She did not reply, but another thought stirred him to turn back and say to Jed, “Tell those lads to come down from the peaks only if they’ve aught to report. If not, they must bide with the watchers. I want at least one man on each peak till I say otherwise. If one comes to report, send another up straightaway to replace him.”
“Aye, sir. D’ye expect trouble?”
“We’ll prepare for it just in case,” Simon said. “We’ve eased our watch on the peaks since the truce, so remind those lads to keep a keen eye at night, too.”
Urging Sibylla to the entrance, he saw the worried look on her face but said no more. He was certain that once word spread of their arrival, Kit would show herself.
Three hours later, at midday, they still had found no sign of her.
Tetsy and another maid had prepared Dand’s body for burial, and tears sprang to Sibylla’s eyes when she saw him. He looked pale and thin, and she strongly believed that his death had been no accident.
But when she said so to Simon as they dined, he patted her shoulder and said, “You’re letting your imagination run amok again. No one else has said such a thing.”
“Prithee, sir, stop dismissing everything I say without giving it a thought,” she said testily, her temper barely in check. “The way Jed Hay kept saying ‘they said,’ as he told us what happened, he clearly suspects villainy just as I do.”
“I don’t dismiss everything you say,” he said.
“You do it often enough, and something is amiss in all of this,” she insisted. “The least you can do is discuss it with me as if I had a brain in my head.”
“Sibylla, I have never questioned your intelligence.” Ignoring that tempting subject, she said bluntly, “Did
Jed Hay’s description of your Percy cousin fit the man you know? You asked for no other details.”
His temper had visibly bristled at her tone, but after a momentary silence he said calmly, “I don’t know Percy well, lass. But as I recall, he had hair just a bit darker red than Sym Elliot’s. That is why I asked the question. However, I don’t remember if his eyebrows were red or brown, so Jed’s reply was not much help.”
“What about their apparel?” she asked, eyeing him intently.
He shrugged. “They wore what Borderers wear— jacks-o’-plate, helmets, and heavy cloaks against the chill. There is nowt to question there.”
“Is there not?” she asked. “I’m told the Percys wear light armor like that which the French provided for many of our own Border nobles years ago. Wat Scott and others who were at Otterburn said Hotspur and many of the Percys wore it.”
He frowned. “You may be right,” he said at last. “But we’ve no proof that our visitors were other than Cecil and his lads, and we did expect them, albeit not so soon. I do recall enough about Cecil Percy to suspect he is not one who marches to my mother’s piping, so his early arrival need not mean much.”
“But whilst they were here, Dand died in a fall that apparently none of your own servants witnessed. And Kit vanished.”
“Sibylla, listen to me—”
“You say they cannot have spirited her out under a cloak. I say they may have if they dosed her with something to keep her still. Moreover, the very fact of this odd visit, added to her disappearance, tells me she must be Thomas’s missing heiress. Dand was just a lad trying to protect her. Sakes, but Fife must have called you to Edinburgh to get you out of the way for it. He arranged for those men to do as they did last night.”
“Godamercy,” Simon exclaimed. “What will you think of next?”
“If I am wrong, where is Kit? We have looked everywhere.”
“One must suppose she managed to slip out of the castle and went home.”
“But if Dand was not her brother—”
“You don’t know that,” he interjected testily. “In any event, I have never believed those two did not know where their home is, yet they said nowt of it to us.”
In truth, Sibylla had suspected the children knew where their people were, and she saw that Simon’s temper had frayed to near breaking. She did not want to fight with him. She wanted to find Kit and learn the truth about what the villains had done.
“If your visitor was honest, he had news for you,” she reminded Simon. “Should he not learn soon that our parties missed each other, and turn back?”
“If he inquires on the road, he will, although most folks would speak only of Buccleuch,” he said. His expression softened. “I’m sorry if I sounded angry, lass.”
“You did, aye, but I ken fine that you are unaccustomed to disagreement. In troth, you discourage it in much the same way that Fife does,” she added frankly.
