The Legend of Lady MacLaoch

by Becky Banks

  The Legend of Lady MacLaoch

  by Becky Banks

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2011 by Rebecca Banks

  http://www.beckybanksonline.com

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever without written permission from the author.

  ISBN: 978-0-578-07566-2 (paperback)

  Cover design & photograph © Becky Banks

  .

  This book is dedicated to you, dear reader.

  Yes, you.

  .

  PROLOGUE

  The Year of Our Lord 1211

  Scotland

  Pain gripped her abdomen in convulsive ripples, telling her she would not survive to see the morning. Her last breath would be soon—with it, she would accomplish her last wakeful deed in this world.

  She looked up at the man who possessively held her newborn child, the man she called father and enemy. She spoke the words that reverberated through her soul, as if they were pulled from the very earth, full of power and purpose.

  I curse ye, Father. I curse the ground beneath yer feet, the air ye breathe, the blood within yer veins, and the seed ye spill upon this earth. May ye die having felt my pain and if ye havenae, may no MacLaoch chieftain ever know love. Only when they have walked the lonely halls of despair will I bestow upon them a peace I once held long ago, and then only for a moment. I will feast upon yer pain and drink the anguish of this curse until the one who calls himself chief of the MacLaochs has shared in my anguish. Until then, I will haunt ye and yers every eve and every dawn and all time in between, forever.

  CHAPTER 1

  Three years ago

  The Middle East

  The desert heat rolled away from them in waves of sound as they tore through the atmosphere. The Royal Air Force fighter jet seemed molded around them, an extension of their own bodies—metallic, fierce—traveling just a few hundred feet above the knobby desert valley floor and just a few feet under detectable radar. Fingers of desert sandstone, etched away by wind and time, spread down from the high sides of the valley walls, bending and twisting, making the way challenging and dangerous.

  “This is not a strictly sanctioned NATO op.” The thick Oxfordshire accent of his captain’s voice rang in his memory. Rowan and his flight navigator, Victor (also known as the Victorious or just simply Vick), had been handpicked for this not-strictly-sanctioned task. It was easy enough: fly over a small village in the eastern region of enemy territory; flip the switch; drop the goods; get the fuck out. Simple. Yet the sweat dripping down his brow—and the rolling chills, like a premonition fever—had him on high alert. Nothing was out of place, yet this time felt different.

  Winding and twisting through the caverns, the jet rocketed them over the beige blur of desert floor.

  The queasy feeling got worse, suffocating him in his mask.

  “Status,” he said, trying to distract himself.

  “Closing in on the party.” Vick’s response crackled through the earpiece in Rowan’s flight helmet.

  “Roger that.”

  The sandstone formations blurred as the seconds counted down.

  Easy.

  “We are a go in three—”

  With a gloved finger Rowan flipped the switch cover on his instrument panel. Up ahead the valley widened into an expanse of dunes and flat valley floor.

  The last two seconds rolled by like tumbleweed toward its final destination. “One” finally came, and Rowan felt his finger hit the switch. As he did, he caught sight of something on the desert floor. It was a puff of smoke—not below him nor behind him, but in front—the kind of puff of smoke that follows the expulsion of a rocket that is set to fly high and fast, the rocket on a surface-to-air missile.

  Out in this lonely dump of land, in this piece-of-shit excuse for a country, Rowan thought as he watched, as if from outside of his body. He heard Vick’s voice confirm the missile in the air. Rowan’s mind told him to evade. He felt his hand shift on the joystick and felt the beast respond to his command. He heard the cursing in his headset, the confirmation that it would be close. Cut it close to the missile or close to the ground—either were deadly. His other hand grabed the throttle and yanked, sending them up into orbit.

  Only it was too late.

  The missile exploded off the left side of the aircraft, tearing metal in a fiery torrent. The explosion rocked the cockpit; pieces of metal tore through the cabin, and heat slapped at Rowan and Vick as the blast slashed the wing to shreds. Rowan’s hand was already on the lever; he pulled, ejecting himself and his navigator out into the desert air.

