by Jayne Castel
A hollow silence followed her words.
Maximus’s heart was thundering so violently now he felt ill. Like most of his people, he was superstitious. The witch’s words were outrageous, impossible, and yet he found himself believing them.
Another woman, many years earlier, had cursed his legion—Queen Boudicca of the Iceni—and the Hispana had been in decline ever since.
“Enough,” he snarled, his hard-won control finally unraveling. “Kill us, woman. Give us warriors’ deaths.”
The bandruí’s mouth twisted, and she shook her head. “Arrogant man of the Caesars,” she snarled. “You march upon our lands with your bright shields, crested helmets, and red cloaks, and demand we kneel before you. You will suffer for your conceit. Death is too kind!”
Maximus stared up at her, at her terrible beauty. His head ached so badly now, he almost groaned out loud with the pain. Still, he didn’t break her stare.
Long moments stretched out, while the pair of them watched each other, and then a cold smile curved the bandruí’s lips. It was the first expression to shatter her inscrutable mask, yet it was a terrifying one.
“You are one of their chieftains,” she observed finally. “I knew it when I took that strange helmet with a red fan from you.” Her gaze raked down over the leather harness, metal breastplate, and crimson cloak he wore, before she inclined her head. “You are brave … I shall give you that. The warriors said you fought like a cornered wolf before the walls. But it will not save you.”
Maximus’s mouth twisted. He’d fought with the savagery of a doomed man—there had been no glory in it. History wouldn’t remember Maximus Flavius Cato. The Empire had abandoned the Ninth, sacrificed them to the wild.
The woman then rose to her feet, towering above them. She wore a smirk upon her face now. “But, maybe, I will allow you a chance to save yourselves … a riddle.”
Maximus swallowed hard, heat washing over him as his temper flared once more. She was playing with him. He was that field mouse, with its tail pinned under the tom cat’s paw. His life was worthless to her.
“Remember my words well, Maximus,” the druidess continued, her smirk widening into a death’s-head grin. “For if you solve it, the curse will be broken.”
Maximus stared back at her. He refused to believe that a shred of mercy beat in her savage heart. This woman wasn’t really offering him hope. Yet he had no choice in this. All he could do was play her twisted game.
Holding the bandruí’s eye, Maximus clenched his jaw and prepared to listen.
When the Broom-star crosses the sky,
And the Hammer strikes the fort
Upon the Shelving Slope.
When the White Hawk and the Dragon wed,
Only then will the curse be broke.
1, 183 years later …
I
WISH UPON A STAR
The village of Fintry
Stirlingshire, Scotland
Spring, 1301 AD
SHE NEVER THOUGHT she’d end up serving ale to drunks.
Weaving her way through the busy tavern—eyes stinging from cloying peat smoke, and deafened by the raucous laughter surrounding her—Heather wondered how she’d gotten herself into this mess. She’d once had dreams, but now spent her days scrubbing floors and emptying privies. Her evenings were taken up serving food and drink to the rough men who frequented The Bogside Tavern, Fintry’s only watering hole.
Heather let out a long sigh and settled the tray of pies she carried against her hip.
This is my own doing.
Aye, she’d dreamed of being a contented wife to the village’s handsome smithy, of spending her days tending the garden behind their cottage, cooking hearty stews and baking oaten bannocks, and bringing up a brood of bairns—but she’d chosen the wrong man.
In the past, she’d blamed her parents for their overbearing ways or Iain for being such a disappointment. Yet in the end, she was responsible for her own choices.
Heather was considering this unpalatable fact, and attempting to squeeze past a group of farmers who were arguing over the price of rams, when a large hand made a grab for her backside.
Batting the offending paw away, with enough force to make the farmer spill the tankard of mead he was sipping, Heather fixed him with a gimlet stare. “Try that again, Murdoc, and I’ll break yer fingers,” she warned, injecting a falsely cheerful note into her voice.
“Aw, be nice, Heather,” the farmer leered. “Can’t ye let a lonely man have a feel?”
She elbowed her way past him. “Ye’ve been warned.”
Ignoring the coarse laughter that followed, Heather made her way over to where two elderly men sat in a corner. The common room was the heart of The Bogside: a large, rectangular space with two sides lined in booths and a scattering of circular tables in the middle of a sawdust-covered floor. A huge fire roared at one end, and above it loomed a grizzled boar’s head. The beast—one that the tavern owner, Aonghus Galbraith, had hunted as a younger man—snarled out at the patrons, its large, yellowed tusks gleaming in the firelight. Heavy oaken beams crisscrossed overhead, trapping a pall of acrid peat smoke.
The two men were regulars who, since they’d lost their wives, spent every eve at The Bogside playing at knucklebones.
“Did ye see the star yesterday?” one of them said as he flipped the bones and tried to catch them on the back of his hand.
“What?” His companion grumbled.
“The fire-tailed star … the one I told ye about.”
“What star is this, Fergus?” Heather asked, curiosity replacing the simmering irritation that the farmer with wandering hands had provoked. Every evening was the same. She grew tired of constantly having to fend these letches off.
