The Rose Red Bride JK2

by Claire Delacroix

  He crouched opposite the door and leaned his back against the wall. He placed his booted foot over the drain, for no rat could lift the weight of him and it would take a while for the creature to chew through his heavy soles. These southern boots had the advantage of being sturdy, at least.

  In that pose, he took what rest he could while he awaited his chance.

  To his astonishment, Erik’s thoughts turned unbidden not to all he had lost over the years, but the lady who had just betrayed him. He found himself wishing that he had one last chance to explain himself to Vivienne, one last chance to kindle a light in her marvelous eyes, one last chance to plant a son in her womb.

  And that only proved his wits useless indeed.

  * * *

  Elizabeth nearly tripped on the hem of her kirtle, so anxious was she to return to Vivienne. She carried a pair of bowls of steaming venison stew, a loaf of bread that was yet warm, and a pitcher of ale. The crockery cup she carried for the two of them to share was stuffed into her belt, along with a pair of carved wooden spoons, and she felt the cup loosing itself with every step. She had not a spare hand to secure it, though, and the castellan’s wife had been too busy to grant her more aid than she had done.

  Elizabeth hastened through the hall, artfully avoiding the grasp of many a man who assumed her to be a serving wench. Curse these breasts of hers! If ever a man looked her in the eye again - instead of looking rather lower than that - Elizabeth was certain she would wed him on the spot.

  Provided that he was handsome, rich and inclined to seek adventure, of course.

  She kicked a man who grabbed at her and he laughed even as he tried to tumble her into his lap. Had her burden been only her own meal, Elizabeth would have abandoned it to strike him, but she knew that Vivienne must be famished indeed. She avoided his outstretched leg and contented herself with a scathing glare in his direction before hastening onward.

  Elizabeth reached the bottom of the steps, breathless from her efforts, then eased slowly up them so as to not trip upon the hem of her gown.

  Cups were abruptly banged upon the board, urging the men to heed some announcement or another. Elizabeth paused on the steps and glanced back. The man who had tried to trip her leered in her direction, but she ignored him.

  Alexander stood and cleared his throat, looking as pompous as he possibly could. Elizabeth fairly ground her teeth at the change in her eldest brother, who had been so much more entertaining before their parents’ deaths. He had become a tedious old man, obsessed with honor and justice, before Elizabeth’s very eyes. She would never have believed it possible, had she not seen it herself.

  It was time enough, to her thinking, that one of the sisters played a prank upon him, just as he used to play pranks upon them. He was impossibly smug when he had his way, which irked Elizabeth beyond belief.

  “Here is a night in need of a tale, for we will none of us be quick to sleep this night, and here is a teller of tales in need of a cup of ale. I bid welcome to Ruari Macleod, a teller of tales arrived in most timely fashion, a man come to our door in the moment we have greatest need of his talent.”

  A stocky man stood before the head table, where he had obviously made his offer of a tale for a meal. He bowed to the company with clear trepidation, a large saddlebag at his feet. He was older, his hair an unruly russet thatch, his garb rough and his face growing redder by the moment. He looked around the hall, not nearly so at ease to be the focus of attention as one might expect of a storyteller, and cleared his throat a good dozen times.

  A serving woman topped up his cup of ale, clearly thinking that was the issue. He nodded at her, then bowed in gratitude, doing so with such clumsiness that he spilled the ale. The assembly laughed, thinking this a jest, but the man’s face only reddened to a deeper hue. His uncertainty grew more apparent as the expectant silence stretched ever longer. He stood mute, looking at them, and shifting his weight from foot to foot.

  Elizabeth darted up the stairs to find Vivienne pacing in a most uncharacteristic manner. Vivienne pivoted and must have seen that the cup was about to fall. She quickly lifted the two bowls out of Elizabeth’s grip and Elizabeth pulled the cup out of her belt just as it worked itself loose.

  “Just in time!” Elizabeth said with triumph.

  Vivienne did not share her smile. “Is Darg here?”

  “Of course. She prefers smaller chambers to the hall and remained here to dance on the rafters while I was gone. Mark my words, she will descend upon the ale if we do not drink it quickly.”

