A banging at the door drew his attention from the fire, and he cast a quick glance at Shabib. The moor was wrapped in his richly colored robes and kneeling on his blanket — certainly not ready to accompany James on a meeting with King Robert the Bruce. Thomas and Gabe dropped their gazes. They too were unprepared to find themselves aligned with Black Douglas in the presence of the king.
James rubbed a bear-like hand through his riotous, shoulder-length black hair and marched to the door. A slender lad with a sword nearly longer than himself straightened when James swung the door open.
“The king requests your presence,” the laddie squeaked.
James nodded, and grabbing his own broadsword sitting against the wall by the door, he ducked out the low door frame and followed the lad back to the king’s temporary keep.
Humility didn’t sit easily on James’s shoulders, and he knew that if the king had Black Douglas on his side, the man was certain to reclaim his kingdom.
Chapter Four: Secrets
The Outskirts of Edinburgh, Late Spring 1307
“Tosia, can ye bring me some eggs? We can boil them for dinner.”
Flipping her chestnut hair over her shoulder, Tosia rushed to her mother’s side. The woman had looked drawn as of late, tired, and her skin had a gray pallor that sent a lurch of fear over her spine whenever she thought on it.
Her mother’s cough had been growing worse, sometimes making it difficult for her mother to even speak. And there was something more — something her mother wasn’t telling her but made her mother cry herself to sleep at night when she thought Tosia wasn’t listening.
Something dire was weighing on Maggie Fraser, and she wasn’t telling her children.
“Aye, Mother. Can I get ye anything else?”
Maggie shook her head and began coughing, covering her mouth with a rough linen cloth. Tosia set her jaw and patted her mother’s shoulder before heading outside into the drizzling rain in search of eggs.
Her brother, Tavish, was outside, his broadening shoulders and arms swinging an axe at a stack of split logs. The poor lad, well, not so much a lad anymore. Tavish had grown into a strapping young man, but with few prospects. Tosia sighed. Neither of them had prospects.
She hadn’t been deaf to the rumor that she and her brother were bastards of some laird or other man of import. Her mother had never shared that information with them, keeping her scandalous history a secret. Tosia didn’t know who her father might be, but being labeled as illegitimate meant no offers for her hand and few opportunities for Tavish. Since they also lived on the outskirts of Fraser land, they had little interaction with those in the village or in the clan at all.
Life for Tosia had been her mother and her brother. She had no idea how her mother supported them on the Fraser lands. They weren’t tenant farmers — did her mother have to pay the Fraser laird for usage of the land? Their rents? If so, where did that coin come from?
Most importantly, what would happen when her mother died?
Because that event was on the horizon. Tosia may not know much, but only a great fool could miss the signs. Tosia was many things, but she was no fool.
Tosia’s mind whirled at these thoughts as she absently collected the small brown eggs scattered about the thatched chicken coop. Once her basket was full with all the eggs she could find nested in the grass and peat, she stepped outside into the drizzle.