The old man glanced up as Heather placed a hot pie in front of him. “For the past few days, it’s appeared in the night sky,” he replied, flashing her a toothless smile. “It’s bright silver and has a fiery tail.”
Heather inclined her head, ignoring the patron a few tables away who was trying to catch her eye. She’d get to him when she was ready. “Really?” She’d heard that sometimes such stars graced the sky, but had never seen one.
“Aye. When she was alive, my Gran told me about it. She said it heralds change.”
His companion snorted, but Fergus ignored him. His gaze remained upon Heather.
She considered his words. Was his gran right—and if so, what change might be coming?
Perhaps we’ll finally rid ourselves of the English, she thought, her mouth compressing. Maybe the Wallace will return and drive every last one of them back over The Wall.
Dwelling on this thought, Heather set down the second pie before Dougal. “I’ll have to search for this star tonight,” she said with a smile. “Once I’m done here.”
Dougal gave another snort. “Don’t encourage him, lass.”
Ignoring his grumpy friend, Fergus grinned, his eyes bright in a spider web of wrinkles. “Aye, see that ye do … such sights only come once in a lifetime, if we’re lucky.”
Considering this, Heather turned and made her way back to the kitchen. The patron who’d been trying to catch her eye gave an angry shout, but she ignored him. She knew he was waiting for his pie. She hoped he choked on it.
I wish the star heralded change for my life, she thought. Maybe if I wish upon it, my lot will improve. The heaviness that had dogged her steps all day increased at the frivolous thought. It felt as if she carried a sack of oats upon her back today. Wishing upon a star wouldn’t undo the mistakes she’d made.
Moments later, Heather entered the kitchen to find a tall, thin woman awaiting her, hands on hips. Aonghus was away for the night and had left his wife in charge.
“There ye are!” Morag greeted her with a scowl. “Move yer arse, lass. We’re run off our feet tonight. Get those pies served before they go cold.”
Heather inhaled sharply and forced down the irritated response that rose within her. It was hard not to talk back to the woman
. A steward’s daughter, she’d never gotten used to having orders barked at her.
Picking up the tray nearest, she turned and stormed back into the fray. The tavern was filling up even more now, and as Heather worked her way across the floor, batting away more groping hands, she noted that Fergus and Dougal weren’t the only ones discussing the fire-tailed star. The strange sight in the night sky was the talk of the common room this evening.
However, Heather paid their conversation little attention. She now had thirsty men shouting for ale in every direction. The urge to tell the lot of them to go to the devil boiled in Heather’s gut, and heat rose to her cheeks.
She wasn’t cut out for life as a tavern wench. She was too short-tempered, too intolerant.
After her husband’s disappearance, she’d been faced with a difficult choice: either return home to her kin and weather their scorn, or look for work locally and endure a life of drudgery. Pride had overruled good sense perhaps, for drudgery had actually seemed the most appealing option at the time.
A year and a half later, she wasn’t so sure.
“Two more ales over here, lass!” A man boomed from near the fire. “And hurry yerself about it … we’re thirsty!”
Heather nodded to the customer before she swiveled on her heel and went to do his bidding. On the way back with his drinks, she noted that two tables had just been vacated and were now littered with crumbs and spilled ale.
Thumping the tankards down and hastily side stepping yet another grasping hand, Heather wove her way to the counter, where Aonghus usually presided, and fetched a damp cloth.
Morag would chew her ear off if she didn’t wipe down those tables.
She was swishing the cloth across a table top, when the door to the tavern opened, bringing with it a blast of frosty air.
Heather glanced up, her attention traveling to the doorway.
A tall, dark-haired man, clad head-to-toe in black leather, stepped inside. He then pulled the door shut behind him, sealing in the warm, smoky fug.
Heather stilled. This was a new face, and a starkly different one to the regulars inside The Bogside.
But she wasn’t the only one to notice his entrance. The stranger’s arrival caused the roar of conversation inside the tavern to subside—and all gazes swiveled toward him.
II
STRANGER AT THE BOGSIDE
IT WAS DIFFICULT not to stare. Although Fintry was spitting distance from Stirling, it didn’t see many strangers—especially ones who looked like him.
In contrast to the locals, who had long hair and thick beards, the newcomer had cropped hair with a short fringe across the brow. He was also clean shaven and had proud, aquiline features, high cheekbones, and skin that was tanned light gold—odd for this time of year, for the last of the winter snow had just melted and the first days of spring were cold and grey.
His swarthy appearance marked him as foreign, and yet he didn’t look anything like the English soldiers she’d seen.
Heather straightened up, her gaze narrowing when she saw he carried a knife strapped to his hip. Luckily, Aonghus wasn’t here; he wouldn’t have liked that. Nonetheless, her attention didn’t linger on the knife for long, for the rest of him was too fascinating to ignore.
The stranger carried himself straight and proud, his dark gaze scanning the common room as if he hadn’t yet decided whether to linger at the establishment.
Heather’s mouth curved. There isn’t any point in being fussy. These were the only lodgings in Fintry.
Her smile faded then. She didn’t like to remind herself that The Bogside had been her only option as well.
However, the drudgery of her life ceased to matter as Heather continued to observe the newcomer. Since Iain, she’d barely looked at other men. But the sight of this dark-haired stranger sucked the air from her lungs.
