horse shifted, restless. Through the windows of the church, the choir where services were sung glowed like a beckoning lamp, light and lovely as any church he had seen across the Channel.
The villagers huddled before their spiritual home, uncertain of what was to come. Gavin watched a man at the crowd’s edge, hands clasped, eyes closed, lips moving in prayer.
The man’s eyes opened and met Gavin’s.
Fear. Strong enough to taste.
His stomach rebelled. He was sick to death of killing.
A squire ran up to the King, carrying a torch. In the darkening twilight, the shifting flames cast unearthly light and shade across the mud-splattered surcoats and armour.
He looked at his uncle. No more, he thought, the words a wish.
But anger, not mercy, gripped Edward’s face. The Scots had talked truce only to gain time to prepare for war. So, when Lord Douglas finally rejected the English offer of peace, Edward vowed to give them the war they wanted.
The King motioned the squire towards Gavin.
‘Take the torch,’ he said. The fire flickered between them like Satan’s flames. He nodded towards the church. ‘Burn it.’
The squire shoved the torch into Gavin’s outstretched hand. He took it, as he had so many times before, but his grip was unsteady and the firebrand trembled. Or was that just a trick of the wavering light?
The villagers’ wary glances shifted from him to the church. What would happen to them if they lost their link to God?
A baby’s wail bounced off the church’s stone walls.
He shoved the torch at the squire, trying to give back the flames.
‘What are you waiting for?’ Edward roared, releasing all the frustration of a failed campaign. Storms had sunk his ships. There would be no new supplies and nothing left to do but retreat. He meant to leave destruction behind him.
‘Leave it. They never warred on us.’
‘They laid waste to their own lands, so we’d have no cattle to eat nor ale to drink.’
Edward’s knights grumbled their agreement. Hungry bellies made vicious warriors.
Gavin looked from the torch to the church. Stone walls were no protection. He knew that. He had lit fires large and small from Picardy to Artois. Heard the crackle of the roof catch fire, seen the timbers crash to the floor and ignite wooden altars, felt the heat sear his chest through his breastplate. Cinder burns pitted the gold lions and lilies on his surcoat.
But this was different and had been from the moment they crossed the border. He had breathed the familiar smell of the earth, felt the gentle slope of the hills rise below his stallion’s hooves, looked up at the perpetual grey mist of the sky. And knew.
No matter how long he had been away, where, or with whom, this was home.
‘What’s the matter, Fitzjohn?’ the King yelled. ‘Is your Scottish whore’s blood holding you back, boy?’
His mother was no whore. But the King had never forgiven Gavin’s father for his sin, even after death. ‘There’s no reason for this,’ he answered. ‘These folk fight us no more.’
‘Your father would have done it!’
His father had done worse.
But Gavin no longer could.
He dropped the torch and heard it sizzle as it hit the soggy ground. Then, he pulled off the red, gold and blue surcoat bearing his father’s arms and held it over the sputtering flame until it was ablaze.
‘My father might have done it. But I will not.’
He grabbed the reins and turned his horse away to ride into the darkness alone.
He was not the man his father had been.
Or so he prayed.
A few weeks later, in the Cheviot Hills
The falcon paced on her perch that morning, pecking at her jesses, on edge even after Clare slipped the hood over her head to cover her eyes. Strange. Typically, she feared nothing when she could see nothing.
‘What’s the matter, Wee One?’ Clare crooned, as she closed the door and motioned the falconer away. She pretended the birds were part of her duties as mistress of Carr’s Tower, but the falconer was rewarded, and well, to tend to their constant needs. She simply preferred to do it herself, particularly with this one. ‘Don’t you want to take a morning flight?’
She stroked the striped feathers of the bird’s breast, talking nonsense until Wee One recognised her voice and stilled her wings. Clare held out a titbit and the bird nipped it from her fingers.
‘Ye’re spoilin’ the bird, Mistress Clare,’ the old falconer said. His grey-tinged brows nearly met as he frowned. ‘She’ll nae hunt if she’s nae hungry.’
‘It’s no more than a crumb.’ A bribe was more the truth, something to fool herself into believing the bird cared about her instead of only the food she brought.
She checked to be sure the jesses on the falcon’s talons had not come loose. ‘I think it does her good to have a treat from time to time.’
Neil shook his head. ‘Ye won’t think so when ye lose her. If she ever discovers she can eat her fill without our help, she’ll nae return to your fist again.’
He had grumbled the same thing to her for years. But except for this small infraction, Clare had studied all the rules and followed every one when she trained Wee One.
She pulled on a thick leather glove and held out her left hand. The bird hopped on to her wrist and Clare swept out of the mews and into the barmkin where young Angus awaited her.
The page, on the edge of squirehood, had been left behind when her father took most of the men to war, so he viewed himself as protector of the ladies left in the tower.
‘Get my horse and the dog, Angus.’
He hesitated. ‘Ye shouldna go out alone, Mistress Clare.’
She knew that, but she had picked the boy because he would not refuse her. ‘Both the bird and I need exercise. And my father sent word. He’ll be home soon. The Inglis are halfway to Carlisle by now.’
In truth, the Inglis might be as close as Melrose, but she was tired of hiding, tired of winter, tired of being caged like the birds. Besides, the wild hills surrounding their border castle offered as much protection as an army. The ‘Great Waste', some called it. No one would come here unless he wanted to escape the civilised world.
Angus brought her hound and horse and held the falcon as she mounted. Then, sitting proudly on top of his pony, he rode beside her. As they left the shadow of the tower’s wall, she took her first deep breath and looked up at the blue, cloudless sky. They had not seen the like for months.
‘Clare!
