The Angel Knight, page 16
“Will your mother mind if you climb here?” he asked, as she dangled from the bar. He stood nearby in case she fell, but she showed no uncertainty.
“She will not mind if I climb as well as the lads. Which I do.” Grabbing hand over hand, she traversed the width of the bar to show him, her breaths visible puffs of mist..
“Well done,” he said. “And your father—would he have let you climb the gate?” He waited expectantly.
She swung back and forth like the hammer of a bell. “He would hae said it is not a lady’s way. But you do not care about that, for you let me up here.”
He smiled. “You will be a lady when you are ready, Michaelmas,” he said. “It is fine to be a child for now.”
“Gavin Faulkener, are you my father now?”
“I am,” he said. “But I’ve never been any child’s father, and I am not sure how best to do it.”
“Ach, it is not hard. It is only me,” she said. “Fergus Macnab has much more fathering to do. He has eight lads, and a whole flock of God’s children.”
“That’s a task,” Gavin said. “What was your father like?”
She swung for several moments. “He was muckle busy with his horses and his soldiers. He was not here much, for the English king had important work for him in other parts o’ Scotland.” She moved deftly along the bar with her hands. “He had a deep yell, like thunder. I did not like it.”
“Did he shout at you?” he asked, watching her.
“Not me, but at my mother. I did not like him those times. Help me down, please, Gavin Faulkener,” she said. He lifted her down. “John MacKerras is coming. He yells, too.”
“Only a little,” Gavin said, looking over his shoulder.
“Those bairnies will be hurt one day,” John grumbled as he came near. Michaelmas gave him an innocent smile and ran off.
“She’s a cautious girl, I think,” Gavin said. He slid a glance at John. “She reminds me of my mother, somehow.”
John frowned as he stared after her. “Aye, I’ve seen it too. That fine pale hair, those eyes. Aye, she looks like your mother when she was a wee lass.”
“Christian said that Henry adopted Michaelmas from the same priory that my mother stayed in,” Gavin said.
John looked at him sharply. “When was this?”
“Just after Hastings destroyed the place,” Gavin said. “Michaelmas was born there a year or so earlier.”
“Was she,” John said. “Was she indeed.” He frowned and rubbed his blunt fingers over his bearded chin. “I remember that Dame Joan was the prioress there. Did she say who the wee bairn’s mother was? Or her father?”
“Nay,” Gavin answered. “It is likely, I think, that Henry was her father. That alone might explain why the child just has a familiar look to us. But Christian does not know if he was.”
John drew a deep breath and looked at Gavin. “Well,” he said, and hesitated. “I do not mean to imply any ill thoughts, but it does come to my mind that Henry and your mother were verra close. He wanted to wed her once, before she wed your father.”
“I had heard that,” Gavin said. “What do you think, John?”
His uncle sighed and shook his head. “I think it would be a miracle if ‘twere true. Hair of that pale shade is unusual, but there would have to be other proof before I would suspect my own sister of such a thing.”
“True. It is likely impossible,” Gavin said. “The resemblance is curious, though.” He thought then of the little girl’s dream. She had described an older woman, kind and blond. His mother would have been at the priory when Michaelmas had been born, and may have helped care for the child. Perhaps Michaelmas had an infant’s memory of her. Aye, Gavin thought; surely that was all it was.
“Likely any records of her mother’s name were burned with the convent,” John said. “Ach, it is a foolish thought, lad. We need more sleep at night, I think. Though I would not doubt Henry sired the lass.”
Gavin nodded, and exhaled a long breath. “Aye so. Well, what then of the chimneys? You’ve looked at them this morn?”
“Aye,” John said. “Outside the great tower, I saw only smoke vents and the one chimney for the kitchens. We could convert one o’ the privy shafts to a chimney for a new hearth.”
“I will take a look when I go in,” Gavin said. “Christian is likely waiting for me by now. She’s promised to show me through the halls and bedchambers this morning.”
“Be careful she does not hae in mind to drop you through one o’ the floors,” John said. Gavin shot him a wry glance and walked away.
Christian heard quick footsteps as Gavin climbed the stairs leading to the landing where she stood outside the great hall. She wiped at the tears that stained her cheeks and stiffened her spine as he approached. She heard his boots scrape over the steps, and then halt just behind her. She could smell the wind about him, heard the swirl of his cloak as he stepped nearer.
“God’s greetings, lady,” he said. She nodded and kept turned away from him, looking into the chamber. An involuntary sniff slipped out.
“All is not well with you this morning,” he said.
“It is hard to look at this,” she admitted, her voice trembling. She pointed toward the great hall.
Sighing deeply, he leaned a shoulder against the opposite doorjamb. He glanced around the room, at its lofty arch-vaulted stone ceiling, at the walls, charred dark, and at the double design of the pointed arch windows. “This was once a fine chamber,” he said.
“It was that,” she said tremulously. “Room enough for several large tables, and direct access to the kitchens and to fresh water. Glass windows, and carved ceiling bosses, and a design of thistles painted on one wall. Henry was surprised to find such civility in a cold castle in Celtic Scotland.”
