For Danny’s sake, she was grateful. Incredibly grateful.
The silence that had fallen was suddenly broken by Mark Menzies.
“Aye, men, if we’ve a spirit, it’s a kind one, and that’s a fact!”
“Aye! And we’ve a lady of the house willing to blacken herself like any man on behalf of us all!” cried out one of the injured miners, who still hobbled near her cousin Aidan.
“Aye, to our lady!” went up a shout.
The men were suddenly closing in around Shawna. She caught Alistair’s grin of approval before she found herself being lifted and set atop her horse. “Will you drink with us at the tavern, Lady Shawna?” Mark Menzies asked.
A drink at the tavern was a customary event when any possible tragedy at the mines was averted.
Just as a drink at the tavern was customary if tragedy was not averted. The lords of the manor always drank with the miners after a funeral service.
“Indeed, I shall be glad to drink with you,” Shawna said. “But I am dusty as pitch?—”
“’Tis part of the celebration,” Mark said, winking.
“Then we shall drink,” Shawna assured him.
The tavern was not large enough to accommodate all those who came to it, but many of the men and their wives took their ales and stouts out to the grass and the tables beyond the walls of the establishment to make way for everyone. Shawna managed to wipe some of the coal from her face, but not all, and she found herself smiling as she saw the faces of her family around her. Alistair was certainly comical in his coal coloring, but Aidan made her laugh out loud, he was so encrusted with the coal dust.
She was proud of her family. Each and every man of her kin had been in the mine, working, digging, determined none should die. When she was given an ale, she met Gawain’s eyes across the crowded tavern. She lifted her glass to her fierce, crusty great-uncle and was pleased to see his smile of approval in return. She swallowed down some ale, then realized that she was standing by a stranger, a man in dull, brown friar’s garb. He was very tall, but also very old, with thick silver-white hair and one of the thickest, richest beards she had ever seen.
“’Tis honored I am to stand by the lady of the land,” he said, his voice throaty and accented with the lilt of an Irishman. “And on a day of such high excitement. Tell me, how is the lad who was trapped?”
Shawna smiled her relief. “The lad is fine.”
“A miracle.”
“Quite possibly.”
“Yet, I’ve heard y’have strange spirits about the place?”
Shawna swallowed down a long draught of ale, then looked at the stranger. “Nay, we’ve no spirits here…friend. I’m sorry. I don’t know you. What is your name?”
“Brother Damian,” the man supplied.
“And what are you doing here, traveling our Highlands?”
“Pilgrimage,” Brother Damian said. “Please, tell me more about your spirits.”
“We don’t have spirits.”
“Ah, but my lady, you are a superstitious lot! You have a Night of the Moon Maiden—so I’ve heard tell.”
“We enjoy feasts and merriment and happily celebrate some of the ancient holidays,” Shawna informed him, somewhat annoyed. It was one thing to admit to Mark Menzies that they certainly were superstitious, far closer at times to very old ways than they were to contemporary society. But their thoughts and beliefs were a part of them, and she would not be mocked by strangers traveling through their Highland craig. “We enjoy our entertainments, Brother Damian, but we have no spirits here, no pookas, ghosts, or the like. I imagine that the boy found his way through some opening within the tunnel. He is very young. Little more than a babe and certainly imaginative. Far too young to work the mines.” She hesitated and set down her ale. There was a point she meant to make here and now. “In fact,” she said softly, more to herself than to the visiting friar, “there will be no more children of his age working here!”
“Ah, and you are the lady here, so it is your decision, is it?” the man inquired. He drank down a long swallow of his own ale, then set down his glass. He shrugged at her. “One hears things as he travels. The mines are owned in large part by a Douglas, are they not?”
It wasn’t her place, in truth, to run around making decrees regarding what was largely Douglas property. “The current LairdDouglas is in America, Brother Damian, not often able to see to his affairs. He trusts my judgment.”
“And that of your fine, courageous kin.”
“Indeed. Why do you ask?”
“As I said, one hears things…well, quite frankly, there is still talk of the great fire that raged here so many years ago. The Douglas heir killed, consumed in flame! Perhaps he comes back to haunt his land, seeking justice.”