  Elizabeth poured the ale, and heard Darg’s cry of delight. “Can you not hear that?” she asked, but Vivienne shook her head. She pointed, sensing her sister’s disappointment, as Darg swung from the rafters on a doughty cobweb, screaming all the while.

  The fairy jumped at the precise moment that would ensure that she landed upon the handle of the pitcher. “Some ale for you but more for me; a finer taste there cannot be,” she said, smacking her lips. She leaned down to put her mouth to the ale, intending to drink like a dog and doubtless drink it all.

  Elizabeth swatted at the fairy and nearly spilled the ale. Darg dodged the blow, scurried around the lip of the pitcher, then squatted on the rim.

  “Pest!” Elizabeth cried, pushing the fairy aside. Darg jumped to her shoulder, clucking and complaining, as Elizabeth managed to pour ale into the cup she and Vivienne would share.

  She offered her sister the cup and found Vivienne regarding her with confusion. “I will assume that you have not been struck mad,” Vivienne said with a smile. “But that you aim to keep the fairy out of the ale.”

  “Darg likes mortal ale overmuch, and is a cursed amount of trouble once she has had some.” To foil the fairy, Elizabeth knotted a handkerchief over the top of the pitcher. Darg crawled across it, peering through the weave at the ale beneath, then whimpered.

  Vivienne was no more cheerful than the fairy. She seemed concerned about some matter, perhaps overly disappointed that she could not see the fairy. Despite the fact that she must be hungry, Elizabeth watched her sister push the stew around the bowl.

  “You have not taken a bite. I thought your bowl would be clean by now,” she teased, and gained only a tiny smile.

  “I am not that hungry,” Vivienne said and put the bowl aside. The shadows in her eyes were undeniable, though Elizabeth guessed her sister was not ready to speak of what troubled her. Vivienne had a merry heart, by nature, and was impulsive of tongue. Her inclination to silence this night was one that Elizabeth thought should be respected for its rarity.

  They had time aplenty to share tales, for Elizabeth doubted that Vivienne would wed soon. Indeed, she was of an age that might preclude her marrying at all.

  “A storyteller has arrived,” Elizabeth said, hoping to cheer Vivienne, who so loved tales. “He is not a very good storyteller, at least not thus far, for he seems most troubled about making a beginning. And he is old enough that one would think he would have had years to conquer his fear of a large company. Perhaps he is not truly a storyteller at all.” She shrugged and ate some of her stew. “We could sit on the steps, out of sight, and listen.”

  Vivienne straightened and her eyes brightened. “How old is he?”

  Elizabeth considered as she chewed. “Maybe he has seen fifty summers, or maybe he has seen forty that were challenging. I cannot say. He is old, to be sure.”

  She managed to speculate no more, for Vivienne darted down the stairs. Elizabeth trailed after her with her meal, and found her sister’s face alight as she peered around the corner of the wall.

  “You know this man,” she guessed.

  “His name is Ruari Macleod,” Vivienne said with certainty.

  “Do you know where to begin, old man?” cried some stout soul in the company. “Your tale is thin soup thus far!”

  The men roared and murmurings of discontent grew.

  “Once upon a time!” Vivienne shouted.

  Elizabeth peeked and she saw the older man’s relief at
this encouragement. He waved a heavy finger in the direction of the stairs. “Aye, there would be the beginning of the tale. Once upon a time, there was a man and there was a woman...”

  “We know this tale, old man,” a man said in the crowd and a coarse laugh echoed through the hall.

  Ruari rounded upon the man with annoyance and jabbed that finger in the heckler’s direction. “You do not know this tale, you cannot know this tale, for I am here to tell it to you. It is my tale and my gift, though it was lived by another man.”

  “Then begin it in truth,” cried the unrepentant man.

  This Ruari squared his shoulders and his voice grew so loud that it filled the hall. “Once upon a time, there was a man who lost his heart to a woman of Norse lineage, a woman with hair as fair as flax and eyes as blue as the sea. She was not so lovely that wars were fought over her favor, and she was not so finely wrought that she might have been confused with a fairy queen. She was simply a woman, a fine woman with a good heart, a woman with a clear brow and vigor in her limbs, a woman who would bear him sons and love him as fervently as he loved her.”

