Chapter Two
Ornate, sealed, Monteith messages started arriving the very next day.
Lisle sent every one back, unread, and once the emissary started leaving several of them behind, she resorted to putting them in with the smoldering peat they used for a cook fire, adding a strange odor to everything that came out of their oven.
She’d have used a real fire to burn them…
if she had one with which to do so. Building a fire took wood.
Everything took something else; something that they didn’t possess and couldn’t afford. It was dire.
She knew just how dire it was when the west hallway collapsed, sending a wall of rainwater into a hall where royalty had once walked, and waking everyone except the youngest lass, Nadine.
That lass could sleep through a war, Lisle thought as she shoved her arms into the thick, woolen, unbending fabric making up the sleeves of the housecoat that doubled for indoor and outdoor use.
There wasn’t anything else she could use.
The trousseau that she’d spent so many years laboriously putting minute stitches in adorned her stepdaughters and aunts, unless it was of more use as a drapery or bed linen.
That included every lace-bedecked, satin, and gossamer…
Her thoughts stalled the moment her feet did. The hall roof had finally given into a rain that chilled and pelted and stole breath. She was experiencing all of it as she picked her way along the bricks and sod, the broken, rotted beams that had made up this section of the MacHugh ancestral castle.
“Oh, my God!” The screech accompanied Aunt Fanny as she launched her skeletal, white, bridal-satin-clothed body through the rubble. It was Lisle that had to stop her headlong flight before she twisted an ankle, or worse.
“Aunt Fanny! Stop that! You’ll injure yourself.” She was putting the same amount of volume into the words, but a mouthful of rain and wet hair muffled them.
“The chest! Doona’ let it get the chest.”
Aunt Fanny hadn’t much energy left in her body, and what she did possess, she’d just used.
Lisle held to her and assisted her back, over chunks of indecipherable debris: an upturned chair—that was easy to identify—and what had once been a beautiful, grand tapestry depicting a faded, ancient battle that a Scotsman might actually have won, for a change.
Lisle had to swipe a hand across her eyes to make out the safest path back to the broken-off eave, where a sleepy-eyed mass of MacHughs huddled. She was grateful for the coat, since there wasn’t much that could penetrate it, rain included.
“Here. Take Aunt Fanny. Aunt Matilda? Come on, love. She’s distraught.”
“Poor dear. Come along. I’ll get you a bit of spirits. It will do your body good, it will.” Aunt Matilda had an arm around the frailer aunt, and was trying to turn the woman away.
“I canna’ go yet, Mattie. You doona’ recall it? I’ve got to get the chest. It’s priceless.”
There was nothing priceless in the entire castle. Lisle looked back over her shoulder at wreckage that glimmered in what light was available.
“What chest, love?” Aunt Mattie asked.
“The war chest. Laird MacHugh’s personal effects. You remember it?”
“Calm yourself. There was nae chest in that entire hall.”
“Was too! It was in the deacon’s bench! She’s got to get it! I canna’ rest if she does na’ get it!”
Her words ended on a wail, and they’d just gotten her over an illness that had lingered for months. Lisle set her hips and her shoulders.
“If there’s a deacon’s bench in there, I’ll find it.
I promise. Get to the fire—” Lisle stopped her own words, but it wasn’t soon enough.
All the MacHughs were shivering and rubbing their hands over their arms, and hugging each other, and she’d just reminded them all of it.
There wasn’t a stick of wood worth burning in the entire place.
There hadn’t been since early spring. She swallowed and turned back to the mess that used to be the west hallway.
There was wood now, once it dried out enough to burn.
“Angus!” she shouted, but it wasn’t necessary; he was already at her elbow.
“Aye, lass?”
“Get me something to lift…this.” The pause came as she stumbled over a rain-soaked piece of something, ripping her coat, splashing everything else, and jarring her knee against a beam, paining her enough to make her cry aloud.
She didn’t. She’d learned years ago that crying, sobbing, and self-pitying didn’t do much, except gain one a sore throat and an aching head, and sometimes both.
“We’ve na’ got anything like that. If it had a use, we sold it.”
“Then fetch the ladder!”
“We’ve got a ladder?”
