Heart of Stone by Rebecca Ruger

Chapter Thirteen

Lady Agnes was notan unkind person. She just wasn’t what Julianna would have called...well, a kind person. The lady abbess was in fact a mystery. She’d smiled so sweetly when Julianna had walked through the doors two nights ago, had patted her tear-stained cheek and told her that all would be well.

Julianna had been provided with a private chamber and clean clothes, she’d been tucked into bed by the lady and another sister, Bridget, and they’d advised her that they would keep her in their prayers overnight while she slept. Sadly, Julianna had not slept that night. She had cried through most of it. And when her tears were exhausted, she’d entertained more of the rage she primarily felt.

But that was days ago now and everything had changed. Julianna had to believe that the Lady Agnes she’d met on that first night had only been Lady Agnes flush with a bag full of coin. Lady Agnes of the next morning had summoned Julianna to her chambers and proceeded first to lecture her for the abysmal circumstance in which she’d found herself, trapped with the MacKinnons, as if she’d made the choice freely. Next, she’d been admonished for whatever sins she may have committed while in the company of the MacKinnons, which had Julianna raising her brows and darting her eyes around the room, wondering exactly what Calum might have said to the woman. And then, she’d instructed Julianna on what would be expected from her going forward.

The great lady did all this, with two henchmen sisters standing as sentinels at her side, all the while stuffing her face with sweet breads—some of which Julianna could clearly see contained raisins, and which held her interest for quite some time—and tea, which steamed so prettily from the delicate cup that Julianna debated if she should offer her left hand for merely a sip.

“Henceforth,” the Lady Agnes had said, “you will be housed in the dormitory with the novices and assume the schedule that they keep.”

Julianna understood that a nod was all that was desired of her—she’d been chastised twice now for interrupting—but she had to make known her own wishes. “My lady,” she dared to interject, holding up her finger to silence the minion on the left, Cecily, a middle-aged woman who quite clearly was not about the Lord’s work, but Lady Agnes’s, “I appreciate that you have opened your priory to me, at the behest and patronage of Calum MacKinnon,” she furthered, hoping to remind the woman of the coin that came with her. “But I should like you to know that this will be but a resting place for me, as I have neither the ambition nor the temperament to become a nun.” The abbess wanted very much to cut her off, that Julianna rushed out, “And my stay here will be of a short duration before I make my way back home.”

Lady Agnes let her head drop to the left, giving Julianna a stern and yet solemn look, as if she felt sorry for Julianna. “Your destiny has been decreed by the warrior, MacKinnon. ’Tis not a lodging house upon which you have landed, girl, but a home to the children of God. The MacKinnon himself begged that you be kept safe and that you be maneuvered away from the torment the devil has laid at your feet, that of sensual temptation.”

Aghast, Julianna’s jaw dropped. Calum might well have requested that Julianna be kept safe, but she hadn’t any doubt that he had most certainly not asked for that other rubbish.

The lady wanted to chop off Julianna’s hair, as all novices were shorn of their tresses—to disburden your head, the daft woman had said—but there Julianna drew a line. She’d stood from her chair and had promised that she would bring harm to any who dared. When this was received with raised brows from Lady Agnes but scowls from her minions, Julianna had sweetly apologized and suggested that she might be more amenable after she’d settled in.

She did try to settle in, having no choice but to do so.

She’d been awakened for the last three nights at what she thought, with some irony, were seriously ungodly hours, to chant prayers that for the life of her she could neither understand nor recall. She was certain also that not any other person mumbling those prayers was truly giving the beseeching words any thought that the services were merely scant devotion with scandalous irreverence. Sometimes she counted only a dozen or so sisters spaced randomly around the small chapel, when she knew by now that more than forty women were housed here at Murkle.

The sisters woke first only an hour after midnight in preparation for the night office, or nocturns, which began half an hour later and included prayers for the governing body of Scotland, which Julianna believed was purposefully vague in this time of war, and for the dead. Around 3:30 am, they carried on with the daybreak lauds, or matins. Julianna had scoffed at this. Daybreak? She thought not. They were allowed to change and wash—but not return to sleep—at 4 am and then commenced an hour of reading verses before the morning mass. And good grief, all this took place before they began their assigned chores, which were then interrupted by another mass and yet an additional hour of reading and still Julianna wouldn’t be fed for several more hours that she thought this must explain the pale and waiflike forms of all her fellow novices.

