[Druids Bidding 02.0] RenFaire Druids: Dunskey Castle Prequels

by Jane Stain

  She hugged his back tight and whispered in his ear, “Dall, I cannot bear the thought of you with another woman, either. I promise that one day, I will be ready to join with you—and remain in one time. I forgive your loss of control. Do you promise to be mine only and to wait for me to be ready?”

  He stopped the horse and turned in the saddle to embrace her. “I dae.”

  They kissed quite a bit before he got the horse moving again.

  Emily could tell they were nearing a settlement. Cattle dotted the green hillsides beneath the cloudy highland sky. She took a deep breath and let it out slowly when Dall told her the settlement they were nearing was his family’s. He dismounted and helped her down, then kept her hand in his. She found his gentle hand squeeze reassuring. They walked on together hand in hand, and around the next bend, there it was.

  The settlement reminded Emily of the model of a feudal town she and her classmates had made with shoeboxes in social studies class in sixth grade. Dall’s family had built themselves a large grand house at the craggy top of a green rise on the mountainside. Sprawled out on the hill below it were two dozen more houses. These were cabins, really. All the structures were built of a much lighter color of wood than Emily was used to, and they looked almost like more crags in the green rise. The effect was quite pretty.

  “Da!”

  “Da!”

  A boy and girl about six and four ran down the hill and put their arms around Dall’s waist.

  Dall met Emily’s eyes and smiled.

  She smiled back at him.

  And then he dropped her hand, scooped an arm around each of his children, and swung them around as if they were on a carnival ride. They screamed, but in delight, not in fear. When he was quite spin dizzy, he pretended to fall down with them, and when they landed on the soft green grass, he tickled them until they were so giggly, Emily started giggling, too.

  “Och,” Dall said to his kids, “I did miss ye. Here, meet my friend Emily.” He turned them around to face her. “Emily, this strong young man is Peadar, and this lovely young lass is Peigi.”

  Keeping one arm each around their Da’s waist, the children scrunched up their little foreheads and studied Emily as if she were in a cage at the zoo. The boy looked just like his dad, whereas the girl must have favored her mother. They looked healthy and happy. He wore trousers rather than a kilt—which Emily figured was best for playing. But the girl was dressed like a miniature highland woman in a plaid skirt and bodice with a shift underneath.

  Emily knelt down so that she was face to face with the children and smiled. “Hello. Oh. I have treats for you.” She was digging in one of her pouches for two pieces of hard candy when she realized what she had better add. “If it’s all right with your father?”

  While she looked to Dall for his permission, she let the reality of Dall being a father sink in. Sure, she had known before that he had kids. But having his flesh and blood right here, standing in front of her with red cheeks and curious eyes and loving devotion for their da? That was still a bit of a shock. All the people her age that she knew were college students, and none were parents. Well, worse still, their own parents still called them kids.

  Dall smiled and nodded that it was OK for his kids to have candy. “Best unwrap it for them. And keep the dear wee bits o’ waxed paper, lass.”

  When Emily handed the children the small bits of hard candy, they looked to their Da with puzzled expressions.

  Saying a bunch of words that Emily didn’t understand, Dall pretended to put one of the candies in his mouth and roll it around on his tongue.

  When the small boy and girl copied him and put the candy in their mouths, their eyes lit up with great surprise. They smiled while they rolled the candy around in their mouths.

  Dall smiled back at them and nodded. All the while they enjoyed the candy, their da spoke to them. It was in Gaelic, but Emily guessed what he was saying. “It is good, aye lass? Aye laddie? Resist the urge tae bite, and ’twill last a while. I did try it myself na sae lang syne. Emily gave some tae me, as wull. She’s a nice lass. I hope ye wull be good friends with her.”

  As Dall talked, he beckoned Emily over to him and took her hand once more in his.

  She took it gladly.

