Page 78 of The Scottish Bride
“Perhaps someday I will come to your aid instead.” She wanted to lighten the mood. She had spoken too quickly earlier, and once again he had taken it in stride.
“A lady rescuing a knight? One never knows.” He pointed ahead. “Look there, where that wide stream cuts through the moor—that is the Ettrick Water. We will cross that arched stone bridge, see there? Farther on, where the trees grow thick along that ridge, is the hemline of the forest skirt. Where those tall boughs come together like a cathedral arch, over to the left—that is the entrance we will take into the great forest.”
“Oh, it is lovely!” The leaves of the tall oaks and birches were turning with the season, gold and rust and purple against canopies of every shade of green and sienna. Against the blue sky, the beauty of it nurtured her soul.
She longed to find rest and peace in that cool sanctuary, though impatience made her wish to take the shortest route to Selkirk to find the bookbinder’s shop. She followed Liam over the stone bridge, then drew alongside him again.
“Tamsin,” he said then, “perhaps I have held back too much from you.”
A sense went through her of truth dawning, feather-light and clear. She waited.
“King Edward gave me the order in September,” he said, “when I was a prisoner at Carlisle. He had me brought to him at Lanercost. Said he wanted a book belonging to the Rhymer. Said it was owned by an old woman. Thomasina.”
“Ah. The Rhymer’s daughter. He was so wrong. He released you because you promised to fetch the book?”
“But I refused.”
“He would have killed you if you had refused. A Scotsman, perhaps a spy, already in his custody? You would be dead now.”
“She sees truth and speaks it out,” he said. “Aye, he would have had me killed, like a cousin of mine, like friends. Wallace. Others. But—” He stopped, rode on until she craned to look at him.
“But what? You agreed, for you went free.”
“Because he offered to give me Dalrinnie again. And—Malise was there. He pushed for the king to give him the order. That decided me.”
“More than Dalrinnie?”
“I am not so foolish as to trust Edward’s word. And I did not want Malise to succeed.”
“Or take Dalrinnie.”
“Or pester an old lady.” He gave her such a wry smile that she laughed.
“Well, he did pester me.”
“And still would. We will find a way to stop him. What say you, aye?”
“I think,” she said, smiling, “I am very fond of you just now, sirrah.”
“Truth will out.” He laughed and rode ahead, guiding her up a grassy slope toward the cathedral of trees ahead to enter the forest.
The horses’ hooves crunched rhythmically along the forest floor where fallen leaves and pine needles mingled, the pathwide enough for them to ride side by side, the trees widely spaced, the terrain flat enough that Tamsin could see through and beyond, to the green and brown density further on. Autumn leaves crushed underfoot, and she realized it was impossible to move silently through this part of the forest. As they rode on, leaves fell around them, spinning down in the breeze. A tapestry of sound wove together the thud of horse hooves, the rustle of the wind, the chatter and trill of birds, and somewhere the constant burble of water.
“It is peaceful here, so golden and quiet,” she said, looking up at leafy curtains of gold, copper, green and russet in the oaks and birches and hazelnut trees.
“Aye so,” he said, as a fox slipped across the wide flat path between the trees and disappeared. After a while the natural path narrowed and he moved in front of her. The wide, flat ground became more rugged. Now hillsides fell steeply away, where trees grew upright on slopes thick with bracken and fallen branches. Birds flitted through the trees overhead, quick and light. Then she noticed one bird appearing more than once.
“A hawk,” she said, pointing. “Up there, do you see? It is here now, and I saw it back there as well. Sitting and watching us, as if it has been following us all along.”
“The goshawk? Aye, he may be tracking us.” He whistled then, a melodic sequence of a few notes, and repeated it.
As if in response, the hawk flew to a tree closer to them and settled high up.
“It almost seems like he is doing that deliberately,” Tamsin said.
“He is. Look closely, do you see?”
She peered, hand shading her brow. “Oh! The jesses. I did not see them before. Where is his master?”
