Page 37 of Keepers of the Highland Crown
“This way.” She ripped him right again into the sheep pens and those shearing the mewling creatures under crude overhangs dripping rain like a waterfall.
Four rows over there stood a wailing wee lad, perhaps quarter score. Nella knelt before him as Callum darted his gaze about. Northman? Nae. Hiss? Nae. Mother looking for her lost lad? Nae. Hell!
“’Tis fine,” Nella soothed the red-faced expression. “We shall find her. What does your mam call you, wee one?”
“Adam,” he peeped.
Callum saw Nella in his periphery tilt her head. She was searching for the mother.“I… I know where your mam is. Take my hand and I may see you to her.” The lad looked apprehensive a moment. “I know she is searching for her Adam’s Apple. That is her loving summons for you, is it not?”
The puffy eyes widened. “Aye, you know my mam.” He placed his hand in Nella’s.
She met Callum’s eyes and he nodded, grasping his sword’s hilt beneath his cloak he trailed the pair. His eyes scanned all the faces in the packed merchant row as the rain went back from sheets to mist.
The mother was easily spotted; her puffy eyes matched her “Adam’s Apple” and her face lit up when she saw Nella round the corner with him. Lifting her skirts, the mother bolted toward Nella who released the lad’s hand after he raced for his mother.
Introductions were not a good idea.Callum grabbed Nella’s palm before they vanished into the next row of stalls where various meads were being haggled over.
“That one gave me the pisses last year same as a horse,” a disgruntled patron groused as they tore past the wagons. Two more. Two more turns and they would be at the docks!
Fish fumes reigned supreme the final stretch while they bolted by the fishermen’s stalls. The creatures from the ocean lay with unseeing eyes for sale in rows tidy as the marketplace itself. “Salted, ’tis the very finest salmon and it shall keep eatable for a long while,” one fisherman promised a Scotswoman.
They were going to make it! Was that the first mate to the Spaniard on the dock’s edges releasing the line for the barge to the large cog ship? Aye!
“Nella,” he whispered fiercely, “the crewman with bald head, he is with the Spaniard.”
“He is taking his leave!” she said in a low panicked tone.
“Aye, step quickly but do not call out for him,” Callum advised.
Concealing their steps under the cloaks, they half ran the final stretch. A shadow appeared on their left. Brayden.
What was the bald crewman called? Fernando? No. Tomas? Aye, that was… “Tomas,” Callum greeted when the brown gaze glanced up at them on their final approach.
“Sir Callum!” Tomas replied then looked toward, “Sir Brayden. The captain shall welcome your arrival. Come, come.” Strange; that was a rather boastful greeting.
***
A short bobbing on the waves later, Nella found herself on the deck of a most extraordinary ship. Huge! Had she ever seen the likes of it before? No. The bald crewman called Tomas vanished a moment below deck. She leaned her head slightly.
“Tomas, good, you’re back. Three more have taken ill. ’Tis the damn spoiled ale they drank earlier. We cannot have them…”
“Captain,” she heard Tomas interrupt, “Sir Callum is on deck for you.”
“Finally!”
“Captain, there is a lady with him.”
“Oh?”
“A beauty.”
“Well then let us have a look at the lady who has finally broken through that sound stoic armor he has worn all these years in sorrow.”That was because of me.
Nella cast her eyes down. “Nella?” Callum murmured. “Have you harkened to something causing you sorrow?”Aye.
She stole his hand in hers beneath his cloak. Before she could explain, a voice boomed the deserted deck. “Sir Callum!”
A large Spaniard with a beard thick as the captain himself appeared from the hold’s doorway. When he spotted her, a grin white as pearls in the ocean beneath flashed.
