by Jackie Ivie
“I gave the holdings to the man who’d earned them, and then demonstrated to me and everyone in the land why. They belong to my champion. Payton Dunn-Fadden.”
The lances in front of Payton tipped slightly at the approval in the king’s voice. Kilchurning looked very uncomfortable, as his face went red.
“But the news Kilchurning brought me…I can’t overlook. You do understand? Or have you not heard?”
Dallis watched the men below them, and all had the same expression: stern. She must be the lone one questioning it, but bit her tongue to hold back any such words.
“You know the law. And my edict was law. The keep, the lands, and all the holdings go with the heiress. And I cannot change it at this juncture.”
“Fair enough,” Payton replied.
“Well, how can I give over the keep, lands, and holdings to you, if she is carrying Kilchurning’s bastard?”
“He told you…what?” Dallis couldn’t help it. She blurted it out, her mouth went open with shock, and the last word was almost a scream.
“Now, my dear. Calm yourself.”
“Calm—! But…he lies! It’s a lie. I swear to you—” she began.
“He says the same of you.”
“What? He says I lie? How would he ken? He’s na’ met me but twice!”
The king chuckled. “Well, he must have been very intimate on short acquaintance then.”
“He’s never touched me!” Dallis’s voice shook. She was so angry, nothing else mattered. “Never. I swear it!”
“And he swears the same. Don’t you, My Laird Kilchurning?”
Dallis turned with the monarch and watched him nod. Her mouth went into a snarl and she turned back to the king.
“But I can prove it. My aunt was with me. Every moment in my tower. She would ken his lie!”
“He has already told me of Lady Evelyn Caruth. And her leanings. I’m afraid, my dear, that she is also branded a liar in this mess.”
“But…it’s na’ true.”
She was close to sobbing now. And she could hear the reaction on the floor as the lances slapped against each other in warning. Dallis clenched her hands together and sucked for breath. She had to calm! She had to find the state she’d been taught of, the one that makes it possible to absorb tremendous suffering and shock without complaint. She had to! She didn’t know what Payton might do, otherwise, she didn’t know what the diminutive king was capable of, and she was afraid to see it.
“What…are you going to do?” she asked finally, in a voice that was steady-sounding and sharp.
The king pulled back into his chair and regarded her. “Well, her antecedents are not in question here. She is definitely a Caruth. No other clan has their stoicism.”
“Well?” she asked again.
His eyes narrowed at her. “Firstly, I’m going to fine My Laird Kilchurning for disobeying my edict in the first place. He will find this fine onerous. Especially when I add it to the bill he will incur by my hospitality.”
“I’m na’ staying here!”
The king looked over at Kilchurning. “I have a dungeon for those that displease me. And if they displease me enough, I have them executed,” he said.
Dallis’s heart beat a staccato rhythm in her breast, and she concentrated on modulating it…calming it. Just then the babe moved, sending the tingle through her womb and making everything crystal clear and focused.
“I was telling the Lady Dunn-Fadden my plans. I am also going to have to fine my champion. For the same transgress. I will also be adding in the cost to house that bastard, Dunrobin. And his household.”
“For how long?” Payton asked.
The king sighed heavily, and turned from her to the floor again.
“I am trying to discourse with the lady here. If I have much more interference, I’ll be issuing other orders. Is this understood? Both of you?”
Payton nodded. After a moment, Kilchurning did also.
The king turned back to her, put a hand to his forehead and squeezed it with ungentle fingers.
“I was just preparing to inform her ladyship that my hospitality will match hers. As long as she carries this child. That is the length of her stay.”
“Over four…months?” Dallis whispered.
“I need to see if you birth a Dunn-Fadden or Kilchurning. The bairn’s heritage, my dear, cannot lie. So, it is decreed.”
“What will happen then?” Dallis asked.
“If it is Dunn-Fadden’s bairn, he goes about his way, with his wife and child and his legacy. As I already decreed once a-fore.”
