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“Get out my best broadsword,” he ordered Lucinda. “I will show the Scot some solid English sword craft.”
“Get some sense into you,” Grandma chided. “You cannot fight with this Ferguson until your broken shoulder is healed. Show the man around by all means, but let Nathan do the fighting as he has done since you injured yourself.”
Nathan was not so enamored of the plan when Lucinda sought him out cleaning weapons in one of the storerooms, his previous encounter with McCrae having made him somewhat wary of taking on another Scot. Ferguson was older, hairier and all together scarier than McCrae and a highly experienced fencing master to boot. With a sigh Nathan reluctantly agreed. “I will do it under one condition.”
“Anything,” Lucinda said rashly. “Within reason,” she amended when she saw the huge grin that broke across his face.
“I only wanted a kiss.”
“Very well, but later. Ferguson is most anxious to try out the piste.”
Anxious was an understatement. Ferguson was like a dog keen to lay down his scent, hunting for the nearest post to piss upon.
“Make that two kisses,” Nathan whispered as she handed him his sword. “I have a horrible feeling I am going to earn them.”
After a few brief minutes of circling and measuring his opponent Ferguson went on the attack. Nathan did his best to use his speed to his advantage, nipping and diving at his opponent, but a scholar against a master swordsman is like a terrier taking on a mastiff, and, though intense, their sparring was inevitably short-lived. To no one’s surprise Ferguson emerged the victor, declaring that Nathan’s fencing skills were, “not bad for an actor”, a somewhat begrudging compliment. There was certainly no danger of it going to Nathan’s head, for he immediately added, “The lad has plenty of show but not much clout.”
Leaving Nathan to lick his wounds Lucinda trailed behind the men as her father showed Ferguson around, hoping to glean more of the exact details of the new arrangement, an exercise that was largely futile, since they spent much of the time engaged in the competitive sport of one-up-man-ship, comparing everything English to everything Scottish. Whose swords were biggest, heaviest, deadliest, whose shields more effective, which length of dagger was best for the stealthy dispatching of ones enemies – the boastful talk oft favored by swordmasters and designed to impress each other as well as pat themselves on the back. Ferguson did concede to being quite taken with many aspects of Whitefriars: the physical space and layout of the fencing school, the range and quality of the armory, and, in particular, the ledger system they used for keeping track of payments and lessons. He also showed an interest in her grandma that was quite disturbing for a man of his advanced years. He would have to be in his fifth decade at least, older than her father but possibly ten years younger than Grandma, yet he panted after her as if she was on heat. Grandma Jones was swift to chide Lucinda for any flirtatious tendencies, yet here she was lapping up the attention, hardly setting an example of chaste decorum. She called Lucinda over when the men had finished their tour, ostensibly to find out how it was going, all the while gazing over at the tall red-headed Scotsman.
“I wonder if the patch around his manhood is equally flaming and hirsute?” she mused out loud.
“Grandma!”
Grandma Jones raised one eyebrow. “Do not look so surprised. I have borne three children. I know what lurks beneath a man’s breeches. Did you know Scotsmen call their codpiece a sporran?”
That she did not.
All this and the day was barely begun. There was still a whole day ahead of them, a whole day and part of the evening filled with fencers, many of them Scotsmen, and Lucinda already had her fill of the northern invaders. One Scotsman at a time was sufferance enough, let alone something upward of twenty. If anyone else called her lassie before this day was out, she would have no choice but to poke them in the eye. Unwittingly, later in the morning, Nathan became the hapless target of her irritation, delivering a message at a thoroughly inconvenient moment when every Scot south of the border was calling for a new weapon or replenishment of his ale.
“Your grandmother wants to see you.”
“Can’t it wait?” she snapped.
“She says there is someone here asking for you.”
“Any idea who it might be?”
He shook his head. “I did not see them. Mistress Jones said to meet her in her potions room.”
It better not be McCrae coming back to make more trouble. That would be the last straw. With her temper further soured she made her way through the thicket of fencers. Would these men never go home?
Grandma’s potion room, as Nathan called it, was where she stored her herbs and made up her remedies. Lucinda was the only one allowed to go in there and that was strictly at Grandma’s discretion. Back when Whitefriars had been a monastery, the potion room had likely been used as a pigsty or hen house. The walls were solid stone with a large window set with vertical bars that allowed in plenty of light. To keep out the cold and prying eyes Father had rigged up a curtain made of old sail cloth. At the moment the sail cloth was pulled down which was unusual. The curtain was normally only pulled down at night.
She knocked on the door. Grandma opened it bearing an expression that was fixed and unreadable.
“Nathan said––”
“You have a visitor,” Grandma finished for her. “Right here.” From out of the shadows a slight figure emerged.
“Maud! What brings you here?”
The blacksmith’s daughter was the last person she expected to see. She looked a little improved on the previous day, her light brown plaits being both securely coiled and fixed to her head, but there was an unmistakable haunted look about her eyes.
“Maud has been telling me about your kind offer.”
Oh no. She was done for. Grandma Jones had her skewered. Nothing had changed since her childhood, a childhood filled with a long litany of misdemeanors. All it took was Grandma’s face of disapproval to reduce her to feeling like a human spit roast slowly being turned over the coals. Deliberately she did not look at Grandma but instead concentrated her attention solely on Maud. It was the only way to survive being roasted alive.
“I am so glad you decided to come,” she said to Maud, most sincerely, though her brow was breaking out in beads of sweat.