  With his other arm, Dall held both Peadar and Peigi, and so the four of them stood as a family, watching an older Scots woman who could only be Dall’s mother walk at a stately pace down the hill in her long plaid skirt, with a toddler on her hip.

  Dall reached for the tiny boy when she got close, and the father spun this child around, too, though instead of pretending to fall, he tossed his youngest son in the air to make him giggle. And then, holding the toddler in one arm, he pulled Emily close with the other arm and beckoned the children and his mother close to him, so that they were all in a group hug.

  As they walked up the hill that way to Dall’s family’s house, the lower neighbors came out to greet him.

  “’Tis wull ye hae come haime, Dall.”

  “In all ways, ’tis good tae see ye hae made the journey once more.”

  Dall greeted each one in turn by name, so that it took a while to walk up the small hill.

  Once they were up in the relative privacy of the hilltop, Dall’s brothers and their wives came over to meet Emily. At first, they looked at her foreign clothing and eyed her with suspicion as Dall made introductions. Once they had all gathered round, though, Dall explained how Emily had saved Alasdair from choking on his breakfast.

  Just like that, Emily was treated to knowing smiles about the way Dall was holding her, as well as teasing remarks about how they would sleep in separate beds until a priest could be rounded up to their tiny kirk.

  Dall and Emily looked at each other sorrowfully for a moment at those remarks, but then Dall’s mother invited them in for a hot meal, and they soon got lost in pleasant conversation.

  And they spent the week that way.

  Mostly, they played with Dall’s children. Domhnall, his two-year-old son, was allowed to run loose on the bottom floor of the house, and of course he got into everything. Emily took her share of turns picking him up and untangling him from yarn or prying his hands off the dog’s tail, and she grew fond of the little fellow.

  But their visit was also about having Emily get to know Dall’s mother and his brothers and their wives and all of Dall’s nieces and nephews. The other people who lived in the settlement pretty much left Dall’s family alone at the top of their hill.

  Always the settlement kept a watch. Feeling uneasy about that, Emily asked the other women about it one night while they were washing up the dishes after supper, using two basins they had filled with water hauled up from the creek earlier that day.

  “The watch is so on guard,” Emily said casually, looking out the wind opening in the family’s large kitchen. “Who do you expect to come attack?”

  She turned to look at Dall’s sisters-in-law for their answer, curious.

  The two Scots women continued washing, rinsing, and drying dishes.

  The taller one cast a stoic look at Emily. “Why, the Menzies Clan, lass,” she said as if it was something Emily should have known.

  Not any more enlightened than she had been before, Emily tried again. “But, why are the Menzies Clan your enemies?”

  Still with stoic looks on their faces—not unfriendly, just serious and resigned to their lot in life—the two women put their dishes down and stopped to glare at Emily. The taller one put her hand on her hip, and the other cocked her head sideways, as if they thought Emily knew the answer and just needed to think about it.

  “Sorry, I’m not from around here,” Emily tried by way of explanation, gesturing at her English clothing. “I really don’t know why the Menzies Clan and the MacGregor Clan are at war, and I really would like to understand.” She looked them in the eye in what she hoped was a sincere and beseeching way.

  The taller one nodded then, and picked up her towel once more to dry another cup and set it on the bo
ard that had been fastened to the wall. “This land used tae be Clan Menzies territory,” she said to the dish boards as she dried another cup and put it away. “Ower the past ten years, we hae taken it for the Campbells.”

  “Oh.” Emily held out her hands. “Can I help?”

  The taller woman handed her the dishtowel.

  Quietly helping them dry the rest of the dishes, Emily wished she could make all the highlanders see that the English were the enemy, that the highland clans needed to unite against the English and quit killing each other off. However, she knew that effort was doomed to only cause more heartbreak when it failed. And, they thought she was English. They intimidated her, these tough stoic women. She really didn’t dare try and tell them what to do.

  She held out hope that she and Dall could save these few people who were closest to him, and whose names weren’t in the history books.

