Susan King - [Celtic Nights 01] (28 page)

"Ah, the mysterious Esa. I look forward to meeting her." He spoke in the cool tone that she knew he sometimes used to mask his thoughts. She wondered if he suspected that Ruari MacWilliam was alive, and if he would talk to Esa about it. If so, she was determined that he would discover nothing that could bring harm to any of her kinfolk.

Earlier, she had told Giric about Ruari. He had reacted as she had expected, with perfect calm. She knew that he would keep the secret.

"I must ask my kinsmen which one of them will come to see Esa with me," Alainna said. She looked behind her and paused while Niall, Lulach, and Giric came toward them.

She explained what she wanted to do. "Once we have deep snow, it will not be easy to fetch Esa to Kinlochan," she added.

"It will not be easy no matter when you go," Niall said.

"I want Esa to be here for our handfasting," Alainna said. "I hope one of you will go with me."

"Huh," Lulach said. "I would sooner rip an oak from the ground than fetch Esa out of her house. She is sweet but stubborn."

"Ach,"
Alainna said. "I will get her to come with me. You just do not know how to do it." She smiled.

"We have tried three times of late," Lulach said. "She refuses, so calm and dear that we hardly know she's refusing. But that woman is like a piece of stone."

"I know how to work stone," Alainna said, still smiling. "Which of you will go with me? Niall? You enjoy seeing Esa."

"I will not come," Niall said. "She would make me do all her chores, and I would end up carrying that great loom of hers on my back down the mountain—if she would even leave her little house. Which she will not."

"Giric? You will come."

"Alainna, I promised the knights I would take them out deer hunting tomorrow. Can we go the next day?"

"I do not want to wait," she said. "The weather will worsen. Una says she is certain of that. And I want Esa here for the handfasting and for Christmas. Lulach?"

"Donal and I are going to clean the forge and make repairs over the next few days," he said. "Una and Morag want the fortress cleaned and made proper for the new year. There is much to be done to please them."

"You go," Niall said to Lulach. "You have been a fool for Esa since you were an infant."

"Me? You were the one in love with Esa!" Lulach barked.

"I think you both loved her," Giric interrupted. "I have heard it said that when Esa married Ruari she broke a hundred hearts."

"I must meet this woman," Sebastien said, sounding amused. "I will go with you, Alainna."

"You?" she squeaked, and looked quickly at Giric, who frowned. "Lome might go with me," she said quickly.

"Lome will be in his poet's bed," Giric said. "He told Una it was time for that again."

"Poet's bed?" Sebastien asked.

"Now and then he takes to his bed for a full day, from dawn to dawn," Alainna told him. "He lies in the darkness, with a cloth over his eyes and a stone on his belly. He remembers every line of all the poems and stories he has ever learned. It is part of his training as a bard to do that."

"Ah," Sebastien said, nodding as if fascinated. "I will go with you," he repeated firmly. "I have yet to find all the boundary stones. Some of them lie up that way. I must ride in that direction sooner or later."

She sighed. "Very well... But we must walk, for she lives in the high hills."

"That will be fine," he replied. "Whatever you wish, my lady."

"Aha!" Niall cried. "The man is to be handfasted! He does not want to leave the girl's side!"

Alainna felt herself grow hot under her kinsmen's grins, and under Sebastien's calm, unwavering gaze and slow smile.

Chapter 17

"There is a boundary stone down there," Alainna called down to Sebastien. "Do you see it?" She stood on the shoulder of a steep hill far above him.

"I found it," Sebastien called, waving. He stood at the base of the hill, where a burn flowed fast. He dropped down to scoop a quick, cold drink with his hand, drying his fingers on his cloak. On the bank was a large rock painted white, the stone he sought. He stood again, narrowing his eyes to scan the hills and estimate how far he and Alainna had walked from the last boundary marker farther along the same winding burn.

For much of the morning, they had climbed ever higher into the hills, where the slopes were brown and barren and rocky, where the wind whipped past and thick white mist obscured the peaks.

He took his wax tablet and bone stylus from his belt pouch and wrote a few notes about the stone's location. Then he walked back up the hill, where Alainna waited beside a large boulder.

"May I see?" she asked, extending her hand. "Have you made a map of Kinlochan?"

He hesitated. "A simple one," he said, as he handed her the wax tablet. She studied the tiny drawing he had made showing the approximate shape of the property, with loch, fortress, and the long, wide burn marked there. Then she looked at the small, careful drawing in one corner.

"I did not know you had such a fine hand for drawing," she said. "This little castle is excellently made. Is it one that you have seen somewhere?"

He held his hand out, but she kept the tablet. "It is my own design."

"It is lovely. And I like the three towers in the walls. I imagine there is nothing like it in the Highlands. Is this what Kinlochan castle will look like when it is made?"

He shrugged. "Mayhap it will." He took the tablet from her hands, sliding it back into his leather pouch.

"So you understand mapmaking and building?"

He gave her a flat smile. "Did you think I am interested only in matters of war, or jousting, or standing guard for kings?"

"I have seen you practice for war and ride out to hunt. And of course I have seen you stand guard for the king. But that is all."

"I would design buildings," he said, "if I had not become a knight in the service of a liege lord. If I had been given the privilege of a university education, I would have studied the art of architecture."

