Taken by the Border Rebel

by Blythe Gifford

  ‘Come.’ She turned away from the tower walls.

  Rob hesitated. ‘It is outside the walls?’

  A tower under siege would need water. A good leader would know that.

  She nodded. ‘That is why no one heard me.’ She pointed up the hill. ‘It’s up there. In one of the old forts.’

  Together, they turned towards the hills. No one followed them.

  In truth, Stella was not certain she could find it again. Oh, she knew where the old walls were. All of them did. But to deliberately walk up to that hole in the ground and stare into the darkness …

  No. She had never had the courage to do that.

  Yet now, with Rob at her side, she found her way by instinct. Bluebells beckoned her on, a trail to follow.

  You used to love the hills.

  Aye, she could imagine that on a day such as this, wandering into the hills when she was little more than a babe, too young to know fear …

  The momentary joy evaporated. Her muscles tensed. Ah, her body remembered. They must be close now.

  The old fort where the early ones had lived was worn smooth now. Only indentations in the grass showed where mighty walls had stood, yet some sloped high enough that she could gaze over the valley.

  There. In a corner surrounded by weeds. She knew it. And could not take another step.

  Rob came closer and gripped her hand. They had not touched since entering the gate for fear the madness would seize them again, but his hand was a comfort now.

  ‘Here,’ she said, still not moving. ‘It is here.’

  And she felt the breeze in her hair and the sunshine of June on her cheeks and cringed.

  The well had been dark and cold.

  ‘It’s no more than a hole in the ground,’ he said, his voice rough in her ear. He nudged her back in encouragement.

  She crept forwards, as if she must catch it unawares, as if it were a live thing, only sleeping, and ready to roar to life if she woke it.

  A few more steps.

  Even from here, she could not see the well itself. Grasses and ferns sprouted around it, hiding it. It would be easy to miss, easy for a child to run right to it and tumble in, with never a chance to hesitate—

  She squeezed his fingers.

  ‘Just a few more steps, Stella. I won’t let you fall.’

  She took them, pausing, finally, a few inches from the edge. The wind rippled her skirt over the yawning blackness. The earth seemed to tilt beneath her.

  She dropped to her knees, never letting go of his hand, feeling safer closer to the ground, held fast by the earth. And as she peered over the side, she saw only stones.

  She leaned closer. Where was the shaft, plummeting deep into the earth? Where was the water, waiting to swallow her? All that was here now was gravel, close enough to touch.

  She looked up at Rob, seeing safety in his brown eyes, and tried to catch a memory …

  ‘I don’t understand. It was deep and dark with water waiting at the bottom. This is …’ She waved her hand, ashamed. ‘Harmless.’

  He wrapped his arms around her, rocking her against his chest, but she would not be comforted. ‘Was I wrong? Were they all wrong? All this time?’

  ‘Who knows? The wall might have crumbled in since then or they might have deliberately filled it to save the next child.’

  Explanations all logical. But shame bit her still. She had been afraid … of what? A story her mother had told her?

  And if it was only a story, then why?

  The shame ebbed and she could breathe again. Breathe as she had not for fifteen years.

  She would fear the well no more.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Each step Rob took towards Storwick Castle dragged.

  This last day he had spent with her had only prolonged his agony and postponed the inevitable. It was time to mount Felloun and ride home across the hills, thanking God he was done with Storwicks.

  The hollow longing for her had become as familiar as a wound.

  Beside him, Stella walked across the grass with a smile. Of course she would smile. She was home and free of the fear that had haunted her all her life.

  She needed him no more.

  As for Rob, he had honoured his enemy’s wish and returned his body home. His father would not have done it, he was sure, but he was head man now. The decision had been his.

  Yet poor Hobbes Storwick must be in Purgatory grumbling at the poor stewardship he had left behind. Money spent on tapestries, while roofs stayed unthatched.

