by Lynne Jonell
Neil Gointe Stewart shrugged and made a gesture with one hand. The armed men stood back to let Sir Robert pass out of the cell.
One guard went up the narrow, steep steps. Sir Robert followed, moving stiffly, and with another guard at his back. Last of all, Neil Gointe Stewart swept the dungeon with his cold gaze. For the briefest of moments, his eyes seemed to look directly into Will’s. Then he turned to speak to the hairy-faced man.
“I think that’s the dungeon guard,” Nan whispered.
“Shh! I want to hear what they’re saying.”
The guard jerked his head at something beyond Will’s field of vision. Neil Gointe Stewart grinned on one side of his mouth, like a dog snarling. “No, we’ll leave him there for now. He’s got parents in France; we might get a ransom out of them.” He chuckled. “Anyway, I hear that the other lad—the one Sir Robert had at the castle all this time—went missing the night of the fire.”
“Should I search for him?” The guard’s feet scraped on the floor, as if impatient to get moving. “There are woods and caves where a lad could hide. I could smoke him out.”
“Perhaps.” The Stewart laird tapped his fingers together again, as if thinking. “One or the other of them must be the real nephew. We’ll find out. There are ways.”
“What will you do with the false one?” the guard asked eagerly.
The laird laughed softly. “Garth Castle has a high parapet, and it’s a long way to the gorge below. I don’t think it will be hard to get rid of one small lad, when the time comes.”
Jamie’s hand gripped his brother’s shoulder convulsively.
Will could not recall ever hating anyone as much as he hated Neil Gointe Stewart. He watched grimly as the Stewart laird mounted the stairs, followed by the guard. When the door banged shut at the top of the stairs, Will moved slowly out of Sir Robert’s cell and then turned, keeping his focus.
The window to the past showed another wooden door. Will moved forward and shifted his focus slightly, and the door melted away to show a boy.
He lay on a dirty mattress atop a rough wooden bench. Bits of straw stuck out here and there from the ticking. His face was turned toward the dim light that shone palely through an arrow slit high above, and his arms were folded about himself. He looked like a grubbier, more hopeless version of Jamie, and Will felt a lump rise in his throat.
“Still think we should let someone else rescue him?” Will whispered to Nan.
“Hold your whisht, will you?” Nan wiped the back of her hand across her eyes. “Of course we have to get the poor wee lad. I’ll do it; you hold the window open for me.”
But Jamie had already scrambled through.
“Oh, brilliant,” Nan muttered. “Now I have to bring two of them back.”
“Quick, Nan,” said Will tensely.
Nan lifted her foot to follow Jamie, but suddenly a small shape scuttled across the wine cellar floor and ran over her foot. She shrieked and fell backward, knocking Will sideways. The window snapped shut.
“What did you do that for?” Will shouted.
“It was a mouse!” Nan said hotly. “I’d like to see you hold still if one ran across your foot!”
The door at the top of the stairs opened. “Is everyone all right down there?” Cousin Elspeth’s voice floated down. “Only I heard shouting.”
Will and Nan stared guiltily at each other.
“We’re fine, Mum,” Nan called up. “We’re just playacting.”
“Are you sure? Maybe you’d better send Jamie up to me.”
Nan opened her mouth and shut it again, like a fish. She looked at Will.
Will never knew where the words came from, but suddenly he found himself speaking. “We’re reenacting history, Cousin Elspeth. Jamie is locked in a cell, and he wants us to rescue him. Can we have a few more minutes?” He moved to the bottom of the stairs and produced what he hoped looked like a carefree grin.
Nan’s mother chuckled. “All right, then. Far be it from me to discourage an interest in Scottish history!”
“Oh, well done,” breathed Nan.
Will didn’t waste any more words. His brother was back in Sir Robert’s time, locked in the dungeon at Garth Castle; seconds counted. He stared into the middle distance and concentrated. He couldn’t mess this up.
“Hurry,” said Nan. “What if another whole year goes by, like before?”