“What kind of hearth was here?” he asked. “I see no fireplace in the wall.”
She pointed. “An iron basket, there, in the center of the room. We usually burned peats there, though Henry often complained about that and ordered a log fire. The fire basket has fallen among the floor timbers.” She pointed downward.
“I see. A hooded fireplace would be best here. They heat the rooms well, with less smoke.”
“Kilglassie is an older castle, parts of it built generations ago. We only had two true fireplaces, in the bakery and in the kitchen just there, that room beyond the hall. We used fire baskets and iron braziers for heat elsewhere.”
“We will have wall hearths and corner hearths now, wherever you like,” he said. “We can add chimneys on the outer walls.”
She glanced over at him. In the cool dawn light, his hair, spilling to his shoulders, was touched with strands of gold. Framed against dark stone, his profile was finely cut, strong and lean and beautiful. Christian longed, for an instant, to trace her fingers along his jaw, to feel the texture of his beard, to feel the warmth of his face near hers once again.
She thought of his kisses last night, and of his words to her. A swirling, yearning sensation spun through her body. But she frowned at herself, still caught in the conflict between such new, tentative joys, and old, powerful fears.
“How many men did Henry have here?” Gavin asked.
His words jolted her, reminding her that his only intent was to rebuild Kilglassie and fill it with English soldiers. “Two hundred or so,” she said. “They kept their quarters in the southeast and northeast towers.” She slid him a glance. “Do you mean to bring that many?”
“I do not know how many men will be sent here. It is not my decision.” His gaze was brilliant blue in the dimness. “And they could not be housed where Henry’s men were, for those towers are almost totally destroyed. I doubt the masonry there is strong enough to support new floors. The walls could collapse.”
“The walls of those two towers have always been weak, and cracked in places,” she said. “My father hired masons to shore them up when I was a child. He thought there was some basic fault in the stone, or perhaps in the foundation. He intended to rebuild them someday, but we spent most of our time at his castle in the western Highlands.”
“I will hire stonemasons to examine the structures and rebuild them entirely,” Gavin said.
“It would take years to reconstruct them,” she said.
“Aye.” He looked at her so directly, so intensely, that her heart bounded in her chest. “Two years at least, I think, before we see our castle complete, my lady.”
Her eyes widened. He spoke as if he thought of her as his wife, his partner, as if rebuilding were a project of shared delight and not a necessity of war. As if no kings or wars existed to determine the function of the castle. As if he valued her opinion.
She was used to gruff complaining, and harsh criticism, and a cold, lonely bed every night; she was used to a husband who disliked her intensely. She found it difficult to accept that this English knight did not condemn her and reject her constantly. Henry had only softened his disagreeable manner when Michaelmas had been nearby; for that much, at least, Christian had always been grateful.
“But there are more immediate concerns than those two towers,” Gavin continued. Christian cleared her throat, trying to focus her thoughts on what he said. “We need bedchambers readied as soon as possible. That little chamber we are all sharing now is rather uncomfortable. No hearth, no true beds, and too close to the stabled horses. And it has grown even more crowded of late.”
She raised her chin. “I will not send my daughter back to Fergus and Moira.”
“My lady, I would not ask that.” He gave her a puzzled look. “Your daughter belongs here. But I will clear rooms for her and the others elsewhere, and soon. That little fellow William snores louder than John.”
Christian laughed, a soft burst of humor and relief. He smiled and turned slowly to examine the small corridor in which they stood. Then he crossed the landing to look out the small arrowslit window, where cold light and air knifed through the wall. Watching him, Christian noticed that he moved with a simple athletic grace. She admired the width of his shoulders and his narrow hips, the limber turn of his tall body in the black tunic and deep blue cloak.
He gestured toward the stairs. “How many bedchambers are above this level?”
“Four in all up there, two with privies,” she said. “The two smaller rooms are built into the thickness of the walls. The largest bedchamber—the laird’s solar—lies partly over the great hall.”
“Show me,” he said.
Four arched doorways were set in the length of the upper corridor, one door placed away from the others. That door had wooden planking still intact, its gently arched doorframe a note of grace in a wall darkened and marred by smoke. Christian approached the door with Gavin just behind her. Lifting the latch, she pushed the door open.
“The laird’s bedchamber,” she said. “There is another entrance in that corner, with steps leading to the great hall below.”
“Was this your room?”
“I shared it with my daughter,” she said. “Henry slept down the hall. He always preferred a private chamber.”
The last time that she had been here, she had supervised the servants, hurrying them along while they stripped embroidered hangings from the walls, carried her clothing chests down the steps, and dismantled the huge bed. Now the chamber was another empty, ugly hole, like the hall below, its floor partly ruined, its windows and raftered ceiling and leaking light, open to the cold winter dawn.
Gavin sighed as he looked around. “You do surely know how to ruin a castle,” he said softly. “King Edward should have had you on his side.”
She whirled. “And I would burn his great castle, with him in it!”
