by Amanda Scott
No one was there. But hearing footsteps above, she waited. And presently the plump, rosy lass who served them came into view round the turn.
“Flory, I need help lacing my kirtle,” Mairi said quietly.
“Aye, m’lady, I were just a-coming. Be the lady Fiona up yet?”
“Nay, but I doubt we will wake her.”
“That lassie does sleep as if she were deaf,” Flory said, straightening her cap. “Will I brush your hair first, m’lady?”
“Nay, I’ll dress first. The air is gey chilly in here.”
While she concentrated on dressing and not waking Fiona, who would sleep soundly for only so long, Mairi did not think of Maxwell. But as she made her way downstairs to the hall to break her fast, she wondered if he might still be angry.
That he had been fuming just before he’d taken leave of them would have been plain to the meanest intelligence. She was sorry for that, although her father had been the one to anger him. Even Dunwythie had admitted that a sheriff generally did command a whole shire. Still, the Maxwells were overstepping tradition. That, too, was clear.
Never in Annandale’s history had its nobles paid their share of the Crown’s demands to anyone save their own steward or seneschal to deliver to the King. That the sheriff hoped to change that tradition was one thing. That he had the right or the power to do so without Annandale’s consent was another question.
Still, she could wish that Robert Maxwell had come into her life in some other way—and as some person other than a Maxwell.
Chuckling at her own whimsy, she thrust all thought of him from her mind at the hall landing and stepped onto the dais with a smile for her father and another for her stepmother. The latter had come down earlier than usual.
“I trust you slept well, madam,” Mairi said.
“Och, aye, as well as I ever do these days, I expect,” Phaeline said.
Dunwythie was halfway through his breakfast, his attention clearly on other matters. But after Mairi had taken a manchet from the basket and allowed a gillie to serve her ale from the flagon, and a small fried trout doubtless caught fresh from the river that morning, she said to her father, “Sir, do you think the Sheriff of Dumfries can just force his authority on Annandale?”
Giving her a fond look, Dunwythie said, “Ye women! I tell ye, ye needna fret about such things.”
“Mayhap we need not, sir,” Mairi said. “But one dislikes seeing anyone leave here in anger, as Robert Maxwell did yestereve. And he did say the sheriff has power to seize our estates. Can he, sir?”
“Nay, nay, lass. Dinna be thinking such things. It willna happen. I mean to make it plain that I’ll have nae bowing down to the Maxwells. They just want to exert such power to raise more gelt for their own purpose. I ken fine what it be, too—rebuilding Caerlaverock!” With a look that included his lady wife, he added, “We’ll be saying no more about this now, d’ye hear?”
Mairi willingly complied with what amounted to an order. She nearly always preferred peace to its absence. Although her father shared the same peaceful nature, like many men accustomed to command, he was apt to lose his temper when anyone who owed him duty defied him.
Despite her intent to banish thoughts and memories of Robert Maxwell, they continued to plague her, stirring oddly conflicting emotions as they did. She would recall his arrogance one moment, how clear his eyes were the next. Uneasily recalling his anger, she remembered the look he had given her as he’d turned to go.
There had been no anger in that look.
Calling her wits to order at last, she thrust him out of her head and focused instead on diverting Fiona from thoughts of Will Jardine and on fixing her own thoughts on what her father could teach her about the Dunwythie estates.
Leaving Spedlins Tower as the sun peeked over the eastern hills, Rob and his men enjoyed a peaceful ride back to Dumfries, fifteen miles to the southwest.
Mist rising from the river Annan and the still rain-damp landscape clung to shrubbery and trees in shredded skirts, but by the time the sun had climbed above the hilltops, the mist had disappeared.
Rob and his men forded the Annan a few miles south of Applegarth. Staying north of the springtime morass of water meadows and bogs surrounding Lochmaben Castle, they met the Dumfries road a few miles to the west.
Two hours later, they reached the royal burgh of Dumfries and followed its High Street to the tall stone edifice known as Alan’s Tower.
