Chapter 7
Robina excused herself and Benjy from the high table soon after the boy had eaten. Her feelings about Dev’s taking charge at Coklaw remained mixed. The news had shocked her, and she was still trying to accustom herself to it.
That Rab seemed to welcome Dev’s arrival was irksome.
“You’ll soon be glad he’s here.”
“Will I?” she retorted, glancing toward him to see only the wall beside her.
“Who ye talking to?” Benjy asked over his shoulder as they went up the stairs.
“Myself, laddie. Sometimes I like to enjoy a conversation with the one person who always understands what I’m talking about.”
“Are ye saying I’m nobbut a dolt, then?”
Hearing amusement in his tone, she said lightly, “I am not, and you know it. I think I must be as tired tonight as you are, though, so I’m going to go to bed, too.”
“It seemed to me that Dev expected ye to go back downstairs.”
“It seemed so to me, too, Beany.”
Robina thought they were both right, but she was not ready yet to talk more with Dev. She wanted to examine the jar and see if she could open it.
She said, “Dev has been traveling hither and yon for a sennight, Benjy, so he must be sleepy, too. Besides, he did not say that I should go back down, so I’m going to bed as soon as you are tucked up in your cot.”
Corinne was straightening the coverlet on Benjy’s bed when they arrived and greeted them with a grin, saying, “I’ve shaken out his bedclothes, mistress, and smoothed his cot. He’s a restless sleeper, our laddie,” she added, ruffling his hair.
“I can get myself ready for bed,” he said, stepping away from her.
“Can ye now?” Corinne said, exchanging a smile with Robina. “We’ll just see about that, won’t we?”
When Benjy frowned, Robina said, “He’s feeling much better, Corinne, so he won’t need you. I’m for bed myself, though, so unless you’ve already brought up my hot water, prithee shout for someone to fetch some to my chamber.”
“Aye, sure, mistress,” Corinne said.
“Benjy should have a lad to look after him. He’s too old to be coddled so.”
For once, Robina agreed with Rab. But, suspecting that Dev would say such needs of Benjy’s fell within his purview now, she would ask him about it first.
Downstairs, Dev waited at the high table, wondering if Robina would return. He had already decided that it was unlikely. If she knew he’d seen her on the rise, under that oilskin in the drizzle…
He was more than curious about what she’d been doing, which made him wonder if it was his well-honed suspicious nature that made her behavior, in retrospect, seem furtive, or something more than that. She had hurried inside when she saw him.
Asking a lad to remove the privacy screens, he watched as men in the lower hall laid out pallets, diced, played other games, or talked together. But his thoughts stayed with Robina. “Likely, she hurried inside only because of the rain,” he muttered.
Motion to his right drew his attention to Greenlaw stepping onto the dais. “If ye’d like, sir,” the steward said, “I’ll show ye to the master’s chambers. Your man likely has all in readiness there for your comfort by now.”
“Sit down, Greenlaw,” Dev said, pushing out the nearest back-stool with a foot. “I’ve decided that you and I should meet briefly each morning to discuss aught that might need my attention. Do you know of any such thing that I should see to straightaway?”
Greenlaw’s lips twisted wryly. “We ha’ lost stock since the young laird’s death, sir. Likely some o’ our greedier neighbors ha’ taken advantage o’ his loss, when they ought to be grieving wi’ the family.”
“You know as well as I do that Borderers’ thoughts rarely linger on death,” Dev said. “It occurs too often hereabouts to dwell long on each loss.”
“Aye, so I should tell ye, sir, that young Benjy has set his heart on planting a memorial tree to our Rab on a rise not far from the gate.”
“That rise to the southeast?”
“Aye, sir. But if ye’re thinking he ought not to dwell—”
“Nay, nay,” Dev said hastily. “Benjy is still a bairn, whatever else he may be. As long as I have a say here, he will enjoy his childhood as much as he can whilst learning his future duties.”
“I’ll say nae more about that, then. As to the stock…”
Resigned to hearing more about Coklaw’s losses, Dev decided that at least he now knew why Robby had been creeping about in the rain. Since Benjy had been in bed, sick, she had simply been seeing that his memorial to Rab was safe.
She was a good and loving sister, so it likely had been no more than his own too-suspicious nature that had made her actions seem furtive.
As soon as Corinne departed for the night, leaving a lighted candle on the stand by Robina’s bed, Robina got up, slid the bolt on her door into its slot, and opened the blanket kist. The jar lay under the four blankets where she had left it.
Taking it out and moving near the candle, she examined the jar.
