching a tankard like a sailor on furlough after six months at sea. Mariota raises a hand to him. He tips his head in acknowledgment, then eyes me scornfully. If he could shoot lasers with his eyes, I’d be reduced to a pile of smoking ash. I ball my fists defensively, expecting him to get up and storm at us. Thankfully, though, one of the men he’s with slaps him on the back and shares a joke, rescuing me.

The outer doors are open and we walk outside into a light mist. It’s now the first of May and the day is warming gradually, if not drying out. As we walk slowly, the space between us widens.

“You wished to speak with me?” she says.

“Do I need a reason to be with you?” I say a little too tersely. She flinches. I can’t help myself. The hopelessness of my situation is beginning to wear on me. Realizing how snide that sounded, I try another approach. “It’s just that ... we haven’t been alone yet. I wanted to talk last night, but I couldn’t find you. It’s like you’re avoiding me. Like you’re more disappointed than glad to find me here. Are you?”

The pungent smell of hay assaults my nostrils. We’re nearing the stables now. I expect to start sneezing and itching, but nothing happens. I inhale more deeply. Until now, I hadn’t realized how good that smell actually is.

“Was I what?”

“Avoiding me. Disappointed.” I hold out my hand and begin to count on my fingers. “Angry. Indifferent. Shocked. Disbelieving ... Take your pick.”

Mariota puts a hand on my arm to halt me. But it’s only to keep me from plowing into a horse’s side as a groom leads it from one of the side stalls toward the smith’s shed. She starts forward again, but I quickly turn in front of her, blocking her path.

Her mouth twists with unspoken words. Fine creases furrow her forehead. “You’re different, somehow.”

Tell me about it
. Seeing Roslin again may have been hard for her so far, but she has no idea what the past few days have been like for me. “I’m sorry, but I don’t remember —”

“I know. They told me. Still ... it’s as if I look into your eyes and I see someone else.”

“Is that a good or bad thing?” I try to joke, but it falls flat. If anything, I’ve only confused her. Or put her off even more, if that’s even possible. “Look, whoever I was before, I get the feeling I wasn’t entirely good to you. That things between us were shaky, at best. Whatever it was I did, or didn’t do, I’m sorry. I’d like to start over, if that’s okay?”

She blinks at me in confusion. Oh, I’ve just used a word, ‘okay’, that won’t be invented for several hundred more years. “I mean, can we put the past behind us, please? Maybe later, you can explain things to me and I’ll understand how I may have upset you. Until then, I desperately need someone to tell me who’s who, what’s going on, how I’m supposed to handle things with my father when we get to Blacklaw —”

Her features darken at the mention.

“You don’t like Blacklaw? Or is it my father?”

She looks around, as if to avoid meeting my eyes. “It ...” Her gaze drops to the mud at her feet. Her shoes are caked with filth, yet she hasn’t complained. “It was supposed to be our home. Yet every day I waited for you, trying to fill the hours. As for Sir Henry ... we haven’t much to talk about beyond the weather and the crops. Even then my opinion is seldom valued.”

She looks so vulnerable, so wounded. I brush her cheek with my thumb. So, I had abandoned her and left her alone with a disagreeable father-in-law? If I’d done that to Claire, she would have murdered me upon my return. Mariota, instead, has drawn into herself, suffered the solitude. I know what living with a person like that’s like. It’s worse than being alone. “Would you rather stay here with Beatrice?”

“No!” She looks up suddenly, panic widening her eyes. Something, or someone, has made her change her mind about being in Lintalee since yesterday.

“All right, then.” I stroke her hair, trying to reassure her. “We’re supposed to leave for Blacklaw tomorrow. I’ll try to make up for lost time.”

She looks away. “It will take you more than a day to do that.”

“Then I’ll take as long as is needed.” I’m not sure why I’ve made her those promises, but for now it seems the right thing to do. As long as I’m stuck in the fourteenth century, I might as well make the best of it.

“Now, tell me about my brother William, will you?” I offer her my elbow.

Tentative, she slips a hand around my arm. The yard is crowding with people: soldiers carrying supplies on their shoulders, grooms tending to horses, women scurrying about in small groups with baskets of laundry and food, children trailing at their skirts.