However, and despite all this, Julianna could not say that she was unhappy. She truly enjoyed her fellow novices, with whom she spent so much of her time, though not one of them was anywhere near her age, the closest being all but fifteen. Conversation, of course, was limited, as they were only allowed to speak during the dinner hour. Naturally, being young lasses, there was much whispering and giggling during their work and often at night inside the long dormitory, which took up nearly the entire third floor.

On the first morning that she’d joined one of the work groups, Julianna had been the subject of many sidelong glances and so much interest. She was not at all surprised that they were quite curious about her; she was so advanced in age and had come to the priory in the middle of the night that surely they suspected there must be some tragic or exciting tale to justify her presence at Murkle.

They were scrubbing floors that morning because the abbess was annoyingly fond of instructing that purity of heart and mind began with cleanliness of the priory floors.

Not wanting to be considered a shirker, Julianna embraced the task, kneeling alongside the four other girls, all of them in a straight line, washing the laid stone, inching backwards as they worked. She applied much zeal and pressure to the well-used brush she’d been given but was quickly disabused of her wish to be efficient.

“If we finish too quickly, we’ll only be set with another chore,” said one girl, all of ten years old Julianna might have guessed. Her eyes were huge and gray and shadowed with dark circles in her thin face, all of this exacerbated by the uneven cut of her dark brown hair, which highlighted both beauty and imperfections indiscriminately.

“We like to only finish one job per day,” said another girl. She was the oldest and introduced herself as Brida. She was what Julianna’s sisters would have called an unfortunate, her teeth too large for her narrow face and her nose too angular; her eyes, which might have been her most pleasing feature, were at best non-descript, a lackluster brown though they did have an unusual angle, tilting upward at the outside.

Brida ticked off the names of the other girls: Helen was the gray-eyed lass; Barbara, with the coal-black eyes and skin tinted a lovely olive; and Marta, who might be the youngest though not the quietest, her pretty blue eyes resting often upon Julianna.

“What other chores are there?” She asked, suspecting she would not like the answer.

“It’s all scrubbing,” said Marta, “just a matter of where.”

“Seònaid’s group—she’s that nasty girl with the overbite, thinks she’s finer than any of us; did you see her in the refectory?—they’re on privy duty this week,” Brida said, not bothering to hide her delight.

“Come after the whipping, though,” Marta said with a fragile shudder.

Barbara enlightened Julianna further, her black eyes wide as she tipped her face toward Julianna, her two hands atop the brush she moved about the floor. “They were caught outside the walls.”

“Outside...where?”

“Into town,” Helen said sleepily, but then added with a rush of astonishment, “With boys!”

“Oh, my,” Julianna said, grinning at this. Obviously she wasn’t the only one who suspected they weren’t exactly Bride of Christ material. Her own curiosity bade her ask, “What did they wear? Did they leave Murkle in these horrid tunics?” She asked, glancing down with a hearty loathing at the ugly gray, shapeless sack of linen she’d been forced to wear. “And with their wimples on?” This, she hated most. Never in her life had she covered her hair, all day and all night with so bothersome a thing, white scratchy linen, wrapped severely around her head and neck, that only her face was visible. However, for the time being, she’d been given the choice of donning the wimple or having her hair shorn.

“They’d hidden garments in a lose stone inside the infirmary,” Brida answered.

Which reminded Julianna of something. “What might have become of the clothes I arrived in?” It wasn’t that she cared not at all for Beitris’s gown, she would have liked to return it one day, but she was more concerned with Calum’s plaid. It was all she had of him and she was besieged with anguish when she’d been informed it would not be returned to her.

“Like as no’, your things would be in Lady Agnes’s chamber or the garderobe near there,” Barbara supposed. “She keeps the finer things for herself.”

“I want them back,” Julianna stated emphatically, albeit childishly. “They belong to me.”

“Ooh,” cooed Helen with some excitement. “We can steal it back. Wouldn’t that be fun?”

