Once the first contingent passed, the dust settled and behind them more slowly came Queen Mary, her men-at-arms, her ladies, and the remainder of the army. Horatius stepped toward the road’s edge and waited, the taste and grit of dirt still in his mouth. When they started to pass him, he broke into a slow jog and kept pace with the group with the wagon in which Mary rode.
“Greetings, man,” one of the horsemen yelled.
He probably thinks I’m just a local coming out to see the procession.
“Hail to the Queen Mary,” he said and tossed a copper through the air to Horatius.
He caught it easily, but kept jogging. “I need to speak with the Queen,” he huffed.
“Of course you do. I will be certain to tell her an ardent supporter abides in yon village.”
“We know each other. I am a friend of hers. From France.” He coughed and cleared his throat but refrained from much-needed spitting.
The horseman pushed his mount forward toward his departing unit. “Good day, man. You best be back to your own affairs.”
Horatius dropped back to catch his breath. He thought of turning the man’s bowels to jelly but caught himself in time. After several lines of people passed, he started jogging again. He caught another coin, but broke in before the man could dismiss him.
“I am Horace of the Saracens, longtime associate of Queen Mary’s late husband, Francis, Dauphin of France.” He used his old title that Mary knew him by. “I wish…I must speak to her. It is of great importance.”
“Tha’ is what everyone says, man. Move aside and spare your feet from being trampled.” And the rider pulled away, back into the thundering mass.
In spite of the weakness making his calves shake and his thighs burn, Horatius kept jogging. The wretched experience prevented him from casting a curse at the loathsome rider.
When he thought he could not possibly take another step, a horn sounded and the horde of horses came to a disorderly stop. To the west of the road, a large field of grass and wildflowers allowed space for the Queen’s party to rest. Several women emerged from the train, and servants carried large baskets of foodstuffs. A loose circle of men-at-arms formed around the area, making a barrier to protect the Queen against unwanted intrusion from the common folk who were gathering from their fields and hovels to catch a glimpse of their monarch.
Horatius approached the circle, trying not to look drunk by stumbling or walking off kilter, but he must have failed because the men-at-arms jumped and set up a perimeter as though he meant to run in and kidnap the Queen. His legs were weak and wouldn’t respond normally.
He put his hands up in surrender. “Whoa there, good fellows. I arranged to speak with Her Highness.”
No one eagerly answered him. They all stared, taking in his height and appearance. “Wait here,” one of them finally said.
The man left and Horatius had to sit down. Or more like fall down. His legs would no longer hold him up.
He waited. And waited. And grew more agitated by the minute.
He pulled his shaky knees up and rested his forehead down on his crossed arms, allowing himself just a moment to reenergize. Fatigue threatened to overtake him. He even closed his eyes, just briefly, to sooth the burning. Ah, a wonderful relief.
A commotion pulled Horatius from dozing. The group was breaking up and returning to the road. The men with whom he spoke earlier were gone. The whole crowd was moving away to regroup and leave. That was not allowable.
He ignored the wobble in his legs and staggered toward the group of women walking to the horses. He got through the Queen’s men milling about, gathering their belongings from the grass, and all the way to the first layer of women—when several bodies plowed into him and knocked him to the ground.
Someone lay across his head. Several others were smashing him into the grass. He could not move. His strength was gone.
“Get off his face, Connor,” a voice said. “See who it is.”
“Jemmy, if I get up, he will get up. He is a big lout. This is the best way to hold him down.”
“Ogilvie,” said a third laughed, “mind your brother. I want to see who this brown mongrel is.”
The man on his head got off, but he still could not lift up because of the weight on his back.
“I mean no harm,” Horatius bellowed into the grass.
“Why are you racing after the Queen then? You should know better if you dinna want to land in the spot you are in now.”
“I was trying— Can I get up? Would you get off—” His neck was bent wrong. And he was just plain miffed. He struggled against the pressure holding him down.
The weight increased and someone added their hands to hold his shoulders still.
“For the love of— Get off! I am just trying—”
The freckled face of a man appeared down in the grass next to his, lying sideways and lining up his gaze to match Horatius’ eyes.
“Stop fighting us or things will be worse for you.”
“I just need to see the Queen,” Horatius said through clenched teeth.
“And you think you are just going to race up to her like that?”
“I’m in a hurry. Two lasses’ safety is at risk. They were kidnapped by Gordon’s mercenaries. I need to ask Queen Mary for help. She’s a friend of mine.”
Before he finished, the two eyes surrounded by freckles left his line of sight.
“James, wha’ do you think? Should we tie him up and leave him till there is a good distance betwixt us?”
“Or we could leave ’im to the local sheriff.”
Neither was suitable. Horatius wanted to pound sense into all the idiots sitting on him. He wanted to cover them with boils. Or turn them into pillars of salt.
He would have to risk letting Satarel find his location. It suddenly became so obvious. He should have done it long ago. Where has my mind been? What a fool he had been to let the girls get so far away from him. Mebahel could not possibly expect him to remain so useless.
