The Intelligencer is off the the editor! Here's a look at Ch. 1

Intelligencer: a person who gathers intelligence, especially an informer, spy, or secret agent.

"Careful you don't give her a good show," said Cormac the minstrel, lanky and grinning, one shoulder resting on the wall.

"Wheesht. I'm giving no one a show," Sir Law Kintour said. He reached for a tiny jar sitting in the window, pulled out the cork releasing a sharp, musty smell. The canoness had told him swallowed it was poison, but when the cream was rubbed on his scars it eased them a bit.

When there was a tap on the door, Cormac opened it. Anny Cullen stood there with a steaming bowl in her hands. At twelve, she had started to look much like her mother, sturdy and muscular. She smiled at him shyly.

He watched as she put the bowl on the wobbly little table in the middle of the room and pulled a long rag out. She twisted it hard to wring out the excess water.  He held out his hand. "Give it. You'd best run along to help your mam." He took the rag gingerly away from her since it was still steaming in the chill morning air.

"Careful and don't let it cool off."

"You could have brought us up some bread and cheese when you came," Cormac grumbled. He gave her his best attempt at a piteous look, but it worked poorly with the wry twist to his mouth.  

"If you want bread and cheese, you go down and tell my mam." She frowned at him, but then her round, freckled face lit up with a smile for Law. "Go ahead, Sir Law. You dinnae want to wait. It will only help while it's still hot."

Law smiled but he thrust his chin toward the door. "Not until you're gone, now shoo."

"You will use it?" she asked.

"I shall." He forced a smile over his gritted teeth, just anxious for her to leave. "Thank you, lass."

"You're welcome." With a glance over her shoulder, Anny left and the door closed behind her.

Law unfastened the laces of his tights and pushed down the one on his left leg. He rubbed a bit of the thick, numbing ointment on, and gave Cormac a look. Cormac had seen the ropy, red scars before, mangled by a lance during the Battle of Verneuil in France, but Law still didn't like showing them. But Cormac had taken out the deadly sharp sgian-achlais  he had taken to carrying in an armpit sheath and was cleaning his fingernails.

Law breathed out a soft snort. You could take off a finger with that knife but shook his head and quickly wrapped the steaming cloth around his thigh and sucked in his breath at the heat on the sensitive scars. He trained the day before with wardens of the burgh to keep himself in fighting fit, and now his bad leg felt like it was being ripped with a lance all over again. Even after these months, he missed his life before. It had been good, but in the end the battle lost him his lord, his rank, and his dearest friend. Now he had nothing but his armor in a bag, some worn clothes, and a limp. He still had a fading bruise that covered his forehead from when he was attacked a few weeks before by a mad friar. 

Cormac held out his hand, examining his nails closely. They were longer than most men's because the clàrsach that he favored was plucked with the fingernails.  "She's sweet on you, you ken." He seemed satisfied with the state of his nails and slid the blade away.

Law lived in a small room above a shabby tavern run by the girl's mother and father, although she was now old enough to do some of the serving. "She's still a wean," Law said. "What is she? Twelve?" Law grimaced at the heat from the cloth wrapped tightly around his leg. It hurt so that he could barely keep still, but it was beginning to ease the deep pain in his leg. He could feel the muscles unknotting as the heat seeped in. Though still a bit tight lipped, he said, "She'll soon find someone else to make doe eyes at. You, mayhap."

Cormac threw up his hands. "Not if I can help it. Her mam would have my hide and hers if she looked at a Hielander. Any road, soon enough they'll look for a sturdy burgher for her. Neither of us are such a prize."

He grunted. Cormac was right that he was no prize. A landless knight was never a sought after, and he even less than most. He might have been born into the small nobility from a family with ties to the great Douglas clan, but he had fallen as low as a knight could. He still had his gold spurs and his arms, but what good did that do him with a lame leg? He wasn't so bad looking, or so he'd some had told him even if it was at night in a hot embrace. He was taller than most men and lean and muscular with a full head of light brown hair, but a lord didn't take a knight into his service for his looks, but on how well they could fight. He might hold his own in a street brawl, but he would never be fit for battle again.

Cormac smoothed his red and white striped doublet and re-tied one of the green ribbons on his sleeve while Law unwrapped the cooled cloth from his leg and pulled his stocking up. He turned to look for his boots to find Cormac holding one and shaking his head over its worn state. "That's pathetic. Dinnae you ever buy new ones?"

