Chapter Eleven
It had been a long, grueling journey from Auchnacree.
Through driving rain and blustery days, Isadora, Niall, Ewan, and Ossian had finally made it to the outskirts of the Ludus Caledonia.
The winding road hidden in the darkened hills south of Edinburgh was the last stretch of their trip and there was a sense of anticipation in the air.
Behind her, Isadora could hear her brothers hissing with excitement as they approached the crest of the hill.
“Issie,” Ewan was whisper-yelling at her. “Do ye know why we’ve really come? Da wouldna tell ye, but I will. I dunna want ye tae be surprised.”
Isadora rolled her eyes. As the youngest of the three, she’d suffered her share of teasing and harassment over the years from her annoying older brothers.
“Hush,” she turned to hiss at him. “Ye chatter like a woman. If ye dunna quiet yer mouth, someone might mistake ye for a man’s wife.”
Ewan had a healthy respect for his sister’s insult skills, and he was going to get his licks in before she plastered him.
“Ye poor lass,” he clucked. “Dunna ye know why we’ve come? Dada has come here tae buy ye a husband. That’s the only way ye’ll ever get one, Issie.”
Ossian giggled at his sister’s expense as Isadora had to fight down her natural reaction to flare. Had they been home, she would already have a stick in her hand, chasing her brother down with the intention of beating his brains in.
“Coming from a man who has seen twenty years and eight and has yet tae marry, I would watch who I was throwing stones at,” she said. “There’s not a lass in Auchnacree that will have ye, Ewan. Rumor has it ye kiss like a fish.”
That was a touchy subject with Ewan. He thought himself quite the ladies’ man, but it simply wasn’t true.
Try as he might, he hadn’t been able to find a wife yet, probably due more to immaturity on his part rather than his looks.
He wasn’t unhandsome. Still, it was a difficult subject and as Isadora hit him where it hurt, he wasn’t able to hold his temper very well.
“Is that so?” he growled.
“’Tis.”
“I’ll have ye know—”
“Enough.” Niall’s fatherly voice stopped them. “Ewan, stop vexing yer sister.”
Obediently, Ewan and Ossian quieted, but they were glaring at their sister, who was soundly ignoring them.
They were closing in on the top of the hill now, a clearing on high beneath a gentle morning sun.
Once they reached the very top, the massive walls of Caelian Hill came into view in the distance.
The Ludus Caledonia in all her glory spread out before them.
Finally, they’d arrived.
It was a thrilling sight, and there was a sense of awe, too, as they beheld the fabled fight guild.
As they followed the road around the massive moat, they began to hear noise off to the left and turned to see an arena built into a wide gap between the hills.
They could hear the clang of metal against metal and see the men as they squared off against each other.
That, more than anything, had Isadora’s attention.
“Da,” she said as she spurred her horse next to her father’s. She pointed to the arena in the distance. “What are the men doing down there?”
Niall looked to see what had her attention. “’Tis where they have the fighting,” he said. “It looks as if they are training men this morning.”
“Can I watch the fights while we are here?”
Niall frowned. “Nay, ye canna,” he said flatly. “’Tis not seemly for a lass tae gamble.”
Her face fell. “But I’d like tae watch them fight.”
Niall sighed heavily. “If ye want tae watch them fight, then go watch them train,” he said, pointing to the arena. “I have business with Sir Clegg that ye dunna need tae be part of. Go down tae the arena and wait for me there.”
When she reined her horse to a halt, Isadora’s attention was divided between the arena in the distance and her brothers as they passed by. Ewan made a face at her and she stuck her tongue out at him.
Leaving her horse tethered to a tree, Isadora headed down the hill and toward the arena, its stone benches gleaming in the sun.
The closer she came, the louder the chimes of metal against metal, and she made her way to the top level of the arena, experiencing the thrill of her first visit to the Ludus Caledonia.
Since the arena was built into a gully, one entered from the top with the fighting field far down below.
There were rows of seats cut into the rocky hillside.
But Isadora didn’t want to stay at the top, so far away from the action.
She went down, closer to the field, so she could watch what they were doing in detail.
There was a group of men down there, battling under the watchful eye of a trainer.
Stranger still, one of the fighting men looked oddly familiar.
When he finally turned in her direction, it was a moment she would remember for the rest of her life.
