Page 29 of Laird of Flint
He supposed that was wise. A watched outlaw was always careful. Hew needed the thief to think he was safe. Overconfident robbers made mistakes.
The priest didn’t stay long, and it seemed neither the time nor place to inquire about his visits to Kildunan. But Father James did speak at length to the abbot and the prior. And once or twice he glanced in Hew’s direction. Clearly, he wished to know who the stranger at the monastery was. Hew wondered what they were telling him.
According to the prior, when a monk died at Kildunan, he was buried in an unmarked grave in the orchard. But there was a special graveyard behind the orchard for notable guests. Two rows of small gravestones were embedded into the sod there like crooked teeth. At one end was a new hole gouged into the earth where the latest body would be buried.
By late afternoon, the rites were over. The monks dispersed from the grave until only the prior and he remained.
“Well?” the prior asked with a smirk, raising one judgmental brow.
Hew frowned. “What?”
“Ye can’t possibly think Father James is…” He glanced cautiously about the orchard for stragglers. “Ye know.”
“The thief?”
The prior winced. He obviously didn’t want to speak the words aloud. “Aye.”
Hew wasn’t ready to say. “I’m not certain yet.”
The prior thinned his lips in disapproval.
Hew had a question of his own. “What did you tell him about me?”
“Just that ye were visitin’ the monastery.”
“You didn’t tell him I was from Rivenloch?”
“I did not.”
“Good.”
“The abbot, however, might have mentioned it.”
Hew growled.
Bloody hell. Loose-lipped monks would be the death of him. Soon all of Scotland would know a warrior of Rivenloch was hiding at Kildunan. And when the king found out, he’d no doubt come running with a betrothal. A betrothal between Hew and some milksop daughter of an English lord.
Hew wanted to punch something. But he’d resist the urge. He didn’t want to alarm the prior. He needed the man’s trust and cooperation. The sooner he could get it, the sooner he could solve the crime. The sooner he could solve the crime, the sooner he could leave this purgatory and find a safer place to hide. Hopefully with his cousin Gellir at Darragh.
So he reduced his temper to a low simmer. “Brother Cathal comes on the morrow, aye?”
“Aye.”
“I’ll want to question him.”
“O’ course.”
As he left to find something to eat, he called back over his shoulder, “And henceforth, I wish to be introduced simply as Hew.”
Since he’d had little to eat all day, Hew treated himself to double portions of supper, ignoring the scowls of scorn from the prior. Afterwards, he borrowed the monastery’s rarely used wooden tub, filling it from the well. Then he coaxed the cook to heat a cauldron of cinnamon-infused water for him to add to the tub. An hour later, he sank into his first decent bath in a fortnight and scrubbed off the cloying scent of incense and the lingering stench of death.
The steaming, fragrant water lulled him to drowsiness. He bathed, dried off, and cracked open the shutters to let in the fresh evening air. Then he fell into bed, asleep almost before his head hit the pallet.
Sometime in the middle of the night, through the gap in the shutters, a shadow falling across the full moon abruptly awakened him.
His eyes flew open. But he lay motionless, listening.
Were those footfalls?