“So now I am like Fife?” he said, raising his eyebrows.
“Aye, sometimes,” she said. “You display the same icy demeanor that he does when you are angry, and sometimes when you are not. You said Kit imitates me, after all, and youngsters do often acquire attitudes from adults they respect.”
“I don’t know about that, but I will agree that Fife behaved oddly,” he said. “Also, the Colvilles have been in this area searching for Kit. If they learned that we had a child here who might be their missing heiress, and if Fife saw some way he might somehow be able to use that as legal cause to seize Elishaw . . .” He paused.
“We need to learn more,” she said.
“We do, aye,” he agreed. “At the least, I must go to meet Percy if he does return, or send someone on to find him and bring him back.”
“Will you leave straightaway then?”
“Aye, and return for supper if I meet him before Hob-kirk as I suspect I will.”
Sibylla doubted that, but she encouraged him to make haste. “And prithee, take a score of good men with you, sir, lest you meet danger. I may fratch with you more than either of us likes, but I am not ready to be a widow.”
Simon left within the hour, taking his best tracker and a dozen men-at-arms.
Other thoughts had come to him as he got ready, thoughts he had not shared with Sibylla. He was sure she was wrong about Kit, but he suspected she was right about Fife, who had a network of agents to attend to his more secretive affairs.
The closest Simon had come to being part of the network was some years before when he’d agreed to ask his brother Tom, a talented lute player, to serve as minstrel in Isabel’s household, so Tom could keep an eye on her for Fife.
Thinking of those agents, and the supposed raiders throwing the children in the river, he recalled the rider Dand had described, whose meeting with the raiders had hurried them all away shortly before Simon and his men arrived on the scene.
Simon realized the raiders might easily have taken cover then and followed his party back to Elishaw. If they recognized the Murray banner, they might just have watched and reported to the Colvilles or Fife that he had saved the children.
If Fife was involved in the affair, one thing was certain. His motive was more complicated than just to make sure of Simon’s continued loyalty to him.
Sibylla did not believe Kit had left the castle voluntarily. But much as she believed the strangers were responsible for the child’s disappearance, she could not be sure they had taken her with them. Accordingly, she summoned the housekeeper and Tetsy to organize a more thorough search.
“I want every kist and cupboard turned out,” Sibylla said.
“Mercy, madam,” Tetsy said. “I didna say nowt wi’ the master here, but if them men last night didna find her, how can we?”
“Do you mean to say they were looking for Kit?” “One came where we sleep. But she wasna there, and he didna believe I knew nowt. I were so afeard, I fainted dead away. When I awoke, he’d gone.”
“Look again, anyway,” Sibylla said. “We must be sure she is not here before the laird will do more to find her.”
As she left them, she felt a niggling sense of something she or someone else had said that was not right. She had sensed the same thing, talking with Simon, but she could not recall what had caused it t
hen either.
Annoyance with herself reminded her she had been irked with him because he’d interrupted her in the midst of telling him that they’d looked everywhere for Kit, offering the information as proof that the visitors must have taken her.
But they had not searched everywhere. And she had not tumbled to that fact even when Simon had suggested Kit might have slipped out of the castle unseen.
Descending to the kitchen, Sibylla noted that two scullions were still working at the far end of the kitchen. The bakehouse chamber, however, was empty.
Without hesitation, she stepped into the alcove, shifted the latch hook, and began to open the door to the tunnel. It met immediate resistance, heavier than the small sack of walnuts she had set against it before.
“Kit, it’s Lady Sibylla,” she murmured. “You’re safe now, love. Come out.”
The sound of a gusty sob from within brought a huge sigh of relief.
“No one else is with me, lassie,” Sibylla said. “Come quickly.”
If Kit did not come quickly, she emerged before anyone walked into the bakehouse or past the archway.
“Be the laird vexed wi’ me?” she asked in hushed accents.
