Jack Whyte - Order in Chaos

He gestured over his shoulder with a pointing thumb, and Jessie looked to see what he was talking about. There were about forty men crowded into the yard now, climbing down from the garrons and beginning to mill about in the enclosed space, but one of them stood out from all the others, a tall man wearing half armor and the polished steel helmet of a moss-trooper. He stood with his back to her, his eyes apparently looking over the outbuildings around the yard.

“He’s shy,” Jamie said, then raised his voice. “Thomas, have you no words of greeting for our hostess?”

The tall man seemed to stiffen, and then turned around slowly, and even from a distance Jessie could see the color suffusing his face as Douglas called again. “Come over here, man, and play the civil courtier.”

Jessie felt her jaw sag open as she gazed at the stranger, whose eyes only now met hers, clouded with what she could only discern as shame and embarrassment. She knew the man, recognized him easily, but yet her mind seemed incapable of accepting his presence here.

“Thomas?” she said, her voice little more than a whisper. Then, more strongly, “Thomas, is that you?”

The man ducked his head in acknowledgment, then moved forward slowly, his fair-skinned face burning with blood. “Auntie Jessie,” he said. “Forgive me for this. I fear you may not want me ’neath your roof.”

Her eyes went wide with astonishment. “ My roof? What are you talking about? It is your roof, Thomas. This is your house. But you were … I thought … How come you here?”

Sir Thomas Randolph, her eldest brother’s son and nephew to the Bruce himself through a half-sister, stepped closer, his face a portrait of misery and shame. “You thought me in England, a willing vassal to the Plantagenet, a traitor to my home and kinsmen. Is that not what you wished to say?”

Jessie gasped, then bridled in protest. “Well, yes and no, in equal measure. In England, certainly. A prisoner of England, willingly or no, taken at Methven field. But traitor? No. That thought never entered my mind. No man who bears the name of Thomas Randolph could ever be traitor. So have done with the self-pity if you would please me, for it ill becomes you. Now, tell me true, how do you come to be here?”

Before the other could answer, Jamie Douglas moved away and began barking orders to his men, bidding them settle down and dispose themselves quietly and without fuss, and Jessie turned to interrupt him.

“How many are you, Sir James?”

“Forty-four, my lady, including ourselves … young Thomas and I.”

“Then we can put them all under roofs. There are four bothies behind the farm, apart from the main buildings. They can hold twelve men apiece in comfort. Have your men move into those and set up picket lines for your horses at the rear. There’s ample grazing in the paddock back there, and I’ll have my people—Sir Thomas’s people—start preparing food for everyone. We had to kill a stirk that broke a leg four days ago, so we have ample meat. I had feared much of it might go to waste, but now we’ll make good use of it, though it will be well after dark, I fear, before we sup.”

She turned back to her nephew to find that the angry color had receded from his face and he was looking at her now with something akin to gratitude and wonder in his eyes. “Well,” she said. “Are you going to stand there fidgeting all night, Thomas Randolph? Come you inside. I have been keeping your house clean and warm in your absence, but now that you are home again, I am become your guest.”

He threw up his hand immediately, then bowed from the waist, smiling suddenly, and it seemed the sun itself shone from his eyes. “No, Auntie Jess. Do not even say the words. I am … in transit. No more than that. This house is yours for as long as you may need it. And I am grateful.”

“Grateful? For what?”

“For your forbearance … your goodwill. Sir James has told me you are close in the King’s regard. Nursed him while he was sick. I had thought you would bear me ill will for taking arms against him.”

“Aye … Well, you were wrong. We talked of you, the King and I, when word first came to us last winter that you were riding with the English. He bore you no ill will, even then, knowing you for what you are, a knight yet unschooled in the realities of the wars he fights today. He said you reminded him of himself, when he was your age, full of the bright awareness of knighthood and honor and chivalry and not yet dulled by life’s realities. He feared that you saw him as a brigand, unfit to bear the title of knighthood. And he grieved for that. But we will talk of that later. I have much to do to feed your company, and the day grows late already. Come you in when you have finished what you have to do, and bring Sir James with you. I will have something more than water to slake your thirst by then. Go now.”

His face flushed again, though not so shamefacedly this time, and she felt the beginnings of a smile upon her lips, for she thought he might be quite the most attractive man she had ever seen, tall and broad shouldered and fair of hair and face. He would be more than half her age, she thought, twenty at the most, to her thirty and six, and he had his father’s easy, upright carriage and his mother’s length of limb and her maternal family’s golden hair and bright blue eyes. He shrugged the sword belt from across his chest and over his head as he went from her, and she admired the easy confidence with which he threw the long, sheathed weapon to a waiting, gray-bearded moss-trooper before he strode through the entranceway and out into the fields beyond, headed towards the bothies at the back. And then she remembered what she had to do and spun back to the doorway.

From that moment on until late in the night after the huge but plain supper of spit-roasted beef, fresh oatmeal bread, and boiled greens served with vinegar and butter, Jessie barely had a moment to herself, making herself available and visible everywhere, supervising the details of the meal’s preparation and the arrangements for housing more than two score unanticipated visitors. And so it was with great relief that she sank into a solid, upholstered chair by the fire in the farmhouse’s main room shortly before midnight, taking pleasure in the fact that her two guests were there already, comfortably seated and awaiting her arrival.

Douglas had been dozing when she came in, but had leapt to his feet as quickly as her nephew and ushered her towards the room’s main chair, situated directly in front of the peat fire that glowed in the stone hearth. She thanked him with a smile and murmured word of thanks, then allowed herself to relax into the chair and look around the shadowed, comfortable room. It was spacious but low ceilinged, with a roof of hammered beams, and furnished for comfort, with four massive armchairs and a deep couch, besides the enormous table of ancient, hand-carved black oak and the twelve matching high-backed chairs surrounding it. Candles were scattered throughout, some in sconces, others in scattered holders, and a half score ranged in each of the two candelabra on the old oak table, and their light reflected on all the upright surfaces, casting the four corners of the room into dark, flickering, shadow-filled places. She sighed contentedly and waved away the proffered cup of wine that her nephew held out to her.

“No, Thomas. Too late at night and we must be astir at daybreak. So come and sit down and tell me, for you never did, what brings you here thus unexpectedly.”

Randolph grinned. He poured the wine from the cup he had offered her into his own, then gestured with it towards where Douglas had subsided back into his chair. “Sir James, my captor here, thought we should visit you.”