The Mark of Salvation Read Online Free PDF

south.
    Daylight faded and still no one, English or Scottish, came for the women. Angela looked to Orelia for leadership, and she kept her busy searching for firewood and rummaging for foodstuffs in the wagons. As a precaution, she urged Angela to arm herself with a knife. But from Angela’s clumsy attempts to find a place to wear it, Orelia could tell Angela was more likely to wound herself than an enemy. Still, Orelia insisted.
    As night fell, Orelia knew that John should have come for her by now. Something was terribly wrong.Obviously she was going to have to spend the better part of the night here with Angela. Orelia made room inside one of the wagons that was covered with an oiled cloth. When they’d finished supper and doused the fire, the tired, frightened women crawled into the wagon for a miserable night’s sleep.
    THAT NIGHT CEALLACH AND THE OTHERS CELEBRATED—the feared renewed attack had never materialized and Edward of England was running for his life. Ceallach celebrated as he knew he shouldn’t—with ale and even some uisgebeatha. More than was necessary. Much more. But the fiery liquid calmed his tattered heart, made it stop racing, drove away the fear and the memories. Aye, he became a normal man when the whiskey dulled his feelings. A man without demons running through his very veins.
    But if the whiskey loosened his fear, it never loosened his tongue. After years of living in near silence, he’d long ago lost the ability to make idle chatter. He rarely spoke and then only when asked a direct question. Alone at the edge of the crowd, Ceallach slowly and quite deliberately became drunk.
    One of the camp women came and sat beside him. She’d sat with him before and unlike so many of her kind, she didn’t press him to make conversation. But the invitation was there all the same, in the way she brushed her breast against his arm when she reached for the flask of whiskey. Or in the wise smile she gave him when he jerked away from the touch.
    He knew nothing of women and their ways after so many years of monastic life. But even Ceallach could read the invitation in her eyes and the lift of her brow.
    Hating himself, knowing it was wrong but powerless to stop, he drank until the last of his inhibitions slipped away. When she reached out a hand to him, he went with her. He was damned anyway; might as well seal his doom in the arms of a willing woman.
    When he disrobed, she gasped at a gash on his thigh. He must have been wounded in the fray, but he’d not felt the blow or any pain. Nor did he feel any when she poured whiskey into the wound and bound it. This wasn’t the first time he’d been hurt and hadn’t noticed it.
    The next morning Ceallach awoke to an empty bed and a head full of hammer beats with each pulse of his heart. He was glad the woman was gone—didn’t want to have to talk to her or anyone else until the whiskey had worked itself out of his system. But long before that had a chance to happen, Bruce sent him to inspect the English supply train. Although Ceallach’s head stopped pounding by the time he mounted his horse, pain still lingered behind his eyes.
    He rode down the line of wagons until he came to a deserted campsite with a still-warm fire. Quietly he dismounted, tied his horse to a wagon, and crept into the camp. He shook his head. He couldn’t see anyone, but he heard the murmuring of conversation. Female voices? His head was in worse shape than he thought.
    ORELIA AWOKE, not sure of the time or what had awakened her. Angela still slept and Orelia wondered if her companion’s sleep had been as fitful as her own. She’d lain awake for hours listening for John’s return. Long after midnight she’d gotten up and left the wagon to look at the stars and to listen. All was quiet then, just as it was now.
    She’d finally fallen into an exhausted sleep a few hours before sunrise. Cautiously she stretched cramped