by Leela Ash
Taking out her notebook, she began to sketch pictures with notes of what she saw. It would be fascinating reading when she got back to 2015, if she ever returned. At first she remained within the confines of the tent, but as the day dragged on, she became bored. Tucking her hair underneath her cap, she started to wander further afield. It seemed quiet and surely no one would notice her. With her slight frame and tunic and leggings, she could easily pass for one of the young squires. Eventually she came to a very large and wealthy-looking tent that bore the royal coat of arms; it must be the tent of King James. Picking up her pencil, she had just started drawing the scene when a hefty arm caught hold of her.
Two burly highlanders stood behind her, their swords drawn, and before she could speak her hands were fastened behind her and she was thrown into a tent. No one knew who she was and it was assumed that she must be an English spy.
A long time passed before one of the older men came into the tent to speak to her.
“What’s yer name sonny, and who do ye work for?”
She stuttered out William’s name and said that she was his squire. The man rubbed his whiskers. He wasn’t sure. The boy’s accent wasn’t Scots, and there was something unusual about him. He would keep him under watch until William returned.
She was brought some simple food and water during the day, but apart from that, she had no company. At night she was given a blanket but could not sleep. How different the previous night had been. She lay awake thinking of William.
A few miles away, William Stewart lay on the ground looking up at the stars. It was a beautiful night and he wondered if it might be his last. He was sure Rebecca knew something about the battle but was afraid to tell him. He feared the worse. He removed the strange device from his tunic and pressed the button she had shown him. The square box switched into life and he saw a picture of a white apple on a black background. This thing amazed him and he wondered what it was like in 2015. Would he still be remembered? The apple disappeared and was replaced by their image, his face and hers. She was laughing and he was looking confused. She looked beautiful. Kissing the image, he pressed the button to close the machine and to “save the battery” as she had put it.
He prayed to God to keep them both safe.
The next morning, the clouds had set in and what started as a light drizzle turned into torrential rain by mid afternoon. Rebecca listened carefully for any news, but all was quiet. She hadn’t slept well the previous night and was awoken by the sound of loud voices and seemed to recognize one of them. The tent opened and in walked Angus, one of William’s men who had threatened her with a sword a few days earlier. She was grateful for her disguise for he did not seem to recognize her and soon walked out again. She wondered what he was doing here and why he wasn’t at the battle. The reason soon became clear. The battle had already started late afternoon and by now the Scots were being massacred by the English. It seemed that the coward had run away from the danger. A few hours later, a messenger arrived to state that all was lost and to clear the camp. Horses were readied and Rebecca wondered if she would be forgotten when Angus walked into the tent and pulled her outside.
The older man was waiting outside. “He says he’s William Stewart’s squire.”
Angus peered closely at Rebecca, uncertain. Pulling at her cap, he released her blonde hair, which cascaded down her back.
“William Stewart’s whore, more like.” And bringing his face up close to hers, he leered down at her, his cruel mouth mocking her.
“Well, William’s dead so she’s no use to him now. I’m sure I can make good use of her, though.” With that, he dragged her back into the tent.
Rebecca didn’t know what was happening to her. Her whole body had gone into shock. If William was dead, then she was lost, too. The old woman had been wrong after all. Perhaps it was her fault; she had upset the balance of time.
She had a sense of déjà vu but seemed lost in a dream. Angus was suddenly in front of her and from the smell on his breath, he had been drinking a great quantity of ale. His hand was squeezing her arm, but she could not struggle. She had given up the fight. His eyes were like slits and there was cruelty in their steely grey as he looked her up and down.
Licking his lips, he sneered at her and brought his face directly in front of hers.
His breath was stale and sour, and Rebecca turned her face away from him.
“Little whore, I’ll show ye.” He pulled her to the floor as his free hand started to work its way underneath her tunic.
His other hand was around her neck and almost choking her. She thought she might black out when suddenly he released her, his whole weight lifting away from her.
“Angus.”
The voice was his. William had returned and had pulled Angus away from her, punching him to the floor.