  Grateful again, Rob thought of his father and the hours he had spent at his elbow, learning what a head man must. Duty. Courage. Strength. The doubts that had plagued him ebbed. The Brunson clan was in good hands. His.

  Humphrey and Oswyn spent more hours squabbling with each other than planning for battle or even for daily life. Even their sheep staggered under coats of unsheared wool.

  No wonder they had not ridden to save their head man. These two fools could not agree on what to have for dinner.

  Wat Gregor had more sense. And more integrity, too, he’d wager. Neither would step aside, yet neither was strong enough to assume leadership of the other, or the rest of the family. So the world slowly crumbled in their wake, until the family would be no threat to anyone else.

  And no bulwark against them, either.

  Stella might smile now, but he could see the future, as if he had the sight. One day, if not in this generation, then the next, the Robsons or the Elliots or some other family from either side of the border would swoop down and discover the Storwicks were defenceless and the family would be no more.

  He should have relished the thought. He didn’t.

  But if he had learned anything these last days, it was that his father had been wise to choose and groom his successor so early.

  And that Rob needed to do the same.

  If something happened to him tomorrow, Johnnie could, would, step in. But if he were to protect the family for the next generation and the next, it was his duty to marry, beget sons and train them. There had been a First Brunson. There must not be a Last.

  He knew his duty. Yet when he looked at Stella, wild longing gripped him. He wanted to grab her, mount Felloun, race across the border and hold her for ever.

  A selfish dream. A violation of his duty and her happiness.

  He had kept his word to her father and brought her home. They had been reluctant to ransom her, true, but now he had witnessed the reverence in which they held her. He was certain they would let no harm come to her, no matter what danger the rest of the family might face.

  But the price of that reverence, the lonely, isolated life she would lead here, twisted his heart.

  A sense of peace settled around Stella as they left the hill. She had bidden farewell to her father and laid him to rest and with him, thanks to Rob, she had laid to rest the fear that had haunted her her whole life. For those few moments, to be Stella, walking beside Rob in the sunshine, seemed enough for all the world.

  Yet her calm disappeared as they approached the gate.

  What had happened all those years ago? Why couldn’t she remember? And what parts of her mother’s story were true?

  ‘I’ll be leaving, then,’ he said, next to her.

  A shadow, fear, returned. Aye, there was what she had tried to forget. She would have to face those questions alone. ‘It’s late. The day’s near gone. Wait until tomorrow.’

  Just a little longer …

  She reached for his hand, as if that would be enough to change his mind.

  He pulled away the instant her fingers met his. ‘Don’t make it harder.’

  She had reached for one more day, one more hour, as if she could extend their time together. As if she could run away with him, disappear, and make time stand still until a miracle happened and they were allowed to be together.

  But miracles were scarce on the Borders and it seemed she had reached her limit.

  ‘It could not be any harder,’ she said, he
r voice dull with defeat.

  He did not turn away from her gaze and she saw in his eyes that his agony equalled hers. ‘Aye, it could.’ Grim words. ‘You could be with child.’

  Without thinking, she touched her belly. It was too soon to know whether his seed had taken root. Surely God would not be that cruel.

  Or kind.

  She looked away, to hide her tears. Looked to the hills and the path he would ride home. She knew, now, what was on the other side. A valley that would no longer welcome her.

  ‘Tell Wat,’ she began, struggling with the words, ‘that I did not abandon him. Tell him …’ She cleared her throat. ‘Tell him that I love him.’

  I’ll love you all my days.

  But for Rob duty would always come first. As it should.

  They entered the courtyard, not touching, and he went directly to the stables. She trailed behind, as silent as he, for nothing she could say would change the fact that she was a Storwick and he a Brunson.

  But when he mounted Felloun and gathered the reins, he looked down at her. The darkness on his brow, she saw now, the reason they had called him Black, no longer seemed the darkness of anger, but of sorrow.

  He cleared his throat. ‘If you ever need …’ The sentence died in his throat.

