Chapter 7
Chapter Seven
A fter confronting Beinn about his fake scar, Lucy went downstairs and entered the great hall.
She had to quickly dodge around three clansmen who were shoving each other as they growled in Gaelic.
Along with the Beinn encounter her day usually began with such preludes to a brawl, so she’d learned to anticipate them.
She ducked to avoid a mug tossed her way by a fourth man, and walked over to the currently empty table where the senior men gathered for the morning meal.
“Fair morning, Mistress Brooke.” Playing waiter as he always did, Sgathan came to place in front of her a mug of something hot and fragrant. He also invaded her space just a degree too close for her comfort. “I trust you spent a restful night.”
“It’s nice that you’re so trusting.” As he came close enough to brush his arm against hers Lucy shifted away from him on the bench to break the contact.
“Garia needs to have a bathe with lots of soap, and then see your doctor to get treatment for body lice. The wee white bugs,” she added when he frowned at her.
“Och, ’tis a common complaint during the winter and spring,” the seneschal told her, making a careless gesture. “I cannae force our vassals to wash.”
“Then everyone she has contact with will become infested,” Lucy said. “That includes that guard who takes her with him every night.”
“Halley.” He regarded her with a frown. “Why should you care what we MacRune suffer, Mistress?”
“Oh, you know. I’m not a jerk like you.” She sipped the brew, which tasted of honey, mint and something floral, and then eyed the overflowing platters of food on the table.
She appreciated the fact that Ronan always provided plenty of food at mealtimes, but she’d soon discovered that facing yards of sausage dripping with fat this early was a bit too much for her appetite. “Where’s the laird?”
Sgathan’s expression blanked. “Alas, no’ here.”
“Could you be more specific, please?” When he didn’t reply Lucy sighed. “Right, that’s confidential info, like everything the man does. I forgot.”
“Fair morning.” Lochran, his eyes covered with his daytime blindfold, sat down on the bench across from Lucy. “Need you something from our lord, Mistress Brooke?”
As if she’d confide in the disabled guy, who in his own way was trying to scam her as much as the rest of the clan. “Plenty, but that can wait.”
The Chief of the Night Watch had been joining her in the great hall for breakfast each morning, which she was fairly sure Tair had ordered him to do.
She’d learned only that he had a mysterious eye condition that made sunlight blinding for him.
Since there was no real medical care in this time, he coped by covering his eyes during the daylight hours.
Despite that, Lucy noticed that he made his way through the castle with ease, as if he were silently counting steps as he moved through the passages and rooms. A guard shadowed him everywhere during the day as well, probably to help him avoid trouble with things that unexpectedly got in his path.
Lucy had already decided to make a show of befriending Lochran so that he thought she was as sincere as he was pretending to be. “How was your night, Chief?”
His roofbeam shoulders moved. “No one slain, naught stolen, and the keep yet stands intact. I live to serve another night.”
“Smashing.” She saw two of the men who had been bickering earlier were now shoving each other. Both went down and rolled toward her, which meant they were probably going to get her newly-washed clothes dirty. Her patience finally ran out, and she stood up. “Excuse me for a minute.”
She heard Sgathan call her name but ignored him, and grabbed a pitcher of something cold from a serving maid’s hands as she approached the brawlers. Tossing the contents of the pitcher on them stopped the fight, and the pair stared up at her in shock.
“I would like to have breakfast today without being splattered with someone’s blood,” Lucy told them as she slammed down the pitcher on the nearest table. Aware that all the men in the hall were watching her now, she pointed toward the arch. “Take it outside, boys, or settle down and tuck in.”
“Dare you command us, wench?” the bigger of the pair demanded as he hoisted himself up from the floor.
“Yes, this is me, daring.” Their intimidating act had scared her at first, but after Beinn had failed so miserably to scare her it had just gotten annoying. Lucy went toe-to-toe with him. “Will you please grow up?”
He peered down at her and bellowed, “Do you think us veg, woman?”
“No, I think you’re men,” Lucy shouted back, silencing him and everyone else in the hall. “Why don’t you act like it?”
Just as she hoped, both brawlers exchanged confused looks before they limped over to a table and sat down with sulky expressions. The other clansmen stared at her as if they’d never before seen a woman stand up to a man, which they probably hadn’t.
