by Unknown
That thought garnered a glance between two of the younger looking guards. Not that they would actually do anything to stop the execution.
The leader threw the unlocked door open. It squeaked on untended hinges. He trudged in with his keys. “No matter. You were kept right here with the chain at your neck.” He drew out a thick rope and bound Ewan’s wrists behind his back. The other guards crowded in, their short swords drawn in case he attacked. “When was the last time you ate or drank, Scot?” he asked as he unlocked the collar at the back of Ewan’s neck.
“That depends?” Ewan said low, relishing the feel of the heavy weight off his shoulders. He shrugged to loosen the tight muscles there.
“Depends?” The guard stilled.
“Aye,” Ewan said, “do ye mean the rancid food ye brought the first three days or the rats that don’t move quick enough to escape a trapped Highlander?”
One of the guards made a hitching sound on an exhale. Ewan grinned at him, showing his teeth. The guard swore beneath his breath.
“Enough talk,” the leader said and shoved Ewan’s shoulder to get him moving.
They stepped out into the cool morning mist. Even with the dull light, the dawn pierced Ewan’s eyes, making him blink. Lord help the men left back in that hole.
He stumbled on purpose, bending his shoulders and shuffling more than necessary. Let the bloody guards think the edict of no food and water had weakened him.
Be ready. The words repeated through his mind. Though he bowed his head in defeat, his gaze shifted, searching the area, searching the wall walk, but all he saw were more guards.
The guards prodded him out the gates that he and Dory had once walked through. At the memory his chest tightened. She’d played through his mind over the many hours of darkness, every word, every touch, every unguarded response. She hadn’t loved him, wouldn’t miss him after she let go of the guilt she felt.
Ewan walked, stumbling occasionally to slow his progress, through a parting in the rather generous crowd of commoners despite the early hour. He scanned the faces on each side, but saw no one he recognized. He stepped up to the platform where a hooded man held a noose. The leader of the guards unrolled the same parchment.
“Ewan Brody of Scotland, you have been found guilty of treasonous activity by conspiring to kill our majesty, King Henry. You will be hung until dead, then your entrails removed and your head placed on a pike before London Tower until your carcass is picked clean by scavengers.”
“Bloody lovely,” he said and glanced from his periphery, but all he saw outside the unfamiliar crowd was a hooded woman dash up to the scene at the back. For a second his breath stopped until he saw a thin strand of brown peak out around a round face. A stranger. Dory was gone—really gone—forever.
“What do you have to say for yourself?” the guard asked as the executioner approached.
He held the noose open, but there was no way in hell Ewan would voluntarily slide his head through.
“Aye, I would like to say a bit.” He needed to stall, stall and think. “I once loved,” he started. “Only once.” The lever that would drop the floor out from under him sat directly to his right while the executioner came from the left.
“She is young and bonny, but even more, she doesn’t adhere to the rules.” He grinned as he realized it was true. “I once thought that I didn’t need to bind myself to a lass, didn’t want to be hindered by the responsibility of loving someone.”
The entire crowd had quieted, hanging on his words. Perhaps they didn’t often hear the condemned speak words of love.
“But I was wrong.” He smiled, though it was tainted with regret. He shifted his weight, using the change in his tone to move closer to the lever. Then whistled, long and shrill, and shook his head. “Aye, I was wrong.”
Movement alongside the wall to the left caught his attention. Gaoth! He smiled broadly. A hooded man jogged up beside his horse, a fluffy dog with him. Maggie! The man had to be Searc.
“How were you wrong?” a woman yelled up and a dozen echoed the question. Executions were quite popular and the more dramatic the scene, the fonder the crowd became of the doomed. Though he’d never heard of a crowd stopping an execution.
The guard huffed and walked in a tight little circle just on the other side of the executioner.
“I was wrong because I thought love was just a hindrance, a fodder for romantic poems. That it wearies a man.” He shook his head. “’Tis just the opposite. Real love strengthens.” Unless you throw it away, he thought. Then loves becomes lethal.
