The Honor Due a King Read Online Free PDF Page B

being repaired. The English soldiers, on their way through after Bannockburn, had scattered what sheep they had not stolen. The abbey’s flock numbered in the thousands and it had been no small task for its shepherds to comb the hills and return them to the lowland winter pastures. The abbot took great pride in standing only his best rams to his ewes and so after every harvest the ewes were gathered up for breeding. But this year the monks and lay brothers had been too busy rebuilding. Lambing next spring would be later than usual.
    The stone fences normally in use had been knocked over in many places and while the lay brothers were carefully setting the stones one by one, Robert had tasked his soldiers to repair the winter holding pens – as much to keep us from mischief as to lodge us in the abbot’s favor.
    While it was not my place as one of the king’s commanders to ply my trade at menial tasks, there was only so much a man could do whilst confined at an abbey. So I took up tools beside my muttering men and the toiling lay brothers and did my share. It only seemed a fair exchange for all the times I had looted the stores of many a holy place to keep my men fed and alive.
    It soon became evident that I was not born with a shepherd’s crook in my hand. More than once that day, a frantic ewe had knocked me off my feet. One, spooked when I tossed a stone aside, bolted in fright, nostrils wide in panic, and slammed her head into a stone wall. She fell over, legs twitching, her neck flopped oddly backward. I slit her throat to relieve her of her misery. Tomorrow we would fill our bellies on a pot of mutton stew.
    A weak winter sun peeked between scudding clouds of iron gray. I rubbed my hands together to warm them. Motioning for Boyd to join me, I grabbed the axe and hoisted it onto my shoulder as I strode past him. “Come along. We’ve done enough for today.”
    He hesitated, then caught up with me in three thunderous strides. We walked up the well-beaten sheep path toward the eastern gate of the precinct wall, through which one could see the great eastern window of the abbey. The church had been built a hundred and fifty years ago in the time of King David. The sandstone blocks of which it was constructed were quarried from the slopes of the Eildon Hills. A magnificent structure, two transepts stretched north and south like the arms of a crucifix. Westward ran the long nave, braced by airy buttresses on the outside and lined inside with an arcade of stout columns. On the north side were the monks’ cloisters.
    We passed through the eastern gate, its recent repairs evidenced by freshly hewn timbers. A cemetery with mossy stones so old and weathered their carvings could no longer be read filled the open ground on the southern side of the abbey. Many of the grave markers had been toppled by the retreating English. It was there, beneath the twisted limbs of an ancient yew tree, two women stood in the growing darkness, their mirthful laughter a stark contrast to the solemnity of their surroundings.
    “When the queen is well enough,” Boyd asked, “we’ll move on, aye?”
    “Why so eager? Need to get back to Lanark to your new woman?”
    “Aye, that. My woman has a rump as round as a sow’s. Good for clinging to at the right moment ... But you wouldn’t understand such things. Chaste as a monk, you are. My daughter would make a fitting mate for you.”
    “You’ve made the offer before. I said ‘no’, as I recall.”
    “Not that one. She’s already wed. Her growing belly was ... ah, getting a little hard to hide. Seems the Boyd women are tantalizing to any man with a heartbeat. This is a different daughter. Younger. Sturdier. More comely, even. And only fifteen. Tucked away in a nunnery, for now – although I fear some passing merchant or nearby crofter’s son will sniff her out all too soon. You’d have to marry her, of course. Won’t have any bastard grandchildren, not even by the likes of you ...” –