by Amanda Scott
Smiling, Jenny shifted her gaze back to the clearing as a burst of applause sounded. The dancers were making their bows, the jugglers still juggling.
She saw the Joculator standing to one side, watching with a critical eye. As the dancers skipped away, he joined the jugglers with balls like theirs, apparently just one more of them, until his first dagger flew high into the air above his head.
She heard the gasps when he caught it and spun it upward again, followed by a second one, and she marveled again at the man’s dexterity. Even now, in broad daylight, she could not tell how the balls had vanished as daggers took their places.
It had all happened so swiftly and smoothly that it was as if the daggers had sprung out of the air. The audience became silent until, flinging his arms wide, he seemed to scoop all the daggers from the air at once and then held them high to thunderous applause and shouts for more.
The acrobats returned for another turn, after which the Joculator moved to stand quietly in the center until the cheering and laughter faded to silence again. Then, he gestured to a lad, who ran to him with a stool.
As the lad ran away, the Joculator set the stool down and motioned to Jenny. He held a lute in his hand now, and where it had come from, she did not know.
Drawing a deep breath, she exhaled and went to take the lute from his hand.
The silence continued as he walked away, and she realized that he had so mesmerized the audience with his skill that by the simple act of inviting her into the clearing and leaving her there alone, he had promised them something special.
Her hands shook, but she breathed deeply again and slowly, telling herself it was just as it had been when she had played for her father and their household, or for special occasions when their people had gathered on the estate to celebrate.
Imagining that the folks around her now were her own people, she sat on the stool, settled the beautiful instrument in place, and plucked the first note. Then she looked up, found a smiling face, and began to sing to it, quickly losing herself in the music and words of the song. The song was her father’s favorite, the same love song she had sung for the Joculator.
When she finished, the silence continued, surprising her and making her look uncertainly at the Joculator. As she did, the applause began, and the cheering.
When she smiled, the din grew louder.
She was stunned. They liked her! Seeing the Joculator’s nod, she looked back at her lute and plucked the first notes of the other song she had practiced. It was a livelier ditty with a number of verses, a song known throughout the Borders. By the time she reached the third verse, the audience was singing with her and the other musicians had joined in her accompaniment.
When they finished, the applause burst forth at once and continued.
“Ye’ll do gey fine with us, lass.”
Turning, she found the Joculator at her side and beamed at him. “That was wonderful, sir. I never thought… when they were so quiet…”
“A high compliment,” he said. Then he held his hands high, and the audience grew quiet again. Raising his voice, he said, “If ye liked hearing our bonnie Jenny’s singing, ye should ken she’ll be singing more as we travel on to Dumfries. We’ll perform for the English inside Lochmaben Castle next. But after we leave there, any Scots wha’ care to enjoy us again will be welcome to seek our encampment Sunday evening near Dumfries and watch whilst we practice, or to come see us on Monday in Dumfries market square. We’ll be performing there each evening for a sennight.”
The cheering broke out anew. But Jenny, although enjoying it immensely, wondered if her adventure could possibly last until Monday, let alone any longer.
“Nae doots, we’ll catch up with one or another of them lasses sometime afore midnight,” Lucas Horne said bleakly late that afternoon when they still had found no trace of the minstrels. He added with emphasis, “If fortune favors us at all by then.”
So far, Hugh thought grimly, fortune had shat on them.
Determined though he had been to lay hands on Lady Easdale by nightfall, he had realized some time before that it would likely take longer than that just to find her trail. The main track from Annan House had revealed no evidence that the minstrels had followed it. Nor could he or Lucas tell if they had taken another route. With so many guests departing, hoof tracks had led everywhere and nowhere.
No one at Annan House had paid heed to aught save the fact of the minstrels’ departure. One watchman said he thought they had gone down through the town. Another thought they had headed east toward Gretna.