  Most of the time, Emily could almost pretend she was on her uncle’s farm back home. Aside from the watch and all the men in kilts and their Gaelic speech and the women’s long skirts and the weapons mounted on the inside walls of the house, this was just country life. During daylight hours, everyone worked some. Emily gardened and canned with the women. They used pottery, much like the small medicine containers in her pouches. With the men, Dall herded cattle and went hunting.

  In the evenings they had wonderful family dinners, and afterward, they sang—much like in Siobhan’s trailer at the faire.

  Dall’s children took to Emily. Once they got over her being a stranger, they invited her to play with them and their cousins. The boys pretended to be cattle raiders, mostly, imitating what they heard the grown-ups discussing. But when they would deign to play in a big group along with the girls, Emily learned their versions of tag, and hide and seek, and king of the hill, and capture the flag. The girls cheerfully let Emily teach them jump-rope and hopscotch. She grinned while they copied her favorite jump-rope chant and wondered if they would bring it forward in time so that she could learn ‘Miss Mary Mack’ five hundred years from then.

  It was a lovely week that Emily planned to treasure for the rest of her life.

  But she was aware that in the background, Dall and his oldest brother talked politics, and that it was mostly about the brother being Alasdair’s right-hand man in this region. Emily was starting to realize that meant Dall’s family couldn’t just pick up and leave because his new woman said the sky was going to fall in seven to twenty-nine years. Not even if they believed her.

  Emily loved Dall’s family, and she could tell they were growing to love her. But she and Dall had to leave them soon, not knowing when they would be back, or if.

  First shoving Emily’s phone into one of her boots so that anyone listening through it—with the power turned off—hopefully wouldn’t hear, Dall and Emily took frequent walks. As they walked together, Dall showed her the majesty of the highlands: craggy hillsides, deep green valleys, and panoramic views from the tops of the crags.

  But whenever the two of them left on one of these walks with an arm around each other, they were teased.

  “Dinna catch yer deaths o’ cold, oot there bare in the wind.”

  “‘Tis warm in the kirk, I hear.”

  “Aye, best spend a bit o’ time in there first.”

  The two of them stayed within sight of the watch on their walks, but they strayed far out of hearing range. Sooner or later, their conversations always sounded something like this:

  Emily would suggest, “Let’s take them all with us, back to my time. They can all manage body contact just before I push the button.”

  Dall would counter, “Eamann would ne’er allow that, lass. He would ken oor plan as soon as he saw them all coming.”

  “We could have them hide in the trees, and then sneak them into the castle after dark,” she’d say.

  “Ye mean tae hae them leave here and ne’er come back?”

  “Yes. They would be far safer in my time.”

  “Och, my brothers would ne’er agree tae leave their places here in Alasdair’s service. And their wives would ne’er agree tae gae withoot them, nor tae let their bairns gae alone.”

  She would all but beg him, “Let’s take your mother and your children with us, then. She can watch after them while we need to be away.”

  He would smile at her sadly. “My mither canna live on her own, lass, withoot my brothers tae bring her meat. And see here: Peadar, Peigi, and Domhnall are better off with the rest o’ the clan tae guide them, and happier with their cousins tae keep them company.”

  He was right, so Emily stopped arguing. Until the next walk, when her peacemaking nature urged her to bring it up again. Finally, there was a walk when she didn’t bring it up at all.

  Dall noticed. “Nay maire scheming, Drusilla?” He pulled her into an embrace, all the while looking into her eyes playfully, seeming to dare her to scheme some more.

  “I just feel so bad about you being separated from your children, Dall.” There was no playfulness in her at all. She felt wretched … guilty.

  He gently put his arm around her head and tugged it close to his own, where he spoke in her ear softly. “I would be going away from them tae serve the druids’ pleasure even if ye were na with me, lass. Ye canna take the blame.”

