The Border Lord

by Sophia James

  A great cheer went up, echoing through the ranks of his opponents and Grace ran, shaking off Lizzie’s arm, ran through the grass and across the field to the place he had fallen, the shape of others only peripheral, flail and mace as nothing to stop her reaching the one man whom she sought.

  Lachlan.

  He struggled with breath and the blood from beneath his aventail dripped on to the skirt of her cape. Bending, she rolled him over to one side where perhaps he could take the air that he needed.

  Panic settled full when he did not and she shook him until he coughed, spittle and blood, thick, formed across his face.

  ‘Take her.’ A voice from behind, the cadence of it familiar. Malcolm Kerr. There was a whirring slap of leather and her hands were tied, the wooden pommel of a falchion catching her unawares and then all she knew was the rust-sharp taste of blood.

  ‘She has woken.’

  Grace heard the words through a haze of white. Opening her eyes, she saw she was in a well-appointed room, pictures of angels above her. Angels. Was she dead? When the pain struck her arm, she knew that she wasn’t and caught her breath. Two women beside her looked worried. They wore nuns’ habits, each with a gold cross dangling from their necks.

  ‘Keep still. I am bleeding you.’

  She did as she was told, trying to speak, trying to ask, trying to form a name in her mind, but she could not.

  Lachlan?

  She wondered why she could not, and with her tongue, explored the outside of her lip on the left side. It was swollen sore.

  ‘I have stitched your arm where the blade hit it. There will be a mark there.’

  ‘Laird Lachlan Kerr? Is he safe?’

  Silence. Grace knew the moment that nobody spoke that he was lost. She turned from them, from the eyes that could measure her grief. Her husband dead. The only man she would ever love. Nothing left of any of it.

  When she woke again it was night. A single candle burnt beside the bed, shadow pushed away.

  ‘Gracie?’

  Judith sat beside her, her smile and voice soft, and a look in her face that hardly knew how to say what she thought.

  I am so very sorry.

  For the first time in this room of angels Grace felt tears coursing down her cheeks, wetting the sheets and the bandage, her body shrunk into regret, hope flown like the cherubs hovering above her, wings lifting them up, into another place, a softer place. The place that Lachlan had gone to? The very best of the King’s knights surely should have a rest in Heaven that was finally easy?

  ‘You have been here for almost six days.’

  ‘Here?’

  ‘A nunnery just outside Eddington. Malcolm Kerr held a meeting with Stephen and Father yesterday.’

  Lord, so he was alive. She had not imagined his voice.

  ‘Why?’

  Her cousin tucked her hand in her lap. ‘You need to get well first, Grace. You need to eat again for you are so thin…’

  ‘Why?’ She repeated the question again, waiting for the right answer.

  ‘He said that he would still consider you as a bride.’

  Horror spiralled, choking her with the dreadful certainty of the man’s cleverness.

  He wanted her money and he would get it because Stephen and her uncle would have no way to counteract his plans without ruining them all.

  ‘I c-cannot…’

  ‘I know, but until we can think of a way to get you out of here we need him to believe that you will. He is a powerful force, with friends in high places and the ear of Edward. His mission north has been hailed as a triumph.’

  ‘His standard was not th-there, he c-came only at the e-end…’

  ‘Go to sleep. I’ll stay beside you, I promise.’

  ‘And U-Uncle…?’

  ‘Is speaking with the King to ask if you could stay here at the nunnery.’

  ‘For ever and ever.’ Grace could not even contemplate the very length of it as she closed her eyes and dreamed.

  They were in the cave, a shadow cave. Neither Belridden. Nor Grantley. Not the soft mist of the north nor the damp of this lower lying city. Lighter. Warmer.

  ‘Je t’aime toujours.’

  French. I will love you, always. French as fluent as one raised there, his hand across hers…

  No, that was not right. Nothing left. A moth in amber in her fingers laughing, an argus moth and double banded.

  For luck, Donald had said. Just for luck.

  Good? Bad? She had not asked.

