"Lome will be in his poet's bed," Giric said. "He told Una it was time for that again."
"Poet's bed?" Sebastien asked.
"Now and then he takes to his bed for a full day, from dawn to dawn," Alainna told him. "He lies in the darkness, with a cloth over his eyes and a stone on his belly. He remembers every line of all the poems and stories he has ever learned. It is part of his training as a bard to do that."
"Ah," Sebastien said, nodding as if fascinated. "I will go with you," he repeated firmly. "I have yet to find all the boundary stones. Some of them lie up that way. I must ride in that direction sooner or later."
She sighed. "Very well... But we must walk, for she lives in the high hills."
"That will be fine," he replied. "Whatever you wish, my lady."
"Aha!" Niall cried. "The man is to be handfasted! He does not want to leave the girl's side!"
Alainna felt herself grow hot under her kinsmen's grins, and under Sebastien's calm, unwavering gaze and slow smile.
Chapter 17
"There is a boundary stone down there," Alainna called down to Sebastien. "Do you see it?" She stood on the shoulder of a steep hill far above him.
"I found it," Sebastien called, waving. He stood at the base of the hill, where a burn flowed fast. He dropped down to scoop a quick, cold drink with his hand, drying his fingers on his cloak. On the bank was a large rock painted white, the stone he sought. He stood again, narrowing his eyes to scan the hills and estimate how far he and Alainna had walked from the last boundary marker farther along the same winding burn.
For much of the morning, they had climbed ever higher into the hills, where the slopes were brown and barren and rocky, where the wind whipped past and thick white mist obscured the peaks.
He took his wax tablet and bone stylus from his belt pouch and wrote a few notes about the stone's location. Then he walked back up the hill, where Alainna waited beside a large boulder.
"May I see?" she asked, extending her hand. "Have you made a map of Kinlochan?"
He hesitated. "A simple one," he said, as he handed her the wax tablet. She studied the tiny drawing he had made showing the approximate shape of the property, with loch, fortress, and the long, wide burn marked there. Then she looked at the small, careful drawing in one corner.
"I did not know you had such a fine hand for drawing," she said. "This little castle is excellently made. Is it one that you have seen somewhere?"
He held his hand out, but she kept the tablet. "It is my own design."
"It is lovely. And I like the three towers in the walls. I imagine there is nothing like it in the Highlands. Is this what Kinlochan castle will look like when it is made?"
He shrugged. "Mayhap it will." He took the tablet from her hands, sliding it back into his leather pouch.
"So you understand mapmaking and building?"
He gave her a flat smile. "Did you think I am interested only in matters of war, or jousting, or standing guard for kings?"
"I have seen you practice for war and ride out to hunt. And of course I have seen you stand guard for the king. But that is all."
"I would design buildings," he said, "if I had not become a knight in the service of a liege lord. If I had been given the privilege of a university education, I would have studied the art of architecture."
He looked out over the sweep of the slope as he spoke, aware that he had rarely voiced that wish to anyone. The drawing of the castle might seem simple to someone else, but it represented something precious and private to him.
He had studied and sketched many structures over the years, fascinated since childhood by their design. He had learned much through observation, through reading whatever he could find in the libraries of the noble lords he served, and through his experiences in the service of an English baron who had allowed him direct involvement in the raising of three castles.
The little wax sketch was a culmination of observations and ideas, an expression of his cherished dream to design his own castle. King William's directive concerning Kinlochan had been more than welcome in that way, but frustrating as well. While he wanted to supervise the construction of a stone fortress, he did not intend Kinlochan to be his home.
The brightness in Alainna's deep blue eyes told him that she was intrigued. He wanted to tell her more. Sharing this with her felt safe, he realized suddenly. He wanted to hear her thoughts, to see her eyes sparkle with the passion she seemed to bring to all things.
"How did you come to know the art of architecture?" she asked. "You did not attend university. How were you schooled?"
"So many questions," he said, smiling a little. "Shall we rest here for a bit? Una sent food with you in that bundle."
"She did. If you want to sit here... wait," she said, as he shifted to sit on the boulder. He stepped back. "Watch."
She touched her fingertip to the stone. The boulder was as long as a man, and nearly half that length wide, but it began to rock gently back and forth at her light touch.
Sebastien laughed in surprise. When the stone stilled, he touched it himself. The rocking began again. Curious, he dropped to his knees to peer underneath.
The curving underside of the slate boulder rested on a flat base of shale. Daylight leaked through at all points but the centermost juncture between the upper and lower stones. He stood, shaking his head in astonishment.
"It is a jury stone," Alainna said. "The ancient people used it to decide justice in cases of crimes and disputes. Lorne has told me all about this. The accused would stand there"—she indicated the end of the boulder that pointed downhill—"and a priest or a clan chief would stand at the other end, and speak the case aloud for the witnesses. Then the leader would give the stone a tap with a birch wand, and the stone would answer by rocking one way or another."
Sebastien gave the boulder a few experimental pushes while she spoke. "Sometimes it moves north to south, sometimes east to west," he observed, walking around it.
