Once Upon a Plaid (16 page)

“I want ye to do something for me, William.”

“Anything.” He brought her hand to his lips.

“After ye return from the hunt . . .”

“Aye?”

“I want ye to spend the night . . .”

He’d do it right this time. Whatever it took, their lovemaking would be all about her pleasure. It was the only thing that would please him.

“In the chapel praying,” she finished.

He had not seen that coming. “Katherine, ye know I dinna—”

“Ye said ye’d do anything.”

Trapped by the words of his own mouth. “And just what am I supposed to be praying for.”

“Wisdom.” She stood on tiptoe and kissed his cheek. “I want ye to pray that God will show ye the right path ahead for the two of us.”

“I already know what that is.”

She tilted her head. It wasn’t right that she looked so fetching when she was tormenting him. “I want ye to ask God honestly if ’tis right for us to seek an annulment. I’ve prayed till I’m blue but I canna seem to hear an answer.”

Perhaps because no one’s listening to your question,
he thought. But she looked up at him with such an earnest expression, he couldn’t belittle her faith.

“All right. I’ll go to the chapel,” he said. “But only for half a night. I’ll spend the other half with ye, telling ye the answer.”

—From “The Twelve Days of Christmas”

 

 

—An observation from Nab,
fool to the Earl of Glengarry

Chapter Nineteen

The hunting party headed into the Highlands, leaving Glengarry Castle far behind. The men split into smaller groups, stalking game trails leading in different directions. Lord Glengarry and William, along with Ranulf MacNaught and his cronies, took the steepest path into the deep woods.

William and his father-in-law stopped at an overlook and leaned on their pommels to gaze back at the castle. It seemed to sprawl along the coastline of the loch in the distance, its grey stone sprouting from the earth like the bones of some long-dead creature risen halfway from its grave.

“It’s never been taken from without,” the earl said. “Glengarry was besieged for a whole year back in my six-times great-grandfather’s time, but it never fell. O’ course, according to the old tales, folk did take to eating rats and boiling their own shoes before help came.” He glanced at his nephew Ranulf MacNaught, who was ranging a few yards ahead, laughing with his group of toadies. “Perhaps Jamison is right to see that the larder is full to bursting. We can always salt the meat down.”

“We have to find some first. Red deer are shy this time of year,” William said. The pair of deerhounds loped alongside them when they started moving again. The dogs rarely sniffed after a prey’s trail, but once they caught sight of anything with hooves, they could run it to earth in a few heartbeats. “A good many deer have probably wandered to the Lowlands.”

“Yet I see signs of them hereabouts.” As they rode past a towering pine, Lord Glengarry pointed to a pile of small round droppings near the base. They didn’t appear fresh. MacNaught’s laughter echoed back to them again.

“Ranulf,” the earl called in a half voice, “ye and your men will scare the deer clear to the coast and send ’em swimmin’ out to the Orkneys if ye keep up that racket. I thought ye were going to try Murray’s peregrine and see if it can roust up a brace of coneys for the stewpot.”

Hugh Murray’s medium-sized falcon was a vicious bird, as ill tempered as its master. The peregrine had nearly taken the thumb off of one of the lads who tended the castle mews. It screamed now from its perch on Murray’s heavily gloved forearm.

“A peregrine doesna usually take to small game like rabbits.” Sinclair, as usual, considered himself the fount of information on every topic being discussed even though the bird in question wasn’t on his fist. “It prefers to hunt other birds.”

“Aye, and I dinna think much of anything, be it man or beast, that preys on its own kind,” Lord Glengarry said with a dismissive wave of his hand. “Take the bedeviled thing out of my sight.”

“Verra well, uncle.” MacNaught turned his horse’s head away from the earl. “We’ll descend a bit for our hunt then, since ye seem to prefer Lord Badenoch’s company over that of your own blood. I’ll leave ye two with the hounds. Good hunting.”

Ranulf and his men plodded back down the hillside through the rotten snow. A warm wind had started melting the mantle of white. Once the other men were gone, the woods were still enough that William could hear water running beneath the crust of snow, forming into small rivulets and pooling in shallow puddles in low places.

“Ranulf is just like his mother,” Lord Glengarry said, shaking his head after his retreating nephew. “My sister was always looking for offense where none was meant. I’ve tried to help him along, to give him an opportunity to improve himself, for her sake, though she never showed the least appreciation. Besides, it doesna look as if Ranulf will take any chance I give him.”

