Chapter Eighteen #2
Inside, there was a long, slender room, nearly the length of the building, and back in the rear of the room, he could see a kitchen complete with a giant, smoking hearth.
Cooking smells wafted in the room, the scent of roasting meat and heavy smoke.
It also smelled like dogs and nearly as soon as they entered, a pack of mutts came rushing out at them.
Sophie screamed when one growled and nearly launched herself into Cortez’s arms. He kicked the growling dog in the throat, and the dog yelped as it turned tail and scampered off.
“Dunna kick me dogs, mon,” the innkeeper said as he emerged from the kitchen. He was a fat man with a crown of wild red hair and a long pipe hanging from his lips. “They willna hurt ye.”
Cortez cocked a dark eyebrow. “That dog growled at my daughter and frightened her,” he said evenly. “If it does it again, I will kill it and reimburse you the cost for a new one that will be friendlier towards children.”
The innkeeper stared at him a moment before breaking into a grin, revealing crooked and green teeth. “Where are ye from, sassenach?”
Cortez couldn’t tell if the man was trying to be friendly or trying to figure out just how much of an enemy he was. Upon hearing Cortez’s speech pattern, it was clear that he was instantly suspicious.
“We have come to visit kin,” Cortez didn’t answer him directly. He lied, in fact. “We require at least four rooms, more if you can spare them.”
The innkeeper puffed on his pipe. The smoke that emerged smelled strongly of animal dung. As he puffed away, deciding whether or not he wanted to rent a room to the Sassenach knight and his family, his round wife came waddling in from the kitchen, took one look at Sophie, and crowed with delight.
“Oooch!” she exclaimed, clapping her hands. “What have we here? A bonny lass with the face of an angel!”
Sophie looked at the woman with the loud voice and turned her head away, laying it on Cortez’s shoulder.
From the growling dog to the loud woman, she wasn’t entirely comfortable with these unfamiliar surroundings so she buried her face in Cortez’s shoulder.
The old woman, however, was not deterred.
She went up to Cortez and patted Sophie gently on the back.
“Do ye know what it is I have fer ye, lass?” she said, trying to get the girl to look at her. “I have a sweet treat fer ye with honey and apricots and fermented milk. Would ye like some?”
Diamantha had been standing silently by, watching the woman try to warm Sophie up, but it was clear her daughter wasn’t willing to respond at the moment. She was tired from travel, so Diamantha interrupted the woman’s attempts.
“We are very tired,” she said politely. “Mayhap she will accept your treat once she has had a chance to rest. May we go to our rooms now?”
Even though the husband hadn’t yet decided if he wanted English guests, the wife took charge of the situation. She didn’t care if they were English or not. She had guests and she would provide for them.
“Of course ye can,” she said, moving towards the narrow staircase built against the side of the wall. It disappeared into the darkened floor above and she mounted the steps, turning to wave her guests along. “Come with me. I’ll get ye settled. Would ye be wantin’ a bath?”
Diamantha was already following the woman with Cortez, Sophie, and Merlin close behind. “That would be lovely, thank you,” she said.
The woman gathered her dirty skirts as she took the stairs. “I’ll have one brought to ye,” she said. “I’ll also bring up some food fer the little lass.”
“We have more in our party,” Cortez said as he carried Sophie up the stairs. “Five more knights who will require rooms. I shall pay handsomely for the privilege.”
The woman nodded vigorously. “We have enough room fer them,” she said. “There was a big market here a couple of days ago and we were all full, but everyone has left. We have lots o’room now.”
Diamantha turned to glance at Cortez, who winked at her as they followed the loud, enthusiastic woman up the stairs.
Once they mounted the top of the steps, she turned left and took them down a short, dark corridor that ended at a rather heavy oak door.
The woman threw the latch and an enormous room came into view.
The chamber was at the front of the inn, overlooking the square.
There were two good-sized beds, strung with rope with clean straw mattresses, a table and chairs near a sooty hearth, and back in the corner behind a wooden screen was an in-room privy.
It was nothing more than a seat placed over the bottom half of a barrel, but Diamantha was rather surprised to see it in their room.
The old woman threw open the window at the front of the chamber and let some of the damp, cool wind inside.
