Susan King - [Celtic Nights 01] (7 page)

"Are you a leader of rebels, to speak so hot?"

"We would certainly rebel if someone tried to take our land," she replied. "But we do not rebel against our king."

"I rode beside your king while he defeated a host of Celtic rebels last year. After what I saw there, be sure that my ambitions do not include sharing land with savages."

"Good," she snapped. "Tell the king that Kinlochan goes only to a Celtic warrior."

"God help that Celt." He turned to pull open the great arched door. "My lady, you wanted to see the abbey."

Heart pounding, Alainna hesitated. Then she remembered that the entrance porch of a church, where she stood with the knight, was the traditional site for marriage ceremonies. The thought was so distressing that she stepped past him quickly.

"I did want to see the stonework," she admitted.

"Here is your chance." He held the door open.

Alainna stepped into the heart of peace and silence. The light was lucent and golden, and incense lingered in the air. She walked to the altar and knelt to pray. Sebastien knelt too, then rose with her. Their glances touched, slid free. She looked up.

Massive columns soared toward whitewashed walls. Above them was a clerestory pierced with windows of milky glass, the whole crowned by a curving ribbed vault. Alainna walked into a shadowed side aisle, her steps a soft echo.

She saw the knight standing in the nave, silent and patient, her own honor guard. Light glossed his hair to gold and flashed in his steel mesh hauberk. In chain mail, he seemed fiercely beautiful, hard and perfect.

She looked away, striving to focus her attention on the stone carvings. Familiar with her cousin's artistic hand, she saw its quiet assurance in several of the carved capitals, and she immersed herself in that pleasure, like finding a lost friend. Wandering the church, she searched for his mason's mark, a cut signature.

As she strolled through the church, she thought of her own carved reliefs in her small workshop at Kinlochan, and sighed. Even if she used more finesse with her chisels, she would never achieve the mastery of what she saw here.

Standing beneath a wreath of carved acanthus leaves on a capital, she took out a piece of linen and a stick of burnt willow from the leather pouch that hung suspended from her belt. Carefully she began to draw the leaf pattern on the cloth. Cousin Malcolm had always insisted that good carving depended upon good drawing, and she often made sketches to record ideas or to copy images and learn from them.

She looked at the knight, who glanced away as her gaze touched his. In the church setting, he reminded her of a warrior saint. Dynamic in his static pose, he fascinated her. Despite his fiery words, he made her feel safe. Closing her eyes, she felt her constant burden of worry and fear lift a little. Too soon, she would return to a world of uncertainty. For now, she wanted to savor the serenity and the reassurance she felt in this place, and in the knight's presence.

After a moment, she strolled onward. As she looked up, she gasped. High overhead, Malcolm's carved signature mark gleamed in the stone of one column. She hurried forward.

* * *

He scanned the shadows out of habit, though he knew no danger existed here. The abbey seemed to glow, he thought, glancing around its familiar interior. Perhaps its luminosity came from the afternoon light—or perhaps the girl created it, like a flame inside a lantern.

She was indeed a flame, for she had stirred him to fire when he preferred coolness and control. In scarcely an hour's time, she had ignited in him fascination, lust, envy, anger, and frustration. Now she roused something else in him, an urge to keep the world away from her and allow her peace. He wanted to give her that.

When she disappeared among the columns for a long while, he crossed the nave out of curiosity. Rounding a wide column, he stopped in astonishment.

Alainna stood on the narrow edge of a column base, toes balanced, chest and torso pressed against the pillar. One arm hugged the column, and the other hand stretched toward the groove of a carved chevron as if to seek a hold.

"Do you mean to climb all the way up, my lady?" he asked.

She gasped and shifted. Her foot caught in the train of her gown, and she tilted, arms flailing. He lunged forward so that she tipped neatly into the cradle of his arms.

"Ach,"
she said breathlessly, looping an arm around his neck. She was long-limbed but not heavy, her body firm through layered fabrics. She was strong, too, for she squirmed so that he nearly dropped her.

"Let me go, sirrah!" she insisted.

"I will," he promised. "First tell me what happened. Did you turn your ankle? Were you startled by a mouse?" He turned, holding her. "Shall I vanquish the creature for you?"

"Spare me your chivalry," she said, "and your poor jest. You surprised me, and I fell. Set me down!"

"So be it." He lowered her gently. "Tell me, why did you try to scale that column like a squirrel in a tree?"

She was not amused, he saw, although he could barely hide his own smile. A blush spread beneath her translucent skin, her sapphire eyes darkened, her brows lowered. Sebastien felt as if he watched a gathering storm. He rather liked storms.

"If you wish," he drawled, "I could fetch a ladder."

She opened her mouth to reply, then laughed reluctantly. The sound echoed like small bells. He chuckled, though it felt strangely dry and rusty. He did not laugh often, he realized.

"I wanted to see my cousin's mark, up there." She pointed.

He looked up. "His mark?"

"His mason's mark," she said. "A symbol engraved in the stone. When a mason dresses a block or makes a carving, he cuts his mark. They are paid according to the work they sign. That one is my cousin's mark."

The vision in his left eye was not as sharp as it once had been, but he saw a distinct symbol cut into the stone. He nodded.

"I just wanted to see it. Touch it," Alainna said.

