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Keira, slipping on the homespun breeches she wore when she wanted to disguise herself, sighed.
“Why can women not dress like this?” she asked. “It is so much more comfortable than all our petticoats and dresses.”
“Ye wilnae be sayin’ that in a while,” Moira assured her as she began to bind Keira’s breasts with a long strip of linen. She pulled it tight to make sure that the soft mounds of flesh were flattened so that they resembled a teenage boy’s chest.
“Ow!” Keira moaned. “That is so sore!” She drew in a deep breath, then fisted her hands and screwed up her face in pain.
Moira shrugged as she tied the end of the bandage off under Keira’s arm. “Well, nobody is forcin’ ye tae do this foolish thing, Keira. If ye are sore, it is yer own fault.”
She wrapped more linen around her waist to make it look thicker, then helped Keira pull the straps holding the trews up and tied the string at the waist, then stood back to look at her.
“Good thing ye have slim hips, hen,” she remarked. “Now ye are almost shapeless!”
Keira donned a tattered jacket with specially padded shoulders, then sat down so that Moira could tie and pin her hair up and then bundle it into a cap. She might not pass muster with anyone sitting across a table from her, but from a distance, particularly if she was riding astride a horse and not sidesaddle, as a woman did, she looked like a young man.
“Maybe I can persuade some obliging man to cut his hair and make a beard for me,” she suggested, laughing as she pulled the cap farther down over her head until it almost reached her eyebrows.
Moira raised her eyebrows and shook her head. “I think ye should stay at home, but I know ye are too softhearted tae let people go hungry. At least I know whatever it is ye are doin’ when ye slip away at night, it is nothin’ bad.”
Keira looked at Moira and felt an upwelling of love. She wished she could run away with her and Adaira and find some decent, hardworking men with whom to raise families. She had been born and brought up in an environment where she had never wanted for anything, and for that she was grateful. However, when she saw the desperate state of some of her father’s tenants, it had made her so angry that she knew she would have to do something to change their circumstances for the better.
She could not stand idly by while people starved around her. Appealing to her father’s better nature did no good since he did not seem to have one. No, she had decided that something more radical would have to be done, and since she had access to her father at all times, she decided to do it.
Her horse, a big grey mare she had called Diamond, had become so used to the journey to the Rabbit’s Foot tavern that she could do it in the dark. This was just as well because it was a distance of almost a mile, and it would have taken Keira almost two hours to walk.
The young man who stepped into the tavern immediately descended the stairs to where the barrels of beer were stored, then he made his way to the secret inner chamber concealed behind a large cupboard that stored whiskey. He took a single key from his pocket and unlocked the door, then stepped through the back of it into a sizable but dark and stuffy room.
The men sitting on top of empty crates there looked up and smiled at him as he came in. There were five of them in all, each one a farmer or a laborer, smiling and holding pints of ale in their hands.
“Evenin’, boss,” Gerry McKinlay said. “Have ye brought us anythin’ tonight?”
Keira, the “young man,” laughed. “Of course I have,” she replied with mock indignation. “You know I never come empty-handed!”
She took off the backpack she had been carrying and spread out the contents onto the floor. There were apples, bread, cheese, chunks of dried meat, and five small oranges, which were an exotic treat. The men exclaimed over them since they were such a rarity.
“My father is having them brought in from Spain,” she told them, “but I know where we can get our own supply.” She winked at them. “I have heard that a shipment of spices and fruit is coming in from the continent next week, but the cargo will never fall into my father’s hands.” She looked around them, grinning. “It will fall into ours!”
Hugh McLean, one of the other men, looked at her admiringly. “It was a fine day ye came tae us, lass,” he said, smiling at her fondly.
All the others joined in, and Keira blushed bright red. For a second, her mind flashed back to that night just after her sixteenth birthday, when she was so downhearted and miserable that she had thought of jumping from the castle turrets and ending her life.
Four years ago…
Her father’s study was the one place in the whole of the castle that was forbidden to everyone except those who were invited or had a very good reason to request an audience with him. Keira had only been in it twice in her life, and both times the reason had been because he wanted to inflict a dire punishment for some minor infraction.
She remembered it as being a creepy place, with dark-paneled walls and deep brown curtains, but what made it the darkest of all was the scowl on her father’s face. He had taken a riding crop to her backside, and she had left weeping both times, but it had stirred up in her a strong determination never to be bested by him again. The second time was when she became his enemy and would be for the rest of her life.
She had been only fourteen then, too young to be taken seriously by anyone, but she had spent much of her time watching and waiting until the time came when she could sneak into his study again.
One day she was descending the stairs just outside the room when she saw her father coming out looking rather preoccupied, so much so that he left the door unlocked behind him. Keira descended the stairs silently, then followed him at a distance for a little way. He had walked down the hallway heading for another staircase that led up to the battlements, and he looked as though he was deep in thought.
“I am going to the topmost tower,” he told the guard. “And I am not to be disturbed unless the castle is burning down. Understand?”
“Aye, sir,” the guard answered with a smart salute. He turned to his friend. “What the hell has got intae him?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” the other man answered. “He got a note a wee while ago wi’ a crest on it, but I didnae see which clan it was.”