“It won’t,” Will said shortly. “I’m getting so I can find the exact time—almost.” He swallowed. It was that almost that had him worried.
“But what if the guard comes back before you get there?” Nan whispered. “What if he looks in the cell and sees there are two boys?”
The air, which had begun to shimmer, went flat at Will’s anguished jerk. He turned on his cousin and shook her by the shoulders. “Stop saying that!”
Nan’s face crumpled. “Don’t be such a bampot. I’m worried about Jamie, too.”
“Talking about it isn’t going to do any good,” Will said, his own face scrunched with the effort to keep himself steady. “I know it could happen, do you think I’m stupid? I’m better at Time Sight now, but it’s hard to get the exact moment, and if I’m too late—or if a whole year goes by, like before—”
“Then you just try again and go back a little earlier,” Nan said in a soothing tone.
“But I can’t go back earlier. Not once I’ve been there. There’s this grayness there, remember? It won’t let me live the same time over again.” Will’s voice broke.
“Okay,” said Nan, “but what if you just open a window, and look? If you just look, and see that it’s too late, it won’t count as living the time, right? I’m pretty sure you can still open a window to an earlier time, it just makes sense—”
“You don’t know that!” Will said in a whisper so fierce it was almost a shout. “We don’t understand how Time Sight works, not really. We’re playing around with something as dangerous as lightning, and I don’t know all the rules, and I’m scared!” He scrubbed at his eyes furiously. “Go ahead, call me a chicken like you did before, I don’t care! It makes sense to be scared sometimes! And I can’t do anything to rescue my mother or help my dad, but I can try to get Jamie back, so will you just shut up and let me do it?”
Nan’s eyes were wide, and her mouth was a small, round shape, slightly open.
Will pressed his fists to his chin to hold it steady. “If I don’t get the time right,” he whispered, “if the guard has already come back and seen the two boys and brought them to Neil Gointe Stewart—oh, God.” Will shut his eyes, and a small, keening note came from him, like a bird singing sorrow, or an animal with a wound.
Nan put a timid hand on his arm. “I’m sorry I called you a feartie chicken. I think you’ve been really brave all along.”
Will gulped, shook himself like a dog coming out of water, and took a deep breath.
“Vil God I Sal,” said Nan, patting his arm.
Will nodded. He breathed in deeply. His head ached and his eyes were hot, but he had a job to do, he was a Menzies, his brother was waiting. His thoughts swarmed and rose like a cloud of buzzing insects. Vil God I Sal, he repeated in his mind, and the buzzing swarm subsided. He gazed into the middle distance, relaxed his focus until the air changed and moved, found a thread, and followed it. Inside himself he became aware of a still point of calm, a strength that flowed in from somewhere else, a clear path to his goal if only the window would open now.…
It opened on a boy very like Jamie, but thin, terribly thin and dirty, as if he had been ill-treated for a very long time. Will’s heart seemed to stop in his chest. He lunged through the window, forgetting about Nan, forgetting everything but the need to get to his brother—
Jamie popped up from a shadowy corner of the cell, his round face beaming. “What took you so long? I had time to teach James all the verses to ‘Flower of Scotland’!”
* * *
Will sat in a corner of the cell with closed eyes, half listening as Jamie talked on and on
. Will’s other ear was cocked for any noise outside the cell that would signal the guard’s return. If only he would stay away just a few more minutes. He wanted to rest his eyes, and they had to get James to trust them enough to step through the time window.
“—and so James thought it was witchcraft at first,” Jamie was saying eagerly.
“But then he told me he was an angel.” James, the real nephew, looked doubtfully at Will. “You keep your wings hidden, mayhap?” he added politely.
“I said we were like angels,” Jamie corrected. “Angels are helpers; I learned that in the Menzies kirk, and we’re here to help you.”
“The Menzies kirk?” said the boy slowly. “You are not Stewart children, then?”
Will shook his head. “I’m William Menzies. This is Jamie—James Menzies. We’re your … cousins. Distant ones.”