  Suspended for just a moment before gravity took its turn with him, Rowan experienced a single moment of complete silence. He watched the tortured wreckage of their flight craft spiral out below him, billowing smoke and fire. Above him, his chute snapped open; Rowan watched Vick drift soundlessly in the distance. The village below, once so small and inconsequential, became alive and swarmed like a disrupted ant nest.

  Fuck, Rowan said silently, like a prayer, up into the billowing fabric of his chute.

  The ground came much too quickly. He tumbled forward and unhooked himself from his chute. Squinting against the light reflecting off the smattering of sand on his helmet’s visor, Rowan searched the horizon for his navigator. He spotted Vick moving swiftly toward him, his chute billowing in the wind and yanking him along the desert floor. Rowan made his way toward Vick, the sickness in his stomach getting worse. This unsanctioned mission would not receive any help before the enemy got to them.

  When Rowan caught up to him, Vick was half conscious, his flight suit shredded at the knees, the contact points where his body had been dragged across the sandpaper ground.

  “Vick!” He shook his partner’s shoulder with one hand and released his parachute with the other. “Vick!” he shouted again. The chute detached with a snap of the lines, rolling and billowing away from them.

  Diesel-motored trucks sounded in the distance. Rowan’s heartbeat ratcheted up as his body prepared for the fight that was to come. The wide valley floor spread out around them, lending no shelter except for a few large rocks. Putting an arm around Vick, Rowan lifted his struggling navigator and began making painful progress to the closest boulder.

  Enemy fire erupted, spraying dust and rocks into the air around them.

  He heard the enemies call to him in their native tongue, telling him to get to his knees with his hands on his head. Vick cried out as a bullet tore through his leg.

  Reluctantly they fell to their knees. The enemy’s leader came to them, a pistol in one hand, an automatic rifle slung over his shoulder. Spittle had accumulated at the corners of his mouth from his shouting.

  The leader was making demands, and Rowan knew that he had no leverage. His pistol was at his calf, his sgian-dubh in his boot, yet his Scottish blood pounded in his ears demanding that he defend himself and his navigator.

  Rowan heard Vick groan and utter, “God save the Quee—”

  It happened then.

  Rowan’s world moved in slow motion. He had been watching the enemy leader as he made his demands. Then, registered too late as the man’s mind in a millisecond made the decision to shoot, his gun sending a single bullet into Vick’s forehead and through the back of him.

  Now, said a voice to Rowan, and he leaped forward as the gun went off again, this time with its black eye upon him.

  In that moment, metal fire rained down from the heavens and the entire event bur
ned into Rowan’s memory, vivid and uncompromising in its brutality.

  CHAPTER 2

  Present day

  South Carolina

  It was Christmas, and I was surrounded at the wooden table that had been in the Baker family for generations by, well, generations of Bakers. My family. Dinner had been delayed again by a cousin coming late with the mashed potatoes, and the talk buzzed around who TJ had been playing tonsil hockey with this weekend.

  That topic was started, of course, by TJ. Though older than me by several years, my brother rarely acted like it. Mother and Daddy were seated at our end of the table, the aunts and uncles and older cousins at the other—all of us anchored by the man at the table’s head, my father’s father, the Baker family patriarch, Grandpappy. My little cousins, too young to be at the main table, were in the other room of Grandpappy and Grandmama’s old farmhouse, watching a Disney movie with their dinner. Soon Mother, ticked off to no end by hearing about TJ’s escapades, tried to steer the conversation, calling across the table: “Janie is out with her new man. Did you see him, Linda?” Father and Grandpappy were deep in their own discussion: “The university contacted me this week on testing a new pesticide for that damn twig borer . . . ” If talk didn’t turn to peaches or pecans or the woes of Mother Nature’s wrath on the orchards, I wasn’t at a Baker family dinner.