He gathered his thoughts and decided to just shock the idiots lying on him by transfiguring right then and there, consequences be cursed. They would rationalize it away anyway. He had to get moving. He concentrated.
Nothing happened.
The men still sat on him and still talked above him like they could determine his fate. He tensed to transfigure again.
But this time, everything went black again.
CHAPTER 29
“I can understand you,” Kaitlyn shrieked. She sounded excited. But Chloe’s heart erupted into an anxious gallop seeing him and hearing he could speak English after all.
“I was so disappointed to find you gone this morning.”
“You can speak English?” Chloe said. Her voice cracked and quivered, though she tried to control it.
“You could understand us all along?” Kaitlyn said.
“It was rude, you know, to leave like that—after we’d taken such good care of you both.”
Kaitlyn shriveled like a scolded child. Chloe grabbed her hand and squeezed it.
“Good care?” Chloe whispered. Her hand went to her neck. Her captor's handprint from when he’d crushed her airway was unforgettable.
“A misunderstanding. I thought you were someone else. A vixen who’d robbed and tried to poison me. As soon as I realized you were not she, I let go. No harm done.”
No harm done? Of course there was harm done! She’d be traumatized forever. But she couldn’t say it. He couldn’t know the power he had over her. The terror he caused. She put on her bravest face. “That still doesn’t explain why you pretended not to speak English.”
“There is a perfectly good explan—”
The well-dressed woman interrupted them with several incomprehensible phrases and their captor answered back in the same unknown language. They spoke for a time then he turned his attention back to the girls.
“I have arranged for you to stay here. Lady Gordon will see to your comfort. I will be assisting her husband for a short time.
See? I have your best interests at heart. I have not hurt you, have I? You need not fear me. I rescued you from your lost state outside of Edinburgh and brought you—or tried to bring you—to this good lady to provide you refuge.”
Kaitlyn sighed as though his explanation took care of everything. Chloe wasn’t going to buy his story so quickly. “You were bringing us here.” Sure.
He nodded, looking hurt that Chloe would question his intentions. “Are you hungry?” he asked as he backhanded his companions on either side to move them away. “Certainly you are. Come on. Sit. I will not bite.”
Chloe wasn’t sure Kaitlyn even tried to hold back. As soon as he said sit, she sat. He poured her a drink and gave her a giant leg of mutton. But when Kaitlyn jerked back and visibly gagged, he laughed without malice, threw the mutton to a dog and offered her an apple.
He actually seemed chipper now—and almost kind. Maybe he really had thought they were in trouble. Or they did things differently here and now. Maybe he truly thought she was someone else. Was she just being prejudiced because he looked so awful, assuming the worst because of his hideous scar?
But he still hadn’t said why he pretended not to speak English.
“Why’d you act like you didn’t know English? That doesn’t make sense.”
“It is very hard to explain really. It might be hard on you, I mean.”
Chloe couldn’t imagine why. She braced for lies. This guy was a crafty one for sure. “Yeah? How so?”
“Of course, at first, if you remember, I was conversing with my companions before you even spoke. We were speaking Gàidhlig. I was not ‘pretending’ anything.”
“Well, when I spoke, you could have said something.”
Kaitlyn nibbled on her apple looking back and forth between them.
“As soon as you called out for Horace, it took me aback, for I knew a Horace who is a shark and scoundrel. I feared he may have been the very one of whom you spoke and so I thought to listen and see. From your conversation, I ascertained he was probably the same man. I must apologize for causing you and Miss Kaitlyn here any affliction. I intended to make known my suspicions and concerns to you, but alas, you left too soon.”
Chloe eased down onto a bench. “What do you mean about Horace? What do you know about him?”
He rubbed another apple to a glistening red on his sleeve and rolled it to her. “Your Horace is a large man, no? And from the Middle East? Horace is not even his real name. I was on Crusade and he suddenly showed up. He was a terror. He caused immeasurable grief to so many.” His fingers caressed the length of the scar running from his temple to his chin. “This was a gift from him. He is violent and ruthless. Has he caused you grief? To your loved ones? That seems to be his way. Those who spend time with him always end up hurt…or worse.”
That had to be her Horace. No one else would match that description. Or have that pattern of behavior. “What kind of stuff, specifically, do you mean? Like, is he a criminal—murderer or something? Does he hurt little kids?” She remembered Horace taking Benji without permission.
The man cleared his throat and bent in closer. “I cannot really say. Not in mixed company. But he over-drinks and seduces girls. The rest—I will not go on.”
Kaitlyn gasped. The food in Chloe’s throat stuck. What had she done? Benji had spent the day with him. She had fallen for him, his flirty gaze. He’d been toying with her since she met him—drunk no less—on the cliff top.
She swallowed hard. “So you’re saying he’s really bad?” Images flashed through her mind—Horace there when she was locked out of her car, when the gang attacked, when his father attacked them. She realized that every time he “helped” her, it was after he caused the trouble in the first place. “No really. What has he done? How bad is he?” She had to know.
“Truly, I cannot utter the words. It would be indecent.”
