My Something Wonderful

by Jill Barnett

  De Hay studied Glenna for a long time before he said, “Interesting.” He moved closer and tilted her chin up so she had to look up at him.

  To stand passively by and watch was not easy; he wanted to pull de Hay away from her.

  “She has his look…without the fire. But one could expect little substance from a woman, even one with royal blood.” De Hay turned and stepped away, half-laughing. “Not that she looks like one.”

  Glenna did not show any emotion, nor did her eyes appear to make contact with anyone in the room. After de Hay stepped away, she stared down at her clasped hands. Lyall could only admire her ability to not give an inch and to hide her feelings, something she never did with him.

  What was she thinking now?

  Did she long to stick a knife in his ribs?

  Whatever was going on inside her head would only be inflamed as his father by marriage explained, rather cheerfully, her use as a pawn in the plot to overthrow her father.

  “Woman!” de Hay barked. “I am speaking to you!”

  She raised her face and looked past them all.

  “Your father’s men sought to protect you, hiding you away for all these years. You are the eldest, I’m told,” de Hay said, casually.

  Lyall caught Glenna’s blink, the only sign that she’d just received the news she was not the only child of the king. His own decision to not tell her the truth had more to do with ease of his mission than protecting her. And there was little that was true in what he had done. Why, he thought bitterly, muck up all the lies with one truth?

  For days the feeling haunted him that his life had changed forever. Once again he tried to summon up some kind of protection from what he felt for her, a wall to erect between them—like he had done before--but something warm like pride washed over him as he watched her unflinching strength.

  To deny what was between the two of them was no longer possible, a bond the seeds of which had been there from the moment he held a knife at her throat in that stable, a bond he would have never thought possible with anyone who was not his blood. Only his mother and Mairi touched him in the same intimate way. But unlike Glenna, they were safe from his treacheries.

  The deed was done. His fate was set. Her fate was truly no longer his concern.

  Then he watched her knuckles slowly turn white and felt a deep and abiding regret and worse…shame.

  “Sutherland, Douglas, and Ramsey foolishly bet on the secrecy of your existence to remain a secret. Fortunately for us,” de Hay put his hand on Lyall’s shoulder. “ Roberston here wants Dunkeldon enough to give you over to us.” De Hay laughed with an ugliness that proved him to be an arrogant, manipulative bastard. “Some persuasion on my part, the bribe of the lands, and here you are.”

  Glenna did not look at him, but stayed stoic.

  “At one time there were rumors the queen was with child, but they were put to rest after her death,” de Hay continued. “Until a few months ago, no one knew of your existence, Glenna Canmore…or that of your sisters.”

  For a mere heartbeat Lyall dropped his head back and silently cursed, but Glenna appeared calm as a rock when she looked at de Hay blankly. He could only imagine what it took for her to remain passive, given the Glenna he knew and what she’d just been told.

  “I am no fool and have heard you speak, girl.” de Hay goaded. “You are not an idiot. Do not pretend to be one. Have you nothing to say?”

  “Aye. I have something to say.”

  Lyall almost winced, expecting her to fling de Hay’s words back in his face.

  “I do not know my father anymore than I know you, sir.” She lowered her eyes. “I am but a woman raised simply to be nothing close to what I was born into.”

  Lyall choked on his spittle and began to cough so long and hard that Frasyr thumped him on the back a few times.

  Meanwhile Glenna bent down and picked up the flea-bitten cat, and Lyall was reminded how much she had lost in a matter of days: her beloved fool-faced hound, her home and brothers, her life as she had always known it.

  Her face was placid as milk when she shrugged. “I care naught for the machinations and workings of men.” She scratched the cat’s flea-bitten ears and rocked slightly, cooing at it. “I have never known a throne, jewels, or fine gowns. Until this moment, I have never been inside a castle.

