Blood of the Thistle (Far From Home #14)

Chapter One

Bram MacCailin woke before the guards began their first passage through the corridor, though whether he had truly slept was doubtful.

Sleep in this place came in thin, uneasy stretches, broken by the scrape of rats along the corridor outside his cell, the steady drip of water somewhere beyond the cell, and the coughing of a man two chambers down who had been dying by slow degrees for nearly a fortnight.

Dawn announced itself only by the faint lightening of the darkness beyond the narrow slit cut high into the stone, not enough to see the courtyard below but sufficient to turn the blackness of the cell gray and reveal the familiar outlines of the bucket in the corner, the wooden cup near the wall, and the heap of damp straw pushed into another corner.

The smell was no better in daylight. Wet stone, old rushes, sweat, smoke from the kitchens, and the sour remains of yesterday’s slop had settled so thoroughly that Bram no longer noticed one scent above another.

It was simply the smell of waking now, as much a part of morning as the pain in his shoulders and the cold that had lodged itself deep inside his bones.

He remained still for several moments, listening as the prison around him came to life.

He knew little of this place, Richmond House, save that it was owned by some absentee lord, that it sat just inside the northern border of England, and that it was presently garrisoned by English soldiers.

The English had taken what had once been the lord’s solar on the top floor and divided it into sixteen cramped cells with rough timber walls thick enough to muffle conversation but too thin to silence suffering.

The great hearth at the western end had been sealed with stone years earlier, leaving only its blackened chimney above as evidence that families had once gathered here instead of prisoners awaiting judgment. Scots prisoners did not need warmth.

A key turned somewhere far down the passage, followed by the muted complaint of an iron hinge.

Someone muttered a prayer. Another man coughed many times, sounding weak.

Soon the first guard would make his rounds, carrying a lantern and testing each lock with an absent tug, as though any of the men confined here might have spent the night quietly dismantling English iron with their bare hands.

Bread would come after that, hard and stale, sometimes spotted with mold, accompanied by water that tasted faintly of rust. By midmorning there would be footsteps enough to announce which prisoner had been selected for questioning.

Their questions never changed. Where was Wallace?

Which Scottish man or house still supported him?

Who carried his messages? The English seemed convinced that repetition might somehow create knowledge where none existed.

Bram gave them the same answer each day, spoken plainly and without apology: he did not know.

With care, he pushed himself upright and sat on the edge of the pallet, waiting until the stiffness in his back eased enough to allow him to stand.

As always, he felt stiffness and lingering pain first in his right shoulder.

Bram rolled it slowly, feeling the joint catch before settling into place with a dull ache that traveled down his arm.

The English here lacked creativity, repeating the same methods almost daily.

They bound a man’s hands high above his head, hauled upon the rope until his toes barely brushed the floor, and left gravity to accomplish what questions could not.

They had learned, with the patience of men accustomed to causing pain, precisely how long they might leave him suspended before his shoulders failed completely.

He knew the measure of that time now, just as he knew how the first hour brought burning, the second numbness, and the third a pain so consuming that his own body no longer seemed to belong to him.

On those days, they lowered him only long enough to ask again after Wallace before drawing the rope tight once more.

His joints remained the greatest reminder of English hospitality.

Weeks of being suspended by bound wrists had left them stiff each morning, forcing him to work slow circles into his wrists and shoulders before they would move as they once had.

His knees bore darker evidence. The skin there had split, scabbed, and split again after hours spent on bare stone, and although the worst of the wounds had closed, the flesh remained thick and raw beneath his torn and battered breeches.

Bram regarded all of it with no more interest than he gave the damp walls or the hard crust of bread that would soon arrive.

These injuries were only his current circumstance.

They hindered him presently, aye, but they did not define him.

The rest was simply the cost of captivity.

Three months of stale bread, watered ale, and thin broth had left their mark: clothing that had once fit closely now hung from his frame, and his body moved a fraction slower than it once had.

It angered him more than it pained him, for he knew precisely what the English intended.

A hungry prisoner was easier to control than a well-fed one.

Still, the English might batter his body until scarcely any part of it remained unmarked, but honor was the one possession they could not strip from him, and he had guarded it more fiercely than he might once have guarded his sword.

He drew breath, and reminded himself daily that so long as he did, he would maintain his honor.

But bloody hell, why—how!—did he still live?

He should be dead—should have fallen at the ambush that destroyed his army and saw him and a dozen more captured.

His men had chosen the ground carefully, believing themselves hidden among the folds of the land and the heavy timber beyond, yet the English had come upon them with such certainty that no honest scout could have guided them.

The attack had begun without warning. Arrows fell first, then mounted men broke through the trees where no English force should have known to ride.

Bram remembered the shock more clearly than the blood: how the charge came from an impossible direction, the immediate certainty that someone had given them away, and the look on the faces of men who knew, before the fighting truly began, that they had been sold.

He’d fought until his sword arm failed and the ground beneath him turned slick, and more than once he’d thought the next blow would be the one that finally allowed death to catch him.

It hadn’t, and neither did death find him on the four-day march south to Ashcombe Hall, where the prisoners had first been taken.

He and the surviving Scots had been herded together with coarse hemp rope looped about their necks, each man tethered to the next like livestock driven to market rather than soldiers who had stood upon a battlefield only hours before.

They walked until darkness swallowed the road, then their captors penned them for the night inside sheep folds, abandoned barns, or hastily fenced enclosures while making comfortable camps nearby, their fires burning close enough that the prisoners could smell roasting meat they would never be offered.