“And…Kilchurning?” Dallis asked.
“If the child is his, then I’ll have to make the castle, and lands, and all holdings over to the child. Not to the sire…although he will have control of it, as is usual.”
“I meant, what will you do to Kilchurning when his lie is discovered?” Dallis asked, turning a narrow glance over at the man she almost wed.
“My head hurts too much for this.”
“Then, allow me to devise the punishment,” Dallis replied. “Decree that.”
King James removed his hand and looked at her. Then he smiled. He looked genuinely amused. “Agreed,” he finally said.
Dallis put all the hatred and malice she felt into the look toward Kilchurning. She had to be satisfied with his lack of color because otherwise he didn’t move.
The king stood. There wasn’t a breath of anything happening on the floor. He was almost to another door before he turned and then returned to her. “It must be the ache throughout my head. I forgot. One more thing I must make clear. And I need a hold put to my champion, first.”
Dallis looked at Payton as men-at-arms seemed to come from everywhere to surround him and his clansmen.
“The lady will be kept in solitude. With my guards about her.”
“Nay!” Dallis’s throat hurt to scream it, and it actually hurt worse that it was in unison with Payton’s cry.
“I canna’ guarantee her safety otherwise. And the safety of the bairn. Come with me, Lady Dunn-Fadden. Quickly. A-fore I have to make good on my threats.”
Dallis could see the wisdom of that as steel was getting pulled in the area about Clan Dunn-Fadden. She ran to the door, and then stopped.
She called out to him. Waited. Called again. She couldn’t see through the tears streaking her face and had to shove an arm across her eyes to blot them away.
Payton had all four of his clansmen holding to him, and several more arms putting up a wall against his progress toward her when he heard her. He ceased struggling, looked across the chamber at her over everyone, and locked eyes.
I love you.
She mouthed it and disappeared through the door.
Chapter 21
“How long has it been? Why are there only six marks? Well? What does the six mean? ’Tis been only six? Why does na’ somebody answer me?”
“Because you already ken the answer, Payton. Sit down. You’re driving us mad with your pacing about.”
“You saying the six is true? That’s it, is na’ it? Six? We’ve been here six days…and I have na’ seen her? Na’ once!”
“See? You already knew the answer.”
“Curse you, Redmond!” Payton let fly one of his skeans, hitting the shield target they’d set up in their chambers with a thunk of sound.
“And that’s what I feel for you, Kilchurning. And that!”
Payton had his skeans depleted, all ten of them, and was grabbing his hand-ax when Redmond stood.
“Now, cease that, Dunn-Fadden. You’ll be putting a hole through another tapestry, and we already have to pay a fine for the last one.”
“Fines! Fines! I pay a fine for breathing in this accursed rock! Tell me something I doona’ ken!”
“Dunrobin is useless as a spy. Thus far.”
Payton stopped the cocked motion of the hand-ax and looked across at Redmond. “Spy?” he asked.
“Aye. He tells me he can get word. He’s been trying to find her whereabo
uts. Without success. Thus far.”
“Thus far? All have failed at finding her whereabouts, thus far! I am nearly desperate enough to beg.”
Redmond sobered. “You want to see her?”
“Aye.”
“Maybe…speak with her?”
Payton lowered the hand-ax onto his shoulder and welcomed the weight as something tangible…not like the dreams he’d been cursed with, and the worries he’d been suffering, and the ache in his heart that nothing cured.
“Aye.”
“Then, do as the Stewart requires. Give him battles.”
“Nay!” Payton retaliated with a fling of the hand-ax, slamming into the shield they’d set up that was already thick with knife hilts. They all watched as the wood slowly cracked, and then split, sending the unattached half to the floor.
“Why not?”
“I will na’ fight for him. I vowed it when he last forced me. And I am keeping it. There is nae glory in it anymore. He can find another champion.”
“What…if I can get him to have a different kind of battle?”
