“Oh, it was,” the bowyer said. “Near broke their mother. But Baldie, now, he survives that, and we’re all saying how lucky he is, you know, when not two months later his father falls into a well, breaks his neck. One of his brothers is so distraught he hangs himself, and the other—so far as anyone knows—drowns himself in the same river that Baldie crawled out of. History’s repeating wheel of tragedy, innit? The perversity of things.”
“Turned all around,” agreed Waldroup. “I can see how with all that going on, he might forget about ordering a bow.”
“Oh, well.” The bowyer glanced aside. “I’d not quite come to that yet. There’s still more to the tale. Ya see, our Baldie went and got married last year. To the daughter of that family what lost their sons.”
Thomas couldn’t help himself from saying her name. “Innes?” His horror was plain. The others at the table stopped their conversation and stared at him.
The bowyer said, “That’s right. Innes Rimor. So, you do know these families, then.”
“I . . .” He gave Waldroup a painful look, then got up and walked into the back.
Expectations swung slowly to Waldroup, who replied, “He’s a sensitive lad, our Fingal. I believe he encountered that very girl on the road to the abbey. I know he was watching everyone on the street when we came into town today, hoping to see her again.”
“Last summer, was it? Turned his head, I imagine. She was a beautiful girl, would hae been with child then, though.”
“Was beautiful?”
The bowyer looked at the table, displaying the few remaining hairs on top of his head. The other men glanced away as if they had other things to consider. The bowyer tapped the edge of his tankard. “I shouldn’t be saying all this. She lost her newborn just this month. Three weeks old when it withered and died. Midwife says it was a hard birth, too, so she’ll have no others. Daren’t even try, and the poor girl only seventeen. Gone mad, she has.”
“Jesus have mercy.”
“Indeed, I expect it’s only prayer to Him that’s kept poor Balthair sane amidst all that death. It’s a curse for sure. But now you understand why he won’t notice if the bow goes elsewhere. Somewhere far away is better.”
Waldroup drank his ale down and stood. “Don’t think I’ll tell young Fingal that, as I know he did fancy her.” Now the men looked up at him, nodding, agreeing that anybody would have fancied her. To the bowyer, he added, “In the morning, then, sir.”
“Oh, yes.” The bowyer emptied his own tankard and stood. He smiled. “Small beer in my case. Can’t afford to muddy my faculties, can I? Not tonight. Arrows still to fletch, hmm?” He turned and headed for the door. The others pretended not to watch Waldroup retreat into the back, and whatever counsel they kept, they kept it to themselves.
VIII. Innes
Waldroup was snoring in the brewster’s, completely unaware that Thomas had stolen out the back, through the barn, and between the buildings. He strode swiftly across the high street, up the hill, and out of the town. All he wanted was to see his sister and to know she was safe—at least that was his rationale for sneaking off on his own.
Innes had never been the least attracted to Baldie. Of that much Thomas was certain. He knew of no discussion between his parents on the subject of her marrying into the MacGillean clan, either, though admittedly they might have had discussions where he wasn’t present, in body or in mind. There could have been plans to marry her to one of the older MacGillean boys. The union would have been considered a good one for both families, not a step up but certainly a doubling of holdings, of prominence. In truth he—the idiot son whom everyone dismissed—knew nothing of that, did he? It wasn’t as if his opinion would have been solicited. Nobody had ever planned to marry him off to anybody. Even the Church wouldn’t have him. Still, his parents had no reservations speaking of that in front of him; why would they not have spoken of such a profitable union? But Innes? Innes had been quite obsessed with another boy entirely.
He had to find out the truth.
The home of clan MacGillean, northwest of the town, was a square stone keep on a motte built inside a rectangular palisade wall with towers at the corners and an entrance that was a single large gate with a drawbridge over an enclosing ditch. To his knowledge, the bridge had never been raised. As a child in his brother’s company, he had spent days and nights inside the walls and in the keep. It was the first stone keep he’d ever seen—every other castle he knew had keeps made of wood. It had recesses in its walls with holes above them, so that fires could be lit in every room, not just in the center of the great hall. As a result of all the burning for warmth, he smelled the castle long before he reached it.
Baldie and Onchu had shown him secret entrances in various rooms and led him along subterranean passages and into chambers, sometimes to see if they could lose him, because such dark mysteries were what boys invariably sought out. Once, the two of them had locked Thomas in a dark cell deep below the tower (there were three), but when he didn’t scream or cry, they’d let him out. It was useless trying to frighten someone without enough sense to know they ought to be scared.