Bram remembered little of the trek itself.

Hunger, exhaustion, and blood loss had blurred those first days into one long, miserable haze.

Instead, he remembered the march by the men they left behind.

Angus survived the battle only to die before darkness fell the first night, his breathing growing shallower until it simply stopped.

Young Donnell, scarcely old enough to grow a proper beard, had wept quietly for his mother through most of the second day, though whether from pain or fever Bram never knew.

By evening he no longer spoke at all. Others lingered longer.

Ewan had survived the march only to perish after the third round of English questioning, and from then on Bram measured the passing days not by sunrise or church bells, but by the companions whose voices disappeared from the cells beside him, one after another.

And still, Bram lived, even as he thought he should have died during the interrogations as well.

There had been moments while hanging by his wrists when his heart had beat so violently he imagined it must tear itself apart, and others when the room had narrowed into darkness, and he had felt himself slipping toward a place from which he might not return.

He’d survived repeated beatings with a rod or staff, had been whipped with a leather strap while questioned, and occasionally simply beat or kicked him when he refused to answer.

His mind had held when his body nearly surrendered, though Bram had taken no pride in it at the time.

Enduring had never felt noble. It had felt ugly, desperate, and at times almost beyond him.

He should have died when he discovered the traitor—when Raghnall Hay himself arrived at Richmond House, unconcerned that Bram recognized him.

Of all the moments when death should have found him but did not, that one remained the least explicable.

The man had appeared in the outer yard nearly three weeks earlier, walking freely beside an English officer and dressed far too well to be a prisoner.

Bram had recognized him at once, though for a moment he believed his exhausted mind had conjured the familiar face out of rage.

He had known Hay for years. Not well enough to call him friend, perhaps, but well enough that the sight of him beneath an English banner had been incomprehensible.

Raghnall had supped at Craig na Coille alongside other northern lords, drinking Bram’s ale and speaking bitterly of English garrisons upon Scottish soil, of Scots who bent the knee to preserve their lands, and of the day Edward’s armies would finally be driven south. Bram had believed him sincere.

Now he knew Hay had arranged the ambush that had delivered Bram and his army into English hands.

Hay hadn’t denied it. He’d lingered outside Bram’s confinement and spoken through the bars with the confidence of a man certain no consequence would ever reach him.

Scotland would lose, he said. Edward's strength would crush what remained of the resistance and only fools continued bleeding for a cause already doomed.

He had chosen the winning side, as if loyalty were no more sacred than choosing which horse to wager on at a race.

Bram had wanted to kill him. Even now, remembering the smug satisfaction upon Hay's face stirred a rage so consuming that Bram could imagine his hands around the bastard’s throat.

Yet vengeance had seemed a bitterly useless desire while he remained chained inside an English stronghold, scarcely able to stand and unlikely ever to see Scotland again.

Hay had known it too. He’d gloated because he believed Bram would never live long enough to make him answer for what he'd done.

He stood now and crossed the few paces his cell allowed, pausing beneath the narrow opening in the wall.

The air entering through it was cold and smelled faintly of rain, though the sky beyond was only a pale strip of gray.

Somewhere outside, a bell began to toll the hour.

Bram counted the strokes automatically, as he had learned to do within the first weeks of confinement, though time had lost much of its meaning since then.

Days passed. Wounds healed badly. Men were taken away and did not return. On and on it went.

He had survived the battlefield, the torture, and the discovery of the traitor, though what that should suggest to him, he could not say.

Providence, perhaps—or mayhap the poor fortune of being denied death before now.

Or merely the cruel habit of death to circle a man before deciding when best to strike.

The first guard passed as expected, his lantern casting a trembling line of light beneath the door.

Bram knew him by the slight drag of his left foot, the scrape arriving half a beat after every step.

A second man followed some time later, whistling tunelessly as he carried the morning bread.

He shoved the crust and cup through the opening without a word, and Bram ate slowly, softening each mouthful with water to keep it from tearing his mouth.

The routine continued. A prisoner began shouting from farther along the corridor and was silenced by the blow of something heavy against wood.

Keys rattled. A door opened. Someone begged mercy in Gaelic.

Then the sounds receded, leaving only the drip of water and the distant coughing.

Bram expected the usual steps before noon.

Two men, perhaps three, one carrying the keys and another the cudgel.

He knew nearly every gait by now. One guard struck his heels hard enough to echo.

Another breathed through his mouth and coughed after every short climb.

The youngest wore spurs indoors, their faint jingle giving warning long before he came into view.

The footsteps approaching now belonged to none of them, compelling Bram to lift his head.

There were too many men, and they walked with a different purpose.

No dragging boots, no lazy conversation, no careless rattle of keys.

The tread was heavier, measured, accompanied by the muted clink of mail and the harder strike of a sword belt against a man’s thigh.

An officer, then, and at least two guards with him.

Bram set aside the cup and rose fully before they reached his door.

The bolts were drawn back one by one. When the door opened, a broad-shouldered sergeant stood beyond it with two armed men at his back and another figure half-hidden in the corridor’s gloom. He saw neither rope nor cudgel.

“MacCailin,” the sergeant said.

Bram met his gaze. “Aye.”

“You’re to York.”

He showed no surprise. It was the summons he had been waiting for.

The English had apparently tired of asking questions he would not answer.

York meant royal judgment, and royal judgment for a Scottish laird taken in rebellion meant only one thing.

They were finished with ropes around his wrists—soon they would put one around his neck.