ELEANOR SAID. Alana trembled, seated beside her grandmother in the front seat of the wagon, Mary MacDuff and her children huddled under wool blankets in the back. The dark stone castle rose out of a promontory on a hill above the town, the skies blue and sunny above it. Snow was clinging to the rocky hillside, and the deep blue waters of the Moray Firth were visible behind it. It had taken them a few hours to travel the short distance from the MacDuffs’ burned manor to Nairn. Poor Fergus had been left in the woods not far from last night’s camp, retching up his breakfast. In a few hours he would be well enough to go on his way. From the towers, shouts rang out. Alana tensed. She had been to the town of Nairn many times, as it was a bustling port and she enjoyed the market there. But she had never been within the castle, which had always seemed threatening. It had been garrisoned with royal English troops for years because the great barons of north Scotland were at war with England more often than not.
