The Royal Mile

by Mary Daheim

  Dallas hesitated. “I’m fine,” she whispered back at last. “Besides, you ramble about in your sleep since you started to get better.”

  “As you will.” He was silent for a moment while the old couple began to settle down by the hearth. “Give me your hand, Dallas,” he commanded in a low voice.

  Dallas obeyed, reaching out to let him take her fingers in his. Soon they were both asleep, their hands still clasped together.

  Dressed in a fresh bandage, his chain mail and Cummings’s too-small shirt, Fraser went outside to where Barvas was tethered. It was raining, a steady cool drizzle which brought the clouds in low above the surrounding hills.

  “You’ll have to pay these people for their kindness,” Fraser said as he checked Barvas’s saddle and girth. “You have money?”

  “Nay, I never thought to bring any. What about Cummings?”

  “Not enough on his person to make adequate recompense.” He frowned as Barvas whinnied softly, apparently impatient.

  “My rings,” Dallas said, holding out her hands, now red and scratched from her labors. “They could sell them, couldn’t they?”

  He pointed to her right hand. “That sapphire will do nicely, a full year’s livelihood for these poor folk. You weren’t considering your wedding band, were you?”

  Dallas’s right hand flew to her left, covering the wide band of beaten gold set with emeralds. “Oh, no, I wouldn’t do that!”

  Her genuine horror delighted him. He took her chin in his hand and bent down to kiss her firmly on the mouth. She felt her lips part under his and wished he would never stop kissing her. But he released her almost at once. “Take care, lassie,” he said, and swung up into the saddle.

  It rained harder as Fraser rode west. He traveled slowly, as he had promised Dallas, and spent the night in a shieling outside of Strathdon. When he arrived at Inverness the following evening, the first thing that struck him was the subdued atmosphere which hung about the city like the rain itself. The Gordon stronghold was feeling the effects of its clan’s defeat at Corrichie Moor. Great Huntly was dead and their new chieftain was somewhere in the south, hiding out with the Hamiltons.

  Wearily, Fraser clattered over the stone bridge which crossed the River Ness. The old high kirk, built on a knoll once called Michael’s Mound, stood to his right, its stones a brooding grey in the waning October light. In another hour, he should reach Beauly, and he spurred Barvas into a trot. They set out through a gentle green valley. Beyond the tree-covered ridges lay the gaunt mountains of the west, waiting for their first cap of snow.

  He reined in at Beauly just after dark. The wound in his back was throbbing and his skin was soaked with rain and sweat. The members of his clan would welcome him, though at Corrichie some had taken up arms for the Gordons. No matter, he thought, I’m alive. I’m safe for now—and I’m home.

  Chapter 11

  Dallas was alone in the royal chambers at Aberdeen. The preliminary packing for the return south was all but accomplished, and as she glanced out the window towards the sloping drive she saw a half-dozen royal retainers piling a baggage cart high with trussed crates. These, she knew, contained the priceless vestments from St. Matchar Cathedral which had been entrusted to the Gordons and now had been confiscated by the Crown. An even larger crate still lay on the ground, monstrous in size, grisly in content. Inside rested the disemboweled body of Great Huntly, destined to be tried in the ancient way, in front of Parliament with the Queen sitting in attendance.

  Shuddering, Dallas turned away to fasten the clasps of a leather-bound trunk. The Queen and the other courtiers had left the Earl Marischal’s house a few hours earlier, headed for the town square to witness Lord John Gordon’s execution. Mary Stuart had persevered in her efforts to spare young Adam’s life, and George Gordon was still safe with the Hamiltons. But James Stuart would not relent in John Gordon’s case; he would die at noon, with the Queen looking on.

  After the hanging of Alexander at Inverness Castle and the subsequent victory over the Gordons at Corrichie Moor, Mary Stuart had lost her blood lust. She had protested vehemently when James insisted upon her being present for John Gordon’s beheading. James, however, asserted that many people felt she had encouraged him in his alleged plans to wed with her and that only by attending the gruesome event could she prove her own innocence. Trembling noticeably, she had left for the execution site with James holding firmly onto her arm.