"Give it here," Law said.

Cormac tossed the boot to him and turned to open the door. "I'd better find someone to pay for my songs," he called back. "Bidh mi 'gad fhaicinn." He ran down the rickety stairs.

"Aye, see you later, Cormac."

Law drew on the boot, found the other and followed Cormac down the stairs. The minstrel had disappeared although he'd be back later to play for the inn's customers. For now, the only people there were Anny sweeping the bare wood floor, Mall stirring a big pot that had a scent of thyme that must be for dinner, and Wulle talking to the only customer, a tall red-haired man named Andrew Bouquhen, a candle maker with a shop not far away.

There was barley bread and a big round of cheese on the long table that separated the room from the barrel of ale, so Law helped himself. Mall nodded, and he knew she'd add a chit to his tab for his room did not include meals. The he carried them to seat at the back of the inn. He put a sliver of cheese on a bit of the barley bread and chewed them. Simple but hearty and he was not going to complain. Besides, he was glad not to have any reason to go out. Here inside, the rich cheese and the soft crackle of the peat fire in the open hearth were as warm as a grandmother’s embrace. He chuckled at the thought. He must be getting soft.

Mall brought over a cup of ale. He was about  to take a swallow when he noticed a small, bow-legged man standing in the doorwas, picking bits of straw off his blue knitted cap.

"You're letting in the damp," Mall scolded.

The man closed the door, raised his blue knit cap to Law, and clapped it back on his head. “You’re Sir Law Kintour, are you?”

Law contemplated his half-finished piece of cheese, the fire and the cup of malty ale. He sighed. “Aye. What is it you need?”

“Mistress Elspeth Buchan said to fetch you, sir,” he said. “The maister has gone missing and she wants you to come right away. She’s that upset about it.”

The Winter Kill now available on Amazon

Thieves and the unsavory of Perth: All in a day’s work for lordless Sir Law Kentour…until a mysterious death in the midst of a Highland blizzard. When the sheriff of Perth demands that Sir Law show that the death was not an inconvenient murder, Law thinks this looks like an easy job. But circumstances seem to conspire against him, and another murder follows. Soon the King's chancellor becomes involved, making the mystery even more dangerous. Not only does the murder investigation keep running into brick walls, his friend Cormac plunges into danger; and Law again encounters the thief who has already been a thorn in his side. When answers start to emerge, Sir Law gets more than he bargained for…

The Winter Kill

A Medieval Mystery Novella

The Winter Kill now available on Amazon

Thieves and the unsavory of Perth: All in a day’s work for lordless Sir Law Kentour…until a mysterious death in the midst of a Highland blizzard. When the sheriff of Perth demands that Sir Law show that the death was not an inconvenient murder, Law thinks this looks like an easy job. But circumstances seem to conspire against him, and another murder follows. Soon the King's chancellor becomes involved, making the mystery even more dangerous. Not only does the murder investigation keep running into brick walls, his friend Cormac plunges into danger; and Law again encounters the thief who has already been a thorn in his side. When answers start to emerge, Sir Law gets more than he bargained for…

The Winter Kill

A Medieval Mystery Novella

The Winter Kill now available on Amazon

Thieves and the unsavory of Perth: All in a day’s work for lordless Sir Law Kentour…until a mysterious death in the midst of a Highland blizzard. When the sheriff of Perth demands that Sir Law show that the death was not an inconvenient murder, Law thinks this looks like an easy job. But circumstances seem to conspire against him, and another murder follows. Soon the King's chancellor becomes involved, making the mystery even more dangerous. Not only does the murder investigation keep running into brick walls, his friend Cormac plunges into danger; and Law again encounters the thief who has already been a thorn in his side. When answers start to emerge, Sir Law gets more than he bargained for…

The Winter Kill

A Medieval Mystery Novella

Celebrating a new novella!

The Winter Kill will be released on Monday, so I am celebrating by putting the first novel in the series free through Wednesday!

The Templar's Cross

Editing On

Hurrah! 

I just received the edit for The Winter Kill from my editor. I'm very pleased with how this novel is working out - finally. It was a tough one. Mysteries are harder than they look. I'll work on the edit for the next week and then it goes for a final proofread. So it looks on schedule for the July 25th release date!

It is now available on preorder on Amazon for only $2.99!