“Perhaps we could speak more privately somewhere?” Her gaze sweeps around the compound. She points. “There, in the granary.”

I’m not entirely sure what a granary is, so I let her guide me. We begin toward a building that looks vaguely like a barn.

“He left a son behind,” she says.

“William did? How old is he now? And where is he?”

“Four, I believe. He was an infant when you and your brother left. The boy is in Orkney with his mother’s family.” She guides me in the direction of a wagon piled with sacks of grain. “This way.”

A few nobles pass us and raise a hand in greeting; I smile at them, even though I have no idea who they are. Mariota whispers their names to me: John Thomas, Patrick Graham, Robert Gordon, John le Fitzwilliam ... I catch a couple of earls in there, but by the time we reach the granary, I’ve already forgotten who’s who. When she starts to tell me how they’re all related, I wave my hands at her.

“One more and my head is going to explode.” I press my fingertips to my temples.

Laughter trickles from her throat. She clamps a hand over her mouth, trying to quell it, but it spills out, light as duck down. We’re standing between the cart and the granary. A trace of grain dust hangs in the air, despite the dampness from the previous night’s rain.

“What’s so hilarious?” I ask. It’s the first I’ve seen her let her guard down. I like this side of her.

Finally, she puts a hand on the cart’s bed to steady herself as she waits for her laughter to subside. “You always used to complain about keeping straight who held a grudge against whom. You believed most of it was posturing for favors or overblown misunderstanding. You found it aggravating and petty, yet you partook of your share of it yourself. This way, although you may find it frustrating to not be able to remember, everything is new to you. Old grievances are forgotten.” Her smile fades away. “If we could all forget, then maybe we could forgive more easily.”

The echo of a long-ago voice, my mother’s, sounds inside my head:

‘Maybe someday you’ll even ... forgive him.’

I turn away. No, it’s not that easy for me. It’s been years since I’ve spoken to my dad and I still can’t forgive him for the way he treated us. Even here, centuries removed, I still get riled up over it. Would it have been that hard for him to tell us he was sorry for the things he’d said? To make it up by showing Mom compassion when she’d needed it most? To have supported my aspirations in some way or maybe just once told me he was proud of me?

Mariota touches my arm. “Roslin, is something troubling you?”

“No. I’m fine.” She doesn’t need to know. It isn’t her problem. Turning back to her, I take her hand, holding it firmly as I try to anchor myself in this place and time. I’m about to ask her about William again when I see someone striding toward us: Alan Stewart.

“Sir Roslin!” he shouts.

Too bad I didn’t see him first.

When he reaches us, he steals Mariota’s hand from my grip and places a kiss on her knuckles — a tender, lingering kiss. Even as he looks up at her, his hold on her goes on uncomfortably long. Mariota doesn’t pull away or even glance away coyly, but meets his gaze with a degree of coldness I didn’t know was in her. He tilts his head as he takes her in, his words softening to a husky murmur. “And the lovely Lady Mariota.”

Heat flares at the back of my neck and spreads around to my chest. If he hadn’t finally let go of her hand, I might have punched him. Then again, who am I kidding? I’ve never hit anyone in my life. Instead, I bury my feelings. I hate conflict. Hate the yelling. Hate how it never solves anything.

“Good morning, Sir Alan,” I say between clenched teeth. I place Mariota’s hand on my forearm, trying to make a point. “If you don’t mind —”

“Did Lord Archibald tell you?” He grins smugly.

“Tell me what?”

“I am to accompany you to Blacklaw. He was concerned, given your condition, about your ability to oversee the organization of troops and the collection of supplies at Dunbar. He thought I should, perhaps ... how to put this ... replace you in that capacity, for the most part. I’ll keep you well informed, though.” He gives me a patronizing pat on the upper arm. “In the morning then. We depart an hour after sunrise.”

As he strides arrogantly away, I glance at Mariota. Her mouth is set in a firm line, her fingernails digging into my flesh. If it’s possible, she looks even less pleased than I am.

Before I can probe for details, Mariota has plucked up the hem of her skirt and begun back toward the great hall.

“Where are you going?” I reach for her, but she’s already several steps away.

“I’m late. Lady Beatrice is expecting me.”

Somehow, I don’t think that’s true. Something about Alan unsettles her. Something she isn’t willing to share. At least not yet.