“Ye want tae make them…ill?” he asked.
Magnus nodded. “For a day or two,” he said. “As a joke, ye see. They saddled me with a… Well, it doesna matter. I need tae punish them but not hurt them. I want everything they’ve eaten tae come out from the top and the bottom. What can ye sell me that will do that but not harm them?”
“Ye want a cleanse?”
“If that will expel everything from their innards, I do.”
The old man with the yellow beard was beginning to understand. He didn’t seem confused any longer, but rather disapproving of what he was being asked for and the purpose for which it would be used. However, given that he’d seen this man before, once in the company of the owner of the Ludus Caledonia and a few other times on his own, the apothecary didn’t press him further. He wanted to get through this without any trouble from the muscular warrior, so he turned back to his shelves of glass phials.
Each little bottle held something different, mysterious or expensive ingredients. There had to be hundreds of the phials lining the shelves of the shop. Most contained what was called “simple” ingredients, meaning that each was only one element. But others had multiple ingredients, or “compounds,” which were mixed for a specific purpose.
The old man went to a particular area of the shop, peering up toward the top shelf, lined with dusty glass bottles. Pulling forth a small ladder, he climbed the rickety rungs and plucked one of the bottles from the top shelf. With the glass carefully cradled in one hand, he returned to Magnus.
The phial was filled with silver pellets. Removing the stopper, he plucked one of the pellets and held it up to Magnus.
“Steep this in wine a few hours,” he said. “Have yer…friends drink the wine without the pellet in it. It will have the desired effect without injuring them.”
Magnus took the silver bit out of his hand, holding it up to the dim light of the shop to get a better look at it.
“What is it?” he asked.
The old man was already turning away from him, returning the bottle to its proper place.
“It is called tartar emetic,” he said. “It is used tae purge foul humors. Careful ye dunna give yer friends too much or it will kill them.”
Magnus didn’t want to do that. He just wanted to get back at them for the old-whore trick.
“I let it soak just a few hours?” he clarified.
“Just a few and no longer.”
“And it willna kill them?”
“If ye use it properly, it shouldna.”
That was good enough for Magnus. He inspected the silver pellet a moment longer before tucking it into his purse and pulling forth two silver coins. Handing those over to the appreciative apothecary, he was just turning for the door when a group of women blew in.
Magnus couldn’t see them very well because of the bright sunlight coming in through the doorway behind them, but he could see their shapes. He could smell the perfume. As they came deeper into the shop, he realized that he recognized the woman in the lead.
A bolt of shock ran through him.
The woman was well dressed and elegant, and Magnus knew her well, but she reminded him of a time in his life he’d rather forget. For a moment, he wasn’t sure what to do, and his moment of indecision cost him, for the woman locked gazes with him and she, too, registered great surprise.
“Magnus?” she gasped. “Magnus, is that you?”
Magnus nodded, realizing that he could not run now. He took a deep breath to steady himself as his heart began to pound.
“Aye,” he said. “Greetings, Lady Ayr.”
The woman shuffled over to him in a flurry of fine fabric and strong perfume, her expression filled with delight.
“Oh, it is you,” she said in her clipped English accent. “What a magnificent stroke of luck to find you here, Magnus. I’ve not seen you in years.”
That was very true. Not since he’d had been her husband’s hostage. He’d spent most of his life in captivity before being released, cast off into the world to fend for himself. Those were the years that Magnus tried to pretend never happened, but seeing Agnes Stewart, Duchess of Ayr, brought back that which he hadn’t thought of in quite some time.
Seeing her face brought back the old, familiar hatred.
“It has been many years, m’lady,” he said, feeling uncomfortable. “If ye will excuse me, I’ve business elsewhere.”
“Magnus, wait,” she said, putting her hand on his arm to stop him. Her gaze looked him over appraisingly. “Do you not have a moment to spare me? My, you have grown. When I last saw you, you had only just become a man and my husband had finally found peace with your father. What a glorious day that was, your release. To tell you the truth, I had begun to look at you as one of the family. You had been with us for so long, I felt as if I had raised you and I was sorry to see you go.”
I doubt that raising your children means keeping them locked up and punished at the slightest infraction, he thought bitterly. Lady Ayr wasn’t a terrible person, at least not as terrible as her husband, but she had been guilty of ignorance. She was slightly daft, and silly, and hardly noticed the things that went on around her. The more Magnus looked at her, the more those terrible memories filled him.
The more he was bombarded by things he had tried hard to forget.
He had been so young when he’d been taken hostage by Ambrose Stewart, Duke of Ayr. The man was a cousin to his father, the youngest brother of the King of Scotland, James. Hugh Stewart, Duke of Kintyre and Lorne, was a man with a rebellious streak in him. At least, that was the general consensus from the royals when others called him a true loyalist to Scotland. When Hugh had fallen afoul of his brother in a sloppy coup attempt, Ambrose had stepped in to take Hugh’s bastard son hostage to ensure Hugh’s good behavior.
And that’s how Magnus had spent his entire life up until his release seven years ago. He had been treated adequately or poorly within the household of the Duke of Ayr, depending on his father’s behavior.
It had been a horrible way to live.
