Chapter 19
Callum saw Nella glance up at the sky again after they fell in step once the chargers were seen to before she tilted her head heavier. “My lady,” he murmured in the tiniest whisper, “if the task harbors too severe a cost you halt, understood?”
Her hand sought his jaw as silent answer to aye. Good. He wasn’t about to chance her.
Brayden? He glanced over his shoulder. Not anywhere visible. Well done, my friend, he thought, at blending seamlessly into the crowds who were giving off as much body fumes as opinions at the prices in various bartering.
Taking a strong hold on Nella’s hand, Callum led her toward the Spaniard’s ship.
His grip tightened when she tripped slightly on a hidden root reaching up like a finger from the trampled soil beneath them.
She was focusing all her strength. Guide her a path through the chaos with care.
Take a left at the tent with the animal hides hanging about it.
Ahh, better, a quieter stretch toward the docks for her.
“Callum.” Her tone caused a halting by his feet when she tugged on him. “We must go back. There is a lass. She is cornered by a bawdy lad four tents past who means her harm.”
He darted his eyes at where Nella mentioned as they came around the next corner. Look at that wee bastard, his jaw set; they didn’t have time for a lad who couldn’t drop his braise fast enough.
“In haste,” Nella whispered frantically.
His feet bolted over the muddied terrain as rain turned more from mist into a pour like Mother Nature’s pitcher.
It was too far; they needed a quicker means in halting this disgusting display when the lass’s squeak became muffled by the lad closing his hand over her mouth while his bare arse hit the wind. Go with the arrow, not the sword.
He dropped Nella’s hand, and she halted beside him as he pulled the bow from under his cloak along with an arrow. Left or right or center straight up the arse’s hole? Left. Teach the lad a lesson he wouldn’t soon forget.
The arrow flew the breeze before a howl was lost in the wind when the iron point made the mark.
The attacker dropped his hold on the lass, who bolted, as he clutched his arse.
That will stay with the attacker always!
Turning toward Nella, she gave an approving nod before Callum stole her hand in his and they charged at a quick pace for the docks.
The stalls seemed to lead all the way to Edinburgh. Hell! How far had they come? Little over halfway. Callum tugged Nella right at the next embankment belonging to cattlemen trying to calm the herds in the dire weather, and Nella paused her step.
“Callum, he… he is here.” She blanched. “The Northman, I hear him haggling with a Scotsman four stalls beyond us on the left for ale.” Go right! He tore them into the next row away from Kolson.
Her stride widened while he pulled her hood further down when a gust tried to take it back from concealing her face. He almost yanked her arm when her feet planted the earth strong as the posts on the tented stall beside them.
“A wee lad, he has lost his way and weeps for his mother,” Nella murmured.
They must make the docks! He looked about. “Where?”
“This way.” She ripped him right again into the sheep pens and those shearing the mewling creatures under crude overhangs dripping rain like a waterfall.
Four rows over there stood a wailing wee lad, perhaps quarter score. Nella knelt before him as Callum darted his gaze about. Northman? Nae. Hiss? Nae. Mother looking for her lost lad? Nae. Hell!
“’Tis fine,” Nella soothed the red-faced expression. “We shall find her. What does your mam call you, wee one?”
“Adam,” he peeped.
Callum saw Nella in his periphery tilt her head. She was searching for the mother. “I… I know where your mam is. Take my hand and I may see you to her.” The lad looked apprehensive a moment. “I know she is searching for her Adam’s Apple. That is her loving summons for you, is it not?”
The puffy eyes widened. “Aye, you know my mam.” He placed his hand in Nella’s.
She met Callum’s eyes and he nodded, grasping his sword’s hilt beneath his cloak he trailed the pair. His eyes scanned all the faces in the packed merchant row as the rain went back from sheets to mist.
The mother was easily spotted; her puffy eyes matched her “Adam’s Apple” and her face lit up when she saw Nella round the corner with him. Lifting her skirts, the mother bolted toward Nella who released the lad’s hand after he raced for his mother.
Introductions were not a good idea. Callum grabbed Nella’s palm before they vanished into the next row of stalls where various meads were being haggled over.
“That one gave me the pisses last year same as a horse,” a disgruntled patron groused as they tore past the wagons. Two more. Two more turns and they would be at the docks!
Fish fumes reigned supreme the final stretch while they bolted by the fishermen’s stalls.
The creatures from the ocean lay with unseeing eyes for sale in rows tidy as the marketplace itself.
“Salted, ’tis the very finest salmon and it shall keep eatable for a long while,” one fisherman promised a Scotswoman.
They were going to make it! Was that the first mate to the Spaniard on the dock’s edges releasing the line for the barge to the large cog ship? Aye!
“Nella,” he whispered fiercely, “the crewman with bald head, he is with the Spaniard.”
“He is taking his leave!” she said in a low panicked tone.
“Aye, step quickly but do not call out for him,” Callum advised.
Concealing their steps under the cloaks, they half ran the final stretch. A shadow appeared on their left. Brayden.
What was the bald crewman called? Fernando? No. Tomas? Aye, that was… “Tomas,” Callum greeted when the brown gaze glanced up at them on their final approach.
“Sir Callum!” Tomas replied then looked toward, “Sir Brayden. The captain shall welcome your arrival. Come, come.” Strange; that was a rather boastful greeting.