"North to south was regarded as a judgment of innocent, and east to west was seen as guilty. If it stood still, that meant undecided, which allowed the accused to go free of punishment. No one uses the stone now," she said, and sat. It shivered gently beneath her weight. "It is a curiosity only."
"Curious indeed." Sebastien sat on the stone too, bracing his feet on the ground until it stilled. Alainna rummaged in the tied cloth bundle that she had carried with her. She handed Sebastien an oatcake and a thick slab of cheese.
"Tell me how you were educated," she said as they began to eat. "And how you became interested in designing castles."
"The monks who raised me gave me excellent training in languages, in reading and writing skills, in mathematics and theology. The arts of architecture and geometry intrigued me, and I pursued those on my own. But I do not have a specialized education from a university. There was no one to pay the cost of it," he added.
"Have you no family, Sebastien?" she asked quietly.
"Only my son now." Plain words that did not reveal the loss and anguish of a few years before. He broke off a bit of cheese and chewed it slowly before he continued. "The monks are more my family than any other. Abbot Philippe has been like a father to me. I came to his monastery when I was but two years old, and he a young man and not yet abbot."
"No wonder you feel that you must return to Brittany."
His simple nod belied the intensity of his conviction. "I must find Conan and the monks, and do whatever I can to help them. It is... hard for me to stay in Scotland without knowing what has become of them." And hard to admit his feelings aloud, he thought, although he could do so with Alainna more readily than anyone.
"When I first met you," she said in a musing tone, watching him, "I thought that you and I could not be more different. But more and more, I think we are alike."
"In pride, most assuredly." He smiled a little.
"More than that. We both would do anything for those we love. You would leave this excellent holding"—she waved a hand aroun
d the hills—"just to be with them and know they are safe."
As he swept his gaze over the hills, he felt a twinge of regret. He had begun to love this country of slopes and lochs and open sky. Leaving here, he realized, would be far harder than he would have thought, for several reasons.
"I would give my soul to know they are safe," he murmured.
"As would I, for my kin," she said. "Although if I were separated from my kin and in a strange place, among strangers, I would not be as courteous to them as you have been with us. I would leave as quick as I could. And be thought a barbaric Scotswoman, I suppose."
He smiled. "I thought you were weary of my courtesy and chivalry, my lady."
She half laughed. "Not all of your chivalry, sirrah." She glanced down at his long legs and braced feet. "You are very kindly keeping this stone still so that we can eat."
He laughed and bit into the salty, chewy oatcake. She ate too, and after a while brushed the crumbs from her hands.
"You said once that you knew something of your parents. Have you no connection to their families?"
He broke up the last of his oatcake and tossed it into the snags of heather for the birds and animals to find. "I was a foundling," he said, "left at the gate of the monastery with a gold ring and a bit of salt to show that I was of noble birth and baptized. The monks did not know my name or where I came from, at least then. They named me for their patron saint, since I was found on his feast day. The monastery is Saint-Sebastien, near Rennes in Brittany."
"Ah. So you became Sebastien le Bret. It is a fine name." Her eyes showed only sincerity, no mockery.
"My name may lack the value of generations of warriors and worthy daughters behind it," he said. "It may lack the 'de' to show a noble, landowning family. But it is mine."
"And you will never give it up," she said slowly.
He leaned forward to rest his arms on his knees. He looked out over steep slopes frosted with snow and mist, over sweeping meadows and the meandering, white-frothed burn.
"My name is all I have," he said. "All that is mine alone."
She touched his arm. He did not look at her, but was aware of the pressure of her hand. Her slightest touch stirred him, quickened his heart and his body, warmed him to flame. Best, he told himself, that she not know that; best that he not think about that.
"Do you know anything of your parents?" she asked.
"Abbot Philippe made inquiries for years, and finally, when I was nine, a priest from a Breton village came to see him. A woman had begged the priest on her deathbed to go to the monastery with her story." He paused. "She claimed to have left a child there, not of her own womb. She described the ring and the swaddling found with me. She said she was the wet nurse employed by the mother's family."
"She knew your parents?"
"The priest reported that my mother was the daughter of a Breton lord. I never learned her name or family, for the woman insisted that it be kept a secret. My father was the youngest son of an English baron, a family called de Lindfield."
"So you do know your name!" She smiled.
"It is not my name. I have no right to it."
"How can that be?"
"My father was a priest. The sons of priests have no legal claim to their father's surname. Only in Scotland," he added, "would I be legitimate and named, as the child of a priest."
She stared at him. "Who was your mother?"
"Her family had intended her for the convent," he said. "My father was an English priest at the Breton court. My mother's father hired him to teach his daughter to read. They fell in love... and so I was born. My mother died at my birth, and her brother sought out my father and killed him."
The silence grew as thick as the mist that wreathed the top of the slope. Alainna murmured a wordless sound of sympathy, and leaned against him, arm to arm. Her presence was a welcome comfort. The stone beneath them rocked gently. Sebastien did not stop its motion.
"The wet nurse left me with the monks after I was weaned, as my mother's family had paid her to do. They did not want a bastard child, a disgrace and a reminder of tragedy. She had other children and could not afford another mouth. She told the priest that her heart broke to give me up, and said that she worried about me, yet could not come forth."
