IMPRISONED
The night was dark and cold, the morning colder still. Duncan, riding across moorland, had long ago ceased to feel his fingers.
All he knew was that, by this evening, he would have arrived.
He patted his horse, glad he had brought him instead of accepting his lordship's offer of a new destrier. He patted the horse fondly.
“You know me, and at least I can talk to you.” He chuckled, thinking of Broderick.
His brother had, perhaps foolishly, allowed his lordship to grant him a destrier as a gift. The horse was enormous, trained and bred in France for battle service. The problem was that he only spoke French. His trainers had taught him in that language, and now it was all the horse knew.
Duncan laughed again, shaking his head. Alina would have to speak to the horse for me. Alina and her sister both spoke two languages, daughters of the French king's ambassador to the court, and it always made him grin with amazement when she spoke that strange tongue.
The thought of Alina lanced through his heart painfully. I wonder where she is. What she is doing now.
He let his mind build him pictures of home, of her. Sitting and sewing in the turret room, laughing at some comment from Chrissie. In the garden, the sweet frown on her brow as she thought about the treatment of a patient. In the solar, battling Heath or Brien with her wit, and often winning.
She is everything I love. He let the thoughts of her warm him, letting his mind drift in a space far removed from gray heathland and gray clouds.
He and his horse, Douglas, stopped for lunch. He shared the rations with the horse, knowing how much a sturdy horse like that needed in this cold. More than grass for certain.
They rested a while and then continued on. By the time the sky was starting to darken, he could just see the outline of a fortress on a hill, a tower standing proud against the darkening sky.
He rode across the moorland, narrowing his eyes to keep the place in sight as the light quickly fell and the shadows lengthened to night. When he finally rode up the path to the gate, he could barely see his hand in front of his face, the day an inky darkness, with the strange warmth that comes as the earth gives back its faint heat to the sky.
“Who goes there?” a sentry challenged him at the gate.
“A friend,” Duncan began. He thought hard. He did not want to claim any link to the Lochlann family – these people were their enemies. However, if he said his own name – MacConnoway – would they know of his brother's marriage? It was six months before. They were not that far away.
“Name?” the man said, with a weariness that dared Duncan to test his impatience.
“Duncan MacConnoway,” he said, a plan forming in his mind.
“Business?”
“I wish to speak to your laird. I have information that may be...useful to him.”
“Wait here.”
Duncan nodded his thanks to the guard as they led him round the side of the gatehouse. He slipped wearily from Douglas' saddle. He would give the horse a respite from him.
Soon, he prayed, we will both be within the fastness.
He looked around. He nodded to the other guards but they pointedly looked away, and so he shrugged and looked out of the window.
He had often wondered what Inverglass looked like – the imposing hill-fortress was often mentioned, boasted as impossible to siege. It was well-placed, he had to admit: from the steep hill, they could charge down on their enemies, as well as sighting them for miles.
He strained his eyes, trying to look back out at the walls. It was too dark to see the top, but he had the sense that they were tall.
Someone tapped on the door.
“MacConnoway?”
“Yes?”
“You can go inside. The laird will see you.”
Duncan stared at him. It worked! He had not expected it to. He closed his mouth, realizing that the man thought him faintly mad, and walked to the door.
He left Douglas at the stables and then followed the guard who had admitted him across the path towards the great hall. At the door he was stopped.
“Weapons?”
He sighed. He wore a belt-knife, which he passed over. It was a good one, and he hoped he would see it again. He cast a hard eye at the man who had taken it. He was fairly sure he would find it missing when he came to fetch it back.
Bastards, he thought angrily.
Feeling naked, vulnerable and unsafe, he followed the dour-faced guard along the passage and upstairs towards a tower.
The tower was icy, the wind pouring down through the arrow slits, funneling down the stairs. He bit his lip, shivering as he followed the silent man up the winding tower. For all he knew he was following him into prison. He had no idea at all where he was.
The guard knocked at a tall, arched door, a torch guttering in the wind in a bracket beside it. He paused, and then repeated.
Duncan barely heard the command to enter, but the guard must have, for he opened the door and showed Duncan in. Then closed it behind him.
