Highland Steel (Guardians of the Stone Book 2) (22 page)

Lael hadn’t nearly as much knowledge of herbs as Una or Lìli, but she did know a bit, and she’d managed her brother’s household from the day their mother died. She gave the women cleaning instructions and then made mental notes of all the things she planned to do before leaving: gather the remaining flock and be certain they were tended, enlarge and winterize the chicken coop, weed the garden, check the silos, clean the guarderobes and check the well water. That was one thing they’d learned the hard way at Dubhtolargg, and before they all realized half a dozen good men, women and children had perished from some mysterious illness. Only later did they discover it was because there was waste in one of their wells, and it was only thanks to her brother’s new wife.

And while she was at it, she planned the evening meal—a wedding celebration, she told herself, even though there was hardly any cause for a true celebration. However, these good folk deserved a good meal. Broc included. So let them try to keep her from delivering a meal to the gaols. She didn’t need her knives to put these Sassenach brothers in their places.

For that matter, she refused to leave Broc wallowing in mud. She couldn’t free him from his cell, but she could force them to clean it. She ordered the delivery of rushes to coat his dirty floor, and blankets to keep him from dying from the cold. It was far warmer in the tunnels than she might have expected, but if he kicked up his toes, this would all be for naught.

“I do not think my laird Jaime will like this,” Luc said when she handed over the massive fur coverlet they’d given her to use the night before.

So that was his name?
Jaime
? She preferred
demon
. Or
Butcher
.

“Nay?” she asked, and wished the boy would leave her be. “Why do you not go tell him?” she suggested.

The lad shook his head, pursing his lips and remained beside her like a sullen pup. She almost felt sorry for him, but not quite.

Broc arched a blond brow and shook his head. “Something tells me the Butcher’ll be regrettin’ his decision to wed w’ ye before sundown,” he predicted.

“Good,” Lael said as Luc quickly locked the door behind her when she exited Broc’s cell. There was far more that she would have said but there were too many ears about to hear—the guards and her little watchdog included. “I’ll be sending dinner down afore long,” she reassured him, screwing her nose over the dead pine marten that still littered one corner. “Dinna fill your belly with rats.”

“Mind yourself, Lael,” Broc warned. “Lest ye wind up here again, or worse.”

“Humph!” she replied. If he thought for an instant that he could frighten her into accepting this fate like some timid little lass, then Broc didn’t truly know her at all.

The Butcher’s first mistake was in letting her live. His second was underestimating her. His third—and likely his last—was to give her the run of his estate, for with it she would turn the tide of this battle after all, and mayhap singlehandedly find a way to hand the keys over to its rightful master in the end.

“
Have faith
,” she told Broc as she hurried away. Two guards opened the portal to the chapel and she stepped through, avoiding the myriad webs that had somehow survived the slew of trespassers since two days past.

“So are ye a Christian?” Luc inquired as they passed into the small vestibule from the dingy tunnels. Lael ignored his question, annoyed.

Faith was not merely a Christian tenet. In fact, it was not a pious trait at all. Indeed,
faith
came in many forms. For example, she had every faith in herself, and she would hardly find herself upon her knees praying to herself.

The lad followed closely at her heels through the nave. “David carries his priest where’er he goes. They say he has a special dispensation to carry out the work of God.”

At the mere mention of David’s name, Lael fantasized about shoving Luc’s face into the icy mud.

“’Tis a good thing we’ve a chapel,” he offered as he walked into a spider web himself. “Gawd, ’tis filthy as the gaols!” he exclaimed, flailing his hands to free himself of the silken web.

It would take quite some work to return this chapel to order, she thought. More’s the pity she was not a Christian, for then she could find a way to spend time closer to the tunnels… At some point, someone, somewhere, at some time was bound to make a mistake and then she would seize it and set Broc free. She blinked and halted suddenly, turning to peer at the lad.

The priest was gone now, along with David, and there was no one left at Keppenach who could possibly know how close she remained to the old ways—not even Broc. “Is the Butcher pious?” she inquired.

“Nay, and he does not like
that
name,” Luc enlightened her at once. “Although he does claim his soul is damned.”

“And so it may be,” she replied, more to herself. Lael had no concept of the Christian god or his rules, but anyone who could burn a keep full of people must surely be damned.

“My lady?”

She reached out to pat Luc’s shoulder as she would have Keane’s. “Never mind. Let’s clean up the chapel,” she proposed, and the lad furrowed his brows as he considered her another long moment.

“For you?” he asked. “I’m sorry, my lady, but ’tis unlikely my lord Jaime will ever use it save as a pass through to the gaols.”

Lael smiled. “God willing, mayhap he will change his mind,” she offered. “Shall we begin on the morrow?”

“Very well, then, aye,” he agreed, and Lael smiled, her mood brighter than it had been in weeks.

Two bodies pose a problem.

Maddog had performed his duties for MacLaren all too well, and for his efforts he’d earned merely a warm bed and the distrust of his kinsmen. Now he didn’t even have the bed, because the Butcher had ousted him from it, leaving him to seek another like a common dolt. Unfortunately, he hadn’t even the opportunity to empty the laird’s chamber of a few special items he wished to keep. Now he had no money, no valuables and after nearly twenty-three years of service he was forced to take a pallet in the hall, along with the rest of the dirty buggers in this keep.