"But she was a kindhearted woman," Alainna said.
"It would seem so. When I was young," he said, "I used to dream about a round little woman with brown eyes who sang to me and held me." He shrugged. "I wondered then who she could have been, since the only family I knew were the monks."
"I am sure you remembered her," Alainna said.
"Mayhap." He sighed. "The monks were good to all the boys in their care, but it was a strict upbringing. A little play, and a lot of prayer and study. Not the usual life for a child. Such a life makes a good monk, but I was not interested in that."
"You left to make your way in the secular world?"
"Abbot Philippe located my father's kin in England. A cousin came to the monastery, and took me into his household in England when I was eleven."
"You do have kin, then."
He shrugged. "I suppose. But none of them were eager to acknowledge me, and I soon learned to expect nothing of them. I was given a place in the stables, where I learned much about training horses. Eventually another knight took me into his household, where I became a squire and finally a knight. Sir Richard was a good man. He gave me many opportunities."
"You have come far from that Breton monastery."
"In some ways. I learned quite young to make my own way in the world. I wanted what other knights had—name, wealth, land, family. I determined to obtain that." He glanced at her. "In other ways, I have not come far from the monastery at all. I am still a solitary man. I live the vita activa, but I retain the vita contemplativa in my nature."
She sat quietly, her gaze earnest, her head tilted as she did so often when she looked at him. "So that is your tale," she said in a musing tone.
"Part of it. And you? What of your tale?"
She shrugged. "Mine is not so interesting, and you know much of it already. I have lived at Kinlochan all my life, with my family close about me. A sheltered life, made even closer and more guarded because of the feud and the losses and danger to my clan. But the gift of my family and my home has more than made up for the curse of that strife." She stood to pack the rest of the food away as she spoke.
The stone undulated beneath him like the bobble of a boat on water. Sebastien stilled it again with his foot. "What an odd stone this is," he said pensively. He slid his hand over the cool, hard surface.
"Some people still come up here for predictions on the first of May—lovers' questions—and for portents for the new year."
"I can imagine," he said. He stood and leaned forward. "Tell me, stone, will it snow?"
Alainna laughed, a silvery trill. "That is easy to answer."
He touched the stone gently. It slipped into an immediate rhythm. "North to south," he announced, grinning at her.
"It will snow, sooner or later. We hardly needed the stone to tell us that."
He put his foot on the stone to still it. "Will the mysterious Esa consent to return with us?"
Alainna laughed again. "I think I know the answer."
"Hush, you," he said, giving her a mock frown. She giggled, a sweet sound. He touched the stone, and the rocking began.
"North to south," he said. "Esa will come back with us."
"I could have told you that." She looked smug and pleased.
"Who needs a judgment stone when they have Lady Alainna?" He was glad to see her smile grow.
"Ask something you could not know," she suggested.
He tilted his head, pondering. "Will Alainna... find the Celtic warrior she wants?" he asked, mildly teasing.
She grimaced at him. He smiled, leaned down, and touched the stone. It moved north to south in the affirmative.
He felt a frisson of disappointment. "Ah," he murmured. "It seems that you will have yo
ur heart's desire."
She looked dismayed. "Let me try. Will Sebastien"—she walked around the stone as she spoke—"find himself a fine Breton lady?" The stone shifted when she touched it. "East to west," she said. "Oh. You will not. I should have asked if you would find a fine French lady," she amended.
"No doubt," he murmured.
"Will Sebastien... find a home for his wandering soul?" Her voice was soft.
He felt himself go very still, spirit and flesh. Alainna touched the stone. After a moment it undulated slowly.
"North to south," she murmured, and looked at him. "You will find what you want."
"Will I?" He watched her for a long moment. Then he placed a foot on the stone to stop its motion.
"It is said the jury stone is never wrong."
"We have tested it well," he said. He walked around the stone toward her, bending to pick up her cloth pack. As he straightened, he heard Alainna gasp.
"Look!" she cried.
A few snowflakes fell gently from the sky. He put up a palm to catch them, and showed them to her.
"The stone was right," she said. He smiled, more pleased by her delight than by the stone's prediction or the delicate snowflakes in his hand.
She looked up at him, so fresh and beautiful that he felt as if his heart fell to his feet. He reached out to gently brush at the snow that dusted her hair, and swept his thumb over her cheekbone, where a few snowflakes sparkled.
"There is one more question I want to ask," he murmured.
"What is that?" she whispered.
"Will Alainna," he murmured, grazing his thumb along the line of her jaw, "kiss me?"
She closed her eyes in answer, and he glided toward her to rest his mouth on hers. The snow danced over his face and the air was cold, but her lips created a circle of warmth. He knew he should not have responded to her allure, but he had discovered a weakness within him where she was concerned. He found her more and more irresistible, although he was aware that answering that desire could open both of them to sorrow.
Just for now, he thought. Just once, to taste her again. He slipped his hand along the side of her face and kissed her more deeply, savoring the glow of spirit that he sensed in her.
Susan King - [Celtic Nights 01] Page 19