“Idiots,” she muttered as she marched back to her table.
“Well done,” Lochran said as she sat down again. “You shall become the hero to all our maids and sculleries.”
She eyed him. “I’m cheesed off right now, Night Watch. Keep being sarcastic with me, and you’ll be wearing my brew.”
“Peace, lady, peace.” The big man lifted his hands and laughed aloud, clearly delighted. “Gods, but I like you.”
Sgathan returned to place a bowl with berry-sprinkled porridge and a small pitcher at her place before taking another platter to the next table.
She also noticed Lochran had his own bowl with the same contents.
She’d managed to convince Ronan to prepare the porridge the way she liked it, but she wasn’t aware anyone else did.
“Why are you eating my oatmeal, Chief?” she asked as she stirred hers .
“Seneschal filched a bowl for me. The smell, ’tis quite interesting.” He sampled a spoonful. “A bit like bread another has chewed and spat out.”
“Ick, now even I don’t want to eat it. Wait.
” She poured some of the very yellow cream from the pitcher over his portion.
“Try it again.” When he did his visible surprise made her chuckle.
“It’s better with honey and cream, or chopped apples and honey.
Spices are nice, too, but I’m not familiar with yours yet.
I think it will be a few centuries before the UK gets sugar. ”
“UK meaning the United Kingdom,” Lochran said, frowning.
He seemed to remember everything she told him.
“I yet dinnae fathom why our country unites with Britannia. They’re a savage lot, ever slaying each other for power and rule.
They say the same of us, of course, but we encourage that. Keeps the bastarts from coming north.”
He had an interesting way of looking at things, Lucy had discovered. He also helped her to understand the people of this time more than any other MacRune—when he wasn’t telling her bald-faced lies.
“The union is a compromise between your countries. Someday Scotland is going to need money to pay their debts, and England will want to keep you lot from siding with France against them. Nasty war, that one. There’s also an English queen who dies childless, and her heir turns out to be the King of Scotland, who wants a union of the crowns.
” She stopped herself and sighed. “It’s a complicated and endless shambles, but most of our history is.
Anyway, has anyone reported seeing the cluet anywhere? ”
“None.” A tall, lean man with strange black ink all over his arms and neck sat down beside Lochran. “Fair morning, Mistress Brooke.”
The clan’s war master, Cath, was probably the oddest guy on the island.
He was the only MacRune with tattoos, and dressed in vests instead of tunics.
His trousers were made from a kind of black leather Lucy had never before seen, and had tiny silvery spikes all over the them that usually laid flat when he sat and bristled when he stood or moved.
He never laughed or even smiled, and spoke in a tone so low it was often hard to make out what he said.
He also drank only water and ate as sparsely as if he were on a diet.
Something about him made her think of a castaway on a deserted island, just sitting and staring out at the sea.
Cath looked different from the other men of the clan, too—just as tall as Beinn but not quite as broad.
His long, corded muscles always appeared tensed, like he never once relaxed.
He was the only clansman who had gray streaks in his hair, suggesting he might be one of the oldest MacRune.
If he ate more he’d probably bulk up, but instead he seemed to like being lanky.
Of all the MacRune, he wouldn’t touch meat, which she found as interesting as his tattoos. Meat was a big deal to the clan, and all the people of this time, and there was always plenty of it at every meal. All the men gobbled it up like they were starving, too.
So why didn’t he partake?
The ink on Cath’s skin took on a faint reddish sheen from torch or sunlight, and depicted what Lucy could only think of as miniature monsters with tiny mouths filled with fangs.
Today he’d tied back his long salt and pepper hair, and she saw for the first time that a sizeable thick keloid like a bulging white vein bisected one side of his head.
It made her wonder if someone had taken an axe to his skull.
Of course no one could survive that kind of injury, but what else could have left such a terrible scar?
He took an amber pear from the fruit platter and began slicing off pieces. “’Tisnae polite to stare, Mistress Brooke.”
“Sorry, chum. Your ink always distracts me, but this do is new.” She nodded at the scar on his head. “What permanently parted your hair there?”
“A blow from a troll’s four-handed polearm, and my sire’s healing magic.” He watched her as he chewed and swallowed a piece of pear. “’Twasnae a battle held here among mortal kind.”