Kaitlyn’s hand flew to her mouth. Chloe felt sick. How could she have trusted him? Because of him, Benji might be dead. Nana, Mom, Michelle, all of them, stuck in the burning house because Horace abandoned them there to save his own skin.
“Are you okay?” the captor asked her. His scar and puckered cheek didn’t seem as menacing as it had before. His gentle voice made her throat tighten and tears flood her eyes.
But she couldn’t tell him. Who would understand what had happened? That some half-angel had flown her from another century and left her family dying in a burning house?
Kaitlyn reached over and took her hand and said to him, “I think she might need a moment.”
That made it even harder for Chloe not to cry. A tear escaped and ran down her cheek.
He touched a cloth napkin from the table to the tear. “If I can do anything…”
“I just want to go home.” She said it to herself.
“I know,” he said. “I think I might be able to help—”
The woman at the table yelled out at them. She argued with their captor until he grew red and the scar on his face blanched even whiter. Kaitlyn placed her hand on his clenched fist and he let his breath out.
“She is being pigheaded. She wants payment for our meals. Right now. I told her I will have it once her husband pays me for my services. But that is not soon enough for her.” His fist clenched back into a ball.
“Maybe we can help,” Kaitlyn said. She motioned toward the pipe and lute players who had stopped playing when the yelling began. “We can play some music for her royal highness, if you can find us some instruments.” She looked at Chloe for approval. Chloe couldn’t help but nod. Kaitlyn was so earnest. And what would it hurt? Getting her hands on a cello would be soothing therapy when the rest of her world was crashing around her. She’d have time to figure out just what to do with all her changing feelings—both about Horace and this new guy.
“No ‘royal highness’ needed. She is just ‘lady.’ But maybe you have a workable idea. She loves fine things. What do you play?” he asked.
“Bach, Mozart, The Beetles, Tchaikovsky—”
“She means she plays viola and I play cello. Do you have those here?”
“Let me see what I can do.” He spoke to the woman. She left them alone and barked at a nearby servant instead.
“They can get some instruments. That will keep her calm for a little while. At least until we have a chance to get to know each other better. So, you wish to go home?”
CHAPTER 30
The drizzle on his face woke him. He fought to gather his wits and remember what had happened and where he was. Gravity weighed heavily against his arms and legs, anchoring them to the ground. A headache pierced his temples. A dry mouth left his tongue sandpaper and his lips like a winter leaf. Was he about to feel steel through his neck? I have to get up. And I have to get up now!
He cracked his eyelids. A red-haired lad with freckles splattered from ear to ear stood over him with a dim torch. He was reaching toward Horatius’ cheek, his spindly fingers stretched out to touch his unshaven face, when Horatius’ eyes opened all the way. The boy’s arm snapped back, but he didn’t retreat. He moved the torch closer and took a good, long look at Horatius, watching his eyes a minute before he spoke.
“What is wrong with you?”
“Hello?” Horatius said without moving.
“What is wrong with you?” the boy asked again. “Been watching you all day.”
“I’m not sure.”
The boy took in the full length of Horatius, moving his torch up and down several times.
“Altogether benumbing, but you are a big one. Can you move? Here, I will help.”
He extended his arm—the tiny limb no bigger around than a twig—and offered his one-handed assistance while holding the flame high with the other hand.
“Thank you, but I will manage.” He was not sure he could manage, but he knew the little boy would do him no good. In spite of the force pressing him to the earth, he made his limbs move. It took a great deal of effort, but he eventually sat up.
“I need to get to a
church. Do you know of any near by?”
“O’er in the village there is a small chapel where nuns used to be afore the Purge.”
The boy referred to the mobs incited by Knox’s sermons against the Catholics. They burned and pillaged everything they could get their hands on. Including several nuns and monks. Horatius got grumpier thinking about it.
“Do you think you could help me get there?” he said, trying not to scare the boy away with too gruff a tone. “I will pay you well.”
“Why do you want to get there?”
Even in the inefficient light of the small torch, the boy’s wide, honest eyes were disarming. His freckles and extended ears gave him the look of an elf. The two studied each other a moment in the flame’s glow.
“I want to pray,” Horatius finally said.
“Oh, you can do that right here,” the boy said. “I do it all the time.”
“That is all well and good for you. But I must get to a church.” He lost patience and struggled to get to his feet, though he only scooted a bit across the ground.
The boy’s eyes opened wide and he scampered off.
“Wait! Do not leave me,” Horatius called out. “I will pay you!”
The boy ran back. “Here, hold this for me,” and handed him the torch. “Then you willna be afraid of the dark.”
Before Horatius could protest, he was gone again.
He wanted to lie back down, it was so hard to sit, but he would not give in to the impulse. Getting up had been too difficult.
He waited in the grass, holding the torch. After a time, he chuckled that the boy thought he was afraid of the dark. This kind of darkness isn’t what scares me.
The creak of wood drew his attention to where the boy had disappeared into the night. He emerged again, pulling behind him a cart the size of a wheelbarrow. It had two wheels and a small platform. The undersized boy pulled the tongue in his two miniature hands. A huge grin pressed his freckled cheeks into chubby balls.
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