Chapter 16 #2
When the man took an odd, whistling breath, Lyall leaned forward slowly, forearms on the table, setting some coins between them where they caught the candlelight and gleamed bright silver.
“This could be a day of fine luck for both of us, Heckie of Drumashie,” he said easily pushing the coin closer to the man. “I am on the trail of some important information….”
Ramsey paced in his private chamber, hands locked behind him and dictating a message to his scribe, when three small children came running across the stone floor shrieking, “Greatpapa! Greatpapa!” and they were suddenly shimmying up him like the odd, agile monkeys he once saw in London.
As those small hands and feet frantically covered him, his mood lightened and his precise and careful choice of words written to the earl of Sutherland were quickly forgotten.
“We will finish later,” he told his scribe, who quickly gathered his precious writing tools close to his chest. All knew Mairi’s young and curious children had free reign at Rossi to destroy whatever they could, at their whim, and the scribe rushed the room as if his hair were on fire.
Ramsey pulled Duncan and Gregor into his broad arms and Robbie, the eldest, was already hanging from his back.
“Be the bear, Greatpapa!”
So he growled and carried on, juggling his grandchildren, step grandchildren if one wanted to be accurate, as he prowled the inner chamber like a dancing bear and nothing near to an infamous warrior or a baron.
He was at that moment merely ‘Greatpapa,’ a name Robbie had come up with mixing up great and grand, and despite all Mairi’s scolding, nothing could change Robbie’s name for him.
Secretly Ramsey cared not what the lads called him and thought his grandson’s stubbornness was a good trait, and at one point, he taught Duncan to call him the Greatpapa, which, when Mairi caught him in the act, earned him a weak scolding from his laughing stepdaughter.
For Ramsey, the sound of children’s voices echoing off the stone walls of his castle gave him great joy, and was something he had longed for.
All his wealth and power could not give him sons and daughters.
No babes had grown from the wombs of either of his wives.
He had his two stepchildren--though he could not wait to get his hands on one of them—and he had Mairi’s sons.
By the time he and the lads were all tumbling upon the thick carpet he had brought back from his youthful journey to the Holy Land, Beitris and Mairi came inside arm in arm and stood watching and shaking their heads, ready as usual to put a halt to their antics.
“Come along you,” Mairi said as she began pulling children off of him. “Leave Greatpapa be.”
Robbie puffed himself up, “I am the great knight Sir Robert of Glamis!” He held up a mock sword.
“I shall save all from the mad bear!” He kissed the imaginary sword and acted out jabbing it into Ramsey, who rolled and groaned and moaned, flopped and twitched like he was dying, then flung his arms outwards and lay perfectly still on the carpet, while Robbie rested his small foot on his chest and bowed victorious to all.
“Enough foolishness,” Mairi said, but her voice held no censure. “Come. Cook has warm honeycakes waiting for you.”
The children froze and looked down at him as if to judge which was more desirable, Greatpapa or sweets. “Go on with you,” he said, winking. “But save me the heftiest honeycake.”
The women gathered up the bouncing children, who were now arguing over which would choose first, and sent them off with two capable nursemaids, so Ramsey leapt up easily and ran a hand through his tousled dark hair which was just beginning to show the steely edges of some gray, and he grinned sheepishly at his wife, then turned to his stepdaughter.
“Come and give an old man a proper greeting.”
“What old man? I do not see an old man,” Mairi said and nestled into the crook of his arm, hugging him.
“Two score and five this coming year,” he declared. Spoken aloud, the number sounded old to his ears. He slipped his arm tighter around her and he thought perhaps she had finally began to put some meat back on her willow-thin bones.
“You are so good for them,” she said quietly, her cheek to his chest and her voice thick with emotion.
Widowed just over a year ago, Mairi still looked wan and lost without Robert Gray.
Her husband died in a shipwreck off the coast of Ireland while there as an emissary for his maternal uncle, the earl of Pembroke.
Ramsey knew she would need another husband to protect Grey lands for his grandsons, and while many believed he should marry her off to another quickly, Ramsey wanted Mairi to be content.
She, like Beitris, had had enough pain. For now, he held guardianship over her and the lads and provided their protection, because he knew his strong-willed stepdaughter could not yet face another marriage.
