Chapter 4 #3
knew the tall, white-haired woman with the ermine short cloak now
hugging Leif was Lynette, his mother, and the pretty blonde dancing
beside her was Gwyneth, who hadn’t yet even looked her betrothed’s
way. Roger, however, stared at Roark and Alina as they descended
the gangplank with a smug smile on his long-chinned, sharp-angled,
Northman’s face.
Roark stopped in front of Roger and let go
his hold of Alina’s elbow. He stepped forward and clasped Roger’s
arm.
“Did you have any trouble?” Roger asked with
only the slightest Northern accent to his Green Isles tongue.
“No,” Roark said. “It went surprisingly
well.”
He stepped back, and Roger and Alina took
each other’s measure. Looking at Roger was like looking at an older
version of her Uncle Tryggr. Same height, build, high-boned cheeks,
and grey eyes. All fairly typical of a Northman.
Roger gave a signal and Roark took Alina by
the elbow and led her toward a wagon pulled by two draft horses
with two saddle horses tied to the back. Roger gave his wife a hand
up onto the wagon as Leif helped Gwyneth and then jumped into the
back. Roark untied the saddle horses from the wagon, booted Alina
up onto the back of the shaggy little dun mare, and then mounted
the sturdy, dapple grey stallion.
They rode behind the wagon, traveling
northwest along a road cut deep with wheel ruts through rolling
hills dotted with small herds of white, tan, and brown sheep before
the road turned north through a village of thatch houses, many of
them little more than huts, the men and women and children there
stopping to watch them pass.
Most of the children were barefoot, and their
parents dressed in threadbare tunics and work aprons. Alina looked
at Roark, who met her gaze, and she nodded purposely from the
ragged serfs to the richly dressed laird’s family, who sat on
cushions and blankets and laughed and talked among themselves while
enjoying a meal of fruit, bread, and cheese, never once asking her
or Roark if they were hungry, or even glancing at the dirt-poor
villagers.
“I know,” he told her. “This is what I’m
trying to prevent more of. What I’m hoping to change.”
By marrying Gwyneth and keeping the alliances
between lairds and clans intact.
Another quarter league up the road they came
to the gated entrance of a two-story manor house with several small
buildings and what looked to be a stable with a paddock situated
over several acres of cleared land.
They rode up to the front doors of the house,
where a middle-aged couple dressed in the plain work aprons of
house servants stood waiting. Roger and Leif helped Lynette and
Gwyneth down from the wagon and the servants followed the ladies
into the house.
“Bring our guest to my private chambers,”
Roger ordered Roark, and then he and Leif strode into the
house.
Roark dismounted as two stable hands came
trotting over to take their horses’ reins. Alina swung her leg over
the dun’s rump and startled as Roark’s hands grasped her around the
waist and lowered her to the ground.
“Welcome to North Shore Keep,” he said,
giving her waist a quick squeeze before letting go.
He pushed the thick, wooden, double doors to
the manor house open and Alina followed him into the entrance hall.
To the right of the staircase leading up to the second story was a
dining hall with one high and several low tables and chairs, and an
open door to the kitchens, from which the enticing scents of bread
baking and meat roasting wafted. Roark turned to the left, leading
Alina through a common room with a large hearth and sitting area
full of chairs and tables to an ornately carved door he knocked
on.
“Enter,” a man’s voice said from the other
side.
They walked into a room with wood-paneled
walls hung with richly detailed tapestries, a thick, woolen rug,
and heavy wood furniture.
“Take a seat,” Roger said. He sat behind an
oak desk with curved legs and clawed feet, and indicated a
cushioned bench along one wall. Leif sat on a chair with an
upholstered seat next to his father’s table across from them.
“First of all,” Roger said in the Green Isles tongue, “well done,
both of you. Well done indeed.”
“Thank you, Father.” Leif sat taller in his
chair. “That bastard Jerrik will be in for a surprise when he finds
out his precious daughter isn’t dead but being held for
ransom.”
“Surprise isn’t what he’ll be feeling,” Roger
said. He looked at Alina, who lifted her chin a notch at his
perusal, and smiled without showing any teeth, putting her in mind
of a cat playing with a half-dead mouse.
“What do you mean?” Roark asked.
Roger smirked. “I mean the plan has
changed.”
“How so?”
“However I say it has,” Roger snapped.
Alina sat back at the angry tone of his voice
and Roark stiffened and said nothing more. From what he’d told her
about Roger, he wasn’t a man to be challenged, especially in front
of others, even if it was assumed they couldn’t understand a word
of what was being said.
Smoothing his tunic, Roger addressed Alina.
