Exiles in Time (The After Cilmeri Series) (31 page)

“
If it pleases you, Bishop
Fraser feels we must meet in council now,” said James. “Both John
Balliol and the Black Comyn have arrived.”

This
was going to be a fun meeting. “Of course,” Callum said. “Just
a moment—” He turned back to Cassie.

“
I know. You have to go,”
she said, “though I imagine sitting in a meeting with men at each
other’s throats has to be your least favorite thing on the planet
to do.”

“
I’d rather be on the wrong
end of an ambush.” Callum leaned in and kissed Cassie’s temple. “I
know I’d rather be with you.”

Though Cassie gave Callum a quick
smile, it didn’t reach her eyes. As Callum stepped off the dais
with James, he turned to look at Cassie one more time. She had
already left the table, however, and was just disappearing through
a door on the other side of the hall.

Chapter
Eighteen

Cassie

C
assie was ready to leave, with or without saying goodbye to
Callum, even if it meant behaving like Maria in that horrible scene
from the
Sound of Music
after which her mother had always made her go to bed because
the movie was so freaking long. Except that no duchess was telling
Cassie lies to make her leave. She was doing that all by herself.
It would be dishonorable to go, and hurtful, but Callum couldn’t
see how wrong this all was.

Cassie saw what was in his
eyes when he looked at her. They’d known each other for a week, and
she knew what she saw in him because she felt the same as he did.
How could they not, after what they’d been through? But he didn’t
really know her if he didn’t see that she couldn’t
do
this; she couldn’t be a
medieval wife; she couldn’t be the Earl of Shrewsbury’s wife, for
heaven’s sake!

Back at the village, Callum
had told Cassie how he felt about this life, and she had talked
about her feelings. But the truth was, despite his issues, Callum
handled being in the Middle Ages better than she did. He actually
thought she could just
adapt
.

Cassie’s ire carried her out of the
hall and up to her room. It started to wane, however, when she
realized that her clothes hadn’t returned from the laundry (and
might never do so) and that she still hadn’t restocked her quiver.
She could at least do that and pretend that she had something real
to occupy her time instead of simply looking pretty on Callum’s
arm. Callum would be gone for hours meeting with the other men,
determining the course of Scotland’s future.

And that probably would have sounded
as sour spoken out loud as it did in her head. Poor Callum, though.
The deep circles under his eyes were going to become permanent if
he couldn’t rest in a real bed soon.

Cassie swung her fine new cloak around
her shoulders and unsnapped her quiver from her backpack. She held
the quiver in one hand and her bow in the other. Somehow, she
couldn’t leave the bow behind, even for the time it would take to
find the armory and fill her quiver. If she didn’t get her old
cloak back, she’d have to cut slits in this one so she could wear
her pack on her back as before.

Cassie found her way to the inner
bailey of the castle, but when she reached it, she came to a halt
at the sheer number of men in front of her. Not only the Black
Comyn and John Balliol, but the Scottish parliament—a council of
bishops, earls, and minor lairds from all over Scotland—had come to
Stirling. At the same time, she was glad of their presence because
it would be easy to get lost in the crowd.

It was full dark by now, and Cassie
threaded her way to the outer bailey by the light of fifty torches.
The armory lay by the outer gatehouse. The second bailey was even
more crowded than the first, what with so many retainers and
hangers-on who needed a place to sleep tonight.

Then a drawling voice said, “Well,
well … what do we have here?”

Cassie felt herself spun around, her
wrists clamped so tightly she had to drop her bow and quiver. The
Cunningham boy, Gerard, buttressed by two of his friends, grinned
at her as he pressed her to the stone wall of the
armory.

Cassie looked past him, searching for
anyone she knew. Nobody paid them the least attention. Cassie tried
to keep herself composed, even as she struggled to free her wrists.
“What do you want?”

“
You know what I want.”
Gerard hauled her around the corner to a narrow space between the
armory and the blacksmith’s works. The alley smelled of wet hay and
manure. And fear.

Cassie drove her knee towards Gerard’s
groin, but one of his friends was quicker and jammed his leg
between her and Gerard, putting the full weight of his body into
her side. “Now, now,” Gerard said. “We can’t have that.”

Real panic rose in Cassie now, along
with a blinding rage that this could be happening to her. She
wouldn’t have thought it possible for her to be so alone in such a
crowd. But if anyone had seen the men grab her, they might have
thought nothing of it. Everywhere men went, whores followed. Cassie
kept up her struggles, but even though Gerard was the same height
as she, he was stronger and had two friends to assist
him.

“
Help—!”

Gerard cut off Cassie’s cry with a
hand clapped over her mouth. “Let’s get her under
cover—”

And then suddenly Gerard was grabbed
from behind and thrown—literally thrown—ten feet towards the
blacksmith’s works. The man to Cassie’s right took a gloved fist in
the face, and because the second friend was backing away, not
looking at her, Cassie was able to stab at his knee with her foot.
Callum stepped in to finish him off with an uppercut to the
jaw.

“
My God, Cassie!” Callum
pulled her to him and wrapped his arms around her so tightly she
almost couldn’t breathe, even as her breath came in
gasps.

“
Is there a problem, my
lord?” One of James’s soldiers came hurrying up.

Callum loosened his grip on Cassie
enough to turn to the man. “Do you know who I am?”

“
The Earl of Shrewsbury,
sir.”

“
These men were assaulting
my betrothed. I want them locked up until Lord James decides what
to do with them.”

“
Y-y-yes, my lord!” If the
man had been a modern solider, he would have saluted. As it was, he
waved an arm at four members of the garrison who’d followed him.
Callum urged Cassie back around the corner and into the bailey. He
held her head between his hands and kissed both eyes, her cheeks,
and then her lips. “What could have happened—”

Cassie started to shake with delayed
shock. Callum held her in a full embrace, rubbing at her back and
arms to warm her. Cassie’s heartbeat began to slow. “I’m okay,
Callum.”