“I’m more concerned that he’ll take his own chances,” William said. There is a certain glimmer in the eyes of a stallion who intends to rule the whole herd. Will had seen that same glint in MacNaught’s eye more than once.

The earl snorted, whether in agreement or dismissal William wasn’t sure. “I canna like his companions overmuch.”

“From what I’ve heard, Sinclair, Murray, MacTavish, and Gordon are the best of the lot.” Rumor had it that MacNaught had offered a haven to every masterless man in the Highlands. His crumbling keep was home to any highwaymen, reiver, or draw-latch who’d swear fealty to him. William shifted uneasily in his saddle. If Ranulf could control them, he’d have a formidable fighting force made up of men who had nothing to lose.

“Sir Ellar Dinglewood is sending his wife back to her father after Christmastide,” the earl said softly so as not to spook any game that might be nearby. “He says she willna breed so he’s claiming nonconsummation and having their marriage put aside.”

It was an abrupt change of topic, but William was used to his father-in-law’s penchant for dropping things he didn’t want to discuss. Evidently, he wasn’t ready to consider what MacNaught’s plans might be.

“Dinglewood and his lady have been wed for nearly ten years,” William said.

“And ye and Katherine have been wed for four.” The earl tossed him an inquiring look. “Are ye planning to send my daughter back to me, William?”

“No, sir.”

“I ask because Katherine has been after me to find a friar who can deliver a letter to Rome. What do ye know about that?”

“Nothing.” He didn’t want to accuse Katherine. “I dinna want our marriage annulled. I gave your daughter my vow. I will never put her away.”

Lord Glengarry gave a grunt of approval. Then he frowned. “But she may put
ye
away. She’s headstrong, is my Kat. I thought she’d come home to help Margaret, but after watching the pair of ye lately, I’ve been wondering if she had another reason to leave Badenoch. Far be it from me to come between a man and his wife, but . . . ye’re not harsh with her, are ye?”

“Never.”

“Good. I’d have to throttle ye, if ye were.”

If the earl were younger, William might have been concerned. The old man had been a veritable mad wolf of a fighter in his prime. Even now, he could probably land a telling blow or two.

“Her mother had trouble bringing bairns into the world too, ye ken.” Lord Glengarry dropped his voice to a whisper now, both because the subject was delicate and because they’d just spotted the twin almond-shaped tracks of their quarry. “Not that she couldna quicken. We lost count of how many times she failed to carry a babe longer than a couple of months. Still, she did manage to give me my heir.”

“And your daughter,” William whispered back. He wondered if Katherine knew her mother had suffered from multiple losses just as she had. And if that knowledge would make a difference. The deerhounds’ ears pricked to a sound the men couldn’t hear.

“Aye, and a surprise Kat was too,” the earl said, oblivious to the way his dogs’ ruffs were rising. “We’d thought we were past more children, especially as my Alva had such trouble bearing them. But then here came our Katikins to be a comfort to my old age. It just goes to show, William.”

“It shows ye must never give up hope,” the earl continued as if he’d been asked.

Hope was something William was fresh out of, but he was spared from having to reply when the two hounds darted forward in long-legged lunges. The thicket ahead of them rattled. There was a chorus of growls mixed with a plaintive cry that was abruptly cut off.

The men chirruped to their mounts and forged through the dense undergrowth, finding the deerhounds seated next to a goodly sized deer carcass. Their blooded tongues lolled in macabre doggie grins. Lord Glengarry had trained the hounds to stop worrying the prey once it ceased struggling. He praised the pair in more lavish terms than William had ever heard him offer someone with two legs.

“Well, that buck’s eighteen stone, minus the rack, I’ll warrant. Should feed us for a while.” The old man dismounted and started field dressing the deer, but William took the knife from him to spare him the chore of gutting the buck. “Jamison ought to be satisfied now.”

The scream of a peregrine overhead made William look up. Murray’s falcon wheeled above them. Then it gathered itself into a killing wedge and stooped. Hidden by the forest, it dove into a meadow lower down the hillside. The raptor didn’t rise again.

“Looks like your nephew’s party made a kill as well.”

The earl ignored the comment. “Glad we didna bag a doe. That’s the trouble of hunting with the dogs. Ye can rarely see what they’re after till they’ve gone and killed it.”

William wondered if he would figure out what Ranulf was after before Lord Glengarry’s nephew made a move.