  Dallas, however, had no such compelling motives for being present. She simply refused to budge from the Earl Marischal’s residence and the Queen was in no condition to insist upon her attendance. So she had passed the long morning by supervising the packing and had just finished giving instructions to a page for moving out the leather-bound trunks when the Queen returned with her ladies.

  The Queen was barely able to walk, her white skin a deathly grey, her body supported by Jean Argyll and Mary Livingstone. With barely a glance at Dallas, the royal attendants half-carried their mistress into the bedchamber and closed the door. Five minutes later Jean Argyll returned, her own countenance pale and wretched.

  “It was horrible,” she murmured, sinking onto a large teakwood box. “Lord John called out that Her Grace’s presence gave him comfort and that he died for love of her. Then the executioner set about his task and proved—inept.” Jean’s tongue flicked over her lips as she closed her eyes at the memory of the bloody spectacle. “I never saw the like, butchery is what it was, and our poor Queen weeping hysterically.”

  Dallas put a tight rein on her imagination, trying not to visualize the tortured demise of the once handsome John Gordon. Nor could she help but spare a pang of compassion for his brother, George. “I’ll be glad to be gone from here,” she asserted, flinging a pair of the Queen’s slippers into a carton. “It’s a barbarous place, encouraging barbarous deeds.”

  “You’ve suffered here yourself,” Jean said sympathetically. “I’m still astonished at how you nursed your husband back to life.”

  Dallas lifted a shoulder. “Iain’s strong as an ox, he’d probably have survived without my ministrations.”

  “That’s not the point,” Jean said gravely. “You went there at considerable risk to yourself. You must have gone without sleep and decent food. It seems to me you made a great sacrifice.”

  Avoiding Jean’s gaze, Dallas gathered up an armload of chemises and began sorting and folding them. She was aware that many of the courtiers had been gossiping about her flight to the farmer’s croft and her unusual diligence in caring for her lord. For a wife who seemed virtually indifferent to her husband, Dallas had behaved in an inexplicable manner. Jean, in particular, estranged from her own spouse for several years, considered Dallas’s actions quite bewildering and yet somehow admirable.

  “I reacted on impulse,” Dallas said without expression. “Often, such instincts prove right.” Carefully, she laid the chemises one on top of the other in the box. It had been over a week since Fraser had ridden away from the croft. Dallas had spent much time contemplating her love for him and the tenderness he’d shown her. Gratitude motivated her husband, she told herself sternly. So she argued with herself, cursing the ill fate of loving a man who could not possibly love her. If he did—even a little—why had he not sought her out in the weeks before the battle? Surely he could not have been that immersed in preparation.

  And now he was gone, probably for months. Dallas looked into a grim future of loneliness and unrequited love. It was a prospect she could never have imagined facing—but it was as real as it was disturbing.

  Dallas tossed her ivory fan onto a table, narrowly missing a bowl of scented water. “I suppose you have no money, no references, nothing to offer save your hulking body?” She turned to Donald McVurrich who stood haplessly downcast before her. He said nothing, just stood with his arms at his side, in a shirt he had long ago outgrown and breeches that had been patched at least a dozen times. Dallas had not seen him in almost a year and a half, since that fateful Christmas at Dunbar
. Her sisters had visited the McVurrichs the previous summer but Dallas had been with the court on the progress north. In that time, Donald’s shoulders had broadened, his blond beard had grown out and his voice had deepened. He was no longer Oliver McVurrich’s young laddie, but a full-grown man.

  For all that, he still looked boyishly chagrined as he hung his head in front of Dallas. He was a good fellow, after all, she reasoned, and felt repentant. “Oh, sit, Donald, you must be tired and hungry. I’m just fretful these days, forgive my rampant tongue.”

  As Donald sat down awkwardly in a dainty French chair, Dallas summoned Flora. In a few moments, the maid had moved brusquely out of the room to fetch food. Dallas pulled up a footstool and sat down by Donald. “I can’t present you today—you’ve heard that the Queen’s half-brother, Lord Johnny, died last night?”

  Donald looked surprised. “I noted the mourning but thought it was for her two uncles in France who passed on recently.”

  “For them, too, but Johnny’s death was a terrible shock. ’Tis a most unhappy time at court.”

