However, she had a great deal of help, since she managed to hire two more maids, a groom, a falconer (she decided Carlisle would want gerfalcons once he realized he had a man to train them), a huntsman (whom she immediately sent out to find game), and a wizened gatekeeper named Cameron MacTavish. Of course there was no gate for MacTavish to keep, since the outer stone walls that had once surrounded Castle Carlisle had long since crumbled. But Reggie had heard MacTavish tell such a glorious tale of jousting knights and their fair ladies at the kitchen table—where he had been offered a cup of tea, hot-from-the-oven butter biscuits, and a place to warm his bones—that she had begged him to stay and tell more stories. “I canna stay without worrrking for my hirrre,” the Scotsman said in his thick burr. “What can you do?” Reggie asked. “In days of old, when Scottish lairrrds lived in these castles, I was a gille-coise,” the old man said. “What is that?” Reggie asked, not recognizing the Scottish word.
