Page 13 of Rebellion's Fire

“You won’t remember this part,” Eua said. “The old hall burned down.”

Bright orange and red flames, shooting through the roof; thick, acrid smoke choking her throat; pain and terror.

Christian grasped the corner of the big, plainly carved table, forcing back memory. Some things weren’t good to remember.

Eua walked past her. “They built the new hall immediately, I’m told, in the same place, and the same size as the old.”

Near the entrance to the hall was a wooden staircase, little more than a ladder, leading to a loft. Christian didn’t go up, merely followed Eua through the hall, past the main table to a chamber behind, partitioned from the main part of the hall. It contained little more than a big bedframe, comfortably made up with a mattress covered by linen and blankets, and a plain wooden chest out of which spilled a few unidentifiable pieces of clothing. A child’s wooden doll lay discarded on the floor.

“I’ll move our things,” Eua said tonelessly.

Clearly, she and her husband had occupied this chamber. Their children, Eua said, had slept in the loft.

She showed Christian the outhouses: the kitchen, the dairy, a brewery, and finally, as the light began to fade, a guesthouse that seemed to be used primarily as a storeroom. Here at last, Christian found old wood and a sliver of familiarity. She’d loved someone who’d lived here. A wizened old lady. Her grandmother.

This building had a loft, too, a bed space…

In spite of everything, excitement stirred. This could be home again. It could.

Christian drew in her breath. “The main loft has good space. If you wish, you could live there, partition it to suit yourself. This is too small for your family, I think.”

“There is another, slightly bigger house. We could live there, if you’d rather have your women closer, in the main loft.”

“They wouldn’t be closer there,” Christian said firmly. “I shall sleep here.”

Eua frowned with incomprehension, but before she could ask the questions so clearly hovering on her lips, shouts went up from the yard, followed by the distant drumming of hooves.

William.

Christian had to stop him from killing Donald MacHeth. If he did that, especially when his wife had been returned to him, the whole country would rise against him, and the adventure would be over before it had begun. As one, Eua and Christian hurried from the guesthouse and into the yard before the main hall.

William rode in the open gates at the head of his men. Behind him came Henry, mounted and leading a horse on which a tall figure rode with his hands tied behind his back. Presumably Donald MacHeth. Christian’s anxious eyes picked out her women in the center of the cavalcade. Alys and the others looked pale but alive and unhurt.

William’s eyes lashed her, accusing as ever. He’d won a victory, and in his eyes was losing it again by having to return Donald for his own wife. That would be Christian’s fault by now, not his for leaving the women with too little protection. She wondered, vaguely, what he’d have done if they’d lied as he’d told them to, if she’d let Adam take Alys instead of her. For the first time, she wondered about Alys’s actual value to him. Oh, she was decorative and adoring, and she clearly made excellent bed sport. He’d humiliate Christian for her. But only up to a point. She doubted he actually loved Alys either. He wasn’t capable of it. Her husband was a mean human being.

Adam MacHeth, knowing neither of them, had been right. William regarded Christian as his and was quite definitely annoyed at having his possession taken from him.

That didn’t make him pleased by its return.

As the cavalcade came to a halt, he scowled at Christian, as though offended by her well-being, and then barked at Henry, who dismounted and pulled his prisoner from his horse.

Donald MacHeth was tall and dark like his brother, but any further similarity was hard to see. His face was bruised and swollen, and blood stained his arm and his shoulder. Beneath the blood, his clothing seemed finer and cleaner, as if he’d worn armor of some kind that had since been removed.

“So, this is the hovel your brother gives me in return for you?” William sneered.

“Be grateful,” Donald retorted in equally good French. “It’s more than you’d have got from me.”

“It will do for now,” William said grandly. “Very well. There’s no sign of the brother’s men still lurking in the vicinity. Presumably, he knows better! The house is ours. My wife is returned. Cut off the captive’s right hand and free him.”

Henry, who was nothing if not honorable, blanched and fell back in protest. Christian hastened forward, but William’s men were in a hurry. Cutting Donald’s bonds, one wrestled his left hand behind his back while two others stretched out his right arm and held on grimly despite his struggles. A fourth man raised his sword high.

“William!” Christian cried out, but he’d never listened to her before and he wasn’t about to start when she was in disgrace twice over. Donald might not die of this, but from William’s point of view and hers, it would be as good as killing him. She saw exactly how hopeless it was before the swordsman even began his downward swipe.

And then something thudded into the back of the swordsman’s shoulder with enough force to make him stumble forward. He crumpled to the ground, twitching, an axe head and thick wooden handle sticking out of his back.

“Where the…?” William wheeled his horse, but before anyone else could move, a voice spoke from above.

“Nobody should move. There are weapons trained on you, Sir William, and on several of your men.”

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