Winter Kill - Chapter One

This is still in rough draft form but gives you an idea of what is happening to Sir Law since the end of The Templar's Cross. The first draft is completed and it's now being edited. It will be published in January.

Winter Kill

One day after it was ended and over, Sir Law realized that he and Jannet Neyn Patrik Ross had trudged through the snow on the same day and perhaps at the same hour so many miles apart.  Wind had whipped both of them raw on that harsh Scottish November. But on that day, he had never heard of her or of the modest tower near which she died.

By the time he contemplated this quirk of fate, in his mind he could see it happen. Like an unseen watcher on a nearby mountain, he saw her grasping her fur-lined cloak as she rushed out the narrow doorway. There was a dark shape behind her as she ran down the path. Her hair was honey gold and whipped in the wind, entangling snowflakes in its strands. Her fair, narrow face and long neck gave her a look of vulnerability. She bent forward as she ran into swirling gusts of white, her expression that of a woman escaping headlong from hell. 

From his vantage point, he saw her look over her shoulder and saw her mouth open to scream. She ran until she struggled through the deep snow. He saw how it was done to her. She had no chance at all. He watched her go still, unmarked , sprawled on her back, snow covering her face like a shroud. Then there was only the howl of the wind.

The job was a stringy young man from Lothian named Richerd Ancraft. He had found a good position with at the house of the bishop of Dunkeld, running errands for the stewart, Nicholl of Annand. Now Nicholl believed that the young man was stealing small items, gloves and items of that ilk, to sell. They’d even searched him for contraband but found nothing. The stewart wanted the matter resolved quietly with no embarrassment to himself in front of the bishop, Robert de Cardeny. The beefy stewart had paled at the thought, muttering that the bishop was distant cousin to the king. Hiring a thief would make him look like a fool, but Richerd had been cunning enough not to get caught.

The bishop’s man had hired him for this because, he realized with bitterness, he looked enough like the rough workers that he would not be noticed amongst them. His natural skin tone was light but tanned from years in the sun.  His light hair was a bit ragged. His limp might make him look helpless but a closer look at his deep chest and wide shoulders might disabuse of the notion. He’d left his sword in his room at the inn since no workman would carry such a weapon, but the long dirk at his belt would serve as well. He’d try not to be seen, but if he was the quarry would not take him for one of the bishop’s well-liveried servants. That was a certainty.

Law had been detailed to catch the man red-handed so the stewart could pry himself loose with the minimum of awkwardness with his employer. So Law slipped out of his own room above the inn well before dawn. He wrapped his feet in an extra layer of cloth before stomping on his boots for winter had well set in. With luck the buildings would cut off the worst of the weather. With his heavy wool doublet and thick, dark cloak, even the chill should not keep him from his task. Sunrise was turning louring clouds to waves of pewter and slate. In the pewter of early day, a light fall of snowflakes blew in the wind. The narrow Cutlog Vennel through the middle of Perth had a smell of the wood carried through it to be milled covering a stench of piss as he slogged through the murk of pre-dawn. Law reached South Street and followed it almost to Watergate, a block down from the bishop’s house. He pressed his back to the wall, clapped his hands and rubbed them together. Already his fingertips felt number, but he pulled his cloak close, his hood up, and hoped the quarry left soon on his errand to the market as he did every week in the bishop’s all-male household. Law had to detect how the man sneaked goods out of the house without being caught.

The man was so intent on watching over his shoulder as he slipped from the bishop’s house that he didn’t even notice Law watching. When the man snuck out of sight around the corner of the house into the tiny alleyway, Law straightened and strolled in that direction. He slumped a bit and dragged his feet, a workman on his reluctant way to a day’s labor. In the alley, Richerd pushed an empty barrel against the wall, hopped onto it and reached over head to untie a bag hanging from a window by a rope. He jumped down, staggered, fumbling to keep it from dropping the loot onto the wet ground.

Law ran towards the culprit, sliding his dirk sliding out of his belt. He rammed his shoulder into the man’s side and slammed him into the wall. 

The youth gave a yelp. “Let me go!”

Law leaned into him, holding him against the wall with his shoulder and put the dirk to his neck. “I’ll have that bag. Now.”

“I… I… I’m the bishop’s man.” He gulped. “He’ll have your head”

Law snorted as he loosened his weight against Richerd enough to grab the bag from his grip.

The youth whimpered. “Let me go. I’ll pay you… everything that I have. Just let me go.”