  ‘Grace. Grace.’ Her uncle’s voice. The heaviness of her eyelids and then his face over her and worried.

  ‘We are here with you. There was a battle and you were hurt…’

  Killed. Dead. Lachlan’s face turned away with the spittle of blood. In that one horrible second everything that had happened came back. She could not catch breath with the grief of it.

  ‘I have spoken with Edward of England. He wants to meet you and find out what your wishes are.’

  ‘My w-wishes?’

  ‘For your future.’

  A future. Grace could barely think about getting through the next hour, let alone a whole future. She shook her head and resolution firmed.

  ‘I wish to st-stay at G-Grantley. If it is marriage to M-Malcolm Kerr he is thinking of…’

  The guilt that covered her uncle’s cheeks was telling. ‘If there is any way Ginny could be spared…’

  Grace held her hand up and he stopped.

  Her life was ruined already and Ginny’s was just beginning. But to marry Malcolm Kerr…No, she could not do it. Would not do it. Even for Ginny.

  ‘I can p-pay Kerr off. The dowry is all he wanted in the f-first place and if it is offered free of any conditions…’

  Her uncle nodded. ‘We can try.’

  The headache that had been threatening throbbed now. Lachlan’s face smeared in blood and stains from the field on to which he had fallen. Where was his body now?

  ‘Were p-prisoners held as ransom?’

  ‘Yes, by the English. They are at Watchlaw Castle, awaiting repayments from their vassals.’

  For the first time a quiver of something akin to hope surged in Grace’s breast. Watchlaw. A castle not far from Eddington.

  ‘Could you arrange f-for me to see them? I need to f-find out what happened—’ She stopped.

  ‘I could try, though I have seen the list and Lachlan Kerr is not numbered amongst them.’ Grace squeezed her uncle’s hand when he held it out and prayed to God for a miracle.

  Lachlan pulled at the ropes on his leg and cursed the English bastards who had sent him here.

  Connor’s condition had worsened, and one of the Elliot soldiers brought in with their group had a gaping wound on his thigh that was untended and weeping.

  Lachlan shouted out for the hundredth time that day, ‘Bring medicine, you English dogs, for there are those here who are ill.’

  His own shoulder ached. He had tried to look at it, but had given up, the effort required not worth the pain, and brackish water all that was left to tend it. Looking across at Ian, he saw the same anger in his eyes that he was certain must be in his own.

  ‘It seems as if we have been forgotten. Perhaps your brother has counselled the English so. Or your wife?’

  He had heard Grace had been seen in Malcolm’s arms after the battle, entwined in each other like the lovers she had purported them not to be, and the pure rage that consumed Lachlan still lingered.

  Betrayed when he had thought her to be so true? What constancy lay in any of it? Another feckless wife! He tried not to care, for there were other matters more pressing. They had not seen Duncan or Alistair Elliot since yesterday afternoon and Lachlan wondered where the hell it was they had gone. The first sacrifices? He kept his fears to himself. ‘David will no doubt send missives negotiating our return.’

  ‘Aye, but will they come in time?’ Ian looked pointedly down at the gaping hole on the Elliot soldier’s thigh and Lachlan shook away worry. They had been here by his re
ckoning for nigh on ten days and every single piece of clothing worth something had been taken from them. Sitting barefoot in thin sarks on a cold stone floor, he was blindingly aware of the losses they had suffered.

  Lord, they would die here in the hands of the English behind bars in the gloom and be buried…where? He was just about to shout again when keys rattled from further out.

  Bates, the jailer, stepped through, a mace in hand, the wicked steel on its spikes showing hair and skin where some unlucky recipient had strayed too close.

  ‘You’ve a visitor. Make sharp.’

  Considering their ankles were bound to the wall and their hands tied, Lachlan did his best not to smile. He had done so yesterday at some other order that the man had given and felt the damage on his neck. Better to shut up and wait for a chance. Was this it? He unfolded his body and leaned back against the stone, a light-headed dizziness overtaking all other intent. God, when had they last been fed? The day before yesterday or the day before that again?