“
I’m not,” he said. “And
you might not have been.”

Which was only too true.

“
Let’s get you out of
here.” Still with his arm around her, Callum turned to head back
across the bailey.

“
Just a second, Callum.”
Cassie shrugged out of his arm so she could pick up her fallen bow
and quiver.

Callum stared at the weapon. “Christ,
Cassie! What were you thinking?”

Cassie clutched the cloth of his tunic
at his breastbone. She found that she couldn’t speak, couldn’t get
mad at him like he was mad at her.

Callum glared at Cassie. She could
feel the force of his gaze even before she lifted her head to look
at him. “You were running away. Away from me.”

“
I actually wasn’t, Callum.
But you have to know that what … almost happened has shown me again
how much I hate this world and what I have to be to fit in it. That
I needed you to save me …”

“
I didn’t save you from
those men because you’re a woman,” Callum said. “If three men had
jumped me, I would’ve need saving too!”

“
Yeah, but—”

Callum cut her off. “Just because you
need a little help once in a while doesn’t make you a lesser
person. Believe me, that wasn’t what was going through my head when
I saw those men surrounding you. David Beckham never won a game all
by himself. You’re good at some things and I’m good at some things.
Why can’t we be good at them together?” He wiggled the tip of
Cassie’s bow, which she held with the quiver in her other hand. It
was probably how Gerard and his friends had noticed her in the
first place.

“
How’d you end up in the
bailey?” Cassie said. “Weren’t you supposed to be in a
meeting?”

“
The council adjourned for
the night,” Callum said. “I might have met you before you left your
room, but as I left the hall, David’s pigeon man at Stirling,
Rhodri, came to find me. After I sent him off with a message for
David, I again intended to return to my room, but before I could, I
saw Gerard leaving the inner bailey. I followed him. Cassie, why—?”
Callum broke off and looked away from her, as if he couldn’t bear
to look at her.

“
I won’t lie. I was
thinking about leaving,” Cassie said. “I hadn’t yet decided to. I
wanted to restock my quiver.”

Callum’s brows drew together, but his
gaze wasn’t directed at her. He looked over her shoulder, towards
the entrance to the armory.

“
What is it?” Cassie
said.

“
You need arrows. I agree
that we should do something about that. Come with me.” He moved
towards the steps that led up to the building behind
them.

“
You’ve lost me,” Cassie
said, taking two steps for every one of his. “What are we
doing?”

“
I could have sworn I just
saw Red Comyn and … well … Kirby enter the armory.”

“
Really?” Cassie said. “If
it is Kirby, what are you going to say to him? Are you going to
confront him?”

Callum shook his head. “I can’t. I
promised James that I wouldn’t until he could speak to the other
Guardians. I certainly wouldn’t do it on my own—not until we’ve
ferreted out more of his plan. As James pointed out, Kirby is a
bishop and England’s representative to Scotland, and if I expose
him, I call David’s power and authority—and wisdom—into
question.”

“
James is too cautious,”
Cassie said. “Kirby is responsible for the death of dozens of men,
whatever his overall plan might be.”

“
James knows the nobility
of Scotland better than I do, and because of that—and because I
think James is a good man—I’m willing to give him the benefit of
the doubt, though what he’ll say when Kirby shows up in the council
chamber, I don’t know.”

“
You have to get to James
first,” Cassie said.

Callum nodded. “For now, I will be
polite to Kirby and lie through my teeth if I have to. We don’t
need him punished today. I know where to find him when the time
comes. I’d rather lull him into a sense of complacency.”

“
You like it when people
underestimate you, don’t you?” Cassie said.

Callum just looked down at her and
took her hand without replying. They went up the steps and through
the doorway, but the barracks were dark. With no light switch to
flip, the torchlight coming through the open door was their only
light. Callum turned on his heel, looked outside, and then back
into the main room where the armor and weapons were kept. “Huh.” A
stairway went up to his left, but no sound came from the floor
above.

“
Where did they go?” Cassie
said.

“
Maybe I was
hallucinating,” Callum said. “I’m tired enough. We can at least get
those arrows while we’re here.”

An unlit candle rested in a holder on
a barrel by the door. Cassie lit it with the fire steel left beside
it and brought it with her, weaving among the storage crates after
Callum. In a far corner near an open door into another room, he
bent over a barrel containing a stockpile of arrows. Cassie was
glad they had something to distract them from what had happened to
her. It was a relief to talk about casual things, even if what was
going on between them was fast becoming the elephant in the
room.

“
This is a pretty meager
collection,” Callum said. “The MacDougalls and Bruces had archers
among them. Why aren’t there more arrows here?”

“
Archery takes years of
practice and good arrows aren’t something just anyone can make,”
Cassie said. “We saw that at Duncraggan. Nobles use swords, and if
the men they recruit don’t know how to shoot—”

“
You end up with a single
barrel as Stirling Castle’s entire stash of arrows,” Callum
said.

Cassie gazed with him at the arrows
he’d found—a hundred at most. Two bows leaned against the wall. She
glanced around. In contrast, an entire wall was given over to
spears and poleaxes. Swords, axes, helmets, and armor of various
sizes and kinds were stacked in trunks or lined the walls. “Let’s
hope Stirling Castle doesn’t have to defend itself any time soon.
It would be in trouble,” she said.

“
They haven’t had a king
here for a long time. William Fraser’s a bishop and probably
doesn’t think about having to defend Stirling or about war at all,
other than how to avoid a fight.” Callum reached into the barrel,
pulled out a handful of arrows, and presented them to
Cassie.