The kingdom of Northumberland

Winter

The Year of Our Lord 1322

 

                                                Chapter One

            

 “Can you repeat what I have told you so far, Miss Feathers?”

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 Julianna put down her quill and blew on the words then read them. “Margery, I hope you are well. I have heard…” She picked up her quill again, dipped it into her small jar of ink and waited for him to continue.

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He smiled, exposing a row of missing teeth. “I have heard,” he continued, “of an opportunity.”

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She blew out a silent sigh and wrote what he said.

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Since leaving the abbey four months ago, this was what she did for coin to stay alive and see to her purposes.

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Her father had been the Governor of Berwick, Viscount of March, before Robert the Bruce’s men had seized the castle and all lands around it. Her father, gone, slain by the Scots’ sword, as was everyone else she’d known, including villagers and castle servants.

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She didn’t want revenge for the attack. She wanted her life back from the aftermath of it. She wanted enough coin to find William Stone, her father’s servant, and Berengaria, her nurse. She hadn’t seen either one in years.

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She used her skills in the arts, singing in taverns or painting outside inns along the coastline in the summer, and this, penning letters for others in order to see to her needs. She even delivered some letters, which was what she was doing for Archie Sommers at present in a tavern on the north coast of Northumberland. She traveled often and was always available somewhere to be a messenger.

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“…employment that might suit you, Sister.” 

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She wrote, dipped then wrote again. 

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“The Earl of Rothbury needs a governess for his child,” he continued. “I hear he is paying quite handsomely.”

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Julianna looked at him through the corner of her eye and waited, her heart suddenly racing. Rothbury. 

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Her ear tilted toward him. It was completely unlike her to take information meant for someone else and use it for her gain. But Lismoor Castle was in Rothbury—and she could use the coin. 

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“There are conditions, of course,” he said, watching her write. “You must be available at all times.”

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Did she just feel Sommers’ breath on her? She cringed and moved further away. He inched closer.

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“Sir,” she said and dipped her quill. “If you come any closer or try to touch me in any way, I will stab you in your eyes.” She lifted her sharp quill and pointed it at him. She wasn’t sure she could make good on her threat. Hopefully, she wouldn’t have to. Thanks to the abbess, her ink was laced with a special herbal poison that, if pricked into the skin by her quill, would almost immediately put its victim to sleep. Or kill him, depending on how much poison had been injected.

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The tips of Julianna’s knives were laced with the poison, as were the tiny stingers of wasps and the tiny fangs of spiders forged to metal rings and bracelets so that she could prick the skin of any threat with ease.

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All such adornments and poison blends, from the work of a Reverend Mother who lived on the moors. 

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Still, idle threats about an abbess would not stop him. Jabbing his eyes out sounded like something a madwoman would say, so she chose that. “Do you think I travel alone without any knowledge about hurting or killing my enemy?” 

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She crooked her mouth at him and a red curl sprang forward from beneath her forest green woolen hood. She had pulled the unruly mass of locks into a tight bun in the back of her head earlier, but she was afraid it was going to burst free of its pins and spill out all around her. 

She didn’t flinch when his eyes fell to the lock and his hungry smile grew.

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She held up her quill and reached for her poison-tipped knife. “Now, make up your mind. Do you want to lose an eye or get this missive to your sister?”

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He let a moment pass and she prayed she wouldn’t have to put him down. For then she wouldn’t get paid. 

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“You must eat and sleep at Lismoor Castle,” Sommers continued, moving away from her. After a moment, he blinked at her and looked at her stilled hand. “What is it, Miss?”

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“Nothing,” she managed and dipped again. Lismoor. It had belonged to Aleysia d’Argentan before the Scots had taken it from her. It was the last known place she could connect to William. But she had already paid handsomely to discover if William resided there. He did not. “Go on. You must sleep…”

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He nodded. “At Lismoor Castle. Do you know it?”

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She shook her head. “I know of it.” 

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She inhaled a deep silent breath and forbade herself to think of him. The boy she’d known since she could walk. The boy she’d grown up loving. He’d been a man when he left her after their first night of kissing in the stable. Some said her father had seen them and beat William and threw him out of the castle, but why hadn’t he come back for her right away? She shook her head. He would have died with the rest of them at the hands of the Scots the next morning. Or maybe not, since he was a Scot, himself. And since he rode with them the last time she saw him. 

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She had told herself that perhaps his decision was the best for him. It had kept him alive and he had wanted her to come with him when she saw him a few months after the massacre at Berwick.

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She remembered his last words to her at St. Peter’s Abbey as if he’d spoken them yesterday. He’d spoken them after she had refused his offer to leave the safety of the abbey with him.

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Julianna, I have loved you my whole life. I will never love anyone but you. Do not sentence me to such a lonely life.

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How different would her life have been if she’d gone with him? She had been a coward. Afraid of the savages he—and even Miss d’Argentan—had called friends. Afraid, still—madly—of the consequence of his being a servant. How would they have lived? Eaten? Where would they have slept?

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Instead of thinking of them lying in a bed together, she forced herself to think about how the Scots would have been outside her door. She’d been afraid, so she chose to wait for the man her father had promised her to. A “man of means” who never came once she lost lands and title.

When there were no other offers for her but one, she took it, and almost paid with her life for it.

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William’s face had always remained, pushing its way to the front of her thoughts, to distract her, to make her doubt everything she wanted now, after two years of torture at the hands of a fiendish husband, and a year at the abbey. Freedom. A life of her own, answering to no one but herself and God.

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But she wanted to see William one more time first. Just one more time.

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She wanted to find Berengaria, too, and ask her why she left them.

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Her patron finished his letter, including giving Julianna instructions on finding his sister. After he paid her a small pouch of coins, she gathered her things and left the tavern, still in a state of unease. Lismoor. She knew from her messenger friends that the earl was a Scot. MacPherson, she’d been told. She guessed he was the brute who had come to the abbey with Miss d’Argentan. Well, MacPherson had to know where William was. 

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She checked the small satchel hanging from a belt at her waist. She had enough coin to get to Rothbury. Even if William wasn’t there, to be paid handsomely and not have to pay for lodgings in the meantime would be glorious for a change. She could save plenty.

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She headed for the stable and paid the groom before she gained her saddle and left. She looked back at the lad, thinking, once again, about William. He had been her groom at Berwick. Behind a spray of dark waves, his eyes were always on her, glittering like silver-blue jewels, tempting her to go to him. When she finally did, his kiss nearly swept her right off her feet and into his arms. She’d loved him. She’d wanted to tell him that night, but what good would it have done them? She was the Governor of Berwick’s daughter. He was a servant. She led a very different life than William.

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But so much had changed for her.

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She pushed him out of her thoughts for now and turned her horse left, toward Margery Sommers’ village.

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