A Trust Betrayed by Candace Robb Page B

you not know what soldiers are like? Half of them are felons pardoned by Longshanks to serve in his army.”
     
    “You mentioned the laundresses yesterday. But there were other women at Mass.”
     
    He shrugged his shoulders, shook his head. “The trouble with your being here is I’ll spend all my time worrying.”
     
    “I am a married woman and run my own household. I do not need tending.”
     
    “This place is nothing like your household.” Murdoch grabbed two bowls from a shelf, a ladle from a hook. His motions were not hesitant—he knew where everything was. “Had you the patience I would have brought some of this up to you myself. A soup with winter roots, a bit of coney, and even some beef.”
     
    “God bless you. I am starving.”
     
    “Sit down.” He ladled some soup into a bowl.
     
    “Celia should have some of this,” Margaret said.
     
    “In good time. You are the mistress.”
     
    “She fell in High Street. She’s wet and muddy.”
     
    “Is she injured?”
     
    “Only her gown, I think.”
     
    “Thank the Lord you women are protected by all your skirts and mantles. Now sit. She will still be peeling off the layers.”
     
    Margaret sat down on a bench, put the bowl on the win-dowsill, and wondered at the amount of meat she stirred up with her spoon. The English would have it if they knew it was here.
     
    “Do you cook for the tavern?” she asked after several spoonfuls.
     
    “I cook for myself, no others. I have a cook for the tavern.”
     
    “This is not the tavern kitchen?”
     
    “That is farther in the backland.”
     
    It was a large kitchen for one man. “Might I dry Celia’s wet clothing in here?”
     
    Murdoch’s short eyebrow twitched. “I’ll not have it. There’s a brazier in your chamber.”
     
    “It will be forever drying. A good cook fire’s what’s needed.”
     
    “Ask my tavern cook—Roy’s his name. His kitchen’s behind the next cottage—where the chambermaid bides when we have one.”
     
    Not wanting to outstay her welcome, Margaret took her leave as soon as she was finished and carried a bowl of the fine soup and a chunk of dark bread up to Celia. The maid ate hastily, then gathered her wet clothes and set out for the tavern kitchen, hoping to wash out the mud before the stains set in.
     
    Margaret felt weary to the bone, but when she lay down and closed her eyes, she felt them fluttering behind the lids as if trying to catch passing ghosts, and every creak set her heart racing. She thought it might help to get her bearings, that she might rest more easily once she had seen more of the inn, the back-land, the town, and understood the sounds.
     
    The rain had stopped, though the stiff breeze carried its scent. The backland stretched out behind Murdoch’s kitchen. The chambermaid’s lodging was a shed half the size of his kitchen, wattle and daub with a thatch roof. Margaret pushed at the door. Inside it was dusty and smelled of damp. There was a platform for a bed, a shelf for a candle, and a stool. A shuttered window faced back to Murdoch’s kitchen. Water puddled in a corner of the packed-earth floor. It was a simple room, but with a brazier, a good oil lamp, and a wattle screen by the bed to block the draft from the window it would be as comfortable as many simple homes. With the leak that had caused the puddle fixed it could be the best home a servant had ever had. Margaret must ask her uncle what had happened to the maid.
     
    Stepping out, she shut the door behind her and turned the corner to continue down the backland to the tavern kitchen. She thought she might come to Celia’s aid if necessary.
     
    The tavern kitchen was twice the size of the chambermaid’s lodging, with a tile roof, smoke coming from the smoke hole in the center, benches lining the outside wall either side of the door. Raised voices, Celia’s and a man’s, came from within.
     
    A young man appeared in the doorway, a bowl cradled in one arm. He stirred the