*
It was the fourth time that morning that Cam had been whacked on the side of the head with the broad side of a shield.
They’d been learning swordplay for the better part of a month, using a dull wooden sword called a gladius, and that had been after an entire month of physical conditioning that had nothing to do with fighting.
Cam still wasn’t very good with weapons and shields.
He was clumsy and did better when it was just his fists.
Wendell was coming at him again as he lay on the ground and fury sparked in his belly.
He didn’t like being smacked around, especially in front of other men who were just as new to this as he was, so he struggled to shake off the ringing in his ears as he rolled away from Wendell and got up on his feet.
He no longer had his shield, but he had the wooden sword.
As Wendell came at him, he dodged away from Wendell’s momentum. Now behind Wendell, he put the wooden blade across the man’s neck. Wendell froze and laughed, low in his throat.
“Excellent,” he said. “You are learning, smithy. Drop your blade now.”
Cam did, but that was his mistake. The moment he relaxed, Wendell swung around and clipped him on the side of the head. As Cam stumbled back, Wendell watched him with a smile on his lips.
“Another lesson,” he told him. “Do not trust a man when you have him under submission. He will say whatever he must to gain the upper hand.”
Cam was becoming increasingly enraged and it was difficult to control himself.
He’d been at this for over a month and, so far, he felt as if everything Wendell did was meant to humiliate him.
Sometimes, Axel would come to the field and work with them, but Axel didn’t try to injure anyone.
He would knock men around, but he wouldn’t make them bleed like Wendell did.
It was difficult for Cam to remember his vow to Clegg, promising to obey Wendell’s orders. There were times when Cam wanted to flatten the man.
The training continued on into the morning.
There were eleven new men whom Cam had come to know by name, but nothing more.
He wasn’t there to make friends. The recruits had begun to form cliques, but Cam wasn’t part of any of that, and as the morning progressed and they broke off into pairs to practice a thrust-and-parry method that Wendell had been showing them, Cam was forced to pair off with Wendell himself, which he dreaded.
Angry, with bloodied knuckles and bruises all up his arms from where Wendell had struck him, he threw his gladius on top of the shield he’d dropped and walked away. He could hear Wendell yelling after him.
“Where are you going?” he called. “We are not finished, smithy.”
Cam simply shook his head and kept walking, heading to the edges of the field to get clear of Wendell and calm his temper.
He was tired of being thrashed. As he heard Wendell laughing behind him and telling the other men that they could take a rest because the “poor smithy” was, he reached the shadow of the arena, leaning over the half-wall that surrounded the dirt field.
He was tired, but more than that, he was humiliated. A man’s pride could only take so much. Shaking out his sore right hand, he heard a woman’s voice.
“Cam?” came the tremulous words. “Sweet Jesus… Cam?”
He knew that voice; God help him, he knew it and he whirled around to the source.
Looking up, Cam could see the outline of a woman standing a few rows above him and as he held up a hand to shield his eyes from the sun coming over the top of the arena, he could see her face. He thought he was dreaming.
Isadora was here.
One moment, he was standing in the arena and in the next, he was in the stands, throwing his arms around her.
He could feel her in his grasp, shaking and weeping, clinging to him so hard that she was becoming a part of him.
Her body was melding with his. He couldn’t have described that moment if he lived to be a thousand years old.
So much panic…
So much pain…
“Isadora?” he breathed. “Lass, where did ye come from?”
Her face was against his neck. “I thought ye were dead,” she wept, finally loosening her grip enough to pull back and look him in the face. “When Netherton burned, I thought ye were killed! But ye’re here?”
He nodded, his big hands on her face as if he were trying to convince himself that she was real. “I’m here,” he said, his voice quivering. “I came here. But before I left, I went tae find ye in the vale, hoping ye might come. But ye never did, so I left ye a message.”
Isadora was struggling to calm down, looking at a vision she never thought she’d see again. She still could hardly believe it.
“I never saw a message,” she said, wiping at her face. “What message? Where did ye leave it?”
Cam could see how shaken she was. Truth be told, he was fairly shaken himself. “On the mud of the brook bank,” he said. “I wrote the only words I have for ye—thu fhèin. Only ye, lass. Always, only ye.”
She smiled at him, tremulously, as she instinctively clutched the copper bracelet still on her arm. “I’ve never taken this off,” she whispered.