“Aye, it was a long time,” he said. It was all he could manage. “Please excuse me, m’lady. I do have pressing business elsewhere.”
This time, Agnes let him go. “Of course, Magnus,” she said, watching him head for the door. “I shall tell my husband that I have seen you and that you look well. We are staying at Trinity House in town. You remember the place? To the north, near the sea. Please visit us when you have the time to do so.”
Her last words were called out to him as he quit the shop, a shouted invitation he would never accept. But just as he rushed through the doorway and onto the street, he plowed into a small body in his path. He hadn’t been watching where he was going, and he heard a feminine yelp as he knocked a woman into the gutter.
Magnus would have kept going, leaving the woman on her backside, had she not been in his way. But she was, and if he took another step, he would have stepped on her. Therefore, he was forced to stop out of necessity, annoyed that she was blocking his exit. He sidestepped her and reached down to pull her to her feet, purely as a courtesy.
He didn’t know why he should show any courtesy because he wasn’t the courteous type. Or polite when it came to women in general. Other than natural male urges or a way to make money, he’d never had any use for them. But the moment he pulled the woman to her feet and looked into her eyes, something changed.
Magnus found himself looking into a face that could only be described as angelic. The startled eyes gazing at him were large and bottomless, a pale shade of brown he’d never seen before. Her nose was pert, her mouth lush and generous, now popped open in surprise. There was a strange magic to the moment, a buzzing in his ears that shut out everything else around him.
Suddenly, he didn’t feel like running off.
“My apologies, m’lady,” he said. “I dinna see ye.”
She wa
s trying to brush off her beautiful dress. It was pale green, perhaps silk because it was so fine, with yellow edges around the neckline and at the bottom of her belled sleeves. Now, it had the addition of dirt from the gutter, and Magnus took his eyes from her long enough to realize that she was quite dirty as the result of his handiwork.
“No wonder,” she said in an accent that was not Scots. “You were moving so quickly, it is a wonder you waited for the door to open at all. Why not take it right from the hinges?”
She was scolding him.
He deserved it.
“Had it not moved aside fast enough, I would have,” he said defensively, crouching down to brush the dirt from the bottom of her hem. “If I’ve ruined yer dress, I’ll pay for it.”
She continued shaking out the dress, looking for any real damage. “It is not my dress,” she said. “It belongs to the Duchess of Ayr. She will not be pleased if you’ve ruined it.”
She was shaking the dress around so much that he stopped trying to brush the dirt from it. Standing up, he studied her for a moment, coming to think there was something oddly familiar about her now that he’d had a good look.
It began to occur to him that he’d seen those eyes somewhere before.
“Are ye a lady for the duchess?” he asked.
She nodded, now brushing her left sleeve. “I am,” she said, taking more time to look at him than at her dress. “No harm done, I suppose. But be careful the next time. The next lady you shove into the gutter may not be as gracious as I am.”
“What’s yer name?”
She stopped brushing, incensed at the question. “That is none of your affair,” she said. “Go on with you or I shall call for a guard.”
He shook his head. “Ye misunderstand,” he said. “I–I think I’ve seen ye before.”
She cocked a disbelieving eyebrow. “Nay, you have not,” she said. “Go on, now.”
“Will ye at least tell me where ye’re from? Ye dunna speak like a Scots.”
“That is because I am not Scots.”
“What are ye?”
“I am from Navarre, if you must know.”
She turned away from him, brushing him off. Magnus could hardly believe it. Was there really a woman in Scotland that would brush him off? He was embarrassed, but more than that, he was incensed. Now, it was becoming a matter of pride.
He wanted to know who she was.
Without another word, he pushed past her into the shop where the duchess was examining several phials with her women. They were smelling, touching, examining. Magnus walked up to her.
“M’lady,” he said. “I have a question tae ask ye.”
Lady Ayr was instantly attentive. “Of course, Magnus,” she said. “What is it?”
At that moment, the woman in the pale-green dress was just coming in through the door and Magnus pointed to her.
“That woman,” he said. “Who is she?”
All eyes turned to the diminutive woman in the doorway, including Lady Ayr’s. When she saw who Magnus was referring to, she smiled.
“Do you not recognize her?” she said. “That is our own Diantha.”
The name meant nothing to him. “Diantha?” he repeated as if it might help him remember. “I dunna know her.”
Lady Ayr laughed softly, putting her hand on his arm. “Of course you do,” she said. “She came to us right before you left us. Her father is a great Spanish warlord from Navarre. She is meant for my son, Conan. Do you recall her now?”
He was starting to. He knew he’d seen her before, but he simply couldn’t place her. Now, it was starting to come back to him.
Years ago, a young and frightened Spanish lass had been brought into the fold at Culroy Castle, seat of the Dukes of Ayr, on a dark and stormy night. Magnus remembered because the lass had screamed until Lady Ayr took charge of her and whisked her away. Everyone thought she was injured or dying, but it turned out she was simply terrified.
Diantha…dee-ON-tha…
He rolled the name around in his mind a few times.
That’s not what she’d been called at the time, however. Everyone referred to her as Flaca, a girl on the cusp of womanhood who was all arms and legs. Skinny and pale, with a boyish body.