  Grace stepped into the dim like a princess, her hair covered with a burgundy scarf and the russet cape she wore swirling with fine fur, and if her face was pale it now paled further, ashen pallid. Her eyes were huge pools of darkness against a chalky countenance as she saw him, just a spark of question and then rolling back in her head, the small cry of his name barely audible as she simply crumpled, down, down to a floor filthy with rushes and dust and silence.

  Lach pulled with all his might against the rope, against the futility of capture and hurt and bondage as his wife lay like a doll ten yards from him, her body strangely thinner. What the hell had just happened? He shouted her name loud, until the mace came down, shoving good sense across bad, the sound of his breath ragged and frenzied, the tang of fear choking panic.

  And then she was gone, lifted by the jailer, carelessly, he thought.

  And gone.

  The clang of the door, the fading of light and then darkness.

  ‘Gun toireach an diabhul fhein leis anns a bhas sibh, direach di Ifrinn!’ His curse followed them into the silence, echoing around stone—‘Ifrinn, Ifrinn, Ifrinn’—back and back to him as if some unholy ghost played games with his dread. Then quiet, his breath the only noise in the gloom.

  ‘What’s ye wife…doing here?’ Con’s voice was weakened from his malady.

  ‘More to the point, will she be back?’ he answered and hoped like hell that Bates was not hurting her. Why had she come alone and at darkness and where was Malcolm?

  Alive. Lachlan was alive. Alive, not under his name but that of Angus MacIndoe. She checked the list of the Scottish prisoners as she recovered in the room Bates held as his own, a drink of mead in her hand and a smile that confused him.

  Lord. When had she become so good at deceit? The faint. The blade. The smile. The added use of her stutter to make the man opposite give her a look that was almost…fatherly.

  ‘I c-c-cannot understand wh-wh-what came o-over me.’

  ‘The dungeons do that to anyone and your uncle should be hanged for letting you come down here alone.’

  She slipped him another coin from her purse to keep him talking.

  ‘Usually the knights from battle would be ransomed, but these ones are to hang the day after tomorrow.’

  Grace felt her throat constrict with fear. ‘C-Could they b-be released if e-enough m-money was p-paid?’

  The man stood still. Calculating, Grace reasoned. Calculating his risk and her ability to pay. Finally he shook his head.

  ‘Three prisoners could not just disappear…’

  When he stopped, she saw the glint of something that she knew could be dangerous. With a smile she placed her cup on the table and stood. Push him too far and he would talk to those she did not want him to.

  ‘Th-thank y-you. I shall f-find my uncle and l-leave.’

  ‘And if anyone asks after you, what exactly should I say?’

  Grace pushed more coinage across the table.

  ‘Say n-nothing.’

  Time stretched out, one hour and then two, the snores of the others telling Lach that they were asleep. He moved carefully and stood so as not to make a noise and alert Con or Ian to anything of difference, and with his foot reached out and out towards the blade his wife had dropped unseen as she fell, the small silver of it just visible under a pile of rushes.

  He could not have planned it better himself, the crumpled faint and the careful letting go of what was in her hand. None had seen but him. Finally he had a foothold, an edge of the dagger, its hilt turning so that he could catch it with his toe, the lack of brogans an unexpected benefit. Stooping, he picked it up, the sharp edge of steel against rope, then freedom. No restraints. He rubbed at the tight prickling numbness at his wrists, thinking.

  By the morning light Lachlan had formed a plan. He would take Bates when he came with the water at midday. A corpse could hardly stay inside a cell—the fetid smell of the decaying flesh of the Elliot soldier was all-encompassing—the groans that had punctuated the night had stopped. Bates would have to come in and this knife gave him an edge of surprise. If they did not take this chance, there would never be another one. He was sure of it. Eleven days and no visitors save for his wife, and Duncan and Alistair and the others lost to them.