  “And you expect me to be loyal to blood and bond and a name I have never known?” She laughed softly and looked evenly at all the men who stood before her. “I care not a flea on this cat for kings and crowns and the power plays of men…or what any of you do. I care only that I have a safe shelter, food, and a bed in which to sleep,” she paused, then said, “…covered with furs.”

  One of the men snorted a laugh.

  Glenna blinked twice, a performance the finest Lyall had ever witnessed, and she looked at them all wide-eyed. “Have I said something humorous?”

  “Nay,” de Hay cut in, bored with her. “If what you say is true, your stay with us should be simple and uneventful.” He dismissed her for the meek, simple woman she was playing, and turned to one of his men at arms. “Lock her in the tower room.” He paused, then added, “And make certain she has her furs.”

  Before the man led her away she looked directly at Lyall, and for the merest of moments her eyes narrowed when they met his, then she turned, cat still in her arms, and calmly followed the men up the stone stairs.

  * * *

  The mangy grey cat was perfectly happy in her arms as Glenna followed the guard passively, watching for the right moment. The stairs led up a thick side wall from the great hall and at the top, the guard turned and they passed by a small grouping of chambers, some with their doors open, and a wide open room with a huge hearth and pallets on the floors, clothing, armor and weapons strewn about, and the strong stench of male and animal sweat.

  They continued down a hallway with little light, and up a narrow staircase that went round and round, seemingly forever, and at the landing at the top of the stairs, she took what she knew was her last chance. “Sir, please…I beg you. Stop. The stairs are so high… Why…why my head is swimming!” she cried out weakly and stumbled into him.

  The cat screeched and leapt from her arms onto the guard, so he struggled to catch her and dislodge the flying cat, and suddenly the three of them were a knot of flying arms and claws, and her swooning knees.

  Just the chaos she needed. She and the cat both fumbled over him as his arms clamped around her, and he dug in his footing and steadied her.

  “There. I have you,” he said not unkindly.

  “Thank you,” she said, wide-eyed, one hand behind her back. “ ‘Tis terribly high up here… like standing on a cliff, and so terribly dark.” She shivered for effect.

  When he turned and moved toward a single door with a heavy iron bolt, she hid his dagger up her sleeve, and his slim purse up the other.

  Weak candlelight dimly lit the tower room. The furnishings within were few, a long and narrow wooden table and a single small chair. Nearby a braiser provided a circle of warmth by a large wooden bed topped with an uneven straw mattress and rough woolen blanket. On the opposite wall an arch was shuttered closed with an iron bold and lock, but drafts of the wind outside still blew through the gaps in the wood and through the staggered arrow slits at opposite sides of the room.

  “There is water in the ewer. And food,” the guard said, standing in front of the door.

  On the table, a bowl of plums and figs sat by a loaf of bread and platter of cheese, a ewer of water, a small cup and laver flanked the rough hewn edges of the table. Fergus loved plums. She saw his silly, shaggy face. He used to toss them like a ball, then eat, jowls cavorting, and spit out the pit the way El taught him.

  She felt a sinking feeling in her belly and placed her hand on it. But he was gone. El was gone. And look where she was.

  The wind outside picked up and a gust blew in, swirling ‘round the room. One of the candles flickered out. Suddenly the room was all shadows.

 
; “Good night, my lady.”

  Her burning eyes adjusted and she wiped them and turned quickly. “Wait!”

  The guard started to close the huge door.

  She rushed forward. “My furs….and a flint and oil reed? To light the candles?”

  He glanced at the candle pricks and nodded. The door closed and the bolt swung into place with a loud scrape, leaving her alone as the sound of his bootsteps disappeared down the tower stairs.

  An empty feeling inside her, she stared at the closed door, confusion and despair fighting for control of her thoughts. Montrose? But he was not Montrose. She placed her hand on her belly as it turned over and she felt a sharp pang in her chest. She bit her lip and closed her eyes, and the image of him came into her mind, a man desperate and alone, standing before two graves in a burned out castle.

  An image she understood. She knew desperation. The first time she had stolen from anyone it was for food. They were starving. Their stock was gone, except for their own mounts. They had nothing. Their father had been dead for four years and her poor brothers had struggled. So she stole first, and they got by.

