The Border Lord and the Lady

by Bertrice Small

  Inside the bedchamber the women heard the outside shutter being dismantled. They were silent. Flora whimpered as they heard the glass window being broken. Cicely debated their course of action. She stepped into the hall, saying to Frang, “They are already through the outside shutter and glass. Once they destroy the inner shutter it is just a matter of pushing the trunks away. I think the children and the women should be upstairs now, Frang. We can be contained there. Here we are open to attack from two sides, I fear.”

  “You’re right, my lady,” he agreed.

  “Quickly,” Cicely called to the women in her bedchamber. “Get upstairs into the nursery chamber before these villains break through into the house.”

  The women hurried from the chamber, carrying the children, and rushed upstairs.

  “You, too, my lady,” Frang said quietly.

  Cicely opened her mouth to protest, and then, seeing the foolishness of it, nodded. “Do not get yourself killed,” she said.

  He grinned at her. “I’ll take a few Grahames with me for company if I do,” he promised her.

  Cicely ran for the stairs and joined the others upstairs. What if they fired the house? she wondered. Could they all get out safely? Blessed Mother! This certainly wouldn’t have happened if Kier had been here. Was James Stewart’s war with the MacDonald of the Isles more important than the survival of Glengorm? She smiled wryly to herself. The answer to that question depended upon who was asking the question. She already knew both answers to her query.

  Almost within sight of his home Kier Douglas and his Glengorm men saw the smoke. The laird of Glengorm raised his hand to signal a stop. From the hill they had just topped they saw the village alight. Kier heard the men behind him beginning to swear. His gaze moved to the house. It was being assaulted. He turned. “It would seem that the Grahames have come calling, lads. No mercy!” Then he spurred his horse down the road leading to his home, his clansmen riding hard behind him.

  Durwin Grahame and his men had almost broken through into the main floor. They pushed and pushed at the inner shutters until they gave way. Then they shoved the trunks piled up, blocking them. As the trunks fell away Durwin Grahame, his men behind him, climbed into the laird of Glengorm’s house. They gawked briefly at the room in which they stood, and then began their attempt to get through the chamber’s door.

  On the second floor one of the archers saw the laird and their clansmen spurring their horses down the hill road to Glengorm. He called down the narrow staircase to Frang, “God be praised, the laird is home! Open the doors to him, Frang!”

  Frang ran to peep out through a shutter. He saw his master as the laird galloped up to the house, his clansmen behind him. Frang’s eyes lifted skyward, and he whispered a quick thanks for the miracle they were receiving. Lifting the bar from the front door of the house himself, he flung it aside and opened the door to admit Kier Douglas. “This way, my lord! They have gotten in through the bedchamber, and are trying to break through into the hall,” Frang said, gesturing and running ahead of the laird.

  They reached the door at the rear of the hall. Frang looked to his master, who nodded. The captain of Glengorm’s men-at-arms lifted the bar he had earlier placed across the door. He turned the key in the lock and kicked open the door. Surprised, Durwin Grahame and his men dashed through the opening, only to find themselves surrounded by Kier Douglas and his men. The Grahames stopped dead in their tracks.

  “No mercy!” the laird shouted as he had earlier, and the battle was enjoined. It was quickly over, for although the Grahames were fighting for their lives, the clansmen of Glengorm fought not only for life, but for their women, their bairns, and their homes.

  At the last minute one man escaped, however. Durwin Grahame did not intend to leave this earth without his sister, Bethia. They let him run. His defeat would make a stronger point than anything else they might do. The Grahame chief raced down the hill and through the village to the beach. Finding his horse, he leaped into the saddle and urged it into the loch. Reaching the other side, he found Bethia waiting for him.

  “What has happened?” she demanded. “Three of your men swam some cows across the loch and kept going. Where are the women you wanted? And where are your men, brother?”

  “Glengorm is surely blessed, sister,” Durwin told her. “The laird came home just as we had broken into the house. All are slain but for me.”

  “You ran? God forgive you for a coward, Durwin,” she sneered, and then she spit at him in disgust.

  “I could not die yet, sister,” he told her. “Not yet. Not until I had killed you!” And Durwin Grahame leaped forward, plunging his dirk into Bethia’s heart, twisting it hard, and gaining satisfaction from the look in her eyes as she died on his blade. Yanking the dirk from her chest, he wiped it on her skirts, replacing it in its sheath. Seeing that she had a small stone flask attached to her belt, he pulled it off, jerked the stopper from it, sniffed, and poured the whiskey down his throat. A moment later he collapsed to the earth, a look of complete surprise upon his face. “Jesu!” he groaned. “I’ve been poisoned.” They were the last words he spoke.

  They found him several hours later, dead on the stony beach that edged the far side of the loch. Looking down at Bethia and Durwin Grahame, Frang said, “Jesu! I had forgotten that Bethia was a Grahame. Her husband took her in a border raid so long ago I didn’t remember it. This man must have been her kin.”

  “She incapacitated the watch on the beach, which allowed her kin to attack the village and the house,” the laird noted. “Bury them.” Then he swam his mount back across the water and rode up the hill to greet his wife.

  Cicely met him in the hall. “Welcome home, my lord. Your arrival was fortuitous, to say the least. It was all I could do to keep Mab from getting herself killed, for she had armed herself with a very dangerous rolling pin and was ready to fight the Grahames herself.”

  Without a word he swept her into his arms, and his mouth descended upon hers in a fierce, hot kiss. When he finally raised his head he said, his voice thick with emotion, “I could have lost you, Cicely. I could have lost you!”

  She wrapped her arms about him, looking up into his face, almost breathless, and smiling. “Then you really do love me, my lord,” Cicely said teasingly.