  Ian had seen the blade when he woke and his eyebrows had risen and fallen again with Lachlan’s gesture of silence. Too far to reach across and cut his bonds with these fetters around his ankles, fetters he did not dare to slice in case Bates saw such freedom before turning the key. The moments stretched into mid-morning, relentlessly slow.

  Grace came as he was snoozing, catching up from the lost sleep from the night before. He opened his eyes and she was there, watching him, her cape this morning of white velvet and again she wore a scarf.

  ‘I’m not certain that this is a good idea, my Lady.’ Bates’s voice.

  ‘It is only a cr-cross of g-gold and I should just like to place one each around their necks b-before…’ She stopped and wiped her eyes with a dainty kerchief. Lachlan could see no sign at all of tears.

  ‘Then in and out in a second. Do not tarry.’

  She stepped through the door and started towards Lachlan, a look in her eyes he had never seen there before. Commanding. Forceful. Trying to communicate with her eyes what she wanted him to do.

  She passed the slingshot to him under the cover of the cape and he took it, notching the stone even before she had stepped away. It flew through the bars and between the eyes of Bates, who did not see it coming.

  ‘The keys.’

  She ran to get them, placing them in his fingers with surprisingly steady hands before leaving the cell to pick up a bag. Monks’ robes and sandals, fine leather and warm wool spilled out on to the filthy stone floor.

  ‘W-We have about f-four more minutes before another guard comes. I counted the w-watches yesterday.’

  She watched as he dressed Con. ‘C-Can he walk?’

  ‘Yes.’ He gave her the answer that he wanted rather than the truth, but he could not leave Connor here to the mercy of the English. Donald would be waiting for him, and Mary with the new bairn who had not seen even one full year.

  Slinging his friend across his shoulder, he followed Grace out, dagger in hand. Ian brought up the rear with the slingshot and a pocketful of stones. These would have to be enough as they walked, his wife taking this corner and that passage and all about them the living and breathing wetness of stone.

  It could not be long until they were stopped, for in the distance he could make out voices. Grace seemed to hear none of it, intent on gaining the outside. For the first time he had followed her he did not notice a limp.

  ‘H-Here. It is h-here.’

  They slipped into a small room, a jug of mead on the table. Waiting, she gestured quiet and the hammer of feet passed by them after a moment.

  ‘N-Now we must just run.’

  There was no finesse as they careened down the corridors and into a larger yard to the shouts of soldiers and the
first real opposition. Sitting Con down against a wall and gesturing his wife to stay with him, Lachlan took the knife in hand. He made short work of the first two and Ian finished off the last one.

  Grabbing Con again, they negotiated a room full of laundry and then another room largely empty. Two more moments and they were through an unprotected gate and outside, four horses waiting tethered to a rail, an urchin looking up in relief.

  ‘Thought you were not comin’.’ He held out his hand to receive a coin and scampered off. Lachlan passed the inert form of Con up to Ian before turning back to Grace.

  ‘Your turn.’

  She shook her head. ‘I was n-never coming. It would be far more dangerous to t-take me and my family is here…’

  He pulled her to him, anger giving the movement more than an edge of roughness. ‘Think again, my lady wife, for I was never going to leave you.’

  Chapter Fourteen

  Up on the horse the same old panic claimed her, but this time Lachlan seemed to be prepared, his arms hiking her full up against his body and leaving hardly a space between them.

  ‘I h-have organised more horses to be w-w-waiting in Murton.’

  He ignored her completely, tying off the bridle of the spare mount and proceeding in exactly the opposite direction that she had indicated.

  ‘It is not this way…’

  ‘Forgive me if I do not follow your pathway, but I feel it wiser to lay out my own escape route.’

  ‘I d-don’t understand.’

  ‘It is said that you left the battlefield in the arms of my brother.’

  Suddenly she saw it all. The anger and the suspicion. Did he think this had been her doing? If she had been less afraid of being on a horse she might have hit him, but her hands were too busy with the action of just clinging on.

  ‘Y-You would th-think th-that of me?’