She knew she should have expected what she was seeing, yet it took her aback. Edinburgh was swarming with French soldiers.They swaggered down the snow-packed High Street. They strolled out of taverns. They regarded her with blatant interest as she trotted past them. Their wolfish looks gave her a shiver, for she was riding all alone. Two of Knox’s men had ridden with her from Stirling, but the French patrolled the countryside and the closer she and her escort had got to Edinburgh, the more she had worried they would be stopped and questioned. She had a legitimate reason for coming—to visit her husband—but Knox’s men had none. So, at the outskirts of the city she had sent them back to Stirling. She would not have the deaths of two more good men on her conscience.Snow had been falling for the last few hours, shrouding the road and trees and the hovels of the poor in a ghostly silence. Dampness had soaked through Isabel’s cloak at the shoulders and seeped through her leather gloves, leaving her wet and cold to the bone, and trying to tamp down her alarm as she trotted past a crowd of soldiers lounging beside Edinburgh’s tollhouse.
