by Jill Barnett
“Aye. We’ll ride to the falls.” He pulled his cowl back over his damp head and waved his men forward.
The falls were wider than he had expected, with clear water rushing downward over granite rocks edged in lichen, trees cloaked with moss, lush patches of long grass and circles of cool treeshadow. Mist rose up from the spill of the falls and rinsed the dry, dirty taste from the midday air and cooled their hot, flushed skin. The horses drank for a long time, their tails flicking lazily at flies, and his men rested in the shade, many of them sitting in the grass, some in their linen and soaked from a quick swim in the cool waters, now chewing on dried meat and crusts of bread.
Ramsey wrapped closed his food cloth and tucked it inside his satchel. He winced when he felt the leagues he had travelled in his stiff muscles and rattled, creaking bones.
By God’s eyes he was getting old. Too old to rescue a young man from himself. They had been riding for a long stretch without stopping, compelled to stay on Lyall's trail from Inverness. Although he had joined his men late, after riding straight from Rossie, and they were still a merry distance from where he expected to find Lyall. He did not believe the lad could pass remotely close to Dunkeldon and not go there, so they were headed that way.
And there had been more news. Seemed that there was word the Gordon brothers were tracking and asking questions, too.
Ramsey’s instincts were high and strong. He would find Lyall. But he could not say if he could find him in time. His instincts seldom let him down, except perhaps in the glimmer of honor he’d thought he had seen in his stepson all those years back. Where did that lad go?
He glanced at his men and thought to give them more time, so they could ride even harder. He had men in eight different directions, like the one who discovered the Inverness trail, lone riders who could ask questions and find answers.
Another smaller contingent of men were with his captain, heading in a different direction, toward de Hay lands, but more as a precaution after what Mairi had revealed to him about Lyall's father by marriage. Isobel's father, Huchon De Hay, was a weasel of the worst kind, conniving in his practices and treasons. De Hay’s unfortunate ties by his own marriage to a powerful Norse earl as well as a blood bond as a distant cousin to the king of France had provided him protection for all too many years.
Would De Hay dare to conduct his treasons in his own nest? Did not seem likely. He was too sly to tempt getting caught. For all too long the man had managed to straddle both sides of the power struggle for the crown, waffling over and placating each side, while subversively aiding the other, hoping to make his own gains amidst the chaos.
In planning the king’s upcoming return, Sutherland had found enough evidence to suspect de Hay’s true loyalties lay among the Norse earls, or at least with their gold and promises. The wealth and power of those earls had been threatened by the true king’s marriage and the short peace that marriage brought before the young queen had died. That peace had put a stop to the earls’ constant, lucrative raids down into the southern isles and their drive to continually encroach upon northern borders. Rebellion and a king in exile kept their coffers filled and their lands expanding southward.
'Twas in the Norse earls best interests to feed a war over the Scots throne, allying and abetting Argyll, the most powerful lord in the west, and continuing to light the man's hungry desire for the power of the crown itself and using the well-known greed of England's Henry to aid in his schemes.
But William, the true king, was soon to be free. All the plans were set, the ransom grudgingly set and agreed.
Except that Lyall's stupidity and single-mindedness was about to ruin his own obligation and part in those plans, and jeopardize the safety of Glenna Canmore. All those years of hiding the king’s daughter were about to be made worthless because years back Ewan Robertson had been a traitor.
Lyall, where go you? Foolish, foolish lad to involve yourself in this. The noose is tightening about your neck, son.
Ramsey stared out at the misty dark outline of Ben Nevis in the distance, and felt as if the road he faced ahead was like climbing that great mountain on foot. His stepson had grown up determined, but lost, unable through his years of trying to in any way redeem his name, to extirpate his father’s treason. It seemed to him that Lyall had eventually given up and tied himself to de Hay with that disaster of a betrothal in a desperate attempt to regain his family’s lost lands. The meek Isobel De Hay had been raised in a nunnery and was unable to face wedding anyone other than her own God.
Since that disastrous day when Lyall had stood over her broken body, he had built a wall of solitude and isolation around himself, which led him on a dark path to destruction, all because of the pain and guilt the lad carried. That determined boy with the bow and quiver, and eye of an eagle, was slowly decaying and destroying the man he could be. Lyall was compelled by some demon of legacy to make the same mistakes Ewan had. And if Lyall was condemned to hang for treason, Beatris would shatter as easily as a clay pot dropped from the hall rafters.
Beatris.
The image of her as Ramsey had first seen her so long ago was always close to his mind. Back then, on that singular day so many years past, she had worn no hood or veil to hide her face. There was no need. She had been young and bright, with skin like the shine of the moon, her eyes the color of the firth in summer, and her hair--the darkest, deepest color of a ripe apple--long and waving down her back. She had been laughing, the sound like bells in the wind, and running into the arms of his closest friend.
The memory faded then, growing dry as the dust on the road they had travelled, leaving the same taste of failure in his mouth as those times when his wife hid her face from him. His Beatris could not survive much more suffering. Ewan’s betrayal wounded all of them in a deeply profound way.