It seemed ordinary, about eight inches tall.
Her two hands could encircle it with her thumbs and forefingers overlapping.
The top end and its crockery cap were a bit smaller.
Such a jar might contain water or wine, or barley.
Whatever it held now did not slosh; it rattled a little.
The wire crisscrossed the cap and wrapped under the lip of the jar, where it flared wider.
Whoever had wired it shut had twisted the wire ends tightly.
Also, as Rab had noted earlier, the wire was rusty.
She would need a tool of some sort and gloves to protect her hands.
Such items were stored in the tool shed by the stable.
Since she could do no more that night and was ready for bed, she tucked the jar away again, unbolted the door so Corinne could get in, in the morning, and went to sleep.
Waking at the sound of the latch, Robina saw bright light through the shutters and knew the clouds had broken at last and the sun had come up.
“ ’Tis a fine soft day, mistress,” Corinne said with a smile as she moved to the washstand with a can of hot water for the ewer.
“I’ll wear my old drab kirtle, the one I decided not to cut up for rags,” Robina said. “I’m going to see how the hole for Benjy’s tree looks this morning, and it will be muddy.”
Her chamber windows, no more than two arrow slits, looked westward over the wall toward Slitrig Water and Hawick.
With the shutters open, she saw blue sky with drifting white clouds.
The hills and forest beyond the wall wore a soft gray blanket of ground fog, but the storm had moved on and the fresh air beckoned.
Dressing quickly, she strapped on the narrow belt bearing her small dirk in its sheath, over her shift, before she donned her kirtle. Then, she adjusted the belt so she could reach the dirk’s hilt through the kirtle’s right-hand fitchet.
Plaiting her hair by herself to save time, she left Corinne to make the bed and tidy the bedchamber, peeked into Benjy’s empty room, and hurried downstairs.
No one was on the dais, so she took a roll from a basket on the high table and a slice of cold beef from under the nearby platter’s cover. Rolling the beef into a narrow tube, she bit off one end as she turned toward the main stairway and finished it before she reached the outer door.
Stepping into the misty yard, she glanced at the sky and drew a deep breath of the rain-freshened air.
Then, tearing off a chunk of her roll, she raised it to take a bite and heard a familiar shriek of anger.
Scanning the yard, she saw Benjy in the grip of a total stranger.
The boy fought to break free as the man dropped to a knee, hauled him across the other one, and began to belabor his backside.
Flinging her roll aside, Robina snatched up her skirts and flew down the steps.
Dev was talking with Shag at the gate when he heard Benjy cry out and turned to see Robina running toward Gyb Christie, one of the men-at-arms from his tail. Gyb had the boy across his knee and was giving him a sound skelping.
“What’s that dastard think he’s a-doing to our Benjy?” Shag demanded.
Dev barely heard him. He was running after Robby, wondering what demon had possessed her to take on a man twice her size, instead of shouting for help. By heaven, he thought, when I get my hands on her… sakes, on all three of them…
The man punishing Benjy faced the northwest corner of the yard with his profile toward Robina. He hadn’t seen her yet, because he had his attention fixed on the boy, who was still screeching with pain and indignant fury.
Putting her hands out toward the lout’s nearer muscular shoulder, Robina shoved hard and skidded to a halt as he went over sideways and Benjy scrambled away.
Hands on her hips, Robina snapped, “How dare you strike my brother!”
“By heaven, ye pliskie bitch, ye need a lesson more than he does,” the lout said, leaping to his feet faster than she had expected.
Swiftly reaching through the fitchet in her skirt for the dirk’s hilt as she stepped back, she said angrily, “You have no right to touch him.”
“Hush your gob, lass! By heaven, I’ll teach ye wisdom if nowt else.”
He reached for her but paused when Benjy shouted, “Dinna touch her! I’ll see ye hanged an ye do!”
“Hoots, I’ll finish wi’ ye later, ye ill-deedit skemp,” the man retorted, turning back toward Robina, who now had her dirk in hand.
“Beany, don’t be daft!”
“I vow,” she muttered grimly, ignoring Rab, “you will not touch him again. Nor will you touch me. If you are wise, you will go about your own business.”
“I like a fierce woman, but I’ll no ha’ ye playing wi’ knives, lassie,” the lout said, grinning now. “Gi’e me that ’un afore ye hurt yourself.”
His hands moved, but she stepped back on her right foot, holding the dirk low as she did. Then she swept it back farther to gain momentum as he reached to grab her other hand, still held out obligingly closer to him.