Chapter 2
Scotland
Caisteal Dubh (Castle Black)
The mere fact that there was a battle going on didn’t mean that Lady Isabel Bruce was going to stay hidden away in her bedchamber. She was just not that kind of lady, she did not wring her hands, her shoulders did not tremble.
The men were gone to war less than a day’s ride away.
A battle that was likely to take all day, if not all night, to run its course.
She prayed it was sooner rather than later, and that they returned well-speckled with the blood of their enemies.
After what she’d been through, she felt she deserved that unkind thought.
Isabel and the other servants in the house had prepared for the warriors’ return, making sure there was plenty of food and drink, linens, and other medicinal herbs and salves ready to tend the wounded, and plenty of whisky to provide succor and strength to the weary.
This was not her first battle, not her first loss–
Isabel cut off her line of thinking. Digging metaphorical nails into the open doors of her grief and slamming them shut.
She was no priss who’d get into hysterics over a silly war between men.
Nay, she knew; she and the other women around her would be the ones left to pick up the pieces.
Some of the men around her liked to pretend her brain was only good for knitting, but she herself thought that was laughable.
So, if she was going to be left behind during battle, which she conceded was a sound idea given if she was seen on the battlefield all the men on both sides might faint from shock.
And then who would be left to cut the firewood?
Plus, while she was skilled with a small dagger, that was nothing compared to the sharpness of her mind.
Isabel had a talent for strategy and anticipating what an enemy may do.
In many scenarios, she’d been able to take a look at a battle map and give several winning outcomes depending on the tactics used.
As a child, her uncle had encouraged her, support that had continued into her adulthood, until recently.
If she were a man, she’d have been lauded for her capability.
But alas, she was of the weaker, feebler, less intelligent sex—according to those with male organs.
Even though it appeared that those organs were weaker, feebler, and less intelligent than her own, if witnessing how being hit in the nether regions brought a man to his knees was any indication.
And so, Isabel’s warnings had been ignored, and she’d been barred from her uncle’s solar at the behest of his council whom he seemed to listen to even above his own conscience. Well, none of them were here now. Her uncle and guardian, Robert the Bruce, was off fighting.
Standing outside her uncle’s solar now, she instructed her maid to be on the lookout in case any servants should come by and see her.
Isabel gently slipped into the chamber, closing the door behind her.
Her maid, Elsa, had argued in vain about her going into her uncle’s private domain, but knew Isabel was not to be thwarted in this mission.
Freckles, her mischievous pet ferret, wriggled in her bodice, popping her head from the loose boning at Isabel’s breasts, trying to free herself from the confines of her carriage.
All of Isabel’s gowns were especially designed to accommodate her companion.
Freckles was meticulous about her grooming, unusual for a ferret, and so never offended Isabel’s nose, and she was happy to keep her close at heart.
“Would ye like a good snoop, then?” Isabel pulled Freckles from her bodice and set her down, watching her brown body wriggle away in glee to do her business and find a snack. “Best find something good!”
She wanted to know exactly what was going on at Falkirk, and what her own fate might be.
The only way to do that was to study the battle map and any correspondence her uncle had left behind.
They had no desire for her help on the field, but had left her in charge of the castle, and any protection it might need from an invading army. Perplexing to say the least.
A saltire, a white St. Andrews cross on a blue background, the flag of Scotland, hung above the hearth, over the place where her uncle’s sword and shield would be returned.
Isabel crossed herself, hoping that day was today.
If only so the women with husbands and sons in the army would quit their simpering.
She was sympathetic to their worry, but fretting didn’t save lives, preparing, assisting, and pushing did.
She ran quickly to the desk where her uncle kept his papers. Page, or whatever his actual name was, her uncle’s shadow, was always lurking somewhere nearby to tell her what to do, and she needed to be quick before he emerged from his hiding place.
The entire surface was covered in reports, ink splotches, quills, some snapped in half, and bottles of ink, some empty, some nearly so. When she’d been allowed in, she’d kept everything in order, but now it looked like a toddler had gone in search of a plaything.
Isabel turned to the large oak table topped with a cloth painted map.
Stones and other carved wooden pieces depicted landmarks.
Small wooden figurines of soldiers, horses and warriors holding spears fought a make-believe battle on the map, where their real life counterparts might have been able to prepare their strategies.
But first, the missives. Isabel returned to the desk, sifting through the various documents.
Isabel was different from many women, because she could read, and read well.
It wasn’t a skill that she bragged about.
Not because it was unseemly for a woman to know how to read and write, even though it theoretically was—men wouldn’t know what unseemly was if it punched them in the face—but because it was just one more advantage she could use against those too willing to underestimate her.
In fact, it had been her mother who had taught her in secret, her father knew they could both read and disdained them for it.
But her mother had found good use for reading in the course of her life and had decided to gift the ability to her daughter as well.
When Uncle Robbie had found out about her learnedness, she worried he would have been angry but was exactly the opposite.
A sudden pang of sadness came over Isabel as she thought about her mother and father, both of them gone the last decade.
Her mother from a plague surge that had hit their village, and her father in a battle with the bloody English.
Isabel had been lucky not to have been struck with the plague, nor the scourge of the English, and had instead tended to her parents on their deathbeds.
This, too, was news that she did not share with anyone because it would have been cause for concern, they might think she still carried the plague on her even though it had been years since. Uneducated minds were often the breeding grounds of superstition.
After her parents had died, she’d been sent to live with her uncle and had resided with him, wherever he went ever since. Currently, they were in Caisteal Dubh on the Firth of Forth.
Lately, she had been seeing her uncle stare at her, giving her looks with contemplative expressions covering his face.
As if he’d just discovered something. And Isabel hated to think it had to do with a marriage.
Uncle Robbie was having whispered conversations with his council, meetings behind closed doors she wasn’t privy to, and this made her gut churn.
She’d always felt like a protégé to be kept close at hand, not a pest to be trapped and released somewhere far away.
Isabel had not forgotten the last time her future was decided for her.
Her parents had died and she’d been left alone, an orphan at age fourteen, with quite a sizable dowry but no one to look after it, and of course, her.
The whispers had finally stopped when Uncle Robbie walked into the great hall of her family’s castle and declared she was his ward.
Isabel’s fingers skimmed over the letters, trying not only to find something that might give her a clue as to what her future entailed, but also perhaps to this war’s outcome.
But there was nothing upon the desk which mentioned her by name or any other such scheme that might mean that she was soon to leave the safe haven of her uncle’s home. Plenty however, of war plans, and none of them looked good.
Satisfied—or rather unsatisfied—Isabel went back to the table with the maps.
She studied the placement of the horses and the schiltrons, a circular formation of spears meant to stop cavalry.
Behind them were more spearmen, warriors with long spears that would attack the cavalry so they could not penetrate the line, allowing the infantry behind them to come in for the final kill.
There were two particular horse warriors who were taller than the rest, one depicting William Wallace, and one who wore a crown on his head, which indicated her uncle, Robert the Bruce.
She had eavesdropped on enough battle talk and asked enough questions of her uncle to understand their schemes and strategies.
Her finger traced along what was drawn onto the map—waterways, mountain ranges, gullies, and dips.
The terrain was different from that of England, which would be in their favor, but she was frustrated by their placements.
The Scots had not changed their way of fighting even though the English would have learned what their battle strategy was by now.
They needed to try something different that would take their enemy by surprise.