  Aye, she understood Lyall’s actions. Desperate people did desperate things. She did not believe for a moment he had been pretending to care for her anymore than she had been pretending. She loved him, and in spite of himself, she believed he loved her.

  I cannot do this was what he had said. Now she understood.

  Oh, Lyall, what shall we do?

  She closed her eyes. Her mind was full.

  I have sisters. She was not the only daughter.

  How could she have sisters? Did the king hide all his children? She laughed then at the madness of it all before she grew thoughtful. If she were the eldest, then they could not have shared a mother. If she was hidden away, they must have been, too. Could they be as rough and wild as she was?

  Or was she the only pawn, the eldest, the man called de Hay had said, and supposedly worth something to the father who had never met her and worth all that much more to his enemies.

  If there was one thing she would never allow herself to be, it was a pawn.

  * * *

  Lyall’s eyes remained locked on the empty spot at the top of the stairs where Glenna had disappeared, and told himself that regret was for those who had a conscience, and he never claimed to have one. Why then did he have the urge to draw his sword, grab her, and die if he had to, fighting to get her away from this place to which he had brought her?

  Long ago, he knelt and avouched to a life of honor, only to have his honor questioned again and again because of the name he carried—his father’s black legacy. He was the son of a man who had no honor, and in time, he learned there were not enough vows in the world to change the dishonor of his name.

  Around him, men’s voices pierced his consciousness.

  “The armorer overcharged me. I threatened to take his fingers one by one if he were to act the fool again.”

  “…came walking out of the hayloft after the milkmaid only to have her young brother conk him out with a barrel stave.”

  “’Aye…the best piece of horseflesh I’ve ever cast these old eyes upon. ‘Tis a smaller, swifter breed of palfrey, bred in the west, on the isles, from Barb bloods and another desert breed. I would give a year’s wages for one.”

  Lyall cast a quick glance over his shoulder. Frasyr’s man at arms was the one lusting after one of the rare bloods, those the Gordons raised, smaller, swifter breeds of riding mounts like Glenna’s Skye.

  A vision of the island swam before his eyes--fields covered in heather, Glenna riding with her romping hound, her laughter or a challenge…all that was left in her wake. So bright was the image, so strong the sound her voice, that his breath caught. His clothes felt suddenly small, and he tugged at his tunic as if he could cover up what he was feeling—the most intense sense of loss. Part of him wanted to sink into the ground.

  In a shadowed corner, de Hay was talking with Frasyr. Meanwhile some of the guards were beginning to sprawl out on wooden benches and pallets, some went abovestairs as pages brought lavers for washing and thickly frothed ale for them to drink themselves to sleep. Before him a maid with a ewer of thick brown ale ran into a bustling squire who precariously balanced a flagon of wine on a tray and had not been paying attention. Brown ale went everywhere, and the two began bickering until they were quieted by a sharp command.

  “I will have a word with you, Robertson.”

  Light from a candle suddenly appeared at his shoulder. De Hay was standing next to him, and he took a goblet of wine from the squire and demanded Lyall follow him from the hall.

  Inside a private chamber with plenty of candlelight, Huchon de Hay sat down in a chair at a wide hewn table and set a coffer before him and unlocked it. Without looking up he said, “Is she as simple-minded as she appears?”

  “More so,” Lyall lied.

  “Then your task cost you little trouble to earn this.” De Hay held out a parchment. A thick gold ring with a mark Lyall had never seen was on his long fingers.

  Lyall steeled himself to look into his eyes and appear passive. When unrolled, the papers revealed a sealed and witnessed document bequothing all of Dunkeldon and its lands, borders, crofts and income and tax fees from the village of Dunwood and the nearby Tay crossing to Sir Lyall Robertson and his heirs.

  Lyall’s hands shook slightly as he read it.

  De Hay stood. “Dunkeldon is yours.”

