Page 5 of The Hawk Laird
John Blair frowned. “Sir John Seton, baron of Aberlady, is a rebel knight in English custody now, I believe. Be careful. There could be English guards with her.”
“I simply require her counsel,” James drawled. “And I want a hostage.”
“If you keep her half so well as the hawks you train, she will be safe.”
“Once trained. Most are gone. I have no castle or mews to keep them. But I have learned from hawking that patience achieves goals.”
“Honor and revenge are at cross purposes in you just now, I fear.”
James stood. “Black Isobel condemned me along with Wallace with her rantings about hawks and eagles. She is a Scotswoman, but her false prophecies favor the English.”
“Jamie, what if she is a true seeress?”
“Then she had better divine what I need to know. Farewell, John.”
He left the chapel, pulling his hood up against the rain, walking quickly away from the abbey. The prophetess had caused him much trouble with that cursed hawk prediction, which many had heard of by now. He would like the truth behind that—but the damage was done.
Passing the hawthorn tree near the cemetery, he paused. Wallace’s mother’s remains lay beneath that tree; he remembered the morning that he and John Blair and Wallace had buried her there in a private, unmarked grave. Will had wanted it that way, had asked James to keep the secret forever, or the English might disturb her rest.
It was the least he could do for a friend. And he owed him far more.
He took a footpath down into the greenwood below the abbey hill, and within moments, ran into the forest.
Chapter Two
The sandstone wallsof Aberlady Castle glowed in the sunset as Isobel Seton climbed the steps to the battlement. She walked resolutely, head high and proud, her gaze trained on the crenelated wall ahead. Reaching up, she pulled off her white silk veil and undid her black braid, still walking forward steadily. But beneath her gray gown and surcoat, her knees trembled.
Hunger weakened her, she told herself firmly. Not fear. She would not show that. Every day at set of sun through ten weeks of besiegement, she had come up here to show the English that she was still here, still defiant.
The breeze lifted her hair as she went toward the crenellations above the foregate. She looked down through an embrasure. Sunset light poured over the incline that led up to the castle: a rocky slope pitted with ditches. Below, a hundred English soldiers gathered near cookfires and tents near wooden palisades set up for protection. Their weapons would be close at hand, she knew, although the day’s fighting had quieted.
Her father’s men—hers now, she reminded herself, for Sir John Seton had been captured by the English months ago—watched from positions along the wall walk. Eleven Scotsmen remained of Aberlady’s garrison; sixty had manned the battlements ten weeks past.
She glanced behind her. The bailey, with its massive stone keep in the center, was deserted, its thatched-roof outbuildings empty of workers, supplies, and animals. They had let the horsesgo during the one truce day they had been allowed. A few of the hawks had been released; the rest had been eaten by now.
And one corner of the bailey had become a graveyard for those who had died from injury, illness, or starvation. Soon they might all be buried in that bleak corner.
Her men nodded as she passed, their bows held ready. They did not object to their mistress walking the battlements, knowing she was safe from the English camped below. The Southron enemies did not dare harm Black Isobel, the prophetess of Aberlady. Her value protected her. Now and then, the English would shout up to her that King Edward wanted her brought to him, whole and unharmed.
The English king approved of Black Isobel’s predictions of the defeat of the Scots at Falkirk, the recent fall of Stirling Castle to the English, and the capture and execution of the freedom fighter William Wallace. King Edward was eager to hear the Scottish prophetess foretell more triumphs for the English. He wanted her to do that in his presence.
She had tried to prevent Wallace’s death by sending a warning, so the news of his execution had made her feel ill. She had stood on the battlements and listened as the siege commander had shouted that she would be well rewarded for helping the English king.
But she had wrapped her note of refusal around an arrow shaft. One of her men had delivered by shooting it quite accurately into the commander’s thigh while he sat his horse. After that, the siege had tightened. The English had brought in engines to batter the outer gate, and their archers had sent flaming arrows over the walls of Aberlady.
Now a cool breeze stirred past as she stood on the high battlement, spreading her hair like a glossy black banner. She welcomed the effect, raising her chin, standing proud. In the encampment below, English soldiers gazed up at her, whileothers practiced with weapons or packed the ditches leading to the castle gates with rubble and branches. A few men repaired the wooden framework of one of the two siege engines used to batter the thick walls.
The delicious smell of meats roasting over English cookfires made her stomach rumble miserably. Chain mail glimmered in the sunset as the English ate and talked and settled for the night. In the morning they would begin another battle, she knew. But Aberlady’s few defenders were weak from hunger and could not withstand another onslaught.
Isobel looked around. The castle rested upon a high dark crag with cliffs on three sides, set on a vast moor, the place was said to be impenetrable, unbreachable. But they were not impervious to starvation.
Isobel sighed, her fingers on gritty sandstone. She had been born here, and she might die here. But not so soon, please God, not so soon.
“Come away from the wall, Isobel.” Sir Eustace Gibson, knight and castle baillie, stepped out of the shadows, stretching out his hand toward her.
“Stay back,” she warned. “They will shoot if they see you.”
He smiled grimly. “They have tried, and I am still here. Come inside the keep.” He guided her toward the steps, and Isobel heard the familiar whine and thwack of an arrow bolt hitting the outer wall where they had stood moments earlier.
