by Jane Stain
Amber looked at the spinning wheel dubiously.
Eileen bit her thumb and smiled around it for a moment before saying anything.
“’Tis na sae daunting as all that. I shall feed the wool intae the groove here. All ye need dae is keep the wheel spinning.”
It took a few minutes, but Amber got the hang of spinning the wheel. Because it was tedious, repetitive, boring work, and Sasha and Kelsey had spoken of Eileen like she was one of them, soon Amber found herself sharing what was on her mind.
She spoke in hushed tones so that the men across the room wouldn’t hear.
“Hae ye noticed aught strange about Tomas?”
“Plenty, and Alfred has noticed as wull. I hear about it daily. Alfred is having tae train Tomas in how tae captain the guards. A man that inexperienced should na be in command, says Alfred.”
“But Laird Malcomb would be the one tae dae some aught about that, aye?”
“Aye, howsoever, if ye ask me, the strangeness is in Sulis. She has that Tomas bewitched, and mayhap Laird Malcomb as wull.”
They worked for a while in silence, and then Eileen made a noise and put her finger in her mouth.
Amber jumped up.
“Dinna ye hae a thimble I can get for ye?”
Eileen laughed.
“I ken ye are na ower enchanted by the work we dae here.”
Amber laughed too.
“Daes it show that much?”
“Aye. But I hae good news for ye. I hae lost my thimble, and I dae think ye should go and get me another.”
Amber knew her face had brightened an obvious amount because Eileen’s smile grew larger as she dug in her pouch for some money and handed it to her.
“I buy whatsoever I can from Joanna the Tinker, a widow who needs all the help we can give tae her. The booth is just doon the way there—”
Dierdre came running over.
“Canna I show her please Maw?”
Amber shrugged when Eileen looked for her opinion on this idea.
Eileen gave Dierdre a serious look.
“Verra wull, howsoever, ye must dae as Amber tells ye.”
Dierdre nodded somberly and then looked up at Amber.
“I will.” And then she grabbed Amber’s hand and tugged her toward the door. “Let’s go!”
~*~
Dierdre tugged Amber to a small market table in a group of other small tables, where a bunch of older women — could they all be widows? That was so sad. — sat in a haphazard circle mending shirts or darning socks while they talked and waited for customers who needed something mended or washed.
Amber had just bought the thimble and was thanking Joanna when Sulis turned the corner and stopped almost on top of her.
Tomas followed close behind Sulis, holding everything she had bought. He had a bolt of cloth in one arm and a bunch of do-dads in his other arm and wore three of her hats on his head as he walked along the street like a zombie with his eyes not showing any life.
Feeling horrible for him, Amber rounded on Sulis.
“How dare ye turn such a smart and vibrant man intae such a drone and call it love?”
Sulis took a haughty stance and crossed her arms over her ample chest and raised her chin up high before she spoke in a loud voice so that everyone nearby could hear her and didn't have a choice but to listen.
“Move on tae some poor shop where ye can trade for what ye need, Amber, because I ken for a clean fact ye don’t hae any money tae pay for anything. Ye are just wasting the time o these craftsmen, hanging about and staring at everything with longing. Move aside and let those o us who can afford the goods shop here.”
Amber made a show of looking about.
“There are nay craftsmen tae be seen anywhere close by, only widows. Who are beneath yer notice, I see.”
Sulis just stood there looking down her nose at Amber, plainly expecting her to cower before her magnificence and clear away.
But Joanna stood from her comfortable chair and turned to Sulis.
“I dinna ken about what ye say.”
And then the tinker widow turned to Amber and Dierdre.
“Ye are welcome tae stay as long as ye like. Ye hae been nought but helpful and kind tae me. Na everyone is like that in this world, and I truly appreciate ye.”
Joanna sat down again, and Amber pressed her lips together to avoid laughing at Sulis, but only because that might have made things worse for Tomas.
Joanna hadn't really said anything about Sulis at all, but there was a general tittering in this area of the market. Apparently, all the widows nearby were amused by Sulis’s having been subtly put down by Joanna.
Of course, Sulis couldn't just leave it well enough alone. She had to make a scene even bigger than the one she had already made. She had to have the last word. That was the kind of person she was.
Sulis stood up even taller and moved her head from side to side in a mocking way and raised her finger at Joanna and shook it at her as if she were a small child and not an elderly widow who deserved respect. When Sulis next spoke, it was as if she were making a speech to everyone in the whole town, it carried so well.
“Upon closer examination, the goods at this booth are na up tae my standards, and I will take my business and my ample money tae spend doon the way, where people are more respectful o their betters.”
Sulis flounced off in what she plainly intended to be an imperious way.
But all the women in the area tittered again, putting the lie to the druidess’s assumption that she had this whole town sewn up in the palm of her hand.
Naoi (9)
Amber helped Eileen walk all her children home that night, and the two of them had supper ready before Kelsey and Sasha got home. Amber could tell by the looks on their faces that they had been unsuccessful in their search for Lachlan the Dark. They nonetheless passed a pleasant evening playing with the children. The men were drilling at the castle and weren’t present this evening but said they’d have dinner with the lasses the next night.