There was only trouble ahead, for despite his compassion for his stepson and his great love for Beatris, his loyalty was first to his king. Above all, Ramsey knew he must keep his pledge to protect the king’s eldest daughter and if that meant Lyall would be sacrificed, then he little choice.
One of his men stood up abruptly. “My lord!”
Ramsey rose more swiftly than his muscles wanted.
“A rider!” More men shot to their feet, weapons ready as one of his outriders rode toward them with great speed.
Ramsey sheathed his weapon as the rider reined in. “Argyll is trapped and sent for aid from de Hay at Kinnesswood, my lord.”
De Hay at Kinnesswood? That was Frasyr's keep and Frasyr was Argyll’s cousin. But the castle was solid and impossible to attack without tenfold his current number of men. If Glenna Canmore was there she would be in the hands of the king's opponents.
“There is more,” the rider said seriously and he pointed down into the glen. “Look there.”
Two riders were crossing Beauly glen, heading south and west. Ramsey watched them long enough to recognized them by the mounts they rode. The stride of the horses was swift and nimble, bred from the finest of Arab bloods, distinctive in their size, color, and motion.
“The Gordons,” Ramsey said.
“They have been asking their own questions, my lord, and had left just before I heard about Argyll’s messenger.”
There was no doubt what they were about. The Gordon brothers were looking for Glenna. “Mount up!” Ramsey said, wincing slightly as he followed his own orders and his legs and hindside ached sharply when they hit the saddle. He gathered the reins and held up a hand. “Wait… Let them go over that next hill and then we will follow. I suspect we are headed toward the same destination.”
His sharp eyes followed the black outlines of the Gordon brothers riding in the distance, heading south and west toward Loch Lisson, where Kinnesswood stood towering over the water from a solid rock island in its center, a castle in a key position and impregnable to attack.
“Ride!” Ramsey ordered and they took off, heading toward a quest that appeared to be impossible.
* * *
; Clouds rolled in on gust of strong wind and the dark sky overhead seemed unpredictable. There was no bright shining moon in the night sky, no trout cooking on an open fire, or starlight over the ruins of a burnt castle, just the high clouds over the black darkness of a loch and distant silhouette of a rock island in the middle of the loch, and above it, the staggered shadows of a castle tower and wall.
Glenna pulled her woolen cloak more tightly about her as she sat in the boat while Montrose rowed them across a lake toward their swiftly approaching destination. What was inside that castle ahead of them? Along its crown were the jagged crenels, looking like a demon’s bite. She closed her eyes and sought some sense of courage she doubted she had left; but she needed some strength of heart for the unknown she was about to face.
Montrose was silent. For the whole day he had withdrawn again, erected a stone wall around himself, and nothing she could say would break through to him. That hardness, that silence, carried into the night.
The night air went suddenly still, as if someone swallowed the wind and left only silence that was pierced only by the rhythmic slap of oars as Montrose drew them through into the water.
‘Twas odd. She looked around her.
The brush lining the shore was thick and dark and still. Her mind was mad, her instincts affected by her fears. The trees and bushes had no eyes.
She faced forward, calling herself silly. Her heart was affecting her head.
Behind Montrose, the image of the castle was growing larger and more imposing, and with each oarstroke her hands began to shake more. The wind picked up again, a small gust, then another, bigger and higher. She could hear a tree bend, the rustling of leaves. Hair pulled from her braid to cut across her mouth and whip into her eyes, for a moment obliterating what was ahead.
When she tucked her hair back, before her was their destination and the knowledge she was one step closer to the moment she would face her father, her fate, her failure and whatever horrible humiliation her future would bring. At that moment she would have given anything to be a crofter, a milkmaid, a goat girl…anything but the daughter of a king.
She tried to quell the rising tide of her fears. Montrose’s lack of speech became too much for her. “Will my father be there?”
“I was told to bring you here. Whether it is to await his arrival, or to meet him, I do not know.” His deep voice sounded cold and tight, his words sharp. He’d had a hard time looking her in the eye since he’d left her standing alone by the strange old tree, confused and feeling adrift.
“I merely wondered if perhaps he had come back undercover for his safety, rather than arriving from a ship like before to face his enemies and their arrows.”
If Montrose had heard her, she would never know. He chose to remain stonily silent, but she could not. “I do not know what he expects of me.”
There. She had spoken her fears aloud. She admitted what she was afraid of.
I wonder if he knows that I trust him enough to tell him this. Then she asked herself why that mattered.
The oar locks creaked as he increased his rowing speed, and she could hear the cutting of the water, the draw of the oar and the ripple of the water on the surface, and then his breathing. Not a word from him. There was only an occasional gust of wind over the land and trees.
“Talk to me, Montrose. Please…” Her voice caught a little and sounded as pitiful as she felt and she hated that.
“You are his daughter,” he said heavily after a moment. “No doubt when you do finally meet he will expect to see a young woman.”
“When we do finally meet?” she repeated, almost leaping upon his words. “You know something! You know he is not there.”
“I know nothing,” he said sharply, continuing to row.
“Then why did you say when we finally meet?” She could feel his tension and hear a slight strangle when he said her name aloud. “What is wrong,” she asked.