“Never mind that,” Sibylla said, drawing her toward the stairway. “And don’t say another word until we reach my chamber.” She had little hope that they would get that far without meeting anyone, but the Fates, for once, were kind. Reaching the door to her room, she pushed it open and almost walked into Tetsy.
“Och, m’lady, ye found her! Where was she?”
“That is not important now,” Sibylla said. “I do need to talk with her, though. Prithee, go and tell the others we’ve found her.”
“Aye, mistress, but I’ve turned out all them kists. I’ll just put everything—”
“Go along. Kit will put those things away.”
“Aye, sure, mistress. She ought no to ha’ hidden herself that way, and so I hope ye’ll tell her.” Giving Kit a stern look, Tetsy hurried out and shut the door.
“She’s vexed,” Kit said dolefully. “I like Tetsy. I’d no want her to be angry.”
“She will come around,” Sibylla said. “How did you find that place?”
“I saw ye . . . you, the night you went through the wall,” Kit said. “You thought I was asleep, but I did no like the kitchen wi’ ghosts dancing on the walls as they do.” She shivered. “And when ye went through the wall, ye didna come back, so I came here and slept. When I woke, ye were here! Be ye a witch, m’lady?”
“Nay, but why did you hide there, Kit? Did you not hear us calling for you?”
“Did ye? I didna hear,” Kit said. “I kept yon door off the latch for a time, but then I heard men calling me, and I feared they’d see it were . . . was open. So I shut it. Then I was gey afeard to open it again, nae matter how fearsome it got inside.”
“But why did you hide?” Sibylla asked again.
Tears sprang to Kit’s eyes. “ ’Cause the b-bad men hurt Dand,” she sobbed. “He ran from them, but a big ’un caught him at the stairs and swung him over them, saying he’d better tell them. When Dand wriggled to get free, the man just let go.”
“You saw that?”
“Aye, for I’d come up them stairs we just used. I heard a man say he were dead. Then another man said, ‘Odds sakes, then we’ll ha’ to find the lassie ourselves.’ I kent fine they meant me, so I hied me back downstairs to hide in the black room.”
“Did you stay by the door the whole time?”
Kit sniffed and wiped her nose on her sleeve as she muttered, “Aye, sure. Sithee, I couldna feel the back wall, and did I keep seeking it, I feared I’d no find my way back to the door. I feared nae one would find me, and I were gey hungry.”
“Did you know the men who hurt Dand?”
“They were the ones from that day at the river. The one wha’ threw him downstairs said it served Dand right for no telling them where to find the lassie—me! They said summat more, too, m’lady, afore I shut the door.”
“What was that?”
“They said they had enough wi’ just the bairns—Dand and me—being here to make the laird see sense. Did he no see it, they said, they’d fix him for good.”
A chill swept over Sibylla. Grasping the little girl gently by the shoulders, she peered into her eyes as she said, “Kit, your Sunday name is Catherine, is it not?”
Kit shrugged. “Everyone just calls me Kit.”
“But you are the lady Catherine Gordon of Huntly, are you not?”
“Nay, mistress.”
“Don’t lie to me, Kit. This is very important.”
Kit burst into tears.
Certain that she was Catherine, frightened witless and grieving for Dand—whatever their relationship might have been—Sibylla exerted herself to console her.
When only sobs remained, Sibylla said, “I shall ask you no more questions now, but heed me well, Kit. The laird is my husband now, and I must find him, because if those bad men mean him harm, I must do what I can to stop them.”
“Ye’ll leave me here again?”
“Aye, but I know you’ll keep safe this time. You’re to stay with Cook or with Tetsy until I get back. If those bad men should return without the laird or me, you do as you did before and hide in the black room. Can you do that?”
“Aye, if Cook and Tetsy will let me.”
“Don’t ask them. Just take care that nobody sees you go in and then no one will seek you there. But I’ll know just where to find you when we return.”
“Prithee, dinna be all night about it,” Kit said gloomily. “I’ll try, but if aught frightens you, you go there and stay till I come for you.”
