Page 16 of Come the Morning

Mellyora looked to the window in her room at the fortress. It was very small; this was a defensive fortress, built strongly from stone.

Yet the river ran by it; if she could just get to the river, she could reach her cousin Daro’s men.

“I cannot argue this any longer!” she announced with sudden determination.

Forgetting Jillian, Mellyora hurried from her own larger chamber into the smaller one behind it where Jillian slept. The window here was cut a bit larger—and let out onto a wooden platform of battlements.

She could easily step outside the window. And there was scaffolding set up where they continued to work on the battlements. In the darkness, she could swing down the wooden scaffolding without being seen, and, if she enwrapped herself in one of Jillian’s plain brown woolen capes, she could simply walk out the gates.

What then?

At the river’s edge, she’d have no choice but to steal a boat. Not steal. She smiled suddenly. King David had been the first Scottish monarch to mint his own coinage. She’d leave the boat’s owner a handsome coin bearing the king’s own image.

“Mellyora?” Jillian called to her.

Mellyora hesitated. “Go back to your tapestry, Jillian. I am sorry to have upset you. I need some time alone,” she said.

She softly closed the doors between the two rooms.

Quietly, she dug into Jillian’s travel trunk and found the cloak she required. She slipped it around herself, drawing the hood low. It was a deep brown color, and would blend well with the night.

Mellyora crawled onto the window seat and squeezed her length through the narrow window. She leapt softly down to the wooden battlement beyond the window and hurried along it.

She paused, seeing the distance between the place where she paused and the scaffolding just beyond. She inhaled, wondering if she was willing to risk her own life for her freedom.

Freedom was a gift worth many risks. She’d heard it said, many times, by many men.

It would be a long fall if she made a leap—and didn’t catch the crossbeam of the scaffolding.

Ruling was wisdom, her father had taught her. Decide if it can be done. And if it can be done …

Then do it with courage.

She stepped back.

Ran … and leapt.

She caught the crossbeam, swung down upon it, caught a lower beam, and then another, and another.

She jumped the last few feet to the ground.

The common courtyard at Stirling was not crowded, neither was it empty. By night, fishermen returned from their journeys along the river; wives rushed home from the last of their bartering; wool, dye, and food merchants closed up their stations for the night. Mellyora blended with them. Nearing the gates, she hurried to walk close behind a peddler leaving the city walls. To someone watching, it would appear she was a woman walking with a brisk pace to keep up with her husband.

Outside the walls, the peddler started down the southward trail, to the village. She parted ways with him, nearly running now as she hurried toward the river.

At the docks there was a great deal of activity, despite the hour. She veered away from the docks, heading downriver. Daro’s men would be encamped in the fields southward, so she would want to move downriver.

She hurried along the damp embankment until she saw an unattended boat. A small rowboat, pulled up tight on the embankment. She looked carefully around, but no one was about, so she hurried over to the small boat. Both oars were in place. She remembered that she wasn’t going to become a thief—not when she didn’t have to become one. She slipped her hand into the pocket sewn into her shift and curled her fingers around a small silver coin. She would toss it onto the shore where the boat had been once she had gotten it moving.

She started to push the boat from the mud when, suddenly, something seemed to rise from the embankment.

She froze.

Not something. Someone. A man. Darkly cloaked as she was herself. He seemed to rise forever, huge and towering in the darkness.

A gasp caught in her throat as a man’s voice deeply shouted out, “Thief!”

Could she get the boat out and away before he reached her? Never.