Overlooking the river Nith, the tower was ancient. It had belonged to Alan, last Lord of Galloway until Archie assumed that title 140 years later. Rob’s branch of Maxwells having owned the Tower for some time before that, it had long served as the residence and court of the hereditary Sheriff of Dumfries.
Dismounting in the yard, Rob tossed his reins to a minion, then paused to exchange a few words with the itinerant knacker, Parland Dow, who had his cottage rent-free from the Maxwells as payment for his many services to them.
Touching his cap, he said to Rob, “Good to see ye, sir. I be a-heading into Annandale from here but I mean to be in Kirkcudbright again nae more than a sennight from now, ten days at most.”
“I should be back at Trailinghail by then easily,” Rob said. “Fin Walters will have work for you there in any event.”
Bidding the knacker a safe journey, Rob strode inside. He was not looking forward to his interview with his brother, but he rarely put things off merely because they would be unpleasant.
Even so, when the elderly porter informed him that Alexander Maxwell wanted to see him at once, Rob felt his stomach clench just as it had so often in his youth under similar circumstances. The reaction was brief but annoying.
“The master be in his wee chamber off the hall, Master Robert… sir, I should say,” the old man added with a smile. “Mind how ye go now.”
“You sound just as you did when I was twelve and Alex was in rare kippage, Edgar,” Rob said, clapping him on a shoulder. “I’m gey old now for skelping.”
“Aye, sir, and too big, I’m thinking. And much too skilled wi’ a sword, come to that,” the porter added dryly. “I just meant ye should avoid the solar. Herself and Lady Maxwell be a-talking in there.”
That information drew a smile from Rob. The servants referred to only one person as “Herself,” and that was his maternal grandmother, Arabella, Lady Kelso. “I’ll go in to them after I see my brother,” he said.
“Herself will be that glad to clap eyes on ye, aye. As for the master…” He spread his hands eloquently and left it at that.
Rob nodded and thanked him, although he had needed no further warning about the state of his brother’s temper. If anything was likely to exacerbate it, it was the presence of Lady Kelso with her ever-sharp tongue.
Outspoken as she was, she was Rob’s favorite kinswoman. When he left the porter, the knowledge that she was home acted on him as it always had when he was younger, too. It made him smile, knowing what she would say to him if she knew that Alex was in a temper and wanted to see him at once:
“Then you probably deserve the rough side of his tongue. And if you dare to lose your temper when he’s lost his, my lad, you’ll deserve every lick you get.”
As he crossed the great hall, where servants were setting up trestles for the midday meal, he drew a breath to ease his returning tension and resolved to keep his temper whatever Alex said to him.
Since Alex could not yet know what the Annandale report was, Lady Kelso or Alex’s lady wife, Cassandra, had likely stirred his temper before Rob’s return. Not that it mattered what or who had stirred it. Rob would have to deal with it.
He had faced many such occasions in the past, and his own temper was ever uncertain. Although he had rarely dared to give his anger free rein with Alex, it had happened more than once. Worse than that was the fact that he had rarely bothered to restrain it with others then unless someone like Lady Kelso forced him to do so.
Keeping his temper in Alex’s presence to avoid the additional consequences of losing i
t had been about all he could manage in those days.
Alex was a good man at heart, but he was also a man who knew his duty, and he’d believed strongly that he had a duty to raise Rob properly. Their mother had died when Rob was four, and their father had followed her three years later, leaving Alex as Rob’s guardian when the former was barely one-and-twenty years old.
He had reached the door to the chamber Alex used as an office. With a single rap on the door to announce himself, Rob entered.
Alex sat in a two-elbow chair behind the long table on which he dealt with the castle accounts and business of the Sheriff of Dumfries. He was in his fortieth year and his dark hair showed gray at the temples with a salty scattering of gray and white throughout. He had put on weight over the past few years and would have jowls and a second chin before many more had passed.
He looked up and frowned at Rob’s entrance. His blue eyes were a few shades darker than Rob’s, his complexion paler.
