The Flower Reader (40 page)

So I ate as little as possible, tasting carefully and spitting out everything that tasted bitter or foul. Grimly I fought my way out of the dark hopelessness of my dreams and began to contrive a plan of escape.

There was one person at Kinmeall who might be willing to help me, and that was Gill. It could not be chance that brought him past my window with Lilidh; he knew how much I loved her and he wanted me to see she was safe and well cared for. If he would do that for me, would he risk more—risk his sodden and brutal master’s fury, risk his place, risk his life—to help me rescue Kitte and join me in a flight to Granmuir?

Even if he would help me, how could I let him know I needed his help? I did not know whether he could read, and in any case I had no paper, no pen. Even if I had them, I had no way to communicate
Gill
to Mousie.

Or did I?

The next morning when she brought my food, I was ready. I knew there would be sour milk, and there was—it was thick with curds. I poured it out onto the floor. That puzzled Mousie, and she gestured toward me.
Eat the food; you are hungry
. I shook my head, and with my finger I began spreading the curds out on the floor in the outline of a horse. A fine mare with a proud wedge-shaped head, an arched neck, long legs, and a flag of a tail. All in white curds.

Lilidh.

I could see Mousie recognized the white horse.

I tore the oatcake into shreds and added the stick figure of a boy beside the white horse.

Mousie frowned.

I made my hands into two mouths, facing each other. I had done it many times as a game with Kitte, making one hand sing a lullaby while the other quacked like a duck. This time I just made them talk, opening and closing my fingers and thumbs, first one, then the other.
Then I pointed to myself, and to the stick figure of oatcake strips beside the horse of white curds.

Mousie looked at me. I wondered what she was thinking. I wondered whether she ever saw Kitte. After a moment she closed the wicket and went away.

I scooped the curds back into the bowl, and the pieces of oatcake. I nibbled around the edges of the cake and sipped a little of the ale—I was famished and thirsty, so thirsty.

Please, Mousie. Please.

It had gone dark when she came back with my food for the night. She opened up the wicket and handed in the bowl. The smell of rank mutton was overwhelming, and this time it had a sickening musty edge—a different poison, some kind of mushroom, but my connection to the plants and flowers had deserted me so completely I did not know for sure what it was. I took the bowl, my hands trembling with hope. Mousie looked at me and turned away.

I wanted to cry. I wanted to throw the bowl of stew.

Then Gill’s face appeared at the wicket grille. For a moment I thought I would faint.

“Steady, mistress,” he said. “Are ye sick? Where’s the bairnie?”

“He took her,” I gasped out. “Oh, Gill, he took Kitte away and he’s trying to kill me. Every bit of food and drink he sends is poisoned.” I held the bowl of stew up to the wicket. The boy scrunched up his face in distaste at the smell.

“Since when?”

“Two days ago. Gill, can you bring me some ale? Or even water? Anything I can drink safely—I am parched with thirst.”

“I’ll fetch something. Dinna despair, mistress; I’ll help ye.”

He vanished.

I put the bowl of stew down on the floor. I felt dizzy.

A little while later Gill returned. Mousie was with him. She showed him how to open the wicket and he handed me a wooden cup of weak ale. I drank it greedily—when had anything ever felt so good, so wet and cool in my mouth, tasted so ambrosial upon my tongue?
Even the wine Jennet had given me when I awoke from my sickness with the New Acquaintance had not been so wonderful. I handed him back the cup.

“Is there more?”

“Wait awee, mistress—ye’ll be sick. Here, eat a bite of this bread.”

He handed me a quarter of a loaf of coarse oat bread. I wolfed it down.

“Gill, we have to find Kitte,” I said. “That girl, that Nan, she took her away. I know he wants her because she is coheiress to Granmuir. He thought to poison me and use my poor baby to take my home and—” I started to cry. I could not stop myself. “We have to find her.”

“Just take a breath, mistress, and try to quieten yourself. Here, have another cup of ale.”

He handed me the cup, refilled, and I drank it down more slowly.

“Libbet here dinnae have the key to the door,” he said. “I’ll have to steal it from the master. He’s rairin drunk every night, so it shouldnae be hard to do.”

“Kitte,” I said. “We have to find Kitte.”

“We will.” He handed me another chunk of bread and one last cup of ale. Even though the ale was weak I was beginning to feel light-headed. “Eat this and try to rest a wee bit. Lilidh’s been a-missing you, mistress, and it’s glad she’ll be to see ye again.”

That made me smile, even in my distress. “We will ride for Granmuir, all of us, won’t we, Gill? We must take Libbet with us. If we escape and take Kitte, the…the master…will blame her.”

“We’ll all go together.”

He and Mousie—Libbet—went off together. I went and sat in my chair and ate my bread and drank my ale, slowly and carefully so my poor stomach would not cast them up again. I tried to remember the terrible ride to Kinmeall—what, fifteen months ago? How could it have been so long?—and how we could find our way from Kinmeall to Granmuir. We had to ride east, around the loch and straight to the sea, then north along the coast. Oh, to see the sea again, even
if it was December! We would need heavy plaids and the warmest clothes we could find. Not the best time to be setting out on a journey, but I would rather freeze to death with my Kitte in my arms than die here and leave her to her father’s mercies. And surely we could find villages along the way where we could purchase shelter and firewood.

Purchase. We needed gold. In the first weeks I’d been at Kinmeall, Rannoch Hamilton had shown me his strongbox, hidden under a flagstone in front of the fireplace in the central hall. He was proud of his hoard of gold. I prayed that he had not spent it all on brandywine.

