Chapter 23 #2
In fact, the stools around the table remained absolutely empty.
Thus Rhona wandered from the dining hall to the nursery.
Catherine’s bed was empty too, so she hurried down the passageway to Edwina’s room.
The door was ajar, and from the hallway, she could hear two tiny voices whispering from within.
“There were noises in the night . . . Frightful noises.” Edwina’s voice was the tiniest scratch of sound.
“Aye.” Catherine’s was barely louder. “But you needn’t fear. ’Tis past now. Go back to sleep.”
“’Twas the devil, wasn’t it?”
“Nay.”
“He will come again,” Edwina’s voice was rising to a low panic. “He will come and eat my liver just as Lady Irvette—”
“Nay,” argued Catherine. “I will keep you safe.”
“But Catty, your face!” she said, and began to cry softly. “He has already beaten you.”
’Twas then that Rhona stepped into the room. The girls jumped like frightened hares, huddling together beneath the blankets, their fingers gripping each other like tiny birds’ claws. She stopped where she was, her throat constricted.
“The devil is gone,” she said simply.
They stared at her in silence. She shrugged. “He left.” Still no response. “Forever,” she added.
Silence again, then Edwina spoke very softly, as though her voice might stir the dead from their restless hiding place. “But Lady Irvette said he would come if I was disobedient like Catty. He would beat me, just as he did her.”
“She is gone too,” said Rhona, and carefully quieted her anger.
The girls glanced at each other then back at her. Their grip in each other’s sleeves tightened slightly.
“She’ll return . . .” began Catherine, her tone not daring to hope. “After the nooning?”
“She’ll not be back,” Rhona corrected.
“Perhaps the devil ate her,” Edwina whispered. There was the whisper of hope in her tone.
Rhona stepped closer, her mind spinning. She knew nothing about easing a young girl’s fears.
“You needn’t worry, lass,” she said. “God is watching—”
But in that moment a noise sounded from the doorway. She turned, expecting trouble, but it was only MacGowan who shadowed the door.
“The devil did na want ’er,” he said.
The wide eyes had turned to him. He smiled, and with that simple expression the room seemed to lighten somehow.
“He did not want her?” Edwina whispered.
“Nay. She was that bitter, she was.”
“How do you know?”
“I spoke to ’im.” He entered the room with easy casualness, his stride long and relaxed. “Afore ’e left.”
“You spoke . . . to the devil?”
“Aye. I told him that an angel of the Lord guards these lassies and that there is no room for his evil here.”
“But Catty’s face,” murmured Edwina. Her eyes were bright with unshed tears, her knuckles white against the coverlet.
A muscle twitched in Lachlan’s cheek and Rhona threw herself into the breech.
“’Twas not the devil who struck your sister, wee Edwina,” she said, “but one of his minions, a person of flesh and bone. A person just like one of us, but evil.”
Catherine seemed to have drawn into herself, but she spoke finally, her voice little louder than the silence. “She warned me not to tell. Said Edwina would suffer for it.”
For a moment no one spoke. Rhona noticed that Lachlan’s fingers tightened upon the hilt of his dirk, but finally he cleared his throat and loosened his grip.
“Aye well, she be gone now,” he said. There was a forced cheeriness to his tone, but his face was hard.
“And the archangel ’as vowed to keep it so. ”
“Will he eat her gizzard?”
He laughed a little now. “Sooner than let ’er return, lass. But enough of this talk. I have been sent to fetch you down to break the fast.”
And so the day began. The girls ate their fill while Lachlan looked on, and then, because the marquis was reported to have injured his leg in his “valiant defense of his home,” Rhona suggested that they venture outside.
Edwina shook her small head vehemently. Catherine pursed her lips.
“You’ve no fondness for the out of doors?” Rhona asked.
Catherine’s scowl deepened. Edwina spoke in a whisper.
“It rained,” she said.
Rhona stared in bemusement and Catherine explained. “We might sully our gowns.”
“Sully your gowns! Well, I should hope so,” she said, and laughed.
“Filth is the devil’s garden,” Edwina quoted.
“But the earth is the divine Lord’s playground,” Rhona said.
Finally, dressed in their ugliest rags, they tripped through the endless gardens to the burn that babbled over its rocky bed toward the sea.
Once there, they followed its wending course, their toes slithering in the mud as they went, and when they found a particularly lovely spot of muck, Rhona turned them loose to play.
Instead, they looked at her with eyes wide and faces wary.
“Play,” she repeated, but Lachlan shook his head.
“Nay,” he said. “These two wee ones are not the sort to waste their hours such. They ’ave been taught to work, have you not, lassies?
” They were still clinging together like tiny spider monkeys.
“So ’tis best to simply let ’em ’ave at it.
” Rhona stared at him, and he shrugged. “I am ’ungry, me wee lassies. Perhaps you could bake me a pie.”
Edwina’s little mouth circled. Catherine frowned before she spoke. “But we have no meat.”
“Ahh, well, mayhap you’d best use mud, then.”
“Mud?” Edwina whispered.
“Or twigs or grasses or whatever lies close t’ ’and.”
“You cannot eat twigs.”
“You think not?”
Edwina shook her head. Catherine only stared.
“Then you have not yet been to Dun Ard.”
No one spoke.
“’Tis me father’s . . .” He paused, seemingly remembering he was to be naught but a servant here. “’Tis the castle where I used to labor before I came to serve Lady Rhona.”
“They eat twigs there?”
“’Tis like this, you see,” he said. Narrowing his eyes, he leaned closer as if he were sharing some wondrous truth.
“The lady of the keep is a great ’orse mistress, greater than all the lords of Christendom.
’er steeds eat like kings, but ’er subjects .
. .” He shrugged. “Sometimes we ’ad to make do. ”
Catherine studied him as if he were some strange new creature, but Edwina spoke again, repeating the question that haunted her. “You ate twigs?”
He laughed as he straightened to his full height. “This I tell you, wee one,” he said. “You make it . . . I will eat it.”
They set to work finally, and although their movements were uncertain at first, they soon caught the spirit of the morning.
As for Rhona, she had never been adverse to filth, so she settled herself on a nearby hillock and scooped up the soil with them. In a matter of minutes they had three pies set atop a rock.
“’Tis ready,” whispered Edwina and turned her attention to Lachlan. Her dimpled hands dripped with slime.
He eyed their masterpieces with judicious sobriety, then, “Nay, they be not yet baked,” he said, but just then the sun, seeming willing to play, skirted a bubbled cloud and shone down hot on the trio of pies.
“Well then,” said Rhona, “they’ll be done soon enough. What shall we do until ’tis time for Champion to sample the fare?”
Neither spoke, but from beneath her tattered gown, Catherine drew out the dirk she’d rescued the night before. Rhona met her gaze.
“Very well,” she said finally, and thus the lessons began.
Although Edwina soon tired of tossing a sharpened stick into a circle of branches, Catherine practiced until her narrow arm shook and Rhona deemed she had had enough. Retracing their steps toward the house, they came upon the mud pies.
The girls stopped, eyeing the feast in tandem. Neither spoke for a long second, but finally Edwina lifted her gaze to Lachlan. The tiniest hint of a smile curved her soft lips.
“Look,” she murmured. “Dinner is served.”