Beitris handed him a large goblet of wine and turned slightly away…taking another small piece of his heart as she did so. “Sit,” he released Mairi and took a drink of dark wine that suddenly held little flavor. He sat down heavily in a chair, his long legs out in front of him.
“Tell me what was so urgent to send guards to escort us here immediately,” Mairi said.
Mairi and Lyall were close as a brother and sister could be.
Beitris stood next to him, her good side to him, her unscarred hand resting gently on his shoulder. She understood how difficult this was for him. If only she understood what she meant to him.
He took another drink and set down his goblet, talked to Mairi about the importance and secrecy of what he was about to tell her…and he told her what Lyall had done.
Mairi swore like a man and her mother flinched and made the sign of the cross.
“My exact reaction,” Ramsey said grimly.
“Lyall stayed with you for most of the spring and half the summer,” Beitris said. “Did you see or hear anything?”
“Aye,” she said, still clearly angry. “Months back, in the late spring, he received a message and rode out with a de Hay knight.”
All was becoming clearer and more treacherous, Ramsey thought.
“God, no… Are you certain it was de Hay?” Beitris asked, her voice high and her hand tightened on his shoulder.
“Aye. I saw the man’s badge. When Lyall returned his mood was changed. He was not himself. I asked what had happened and he claimed it was something to do with Isobel.”
“ ‘Tis unlikely since Isobel’s been dead for three years,” Ramsey said wryly.
“And once she died, Lyall wanted naught to do with the family. In particular her father,” Beitris said, not bothering to hide her anger.
“Only because Dunkeldon was lost to him,” Mairi said aloud what Ramsey was thinking.
"Dunkeldon will be the end of him,” Beitris said clearly unable to comprehend her son’s intense and bleak ties to his father’s lands.
Ramsey did understand Lyall’s torment. A man’s lands gave him worth in a world that judged him on his possession and sword-arm. But Lyall’s drive and his pursuit at any means and in the face of the unattainable was like watching a caged boar beat its head against the iron bars.
“He is a fool,” Mairi said, but the words carried a great and heavy sadness that spread through the chamber.
“He will be hanged for this,” Beitris’ voice cracked and she buried her face in her hands and began to cry.
“Mother…” Mairi ran over to her.
Ramsey stood and started to reach for his wife but someone called to him from behind the chamber curtain. He crossed the room and swept aside the curtain to come face to face with one of his house knights.
“We found their trail, my lord, near Inverness. I rode like the very devil to get here.”
“Good.” Ramsey clapped him on the shoulder and looked out the tower arch. “We have enough time before the sun sets. We will leave immediately. Go find a fresh mount.”
“The grooms are saddling one now, along with your horse, my lord.”
“Go then and have some bread and ale, man—see the cook--while I speak to my wife. I will meet you in the stable.” Ramsey went back inside their chamber.
Beitris was sitting in the chair, Mairi kneeling at her feet and holding her hands.
She had stopped crying and looked up at him, forgetting in her sorrow to hide half her face.
“My men found their trail.”
“Donnald…” she stood and Mairi stood with her. “Please find him. Save my foolish son from himself.”
“I swear to you I will find them.” He reached out and gently touched her scarred face and she suddenly remembered and her hand quickly covered his and he could read the shame in her large eyes. He shook his head, pulled her into his arms and kissed her hard before he turned and left.
Glenna dug her knife into the dirt and pried loose a skinny bunch of carrots, stuffing them into a sack with a few turnips and an onion, and she placed a silver coin worth a hundred bunches of carrots next to the hole, before she crawled down the dirt row to another, where she inhaled the strong scent of leeks.
A moment later a handful of leeks hit the bottom of the sack and she left another coin before she glanced up to keep an eye on the moon still hiding behind thick, approaching storm clouds.
Candlelight flickered dimly from a nearby manor house, and the wind carried the soft, distant voices of the guards whose shadows paced watch near the walls. She was somewhere north of the Ness and east of Beauly, smack in the middle of some of the Gordons’ prized pickings.
She sat up, resting back on her heels, eyeing the outlined shadows if the garden bed.
Taking only a few vegetables was all she would allow herself—despite the coins she left-- because she was still not completely comfortable stealing from crofters, even those on a wealthy estate.
Circumstances were such she could not be selectively generous about who she stole from.