Laughter was bubbling in her throat now, taking the place of any desire to cry. “You were using one to pretend to clean the rafters just this morn, Angus. When you thought I wouldn’t know you were actually running about, trying to discover where I’d hidden your pipes.”
“I—? My pipes? Oh, bless me, lass, you’re right. I’ll be back directly. Directly. That ladder’s na’ much good, but we can use it for leverage and such.”
“And I dinna’ hide them in the rafters, Angus!
” She shouted it after his retreating back.
He didn’t hear it. None of the others did, either.
Those still interested in watching had gathered blankets about themselves, covering over the remnants of Lisle’s French-inspired trousseau they were wearing.
She sighed and ran her hands along her hair, plastering it to her head with the motion.
It was easier to see that way. It was actually a good thing her husband, Ellwood MacHugh, the last laird of the MacHughs, had filled his nursery with nothing save daughters.
God alone knew what she would have used to clothe a boy.
Angus was back, sending her stumbling several steps backward with the awkward way he held what was their ladder.
They’d already bartered off the serviceable one, just as Angus had said.
There was nothing left. The villagers wouldn’t take credit anymore.
She couldn’t afford wood to cook and warm them, or flour to eat.
They were almost reduced to eating barley soup without even barley in it.
All of which made it strange that she sent every unbidden letter from the Black Monteith right back, unopened.
The last time, Nadine had tears in her eyes at her stepmother’s stubbornness.
They didn’t know what it contained. She did.
Monteith was buying up land and property at an amazing rate, accruing his own personal kingdom.
The MacHughs would rather starve to death before taking one thin shilling from the man.
The ladder wasn’t but six feet in length, maybe seven.
Lisle eyed a promising-looking beam, draped over with pieces of thatch and what looked to be plaster, and some of that old, worn-looking tapestry.
Of course, it could be anything else, but in the rain-blurred night, that’s what she decided it would be.
She was actually grateful it was night. This might be enough to make her sit down and wallow in self-pity, if she actually saw it in the light of day
“What are you standing about for, lass? Let’s get to rescuing the war trunk so we can find a spot to dry out in!”
Lisle gained as many slivers in her palms as there were calluses and cracks, but she had the thing beneath the beam, and then she was shoving on it.
Nothing happened. She tried putting her entire body weight on it, testing the ladder’s tensile strength.
That got her a bit of sway to the pile of rubble, and a groaning sound that transferred from the wood along her palms and into her spine.
She went back down. The stack leaned back, an inch or two from where it had started.
She only hoped this chest, that Aunt Fanny was desperate to own, was beneath this chunk of old roofing and decayed beams. Someone should have taken the time and funds years earlier and redone some of the castle.
Maybe then, when there were only MacHugh daughters alive to inherit it, there might be something left to inherit.
Lisle was being stubborn. She should open the Monteith missive, sell off the lot for a whole bunch of his dishonorable gold, and buy them a smaller place; one with some land worth farming, or raising sheep or cattle, or anything that might bring some coin into the family coffers, rather than sending all of them flying out in the opposite direction.
She took a deep breath and launched herself onto the ladder again.
The beam swayed up, dangling pieces of unrecognizable debris, and she kicked with her feet to get it to move a little farther this time before she came back down.
The ladder did the same creaking motion, although the wood in her hand shivered along with it, but when she came back down, the beam had moved, and none the worse for it.
She was almost in buoyant spirits the third time she tried it, absolutely amazed that something she was trying was working.
“Good work, lass. I see it. I ken what she wants now.”
“What?” Her teeth clenched, and the word was whistled through them as she jumped up again, bruising her ribs a bit with it, and gathering even more slivers in her palms.
“The MacHugh war chest. It’s hid in the deacon’s bench. If it’s what I think it is, I know why the woman will na’rest without it. It’ll contain the family Bible. That’s what she wants.”
“What…why—?” Lisle held herself up, kicking her feet with a swinging motion, and moved the beam another good foot to one side. Her query didn’t make much sense with the amount of air available to her to use on it, but he understood it.
“I said, it contains the family Bible. All the history. All the names. All of them, lass. Every hero. Every chieftain. Every Celt.”