  “Mayhap I shouldn’t have come,” Donald muttered. “Mayhap I don’t belong here. ’Tis all so fine.” He indicated the small room with his hand, the Flemish tapestries, the finely crafted furniture, the mirror edged in gilt.

  “Nonsense. Holyrood is much more elegant. Stirling is a barn by comparison.” Dallas sniffed disdainfully as she kicked at a worn place in the Persian carpet. “My husband’s house in Edinburgh is furnished with things too grand for this old fortress.” And she thought to herself, it has been more than a year since I’ve been there, six months since I’ve seen Iain. Oh, her allowance arrived on schedule, but why didn’t the man send some word with it? If the money hadn’t come, she wouldn’t even know he was alive. “You’ll grow accustomed to court life,” she went on, thrusting aside the depressing matter of her husband’s prolonged absence. “I have done so, though Lord knows it wasn’t easy.”

  Flora came in then with a heaping platter of food. Donald ate eagerly, spilling bits of bread and chicken onto the carpet Dallas had scorned but now regarded somewhat ruefully. “We’ll have to get you some decent clothes,” she said, pilfering a chicken wing from the platter. “Let’s see, after the funeral we go to Falkland. Then perhaps I can introduce you. Meanwhile, you’d best remain with me. You can help me with the move to Falkland.”

  “I’d be as honored to serve you as the Queen herself,” Donald blurted, and flushed deeply.

  Dallas turned away so he could not see her roll her eyes in annoyance. She did not need an infatuated country dolt to complicate her life. “You won’t say that after a few days in my service,” she snapped. “I’m not nearly as patient nor as kind as the Queen.”

  Donald sensed instinctively that he should protest and wished he knew some of the flattering phrases which must come so glibly to the courtiers’ tongues. But instead, he silently cursed himself for his lack of eloquence and concentrated on wiping his plate clean with a piece of honeyed rye bread.

  It had been years since Iain Fraser had traveled through Cameron country. Now, fully recovered from his wound, he cantered along the east side of Loch Lochy, unable to keep from marveling at the distance he had traveled on bare feet some eighteen years earlier. How far? he asked himself, smiling wryly at the memory of the dark, gangling youth, hungry and tired, often falling down in his struggle to get home to Beauly.

  He had spent the month of October there this past year, regaining his strength and seeing to his lands. Then, feeling fit except for occasional twinges of pain brought on by excessively damp weather, he had gone to the Isle of Lewes to rejoin his crew. They had sailed on December second, braving severe storms en route, but had made port at Genoa just before Christmas. Fraser had gone on to Rome to see the Pope but could elicit no promise of the loan Queen Mary wanted. Returning to Genoa, he spent the remainder of the winter aboard the Richezza, harassing foreign ships in the Mediterranean.

  By early April, he was back in Scotland. After devoting the next few weeks to his properties, Fraser headed south to accomplish something he had wanted to do ever since Dallas’s father had confided the secret knowledge on his deathbed: Fraser would search among the Camerons to see if he could find any further evidence proving his real father’s identity.

  His own tight-lipped Fraser kin had never told him anything helpful. They probably didn’t know, he had finally concluded. For a long time he wished he could find Moireach, his old nurse. She would know if anyone did. But the courageous woman who had saved his life that night on Beauly Firth had long since disappeared, perhaps even died.

  So here he was, back in Cameron country. He could not recall precisely where he had been held captive. Great stands of gloomy pine and a careening waterfall had been close by, but such sights were common in this part of the Highlands.

  It was on his second day in the saddle that Fraser found the cottage he was seeking. Although he did not think he could recall the face of his captor, he recognized it at once. The beard and hair were almost white and the skin was deeply furrowed, but Fraser knew he’d finally found the right Cameron.

  “What do you want?” the old man asked suspiciously, his roughened hands holding the door open a crack.

  “I’m Iain Fraser. Do you remember me?”

  The lifeless brown eyes revealed nothing. “Nay,” the man answered. “I know no Frasers.”

  “You knew me once, from Blar-na-Leine.” Fraser spoke in conversational tones, but the man’s head lifted slightly.

  “Blar-na-Leine,” he repeated without inflection. “That was nigh on twenty years past.”