The boy rubbed his forehead. “My name is James Menzies, too.”
“We know that already,” Jamie said.
Will put a hand on the boy’s shoulder. “Listen, James,” he said. “We’re going to get you out of here. Just do what we say, all right?”
The boy looked at them from beneath straight brows. “Be you honest men?”
“Well, honest, anyway,” said Will. “Now, listen. I’m going to open this sort of door in the air, and I want you to walk through. We’re taking you to your uncle, Sir Robert.”
The dim light shone on the boy’s uncertain frown. “My uncle does not want me. If he did, he would have rescued me long since.”
Will gripped the boy’s shoulders. “Sir Robert does want you. We’ll explain later. But for now, you’ve got to trust us. Will you do what we tell you, no matter what?”
The boy lifted his chin. He was so like Jamie, and yet there was something different about him, too. He looked as if he had suffered, and been alone, for far too long a time. But still—“I am a Menzies,” he said. “Vil God I Sal.”
“Good lad,” Will whispered. “Hold on to my shoulder and don’t be afraid.”
The air glimmered like a pearl seen through water. Will searched, gently, for the right moment. He was close.… He sensed the familiar tracks of their passage through time—
There came a muffled thud from somewhere outside the cell and a clatter of boots on stone. Jamie gasped.
The wavering air opened onto a stone cellar stocked with bottles of wine. “Okay, Jamie,” Will breathed. “Go through, and don’t make noise.”
“But I don’t see Nan!” Jamie whispered.
“It doesn’t matter.” Will fought to keep a steady focus. “You have to get out now.”
Jamie cast a frightened look behind him and dived through.
That was one safe. “You next, James,” said Will, very low.
Sir Robert’s nephew stood as if in a trance, staring at the time window. Then he turned his head, listening.
“The laird wants the lad brought up?” said a voice outside the cell.
“Aye.” There was a clinking sound, as if keys were being pulled from a belt. “Sir Robert’s men came to escort him home, see? Then they told him that his nephew disappeared the night of the fire and hasn’t been seen since. So Sir Robert changed his mind. He wants to see this lad we’ve been keeping safe for him, after all.”
Will’s heart beat against his ribs. “Now, James!”
“But—my uncle wishes to see me! You heard it! Surely I should let the guards take me to him?”
Sweat broke out on Will’s forehead. He could walk through the time window right now and be safe. He could leave James behind, and the guards would take him to Sir Robert.
But did James look enough like Jamie? Would Sir Robert believe he was his real nephew? Unlikely, when James wouldn’t be able to answer the simplest question about anything that had happened at the castle in the past year.
And after Sir Robert rode away, what would Neil Gointe Stewart do to James then?
The metal key made a snick as it was inserted into the lock.
There was no time to argue. “Do you trust Neil Gointe Stewart?” Will asked. “Or me? Choose!”
James bit his lip. He stared up at Will, trembling.
“Vil God,” Will whispered as the key turned in the lock.
James plunged forward blindly. “I Sal!”
The heavy door swung open. There was a shout. Will sensed a burly shape coming at him from the side.
James’s heels cleared the window. Will sprang after him. Something grabbed at his foot, but he kicked, hard, and heard a bellow of rage. There was a sudden flash to one side, as of reflected light, and then the bellow cut off as the window snapped shut. Will stumbled forward onto a cold stone floor, and something bounced behind him with a metallic clatter.
“There you are!” Nan cried, rushing forward. “I’ve been standing at the bottom of the stairs—my mum’s been calling—”
Jamie picked up a shard of metal off the floor. “It’s the tip of a sword,” he said breathlessly. “You almost got stabbed.”
Will couldn’t speak. His head rang and his eyes burned, but something fizzed through his veins like soda pop as he saw the others safe around him.
He had done it. He had stolen back what Neil Gointe Stewart had taken. He only wished he could see the laird’s ferret face when he heard that little James Menzies had escaped from a locked cell.