Sasha and Kelsey met Amber in her dreams briefly to reassure her that she would be touring the castle and the town.
The next morning, Tomas was there at the castle gate when Amber arrived. He was leaning listlessly against the fence, and he stayed that way even when she got there.
She stopped next to him and defiantly decided to look him in the eye — but with raised eyebrows.
“Good morning. I did na expect tae see ye here.”
He didn’t look at her, just kept staring at a hole in the road.
“Aye, I would na hae been, howsoever, Tavish just asked me tae escort ye aroond, right after Sulis left on one o her jaunts intae the forest.”
Amber clapped a few times, ostensibly because she was happy to have him as a guide — but really to try and awaken Tomas from his stupor. It sort of worked.
He pushed off the fence with his elbow and — turning his back on her and leaving her to follow if she would — started walking through the gate into the castle courtyard.
She hurried to catch up, and walked by his side.
He walked through the castle courtyard and was opening a door to go inside when she grabbed his elbow to stop him. She knew the answer to the question she asked, but this wouldn’t be any sort of tour if all he did was walk around and ignore her. She figured it was up to her to get them talking.
“What are those bins full o wood for?”
He slowly turned to look at them and then back at her.
“They’re practice swords.”
He tried to pull away and open the door again, but she held onto his elbow.
“Sae dae ye guards practice in this courtyard? When? I would like tae watch that.”
He wrinkled his brow at her.
“The guards practice every afternoon, and sometimes intae the evening, like yesterday. But ‘tis naught tae watch, just ordinary men keeping their skills braw sae they can dae their duty.”
On a hunch, she pushed for more details, giving
him a soft smile.
“Sae where and when dae the extraordinary men practice?”
Aha. He stood up a bit straighter at that. He did consider himself extraordinary. Unfortunately, in this context it meant he thought he was better than everyone else. He hadn’t been like that before Sulis. If Amber ever got that woman alone when her powers were low, she would shove her face in the mud. What a B witch she was, corrupting someone as honorable as Tomas once had been.
He still was, she reminded herself. This wasn’t really him, just a spell that Sulis had over him. And Amber needed to break him loose from it.
He was responding.
“We officers practice in a room Laird Malcomb designed for it, directly after breakfast.”
She thought about it for moment.
“But that’s now. Are ye missing practice on my account? Won’t ye get in trouble?”
Until she’d mentioned trouble, he had been not quite smiling but at least not scowling. That changed. He sounded almost like a child, he was so cranky.
“Nay, I’m na gaun'ae get in trouble. I’m fifth in command o this whole place, Amber. All the men look up tae me, and Laird Malcomb and his nephew Alfred look tae me tae help them run things. I get a certain number o favors tae go along with that, and I spent one o those precious favors getting out o practice tae show ye aroond today. Least ye could dae is act appreciative o it instead o suggesting I’m gaun'ae get in trouble.”
Before she could say anything else, he pushed through the door into the castle, once more leaving her to follow if she would.
She ran inside after him.
Not taking any notice whether she did or not, he stomped down the cold stone-on-stone hallway toward the corner, where there was another door.
Again she ran, so as not to allow him the satisfaction of losing her in the huge above-ground castle and thus shirking his duty as her escort for the day.
He looked resigned when she caught up to him at the door in the corner, and he sighed deeply before pushing it open and revealing a spiral staircase that went up into a tower. He started climbing up the stairs.
At least he wasn’t running now, so it was easy for her to keep up. She could even talk while they climbed the stairs.
“Is this the tower where they kept that prisoner, Brian the Druid? Kelsey telt me aboot him.”
He answered without looking back down the stairs at her.
“Aye. Howsoever, he was gone before I arrived. This is where they keep any prisoner. The underground palace is hardly a dungeon.”
Amber knew better. She had seen dungeons in the underground palace — but her gut told her not to give this voodoo-doll version of Tomas any idea she knew better than him about what he considered his domain.
So she just slightly changed the subject.
“Is there a tower prison up at the top o each o the four corners o the above-ground castle, then?”
They had reached the top of the stairs now, and he proudly took out some keys and unlocked the prison room door, pushing it open so that she could see how small the turret room was.
“Nay. This corner faces the underground palace entrance and the cliffs that go doon tae land. No one would be able tae attack from that direction. The other three corners face the sea and land approaches. Those towers are reserved for archers when the need arises.”
He had moved inside the room.
So she did also, surprised to see a bed in here. It really wasn’t such a bad prison, albeit small.
“There are arrow-slit windows in this room, tae.”
He moved over to one and looked out.
“Aye. There aren’t always prisoners in here, such as now. And anyway, the prisoner needs tae be able tae look oot and see what he’s missing.”
She looked out one of the windows for a moment.
“I see what ye mean. Let us move on. This room creeps upon me.”
He nodded the slightest bit as he locked up the room and started down the stairs. Was he showing agreement?