Brida giggled. “Wouldn’t be the first time we snuck into Aggie’s chamber.”

Julianna gasped with amazement. They seemed so frail and adorable, these lasses, but suddenly she understood that they were not. She grinned at Brida, game to undertake whatever was needed to have Calum’s plaid returned to her.

***

“I LIKE ROBBIE’S CIRCUMSTANCE,” Calum said into the silence.

Silent indeed, as they had been, all last night since leaving Murkle, and all this morning. Silent but vexed earlier, he’d supposed, when Finn had taken to stomping around their makeshift camp, all his motions surly and persistently noisy.

“Ye mean his croft there, middle of nowhere?” Asked Tomag.

“Aye,” Calum said, keeping his gaze on the rolling hills in the distance as they rode, though his head was bent low, away from the misting rain. “Bothered by no one, those wastrels that stumbled upon Julianna and Mairi aside. He said they’d had no trouble for more than a decade.”

“I can no’ imagine that,” Artur mused with some conjecture. “Imagine a life without war.”

“Peaceful,” Booth said.

“Very,” Calum agreed and let his thought wander.

Finn’s frostiness continued. “If we dinna find Wallace down near Peebles, I say we get on home then. Enough of this wandering. Let’s find some ease.”

The very fact that Finn thought he might find ease at Caerhayes, where resided his wife, told one and all that his mood was bitter still, that he was angry yet at what they’d done.

Calum didn’t respond to Finn’s upset, didn’t say anything to ease the man’s frustration over Julianna, but advised, “Aye, I said we’d get back, and Domhnall will be waiting, but I want to ken Wallace’s position first, what his plans are for the fall. We’ve got a hundred strong MacKinnons to add to any fight. I’ll no’ leave him short on numbers if there’s a battle to be met and we can contribute.”

This was acknowledged only sparsely, and quietly, that Calum sighed.

He’d spent most of last night and all of this morning attempting to forget the look of betrayal that Julianna had worn when he’d delivered her to the convent, no small undertaking, that. As expressive as she was, all the hurt and disappointment had been easily detected. She’d not even let him kiss her goodbye, had stalked away, her eyes welling with tears that had nearly made him change his mind. He wasn’t sure what part of his brain had allowed him to believe she might welcome the reprieve, might have embraced her freedom from the MacKinnons. Mayhap it was only his thinking that had them yet in the roles of captive and captor. Enemies who kissed.

It was for the best, he knew, or rather tried to convince himself. Before their inevitable return to Caerhayes, they had still some matters to attend, and finding Wallace, or at least discovering evidence of his plans, if any, were a top priority. Julianna was better off, he persuaded himself, in the grand scheme of things, away from Calum and all the MacKinnons, and Caerhayes.

They spent the next three days chasing Wallace’s trail, learning naught but what they’d heard down at Blackwood castle, where Gabriel Jamison had told them that he had some intelligence that suggested Wallace was leaving the country.

“Leaving? For where?”

Gabriel had shrugged, his wide shoulders flexing under his tunic. “I dinna ken, but that mayhap he supposed he might find support or an ally of a common enemy in France.”

“France?” Calum had frowned. “Was no’ a treaty just signed, giving a child bride to England?” His uncle, upon his days at home, had advised him of these events.

“Aye,” said Gabriel, with a bit of a sneer.

A sneer of any sort was unusual for this man, as he was as even-tempered a man as Calum had ever known. Gabriel was several years older, solid of intellect and possessed of a rabid Scottish fervor, but always congenial, even in battle. Calum had fought beside him at Stirling, and he would swear to this day, that Gabriel Jamison had been smiling while he’d struck down the English.

Gabriel had taken a long swallow of the fine wine he’d provided to Calum and his men and added, “A French lass, sister to a king for the current monarch more than thrice her age, and the daughter of the French king for England’s heir.” He’d lifted his goblet in a toast, his eyes crinkling at the corners with his good humor. “A double wedding and peace secured.”

“And Scotland?” Calum had wondered.

“Maybe Wallace’s passion, and his power over words translate well into French,” Gabriel had offered.

They’d spent the night at Gabriel’s keep, now two days far from Caerhayes, but determined home was their destination when they departed.