At least he had the sword.

He didn’t precisely ken why the ancient blade was so valuable. The metal was chipped in spots, and barely sharp enough to split his seams, but deep down he understood it must be precious. Afric had realized it as well and the blacksmith had been prepared to keep it for himself—that is, until his son went missing along with his precious sword, and then Maddog was fairly certain Afric intended to tell the new laird. He couldn’t allow it.

Pondering what to do with the blade, he tucked it away carefully, so that no one could spy its gleam, and then in the shadows of the storehouse, he hid the oiled cloth with some trepidation next to the oversized sack of meal that held the blacksmith’s son. The blacksmith himself… well, he went down the well. “An unfortunate accident,” most would say once they chanced to find the man’s body. To deflect suspicion Maddog had already spread the word that he’d last spied the blacksmith’s boy climbing down the well shaft, as the he was ever wont to do. And of course, Baird wasn’t there, but the blacksmith couldn’t have known that, and who was to say the lump on Afric’s head wasn’t made by the fall?

The comical sound Afric made on his way down the well still filled his ears and made him laugh. He sniggered to himself, holding the force of it in until he blew a snot wad onto his arm, and then frowned.

If the gods be good, it would be some time before anyone found the blacksmith’s body. The last anyone spied the man was in the hall, so just to be certain, he’d made certain people saw him go his own way after quitting the hall, but not before filling Afric’s head with worry o’er the boy and the well. And then, whilst everyone was pre-occupied with the goings-on at the hall, he’d come around behind while Afric stood peering down the shaft. And that was that. Afric would trouble him no more.

The well was nearly worthless anyhow. The water it yielded needed to be strained and then boiled or it was good for naught. Even their ale was slush. ’Twas a good thing they’d built it in a blind spot behind the church, for even now a full hour had gone by and no one had yet sounded any alarm.

But… two bodies pose a problem.

Initially, he’d intended to dump the child down there, as well, but he couldn’t do it now and then have them both turn up at the end of a bucket, now could he? What were the chances of that? Nay… But there must be another way, and he but needed to discern it.

In the meantime there were few enough servants remaining that the sword should remain safely hidden here in the storehouse until he could return for his prize. He didn’t immediately know what was to be done with it, but he was certain enough that an opportunity would arise.

Mayhap the king would return and he would present it as a gift? And for that mayhap he’d earn the stewardship of Keppenach at long last? He was the last remaining heir of Donnal MacLaren, after all. He was a bastard brother to Dougal, though no one seemed to recall. But he could prove it… Kenna knew the truth.

Kenna had been naught more than a wee bairn when her brother left Dunloppe. She no more recalled his face than she did her own name. After Donnal took her grandfather’s keep, the little brown-haired lass stole Donnal’s heart with her tight curls and button nose, and so he’d quietly sent her away to live at Keppenach whilst he held Dunloppe against her brother’s return. The child Donnal tossed over the wall that day was naught but a worthless peasant girl, but he hadn’t counted upon the Butcher’s fury once he’d spied the child’s body lying upon the ground.

Maddog hadn’t witnessed it, but ’twas said the Butcher’s roar echoed across the moorlands. One by one he’d burned the outer buildings, and even their most skilled archers had not been able to stop his retribution. The arrows flew aplenty, and all but one missed him, nearly gouging out his eye. That was the scar he now bore across his brow.

Luckily for Maddog, he had been the one chosen to escort young Kenna home that day, and whilst the girl recalled naught of her brother or her minny, she certainly knew from whence she’d come, and Maddog
never
let her forget who it was who saved her from Dunloppe’s fate—an inferno that the bards claim blazed for nearly three days.

As for his MacLaren blood, he had no proof of that, not precisely, though he knew the old laird kept annals tracing their lineage to Domnall mac Ailpín—brother to Kenneth—including bastard sons and bastard daughters. So Maddog, too, bore the blood of kings in his veins and in a sense he had as much right to Keppenach as any other. Somewhere in this keep there was a small box containing his grandsire’s documents—somewhere hidden. And once he found it, he would get his due one way or another, if not by law and reason… then by his sword—
the king sword.

Smiling over his private thoughts, he dragged a heavy sack of grain in front of the oiled cloth, placing it slightly in front of the other, and then another, so they appeared to be simply three fat sacks of grain one beside the other. Then he brushed himself off and kicked the sack containing the boy to smooth a lump and went away.

Rubbing his temples, Jaime pored over the ledgers—all unmarked as yet, but during the course of the following weeks, he would fill every single page.

He took his lessons from the Conqueror, who never took a demesne where he didn’t record each and every sack of grain, every head of cattle, every hen and every last item of value before settling in to manage the estate.

But first things first: settling the grievances of those he wished to rule. Thus he’d spent the majority of the day listening to trials and sent a few disgruntled parties along their way. Save for two particular persons beneath his roof, he had no interest in keeping anyone against their will. That was not the way to begin his stewardship. As it was, he had much to do to change the ill air MacLaren heaped upon the place.

Apparently, some of the villagers took refuge inside the gates, but many more had fled. Come spring the village must be rebuilt from the ground up—every last hut. If necessary, Jaime would enlist more men, but the coming winter would be lean as it was, and he must purchase food and supplies.