Free Worth Dying For (The Bruce Trilogy) by N. Gemini Sasson Page B

their own infirmities.
    “Fitting, don’t you think?” he said hoarsely. Glancing overhead, he pulled off his gloves and smacked them against his palm. “The Bruce’s own daughter – Marjorie. My captive now. A tiny wren, her world no bigger than the stretch of her clipped wings. Poor, flightless creature.”
    The waif wormed her way closer to the edge of the cage, closer to me. Mouth downturned, she wedged her dirtied cheeks between the bars. One of her feet slipped beneath a crossbar, dislodging a shoe. It swung from her toes but a moment, before tumbling earthward. I snatched it up and tossed it at a raven strutting across the frost-crisped grass, missing by an arm’s length. “Must we look upon her wretched face every day? The sight of her only reminds me that her perjuring father yet has his freedom.”
    His glove smarted against the side of my head. I sprang away, glaring at him.
    “Why do you think I put her there, you daff?” A smile of wicked glee creased his mouth. “Bruce’s sister Mary is dangling in an iron nest from the battlements at Roxburgh. Thrice a day she’s allowed the use of the privy inside. This one’s young; we’ll grant her four such excursions. I’ve forbidden anyone but the constable to speak to her. Dare not take the chance that someone will take pity on her, bastard-spawn though she may be. The other sister – oh, what is she called? Damn, I cannot think in this cold... Ah, yes! Christina, the one whose husband, Christopher Seton, lost his head after that routing at Methven. Sick with grief. Shut her up in a nunnery. No comforts for her but her prayers.”
    My hand cupped a still-stinging ear. “What of his wife? Wasn’t she taken, too?”
    “Oh, she’s here. But daylight will not shine on her pretty head until she’s served my purpose to the fullest. I’d love nothing more than to see her suffer the same as this one, but she’s too valuable. I cannot risk her taking ill and inconveniently dying on us – imagine the leverage that would rob us of. Besides,” he said, steeling himself against a visible shiver, “her father’s the Earl of Ulster. He may preside over savages, but he’s loyal. I hear he turned down Bruce’s request for refuge. Very wise of him.” My sire stuck out an angular elbow for his wife. She slipped her hand in the crook of his arm, stroking his forearm with ringed fingers.
    “Time for Mass soon, my son,” the king proclaimed. “Shall we pay a cordial visit to our guest, first?”
    “Guest?”
    “Lady Elizabeth Bruce. Languishing in the Lanthorn Tower – at least until I can think of someplace more suitable. She hasn’t had much to say yet, but I thought I might give her the chance.”
    He gimped away, leaning noticeably against his queen’s arm.
    I glanced once more at Marjorie Bruce, dangling exposed for all to see. She reached a hand downward, the palm reddened with rust where she had toyed with the lock, and pointed to her slipper.
    My sire paused before the door through the inner wall nearest the Lanthorn Tower and said something to Marguerite. She swept her damsels on through the door first with a brush of her hand. Then, my sire bent his head and kissed her on the lips longer than I could bear. I looked away, although I could still hear the smack of their mouths. Dear God, had they no decency?
    When I looked again, they were gone.
    I glanced about the bailey and, finding it empty but for a couple of inattentive sentries – one propped against a merlon of the outer wall, the other making slow circles atop the Salt Tower – I sauntered over to where the shoe lay and picked it up. A ragged hole marked the place where her big toe would have stuck through. The shoe, I observed, was too large to have truly been hers and the leather soles so cracked and worn that I would not have allowed my own servants to go about clad thus.
    “Pleeease,” she begged, in a voice stripped raw by the wind.
    Tapping the shoe against the buttoned front of