The Borders were at peace for once. The celebratory mood had continued into the night, and minstrels rarely took sides in disputes, anyway. So, aside from searching their carts and packs, no one had thought it necessary to keep an eye on them. Hugh had asked no questions about the search. But the very fact of it made it even more unlikely that the minstrels had any connection to the missing jewelry.
He and Lucas had quickly learned that the company had not passed through Annan town. But no one could say they had not simply walked around it. They might even have stayed east of it until they met the Roman road heading north, or stayed southwest of it and followed the riverbank to the first ford. If the Solway tides had cooperated, they might have crossed the river before reaching the town.
Despite Phaeline’s certainty that Jenny would head for Easdale, and the possibility that she might simply have used the minstrels as cover to escape Annan House, Hugh could not bring himself to believe that any sensible young woman—and she had looked sensible—would attempt to travel such a distance alone at night.
After this careful consideration, he had decided that if the minstrels were heading for Dumfries, he and Lucas should do likewise.
Lucas had muttered faint protest, but Hugh paid him no heed. The man had served him for years and had traveled many miles with him. Lucas could always find something to complain about, but he had never let Hugh down.
They kept to the Dumfries road despite passing two roads that branched north. They found no one who had seen the company. As most folks were abed before darkness fell, Hugh kept going then for some time without seeing a soul.
“Nah then, we should ’ave found someone that’s seen ’em by now,” Lucas said at last. “They be right numerous, so I’ve me doots they’d be quiet a-travelin’. We’ve talked to dunamany folks as live along this road, sir, but…” He shrugged.
“Aye,” Hugh agreed. “Someone ought to have heard them. Try that cottage yonder, across that wee field. I’ll wait with the horses and stop anyone who comes along. But I’m rapidly coming to believe they may have taken another route.”
“Aye, I’m for goin’ back to one of them branch roads, m’self.”
“Try the cottage, Lucas.”
With a nod, Lucas handed him the lead for their sumpter pony and urged his own horse to a trot, respectfully keeping to the edge of the field. To Hugh’s experienced eye, it looked freshly planted. An optimist, he thought, to believe that winter was over when one could still feel and even smell snow in the air.
Lucas looked brighter when he returned, because fortune had smiled on them at last. “T’ woman were up all night with a colicky bairn,” he said. “Nae one passed by but silent travelers. However, she has a sister a-visitin’ who lives a mile north of ’ere on the Lochmaben road. The sister were complainin’ of a racket set up in the night by a great company of travelers—a-singin’ and carryin’ on, she said.”
“Can we reach the Lochmaben road from here without trespassing where we should not, or must we ride all the way back to that last fork?” Hugh asked him. “ ’Tis all of two miles and more, I’m thinking.”
“Aye, and I did think to ask t’ woman. She said her sister be ’eading back shortly and will show us the way.” Although Lucas rarely showed his feelings, Hugh could tell he was pleased with himself for acquiring such useful information.
The news, welcome as it was, revealed nothing of the two missing young women, and darkness
would fall long before he and Lucas could catch up with the minstrels. Lucas’s earlier observation that they would catch up with at least one of them by midnight was looking less likely by the minute.
Hugh could not doubt that wherever they had camped the previous night, they would likely have moved on at first light. He also realized now that they were not going directly to Dumfries, so heaven alone knew how many other places they meant to visit first or which direction they would head next.
He was beginning to become seriously annoyed with Janet Easdale. However, his mood lightened when their guide, a brisk young matron who called herself Mistress Moffat, guided them swiftly to the Lochmaben road.
As he thanked her, he said, “I wonder, mistress, if you can suggest a likely place along this road for a company of minstrels to camp.”
She considered for only a moment before suggesting Castle Moss. “The laird there does enjoy the players whenever they come this way, sir. Faith, but he nearly always lets any as wants to camp in his woods. I warrant ye’ll find them there.”
He was just as certain that he would not find them there, but he hoped the laird of Castle Moss could tell him if the young baroness had been with them.
Only when he began to explain that hope to Lucas did he realize he’d have to be careful in his description, so as not to reveal what Dunwythie wanted kept quiet.