For a few moments, she forgot the tyrannical tavern owner and his blade-tongued wife. She ignored her aching back and chapped hands, and the weariness that pulled down at her. She put aside the disappointment that soured her belly, the resentment that gnawed there too, and the underlying sadness that cast a shadow over everything.
Instead, Heather’s gaze tracked the tall, lean figure across the sawdust-strewn floor. And heat flooded through her when she realized he was heading in her direction.
Heather tensed as he approached. Now that he focused his attention upon her, she realized he’d caught her staring. Brazening the moment out, she squared her shoulders and held his gaze.
She’d never seen eyes like his—so dark brown that they almost appeared black in the ruddy light of the cressets that burned upon the surrounding stone walls.
“Do you have a room available for the night?” he asked. His voice was as exotic as the rest of him. He spoke her tongue fluently, and yet with a cadence that definitely wasn’t local. There was a clipped edge to his words.
“Aye,” she replied with a guarded smile. “A penny will get ye a bed, a meal, and a jug of ale.”
He nodded, not returning her smile. “Do you have any wine instead?”
“Aye,” Heather replied. “There’s bramble wine made last autumn. Will that do?”
The stranger nodded again before digging into a pouch at his hip and producing a silver coin, which he placed on the table between them. “Well enough.”
“I’ll have a room made up for ye then?”
“Thank you. I’ve stabled my pony already.” With that, he turned and strode over to one of the booths lining the nearby wall—which two men had just vacated for a table closer to the hearth.
Heather watched him go. He wasn’t the friendliest man she’d ever met, yet now that she’d exchanged a few words with him, she found him even more fascinating than earlier. She was tired of hearing the local men bellow drunkenly at each other night after night, of hearing the same coarse comments.
This man was refreshingly different.
Careful Heather … ye once thought that about Iain.
The reminder was a sobering one.
“Heather!” Morag’s voice lashed through the smoky air. “What are ye doing idling? Finish wiping those tables, and get supper served!”
Fingers clenching around the damp cloth, Heather moved over to the last of the tables before giving it a quick wipe. Not for the first time that evening, hot words bubbled up inside her.
Yer pride will be yer undoing one day, Heather De Keith. Her mother’s words came back to her then. Iona De Keith hadn’t been wrong. Stubborn pride had landed Heather in a right mess.
With that, she approached the tavern owner’s wife and passed her the penny. “I wasn’t idling,” Heather informed Morag through clenched teeth. “That man I was talking to wants lodgings for the night.”
The woman’s thin face softened a little. “I’ll get Alana to ready a room for him.” Morag’s gaze then shifted to where the stranger had settled himself into the booth. “Who is he?”
Heather shrugged, feigning a lack of interest. “Speaks with an accent, so he’s not from here.”
Morag snorted. “Any fool can see that, lass.” She jerked her pointy chin toward the kitchen, where more trays of pies were no doubt cooling. “Go on … get back to work.”
Sighing, Maximus leaned against the back of the booth, letting the warmth of the common room seep into his limbs. He tended to avoid taverns and inns—he got tired of the attention he attracted. All these years in this brutal northern land, and still the locals looked upon him with suspicion.
His arrival had literally killed the conversation in the room, although he was relieved to see that most of the patrons had returned to their ales and suppers now that he’d taken a seat.
It was a relief to be indoors. Outside, the weather was damp and frosty, and he’d slept rough for the last few days during his journey up from Dumfries. He only had half a day’s travel till his destination—Stirling—but his body ached for a soft bed and a warm meal. He’d just have to put up with the stares.
Maximus tense
d at the thought of his destination, and he started to tap his fingers on the polished table top before him. He hoped there would be a message for him in Stirling. It was always a wrench to leave the wilderness behind and re-enter the world—even if he was a man who loved home comforts. It was just easier to spend his days far from other folk and their demands. As such, he didn’t want to make the effort to go to Stirling for nothing. If Cassian or Draco hadn’t left word for him there, he’d have to wait around until one of them did.
Maximus’s attention shifted through the haze that hung underneath the rafters to where the serving lass approached, a jug in one hand, an earthen cup in the other.
His gaze tracked her across the floor toward him.
The women who served in these places seemed to look alike to him: work-worn and put-upon with long-suffering smiles and wary gazes. Yet this tavern wench was different.
She was flustered and pink-cheeked, and wore a thinly veiled look of irritation. But there was something about her—a vibrancy—that made her stand out. She wasn’t classically beautiful. Her face was a trifle too round, her features not striking enough. Yet she was comely with an earthiness that made Maximus keenly aware of her. Thick, light brown hair tumbled over her shoulders. Intelligent grey-green eyes watched him steadily. He noted that she had a sensual mouth, with a plump lower lip.
She also had a body that few men could fail to take notice of: full of womanly curves with a bosom that strained against the laces of her moss-green kirtle.
Maximus liked a lass with flesh on her bones, and the ache that spiked through his groin as his gaze raked down the length of her reminded him that he’d been too long without bedding a woman.
How many months had it been now? Hades … it’s been nearly a year.