  Her own joy at just being with Dall took over then, spreading itself through her like a shot of whiskey and making her relax and smile at the man she now knew she loved. And wanted to marry. She tried to tell him just how much with her eyes, and then with her kiss.

  The evening before she and Dall were to leave for Kilchurn Castle, Dall waited until all the children had gone to bed. Braving the dangerous night air, he took Emily and his mother and his two brothers and their wives for a walk around the top of their hill. Once they were out of earshot from the cabin, Dall and his mother, Beitris, did most of the talking.

  Dall started. “Perhaps ye hae guessed this already, but it was in the service o’ the druids that I met Emily. She is from the future, and we gae there together soon.”

  Beitris tenderly took her son’s face in her hands. “We ken, Dall.”

  Dall looked over at Emily with his brows wrinkled.

  “Ne’er fear,” said Beitris. “’Twas ainly from kenning the secret of the druids’ curse.”

  Dall sighed. “They hae cursed Emily, as wull. We canna marry here, or she wull be stuck in this time, away from her kin.”

  Emily grabbed him. “That isn’t decided yet.”

  The watch sounded the alarm.

  Dall grabbed Emily’s hand, made a run for the cabin, and ushered her inside.

  The other women were already in there, grabbing the bows and quivers off the racks on the walls and setting themselves up at the small windows, to defend the house. Everyone’s children woke up, and Dall handed them all down through the floor of the house into the root cellar. They went without whining or complaining or fussing. Emily went down there with them, more to keep herself company than to comfort them.

  Tough as nails, the children seemed more curious than afraid. All twelve of them whispered in Gaelic to each other, no doubt sharing their theories on why the alarm had been sounded. Not even little Domhnall was afraid. He kept banging on the wall and saying something in Gaelic that Emily was sure meant ‘out’. Peadar and Peigi hushed their little brother without having to be told.

  The noise above the floorboards overhead died down quickly, but when no one came to tell the women all was well, Emily worried. The children began to fidget, and she started a game of funny faces with them. It worked so well to distract them that she had to remind them to be quiet and not laugh out loud. She put on a brave face for them, but she worried.

  Finally, she heard Dall’s voice overhead and breathed easier, though his words puzzled her until she heard a dozen sets of footsteps following him.

  The root cellar door opened, and Dall handed Emily up through the floor into the house.

  Peadar started to follow Emily up.

  Dall
put a hand on his son’s head.

  Peadar backed down into the root cellar once more, looking curiously rather than fearfully at the dozen English archers who had followed his da into the house.

  Emily looked at them, too. She thought Dog and his crew looked guilty, more than afraid, especially Mike, who tried to smile at Emily but didn’t quite manage it.

  “Eamann sent us,” said Dog. “He told us we would be stuck here unless you returned to the castle in time, Dall.” He looked at Emily. “He was adamant that Dall be back, but he didn’t mention you at all.”

  “Ye were na following us when we made oor way here,” Dall said to Dog. “I would hae kennned if ye were. Ye ainly arrived this evening. How did ye find us?”

  “Eamann did something to my … device.” Dog looked anxiously at Emily.

  She looked around at the faces of Dall’s brothers and their wives and his mother, and then met Dall’s eyes.

  Dall closed the root cellar door and said softly, “Ye can speak freely in front o’ my adult kin in this room, but let us spare the children all this, for a time yet.”

  Dog nodded. Taking out his phone and placing it on the kitchen table, he said in an equally soft voice while everyone gathered around, “See this dot here? It shows me where you are.” He was talking to Dall, but he showed the phone first to Emily and then to everyone else.

  Emily stared at Dog’s phone. “How did Eamann install that app in this day and age? And how did he even know how?”

  Dog shook his head. “We don’t know.” He looked around at his crew, and they shook their heads, too.

  “We didn’t see,” Mike said to Emily.

  Dog nodded. “That old druid just asked for my phone and went in the other room. He was only there for a minute. When he came back, he showed me how to use this app like he was a salesman at Best Buy or something. It was weird.”