Enchanted
Page 37
We chased the ruins over roads that got more and more narrow until we came to a Scottish National Trust site. The site was closed for the season. But the ruins were there for all to see—and photograph.
While Evan set off to read the historical plaques, I started taking pictures. After a few minutes, Evan called to me in an odd voice and waved me over to where he was. When I got there, he simply pointed to the plaque. The magnificent red ruins were of a castle called Caerlaverock [Meadowlark’s Nest], which had been built in the twelfth century.
The castle had been the Maxwell Clan stronghold.
Evan and I were stunned by the coincidence of time and place and us. We hadn’t been seeking family landscapes in Scotland; we hadn’t even known they existed. Yet here we were in Caerlaverock…
When we finally left the castle, we were full of questions. We collared one of the locals in a pub. He told us there was a place called Maxwellton [Maxwell Town], near Dumfries. There was a museum there devoted to Maxwell Clan history.
We went to the museum. While Evan admired the assortment of weapons and armor, I wandered off to look around. There was a map of all the clans. The Charteris Clan was there, too, a tiny little fingernail clinging to the edge of the Maxwells’ vast lands.
Beneath the portrait of a fierce-looking Maxwell was a short history of the clan. Soon after I started reading, I was laughing out loud. Evan came over, wondering what was wrong with me.
When he started reading, he discovered what I already had: the Maxwells were a Norman warrior clan that had fought on the wrong side of every major battle after 1066…including the Spanish Armada. Three times an English king took Caerlaverock after a very long siege, pulled down the castle, and stripped the Maxwells of titles and lands. Three times an English king was forced to give back the lands, the titles, and the castle to the Maxwells, so that the clan could guard the western approach to Britain.
The fourth time Caerlaverock was pulled down, it stayed in ruins. The lands and titles were given back to the Maxwells, but not the right to “crenellate” (build a castle).
The Maxwells were contrarians to a man.
And nothing much has changed in nine centuries.
Evan led me away from lost battles to the museum’s archives. There he pointed to several huge, leather-bound volumes. The books were Maxwell family genealogies compiled in the nineteenth century. Intrigued, I began leafing through them.
The longer I looked, the more silent I became. Each page I turned took me farther back in time; and on those yellowed pages I saw again and again a name from my own American childhood: Charters.
From the first moment I had seen Evan in California in 1963, I felt that I knew him in some impossible way. He had felt the same. Now we understood why.
Maxwells and Charters have been marrying one another for nine hundred years.
When I looked up from the ancient genealogies into the green eyes of my very modern warrior, I knew that I would write medieval romances.
And I have.
—Ann Maxwell (a.k.a. Elizabeth Lowell)
About the Author
ELIZABETH LOWELL’s acclaimed suspense novels include the New York Times bestsellers The Color of Death, Die in Plain Sight, Moving Target, Running Scared, and four books featuring the Donovan family, Amber Beach, Jade Island, Pearl Cove, and Midnight in Ruby Bayou. Lowell has more than thirty million books in print. She lives in Seattle, Washington, with her husband, with whom she writes mystery novels under a pseudonym. Visit her website at www.elizabethlowell.com.
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By Elizabeth Lowell
DEATH IS FOREVER • ALWAYS TIME TO DIE
THE COLOR OF DEATH • DIE IN PLAIN SIGHT
RUNNING SCARED • MOVING TARGET
MIDNIGHT IN RUBY BAYOU • PEARL COVE
JADE ISLAND • AMBER BEACH
WINTER FIRE • AUTUMN LOVER
ENCHANTED • FORBIDDEN • UNTAMED
ONLY LOVE • ONLY YOU
ONLY MINE • ONLY HIS
EDEN BURNING • THIS TIME LOVE
BEAUTIFUL DREAMER • REMEMBER SUMMER
DESERT RAIN • WHERE THE HEART IS
TO THE ENDS OF THE EARTH • LOVER IN THE ROUGH
A WOMAN WITHOUT LIES • FORGET ME NOT
Copyright
ENCHANTED is an original publication of Avon Books. This work has never before appeared in book form. This work is a novel. Any similarity to actual persons or events is purely coincidental.
ENCHANTED. Copyright © 1994 by Two of a Kind, Inc. Published by arrangement with the author. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
Mobipocket Reader May 2006 ISBN 0-06-118990-1
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 93-91030
ISBN: 0-38-77257-4
20 19 18 17
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