She certainly didn’t look like that now.
“It’s not Flaca, is it?” he asked hesitantly.
Lady Ayr nodded. “Aye, ’tis Flaca,” she said. “Only we do not call her that any longer. She is Lady Diantha Marabella Silva y de Mora, a lady of fine Spanish breeding. She will make Conan a fine wife, very soon.”
Magnus found himself staring at Diantha, who was standing by the door with an anxious look on her face. Her gaze darted between Lady Ayr and Magnus, hearing what was being said about her.
But Lady Ayr didn’t give Magnus a chance to respond. She took him by the arm and led him over to Diantha.
“Diantha, do you remember Magnus?” she asked. “This is our very own Magnus, a cousin to my husband. His father is the Duke of Kintyre and Lorne.”
Diantha never had a chance to reply. The other women who knew Magnus, or at least knew of him, crowded around to greet him. Magnus was looking at Diantha when she was pushed out of the way by overeager women. Women who wanted to closely inspect the handsome, muscular man Lady Ayr was flaunting.
They pressed forward.
“Tell us what activities you have been engaged in since you left Culroy,” Lady Ayr said for the benefit of her ladies. “We have often spoken of you with fondness and hoped you had fared well.”
Magnus didn’t think that was quite the truth. There had been no love lost for him at Culroy. He recognized most of the women with Lady Ayr, now that he’d gotten a chance to look them over, but he didn’t know them well. Normally, he wouldn’t have given them the benefit of his attention, but something prompted him to respond.
Diantha, who had been pushed to the rear of the group, was watching him.
Maybe he simply wanted her to know how great he was.
“I am a professional warrior, m’lady,” he said, tearing his gaze away from Diantha to focus on the duchess. “Ye can tell the duke that I’ve learned tae fight and I am well paid for it.”
Lady Ayr’s gaze moved over his well-muscled and quite perfect body. “I can see that you have grown quite…strong,” she said. “Are you a mercenary, then?”
He shook his head. “Nay,” he said. “I am a warrior who fights for my living.”
“I do not understand.”
“I live and fight at a fight guild. I am a professional warrior, paid to entertain.”
“What fight guild?”
Magnus paused before answering. The Ludus Caledonia wasn’t spoken of openly. Because of the nature of the business and the vast amounts of money exchanged there on a nightly basis, the location wasn’t openly shared so opportunist armies and thieves wouldn’t converge on them.
It wasn’t supposed to be public knowledge.
However, it was probably one of the worst-kept secrets in Scotland because it was a gambling guild that depended on the money of visitors, a mysterious place where men fought for money, but nonetheless, those who were part of the guild did not share the secret freely.
Not even bold, brash Magnus.
He was careful in his reply.
“The greatest fight guild in all of Scotland,” he finally said. “If ye dunna know what I mean, ask yer husband. Ask him if he knows of the greatest fight guild in Scotland, and ye can tell him that is where I have thrived. All of those years at Culroy Castle taught me how tae survive…and I have learned well.”
There was an insult there, something that dampened Lady Ayr’s enthusiasm a little, though she wasn’t quite sure how to respond.
The smile on her lips faded.
“Are you at least happy, Magnus?” she asked. “I would hope you have found
some joy in your new life.”
He couldn’t decide if she was being sincere or patronizing. With Lady Ayr, it was difficult to know. But he knew one thing—he wouldn’t waste any further time on her. He had better things to do than reminisce about something he wanted to forget.
“Aye,” he said. “I am happy. Thank ye for yer concern, Lady Ayr.”
With that, he simply dipped his head and excused himself, but his gaze lingered on Diantha as he quit the shop. She was watching him, her expression almost…anxious. There was an odd shadow of anxiety there that he hadn’t seen before. A look of curiosity, of concern…
Of desperation?
He wondered if it was the same expression he’d had all of those years at Culroy. Maybe it was something all wards at Culroy had at one time or another, an expression that suggested they would rather be anywhere but in that damnable castle commanded by an unpredictable duke and his spoiled son. Try as he might to shake the thought, he knew he couldn’t. It would haunt him.
She would haunt him.
With a final glance at the beautiful young woman, he quit the shop and headed out into the cloudy Scottish day.
Chapter Three
Magnus Stewart.
It had been a distinct surprise to run into him at the apothecary’s shop. Even now, as Agnes and her ladies headed to the Street of the Merchants, their destination being a broker in fine silks from across the sea, Agnes couldn’t help but think of the young boy who had grown into a fine, strong, and beautiful man.
It was a shocking realization.
It had been one for him, too. She hadn’t been oblivious to the expression on his face when he first saw her. There was pain among the surprise from the man who had spent years at Culroy.
Unfortunately for him, they hadn’t been good years.
Magnus hadn’t been a normal ward. He’d been a hostage and he’d been treated like one, no matter how Agnes had tried to put a spin on the years he’d spent there. She’d tried to make it sound as if he’d been a welcome resident when that had been far from the truth.
He’d been at Culroy for a purpose.
Magnus knew the purpose, but he didn’t know all of it.
Highland Legend Page 3