  She shook her head and looked away. If she met his eyes now, neither one would have the strength to fight desire.

  The horse walked across the courtyard, slowly, it seemed, as if he, too, were reluctant. No one approached them and the gate swung open, no impediment to his departure.

  Outside, Rob kicked Felloun into a gallop and she watched him until horse and rider were swallowed by the hills.

  He did not look back.

  That evening, Stella took her place at the high table, alone with her grief and her questions. Her mother had taken to her bed and no one else dared come close.

  Except Humphrey Storwick.

  Throughout the day, he had paced, agitated, but never approached her. She’d been glad of it, though her skin ached for Rob’s. More than that, her soul missed the only one unafraid to be near her.

  Humphrey leaned closer, trying to be close enough to whisper, but not succeeding. ‘Would you speak with me in private?’

  Something to do with the running of the house, she supposed, though she had never been asked to do so before. But she had learned some things at the Brunson Tower. It would be better to come down from her pedestal and to keep busy.

  In the corridor, Humphrey stopped, abruptly, but backed away when she did not halt quickly enough to keep her distance. He swallowed and licked his lips. ‘I must marry you tomorrow.’

  ‘Must?’ The word seemed even more objectionable than tomorrow.

  ‘Yes. If I’m to be head of the Storwicks.’

  She shook her head. All those days, all those years she had longed for someone to ask for her hand, for intimacy, for children. Now, it was too late.

  Not because she had given her virginity away, but because she had given it to Rob. After him, everyone else would be no more substantial than a feather in the wind.

  Yet, a fleeting question. What would happen if she was with child?

  No. Even that would not force her to wed this man, so inadequate to rearing Rob Brunson’s babe.

  ‘You don’t need to marry me,’ she said. Humphrey’s eyes, wide, seemed to hold more fear than admiration. ‘The family will reward the man best suited, no matter who his wife is, or even whether he has one.’

  ‘But I need you.’

  ‘Need me?’ There was no passion in the word. None of the yearning so deep it could not be spoken. ‘I hear nothing of love in your voice.’

  ‘Love?’ He looked at her as if she were daft. ‘I said nothing of love. I need you because marriage to you will prove God intends me to lead. After we are wed, do as you like.’ He shrugged, not meeting her eyes. ‘Go off to work more miracles.’

  Alone, he might as well have said. Take care of other people’s children. Walk around untouchable, as you have done all your life. Just make me the head man.

  ‘You’re strong enough to lead the Storwicks or you’re not.’ There had been no question, she was certain, who would rule when Geordie Brunson died. ‘Marrying me won’t make it so.’

  ‘Say what you like,’ he said, furrowing his forehead in an expression meant to be menacing. ‘It will happen. Before the priest leaves on the morrow.’

  Behind her, Oswyn’s voice interrupted. ‘Or me. You can marry me.’

  ‘No, she can’t. She’s going to marry me.’

  ‘Not if she doesn’t want to. Let her choose. That’s why God saved her. To choose which of us will lead.’

  God, she was certain, had saved her for nothing of the sort. ‘I’ll live in a convent before I marry either one of you.’

  ‘Your mother will see reason,’ Oswyn said, turning to leave the Hall. ‘I’ll ask her.’

  Humphrey followed, arguing to Oswyn’s back.

  A chill touched Stella’s shoulders. Her mother must know the real story of what had happened to her that day. If Stella confronted her, what would her mother say?

  Possibilities began to swirl. Had Stella fallen down the well, or had she merely disappeared for hours, as Wat might, unmindful of what her parents thought? Perhaps she had simply wandered too far from home and been frightened when she found herself alone?

  Yet her fear of the well, that place, was real. Something had happened there. What? If it was not a miracle, if she had not been saved by an angel, then who had saved her?

  Stella’s mother summoned her before the first star showed in the gloaming.

  A summons from her mother had always unsettled her. When Stella was a child, it had meant lessons or a lecture in a room that seemed always in perpetual twilight.

