Chapter 18 #2
A sob escaped her and she sucked in a quivering breath.
The air was small and tasted and smelled of dank dirt.
She could kneel but her shoulder caught on the wall the space was so narrow, but it was slightly wider on the lower half.
Like a blind woman her hands slowly swept over the ground, where there were deep-angled divots as if left from the shovel used to dig the pit.
Standing took some work in the small space and she tried to quell the fear that overwhelmed her. Above her was the trap door. She jumped upward trying to hit it, but her fist barely tapped the surface of the wood.
With every breath she took the air changed.
A great and powerful fear raced through her, soaked deep into her very bones, and she felt a panic so intense she could only scream and scream and scream, until the shaking stopped and her voice was raspy and almost gone, then she collapsed into a knot on the dirt, knees wedged to her chest, toes against the opposite wall.
She lay her head on her knees and she tried to breathe calmly, breathe slow breaths. The air was getting hotter yet she was shivering as if she were exposed in the dead of winter.
Footsteps sounded, soft thuds coming closer. If the guard was coming back could she get away? Mere minutes had passed…or was it hours? She pushed up the walls, the only way she could actually stand and the trap’s bolt shot.
The door opened, blinding her from the change of light. Munro stood above her. She could feel his aura of evil before his face appeared.
“Well, my dear, how do you find your new home? Looks to be a perfect fit,” he said, laughing. “I have brought you company.” He stepped back.
One of his henchmen came close to the edge. Over her head, dangling from a hook in his hands, was a twitching snake. She could catch glimpses of the distinct pattern on its back and she stopped breathing.
“Drop the adder!” Munro ordered, his face intense.
The snake fell on her, still twisting in the air, its cool skin across her neck and shoulders and she panicked, flailed in the pit and scratched her arms on the rough stones sticking out of the walls.
She began crawling up the wall, desperate to get away.
She heard the snake hit the dirt just as the light disappeared and the trap door had closed on Munro’s vile and wicked laughter.
"I am Glenna Canmore! I am Glenna Canmore! My father is the king!"
The footsteps didn't stop....
"I am Glenna Canmore!"
....They merely disappeared.
She hung her head for a hearbeat, then kept crawling upward, her back pressed to one side of the pit and her feet against the other. Her heartbeat thrummed loudly in her ears and in her chest.
Below was the adder. She could hear it moving in the dirt.
Above was the bolted trap door. Trap…trapped. It was so dark her eyes could not adjust to see anything. Her back ached from the pressure of the jagged rocks, but she dared not relax, wedged as she was she was safe from the adder.
She took long deep breaths and focused on her position. In time, her mind wandered. If she fell, how many snakebites would it take to kill her?
If only…if only…
Her concentration broke and she slipped a bit, but pressed so hard against the wall the rocks felt like knives in her back.
She gripped her knees, willed away the pain in her back, and prayed for the strength to stay as she was, prayed for the power of lust to overcome the guard who had promised to come back.
Lyall adjusted his rough woolen hood and shifted, tugging at the tight peasant’s tunic that pulled at his arms and chest whenever he moved. He snapped the reins and drove the heavy, creaking wain stacked with firewood up to the posts of the manor.
“Where is Cam?” The sheriff’s man asked casually.
“Broke his arm, he did. I am Frang, his brother,” Lyall said, his hands tightening slightly on the reins of the ox team pulling the wagon. Cam was, in truth, tied to a tree up on the rise above the glen.
“Pull your wain to the side and stack the wood there,” the guard said without question and he pointed beyond the gates and around to the back side of the manor house.
Lyall steered the team as told, his gaze darting, taking in the number for guardsmen, the rear gates, lackeys and workers moving about.
A groom lugging buckets of water to the stables.
The hot iron smell of a smithy. Baying, barking hounds in the kennels and screaming peafowl in pens next to the chickens.
He jumped down from the wain as a tall, willow-thin older woman came outside from the open kitchens, eyeing the load of firewood and then eyeing him.