Chapter 19
Having seen Kit safely into the care of the cook and Tetsy, Sibylla found Jed Hay in the bailey, drew him aside, and said, “I want messengers sent to the Douglas at Hermitage, Jed, and to Buccleuch’s people at Scott’s Hall, too.”
“Aye, sure, m’lady. Will ye tell me what sort o’ messages we’d be sending?”
“I’ve evidence that the laird is riding into a well-laid trap,” she explained. “All these incidents occurring at a time when Douglas and the Percys are trying to maintain the truce between our two countries seems suspicious to me.”
“Sakes, m’lady, if that be the case, we should prepare for siege here and no be sending more o’ my men from the castle. The laird would say—”
“Jed, after you send the messages to Douglas and to Scott’s Hall, you may do as you see fit to protect Elishaw. But, prithee, answer me this. If a troop of men should arrive here flying the royal banner, would you refuse them entry?”
He frowned. “Me orders are to do nowt to endanger the castle’s neutral position, m’lady, so I canna deny entry to men flying the royal banner. Why, it would ha’ to be a troop led by the King or the Governor, would it no?”
“Aye, sure,” Sibylla said, stifling a sigh. “But that is what I fear may happen. If it does, it means the Governor may try to seize Elishaw. And that we must not allow, certainly not without the laird’s knowledge and agreement.”
“Nay, but how—?”
“I am the laird’s lady now,” she interjected before he could protest further. “I must take responsibility for what happens in his absence, just as his lady mother would if she were here in my stead. So you must send those messengers, so Douglas and Buccleuch’s people will send men to aid us.”
“But the Douglas may already have left Hermitage for Galloway,” Jed said.
“I know he did not mean to stay long and that Buccleuch is with him,” she said. “ ’Tis why I’m sending to the Hall, too. But are you sure they’ve already gone?”
“The Douglas meant to stay but a night or two,” he said. “If Buccleuch is with him, he’ll have some of his own men, too. As for sending to Scott’s Hall, ’twould be two days afore they could get to us even if I was to send a man straightaway, and they’ll likely have gey few to send. To raise more will take even—”
�
�We need more men here, Jed, and Elishaw’s own ladies Meg and Amalie are at the Hall. If our man does not find them at home, tell him he must relay my message to Dod Elliot, Buccleuch’s captain of the guard.”
“I dinna ken that I should—”
“You will send men to both places,” she said firmly. “The Douglas is my godfather, Jed, and Buccleuch is good-brother to the laird and sworn to aid him in such a case. His people know that and will come if they can. Meantime, the laird is riding into deadly peril. I mean to go after him, but first I must know that you will do all you can to keep anyone from entering Elishaw without his leave.”
When he hesitated, she looked him in the eyes and said with all the authority she could muster, “I am mistress here, Jed. I cannot take time to explain everything I have learned to you, or how I’ve learned it, but I am as certain as I can be that this castle is in danger and that your master’s life is threatened, too.”
Jed licked his lips. “I’ve seen, aye, that ye ken things others do not, m’lady.”
“Good,” Sibylla said, grateful for once that her long habit of acquiring facts wherever she could often stirred rumors that she was a witch. “I want two men to ride with me—good men. Indeed, if Hodge Law did not go with the laird, I want him with me. He is a good man for tracking the others, is he not?”
“The best I have wi’ Jock the Nose gone wi’ the laird. And Hodge do be here.”
“I shall leave the choice of the second man to you and Hodge. But I want them ready to depart as soon as possible,” Sibylla added. “Don’t fail me, Jed.”
“I’ll send Willy the Horn,” Jed said. “If ye find the laird, ’twould be best an ye can let him know straightaway that ye be friendly.” He hesitated.
“What is it?” Sibylla asked. “If it is aught I should know . . .”
“Aye, well, I were just thinking on the laird, mistress, and what he’ll likely say about this decision o’ yours to ride after him.”
“I know what he’ll say,” she said. “But to send someone who does not think this matter is urgent will just persuade him that it is not. I can make him see it as I do.”
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