Payton stopped, with his bow pulled and an arrow set, ready to split the twine holding the upper shield half to the wall. He let the bow string slacken and turned back.
“What…other kind is there?”
“First blow, perhaps. Nae pain.”
Payton shook his head, and pulled on the bowstring again. “Nae good. I am too quick. You ken it. I’d have a challenger to the ground within moments, and then it would be over. First blow from the sod!” He let the arrow fly, it glanced off the rock after splitting the twine, and everyone dove for the floor until they heard it crash into a corner. Then, the sound of the target falling added in. Payton was on his feet again, dusting at his knees, and looking sheepish.
“Show them, then.”
“What?” He looked across at Redmond, who was coming up from beneath a table.
“Give instruction. Show them how you manage to get a man onto the ground and in the defensive stance so quickly and easily.”
“You truly take me for the thickest-headed lout, Redmond MacCloud. Why would I show a man I may have to battle against—and who might be Kilchurning clan—how I do that move? Would he na’ use it on me?”
He walked over to the ruined target and started pulling his skeans out, with a jerking motion on each one.
“The Stewart will let you see her. One hour a day. At a place of his choosing.”
Payton stopped all movement, felt his heart twinge along with it, and then he restarted yanking at knives. “Alone?” he asked.
“I can get him to agree to a companion…Lady Evelyn. What say you?”
Payton considered it, waiting until the last skean was removed from the wood, and then pitched it toward the fireplace. “Find us another target, Alan,” he ordered his cousin. Alan went sprinting toward the door. Payton looked back at Redmond. “What would I have to do?”
“An exhibition.”
“Exhibition?”
“Show of your skills. But not against an opponent.”
“Those are my skills,” Payton replied. He was shoving skeans into his belt along his waist as he said it.
“We’re na’ in agreement. Are we, lads?” There were some grunts of agreement. “Look about you. We have nothing left you can attack. We are now sending Alan about to pillage items for you to work your skill against. For six days now. And you have four months of days still to go. Why na’ show this skill to the court…and gain rights of visit with them?”
Payton waited four heartbeats to answer. They were speeding up, too, at the same rate his hands were starting to tremble. “Go. Arrange it,” he said.
“I canna’ get the stitches straight! And I canna’ see well enough to try!”
Dallis pulled her hands away from the needlework she was attempting, put her face in her hands, and barely held back the sobs as wave after wave of them rushed through her breast, filling her throat, then her nose, and finally her eyes, making a welling of tears inevitable.
Lady Evelyn handed her another heavily embroidered handkerchief, sighed heavily, and went back to work. Beside her, Lady Dunrobin didn’t do more than shuffle to another spot on their joint project.
Dallis was embarrassed by her loss of control from the moment it happened, and that helped dry the tears, while she mopped at her face.
“Forgive me, Aunt Evelyn. Lady Dunrobin. I…doona’ ken what has come over me.”
“’Tis the bairn,” Lady Dunrobin said sagely, while she put another stitch in what she was studying from a distance of an inch.
“Nae,” Dallis’s voice shook but she couldn’t help it. “The bairn was why I was sick. This…this is different.”
“The same thing happened to me when I carried our eldest, Harold. I’d be happily stitching and having a spot of tea, and the next I’d be sobbing. For nae reason.”
“I have a reason,” Dallis complained.
“Aye. We ken. Your husband.”
Both old ladies said it, although one was behind the other, and then they giggled. Dallis had to smile. And then they were all looking toward the door as someone knocked.
They’d given her two servants for her use. Mary and Bess. Both were rose-cheeked lasses from a goodly family in town. They were also quiet, efficient, and fairly dense. Dallis watched as the door to what felt like a prison cell was reached. And then opened.
“’Tis a message,” Mary said, coming into the sun-filled antechamber where the ladies were stitching.
“From the king,” Bess added.
“Here.” Dallis put out her hand. Both girls looked uncomfortable and unsure.
“Beg pardon, but the message is addressed to Lady Evelyn Caruth.”