  That night, however, turned different. For once during the middle of dinner—Christmas dinner, no less—the entire table became quiet.

  One of my cousins, who was arguably too young to be at the adult table, had somehow wiggled his way into a seat between Grandmama and Grandpappy. I hadn’t heard his question, but in the space between chews and intakes of breath it was quiet enough to hear Grandpappy switch subjects from orchard woes to give his answer.

  “Well, we’re not Bakers.”

  The only sound then was the soft scraping of Grandpappy’s fork as he scooped more potatoes and maneuvered for a stray piece of roast on his plate.

  I sat with my entire family silently watching him, our mouths agape and eyes wide as if we all were silently shouting, What?

  “Mmmph, by blood, that is,” he said as he swallowed. “The way I was told of it, we’re all, by blood, Minarys. M-I-N-A-R-Y,” he spelled, not taking his eyes off his gravy-filled plate. Grandpappy chewed slowly as we all chewed with him, mentally, on what he had just said. Even my mother, who normally wouldn’t let a moment like this go silent for so long, just sat with a wide-mouthed stare. Cousins, aunts, uncles, Grandmama, Daddy—all simply gaped.

  He had just told a table full of Bakers—stalwart, hardheaded, proud, he-must-be-a-Baker Bakers—that we were some other name, the devoid-of-meaning, faceless name of Minary.

  Grandpappy finally looked up. “What? I thought y’all knew that.”

  The table exploded into questions. Grandpappy quieted everyone down and explained that his biological father, a Minary, was “a drunk who found himself on the bottom of a riverbed.” His suddenly widowed mother had married a very nice Englishman named Mr. Baker and, for that, we should be proud to be Bakers.

  We didn’t get much more in the way of details since Grandpappy didn’t really much care about them, and he was sure he’d mentioned it a time or two over the years. He did say that all the information had come to him secondhand from his siblings, since he was just an infant when his mother had remarried.

  This reality-shattering news was a lot for all of the generations of Bakers to digest. I watched Grandpappy through new eyes for the rest of my Christmas break from university at home. It was obvious that he came from a place that gave him his tall frame, light, wavy hair, freckled skin, and a knack for sweet-talking his way into just about anything. I think Grandmama always worried that he might go to the bank or the store one day and come home with more than just a deposit receipt or a carton of milk.

  I was a version of Grandpappy—tall, green eyes instead of blue, and light-colored copper curls rioting around my head. We were the spitting image of some ancestor straight from . . . Well, straight from where, now?

  It was only a few months later that Grandpappy went to the big orchard in the sky.

  I flew home from college to attend the funeral at our small community church. The reception room was long, filled with tables of food and people old and young. Older generations reminisced to the younger ones, some who listened and some who didn’t.

  I was eating a piece of pecan pie and emptying my mind of everything but the blissful nutty, sugary-salty, caramel-y pastry when my mother interrupted.

  “Cole, why is it that you can’t dress like a lady? Are you trying to embarrass me?” My mother, too was holding a piece of pie in one hand and a fork in the other. I knew she would carry that piece around for a while, pretending to eat it, and then give it to my brother later, claiming it was her second piece.

  I looked at her—perfectly pressed white slacks (risky business for her, since it was before Memorial Day) and a navy-blue, short-sleeved sweater with matching slip-ons, her short blond hair coiffed just so.

  “What are you really learning up there in Portland?” she persisted. “I can tell you it’s not how to be a lady.”

  I looked down at my outfit. My jeans were very nice, a spendy brand (though bought for a steal from the thrift store), and paired with a silk, expensive, slouchy tank in bronze that I’d borrowed from a friend, knowing full well that I’d need something to bring the jeans up to par. My hair was a manageable mass of coppery curls that had taken me hours to perfect and could all be undone if there was even the slightest change in humidity; I’d even done my makeup just right.