“Love is sharp and hot and often times quite uncomfortable.” The men on the front row chuckled loudly. One hit another on the shoulder. A series of chuckles resounded through the shifting sea of people about twenty rows deep.
He dropped his head forward in a defeated nod. “Aye, but if ye survive its sting, ye grow stronger in its embrace.”
One lady dabbed at her eyes with the hem of her apron. The lady in the cape at the rear pushed forward a few steps and cried out.
“Lord, do not leave me!” Her hood slid from her head and she turned wet cheeks up toward him. “Your heart is full of love, not death, not treason!”
Ewan had never seen her before. He stared, unsure what was to happen, though he remained as ready as he could. She screamed then and hurled herself forward. At some signal from Searc, Maggie started barking and jumping. Ewan whistled and she took off, veering straight toward him, scattering people. No one seemed to know what to do and the guards jumped down from the platform. Even the executioner stared out at the spectacle.
At the same time the woman took off running, Ewan heard the familiar twang of a flying arrow as it caught the wind in its feathers. Whump. The arrow hit the executioner’s gloved hand, piercing him and slicing the noose into one long rope.
Ewan stepped to the right and pressed the lever forward. As he fell, he leaned forward with bent knees to stay upright with his hands still tied. Landing in a crouch, he ran bowed over under the scaffold where Maggie met him, licking his chin.
“What a good lassie,” Ewan breathed. “Go now, back to Searc. Go!”
Maggie took off and Ewan straightened to find Gaoth already on his way.
Guards yelled but their orders were lost in the guttural calls from the commoners, several of whom seemed familiar despite their hoods.
“Stad!” Caden yelled behind him, catching his wrists and slicing through the rope. “Saorsa! Siuthad!” he urged but Ewan didn’t need any encouragement to grab his freedom. “Iar,” Caden said low just as Ewan swung up onto Gaoth. West?
Ewan raced along the waterfront, dodging vendors, guards, and commoners as he got his bearings from the rising sun behind him. Around two more bends he slowed enough to hear horses in pursuit, but a glance over his shoulder brought a smile. Donald and Caden, along with Gavin, Searc, and Alec Munro. He turned forward and laid low over Gaoth’s neck. Be ready. Och, he was good and ready to put London behind him.
Chapter Sixteen
7 October of the Year our Lord God, 1518
Dearest Kat,
Tell me you are well. John is frantic that you have left, and so heavy with child. He swears you have been taken against your will.
Answer me quickly that he is just a fool, and you are home safe. I will ride out if you do not reply immediately. What, my darling, will I do if I lose you?
My everlasting devotion,
Rowland
“Come along, Dory,” Will called. Dory watched him finger the satin of the dress Captain Bart had brought back from Adela’s when they’d been in port months ago. She’d never taken a serious look at it before, but now it laid spread over a chair near her hammock.
“Captain says we’ll make port in a fortnight, a week if you blow us along.”
A fortnight or a week? What did it matter? Nothing seemed to matter, not since the Tower, not since the searing pain of Ewan’s words had ripped a hole that might never heal.
“I’m tired,” was
all she said to Will as she raked the brush slowly through her hair. Since she’d returned to the ship, she’d worn her hair down. At night, after the crew thought she was asleep, she’d change from her sailor trousers to the dress. The feel of it reminded her…
She felt the dull ache sharpen and turned to Will. “Leave me alone.” A bloody nuisance! He’d been bothering her since they boarded the Queen Siren.
“Ah Dory,” Will said. “You just… you should come above. The night is quiet and I’ll be playing my drums. It will do you good.”
Dory could hear the rhythmic stomping above as the crew danced. She’d only danced with Ewan once. Her time with him had flown too fast. She shouldn’t have let him under her skirts. She’d fallen for all his words, delivered with such talent. How could she have been deceived so easily?
Even the fire of fury in her gut wasn’t enough to burn away the ache of loss.