“And who are you?” demanded the caretaker of Garth Castle, staring at the oddly dressed small boy who tagged after Will, Nan, and Jamie.
They had made it up the stairs and out of the castle before being spotted. The grown-ups were talking around the corner, though, and before the children knew it, they had blundered straight into them.
“He’s a friend of mine,” Nan said at once. She smiled at the caretaker. Then she aimed the Dimple at her parents. “Can we give him a ride to Castle Menzies? Please?”
“But what’s he doing here? He’s too young to be on his own,” Cousin Elspeth protested. “And he looks terribly tired.”
“He got lost from his—er, group. He needs to find his uncle. And Castle Menzies is the meeting point. Right?” she said, turning to James.
James nodded, his eyes widening as he took in the modern clothing, the cars in the driveway. “My uncle, Sir Robert, the Laird of Weem, is at the castle, and I must go there without delay.”
Cousin Ewen chuckled. “You’re another young reenactor, I see. But your clothes look a little ragged for the nephew of a laird. Well, climb in, all. We’ll make some phone calls and get it all straightened out when we get to the castle.”
But they did not get far before the car gave a sudden lurch. James, who had said little but was staring at everything with awe, clutched the edge of the seat and went pale.
Cousin Ewen said something under his breath as the car bumped unevenly to a pullout at the side of the narrow road. “Got to change a blasted tire,” he muttered, rummaging in the boot for his jack and spare. “Get out, all of you—run around, stretch your legs. This will take a while.”
“Don’t go out of sight, though,” Nan’s mother warned.
Cousin Ewen sweated and strained; Cousin Elspeth hovered around, giving advice; the children walked down a hedgerow full of ripening gooseberries. James went slowly, on shaky legs.
“This is joy,” he said fervently, lifting his pale face to the sun. “The Stewarts scarce let me outside—only under guard, for an hour at a time. And these berries! I haven’t tasted gooseberries for a year.” He popped one in his mouth and began to hum the song Jamie had taught him, an expression of bliss on his face.
“You’ll get lots of berries when we get you back to Castle Menzies and Sir Robert,” said Jamie earnestly. “Cook makes the best gooseberry tarts ever.” He put three in his mouth, and his cheeks distended like a chipmunk’s.
James stopped humming, and his face took on a look of uncertainty. “Are you sure that my uncle wants me? He did not pay the ransom to get me out.”
“He would have,” Jamie said indistinctly through a mou
th full of gooseberries, “but he already had a boy at the castle he thought was his nephew. So when the Stewarts said they had you in their dungeon, he thought they were lying.”
James frowned. “This false boy, who was he? I must smite him!”
“It was a mistake!” The red mounted in Jamie’s cheeks. “I was the one Sir Robert thought was you. I looked like you, see, and he hadn’t seen you for a long time. Go ahead and smite me if you want, but I’m going to hit you back if you do.”
James stared hard at Jamie. “I thought you were an angel. Why did you not tell him you weren’t his real nephew?”
“I did try. I told him and told him. But he told me I was—um—befuddled, because the Stewarts had hit me in the head.”
James frowned. “So he still thinks you are his real nephew?”
“Probably.” Jamie kicked a little at the earth.
“Well, then.” James shrugged as if he didn’t really care—but he turned his face away. “I do not know where I should go if my uncle won’t have me.”
“He might, though.” Will put his hands on the boys’ shoulders and stood them side by side. “What do you think?” he said to Nan.
“They’re the same size,” said Nan. “The hair’s the same color. And their faces—well, they do look a lot alike.”
“They could be brothers,” said Will thoughtfully. “Except that one of them looks like he’s been half-starved and locked up for way too long.”
Nan chewed on her lower lip. “Maybe Sir Robert will think that’s the reason for the difference—that he was held captive for all the months since the fire. That would change anyone.”
Will nodded. “You won’t remember anything they’d expect you to remember from the past year,” he told James, “but maybe they will think you’re in shock or something.”
“I can tell you some of the things you should know.” Jamie began to talk eagerly as James listened, nodding.