  “Aye,” Lyall said, lingering in his own hopelessness, unable to know how to act or what to do next. He half-expected the parchment to burn its image into his palm. He finally held in his hand all that he had craved for more years than he had lived on Dunkeldon lands.

  “You may go,” de Hay dismissed him, and Lyall walked out to the great hall. As he walked away without purpose, he realized the place stank of burning mutton and sweat, ale and wet, fetid rushes. The stink grew stronger. He needed fresh air. Smell was his only sense, and it was acute and overpowering.

  Had someone touched him, he doubted he would feel it. Had the Devil himself arisen there before his eyes, he would not have seen him. Had the ground opened up and the screams of Hell surrounded him, he would not hear them.

  The coward in him wanted to run, an urge he had felt often in his lifetime but never admitted or acted upon. He didn’t have the courage to be a true coward. He walked on, feeling nothing, yet wondering if betrayal carried a stench.

  Outside, he headed straight for the stable, saddled and mounted his horse, paid the guard a pretty sum to open the gate, and rode out, only to have to bribe the castle ferryman to barge cross the lake. The wind was picking up overhead, and it blew water from the white-capped lake into his eyes and face, and rocked the wooden raft so hard he had his hands full calming down his high-spirited horse.

  On the opposite side he eased his skittish mount off the rocking raft to soft ground, and he kept along the edge of the lake as the wind calmed down, and in time, so did his horse. At a break in the trees, he dismounted and his horse was happy to eat grass. But Lyall’s state of mind was in turmoil as he paced across the damp grass in the dark.

  Dunkeldon was his. After all the time and the pain and disappointment. After keeping his eye on the prize with a single-mindedness that had gone on for so long, eventually he drove himself from the hearts of his family.

  What price so dear one pays….

  He was alone in the grand quiet of the moment he had waited for, yet there was great noise inside his head he could not shake off.

  At the edge of the lake, he stopped. The waters spanned out before him, past the castle rock, and into the great beyond, proving itself broad and distancing and making him feel small. Now the prize was his, and instinct told him that he needed to remember his father and Malcolm; all he had done had been for them.

  He closed his eyes to take his memory back in time. But he saw nothing familiar. No features he could remember, nothing but the shadows of two men.

  What punishment
was this? He could no longer conjure up their faces. When had that happened? How long had it been since he could see their features in his mind’s eye, since he could hear their voices in his head? He could not remember if or when he had tried. He massaged his brow and frowned, then swiped his hand over his mouth and chin, rough with beard.

  The images were lost to him, and he understood like a fool does after acting the idiot that he had traded his memories of his father and Malcolm for the land. Their images were gone, wiped clean from his mind and memory. He had lost everything, and justified doing so by telling himself the greatest lie: all he had done, he had done for them.

  His gaze went to the castle tower, where dim light shone vaguely from an arrow slit. As clear as a summer sky he saw Glenna Canmore walking regally up the stone steps and taking with her his lost soul.

  Lyall could not breathe. He fell to his knees, his control gone. Suddenly all the air in his lungs had been stolen, then next…the blood in his veins disappeared, his bones felt brittle and dry as an old corpse. He was empty.

  Dunkeldon was his but at what cost?

  He knelt there taking long breaths and staring at the flickering, distant light in the tower, until he flung his head back and cried out, a sound that was like that of a lone wolf who lost its mate, a sound that echoed out over the water, into the ground under him and through his body, a cry that filled his throat and left it rough and scratched, and when he found his voice again, the words from his mouth were, “What have I done? What have I done!”

  A moment later a knife pricked his throat as someone gripped his hair tightly in a fist. “It matters not what you have done because you are a dead man.”

  24

  The tower room door opened to the squeak of rusty hinges and the guard’s gruff voice. “I have your furs, my lady.” He stepped inside, and the grey cat rushed in between his legs. “You devil of a cat!” He tossed an armful of marten furs on the bed and grumbled, “That’s how she lost her tail, skulking through open doorways.”