He held up a hand. “Hold, hold. An unfortunate remark. My apologies. Peace between us, lady?” he asked, touching her arm. The contact sent tingling shivers down her spine. She raised her chin stubbornly, reminding herself of his Englishness. But that lever was having less and less effect on her resolve to remain cool toward him. After last night’s heated, breathless kisses, she had begun to believe that he was a man of substance and kindness, virile as well as gentle. A man she was afraid that she had begun to love.
But she was also afraid to soften toward him, afraid that she would trust him to be compassionate and kind, and be proven wrong once again.
Gavin leaned into the room. “That window is set with beautiful tracery, done by a master craftsman.”
“The window frames were carved at Edinburgh and brought here when I was a child,” she said, glad of neutral ground. “A gift for my mother. There was colored glass set in the top section, and oak shutters below.”
“A basket hearth was here as well?”
“We only used a brazier, sometimes two in winter.”
“A fireplace will do better,” he said. “With a long hood to keep the room free of smoke.” He turned to her. “Would you like that, my lady?”
She hesitated, then nodded.
Gavin stepped forward cautiously, pushing his foot against the floorboard before he moved into the room. The blackened boards creaked beneath his weight.
“Do not walk there!” she said, alarmed. “The floor could collapse.”
He glanced back at her, then walked along the perimeter of the room, agile and careful. When he came to the window niche, he walked between its facing stone benches and looked out.
“Come here,” he said, beckoning to her.
“It is dangerous,” she said, holding on to the doorjamb.
He shook his head. “The floor in this room is far more sound than I have seen elsewhere in the castle. Those fallen timbers, there, are from the ceiling. Look up—see where the ceiling rafters are gone, just here, and there?”
She nodded. “The roof must have caught a spark and burned through in those spots.”
“Aye. Fergus told me there was a heavy rainstorm the day of the fire.” He stretched out a hand to rub the wall. “These are water stains. The downpour must have come through the open roof and doused the fire in this room before the floor beams could be consumed.”
Christian glanced at the walls. “I have seen other signs of water damage in other parts of the castle.”
“But there were heavy rains, apparently, that stopped the fire before it could destroy the entire castle. A blessing, my lady.” He cocked a brow at her and beckoned again. “Come here. The floor is safe to cross. I want you to see something.”
She stepped forward carefully, clinging to the wall. The floor creaked but held. Looking down, she realized that the thick oak floor beams were intact, only blackened and littered with soot and rubble from the ceiling rafters.
Gavin walked to her and held out his hand. His fingers were hard and warm over hers as he pulled her toward him and brought her into the window recess.
A cold breeze cut through the empty stone tracery as he stood behind her. “Look out there,” he said softly.
The loch spread away from the castle like cold, smooth silver in the early light, surrounded by dark hills. The misty, infinite expanse of the dawn sky was a glorious, delicate blend of pink and lavender and silver. A flock of white doves soared upward like a spinning cloud.
“Beautiful,” she breathed.
“Aye,” he said, his fingers tightening on her shoulder. “A fine site for a castle. We will make Kilglassie strong again, you and I.”
“For your king,” she said, a bitter edge to her voice.
“For us,” he said.
She half turned and glanced up at him, his determined tone catching her attention. He stared out over her head toward the landscape. The dawn light gave a startling clarity to his eyes, silver threaded into indigo. He seemed a vision of power and masculine beauty, reminding her of the first day she had ever seen him.
“But your king has ordered you to rebuild here only to house his garrisons. And he wants you to find the Bruce, to—”
“I know well what Edward wants me to do. But I do not care to be master over a seat of war only. I will build here as I see fit. I have the coin for it and I hold the charter.” He glanced down at her. “And I will have your help.”
“Why should I help you?” she whispered.
“You are my wife.” He lifted his brows as if the idea were all so simple, without complexity.
“A poor choice for an English knight,” she muttered.
Gavin swore softly. His hands tightened on her shoulders, and he spun her around. “Your bitterness and anger are proving difficult to live with.”
With her back pressed against the windowjamb, she stared up at him. “I will not help you rebuild if you intend to bring English soldiers here. Do not ask it of me.”
“Lady Christian, I have tried to offer peace to you. I realize that this was once your home.”
“I did not ask you to wed with me and come here.”
“Think you I asked King Edward for Scottish land? This is what he granted me!”
“An English sovereign has no right to grant Scottish land!” she shouted.
He blinked once, his nostrils flaring. He tightened his hands on her arms. “Ah. Here is your contention with me, then. You believe I have no right to Kilglassie.”
“None at all!” she yelled. Somehow, shouting at him felt good, a release. She wanted to shout again, scream and pummel at him. Perhaps that would keep her from yearning to have his arms around her. She stared into the darkening blue of his eyes and prepared to face that storm with her own.
“No right? I am your husband!” he said fiercely. Christian flinched, waiting for him to shout the words, but he kept control.
She fisted her hands, unwilling to hold her own temper. “You are an invader!”
“I am your husband,” he said firmly, “and as such I have a right to this castle, by the laws of your king or mine.”
“I did not consent.”
“Consent? We all heard you answer aye in that chapel in Carlisle,” he said. “We were wed in God’s presence, and Kilglassie is ours together.”