He looked out over the sweep of the slope as he spoke, aware that he had rarely voiced that wish to anyone. The drawing of the castle might seem simple to someone else, but it represented something precious and private to him.

He had studied and sketched many structures over the years, fascinated since childhood by their design. He had learned much through observation, through reading whatever he could find in the libraries of the noble lords he served, and through his experiences in the service of an English baron who had allowed him direct involvement in the raising of three castles.

The little wax sketch was a culmination of observations and ideas, an expression of his cherished dream to design his own castle. King William's directive concerning Kinlochan had been more than welcome in that way, but frustrating as well. While he wanted to supervise the construction of a stone fortress, he did not intend Kinlochan to be his home.

The brightness in Alainna's deep blue eyes told him that she was intrigued. He wanted to tell her more. Sharing this with her felt safe, he realized suddenly. He wanted to hear her thoughts, to see her eyes sparkle with the passion she seemed to bring to all things.

"How did you come to know the art of architecture?" she asked. "You did not attend university. How were you schooled?"

"So many questions," he said, smiling a little. "Shall we rest here for a bit? Una sent food with you in that bundle."

"She did. If you want to sit here... wait," she said, as he shifted to sit on the boulder. He stepped back. "Watch."

She touched her fingertip to the stone. The boulder was as long as a man, and nearly half that length wide, but it began to rock gently back and forth at her light touch.

Sebastien laughed in surprise. When the stone stilled, he touched it himself. The rocking began again. Curious, he dropped to his knees to peer underneath.

The curving underside of the slate boulder rested on a flat base of shale. Daylight leaked through at all points but the centermost juncture between the upper and lower stones. He stood, shaking his head in astonishment.

"It is a jury stone," Alainna said. "The ancient people used it to decide justice in cases of crimes and disputes. Lorne has told me all about this. The accused would stand there"—she indicated the end of the boulder that pointed downhill—"and a priest or a clan chief would stand at the other end, and speak the case aloud for the witnesses. Then the leader would give the stone a tap with a birch wand, and the stone would answer by rocking one way or another."

Sebastien gave the boulder a few experimental pushes while she spoke. "Sometimes it moves north to south, sometimes east to west," he observed, walking around it.

"North to south was regarded as a judgment of innocent, and east to west was seen as guilty. If it stood still, that meant undecided, which allowed the accused to go free of punishment. No one uses the stone now," she said, and sat. It shivered gently beneath her weight. "It is a curiosity only."

"Curious indeed." Sebastien sat on the stone too, bracing his feet on the ground until it stilled. Alainna rummaged in the tied cloth bundle that she had carried with her. She handed Sebastien an oatcake and a thick slab of cheese.

"Tell me how you were educated," she said as they began to eat. "And how you became interested in designing castles."

"The monks who raised me gave me excellent training in languages, in reading and writing skills, in mathematics and theology. The arts of architecture and geometry intrigued me, and I pursued those on my own. But I do not have a specialized education from a university. There was no one to pay the cost of it," he added.

"Have you no family, Sebastien?" she asked quietly.

"Only my son now." Plain words that did not reveal the loss and anguish of a few years before. He broke off a bit of cheese and chewed it slowly before he continued. "The monks are more my family than any other. Abbot Philippe has been like a father to me. I came to his monastery when I was but two years old, and he a young man and not yet abbot."

"No wonder you feel that you must return to Brittany."

His simple nod belied the intensity of his conviction. "I must find Conan and the monks, and do whatever I can to help them. It is... hard for me to stay in Scotland without knowing what has become of them." And hard to admit his feelings aloud, he thought, although he could do so with Alainna more readily than anyone.

"When I first met you," she said in a musing tone, watching him, "I thought that you and I could not be more different. But more and more, I think we are alike."

"In pride, most assuredly." He smiled a little.

"More than that. We both would do anything for those we love. You would leave this excellent holding"—she waved a hand around the hills—"just to be with them and know they are safe."

As he swept his gaze over the hills, he felt a twinge of regret. He had begun to love this country of slopes and lochs and open sky. Leaving here, he realized, would be far harder than he would have thought, for several reasons.

"I would give my soul to know they are safe," he murmured.

"As would I, for my kin," she said. "Although if I were separated from my kin and in a strange place, among strangers, I would not be as courteous to them as you have been with us. I would leave as quick as I could. And be thought a barbaric Scotswoman, I suppose."

He smiled. "I thought you were weary of my courtesy and chivalry, my lady."

She half laughed. "Not all of your chivalry, sirrah." She glanced down at his long legs and braced feet. "You are very kindly keeping this stone still so that we can eat."

He laughed and bit into the salty, chewy oatcake. She ate too, and after a while brushed the crumbs from her hands.

"You said once that you knew something of your parents. Have you no connection to their families?"

He broke up the last of his oatcake and tossed it into the snags of heather for the birds and animals to find. "I was a foundling," he said, "left at the gate of the monastery with a gold ring and a bit of salt to show that I was of noble birth and baptized. The monks did not know my name or where I came from, at least then. They named me for their patron saint, since I was found on his feast day. The monastery is Saint-Sebastien, near Rennes in Brittany."