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are some interesting torture devices to be found in the foul dungeons below where we were kept.”
    â€œThere is no real threat you can give me. But since I pray that you don’t set forth upon a bloodbath and murder the men and women who live in this castle, I can promise you, I have no intention of poisoning your wife. Nor sir, would I ever do such a thing. You malign my husband, who is now judged by God alone. If you were blessed with half the intelligence of your brute strength, sir, you would have realized that when you were brought in.”
    She didn’t look at him as she spoke, but gave her entire attention to the task at hand, bathing the woman to slake the fever.
    As the day wore on, he saw what she did, and tried to help. When he realized her dismay at the poor flames in the hearth, he went to fetch wood, and when she dropped each herb into the mulling wine, she had to give him a detailed explanation of just what she used, and why.
    During the long afternoon his men came to the door and gave him reports on what was being done to secure the castle or who had lived, and who had died. Father MacKinley came, and flagons were filled from the great kettle of mulling wine so that he could treat the others as well. Except to fetch wood and kindling for the fire when it was needed, the rebel Scot did not leave the room at all, and when he was not working to bring down his wife’s fever, he sat by her side, holding her hand. What emotion he felt he did not display, other than in the ticking of a blood vessel at his throat, and in the tension in his muscled forearms, and the tightening of his hands.
    â€œHave you suffered the fever yourself, ever?” she asked him once.
    His cold Nordic blue eyes touched hers. “No.”
    â€œYou are at great risk.”
    â€œWe have been at great risk.”
    â€œFrom where had you come to bring this fever with you?”
    He scowled at her, as if talking to her was an extreme bother, but he gave her a reply. “I don’t know where this fever came from. We found a man at sea . . . his shipmates had apparently perished. We thought to save his life. Instead, he has taken all ours.”
    â€œPerhaps,” she said, changing the cloth on the woman’s forehead, “it was God’s judgment.”
    â€œPerhaps it was God’s judgment that the English should seize upon women and children and bring them here, and so kill many more English than Scots,” he said sharply. “And what makes you think I honor your God?”
    She started. “The God of England is the God of Scotland.”
    â€œBut I am not entirely a Scotsman, lady. So don’t think that I will stop at anything because of Christianity or a fear of Hell.”
    â€œI have no doubts that you would kill as brutally as any man alive.”
    â€œNo man alive is more brutal than Edward of England.”
    That was difficult to argue. Not a man, woman, or child alive had not heard tales of the king’s fury when he sacked Berwick. Orders had been given that none should be spared, and women, children and infants had been struck down as they ran in terror. Only the slaying of a mother at the moment of giving birth at last brought the king’s own horror home to him, and only then did the carnage come to an end.
    â€œEdward is merciless against those he considers to be traitors,” she said.
    â€œI am merciless against those I consider to be traitors—or murderers,” he replied.
    A knock sounded at the door and he went to answer the summons. A man he had called Patrick stood there, and spoke to him in quiet tones. A moment later, he closed the door and returned to the room, showing Igrainia a parchment.
    â€œThere lies the love of your king! It’s an order delivered at the end of an arrow shot far from the gates, warning that we must not spread the plague from Langley. How intriguing. It seems that the troops who swept down upon women and children,