  “I am needing such a woman myself,” another man jested, though his companions nudged him none-too-gently to silence.

  “And so this man confessed his admiration to the lady, and asked her to put her hand into his. And she agreed, despite the fact that he had little to his name save his honor and his blade. He was the youngest son of five sons borne to an old Highland family, and his family could grant him only their blessing. The lady loved him well enough to accept his suit and so they were wed.”

  Elizabeth sank down on the step, quietly eating her stew as she listened. She watched Vivienne, who heeded this Ruari’s tale with unexpected interest.

  “In time, and with much labor, they wrought a home for themselves, albeit one far more humble than either had known before. And in time, the woman bore a son to her husband, a boy with hair as fair as his mother’s own. And because the boy so favored his mother’s kin, they gave him a bold Norse name. Erik means ‘ruler forever’ and invokes the great champion Erik the Red.”

  Elizabeth watched Vivienne ease forward on her seat, the meal forgotten. Did she know some man named Erik? Elizabeth did not. Where might her sister have met such a man?

  Meanwhile, the storyteller continued. “So it was that in time, God granted this couple another son, another boy as golden and healthy as the first. But as God takes with one hand, so does he take away with the other, and the woman died in the birthing of her second son. And the husband knew not how he would raise these boys without his wife by his side and he feared his sons would need greater protection than he could grant them. So, he named the boy Nicholas, in honor of the saint known to have had affection for children, and he entreated that saint to show favor to both of his sons.”

  But wait. Elizabeth frowned. Alexander had pledged Vivienne’s hand to Nicholas Sinclair, who had an elder brother named Erik. The Sinclairs were an old Highland family. Nicholas cooled in the dungeon, captured for breaking his pledge to Alexander.

  And most intriguingly, Vivienne had spent two nights and days in the company of Nicholas, unchaperoned. Elizabeth eyed her sister and was not at all convinced that Vivienne did not care for the man in Ravensmuir’s dungeon. She was also unpersuaded that her sister truly bled as she insisted.

  It had not been Annelise a few weeks past, Elizabeth knew it.

  Could the arrival of this storyteller, known to Vivienne against all expectation, be coincidence? Elizabeth thought not. She listened more closely as the storyteller continued.

  “Though the father taught the boys as well as he could, both of them felt often that their father was merely biding his time before he too slipped away to join their mother. It seemed that as the boys grew, their vitality was gained at the cost of their father’s vigor. By the time they were men, tall and strong and triumphant in battle, he never left his bed.

  “The older son, fearing that his father missed the plenty of his youth - for both boys had heard the tale of their parents’ simple beginnings time and again - began to expand their humble abode. He fought avaricious neighbors on every side, he secured his borders, he built a stone keep, and he did it all in his father’s name. He took no credit for himself, but swore it was his father’s plan, his father’s training, and his father’s inspiration that granted him the fortitude to conjure affluence from nothing at all. He was valiant in battle, his word could be relied upon in treaty, and he was trusted for his honor by all.

  “The younger son, meanwhile, had no care for labor. He preferred to savor what he could charm from others, or what he could trick them into granting to him, for he believed that only fools toiled, sweat and shed blood. He was fair to look upon and used that to his advantage in gaining his desires.”

  This was consistent with Elizabeth’s memory of Nicholas Sinclair. She glanced to Vivienne in time to see her sister nod grim agreement. She tapped her on the shoulder. “Then how can you care for Nicholas?” she whispered.

  Vivienne started in surprise. “I do not.”

  “But he is in the dungeon and you clearly fret for him...”

  Vivienne shook her head, then heaved a sigh. “It is Erik Sinclair who is in the dungeon,” she confessed quietly. “It is Erik Sinclair who captured me.”

  Elizabeth opened her mouth at this revelation then closed it again. Vivienne turned her attention back to the storyteller. Elizabeth scarcely breathed, for she knew now that she heard the tale of which Vivienne was a part. She put her meal aside and even ignored the splash of Darg leaping joyously into their half-empty cup of ale.