They were handing it to her on the silver salver it must have been delivered on. As if it were a supreme delicacy. And she supposed it was.
Dallis tried to ignore what was happening. She didn’t care if he wrote to every other lady in his castle. If it didn’t concern Payton, she didn’t want to know.
She rose, walked over to the long window that had real glazed panes in it. The view from her room was uninspiring, but everything was. She was above the curtain wall level, so that put her too high to reach by grappling hook. She appeared to be near the castle herb garden, from the snow-locked stubs of plants in rows that were one wall over. She couldn’t see straight down, or how high she was. The walls were too thick, and they were too high.
She could see the sun in the distance, however, trying to peek through the cloud cover. She knew it wouldn’t succeed. It hadn’t for a full sennight, so far. Scotland’s weather was always harsh and unpredictable and wet. This week had proved it.
“His Majesty appears to be relenting a bit, Dallis.”
She tilted her head toward her aunt. “How so?”
“He’s granting us an audience. At dusk. We are to follow the guardsman that comes for us. Oh, my. Whatever shall I wear?”
Dallis turned back to trying to pick out the horizon from the slivers of sunlight. It didn’t matter what she wore. He’d already adjudged her a woman capable of adultery. What did it matter what more he thought of her?
“But…if he wants to see you…why did he send a message to me?” Aunt Evelyn asked.
“I’m in disgrace, Aunt Evelyn. I should think it obvious.”
“As am I. He thinks me just as much a liar as you. I still doona’ ken why he’d write—”
“I have the added disgrace of possibly being an adulteress, Aunt Evelyn.”
“Possibly. Hmm…but is na’ that a bit like back-wash? You know…he fornicates with adulteresses daily. I still doona’ understand why…”
Lady Dunrobin looked up from the tapestry with her watery-blue gaze fixed on the wall to Dallis’s left. “He considered his options, ladies. Mary, Bess, and I canna’ read. Simple. Now, you really should get back to this rose right here, Evelyn. You’ve left a hanging thread.”
The other ladies returned to sewing, and Dallis went bac
k to looking out the window.
Dusk had shaded the clouds a darker gray when the summons came. Dallis had changed from her daygown. She’d brushed her hair and changed her wimple, and added a drop of Lady Dunrobin’s perfume to the area between her breasts. Then, the guardsmen came. There were four of them. They blindfolded her, the same as they’d done when she’d first been brought there. She knew they did the same to Lady Evelyn by her aunt’s protests. It wouldn’t do any good, and she longed to hush her, but didn’t. She had enough with trying to keep her courage, and her mind on what she’d say. And how fast she’d have to say it.
The child within her moved more than usual, and that altered her steps occasionally. The man holding to her elbow either didn’t note it, or didn’t care. They’d left one arm free, and she used it in front of her, spanning the space as she’d seen Lady Dunrobin do.
She heard sounds with ears high-tuned for them. The scrape of their feet on the flooring. Doors opening. The swish of clothing. Another door. The boom of something falling.
“God’s blood! None said anything about a blindfold!”
“Payton?”
“Get it off of her! Now!”
“Payton?”
Dallis was pulling the blindfold down and managed it a split moment before he reached her, coming from across a far span of room at a near run.
“Payton!”
She was lifted from the floor and into his arms. And then she burst into tears.
“Oh, dearest heart…doona’ cry. My heart canna’ contain it.” He crooned it to her.
“Payton. Payton. My love. Payton.”
She couldn’t stop weeping, even as she had her hands all about his face and then to his shoulders, and then she was putting kisses in their place.
“Darling heart. We have an hour. A short, short hour. Doona’ waste another moment of it crying. Dallis? Do you hear me?”
He was walking with her, and crooning to her, and so solidly real that fresh tears started up.
“An…hour?” She managed to get it through the teardrops, that filled and overflowed, without any blinking on her part.
“Aye. An hour. ’Tis all the king will part with.”
“Nae. Payton…nae.”