On the other side of the door, Duncan found himself in an office. It was warm, a fire blazing, the walls thickly covered, precious fabrics making tapestries that blocked the wind and coldness of the stone. He looked around and saw a wooden desk. Behind it sat an elderly man, white hair bright in the firelight. The old man turned and nodded tranquilly.
“Duncan MacConnoway. Sit.”
Duncan swallowed and nodded. He was expecting to be reprimanded. Interrogated. Arrested, perhaps. Ransoming him to gain advantages from the Lochlann's would have been a clever plan. The last thing he expected was this aloof politeness. It was, quite frankly, more terrifying than if the thane had attacked him.
He cleared his throat, reaching for his manners. “Good evening.”
The thane chuckled. “Good evening indeed. You have business here?”
Duncan nodded. “Yes.” His throat was tight and the word came out rasping. He cursed himself inwardly, but knew he could do nothing different. This old man with the white hair and dry, arid voice was easily more frightening than arrest.
“You are not my ally. You are an ally of my enemy. Yet you are here. Why?”
He stroked his beard slowly as he spoke, and Duncan looked away, trying to focus on the reply.
“I am ally to neither friend nor foe,” Duncan said, mechanically. “I am brother to an ally of your foe, yes. But I am without allegiance.”
“Oh?”
That brought life to him. He sat up and the strange, pale eyes brightened. Duncan shivered. That was what he lacked. He was corpse-like, animated. Some essential spark seemed to have drained out of him at birth, leaving him void and cold.
Duncan, hating himself, continued. “I come to agree to an alliance with you. Myself. Not as a MacConnoway.”
“Oh?” The man raised a hand from his beard, laying it on the armrest. “And why must I agree to this? Why must I trust you?”
Duncan shivered at the sibilant tones. “I bring an offer,” he said.
“Speak it.”
“I plan,” Duncan said, “to overthrow my brother. He is a weak ruler. My father is absent. And Broderick is a poor manager. He taxes the cottagers and overworks the serfs. He fritters away the lives of his men-at-arms and all he cares about is hunts. They hate him. With the slightest encouragement, his own men would overthrow him. And give the castle to me.”
“Oh?” the old man seemed interested. He laid his hand on the table, and then frowned at Duncan. “What would you ask of me? What will you offer in return?”
Duncan clenched his hands under the table, letting his nails rake his palms and remind him that he was not dead, and this man some guardian of the netherworld. “I would offer gold. All I lack is twenty troops. I cannot vouch that all our people would back me, and I need a small force...additionally...to secure it.”
“And the gold?”
“I know Dunkeld has wealth. And we seek to broker an alliance with the Saefirths. They control much of the shipping on the Clyde. You know the wealth that can be made from tax.”
“Yes.” The voice was a rasp.
“Well, then?” Duncan said cautiously.
He waited for the man, but no answer was forthcoming. He looked about the room, noting the striking colors of the tapestries, the careful designs. Whoever had made them, she must have been a master seamstress. As he studied a beautiful one of twined, jewel-colored beasts, the laird moved. Taking his wrist in his bone-white fingers, Duncan felt him pull him close. He found himself an inch away from that old face, looking into ice-pale eyes.
“Why must I take your word? A man who betrays his brother is a liar of the worst kind. I do not trust you.”
Duncan was, in that moment, more terrified than he could remember. He waited, tense and frightened, as the old man hobbled to the door and summoned the guards.
As he was marched away, he looked around, back to the door where the old man stood, watching them stonily.
At least, he thought wryly, following the guard down the hallway and to another flight of stairs, I am under a roof. I am warm. And, hopefully, I will never need see that terrifying man again.
The thought was amusing, but the merriment soon died in him. Finding himself incarcerated in a turret room with a blanket, a bucket, and a small slit of window, he sat down against the wall and closed his eyes.
Alina, he thought wistfully. What do I do now?
Would he ever complete the task? Or would he die here, alone and cold, betrayed by his own hand? All he had wanted was to gain the man's trust, meet his family. Now, it seemed, he would not be meeting anyone. He might never leave this castle, either.
Closing his eyes, filling his mind with memories of love, trying to conjure up hope for the future, searching for Alina's face, he huddled under his cloak, waiting for sleep.