She turned to face the small black port hole again. “I said, leave me alone.”
“God’s balls, Dory,” Will cursed. “You’ve been like this…this half dead thing since you came back. You need to pull out of this hell.”
Dory stared at her reflection in the circular glass. Hell? Yes, this was hell. Her chest squeezed until she felt she couldn’t draw in breath. He’d made her fall in love with him, and then he’d abandoned her. It had been a fortnight. Could he have already been executed?
She felt the tear, hot like fresh blood, leak down her cheek. Aye, the pain she felt was like a mortal wound. Maybe she would die, too.
Will stepped up next to her. “Forget him.”
“I can’t,” she whispered and felt the second scorching tear make its mark on her other cheek. They were like brandings, full of pain.
“God,” she said and wiped her knuckles across her face.
“You’re crying?” Will asked. He ducked forward to see her face, though she looked away. “I’ve never seen you cry before.”
“Get out of here!”
Will swore and stepped back. She heard him pacing behind her. If he would just leave, she could spend the rest of the night crying without anyone noticing. Like she had done every night, hoping, begging, even praying that the tears would lessen the hurt. But they hadn’t.
She turned to order Will out, but stopped. The man looked tormented. Had her tears affected him so much? He ran his hands through his hair, sending it in haphazard knots. His eyes were wide, and he cursed as he rubbed at his head. He must have an ache.
“You were just supposed to forget about the bastard,” Will said. “But no, you have to pine away for him like…like you love him or something.”
“I do,” she whispered.
Those two little words stopped Will in his tracks. He whipped around toward her. “How would you know that? Know you love him? You’d only known him for a couple weeks.”
She should be angry at him for questioning her, but it wasn’t anything she hadn’t already asked herself. “I hurt.” She touched her chest at the tightness that just wouldn’t release. “No matter what I do, it won’t stop.” She felt another damn tear and ignored it. “But when we were together…”
Will looked blurry as her eyes welled up and she blinked to see, dumping her foolish sorrow before him.
“God damned bloody bastard,” he cursed. “He made you fall in love with him. Ruined you.”
Dory wiped her face. “He didn’t make me do anything,” she defended. “I made all my own foolish mistakes.”
But he had said that she was his forever. Liar!
Will sat on the edge of her bed and stared at his boots. “He lied.”
“I know.”
Will looked up. “You know?”
“He claimed me, swore I was his forever.”
Will swore under his breath. “In the Tower, damn it, he lied then.”
“What?” She blinked, watching Will closely. Her heart thumped hard as she held her breath.
“God, Dory, I’ve never seen you cry before. You don’t cry, even when you get hurt. The closest was when you couldn’t get that girl away from O’Neil.”
Dory latched onto that familiar pain. At least it wasn’t as fresh. More tears washed out. Argh! What had Ewan done to her? She may never be a lady, but she certainly wept like one.
He held his hands out in front of him. “Look, Ewan did lie to you, but only because I told him he had to. When we broke into the Tower to get him out, I reached him first and we couldn’t get the collar off him and we heard guards coming outside and—”
“You were inside the cell? I thought you couldn’t get in. The lock was too difficult.” Anger sprouted in her stomach, banishing the ache for a moment.
“Aye, I had the door open, but listen! You can tell when someone is lying, right?”
“Yes,” she said slowly, holding her sizzling temper.
Will stared into her eyes. “Did he let you touch him in the cell, in the Tower, when he said he didn’t want you? Did he?”
“I couldn’t reach him through the bars, and I thought the door was locked,” she said but mentally recalculated the length of the chain, realization lowering her voice. “He didn’t want me to touch him?”
“Not when he knew you could tell he was lying. He told me to pretend the door was still locked when I couldn’t get the collar off him.”
Dory’s breath hitched. The burn in her chest made her inhale. “But he said—”
“Lies,” Will finished. “Because I told him to.”
Her eyes widened, focused on her almost brother.
