PREPARATIONS
Hiram poked the peat fire into life, then turned to his family, cleared his throat and read out an invitation to a reception. It was to be held a fortnight hence in the castle’s Great Hall in honor of Abbott's appointment as Governor of Scotland.
Hannah squirmed in her chair. “Surely you’re nay—not—planning to go?” she asked indignantly.
“Of course we’ll attend,” he replied with equal annoyance. “My absence would be seen as a snub. Not good for business. Governments come and go. Trade goes on.”
Hannah pouted for a while, but then it occurred to her this might be the opportunity she’d been looking for. “Mayhap I should come too.”
Hiram shook his head. “I don’t think it’s a good idea. Chances are you’ll let something slip.”
His wife came to her rescue. “Hiram, it would do her good to get out, meet people.”
She’d hadn’t confided in Sorcha, but suspected the woman saw herself in the role of matchmaker, her mission to help Hannah get over a broken heart. There’d been a steady stream of unmarried male visitors to the house. None of them sparked her interest.
“I will be on my best behavior and speak like the educated noblewoman I was raised to be,” she promised, warming to the idea.
Hiram drummed the fingers of one hand on the mantel.
“Folk will wonder why you haven’t brought your guest along to congratulate Abbott,” she wheedled.
That did the trick, though he proceeded to enumerate various conditions, none of which she heard. She’d already begun to rehearse what to say to the famous general that would save her uncle from the chopping block.
The following day, lads from Hiram’s factory brought bolts of velvet. His wife insisted on dark green for Hannah and midnight blue for herself. Seamstresses appeared to take measurements and were soon busy cutting fabric. Sorcha lectured them at length about the cut and fit, and how the lace modesty panels were to be sewn into the décolletage in such a way to allow for easy removal.
“We must be prepared,” she whispered to Hannah, “for when fashions change.”
Feigning a headache, Hannah excused herself when her cousin’s wife launched into a treatise on the exact details of the coifs they were to make. She stifled a giggle at the vision of Lizzie Beaton’s facial reaction to such frivolities.
~~~
Wherever Morgan ventured inside the castle or without, rumor buzzed that Oliver and Elizabeth Cromwell would journey from London for the official installation of Abbott as Governor of Scotland.
The general assured him this would not be the case, but nevertheless encouraged the rumors. “If people are preoccupied with the pomp and circumstance it will keep their minds off sedition,” he told Morgan.
Organisation of the ceremony and the social gathering slated for afterwards was left in the hands of the castle’s steward, much to Morgan’s relief. He wasn’t in the mood for planning menus and entertainment. It fell to him to make preparations for Glenheath’s trial.
To this end, he paid several visits to Hannah’s uncle. He’d been apprehensive the first time, nervous he’d find the Scot chained to the wall in a foul dungeon, despite Abbott's reassurances to the contrary.
The odor of decay and damp increased his unease as he descended into the vaults, but it came as a relief when the jailer swung open the heavy doors to the cell built for prisoners of war. The jaunty tune being played on a tin whistle ceased abruptly. Glenheath and several of his men were relaxing in hammocks slung from beams below the domed brick ceiling. Red-faced grins reminded Morgan of naughty boys at Shrewsbury caught in the act of telling bawdy jokes.
He’d arranged for Murtagh to accompany the earl to Edinburgh. The blacksmith wasn’t an officer in the rebel army, but he’d saved Morgan’s life. The burly cook perched on a stool next to a square hole cut deep into the stone wall. A hearty fire burned in the grate within and Murtagh turned a spit on which was skewered something that looked and smelled surprisingly like a suckling pig. Laundry—shirts, drawers, hose—hung on rope lines strung here and there. Morgan thought he’d wandered into a well-equipped barracks and suspected this wasn’t the worst accommodation these hardy men had endured.
They bade him welcome, and he found himself looking forward to spending an hour or two in their company as he gathered information freely given. He came to consider the oft-asked question—Ye’re certain ye’re nay a Scot?—the highest compliment they could bestow.