  “Aye,” he admitted to her. “I really do love you! You are my life, my strength, the reason my heart continues to beat, lass!”

  “As you are my life and strength, my lord,” Cicely told him. “I love you too! I always will. Now, Kier Douglas, I want you to promise me, no more running off to war! You have done your duty by James Stewart. Now it is the time for you to do your duty by Glengorm. For Johanna, and Ian, and the bairn I’m now carrying. For our own Glengorm folk. I want my husband home and by my side. Kings may come and go. But the legacy you and I shall build here for our children and for our descendants will be a strong and solid one, my darling.”

  Kier bent, kissing her more gently this time. “Aye,” he agreed, “we shall build a fine legacy for Glengorm that will last at least as long as the Stewarts are kings, sweetheart.”

  Johanna’s little voice suddenly piped up near them. “Da is home, Ian!” she said excitedly. “Da is home!”

  Kier Douglas bent down, lifting Johanna and Ian into the curve of his arm while his other arm wrapped itself tightly about Cicely. “Aye, my bairns, your da is home,” he said, his eyes moist with his emotion. “And home he means to stay forever!”

  “Hooray!” said little Johanna, happily clapping her hands.

  And, their eyes meeting in perfect accord, Kier and Cicely Douglas laughed aloud.

  And Afterwards

  Joan Beaufort bore her husband six daughters: Margaret, Isabella, Joan, Eleanor, Mary, and Annabella. It wasn’t until October of 1430 that Scotland finally had a male heir. The queen bore twin sons, Alexander and James. Alexander did not survive the winter. James, named after his father, came to the throne at the tender age of six, when his father was assassinated on February 2
0, 1437.

  James I had been beloved of his people. His English queen, and the extreme youth of England’s king, not to mention England’s struggle to retain her French possessions, had helped him to maintain peace between the two countries. It allowed James to concentrate on improving the system of justice in Scotland, establishing trade, and stabilizing the currency.

  Unfortunately he was unable to control the ambitions, the petty jealousies, and the rapacity of his lords. They had been used to years of weak kings who could be bought off and controlled. The first James Stewart had proved to be not that kind of a man. His grandfather, Robert II, a widower, had made a second marriage to Euphemia Ross that had produced four children, in addition to the nine Robert II already had. Two were sons, and uncles to James I.

  It was the adherents to this branch of the family, including former servants of the late Duke of Albany, who hatched a plot to kill James Stewart and replace him on the throne with Walter Stewart, the Earl of Atholl, the king’s adviser, who was the younger son of Robert II and Euphemia Ross. The king and his family were staying at the Dominican priory in Perth on that cold winter’s night when the assassins burst in. The queen and several of her women were injured trying to protect the king so he might have time to flee his attackers. Sadly he was caught and stabbed to death. But while her husband was being murdered, Queen Joan escaped to safety, sending word to Edinburgh to protect her son from any other conspirators.

  These lords had unfortunately seen things only from their own perspective. In their mind’s eye they had destroyed a despot. However, Scotland’s people did not see it that way. Regicide was not popular, for kings were anointed by the Church. They were God’s chosen. Joan Beaufort, daughter of royalty, great-granddaughter of Edward III of England, granddaughter of John of Gaunt, having escaped death and kept her son—now James II—safe, knew exactly what to do, and she did it.

  Her husband’s body, bearing its terrible wounds, was put on display for all to see. Joan played the role of tragic widow to the hilt, organizing her own coalition. The conspirators floundered about, having not quite considered what they would do after they killed James I. In the confusion that followed the queen grew stronger and stronger. The papal nuncio, Bishop Anthony Altani of Urbino, had been in Perth at the time of the assassination. He declared that James I had died a martyr as the king was being laid to rest in the Carthusian priory outside of Perth that James I had founded.

  Having aroused the people’s sense of outrage, the queen and her supporters now acted. James I’s murderers were hunted down, arrested, and imprisoned. The queen personally supervised their three days of torture as the top three conspirators were put to slow and painful death. The Earl of Atholl, the king’s uncle, who had dared to involve himself in the plot, was crowned with a burning band of red-hot iron. Engraved on this terrible crown was The King of Traitors.

  Two years later, in the year 1439, the widowed queen, Joan Beaufort, married again. Her second husband was Sir James Stewart, known as the Black Knight of Lorne. She bore him three sons: John, who was created Earl of Atholl; James, Earl of Buchan; and Andrew, who became the bishop of Moray. Dying in 1445, she was buried beside her first and great love, James I.

  Author’s Note

  In my previous novel, Betrayed, set in this time period, I have Queen Joan bearing a son, Alexander, earlier. Later research since then has proved the queen bore her only male children, twins, James and Alexander, in October of 1430. I apologize for any confusion this may have caused the reader.

  About the Author

  Bertrice Small is a New York Times bestselling author and the recipient of numerous awards, including the 2008 Pioneer of Romance Award from Romantic Times magazine. In keeping with her profession, Bertrice Small lives in the oldest English-speaking town in the state of New York, founded in 1640. Her light-filled studio includes the paintings of her favorite cover artist, Elaine Duillo, and a large library. Because she believes in happy endings, Bertrice Small has been married to the same man, her hero, George, for forty-three years. They have a son, Thomas; a daughter-in-law; Megan and four wonderful grandchildren. Longtime readers will be happy to know that Nicki the cockatiel flourishes, along with his housemates: Pookie, the long-haired greige-and-white cat; Finnegan, the long-haired bad black kitty; and Sylvester, the black-and-white tuxedo cat, who is now the official bedcat.