“It was the only way to get you out of there.” He backed toward the door, his words tumbling upon each other. “He knew you would die if you were caught. He chose to save you.” Will shook his head. “I just didn’t know that saving you would turn you into…”
“You told him to release his claim, to say he had only used me! To call me a whore?” Her voice rose with each word.
“I didn’t tell him what to say. That was all his.” Will threw up his hands in surrender and then covered his groin as if he thought better of where she’d aim her vengeance. “But he had to come up with something to get you to leave. If they’d caught you, Dory, they would have burned you alive.”
Dory stood, her fingers contracting inward until the bite of her fingernails in her palms made her release. He lied? Could it have all been just a terrible lie?
“The devil to you, Will! We just left him there!” she screamed. “Just left him in the Tower to die!” And his last thoughts would be that she hated him. She grabbed her hairbrush and hurled it at Will’s head.
He ducked. “His Scots friends were staying behind to help him.”
“You don’t know that! Even with a tornado, it’s near impossible to get someone out of that hell! He could still be there or worse! Get the hell out of my way!” she yelled and grabbed her knife.
Will threw the door open and scrambled up the rungs of the narrow ladder onto the deck.
Dory felt her magic rolling inside her middle, like a tumbling wind ready to fly out in all directions. Fear was the primary force, fear that during these last two weeks she’d lost what had become the most important part of her life. Fear that the pain she’d been feeling at Ewan’s lies would transform into the forever pain of his death. The only thing keeping her together was the tickle of hope, the sweetness of joy that what Will had confessed was true. Could Ewan truly care about her?
She already felt the waves rolling under the ship, ready to turn at her will, as she raised her head out of the hull. She jogged up to the quarterdeck.
“Panda?” Captain Bart said as he followed her up, dismissing the quartermaster. He turned his gaze to the snapping sails. “Are you trying to take over my ship?”
Dory pulled the tiny bits of air and moisture, heating them, jostling them until they became organized enough to act as wind. She looked to her father standing before her. “I have to go back.” Her hair flew around her head, bristling with charge as her emotions split lightning through
the clouds overhead.
Captain Bart stared hard at her. “You want to go back to a land that holds nothing but death for you?”
She shook her head, tears stinging her eyes. “There is life there for me as long as he lives. If there’s a chance he’s alive…”
Captain Bart puckered his lips as if in deep thought while the storm gathered above them. The crew waited below on the main deck, waited for their captain’s orders before turning the sails to catch the new wind.
“Will told you Ewan lied that last time in the Tower,” Captain Bart said.
She nodded, trembling with the possibility that she could be too late. She’d believed his lies too quickly, thinking that he couldn’t truly care for her. She was an orphan, the bastard of two traitors. She hadn’t believed anyone could really love her for who she was, but…he’d lied. He’d lied to save her life, sacrificed himself, maybe died for her.
“I’m going back,” she said, her voice just above the cacophony of wind and sails. “I love him. If he’s still alive, I need him to know… I lied in the Tower, too.”
A slow grin spread across her father’s bearded face. “Well, then, Panda, let’s turn this ship around.”
…
The moon spilled light down through the trees where Ewan sat with Caden and the four other Scotsmen, two from Druim and the two Munros. He didn’t speak, but picked at the dried fish they’d had on them when they’d heard of Ewan’s execution. They had taken to lounging by the tower and rotated watch, waiting for Ewan to be brought out or a plan to develop. Alec had spotted him leaving the tower at dawn and rode like summer lightning to throw rocks at the window where the others slept. They’d been holed up close by in the house of the lad who’d been feeding him. The woman in the crowd who’d caused the distraction had been the lad’s thankful mother.
“Caden,” Donald said. “Do you think Meg misses you?”
Gavin hit him. “Don’t worry him. We’ll be home soon enough.”
“The bairn isn’t due for a month or more,” Caden grumbled. “I’ll be home.”
His friend and chief turned his gaze on him. “And where will you be going?”