  Not this time, she promised herself. She had questions of her own to ask.

  She entered silently, as she had been taught, and waited to be recognised. At least today, the dark shadows were appropriate to mourning.

  Her mother knelt at her prayer stool, the place she had spent so many hours during all of Stella’s life.

  I’ll live in a convent. That’s what she had just threatened, knowing it would be a sacrifice to give up the world.

  She wondered, not for the first time, whether her mother might have been more suited to that life. And for the first time, she wondered what her father must have thought of it. Now that she knew what could happen between men and women, she saw with different eyes.

  Her mother struggled to rise and Stella went to her side, offering an arm. Her mother patted her hand. ‘God was good to us when He sent you.’

  The burden of the day, of her husband’s death, had sapped her. Her eyes drooped, her shoulders slumped, her very skin sagged, as if too tired to cling to her frame, and she leaned against Stella for the few steps between the prayer bench and her chair.

  Stella helped her sink into the seat and then waited, silent, no longer certain she could challenge this woman whose piety had shaped her whole life. Not now, when she had lost so much.

  Her mother’s head rested against the high-backed chair, her eyes closed. ‘God answered only one of my prayers,’ she said, finally, never moving her head. ‘He sent you home to me.’

  ‘Yes, Mother.’ No need to ask what prayer went unanswered when her father lay mouldering in his grave.

  Strength seemed to flow into her mother again. She lifted her head and opened her eyes. ‘The man is a poor excuse for a priest, but he is the one God sent, so he is the one who will marry you.’

  Stella swallowed a scream. ‘Who would you have me marry?’

  ‘Humphrey. Oswyn. The choice is yours.’

  ‘I choose neither.’ She wanted to say more. Wanted to say that a man who could not make himself head of the family without her approval would never be able to make the difficult decisions a head man would be forced to make. Like disowning Willie Storwick.

  ‘But you must.’ Her mother tilted her head, puzzled.
>
  ‘Why?’

  ‘Why else would God have sent you back to us?’

  No other reason. Not that she was loved or wanted or seen as anything other than God’s instrument.

  There is nothing special about you, Stella Storwick. But to Rob Brunson, there had been, and it had nothing in it of reverence, but of relish, of appreciation of her body and her heart. And the rightness she had felt with him seemed more in tune with her purpose than the feigned honour her family accorded her.

  ‘It was not God who brought me back. It was Black Rob Brunson.’

  ‘That,’ her mother said, with a nod, ‘is a miracle only God could have performed.’

  ‘I visited the well today, Mother.’

  Her mother blinked, like a startled bird. ‘Why? You’ve not been there in the years since God saved you.’

  ‘I had to face it.’ Rob had understood. Why hadn’t her parents? Why had they let her drag the dread with her for all these years? ‘And do you know what I found there?’ She paced now, looking at her mother and away, gathering energy. It was as if everything in her life had been upended. ‘I found a gravel pit no deeper than my arm.’

  Her mother looked away. ‘We filled it, later. We filled it in so it could harm no one else.’

  She paused. Rob had suggested the same, but nothing seemed true now. There was nothing she could trust. There had been fear—oh, yes, fear her body still carried. But was it the fear of the trauma she could not remember? Or the fear she would never live up to their expectations?

  ‘What really happened, Mother?’

  ‘It will do you no good to relive this, child. You screamed for days after. I couldn’t comfort you.’

  She ignored the regret on her mother’s face. ‘How long was I gone? An hour? Two? It wasn’t days, was it?’

  ‘Hours seem like days to the mother of a lost child.’

  She bit her lip, knowing the truth of that. Hadn’t she felt the same for those minutes Wat had been missing?

  ‘But I searched for you,’ her mother said, in the words Stella could recite from memory. ‘All day and all night and then, after I had looked everywhere in vain, I went to the chapel and lay on the floor praying to the Virgin, a night and a day, more …’