***
A short bobbing on the waves later, Nella found herself on the deck of a most extraordinary ship. Huge! Had she ever seen the likes of it before? No. The bald crewman called Tomas vanished a moment below deck. She leaned her head slightly.
“Tomas, good, you’re back. Three more have taken ill. ’Tis the damn spoiled ale they drank earlier. We cannot have them…”
“Captain,” she heard Tomas interrupt, “Sir Callum is on deck for you.”
“Finally!”
“Captain, there is a lady with him.”
“Oh?”
“A beauty.”
“Well then let us have a look at the lady who has finally broken through that sound stoic armor he has worn all these years in sorrow.” That was because of me.
Nella cast her eyes down. “Nella?” Callum murmured. “Have you harkened to something causing you sorrow?” Aye.
She stole his hand in hers beneath his cloak. Before she could explain, a voice boomed the deserted deck. “Sir Callum!”
A large Spaniard with a beard thick as the captain himself appeared from the hold’s doorway. When he spotted her, a grin white as pearls in the ocean beneath flashed.
“Good morrow to you and Sir Brayden.” The onyx hair ruffled as a gust slapped at them.
“Good morrow, my lady…?”
“Lady Fawnella.”
“Lady Fawnella ’tis an honor.” The captain inclined his brow. Charming. Then the Spaniard regarded Callum. “Sir Callum, I am so very pleased you were able to arrive in time before our leave upon the morrow.” What was he talking about?
“Captain Castellón, I am not certain what you speak of.”
“The missive.”
“Missive?”
“Yes, the missive I sent to you at the royal court in Stirling over a fortnight past.”
Callum’s jaw tightened as he glanced around, a pensiveness in his eyes. Had they just walked into a trap? She tilted her head more.
“I am telling you ’twas the damn ale!” A crewman swore below. No threat to them.
“Hell, if I retch again my stomach is going to burst.” Another ill one in the decks below. Definitely not a threat. What had made them all ill?
Squeak. Squeak. There were the rats in the lowest hold. Whoosh, slap. Wind and waves against the hull.
She leaned toward Callum’s ear. “Nae threats aboard.” His shoulders lowered as his fingers tightened a breath in hers as if to say silently, Thank you.
Captain Castellón must have seen the reaction as well. “Sir Callum, let us step toward the stern castle for a more private place to speak. Even the holds below have shadows and ears, and worse. Almost the whole crew partook on rancid ale and have fallen ill.”
They strode across the deck before reaching the stairs. Once atop the stern castle beside the abandoned helm, given the anchor was dropped, she heard Callum say, “Captain Castellón, I never received a missive.”
The captain scratched his beard. “The crewman who saw it there handed it to a guard at the gate. I warned him he was to see it to your hand directly, but the guard was most persistent it would be seen to.” There was a traitor at court.
“Would this crewman be present?” Callum questioned.
“Alas, no, he stepped off my ship at Inverness.”
“Then pray tell what was in this missive?”
“A warning of sorts. I am here to deliver a very large, sizable request for swords. The buyer was to be here upon the morrow to collect them. ’Twas the number which struck me at what he demanded, all at once, and all in haste for delivery directly onto your shores, my friend.
” Friend? Huh, how long had Callum known this Spaniard?
“I received word upon arrival yesterday that a wagon was to be acquired by me, the swords loaded, then driven to a valley east of here. Where we were to await his warriors and exchange of coin.” The captain raised his bushy brows.
“If you have not received my missive, then do tell, why are you here on this deck?”
“A very delicate matter for the crown. If I had known of the missive a full guard would be upon the shore behind me. My purpose here was to find out if you have heard any whispers regarding a vast number of swords for a lone individual. You are the strongest trader in weaponry.”
The captain grinned. “Appreciated, my friend.” The lips then turned downward. “However, you will also find my crewmen are of no use going forth.”
“This ale.” Nella stepped forward. “What merchant had the crewman sought onshore?”
“There wasn’t any merchant; it arrived with a missive and compliments of the buyer.” It was the inn all over again!
Callum’s eyes snapped to hers as she gasped the words. “They are being poisoned.”
“Who drank?” Callum questioned. “And when?”
The captain darted his eyes nervously toward the deserted deck. “All, with exception of me and Tomas. Late eve the missive arrived, they drank then.”
Nella looked at Callum. “’Tis a different poison than the tavern.”
“Aye,” Callum concurred then suggested, “The ingredient is slow acting. Perchance it is only meant to delay any action upon the crewman if the acquisition tuned sour?”
Nella met the deep Spaniard’s eyes. “What has ailed them?”
“Retching.”
“This is all? Nae pain in the stomach?”
“No. Are you a healer, my lady?”
She shook her head. “Nae, Captain Castellón, simply an adorer of herbs, with a keen sense of listening to an abbess who is a most gifted healer,” she explained, looking at the three earnest expressions.
“I believe it to be foxglove. A year past the abbess sough to heal a case such as this when a jilted lass began poisoning a lover who came to see the abbess. ’Twas the same as you describe. ”
The captain took a shaking inhale. “Did he die from the effects?”
“Nae, Abbess ordered him to drink a tincture of Belladonna, I remember it well,” Nella replied somberly. “‘With care,’ she said to the lad; too much will cause one to never wake she warned.”
The captain sighed the reply. “I believe we have this tincture in the hold.” He glanced at, “Tomas!”