And it was Mam who came to his rescue again.
“Perhaps,” Harriet Cameron said quietly, “you might agree to keep such an idea to yourself, sir. Tav has inherited this shop and his ship from his…from Dolan Cameron. Dolan claimed Tavish as his own son, and all of Edinburgh knows him as such. If rumor was started that…” Harriet paused. “We could lose everything we have.”
Lucan Montague pressed his hand to his chest and gave another bow. “Upon my honor, Mistress, I’ll not reveal such to anyone in this city.” He rose, and his eyes once more met Tavish’s. “Although, if what I suspect is contained in yonder barrel is true, and my suppositions regarding your tenuous relationship with the city’s officials are confirmed, it will be you who reveals the news I carry. And gladly.”
“I do doubt I would be glad to announce to all Edinburgh that the man who sired me was a wandering ne’er-do-well who got a teenage girl with child and then abandoned her to the spitefulness of her family. And then you said he was hanged, didn’t you? A bastard is bad enough—the bastard of a criminal might as well hang himself and save the magistrate the trouble.”
“Tav,” Mam whispered, looping her arm through his and patting his shoulder with her other hand.
Lucan Montague looked at Tavish and his mother in turn with an almost curiously pleased expression. For so long, in fact, Tavish was tempted to brain the man after all.
“You will proceed how you think best, of course,” the knight said at last. “My oath will stand, regardless. All I ask in return is that Mistress Cameron answer my questions with candor. Then I shall leave you both. Never to return, if that is your wish.”
“Never?” Tavish pressed.
The man bowed again, and Tavish couldn’t help but roll his eyes. “Upon my honor.”
Tavish looked down at his mother who, rather than mirror what Tavish was certain was his own worried expression, looked wistful and even sad.
“What say you, Mam?” Tavish asked.
She held his gaze for a moment and then turned to the knight. “Go on.”
Tavish wondered that the man didn’t carry a perpetual aching head with all the bowing and nodding he did.
“You have my deepest gratitude, Mistress. Now.” His demeanor seemed to change in an instant, his actions becoming clipped and efficient as he reached into his thick, quilted gambeson and withdrew a flattened roll of parchment, tied with a black ribbon. He looked to the bench and then Tavish pointedly, one black eyebrow arched. “May I?”
Tavish nodded, and the man stepped to the smooth slab of wood, placing the parchment near the baton and then withdrawing a shortened quill pen and small glass phial of ink from his gambeson. After setting up his supplies in a tidy display, the man returned his attention to the rolled parchment. Undoing the package efficiently, he cleared his throat in a remarkably knightly manner and then looked once more to Harriet.
“As one sworn into service of the Most Noble Order of the Garter and also as special emissary to His Sovereign Majesty King Henry, I, Lucan Montague, do proclaim this inquiry to be both lawful and binding. Do you swear before God that you are Harriet Cameron, born of the family Payne?”
Mam nodded. “Aye. I do.”
“Did you meet and have relations with a man in the late winter of the year fourteen hundred twenty-seven, known to you as Thomas?”
“Tommy,” Harriet repeated quietly. And then, louder, “Aye, sir. He said his name was Thomas.”
Lucan Montague’s quill scratched on the parchment even as he spoke. “And he was in fact an Englishman?”
Tavish’s head whipped around to look down at Mam, but she was paying him no heed, her pursed lips hinting at the strain she felt.
“Aye. He said he hailed from Northumberland. By the darling reeds, although I never could ken what he meant by that, as he seemed greatly afraid of the place to give it such a pet of a name. It had nearly killed him.”
This was not part of the tale his mother had told Tavish. “Mam?”
Mam hesitated, and her eyes held what appeared to be old sorrow. “He’d been shot several times. Once with an arquebus. If it hadna been so cold as to have frozen his wounds, he’d a’bled to death, for certain. He was in a dead faint on his horse when I found him.”
“He’d been shot. That is new information. Thank you.” Lucan Montague’s gaze had flitted between Mam’s face and the parchment beneath his hand during her explanation, and he was ready immediately with another question. “Do you recall when you found him, Mistress Cameron? The date, as closely as you can recollect?”
“Oh, I wouldna have ken such a thing if it hadna been for the feast day. Imbolc night, it was.”
“You’re certain?” Lucan Montague, his quill paused above the page. “First February?”
“Aye. I had come to the barn to lay the bed and table for Saint Brigid.”
The knight nodded. “And do you vow before God that this man standing before me, known heretofore as Tavish Cameron, is issue from your relations with that Englishman, Thomas?”
For the first time in his life that Tavish could remember, Mam blushed for an instant, but then her chin lifted. “Aye, sir. I knew no other before Tommy. I already carried Tav when me da trothed me to Dolan Cameron. Although neither can give their own oaths to it as they’re both long dead, thanks be to God.”