Finn had come around by then, more closely resembled his old self, that Calum dared to mention Julianna’s name to him as they rode away from Blackwood.

“I dinna say anything to the lads,” he said while they rode side by side, picking their way through the forest near Anagach well south of Nairn, “but Julianna said something interesting regarding Faucht’s attack on us.” At the question in Finn’s eyes, Calum said, “She said that while her stepfather was listing all his reasons for the ambush, one of his men made a remark intimating that Faucht had been paid to do as much.”

Finn’s jaw dropped but he said nothing initially. He clicked to his horse, steering him around the right of a towering tree while Calum went left. An elusive pine marten was seen briefly, before he ducked back into the den he’d made in the hollow at the bottom of the tree.

When they joined again at the far side of the tree, Finn wanted to know, “Who would pay him? Who would either have the means or the desire to see you—us—dead? It dinna make sense.”

It hadn’t originally to Calum either. Truth be told, he might have actually dismissed it as a fabrication of Julianna, her aim to sow seeds of doubt about her own complicity. By now, having firmly exonerated her of all culpability, his mind had returned again and again to the matter. After a while, he was left with little choice but to accept, or at least chew upon, the only possibility that made sense.

“Aye, but there is one who has—like Faucht—been playing both sides,” Calum reminded Finn. “One who only allowed my efforts alongside Wallace and Murray so long as it was done quietly, who never himself fought any battle to save our Scotland, who made the bargain with Faucht and sent me—us—down to Kinclaven.”

“Jesu, lad,” Finn said. “Domhnall’s a disagreeable sort, and I dinna ever care for the way he treads water in both camps and lords about his power but you’re...you’re kin to him, his heir if he wills it.”

“But does he want to bequeath Caerhayes into the hands of a patriot? Finn, he’s worked so hard to assure Edward and England of his loyalty? Aye, he says it’s naught but lip service, but....” Calum shrugged, letting Finn stew on that. Truth be told, he would be very happy if Finn could dissuade him from this conclusion. “Can you think of another who might want us dead and gone? Or can you imagine that Julianna invented that detail?”

Finn could not or did not at that moment.

The next morning saw Calum awakened unexpectedly from sleep by a dream that showed Julianna leaning over him, her blonde hair falling around her shoulders and onto his chest. She smiled at him, her green eyes sparkling, and slid her hand along his face. Sitting up with a grimace when he realized ’twas not real, Calum touched his hand to his cheek, to the spot she’d caressed inside that dream.

He had to stop. He needed to leave off with the guilt and damn, the desire to turn around and go get her back.

Back.

Nae, she’d not been his, had been naught but once his betrothed, and then by the hand of another’s ambitions or designs, she was not. Not his any longer, any more than she ever had been.

He was rather ashamed of the weakness that allowed him to wonder if it, the betrothal, had ever been real at all. What did it matter, save that he might irritate himself further with what might have been?

They moved judiciously north, Calum lamenting both the distance he was putting between himself and Julianna and the tough choices he would have to make once Caerhayes was reached, namely confronting his uncle.

Tomag surprised him by mentioning something they’d had brief conversation about days ago, but which had since not left Calum’s mind completely.

“You ever think about that, Cal? ’Bout living away from the keep, like Robbie does?”

He hadn’t, until...Julianna, until he’d decided that he couldn’t safely bring her to Caerhayes. Hell, he didn’t know at this point if he could safely show his own face at Caerhayes.

“Has its appeal, aye?”

“What do ye do?” Booth wondered. “Just find a plot of land unclaimed and set up a croft and farm?”

“No land is free,” Calum answered. “But aye, there’s many a laird on whose property you might find tenure. Monasteries lease land. Robbie holds his tenancy from the Cisterians.”

“Ye can find a crofting township,” Artur added, “claim your quarterland, and farm and rent.”

“Aye, but who do you fight for?” Peadar wondered. “Are ye still aligned with MacKinnons? Do ye claim your own name and army? Or are ye merely a farmer now, never go off to war?”