  “Aye, I was but fourteen. You remember now?”

  The man nodded slowly. He seemed faintly impressed but neither curious nor frightened. If he had considered that Iain Fraser had come to wreak vengeance for his captivity, the idea did not outwardly disturb him.

  In the woods which surrounded the cottage, the skylark had commenced its evensong as a stately stand of foxgloves swayed in the evening breeze. The sun had slipped halfway behind the western hills, bringing dusk to the Highlands.

  Fraser was growing impatient with the man’s unresponsiveness. “I’m wed to your kin now, to Daniel Cameron’s middle daughter. May I come inside?”

  At last the man reacted with some kind of emotion. “A Fraser wed to a Cameron? Nae such a thing!” He shook his head violently, the beard tumbling from one side of his chest to the other.

  “City ways are different.” From inside the cottage came the sound of a kettle boiling over onto the peat fire. The old man turned around slowly.

  “I must tend to yon kettle. I’m all alone here. My woman passed on two years ago or more.” He shrugged away the time, he could not really remember. Fraser wondered if he remembered very much of anything.

  The old man motioned for Fraser to come in. The little place reeked of peat and overcooked vegetables. An aging, gaunt hound lay on the hearth, barely stirring as his master took the kettle off the hob. The ceiling was so low that Fraser had to stoop to keep from hitting his head.

  “Leeks and a bit o’ mutton,” the old man said, ladling the kettle’s contents onto a wooden plate. “Will ye eat?”

  Fraser sat down at the table, aware that the invitation signified acceptance. A Highlander who offered hospitality never went back on his word.

  “I never knew your Christian name,” Fraser said as the old man got out a second plate.

  “Griogair,” the man replied, handing the full plate to Fraser. He sat down on the hut’s only other chair and began eating with his fingers. They ate in silence, save for the rustling of the pines, the faint echo of the waterfall and the labored breathing of the hound on the hearth. It was almost dark inside the cottage.

  Cameron had gotten up to place his almost finished meal next to the hound. The animal raised its head with great effort and began lapping up the contents. Its master, meanwhile, poked at the fire, sending an eerie light across the pokey little room. “You remember the
hound, Iain Fraser?” he asked.

  “The whelp. It’s the same dog, then?” He did recall a frisky puppy, the only comfort he’d had during his captivity. It seemed hard to believe that this pathetic hound, like the old man, were the only remaining links to the past. Fraser gave the remnants of his own meal to the hound and then pushed his chair back from the rickety table. “You held me for ransom. Why?”

  Cameron shuffled his feet and looked down at the hound. “Och—I’m not sure.” He scratched his thatch of white hair. “There was some tale about you, aye, your father, Malcolm—nae, it was not Malcolm who was your real father.” He paused, as if waiting for Fraser to verify this.

  “So I’ve been told. Go on.”

  “Your true sire, he was—Huntly? Argyll? Who? I’ve forgotten.”

  Fraser tried to keep the impatience out of his voice. “I was never told—then. That’s why I’m here. I thought you might help me.”

  Cameron gaped at Fraser. “Och, so that’s it!” He chuckled as he let out the hound, which was making for the door on shaky legs. “A man ought to know from whose loins he’s sprung. But all I remember is ....’’He shook his head, the recollection eluding him. “But there was the bauble, a bonnie thing with writing on it. None of us could read, that’s why we sent for Daniel Cameron. A learned man, was Daniel, though too refined for my tastes.”

  “What bauble?” Fraser had moved closer, leaning forward on the table so that its legs creaked beneath his weight. He felt the tension building up inside him and could scarcely keep from grabbing Cameron by the shoulders and shaking the facts from the old man.

  “Well,” his host began, fingering the strands of his beard, “we took some things from your house at Strath Farrar, not that there was much to take, but pilfering is part of clan warfare, ye ken?” He paused, vaguely apologetic, but trusting in Fraser’s worldly wisdom. “Among the loot was a necklace of sorts, gold with some bonnie stones set in it. Tucked away in a wall, it was, and then there was this writing. That seemed odd, so we thought it might be important.” He stopped then, maddeningly, and waited for Fraser’s reaction.