“There, now,” she said. “This will air it out a bit. I’ll send me lad up with peat fer the fire. And I’ll be back with food!”
She bustled out, leaving Cortez and Diamantha to settle in.
As Merlin carried the bags in and set them down near the window, Cortez set Sophie down on one of the beds and Diamantha set the animal cage onto the floor.
Then she went over to her daughter and began removing the heavy outer layer of clothing that had kept her warm throughout her travels.
She looked over at Cortez as the man inspected the other bed.
“Can you please bring in all of my sewing?” she asked. “It is still in the wagon where I was sitting. The barrel with our new clothing is there, too. Can you have someone bring it all up?”
Cortez nodded, finished with the bed inspection and then moving over to the in-room privy.
He lifted his eyebrows and shook his head as if he’d never seen such a thing in his life.
“I will go and have them bring it in right now,” he said, his gaze lingering on the privy a moment longer before heading for the chamber door.
“Do you require anything else while I am at the wagon?”
Diamantha pulled Sophie’s arms out of the woolen coat and set it aside. “Nay,” she said pensively. “But I have been thinking… well, that is to say, I have been wondering how far we are from Norham Castle.”
Cortez paused at the door. “Norham?” he repeated. “What has brought that about?”
Diamantha shrugged as she began untying Sophie’s little boots.
“I am not entirely sure,” she said. “I suppose I have simply been thinking about my father since we are so far north. He has never seen Sophie, you know. I was wondering how far away we are from Norham Castle and, if we are not too far, mayhap we can visit my mother and father for a day or two, as we did your father. I… I miss my papa, Cortez. I have not seen him in a very long time.”
Cortez stood at the door a moment before coming back into the room and shutting the door. He seemed to be mulling over her request as he sat on the other bed in the chamber. The ropes creaked under his weight.
“Norham is, at the very least, several days from here,” he said. “It would mean traveling through a good deal of hostile country to get there.”
Diamantha pulled off one of Sophie’s boots and set it down on the floor. “But we have several knights traveling with us,” she said. “That should make it somewhat safer.”
He wriggled his eyebrows. “Not if we are attacked by a thousand angry Scots,” he said.
“Moreover, it would mean delaying our arrival at Falkirk by several days at least and we want to have the chance to look for Rob’s remains while the ground is still soft.
If there is one snow or one freezing rain storm, the ground will harden up and there is no telling how long it will take it to soften again. ”
Diamantha’s expression was downcast. “I know,” she muttered. “It was just a thought. I do not want to delay what we have set out to do. But I thought… if we were close enough… then mayhap I could see my father and he could meet Sophie.”
Cortez stood up from the bed. He went over to her and kissed her cheek as Sophie, with one shoeless foot, began playfully kicking at her mother.
“There will be another time,” he told her. “But I do not believe this is the right time.”
Diamantha simply nodded as he turned for the door once again. His hand was on the latch when she called after him.
“Cortez?”
He paused by the panel, hand on the latch. “Aye, sweet?”
Diamantha was in the process of fending off Sophie’s playful feet as she tried to remove the other boot. “You only recently saw my father, did you not?” she asked. “When you went to Norham to ask for permission to marry me.”
Cortez didn’t move from his position by the door, but his expression flickered. There was something odd in his face, perhaps a flicker of fear that crossed his features but was just as quickly gone.
“Why do you ask?” he wanted to know, his tone steady.
She managed to remove Sophie’s second boot. “Because I never asked you how he was,” she said. “Was he healthy? How did he look?”
Cortez just looked at her. Slowly, he came back into the room as Sophie, seeing her mother distracted, bolted off the bed with her shoeless feet and, giggling, ran to play with her animals.
Diamantha turned to follow her so she could finish undressing the child but Cortez reached out and grasped her by the hand.
“Wait,” he said gently. “Come over here with me. I must speak with you.”
Diamantha allowed him to lead her over to the bed.
He sat down and pulled her down next to him, his hands gripping hers.
All the while, he seemed very thoughtful, which in turn spurred Diamantha’s imagination a bit.
At first his manner was curious to her but now she was starting to become frightened.
When he lifted his head so speak, she interrupted him.
“Something is wrong,” she blurted, fear in her eyes. “What is wrong? Is it my father?”