  Ruari continued. “The brothers argued on occasion, as two wrought so differently only could, but they hid their quarrels from their father - the younger one had no desire to appear poorly in his father’s eyes, and the older one had no yearning to tax his father’s strength. Perhaps the father did not fully understand the nature of Nicholas until it was too late. Perhaps he did not wish to know. I do not know the truth of it, save that it was.”

  Elizabeth was snared by the injustice of the father’s error. Darg belched, then climbed from the empty cup of ale, staggering slightly in her course toward the pitcher. The fairy swung up on the handle of the pitcher, landed atop the handkerchief, and began to gnaw a hole in the cloth.

  Elizabeth was too transfixed by the tale to care.

  “The elder son wed happily, to a local beauty name of Beatrice, and an alliance was sealed with the love match. Two daughters were born to Beatrice, and Erik was proud as ever a father could be. And so it seemed that all was well, though the younger brother had a fierce jealousy of the elder.”

  “This tale will turn from bad to worse,” Elizabeth whispered in trepidation. Vivienne but nodded once, her attention fully fixed on the older man’s voice.

  * * *

  Chapter Ten

  “And so it came to pass that one dark day, Erik was summoned without warning by an ally, one Thomas Gunn, who professed need of his aid. Erik left his wife and his children and his home well defended, though it became clear that he had not prepared for treachery from within. Erik arrived at the abode of Thomas to find those lands at peace, and to learn that his neighbor had sent no summons to him.”

  “Nicholas deceived him!” hissed someone in the company, and Elizabeth was certain that man had named the culprit aright.

  “Aye, Nicholas indeed, though none dared make such a bold accusation then. Once Erik had left his home, Nicholas asserted himself as laird, though most thought the claim a temporary one.”

  “The cur!” shouted one man in the assembly. “I will wager that he had a scheme to see the change wrought permanent!”

  Ruari lifted a hand. “Who can say with certainty, save Nicholas himself? I will tell you, though, that Erik was assaulted upon the road while returning to his own abode, that he was attacked where he least expected such a deed - for, as you will recall, he knew nothing of the changes at his home. He knew only that the message he h
ad received from Thomas Gunn had been an error.

  “And so it was that Erik was surprised upon his own road, he was beaten senseless, he was cast from a cliff. He was believed to be lost to this world forevermore and, indeed, they held a funeral mass for him when he did not return to Blackleith and mourned his passing for a fortnight. It was said that his horse returned home without him, and Nicholas let it be known that he searched endlessly for his brother, without success.”

  “While he had been the one to see to his disappearance,” muttered one man to assent from the hall.

  “This explains his scars,” Elizabeth said quietly, though her sister did not reply.

  Ruari paused and Elizabeth eased to the lip of the stair, so anxious was she to hear the next increment of the tale.

  Vivienne, she noted, listened just as intently, though she did not seem as horrified by the tale. Did Vivienne know it already?

  “He cannot have been dead in truth!” roared a man in encouragement. “That would be the end of your tale.”

  Ruari shook his head. “Erik was close to dead, to be sure, but Fortune finally smiled upon him. A powerful neighbor gone hunting found Erik some days after that man’s own funeral. He recognized Erik and thought to grant him an honorable burial. Imagine his surprise when the supposed corpse began to speak!”

  The company laughed, though Vivienne did not. Elizabeth watched her sister fold the fullness of her kirtle repeatedly between her fingers, utterly unaware of her own fretful gesture, and guessed that Vivienne had lost her heart to this wronged Erik.

  “And so it was from this neighbor that Erik learned of doings at his abode. He learned that it was said that he had been assailed upon the road by bandits and that a funeral mass had been sung in his honor. Erik, though, could not fully credit the rumor of his brother’s deception. In the end, the neighbor - who was the Earl of Sutherland - made Erik a wager which would prove the truth of his claim. The Earl of Sutherland offered to make a visit to Erik’s abode and to secret Erik within his company, so that man could see the truth for himself.”