The two were tight-lipped about their reason for the abduction attempt until Alyn pointed out that, unless he spoke to the authorities on their behalf, the fine hospitality of the dungeon at Crief awaited them. This was, after all, Pictish territory, where Rome had never been welcome as friend or foe. And given yesterday’s turn of events, it was more dangerous than ever to outsiders.
“We were supposed to make certain that you traveled for the reasons you stated, not for Gwenhyfar,” Laol informed them. “Cassian suspected the queen of having more than one copy of the books.”
“But you were guarded at every turn,” Ennis complained. “First in the keep at Glenarden. Then by this Satan’s spawn.”
“The books belong in the Archbasilica in Rome,” Laol stated with as much indignation as the plump little man could muster, trussed as he was like a fowl bound for the cook’s pot. “With the pope … not with these pagans.”
Idwyr shook his necklace of bones at them. The poor priests blanched as white as the clouds spotting the blue morning sky. “Books, ye say. All this about books?” He turned to Alyn. “The Books of the Word?”
Alyn shook his head, fixing his attention on his Roman brethren. An attention that grew increasingly dark. “And you two expected to accomplish what by abducting my wife?”
“’Twas his idea,” Ennis said, jerking his head toward Brother Laol.
“My body was sore from all that riding and riding and riding,” his companion responded in defense. “And as our Cymri brother had pointed out, ’tis more risky than ever going deeper into this godforsaken land.”
“He,” Ennis said, “thought that if we took the lady, you might consider handing over the books.”
“Though we never meant her any harm,” Laol added hastily. “We didn’t know what to do when we came upon that cur.”
“We’d been watching for a chance to catch the lady alone and thought at first rise would present the best opportunity, but just as we were about to come out of hiding—”
“The villain stalked by us, quiet as a ghost, and grabbed her,” Laol finished for his partner.
Kella kept her eyes on the confessors rather than face the accusing glance she felt burning into her skin. Her husband was right to be angry.
Father, help me to be a more obedient wife. The kind to support such a good man as my—
Alyn exploded with a bellow. “Did it occur to you to help my wife?”
Kella gasped, clutching her hand to her chest. Even Idwyr jumped back a step.
“Are you men or mice of God? Are you even of God?” he challenged. Kella could see the veins at his temples bulging, as if about to burst.
“We are unaccustomed to violence,” Ennis said in a timid voice.
Laol nodded.
“Mice carrying crosses,” Alyn muttered in disgust. “We are supposed to be on the same side, not Arthur’s, not Modred’s, not Cassian’s. God’s!” He ran his hands over his temples as if in pain and stormed away.
“Brother Alyn!” Ennis called after him.
He pivoted with an abrupt “What?”
Never had Kella see Alyn like this. As if some beast had been loosed. One he struggled to control.
“We’ve told you everything we know,” the bolder of the two ventured. “Will you speak for us with the lord of Crief?”
For a moment, Alyn looked as if he might return and strike the man.
“In the name of Jesus, sir,” Laol added faintly.
’Twas Jesus’s name that made the beast in Alyn flinch. Alyn fingered the cross that hung about his neck, his lips moving faintly. Kella didn’t realize she held her breath until he spoke.
“Aye. Even mice can carry messages.”
Relieved, not only for the priests but for her husband, Kella hurried to catch up with him as he strode over to the fire where Brisen poured the medicinal tea.
“I’ve need of that tea, if you’ve any to spare, milady,” he told her. “Perhaps it will silence the devils gnawing on my mind.”
Devils? The word worried Kella as much as what she’d just witnessed.
Chapter Twenty-four
It was a perfect day for travel. Fair, warm … and without any further sign of trouble.
Alyn drove the cart past peaceful fields freshly turned and planted. Newborn calves followed their mothers about, nuzzling them for milk. Bees hovered near every blossom that colored the roadside.
But it was just a facade. Like a tapestry, it captured only the moment, only what the eye could see. Not all that transpired before or behind it.