They left the stairwell on the third floor of the castle, where he opened the doors to several apartments so that she could look inside, but they didn’t go in. Each time, he would tell her whose apartment it was. He didn’t use names, just said ‘Laird Malcomb’s eldest son and his family’ or ‘younger son and his family’ or ‘Laird Malcomb’s elder nephew.’
At this last apartment, Amber got curious.
“After their wedding, will Eileen and her children move in here with Alfred?”
He nodded again.
“Aye. Even though Alfred’s marrying a commoner and her bairns are common, Laird Malcomb and his wife — and especially his maw — are fond o them. Next, we can see the nursery where his maw takes care o them when they’re here at the castle for feasts. I suppose she will always take care o them once they live here.”
This made Amber smile, the thought of Eileen’s lovely children being taken care of by someone here in the castle who was fond of them.
“Aye, I should like tae see that.”
Was it her imagination, or was he walking more slowly now, even waiting for her to catch up with him if he did leave her behind?
They went back inside the stairwell and down a flight of stairs. But before they could leave on the second floor, a squadron of kilted soldiers with big swords strapped to their backs entered the stairwell through the same door they wished to exit, one at a time in single file.
The last man stopped and stared at Amber for a moment, then smiled and bowed his head slightly.
“Hello again, Amber. D’ye remember me? Cormac. We met on the cliffs the other day, and I saw ye at the feast the other night. I wonder if the next time there is a feast, ye might want tae—”
Tomas cut between the two of them.
“Get on yer way back tae yer squadron.”
Cormac looked confused for a moment, and then he stood up straight and took the steps two at a time on his way up.
“Aye aye, Captain.”
Shocked, Amber just stood there gazing at Tomas. He sure had broken out of his zombie stupor. His eyes looked a lot less glazed over, and his face was even flushed a bit.
He cleared his throat and opened the door for her, waiting for her to precede him through it.
“What? He canna be shirking his duty. We let a wee bit o that take hold, and there would be chaos.”
Amber’s natural inclination was to tease him, but intuition told her that would be disastrous in his current state, so instead she simply smiled and went through the door he was holding into an older part of Laird Malcomb’s above-ground castle, where the halls were wider and the stone building blocks darker.
She paused, unsure which door would lead into the nursery.
Tomas smiled slightly at her as he passed by. It was a friendly smile, and she almost didn’t notice, it was so normal for him. Had been normal for him seven plus years ago, anyway.
He stopped at a set of double doors and opened them wide.
“Here we are, the nursery. There is na anyone here now.”
Amber smiled as she went in.
“I can imagine Aodh and Niall playing in here, and little Deirdre supervising them.”
Tomas went over to a hand carved rocking horse and stroked his hand over it.
“’Tis someaught of a spectacle, aye?”
Amber felt drawn to him then, as if some sort of tractor beam from his eyes had attached to her and was actively reeling her in. She went over and used the rocking horse as an excuse to get close, touching its sanded and painted smoothness with her own hands — and letting her shoulder nearly touch Tomas’s shoulder.
“Mmmhmm, all that is in here is beautiful.”
Their eyes met then, and his looked aware, but confused and unsure. His brow wrinkled then — in concentration, she thought — and he swallowed, making his Adam’s apple go up and down pronouncedly before he spoke.
“Amber?”
Not breaking eye contact, she nodded at him slowly.
&nbs
p; “Aye, ‘tis me.”
He reached for her. She knew that was what he was doing, reaching out to take her into an embrace that would heal the worry in both of them. It would feel like home, and she welcomed it with a triumphant smile. He was hers. They hadn’t ever broken up. He’d simply disappeared from her life. He was hers, and she was going to reclaim him now with a wonderful warm embrace.
But as his hands slid over the rocking horse toward her, its smooth painted surface distracted him, and he looked down, away from her eyes. Once their eye contact was broken, his brow wrinkled in confusion once more, and he looked around the room as if seeing it for the first time.
And then he grabbed her hand and started walking briskly toward the double doors into the hallway.
“I hae tae get ye out o here.”
He pushed through the double doors, then turned the opposite direction from where they’d come and hustled her down the dark stone hallway into another spiral stone stairwell. The door at the bottom opened out into a huge room with a bunch of plank wood counters and herbs hanging from the ceiling and a huge fireplace in the center. Amber gradually realized this was the castle kitchen. A bunch of women paused from kneading dough and cutting vegetables to look at them with surprised faces as Tomas hurried Amber through an open door and outside.
They were near the spot where she had first become aware of her surroundings when the song stopped making her want to jump off the cliff, which she could now see again.
He was walking her toward the stairway into the underground castle.
Her breath caught. Getting her out of here meant sending her home. She couldn’t leave him, or he would fall right back under Sulis’s spell again and she wouldn’t be any closer to saving him then she had been when she first arrived.
But then she remembered that Tomas would need Tavish to send her home, and Tavish had agreed it was safer if they all stayed here in the past together. So she relaxed and just enjoyed being with Tomas. Enjoyed having his hand in hers once again.
Enjoyed it that is until they got to the bottom of the stairs and ran smack into Sulis.
Still in her white linen robes — now stained green and brown from the woods — the druidess grabbed Tomas away from Amber and whispered something in his ear.