Sebastien frowned, thinking. He picked up the cloth and charcoal she had set down on the floor. Reaching the mason's mark presented no challenge when he boosted a foot onto the plinth and stretched his arm up. He smoothed the cloth over the carving, and rubbed it with the charcoal to obtain an impression. Then he stepped down and handed her the cloth.

"A remembrance of your cousin," he said.

Her gaze was wide and earnest. "My thanks. You must be devoted to your own kin to know why this means so much to me."

"I... value family," he said vaguely. He glanced at the cloth. "I see that you are an
imagier."

"I had some training from my cousin. Come, I will show you his work." She strolled with him, pointing out acanthus carvings and panels of interlaced vines. "See those flowers there? Malcolm always curled and fluted his leaves like that, to make the edges thin and delicate."

He nodded, listening, admiring the fine work she showed him, although he glanced at her more often than at the carvings. Her voice was low and soothing, and the sight of her was like a balm. As they neared the arched doors, she turned to him.

"My foster brother will be waiting, I think."

Sebastien felt an odd dismay, but nodded and held the door open for her.

Outside he saw Giric MacGregor riding toward them, leading a second horse by the reins. Both mounts were the sturdy garrons common to the Highlands, smaller and shaggier than Norman horses.

Sebastien turned. "Farewell,
Alainne an Ceann Lochan.
We will not meet again. I plan to leave Scotland soon."

Her cheeks colored pink. "Oh... oh. A thousand blessings on you, then, and may God make smooth the path before you," she said in Gaelic. "May the faeries protect you."

He smiled, having heard similar Gaelic greetings, and farewells. "May you be safe from every harm," he murmured. "May the angels bless you."

She nodded, then whirled and ran toward her foster brother, who assisted her into the saddle. She took the reins and glanced back.

Sebastien raised his hand in salute. When they left the abbey grounds, he took the path leading to the king's tower. But he could not resist the powerful urge to look back.

Alainna swiveled to look toward him just as he glanced toward her. Both turned quickly away. He walked down the sloped path, surrounded by trees and birdsong, and found himself straining to hear distant hoofbeats, like a thread linking him to her for a while longer.

Sebastien approached the stone tower lost in thought. He felt as if something remarkable had happened, but he could not define it. The Highland girl had entered his day like sunlight falling over shadows. In her absence, the world seemed somehow duller, colder.

A twinge of jealousy at the thought of her marrying some warrior, Celtic or Norman, rippled through him. Frowning, unsure why he should care at all, he walked on.

Chapter 4

"There will be snow tonight," Una said. "Lome's aching bones tell me so." She peered out of the window of Alainna's workshop. The dim light silvered her hair, covered in part by a white linen kerchief, folded and tucked over her head. She was a small woman, and she rose on her toes, balancing a thin hand on the window frame as she looked out.

"My bones do not ache, woman," Lome said. He picked up a small carved stone in the shape of a cross and turned it gently in his long-fingered hands.

"Ach,
they do so—you asked me to put a dose of willow into your ale today," Una said impatiently. "Snow for certain, between what your long bones and those gray clouds out there tell me. The sky is the same color as some of your stones, Alainna."

"I see," Alainna answered without looking up. Her great-aunt and great-uncle had entered her workshop a few moments earlier, but she had scarcely glanced at them. "Let me clear a little more of this section, Una, and I will look."

Alainna circled the bench, critically studying the partially carved slab of gray limestone propped there. Then she angled her claw-toothed chisel blade against the stone and tapped the handle with the wooden mallet held in her right hand.

"This is a good piece," Lome said, setting the little cross on the table. "Finer even than the one you brought to the king. I have not seen it before."

"I carved it this week," Alainna said, blowing away the stone dust she had created. "I promised one of those to Esa."

"When you bring it to her, try again to convince her to come and stay here at Kinlochan," Lome said. "She is stubborn, but the winter will be fierce this year. All the omens point to it." His deep, smooth voice, whose magic Alainna had loved since childhood, held a distinct weariness.

She glanced up, and saw him pause by the long trestle table that held several stone slabs, each as long as a man's forearm. He bent to study them, his shoulders bowed, his long white hair swinging down to hide his handsome, hawklike profile.

"This place is freezing." Una closed the wooden shutter with a decisive bang and latched it shut. "You will catch a chill in your lungs, keeping the window open all day."

"I need the light," Alainna said, tapping again. She paused to blow at the powder that collected at the chisel's edge.

"It is dark as night in here," Una complained. "I can hardly see at all." She stepped forward.

"You just closed the window," Lome reminded her. "None of us can see now."

"There are candles on the shelf," Alainna answered. "The brazier gives out a little light, too."

"Not much light," Una said. "And not much heat. So you might as well stop working for a little. You have not stopped all this week, I think. Oh, move, you greedy hound, taking up all the room in here. Alainna, I know you like this dog, but he is not much of a guard, or much company, lying about all day."

Alainna glanced at the large deerhound who slept contentedly by the brazier. "Finan is a fine guard when he needs to be. And I like his sort of company. He leaves me alone."

Lome chuckled as he found a candle and lit it with a dry stick touched to the brazier's red coals.

"Alainna, we came here to ask you to share supper with us this evening," Una said.

"And we came to see how you are progressing in your work," Lome added. "It is good indeed. The story stone you have just finished is even finer than the others."