“Where is that Cam?” she said and held up a hand not waiting for an answer.
“Foolhardy he is. The mon cannot hold his beer.” She placed her hands on her hips.
“Ye look brawny enough to carry wood, mon. Stack it there. When yer done ye can bring some logs inside and stock the wood boxes.” With that, she disappeared inside.
He needed to find Glenna. But the yard was bustling with guards and workmen.
Lyall grabbed the woodman’s gloves from the plank seat but they did not fit his hands, so he tossed them aside and unloaded the wain barehanded, stacking wood, watching and studying the place until the bed was almost empty and his hands and clothes were filled with splinters, wood dust, and dried flecks of old moss.
As he brushed off his tunic, he looked up.
A milkmaid with her milk pails hanging from a wooden yoke was coming towards him.
As she passed by him, she struggled and milk sloshed onto the ground.
She gave a soft cry, her creamy skin flushed and her eyes panicked.
He steadied the yoke, lifting it easily off her shoulders before she spilt the whole lot of it.
The maid thanked him sweetly and looked up at him as if he were God Himself, and Lyall thought he had found his means of information. He had watched them bring Glenna in, but where they were keeping her?
“Where is Cam?” The maid asked shyly, eyeing him up and down.
“Broken arm,” Lyall said and changed the subject. “Where do you want this milk? I shall carry it for you.”
“Here,” she said, opening a large oaken door. “Follow me.” She went down some stairs that led to a cold room beneath the ground floors. He carried the milk and set the buckets down.
Inside the dark room, Lyall easily got the information he wanted from her.
A poached chicken, a hound, and some lad the sheriff tracked down in the high forest. One relief--Glenna’s guise was safe--until the maid went on about how she pitied the young boy who would be used so cruelly by the sheriff.
“I heard the boy is locked in the pit,” she told him.
“The pit?” he asked. “What is this pit?”
“ ’Tis a dirt hole with trap door.”
“Have you seen it?” Lyall asked.
“I saw it once, not much bigger inside than an ale barrel, and ‘tis in a round room deep inside the manor, close to the master’s chambers. Some say for his convenience.” She paused. “I am not allowed inside, except in here and the kitchens.” She looked down, clearly ashamed of her limits.
“Were I sheriff, a pretty lass like you could roam the whole of my manor,” he said kindly.
Her expression was open—the sweet, carnal invitation in her eyes. There was a time when he would have taken this maid because that was how men proved their manhood. A youthful ideal—one that changed drastically when he stared down at the broken body of his young wife.
He reached out and touched her jawline. “You are a lovely lass.”
She cocked her head and looked at him with an odd expression, curious. Then she smiled tenderly. “Another holds your heart.”
Her words made him immediately uncomfortable. He shook his head, denying what she thought.
" 'Tis the truth. Whether or not you choose to believe it.”
“Hullo! Worthless woodman! Where are ye?”
“ ‘Tis the cook,” she said. “Go. Hurry. No one should see us.”
Lyall went up of the stairs. The cook stood near the woodpile with her arms crossed. “There ye be, mon. Come. Fill yer arms with wood.” She clapped her hands impatiently. “Come. Come!”
He carried in armloads of wood to stock the kitchen fire boxes, before he volunteered to take wood to the rest of the manor and into the master’s chamber, receiving for his good offer, exactly what he wanted: directions to the sheriff chamber inside the manor.
Arms piled with wood, he moved toward the chamber.
Munro was slumped in a chair, his chin resting on his chest, either asleep or drunk or both.
Lyall quietly lay the wood near the hearth and he left the room, moving down the opposite hallway until he opened the door and found the round room.
A red-haired man lay face down on the floor, dead or unconscious. Lyall caught the rise and fall of his shallow breath. Unconscious.
He crossed the small room to where the trap door was open and grabbed a candle from the wall prick. He knelt down, holding the candlelight and he looked down into the pit, where a snake stared back at him with yellow eyes.