“I am Roger MacKinnon, laird of North Shore Keep,” he said in her
Northern tongue. “You are my prisoner here for the next fortnight
at least, when The Rover sails for your home again. Behave
yourself and you will not be mistreated. Try to escape, and you
will regret it.”
“I won’t try to escape,” she answered him,
glad that her voice didn’t quake or crack. “As I told Roark, I plan
on being an accommodating prisoner while waiting for my father to
come for me.” She pressed her lips into a thin smile. “And he
will.”
“I am sure he will,” he said. He tapped his
chin with his forefinger and then looked to Roark, whose expression
was one of unconcern, though his posture was as rigid as a stag in
a hunter’s sights. “How did you trap the bitch?” Roger asked in
their language.
“Roark was great,” Leif jumped in when Roark
hesitated. “He flirted with her and wooed her until she led him,”
he said, laughing, “to a secluded lake.” Leif glanced at Roark, who
shrugged nonchalantly while Alina sat staring straight ahead as if
she didn’t understand every word of Leif’s humiliating recitation.
“You should’ve seen them, Father, cooing and kissing while me and
the others snuck up on them.”
“Well, well, Roark.” Roger chuckled. “I
wouldn’t have guessed you had it in you.”
“He would’ve had it in her,” Leif said,
smirking at his own crude jest, “if we hadn’t showed up when we
did.”
“Ha, ha,” Roark said affably.
Alina sat as stiff and silent as the stone
lodged in her throat. At least Leif hadn’t mentioned Roark’s
proposal of marriage or Alina’s almost answer.
“You’re sure Jerrik will think her dead?”
Roger asked.
“Gall dragged Kerry so it would look like a
wild animal dragged her off into the woods,” Leif told him. “We
left bits and pieces of her gown and mask and cloak and gobs of
pig’s blood along the trail.”
“Good, good.” Roger tapped his chin and
smiled as pleased as a cat that had finished toying with the poor
mouse and killed it. “I want Jerrik and Alyssa to grieve for their
daughter, to know how it feels to lose a child and have your family
torn apart.”
He stood and walked around the table to stand
in front of Alina and stare down at her for a long moment. “You are
your mother’s daughter,” he murmured, and then he went to the door
and opened it. “Peg, Jenny,” he called out. “Come take our guest to
her chambers.”
Two women dressed in plain brown long tunics
and scrubbed white work aprons scurried into the room. The older
one, who looked to be the same servant who had greeted the family
on their return from the docks, was middle-aged, buxom, and
round-faced with curly brown hair poking out from under her white
linen cap. The other woman was a younger version of the first.
Alina started to stand and felt Roark tugging down on the back hem
of her tunic, a tacit reminder that she shouldn’t have understood
what Roger told them.
“This is Peg,” Roger said to Alina in her
Northern tongue as the older servant stepped up and curtsied. “And
this is her daughter, Jenny, they will take you to your rooms.” He
eyed Alina from capped head to boots as she stood. “They will
provide you with clean and proper clothes and will fetch you for
supper when it’s served.” He sniffed as Alina stood and pinched his
narrow nose. “Tomorrow you may bathe.”
Alina ignored his dig and followed the women
out of the room and up the stairs to a hallway with doors to what
she assumed were bedchambers lining the back and sides of the
house, connecting to a walkway along the front side with tall,
narrow windows along the wall opened enough for air flow and
arrows, much like her family’s long house.
“Here we are, Lady,” Peg said, pushing open a
door to a room on the far side from the staircase.
“You speak the Northern tongue well, Peg,”
Alina said.
“Thank you, Lady. Lady Lynette taught me and
Jenny.”
“Alina, please.” She was hoping to make
friends with these women. She could use as many as she could get
while here. “Even in my home, nobody calls me lady.”
“Alina,” Peg said, her round cheeks rising.
She turned to the gawking Jenny. “Hussht, girl,” she said. “Show
Alina here around the room whilst I get her some clothes.”
“Yes ma’am.” Jenny bobbed her head as her
mother bustled out of the room. She gave Alina a shy smile. “This
here’s the bed,” she said in a heavily accented Northern tongue as
she pulled back the red drapes to a canopied, four-poster bed.
“These here are the chests to put your belongings in.”
Alina nodded, not bothering to explain the
only belongings she had were the clothes she was wearing, her
tattered gown, and lynx throw.
Jenny opened the wooden shutters to the one
window in the room and Alina went to look out of it. They were
twenty feet high at least, with a thorny bramble bush growing
directly below the window and not a tree within fifty paces. She
turned away from the window with a heavy sigh.
“I’ll bring you some soap and water and a
washing cloth,” Jenny said, pointing to the wash basin. “My mother
should be back with some clothes soon.”
“Thank you.” Alina sat on the bed as Jenny