An escape tunnel led under the palisade and ditch to a small mound overgrown with saxifrage east of the house; only he, his brother, and Baldie had seemingly ever set foot in it. No one had ever attacked the MacGilleans; no one walked the ramparts at night. No one used the tunnel. He saw no reason to claw his way in through it now. Instead, he crept through the gate, then pressed to the shadows of the palisade, and stood awhile to observe the yard. The stables and byre were at the far end of it, against the north wall. Not far from there stood a hall, workshops, and barracks. Close by stood a kitchen hut, and beside it the well where, presumably, Baldie’s father had fallen in.
Smoke drifted out the holes in most of the roofs. The moonlit yard itself lay abandoned, still; no one appeared to be walking the parapet or manning any of the towers.
Shutters and sheets of parchment covered the windows in the small buildings and those of the keep. It was a drafty old keep, colder than any of the houses in the town if the fires weren’t tended, even though its walls were almost as thick as the abbey’s. He ran across the yard, then dashed up the steps of the motte. At the top he turned and watched the walls and yard. Nothing stirred.
The main door was not locked, but it groaned and shuddered at his touch. It had always been creaky. He pressed it open only enough to let him slide through. He stood still again, listening for footsteps, for any sound that he had alerted someone to his presence. They might think a wind had pushed at the door, or perhaps some ghost was creeping about. How many people would be in the keep as opposed to the other, warmer buildings across the yard?
He hurried up the first flight of steps, which led to a gallery above the empty, uninviting ground floor. The entrance had a trapdoor that could be dropped and bolted in an attack. The gallery contained windows overlooking the entrance that Baldie claimed were for shooting down at any enemy that made it through the doors. Beyond the gallery stood the great hall.
It was dark, all torches extinguished; the low fire still burned in the shallow hearth, but its heat was being drawn out through the hole above it. Shadows danced like goblins over the walls and hangings. Someone had tended to that fire sometime within the last hour, but he saw no sign of them. He crept into the smoky hall.
Years earlier, Onchu and Baldie had picked him up and tried to stuff him up into the hole that overhung it. But the exhaust holes were hardly more than slits, and he’d hung from one of them instead, perfectly content to be smeared with grease and soot, again frustrating his tormenters. Now he crossed to the projecting slab of stone and crouched to warm his hands over the low flames. He could see his breath in the air. He recollected the layout of the other, chambered floor above.
Warmed, he rose again, ready to move, when there came a pounding at the door below. Fast as he could he scampered across the room, past a table that could easily seat a dozen, and behind a large decaying tapestry that hid one of the secret passage entrances. He had just ducked out of sight when, overhead, footsteps thudded across the beams. Someone spoke down below. Apparently a servant had been sleeping there. Somehow Thomas had missed him.
He knelt, and squinted through a section of the tapestry all but devoured by moths; the remaining threads made it like observing activity through a dense screen.
Shortly, the servant ushered someone up across the gallery and into the hall. Cautiously, Thomas drew the edge of the tapestry aside.
It was the alderman, Stroud.
“Thank you,” the alderman said to the servant. “I shall wait here for your master.”
The servant had hardly taken a step to go fetch him when Baldie appeared. He was fully dressed and wearing a heavy robe against the chill. Given the footsteps above and how quickly he’d arrived, it did not seem he had been sleeping.
The servant bowed before him and then hurried to the hearth, tossing two more logs onto the fire. Thomas drew farther back behind the tapestry, almost flat against the wall so that no hint of him would be visible.
The servant began poking at the crackling logs, and the flames jumped. The room grew brighter. Baldie called out, “Leave us!” The servant laid down the poker and scurried away like someone who’d been kicked before for not moving fast enough. Baldie’s voice was that same raw croak as at the abbey.
He and the alderman crossed to the long dining table and sat down at one corner. The alderman said, “Two men are in the town, masons they claim to be, one an apprentice who seems to know of you and Innes in a way that concerns me. He is perhaps fifteen. Dark-haired, lightly bearded. I’m told he reacted strongly to your names.”
“You think it’s he?”
“It is just possible, though he wore his cap all the while and never babbled nor suffered a fit. By description he sounds too steady and too young for him, but we cannot be sure. And you mentioned there was someone among the laborers at the abbey.”
“Memory too vague to offer proof. More a whiff than a recognition. How does yours come to know our Innes?” asked Baldie. “When might she have made a mason’s acquaintance?”