Castle Moss stood only a mile up the road, and although he’d have liked to travel on through the night since they would have moonlight, he knew that both he and Lucas would do better for a good night’s sleep.
The laird of Castle Moss proved both hospitable and delighted to entertain his guests with an enthusiastic description of the minstrels.
“Most astonishing!” he exclaimed when Hugh asked about them. “One fellow tossed dirks about like clubs. Didna seem to mind which end he caught, and I swear to ye, he had eight o’ them going at once. When he stopped, he just gathered them all together like a bouquet o’ spring flowers.”
“That sounds like just what I’m after, sir,” Hugh said. “I’m looking to hire minstrels for our market fair at Thornhill, and I’ve heard that this lot is exceptional.”
“They are, and the jugglers were only the beginning. Why they’ve a pair o’ fools that nigh made me split m’ sides laughing, and then there was Bonnie Jenny.”
Hugh raised his eyebrows. “A lass? Dancer or a gleemaiden?”
“Ye might call her a gleemaiden, I expect. But the chief juggler put her out before us, all on her ownsome, and I’m telling ye, that lass has a voice like an angel. She sang only two songs, mind ye. And, although we shouted for her to sing more, the man wouldna allow it. Instead, he said they’d be at Lochmaben tonight—and doubtless tomorrow, as well, it being Sunday. Then they’ll go on to Dumfries, he said. He kens his business, that ’un. He’ll likely draw crowds wherever they set up their encampments, as well as in Dumfries market square.”
“You did say they aimed for Lochmaben from here, did you not, sir?”
“Och, aye, but it will do ye nae good to seek them there, ye ken. Sithee, them English louts willna let in any Scotsmen unless they be minstrels or troubadours.”
Having learned all he wanted to know, Hugh changed the subject and spent a pleasant evening with his genial host. But the next morning, as he and Lucas were riding away, he said to Lucas, “We’ll make haste now that we know where they are. We need only think of a ruse that will get us inside Lochmaben Castle.”
“Aye, sure,” Lucas said. “Tha think t’ lassies we seek be with them, then.”
Hugh nodded. “No one with the voice of an angel sang at Annan House,” he said. “If they’d had such a singer, can you doubt they’d have produced her? Also, Lady Easdale’s given name is Janet, but members of the family call her ‘Jenny.’ ”
“By, sir, ye’re no expecting me to believe a young baroness in ’er own right be pretending to be them minstrels’ gleemaiden!”
“I don’t know that,” Hugh said. “But I’ll wager half your year’s pay that the singer is either the lady Janet or the maidservant Peg calling herself Jenny in a hope that someone will hear the name and come to collect her mistress.”
“Tha canna expect a man to bargain with half his year’s pay,” Lucas said scornfully. “I’ll put up a groat against ten of yours on such a bet, but no more.”
“Done,” Hugh said. “Easy gelt, that is, and I’ll not turn down a silver groat.”
“Aye, well, I canna think what will get ye into Lochmaben without ye spin them one of your grand tales of why they should admit ye. ’Tis true that I’ve heard ye spin dunamany such tales in days gone by. But if ye think ye can spin one, snatch up the lady, and carry ’er off without raising a fearsome dust—”
“I do not think I can do that,” Hugh said. Although he would never be such a dunce as that, he did realize that he had not yet thought the whole thing through.
“And just as ye canna snatch her from Lochmaben, ye canna march up to yon minstrels and demand they hand her over to ye neither,” Lucas said sagely.
“True,” Hugh said. “We’ll have to be gey cautious in our approach to them, so let us discuss the matter as we ride.”
“We should ha’ gone home when we could, mistress,” Peg said as they prepared their sleeping places at Lochmaben Castle. “I dinna like it here.”
“But think of what we’re seeing, Peg,” Jenny urged. “No one we know has seen the inside of this castle other than the people with whom we’re traveling, and this is the castle that produced King Robert the Bruce. He was born here, I believe, and it was the seat of Bruce power for years, even centuries.”