Arthur, the golden champion of God, had apparently gone mad. Gwenhyfar, the queen of the holiest line of priests and priestesses, and Modred, the archbishop of the Celtic Church, conspired against the High King, at the least. They were adulterers—or worse—at the most.
Alyn had thought this mission, saving the Grail records that established the British church’s direct connection to God’s ordained kings and priests, might be a second chance at righting himself with God. Instead, he’d gone from feeling unworthy of serving the church to feeling the church was not worthy of serving.
“We’ve only a few miles to go,” Kella said, climbing onto the wagon bench from the back as he slowed the cart.
“Aye.” And if he were to remain a good husband, he’d take his wife away from this madness, not into it.
Ahead, a line of humanity waited to cross at the Bridge of Tay. It was definitely fair time. There were nobles and their ladies, warriors and clansmen in bright colors, some afoot or with wagons and carts. Alyn believed that the merchant caravan from Crief was the one now inching over the stone crossing that marked the divide between the river and the loch of the same name.
“Why so glum?” Next to him, Kella used her fingers to pull her mouth into an exaggerated frown.
“I could go on and on, but let’s settle for just today’s events. Someone is trying to kill the woman I love.”
Kella snuggled close, her arm going about his waist as she laid her head upon his shoulder. “He’s dead.”
Simple as that.
“His captain isn’t,” Alyn replied, giving up the unending trail of thought.
“Now, husband,” she cajoled, not without effect. “Jesus knows where the villain is. Like you told Idwyr, He sees all,” she reminded him with childlike conviction. “He may have already punished him.”
“Verily I say unto you, Whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little child, he shall not enter therein.”
God, I do thank You for saving her, Alyn apologized. I praise You for her renewed faith … but it nearly got her killed.
Alyn wanted to take Kella away from all this backstabbing to some remote glen like Brisen’s and just live and love. Once he made certain this captain would never threaten her again.
Vengeance—
I know vengeance is Yours, Lord, he argued against the teachings ingrained in his mind. But I want to send this man to the Other Side.
“Will we make it to the holy mount by dark?” Kella asked. Her face had turned a little pink while sleeping in the sun.
“If we’re not held up long here at the bridge.”
Though, with murder on his mind, Alyn shouldn’t go near the place.
If it was sacred. Little else he’d believed sacred was.
At the sound of horses approaching behind them, Alyn guided the cart to the side of the road to allow the mounted group to pass. Yet, while mounted parties might move ahead of cart and foot traffic on the road, they, too, would have to wait for the merchants to clear the bridge to pass.
“Make way for the king of Errol!”
With a gasp, Kella pivoted in her seat to watch as a herald rode by at the head of a color guard bearing banners marked with the emblem of a black falcon surrounded by an ornate border of blues and black.
Alyn grimaced. That ghost was all he needed. All she needed.
The king followed, head high, a tall, towering man with hawk-like nose and deep-set eyes. Time an
d the elements had etched character on his face. Alyn guessed him to be well past his thirtieth year, though a young queen rode behind him with her lady-in-waiting. Both were bedecked in finery with gold rings and torques that cast off the sunlight as though it were not good enough.
But what held Alyn’s attention most was the Errol lord’s long fair hair. ’Twas almost as white as the bleached horsetails streaming from the helmets of his warriors. His thin lips curled as his companion, perhaps a son or cousin given the likeness, leaned in and made an observation.
“Lorne!” Kella breathed the name as though a knife lodged in her heart.
Alyn gathered her tightly in his arms as she slumped against him. “’Tis his king … and kin,” he assured her. “And you were right.” Would that the kiss he planted atop her head wash away the memory forever. “His hair is the color of cornsilk.”
“Nay, nay …” She fisted her hands about the hem of her shirt as row after row of armed soldiers passed, riding two by two. “Do you think I don’t know the man who fathered this child?” She pulled away from him, her eyes flashing like a summer storm. “’Tis Lorne of Errol, and curse his soul, he’s not dead.”