The key turned in the lock with a scraping sound and the door opened.

“Gill!” I jumped up. “Oh, thank you, thank you! We must find—”

Libbet came in behind him with Kitte in her arms.

My heart stopped.

“Oh, Kitte,” I said. “Oh, my baby.”

I caught her to me and hugged her fiercely. She twined her tiny arms and legs around me as if she wanted to attach herself to me forever and said in a small frightened voice, “Mum-mum.”

“Yes, I am your mum-mum, my precious. I will never let you go again; I swear it.”

“We have a little time,” Gill said. “The master’s in bed with Nan, and they’re both snoring drunk. I’ll be out to the stable and get the horses saddled and a packhorse loaded up with blankets. Libbet—” He made some hand signs to her, something I had never seen before. I could see that he was miming eating food and drinking ale. “Libbet’ll pack as much food as she can. Mistress, do ye know where the master keeps his gold?”

“I do,” I said grimly. “And I will take every piece of it.”

W
e set out in the dark, along the south shore of the loch. Gill told me it was named Loch Rannoch, and that the moor behind us was called Rannoch Moor. I wondered who Rannoch Hamilton’s mother had been, and why she had named her son for the bleak, wild loch and moor. Perhaps it was her way of rebelling against the power of the Hamiltons.

“We must be as far away as we can be by morning,” I said to Gill.

The moon was nothing more than a sliver and provided no useful light; we picked our way carefully with the shoreline to guide us. I led the way on my beloved Lilidh; she was surefooted and intelligent and I trusted her instincts absolutely. I had Kitte wrapped against my breast with a thick, warm plaid; she had nursed a little, then gone to sleep like an angel. She did not seem unusually hungry; Rannoch Hamilton must have found a wet nurse for her in the village.

We reached the end of Loch Rannoch and followed a frozen stream to another loch—the Dunalastair Water, Gill called it. At the easternmost point of the water, just as the sky was lightening in front
of us, we came upon an abandoned herders’ cot. We crowded in, horses and all. No fires, so there would be no telltale smoke. But we ate cold bread and cheese seasoned with freedom, drank ale as delicious as starry wine, and made pallets of blankets. Lilidh folded herself down to lie in a pile of straw, and all of us pressed close to her warmth. Her muzzle was softer than any velvet. The other two horses drowsed on their feet through the day.

No one found us, may the Green Lady be thanked. When darkness fell we started out again and by morning we were able to lose ourselves in the forest. Under the cover of the ancient trees we rode during the day and slept at night, although every time a badger started from its hiding place or a feather-legged capercaillie took flight I trembled, and looked around for Rannoch Hamilton and his men. Were they tracking us, waiting, allowing us to ride far away from Kinmeall so they could kill us without being suspected?

The winter, at least, seemed to be hand-in-glove with us—it was cold but there was no fresh snow. After six more days of riding we found ourselves at last on the coast. We turned to the north and followed the coastline for three more days; still there was no pursuit, and with each day I felt less overwhelmed with fear. In the end, on a midafternoon when the sea was silver-gray and the clouds were the color of pearls and huge feathery flakes of snow were just beginning to drift down around us, we saw the great rock of Granmuir loom out of the mist.

Lilidh might have been made of sea foam, arching her neck and quivering with excitement. My thick warm plaid wrapped me around and around and streamed out behind me like a banner. Gill and Libbet reined their horses on either side of me, my saviors, my unlikely cavaliers.

Granmuir.

Home.

I held Kitte close to my breast and cried.

M
ÀIRI DID NOT KNOW ME
at first.

I suppose I did not help matters, rushing in and snatching her up and crushing her to my heart until she shrieked. My Màiri, my Màiri. I had not seen her since my visit to Granmuir in August of 1562, more than two years before, when she had just turned one year old. Now she was three years and four months, no longer a baby but a fawn-legged little girl—oh, my Màiri, those years lost to me forever—with Leslie eyes the color of the sea and Alexander Gordon’s curling golden hair.

I let her go. She ran to Tante-Mar, although she did not cry; she tucked herself under Tante-Mar’s arm like a kitten and looked at me with great suspicious eyes.

“’Tis your
maman
,
ma petite
,” Tante-Mar said. “Just like in the tales I’ve told you every night. Your beautiful
maman
who sings songs with the queen and dances with all the handsome lords. You know her—we talk to her, you and I, every night before you go to sleep.”

“Maman?”
Màiri said. She had the sweetest, clearest little voice, with a trace of a French accent. It was Tante-Mar, of course, who had been teaching her to talk. “
Maman
hugs too hard.”

Tante-Mar tried to shush her, but I laughed. She was right. I crouched down and held my arms wide.

“I promise I will not hug too hard ever again,” I said. “It is just that I have missed you so much, my bairnie-ba. Will you let me try again, and hug you soft as a robin redbreast’s feathers?”

“Robin,” she said. “I know robins. And gulls.” She lowered her voice as if she were imparting a bit of enormously important secret information. “They are birdies.”

“Oh, my dear. So they are.”

Tante-Mar pushed her a little, and she lifted her chin and walked across to me. She was brave, my Màiri. I put my arms around her and hugged her again, soft as a robin redbreast’s feathers.

“I love you, Màiri Gordon,” I said. “I am your
maman
and I will never leave you again, I swear it by the Green Lady of Granmuir.”

“The Green Lady makes flowers.”

“Yes, she does.”