“You’re back,” he said.
“I expect you knew I was, since Edgar said you wanted to see me at once,” Rob said, shutting the door. There being no other chair or stool in the small room, he stood facing the table, trying to read his brother’s expression. Although Alex was clearly annoyed, Rob could not tell if he was annoyed with him or something else.
Alex said, “I did not expect you back so soon. Did the undertaking prosper?”
“No more than either of us expected it would.”
“Damnation, Rob, Dunwythie is one man, whilst you had the authority of the Sheriff of Dumfries to insist that he comply with our demands. Meeting him face to face, as you did, you ought to have persuaded him easily.”
“He paid my demand no more attention than he paid the warrant you sent him last spring or the second one you sent just before winter set in hard.”
“He pretends I have no authority to issue my warrants, which is absurd,” Alex said. “The man claims to hold to ancient ways of the stewartry. But such ways have no place in proper government today.”
“The only dale in Dumfriesshire that agrees with that is Nithsdale, and it has long been a sheriffdom,” Rob reminded him. “The others pay their taxes through a steward or directly to the King.”
“Aye, but I mean to exert my full authority as sheriff over all Dumfriesshire. So any area that continues to resist me will quickly learn its error. I expected you to teach Dunwythie that lesson straightaway if he continued to defy me.”
“How?” Rob demanded. “You did not want me to take an army with me.”
“I’d have had you do whatever was necessary,” Alex replied icily.
“That is not an answer to my question,” Rob said, meeting his gaze. “We have enjoyed peace in the Borders long enough for men to grow crops again, after decades of cross-border strife. Now you suggest the Maxwells should stir conflict with our own Scottish neighbors? Do you want war with Annandale?”
“Don’t act the dafty,” Alex said irritably. “‘Tis ever your way, Rob, to make outrageous comments rather than deal as you should with the matter at hand. You needed only to show our strength. I told all those lairds, in the formal writ I sent out last spring, that they had no lawful choice but to submit. Letting Dunwythie so easily defy my authority is just further proof of my own error in having entrusted you with such an important task. I had hoped the responsibility of managing Trailinghail had improved you. But I fear you are still the same scapegrace you always were. Or perhaps, having inherited land in Galloway, you no longer think of yourself as a Maxwell of Dumfries.”
Gritting his teeth to keep from uttering the angry words that leaped to his tongue, Rob wondered if his brother would ever stop flinging perceived errors of the past in his teeth. Aware that Alex often read him more accurately than he could read Alex, Rob said, “Mayhap you have forgotten how fast the men of Annandale can assemble their army. Having an English garrison in their midst at Lochmaben has given them much practice in acting swiftly.”
“And so they might have reacted had I led an army into Annandale,” Alex retorted. “Did I not explain that that is why you were to take only your men with you, and none of mine? My writ of authority should have been enough to show Dunwythie that you meant business without an armed host. Were I to lead even my normal tail of twenty men into Annandale, it could stir the natives to a clash. Nevertheless, if they force me to summon an army of Maxwells to my banner, be sure that I will take enough with me to end all the impudence in Annandale.”
Rob said, “I cannot imagine, nor could I from the outset, how you expected me to persuade a man of Dunwythie’s stamp to submit to your authority with only a half dozen men. Nor have you yet told me how. As it was, Old Jardine warned that I should not take any of his men along other than Will, lest I stir conflict.”
“Mayhap you should have ignored him and used your own judgment.”
“He is our ally, Alex, and he knows the dale. He pointed out that Dunwythie would not allow so many enemies inside his wall and that they would be useless outside it, and might even ignite trouble with others in the dale. He made good sense, so I took only my own men. At least, his lordship heard me out.”
“Aye, sure, and then dismissed all that you said to him,” Alex said.
“Surely, you are aware that he looks upon Maxwells as lesser creatures who, in the past, have twice sided with the English. He flatly denies that he owes you either his submission or his fealty.”