He shook his head and looked out at the water. His voice was emotionless when he said, “From what I remember of him, you have his looks.”
“I do? Hmmm. If that is supposed to reassure me, it does not. I do not know if having his look is a good thing. They say the queen, my mother, was a rare beauty.” She grew thoughtful about her mother, speaking of her aloud, and she wondered about all those things a girl who never knew her mother wondered and longed for—someone to guide her and explain her feelings and wants and needs, so many things she never could understand.
Her mind flitted from one fear back to another. “But if I looked like her, I might remind him of his loss and he would ban me from his sight. And of course if I am not beautiful enough, then he might ban me anyway.” She faced him. “ Do kings not have pride? Many say they have all too much pride--the cause of wars.” After a moment she threw her hands up. “Oh, none of this matters because once he knows me, he will probably banish me to some tower or if facing a war, he’ll marry me off to an enemy to forge an alliance. I know little of politics and the power struggles of men. How am I to survive? How?”
I only know how to steal a purse.
Panicking, she blurted out, “What if my husband is old? Or worse?” She paused, then whispered, “What if he beats me?” She wanted to bury her face in her hands and sob. Instead, another horrific image came to mind, one worst than the closing of a trap door. “Montrose?” She almost choked on his name. All her fears and feelings were stuck in her throat.
He was silent.
She lowered her voice and said, “Did you know Germans bury their wives alive as punishment?”
The oars stopped and the oarlocks grated loudly. Montrose cursed viciously. “I cannot do this,” he said, and a moment later he had used one oar to turn the boat.
As the boat spun around, racking raggedly, she gripped the sides. “What are you doing?”
“Be quiet, Glenna.”
The wind picked up and boat moved swiftly.
“Why? We are not hiding. No one is around. I can speak.”
“I am beginning to feel a great kinship with the Germans. “ He pulled the oars through the water a good three times faster than before.
“This is no time for jests.”
“What makes you think I am jesting?”
“But what about my father? Why are we turning back?” She looked around her. “Montrose? What are you doing?”
“I’m going mad. Now do not say another word or I swear I will steal a shovel and make you dig your own grave.”
“Ha! You would not dare.”
“Good. You have stopped your crying,” he said.
“I was not crying!”
The boat hit the bank. Before she could move he pulled her out, gripping her by the shoulders. “I believed I was stronger than I am. I believed I could let you go, could turn and walk away. I cannot. I do not know what you have done to me. You drive me mad. “
“I do?” she asked, suddenly warm. His hands gripped her shoulders and made her feel warm, warmer still from the look in his eyes. He wanted to kiss her. His words to her at the tree came echoing back.
He released her as if she were made of Greek fire. “Despite what I need to do, you are forever in my head, deep inside. Here.” He pointed to his temple, then to his chest. “And here.”
On his face he wore the truth: that he was not pleased about what he had just told her. But she was. “You love me,” she said, trying not to smile.
“Glenna….”
“You love me. ‘Tis true. I shall not argue with you about it, Montrose.”
There were deep furrows in his brow and his hands were in fists. He was battling something strong, and having a great deal of trouble.
She watched him pace the grassy bank like a cat caught in a pen. “Scowl all you want, my lord.”
“I am not your lord. I am not anyone’s lord!”
“Fine but I’m still confused. How does what you feel, Montrose--please note I did not call you ‘my lord’-- have anything to do with your taking me to my father?”
He drove a hand through his hair. “Lord above, woman! I am not taking you to your father!”
“I do not understand. Where are you taking me?”
Torchlight and swift moving shadows came out from the trees, and suddenly a troop of armed men surrounded them. A deep voice came from the midst of them. “He is taking you to me.”
23
Luck was with Lyall because de Hay had no clue he had changed his mind. The man had only heard the end of his conversation with Glenna. She stood before them in the dank hall at Kinnesswood Castle--the holding of one of de Hay’s men, Coll Frasyr, who was cousin to the king of Argyll and who Lyall had known through the tourneys and had, after Frasyr was awarded his own lands, once sought betrothal to Lyall's sister Mairi.
The thick candles guttered and smoked from mutton fat, and the wax spilled in long yellowish trails down the blackened walls to pool and congeal in the corners. Light from the torches and candle pricks flickered over high walls covered in sooty tapestries, and glinted off Glenna’s dark hair, shiny at the crown and falling into one long thick braid down her back. Her bedraggled peasant clothing was speckled with leaves and grass and her shoes were stained and crusted with dried mud. A mangy grey cat with half a tail threaded itself in and out of her legs, rubbing against her calves before it sat abruptly, scratching vigorously at its fleas and nits. Behind her, a couple of hunting hounds were busy gnawing on venison bones near a hearth that was stained with smoke and the rushes on the floor were old, infested, and smelled of grease and neglect. From the condition of his household, one truth was clear: Frasyr still had not found himself a wife.
Lyall looked back to Glenna. He was acutely aware they were standing a short distance apart from each other and yet acting as if they were in different worlds: she was her father’s daughter to the bone and stood before a room filled with armed strangers looking misplaced in their midst; while he stood shoulder to shoulder with her father’s enemies, caught in the teeth of his own misdeeds.