Impossible. “Kella,” Alyn began, “Elkmar witnessed—” Elkmar, who abducted Cassian, turning traitor against Arthur. Captain Elkmar? The implication was staggering.
“He lied!” Kella rolled off the wagon bench and into the back onto the mattress where she’d napped earlier. Frantic, she dug through their stowed belongings.
“What’s happened?” Egan O’Toole drew close to the wagon astride one of the fine steeds delivered to Brisen that morning from the fortress stables.
Alyn handed the cart reins over to the Irishman at the sound of metal scraping from the bottom of the pile. A sword. Realizing the fury he’d seen in Kella’s eyes was about to be unleashed, Alyn swung over the bench in time to wrestle the short sword away his incensed wife.
“I’ll kill that—” she began.
Alyn kissed her. He could think of no other way to stop her from turning the entire Errol procession on them.
The brunt of scorn’s fire turned upon him. The sweet lips that had returned his affections only hours ago now cursed him in five languages, while her fist pummeled away at him. Just as he finally pinned her wrists, Kella jerked up her knee and nearly rendered him useless as a man. Alyn rolled away, inhaling her name with a gasp.
“I’ll kill the lying—ow!” she cried as he kicked the sword from her hand. The wounded look she gave Alyn ran him through.
“I’m sorry!” Did she even see him?
“I want his head on a stake!” Kella lunged for the weapon again.
Aware that they drew an audience, Alyn shouted, “’Tis a fit!”
And fell upon his wife again, from a safer angle. Faith, he’d rather wrestle Egan … anyone who wasn’t the woman he loved and with child.
“The child!” he muttered through clenched teeth as she pulled one hand free and scratched at his face. He caught her hand, forcing it to the mattress … or what was left of it. Her feet flailed the heather stuffings everywhere. “Think of the baby.”
A hint of understanding flickered in Kella’s wild eyes as they settled upon his face.
“The baby,” he repeated hoarsely. “We must protect the baby.”
“Alyn.” Kella spoke as if she just now recognized him.
“I’m here, my love. For you and our child.”
The fight went out of Kella as fast as it had come.…
And into Egan O’Toole. “Never ye mind, lassie,” the big Irishman said, grim as death. “I’ll kill the traitor for ye meself.”
Fortunately, Egan’s anger built more slowly than his daughter’s. The sight of Errol’s troops had cracked the dam that had held back the memory of his identity.
The troops from Errol had crossed the bridge and were well on their way to Fortingall’s fairground by the time Egan revealed how Lorne of Errol had led Strighlagh’s border guard in chase of the raiders into a narrow, wooded pass against Egan’s advice. There, the blue, black, and white of Errol’s small contingent melted into the wood, and all the Miathi in the world came out of it, swarming behind the Strighlagh guard to prevent its retreat, while its prey turned back on them as predator.
Egan recalled being struck down. But how he came to Brisen, he attributed to God. “Sent me to an angel, He did.”
By then Alyn and his motley assembly were on the other side of the Tay, and Errol’s contingent was nowhere in sight. The group stopped the wagon long enough to purchase fresh bread and cheese at the village. There the last piece of the puzzle fell into place. The young woman who followed the king and prince of Errol was not the queen of Errol, but Lorne’s new bride, Morgana. Daughter of Modred.
Though Alyn already suspected it, Kella was the first to say it.
“The captain who sent assassins after me is Elkmar.”
After all, Kella wasn’t the type of woman to take a lover’s lies lightly and accept the lot he left her. The champion’s daughter would fight for the truth.
That made two men Alyn truly wanted to kill. Unless Egan got to them first.
Lorne of Errol, the man she’d loved—or believed she’d loved—was married to a princess. Kella had not given herself to love, but to a lie. And, though God forgave her, Kella could not forgive the man who had willfully done this to her. It was so clear now. Lorne always looked for a chance to spend time with her and Gwenhyfar. The queen’s well-being and thoughts were utmost on his mind … or, rather, his benefactor Modred’s.