“Dunwythie is said to be a man of peace,” Alex said, as if he were explaining something simple to a child. “You had only to explain to him that the law supports my authority, that his grace the King supports it—and explain my right of seizure.”
“You’ve just said that your warrant explained all that,” Rob said.
“Perhaps the man cannot read.”
With Dunwythie’s image still strong in his mind, Rob smiled.
“Do you find humor in my words?” Alex demanded, frowning.
“Dunwythie is an educated man,” Rob said. “He knows his worth, and he wields great influence. Even Old Jardine respects him. In troth, from all I could learn about him, his influence extends far beyond Annandale. I’m telling you, if you threaten him, most of the other barons of Dumfriesshire will rise to his defense. And do not forget that the Douglases are kinsmen to his wife.”
“Do you dare to try teaching me about kinships, my lad? You would do better to have carried out my orders. Instead, you return with nothing accomplished and excuses on your tongue.”
“By God, Alex,” Rob said, bristling. “I am no longer twelve years old, nor am I dependent on you or subject to your constant authority. You are my brother and a man to whom I owe familial duty, but I am not your lackey. Nor do I have to stand here and listen to this like a misbehaving—”
“Och, aye, I forgot,” Alex interjected, his tone scathing. “Now you are a great landowner, the Laird of Trailinghail. And as that fine estate lies across the river Nith, now you count such small things as loyalty to your clan and loyalty to Nithsdale, to Dumfries, and to me as nowt.”
“If that is what you believe, we’ve nowt to discuss,” Rob snapped.
“Aye, sure, lose your temper. It is ever the same with you. The minute someone calls you to account for your actions, or their lack—”
“No more,” Rob said curtly.
“Nay, then, although I’d hoped you had learned to use that stubborn head of yours to prove yourself a worthy member of our great clan. But you are still the hot-tempered, impatient… Damnation, Rob, I’ve no doubt now that you angered Dunwythie as much as you are angering me now. If you were still a lad—”
“Aye, ye’d skelp me blue. But you’d soon find yourself at a standstill, trying anything so daft now,” Rob said. “If you need someone to treat again with Dunwythie, you will doubtless find a more competent man quite easily.”
“Fiend seize you, Rob. I’d hoped…” He sighed. “God kens I’d hoped you had grown out of these ways of yours. But I should have known you had not
.”
“Good-bye, Alex,” Rob said. “I’ll not impose further on your hospitality.”
“Och, aye, run back to Trailinghail,” Alex said with acid dripping from his tongue. “’Tis ever your way. I’m told your people there think highly of you. One can only pray that you do not disappoint them as you have me.”
Rob turned and left, striding back across the hall toward the stairway so angrily that men moving toward tables stepped hastily out of his way.
“Sir! Master Rob! Hi, there, an ye please, sir!”
The high-pitched voice interrupted his streaming thoughts, and Rob turned, wrathfully meaning to tell any gillie insolent enough to shout the length of the hall at him how much in error such behavior was.
The black-haired, blue-eyed lad looked only nine or ten years old. He met Rob’s scowl bravely.
“What the devil do you mean by shouting at me like that?” Rob demanded.
His pointed little chin thrusting boldly forward, the lad replied, “Herself did say I should shout the house down if I must to keep ye from leaving. That’s why.”
“Oh, she did, did she?”
“Aye, she did. And she said ye’d look as red as raw beef, too. So she kens ye well, Herself does. And she tellt me never to mind your temper.”
“You mind your tongue. Is that all she said to tell me?”
“Aye! Well, no the bit about raw beef… no to tell ye that bit, any road. But she did say to stop ye, and to say ye’re no to go afore she talks wi’ ye.”
Rob looked past the lad to the dais, where his sister-in-law, the lady Cassandra Maxwell, stood near the high table gazing myopically at him. Apparently realizing he had seen her, she smiled warily.
Movement in the open doorway behind her—which led to the ladies’ solar—diverted Rob’s eye as his grandmother, Lady Kelso, stepped into the opening.