“Aye, but the Bruce could go outside its walls when he wanted to,” Peg said.
“We’ll be out again by noon tomorrow—by midafter-noon at the latest,” Jenny said, correcting herself when she recalled that the commander of the castle had said he would provide their midday meal for them after their performance.
Peg remained noticeably nervous, however, and Jenny had to admit, if only to herself, that she had felt safer in the laird’s woods at Castle Moss than she felt inside the walls of Lochmaben Castle. She did not know if the walls were fourteen feet thick, but they were certainly thick enough for two men to lie end to end.
Situated, as it was, on a flat peninsula jutting into Loch Maben, with most of the loch’s surrounding land bog-ridden, the castle’s famed impregnability seemed most intimidating when one was inside its walls, surrounded by enemies.
Bad enough that four water-filled ditches stretched across the narrow neck of the peninsula, all but the last one boasting temporary, easily removed drawbridges.
Worse was that the last ditch lacked any bridge, forcing them to go in boats through a main gate that opened right over the water into a well-guarded forecourt.
After disembarking, as they passed through the equally well-guarded inner gate and under a fanged iron portcullis into the castle’s main courtyard, Jenny had looked back to watch the boats depart. That sight made her wonder if she had been dafter than even Peg had thought she was to insist on coming to Lochmaben.
She wondered, too, if she could trust Bryan to keep her full identity secret. He and the others—even the women—behaved as if they had no concern for their safety. But most of the other women, she had noted, had protectors of one sort or another in the company—husbands, other kinsmen, or lovers. She and Peg had only Bryan, who paid little heed to them now that the company was setting up a makeshift camp in one corner of the inner courtyard.
Jenny had expected to share a tent with Peg again. But although the yard was large, its paving stones made pitching the tents impossible. Feeling exposed not only to the chilly weather and dark, menacingly overcast sky but to the castle’s roaming men-at-arms, she recalled Mairi’s comments on the likely life of a minstrel.
Until now, her adventure had seemed no more than that. But catching one lustful look, then another, and another, she felt an increasing chill of unease.
T
o be sure, the looks came from the men-at-arms and not, so far, from any of the minstrels. Even so, she doubted that the latter group would leap to defend her virtue against such odds as they faced inside Lochmaben.
“We must take care to stay together with your brother and his friends or with the other women, Peg,” she said as they made their way toward Bryan.
“Aye, sure,” Peg agreed vaguely, glancing toward the sky. “D’ye think it will snow in the night, m’lady?”
“Sakes, Peg, would you expose my rank to everyone here?” Jenny said. “I depend on you to protect me, and you’ll not do it by flinging m’ladys about.”
“Ay de mi!” Peg exclaimed. “But ’tis harder than ye ken! Them two words just fly off me tongue when I speak to ye.”
“Then think before you speak,” Jenny advised, espying the Joculator making his way toward them through the other minstrels, who were swiftly establishing spaces for themselves in the designated sleeping area.
“I’ve asked the others to provide ye two with extra bedding,” the Joculator told them. “However, I came to tell ye, Jenny, that although the commander of the castle will reserve our full performance for their midday meal tomorrow, he wants us to provide music for their supper tonight. Apparently, lass, someone who heard you at Castle Moss has whispered in the man’s ear.”
“Mercy, do you mean he wants to hear me sing?” Jenny asked. “Tonight?”
Although Phaeline had complimented her musical abilities, she had never led Jenny to think them extraordinary, and she did not know what to think now. That the English commander wanted to hear her sing was flattering. But for him to have singled her out in such a way was disconcerting—even, she decided, a little frightening.
The Joculator’s attractive smile flashed. “I had suggested that our musicians might play from the minstrels’ gallery, and he had agreed. But then he insisted that our bonnie Jenny must sing, too, and not from the gallery. He commanded that your stool be set just below the dais, lass.”
Jenny swallowed hard and cast a glance at Peg. But Peg was staring at her own feet and said not a word until the Joculator had walked away again.