Calum couldn’t imagine that, even as he did have dreams that one day Scotland would be her own again. In the meantime, however, he would fight when called. Still, the idea of a quiet life bore some contemplation that might not need the end of the war. “Mayhap you only plant your grain and graze your sheep and make bairns. But when Wallace or another summoned, you would go.”

“Dinna sound awful,” Finn said.

Tomag chuckled. “Finn, you canna set off to man your own croft, leaving your sweet bride at Caerhayes.”

Grinning, Finn asked, “Aye, and who’s going to tell her where to find me?”

“That woman’s got a keen sense to ken where you are,” Artur said. “I’d put my coin on Magda finding you within a year.”

Finn was undeterred. “Ah, a year of peace.”

Calum boldly took their discussion one step further. “Good people right here,” he said. “We get on well enough, all of us. Finn can hide from Madga. We could settle near Robbie or find our own community.”

Artur was the first to push aside his surprise. “This is no idyllic speculation, then. You’re wanting away from Caerhayes.”

Calum shrugged, though he did remain curious about what their reactions might be. He also knew that any idea of leaving Caerhayes, about assuming a quiet and peaceful life as Robbie had, had no place in reality if Julianna weren’t a part of it. He wouldn’t have ever appreciated the appeal of Robbie’s croft if not for her.

“I might be,” he admitted.

“I’m in,” Finn said without hesitation.

Several chuckles greeted this, though Booth admonished, “Ye canna just abandon Magda.”

“Think about it every day,” Finn didn’t mind admitting.

“I’m wondering what has you so suddenly of a mind to settle down to a quiet life? This idea attached to any one person in particular? And would she be having fine green eyes and some long golden hair?” Calum pictured Artur narrowing his gaze at the back of Calum’s head while they walked their horses along the reedy shore of a loch.

Artur’s bald question put all the others in the know.

“Oh,” Booth drawled, catching on at last.

Unable to avoid it, and unwilling to deny it, Calum pulled back the reins, bringing his destrier to a halt. He angled the horse sideways so that he faced all of them as they stopped as well.

“Aye, I’d no’ be thinking anything of the sort before Julianna and you all ken that,” he said curtly. “And I’m no’ saying I still dinna have to get to Caerhayes and speak with Domhnall, figure out some things. But a quiet croft and a bonny lass suddenly has a lot of appeal.” He let all those truths fall and waited for the reactions.

Finn was first, rolling his eyes. “Then why the bluidy hell did we leave her there?”

Calum shrugged and couldn’t contain a crooked, sheepish grin. “I...I hadn’t processed it fully then.”

“What the feck does that mean?” Artur wanted to know.

He still hadn’t processed it, what he felt for her, what he was presently considering, so he was unable to spell everything out to them. He shrugged and searched for some explanation to give them but failed that all he could manage was a shake of his head and, “I dinna trust Domhnall.”

“Nor I—any of us,” Artur agreed. “But lad, there’s no’ a man here who’d allow any harm to come to her.”

“Aye, if yer uncle even looks sideways at her, we’ll hightail it outta there.”

Calum nodded, still torn. He simply did not want to take chances with her life. “I need to address the issue at Caerhayes first before making any other, future plans,” he said pointedly to Finn.

Tomag chewed his cheek a bit, his head bowed even as he stared at Calum. “I’m only wondering...ye ken the lass is stubborn. If she were—I dinna ken, hurt?—by what she might consider a rejection, who’s to say she’ll no’ welcome the idea of taking the cloth?”

Finn rolled his eyes, embracing this as a dastardly possibility. “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, and the boat they rode in on! It’d be just like her, her blood all boiled ’cause we left her there.”

Calum blanched. She wouldn’t. Bluidy—would she?

“It’s no’ outside the realm of possibilities,” Artur argued. “She’s got that bold streak.”

“We need to go get her,” Calum decided, consumed by this worry now.

Every man nodded in some fashion.

Finn chuckled and slapped his thigh. “Off we go, lads. Gotta pick up something we left back at Murkle.”

“About time,” Artur grumbled.

“Thank God,” Peadar said.

“Wish he’d have figured that out before we’d ridden two days in the opposite direction,” Booth rebuked lightly, grinning as he spun his steed around.

Tomag whooped and led the charge back around the loch.