By These Ten Bones by Clare B. Dunkle Page A

farm tools, thought Maddie. She had hoped he was settling into their life, but he was just trying to escape.
    Carver didn’t get a chance to talk to the farmer. Maddie’s uncle Colin the Smith returned from his journey, walking back through the grain fields. Unaware of the tragedy surrounding his dying son, the smith nevertheless had information of his own.
    â€œThe new lord’s wife is dead,” he told those he met, and the men left their tools in the fields and gathered around. The women didn’t go to funerals, not even for one of their own, but if the men weren’t there to help bear the lady’s body, they would earn the new lord’s lasting fury.
    â€œWe’ll set out at once,” declared Black Ewan. “But without you, Colin. Your family needs you. James, Gillies, and Thomas, you come. Little Ian and Horse, you stay with Colin and finish what you can of the harvest. Don’t cut any more grain till you’ve stored what we’ve already cut. And, Horse, look after the red mare’s injured flank.”
    â€œBut the storms!” objected Horse. “The harvest will take too long.” The least gifted of Black Ewan’s farmhands, he was called Horse because he had once lost the one he was riding home during a drunken stupor.
    â€œNo storms are here yet,” replied Black Ewan. “And we’d best hope we’re back before they are.” He turned to his nephew. “Lachlan, take care of your mother and keep an eye on the town. Don’t try to chain Angus and that Englishman up to the stable wall while I’m gone. Just leave them chained together. Angus won’t go anywhere at night with that dead weight to lug around.”
    Lachlan was only twelve, and he still looked like a child. “Yes, Uncle,” he said respectfully. “But hadn’t I better keep the key in case something goes wrong?”
    Black Ewan looked down at the boy, hesitating. “All right,” he answered, pulling the key from his neck and handing it to Lachlan. The boy hung the large key around his own neck, his eyes shining with pride.
    â€œYou see?” he boasted to his prisoners that night as the pair lay sprawled in the hay of the stall. “I’m the one who has your key now.” But before another day passed, he had reason to regret it.
    â€œLachlan won’t let Ned go,” worried Carver the next morning as he and Maddie stacked peats by the houses. He was so distracted that he was more of a hindrance than a help. He stacked one block, walked away, and then came back to stack another. “He has to let him go, he has to,” he said, taking down the part she had just finished and restacking it himself. “I don’t know what to do.”
    â€œDid you think he would?” Maddie asked, taking advantage of his walking away again to fix the mess he was making of the stack. “Lachlan knows good and well that his uncle will thrash him if he lets Ned loose.”
    â€œNo, he said he wasn’t afraid of a beating,” contradicted the wood-carver, coming back to dismantle the peats again. Maddie stood up and watched him with a sigh. “He has to let Ned go. Just for a couple of days. Ned will be back before Black Ewan comes home.”
    â€œDo you think Lachlan would believe that?” she asked.
    â€œBelieve what?” demanded Carver, standing up to look at her, surrounded by mounds of peats. “Madeleine, please,” he begged, his eyes very tired. “Just for a couple of days.”
    The girl frowned and stepped up close to lay her hand on his cheek. “Your fever’s back,” she announced. “I might have known. It’s back, and it’s high.”
    â€œI know that,” he muttered. “No, wait—” But she was already calling her mother.
    â€œI never should have let him do all that work!” exclaimed Fair Sarah, and she soon had the young man under piles of