Kella wanted the father of her child dead, his poisonous influence ended. Perhaps then this madness Lorne had infected her with would end. The venom that surged through her at the sight of Lorne, healthy and happy—after all she’d been through for his sake—had made her snap. Turn against the one man she really loved—Alyn. Not because he set her fancy free beneath the moonlight, though he was most capable of that. But because he’d shown her what unconditional love was. Loved her when she was not lovable. When she’d scratched his face and screamed her rage at him.
Now she was adamant. Her baby, girl or boy, would never know anyone but the noble, generous, forgiving father God had sent.
The sight of Mons Seion rising gently beyond the glenside village of Llanarch at sunset not only robbed Kella of her breath, but of the vicious revenge weaving through her thoughts, as though dark thoughts were not allowed in such a holy place. An ethereal mantle of pink and blue clouds tucked about the ancient, timeworn mountain, so that where they ended and the soft rock grays and verdant greens of Seion itself started was hard to tell.
Even the village seemed otherworldly, as if untouched by the woes that had plagued the weary travelers on their journey. Though not a monastery, it was a holy community where people gathered at night around a great yew, said to be the offspring of the Giant’s tree in Fortingall. An inn called the Upper Room offered a welcome quote from Jesus painted on its tall gable: “Come unto Me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.”
Kella and her traveling companions waited there while a servant went to fetch Mairead, abbess of the sisters of Mons Seion. Soon the genealogies would be safe among other secrets of the ages.
God was no stranger here. Tradition said that the Holy Mother’s grandparents had been born here, while the Arimathean family established a metals trade in the islands, long before Jesus’s birth. Some said Pontius Pilate was born or educated in these hills when his father, a Roman general, served in Fortingall.
Then there were stories the innkeeper was more fond of. Those of the ancient ones called Giants, who first discovered the healing properties of the holy mount and its springs. Those folks burrowed underground, becoming the fairies of Schiehallion, when the first Jews arrived prior to Christ.
While the men favored ale, Kella washed down the dust of the road with a lovely blend of tea that seemed to seek out and soothe every muscle and joint stiff from the hours of riding. And even t
hough she’d had bread and cheese from the Bridge of Tay, the sticky honey cakes the innkeeper put out for them were so tempting that she ate two.
The innkeeper’s wife kept a wary eye on Idwyr and his two warriors, while the innkeeper himself held his audience captive by passing along tales about the mountain. “Some call it Schiehallion, fairy hill of the Caledonians,” he said in a melodic voice that reminded Kella of a bard … or priest.
She sought the hand of her own beloved priest and felt it wrap about hers.
“Once home o’ the gods,” the innkeeper continued. “Not that we’ve seen a god or fairy in all our years here.” He chuckled.
“Nay, but they been here.” Idwyr moved a lamp over a plaster wall, squinting at tiny specks that caught the light and held it.
“’Tis a special blend of ground glass mixed in the daub,” the man informed the wizard. “A secret passed down by the God cult who mined the mountain.”
“God cult?” Alyn repeated. “You mean the Culdees. They were Jews akin to John the Baptist, hermits who baptized with water and prepared the way before Christ Himself appeared.”
Idwyr perked up. “Jesus?”
“Now what would the likes of you know about Jesus?” the innkeeper’s wife asked. There was no condemnation in demeanor. Simply a wary curiosity.
“We see eye ta eye, Jesus ’n’ me. Like that.” The wizard held up two fingers pressed together.
With no idea what to make of Idwyr, the goodwife fetched a bucket and began to scrub the tables, though they were already rubbed smooth and clean.
At that moment, the door of the inn opened. The servant who’d left earlier returned leading a cloaked and hooded female. The room went silent. Even Brisen and Kella’s father, who were engaged in an intense conversation in the corner, quieted. Not even Mons Seion had calmed the storm of revenge brewing in Egan’s chest.
“Blessed be, it is good to see that you finally arrived,” Mairead said. “I welcome all the friends of Gwenhyfar.”
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