  “Gee, thanks, Mother. Love you too.”

  “Cole, I’m worried about you so far away. You know, I’ve been talking with your aunt Ruth, and she says . . . ”

  Oh god, I thought, tuning her words out. Here it comes.

  Portland, Oregon, was the “tree-hugger, Democrat capitol of the nation,” according to my mother. She worried about what that setting—known for earth, dog, and gay-and-lesbian friendliness—was doing to me.

  “Wearing jeans, Cole? To Grandpappy’s funeral? You might as well just say that you are a—well, you know. I’m just worried about you up there. You have no drive for these things.”

  I cocked an eyebrow at her. “Drive for what, Mother? You’re beating around the bush. Just be out with it.”

  TJ sauntered up, a hilarity dancing in his eyes as he chewed boisterously—manners obviously forgotten or purposefully absent. “You know,” he said, around pie and whipped cream, “that she’s talking about your M-R-S degree.”

  My mother looked knowingly across the crowded room, and I followed her gaze to Roger Bronson, all-star quarterback during our high school years and current-day oil-rig repairman.

  “Mother, Roger is an ex-boyfriend from high school; one that was very sweet but incredibly unmotivated in life except for the pursuit of ass. Remember? That’s why I dumped him. He slept with Candice and Bernice while we were dating?”

  “I think that’s a noble cause. Pursuit of ass,” TJ said, sealing my mother’s lips into a grim line of dissatisfaction with both of us.

  TJ and I exchanged the look, a mental high five.

  “Cole, he is the epitome of male, and you would have beautiful children,” she said, digging back at me.

  “Yes, Mother, the epitome of male, and yet I still do not find him attractive enough to spread my legs and have him screw me out of a happy and successful future.”

  TJ choked on his pie as my response had the desired effect on our mother. Her eyes narrowed to slits. Immediately I felt guilty. At nearly thirty I should not allow my mother to get a rise out of me. Though, in retrospect, I’d gotten very good at being an uncontrollable and willful child, and that gave my mother a perpetual rise.

  “Fine,” she said, as my brother gave his empty plate to a little cousin and told him to throw it away. “If you want to live in Portland and become a lesbian, that’s fine, Cole, but don’t whine to me when y
ou’re old and wish you’d had kids! Yes, which reminds me, TJ,” my mother said, volleying to him, “that if you have two cents, you’ll stay away from MaryJo while you are back at home. She’s a good girl. Whatever happened to Cindy?” At least she was an equal-opportunity meddler, not giving special treatment to her daughter over her son.

  I tuned them both out. Looking down at my plate of half-eaten pie, I knew I didn’t have the stomach to finish it.

  Grandpappy was gone. The thought fell like a lead weight in my stomach. And there I was arguing at his funeral. That was the way of it in our family, I supposed. I thought of my life if I were to do all of the things that my mother wanted me to do. I glanced over at Roger. He was nodding at something Dorothea was saying to him. My elderly aunt thought she had his full attention, yet his eyes scanned the room, looking for his next pursuit. I thought about what it would be like if he and I got married—all the mistresses he’d have; me pregnant and waddling around with a toddler.

  No, I thought. I was being called elsewhere. I had no idea where that was or what I was supposed to do once I got there, but I would follow it until I felt right.

  “Mother,” I said, interrupting her, “TJ’s way too old to be scolded.” She turned her gaze on me, and I turned the conversation. “Did you learn anything more about our true lineage before Grandpappy passed away?”

  My brother gave me a thumbs-up behind her back and made his escape. “True lineage?” she repeated, her voice taking on an edge. “You know, Cole, if you spent half the energy you put into silly topics like that into finding a husband, you’d be happily married with kids by now, so don’t start. Not here.”

  “I’m just asking—”

  “Not now, Cole. For Christ’s sake! Your grandfather isn’t even cold in our memories and you want to drag this out now?”