 

 

“And ye said he wouldna hunt coneys,” Hugh Murray said with a sneer at Sinclair while he fed the falcon a small bit of rabbit liver. Then he tucked the rest of the bloody organ into his other turned-back cuff to feed the bird later.

“I said no such thing. I said peregrines
prefer
to hunt other birds. That’s all,” Sinclair said with an injured sniff worthy of a court dandy. “If ye’d get your head out of your arse and listen once in a while, Murray, ye might learn something.”

“Weel, one coney isna going to make for much stew,” MacTavish said, with surprising practicality as he tied the rabbit’s hind legs together and affixed the carcass to his pony’s pommel. The beast rolled its eyes at the scent of blood but stood still when MacTavish grasped its mane and remounted. “Will the bird hunt again?”

“He might if Murray doesna overfeed him,” Gordon said as Murray slipped the bird another tidbit. Then he raised a pointed finger at the western road below their hillside location. “There’s a rider approaching the castle. He’s wearing your plant badge, MacNaught, or I’m mistook.”

Some clans decorated their bonnets with a cockade of colored ribbons. A thriftier method was to tuck a certain plant into a hatband to declare a man’s allegiance. Ranulf MacNaught’s men wore a sprig of holly when they wanted to make themselves known to each other.

“Prickly and poisonous,” Ranulf had explained to his followers when he chose it. “One way or another, we’ll be a scourge to all who oppose us!”

Now he squinted into the distance. There did seem to be a red-and-green spray attached to the rider’s tam-style hat. “Gordon, ye’ve sharper eyes than that bird. Keep on with the hunt, all of ye. Where there’s one rabbit, there’s a dozen.”

“Where are ye off to?” Gordon asked.

“To see what this fellow wearing my badge wants at Glengarry.”

He left his followers bickering over which direction to take their hunt. Ranulf muscled his gelding into a plunge down the hillside so he could intercept the rider on the western road. To name it a road was to overdignify it. What Gordon had called the western road was little more than a well-worn path. Still, Ranulf meant to catch the rider before he reached the castle.

By the time he reached the road, he recognized the rider as Duncan Burns, one of the men he’d left to guard the Italian friar. Ranulf stopped and waited for Burns to come to him.

“What news?” he said when Burns drew his sturdy Highland pony to a standstill.

“It took a bit of persuading to get the Italian to work on that contraption, but after Ogilvie cut off one of his fingers, he became fair enthusiastic about the whole idea.”

Ranulf’s mouth twitched, but he wouldn’t bestow a smile on Burns just yet. He needed men who could do what was required, whatever that might be. Ranulf made a mental note to see that Ogilvie was suitably rewarded once he came into his own.

“So what has the good friar come up with?”

“He did all sorts of calculating and measuring and wasted any amount of paper drawing up plans based on the parts ye found in the cave. Long and short of it is, we finally have the thing put together.”

“’Tis a trebuchet, not a thing,” Ranulf said. “Show a bit of respect. Call it what it is.”

“The important thing is, does it work?” Ranulf asked.

Burns cocked a brow and nodded. “We tested it. I figured ye’d want us to. Lost Finley on the first try when he didna heed the friar’s instructions and his arm got caught in the gears. We couldna staunch the bleeding.”

“Finley was a fool.”

“And now he’s a dead one, roasting in Hell for his folly. It gave the rest of them pause, I can tell ye. No one ignores the Italian now.”

“What’s the most weight ye can hurl?” Ranulf asked.

“We’ve tossed boulders that weigh more than twenty-five stone. Should do a good bit of damage, depending on where ye aim them. God knows they damaged a few of the men lifting them.”

Ranulf brushed this off as unimportant. He glanced up the hillside where dark granite broke through the turf at intervals. There was plenty of raw material about that would serve as projectiles. In his mind’s eye, he could see work crews hewing rock from the earth, while others transported it to the machine’s maw to be loaded and finally flung at his enemies.

“What else have ye thrown besides stones?” One of the old warriors in Edinburgh had spoken of hurling flaming bundles over castle walls.

“We havena tried anything but loads of rock.”

That didn’t mean something else couldn’t be used. The fellow he’d treated to drinks had gotten morbidly misty-eyed when he described how siege armies had gathered up the dead who’d made the mistake of leaving the walled citadel. Corpses thrown back at trapped defenders were great demoralizers.

“It unmanned ’em something fierce,” the old warrior had affirmed.

“What’s the range of my trebuchet?” Ranulf was feeling possessive of the collection of timbers and gears.