The Night Side by Melanie Jackson Page B

intelligencer and to look at the castle and its inhabitants with the eye of a guest. But it was in his nature to evaluate every new situation for its potential danger to both his person and the crown. Seen with these experienced eyes, the second unwelcome thing that intruded upon his notice was the extreme stillness within the keep’s walls.
    Of course it was not completely noiseless. There was the eddying wind, which carried the familiar odors of fiery peat and sea. And there were the noises from fowl, which hunted grain in the courtyard while doing their best to avoid a group of children intent on playing some game that involved tossing pebbles at the birds and ominous chants of “Pullet gullet.” There were also the ripples of hushed female conversations that echoed softly off of the stone walls that sided the small yard.
    In the distance was the slow clanging of a smith at work, though the blows he struck sounded as lazy and weak as a child’s. All about Colin was the hushed quietude of a churchyard.
    A churchyard. Colin nodded at this description. It fit well. There were no horses about, and of the cattle and sheep that had come from the MacLeod, there was no sign. Colin assumed them to be grazing out on the heath—he hoped that they found something to eat out there. Belatedly it occurred to him that bringing animals to Noltland had been a mistake. If there was not enough grazing for them, they would have to be slaughtered immediately and that would be a waste.
    Colin frowned and exchanged a long look with MacJannet, who nodded slowly.
    It reassured Colin that MacJannet felt the strangeness as well. His bored brain was not imagining things. It was too calm. There was a sense of silence beyond the stillness of observation that followed the arrival of a stranger into a small and isolated community. Something was amiss at Noltland.
    Mayhap the silence was partly mourning for the dead laird and his sons, but still it seemed to him that there should have been the sound of men practicing their swordplay or shooting at butts, and there should have been laughter as they teased each other about their mistakes or praised one another’s prowess. However, the courtyard was bereft of any males save those who had been in Mistress Balfour’s retinue.
    Colin paused, watching and listening intently. There were a few small buildings standing against the walls, which might serve as stables, but they were stout and shallow, thatched with bracken and pegged with hazel sticks. They would shelter no beast larger than a pig or sheep.
    This was not the sort of place where men would spend their time. It belonged to the women and children. Yet, where could the men be if not in the vacant yard? There were no fields to tend and no sign of nearby crofts.
    Colin looked next at the battlements where he expected to see guards posted, and exhaled in shock. There were no men on the ramparts, only some pikes leaned against the wall and a woman seated on a threelegged stool, winding yarn into balls. Occasionally she would look up from her work and cast an eye over thelandscape, but she seemed to be the only lookout facing south.
    Colin turned about slowly. There was another woman seated on the wall that overlooked the sea, but she was occupied with dipping stripped rushes into fat and not paying attention to the MacLeod’s retreating galley.
    To the east and west, the battlements were bare of all but pikes.
    “’Tis a shame,” Tearlach commented, and for one moment Colin wondered if the man had actually perceived his thoughts. But then the oldster went on with an apparent non sequitur: “The master and the Keith were brother starlings. She were a MacKay—and a faithless notch. She betrayed them both wi’ a buckface cuckholder in clan Gunn. She said she were seduced by the master, but I say that nae woman but a halfwit is ever seduced against her will.”
    For the moment, Colin was too distracted to reprimand Tearlach for his conversation, and