The Honor Due a King Read Online Free PDF

faint fumitory of pennyroyal. I put a hand over my nose until my senses grew accustomed to the odors. On a long, narrow table near the door sat an empty laver, a ewer full of water and a stack of folded, clean cloths. Wisps of smoke curled from the small piercings in the bell lid of a bronze incense brazier which was topped with a small, leaning cross, tingeing the air with the sweetness of rosemary and cloves.
    On the far side of the room, a small hearth contained the flames of a well-fed fire. The stones around it bore little trace of soot, indicating that the abbot must not have used it often, probably thinking the luxury too much of an indulgence when wood could be used to cook food or warm the sick.
    The abbot had afforded himself one comfort and that was a large four-postered bed, its mattress plump with feathers and encased in undyed canvas. Cocooned beneath layers of linen sheets and woolen blankets lay my Elizabeth, her head propped against a dark blue bolster.
    If not for Gruoch’s snoring, I might not have seen her lying in the shadows on her pallet between the door and the bed. I crept toward Elizabeth’s sleeping form and stood at the side of her bed. Barely, slowly, her chest rose and fell. A ragged tendril of hair, damp with sweat, lay crookedly from her hairline to the corner of her mouth. I pushed it away, the backs of my fingers lingering at her jawline.
    Dear God in Heaven, don’t ... please don’t take her from me. Not after bringing her back. Not after so long without her.
    I wanted to kneel beside her and lay my hand over hers, but instead I turned back toward the door. An indrawn breath, ragged but deep, stalled me.
    “Will you go ...” came a hoarse voice, “without a kiss?”
    When I first turned to look, her eyes were closed. Surely I had dreamed the words? But then her lashes fluttered and parted.
    “Turnberry,” she said meekly, curling her fingers over the edge of her blanket. “Will you take me there?”
    I returned to her and sought her hand. “Aye. In time.”
    Elizabeth turned her face away, but when she looked back at me, I could see the heartache of eight long years behind those once vibrant green eyes. “When?”
    “Soon, my love. Soon.” The coolness of her cheek as I kissed it reassured me that the fever had at last left her. “The sea air is brisk this time of year, but perhaps it will refresh you.”
    “It has been so long, Robert. So long.” Her mouth trembled. “I hardly know what to make of everything that has happened. What to say ... Where to begin, even.”
    Begin? Why not now, today ... this very moment?
    In truth, though, I knew it would not be so easy. We were strangers, she and I, in ways as yet unknown to us both. God knows I had changed – and not so certainly for the better.
    I knelt at her bedside and cupped her hands between mine. “We have many years still ahead of us, sweet Elizabeth. Many, many years.”

Ch. 3
    James Douglas – Melrose Abbey, 1314
    G runting from deep in his belly like a rutting boar, Robert Boyd heaved the wooden post into a half-frozen mud puddle at my feet. Muck splattered over my shins. Behind me, sheep bleated at the disturbance and ran to the far side of the pen where a small sheep cote had already been erected. Wary of going inside, they crowded at the opening, shoulder to shoulder.
    I rested my axe against the gate. “What was that for, Boyd?”
    “You asked me to bring you another.”
    “You could’ve just laid it on that pile there with the rest.”
    His broad shoulders lifted in an insolent shrug. “Perhaps, James Douglas, I don’t like being ordered about by some coddled underling half my age.”
    “That old now, are you?” I thumped Boyd hard in the middle of his broad chest with my fist. “The king says we’re to make ourselves useful while we’re loitering about here. The orders come from him, not me.”
    We had spent the day working in a stretch of pasture to the east of Melrose Abbey where pens were