He trapped the young thief against the wall again with his weight in order to sheath his dirk.  Then he jerked the trembling youth around, twisting his arm up behind his back. “Back in you go. The steward can deal with you.”

Law shoved the scrawny lad before him to the bishop’s door and gave it a kick since his hands were occupied. A man-at-arms opened the door where the steward waited, and Law shoved the young miscreant at them. He tossed the little bag of booty to the beaming steward. “Hanging out the window from a cord high enough overhead that no one would notice, especially in the half-dark.”

The steward opened the bag and shook his head. “This is what I needed to take him before the lord sheriff."

By this time Richerd was sniveling, tears dripping down his face and his nose running with snot. “You dinnae pay me enough to take care of my mam and four my sisters. And if I’m in a dungeon they’ll starve.”

“You should have thought of their starving before you stole from your master,” the steward snapped.

He counted out coins from his purse, five merks, as though each came out of his hide and dropped them into Law’s outstretched hand. 

At the door, Law glanced once over his shoulder at the pathetic scene. To think he’d once thought himself a feared knight. Now he defeated bawling youths.

He walked through whirling gusts of snow to the inn and slammed the door closed. When Cormac looked up from where he sat plucking his harp, Law gave him a glower and sat, back against the wall, to give Wulle, the innkeeper from whom he rented a room above, a motion to bring him a cup of ale.

Wulle looked at him thoughtfully. “What is chewing your arse? Did they nae pay you?”

“I’ve had too much of this kind of thing, as much as I can stand. The lad was sleekit thief, but…” He shook his head. “He was a sniveling lad, nothing more. I dinnae ken if his story of a starving mam was true, but I’m fed up to my neck with it. Is this the only way for me to keep from starving? There must be something that is worth doing.” He wondered what it would take to wash away the stink of six months of living hand to mouth, bullying petty thieves for merchants.

“A man does what he must to keep food in his belly.”

“That cannae be right, Wulle. There is many a thing I’d starve before I did. Bad leg or no, I’m a good hand with a sword and still have a mind that works. I’d put them to good use, but this kind of work sickens me.”

Wulle sat the horn cup of ale down in front of Law. “Drink that down. It’ll cure what ails you. And go down the vennel to Mother Dickson’s--” He winked. “—for a bit of bobbing before the snow is too deep to open the doors.”

Law looked up from staring into the dark ale to see Cormac give a wry tilt to his mouth. He shrugged and upended up cup, slurping it down. “I have to find something that makes me feel like my life isn’t a waste.”

He leaned his elbows on the rough wood table and tasted the malty brew, caught in a torment he could not define. He knew from a burning in his gut that he would not survive much longer as the same man if he didn’t find some meaning in his life again.  He needed prideful work that used his skills and his abilities. Once he had that and people who meant something to him to go with it. It was a bitter draught that he had had the life most men dreamed of, the gold spurs of a knight, a friend to hold his back who was company for long, lonely nights in camp, and a strong lord to follow into battle against their enemies. But all that had drained into the dirt with their life’s blood.

Law sighed. Thinking Wulle’s advice might do some good, he ignored Cormac’s smirk and banged out into the windy night. Two doors down in Mother Dickson’s whorehouse, he pointed to one of the three girls waiting for a customer. She was tall and lithe, her red hair slicked back into a braid. Mother Dickson brought him a drink. She held out her hand for the price of both so he dropped coins into her hand.

“I’m Jonet, you bonnie lad,” the woman he’d chosen said as she wrapped an arm through his.

Law forced a smile. He had long since outgrown being a lad but would enjoy himself if it killed him. “I’m Law.” He shared his cup with her and kept telling himself he was having a good time as she giggled close to his ear. He followed her up the rickety stairs to her cubby of a room and as soon as they were inside, she turned hard into his arms. Canting her body into him, she dug her nails into his back. For a moment it was fine, until in the darkness he smelled the blood of the battlefield and his comrade bleeding out at his feet. Bile surged up into his throat. He pushed her away and clumped down the stairs. The cure for his ails was not here.

“I’m nae good enough for you?” she shouted after him.

He stomped home, sharp snow-laden wind scouring his face. When the door banged closed behind him, Cormac gave a wry twist of his mouth over his harp, but the tune he wove turned melancholy. Wulle opened his mouth to comment and then backed off at Law’s glare. Law lost count of the cups of ale he poured down his throat before he stumbled up the rickety stairs to his rented chamber.