Once again his strong arms were around her and she wept softly into his chest.
“But I thought you were dead?”
“I was saved by this.” Reaching into his tunic he pulled out her phone. The glass had been smashed but surprisingly it still worked.
“I took a direct hit from an English archer, but luckily I kept your picture next to my heart and the arrow pierced your machine and not me. Ye saved my life.”
Things were as they should be, as they were always meant to be.
Rebecca returned home to Selkirk with William. She married him a month later and he had a special portrait of her commissioned for the occasion. He wanted her to look like the first time he had seen her, standing in the bed chamber with her hair plaited. She wore a blue velvet dress and a pearl necklace that he bought her as a wedding gift. As a surprise in return, she asked the painter to make two small additions to her picture. In her hand, she would hold an apple to symbolize the phone that had saved him. Remembering the original locket, she had already guessed what the twin-tailed symbol of the siren signified: It was the Starbucks logo from her coffee cup that they had kept it as a reminder of her past.
They lived happily ever after despite the fact that she could never return to her own time. They had four children, two girls and two boys. Her past was now her future. She worried about her Mom missing her and thought of a cunning plan. She recorded a message for her parents on the iPhone, using the last remaining battery power. She hoped they would understand.
James Anderson was furious. He had been digging at the site and found a surprisingly modern object buried quite deeply. It seemed as though a thermos flask had been buried on the site of the old house and inside it were two objects: a mobile phone with the front smashed in and a small locket. He recognized the phone; the students seemed to be glued to them these days. This one was housed in a pink sparkly case and it belonged to Rebecca, that strange American girl that he couldn’t get out of his head. Students weren’t allowed to come onto the site without permission, let alone dig.
It might be a practical joke, but just wait until he saw her; he would definitely give her a piece of his mind.
THE END
Through the Highland Gateway
Leela Ash
Copyright ©2015 by Leela Ash. All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic of mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Chapter 1
When she took the time to think back over the previous few weeks (or had it been hundreds of years?), Lily Rey would not know what to think. Any number of things could have happened any other way, and she would not have found herself living with the man she had always felt that she deserved, in the land that she had always dreamed of living in. In her scheme of thinking, things had changed so drastically in such a short period of time; she had gone from stressed to easeful, ignored to revered, and downtrodden to wealthy.
It had all started at the desk outside of Reginald P. Wooley, Esquire’s office. Reginald was a senior partne
r at the offices of Davis, Franklin, and Wooley, Attorneys at Law, a prestigious criminal defense office in Daytona Beach, Florida, when she received a telephone call from Tyler Yancey, her great aunt’s estate attorney. She had been expecting the call for about a week, and was beginning to worry that it would not come in time for her trip to Scotland.
“Reginald Wooley’s office, Lily speaking,” she had answered.
“Yes, Miss Rey,” the man’s voice had said through the crackle of cell-phone static, “I am calling in regards to Mrs. Henry’s estate. The reading of her will is this afternoon, and she had specifically asked that you be present, as it concerns you very much.”
“Okay, what time?”
“We will be starting at 4:00 p.m., exactly.”
“I’ll be there,” she said, replacing the telephone in the receiver. She remembered glancing at the clock and thinking to herself how they could have called her earlier. Her flight was scheduled to leave the runway at 8:15 that evening, and with the post-9/11 security, she would need to be at the airport by no later than 5:00 that evening.
She was cutting it mighty fine, indeed.
She had been looking forward to the trip—her chance to visit the land of her ancestors—for several months. She had always felt drawn to Scotland, most likely because family tradition had always said that they were descended from Scottish nobility, and it made her dream of castles, of handsome men full of chivalry and honor—basically what every young girl dreams of. The problem was, those young girls eventually learn that there are no more castles, princes to sweep them off their feet, or dragons to slay.
No, in modern life, there were only asshole law partners who prevent qualified women from promoting their lowly secretary’s job to a full paralegal, all while making her do the work of one. The bad part was, Reginald P. Wooley, Esq. was a perverted old man who only wanted to keep her at his front desk because of her round ass and large, perky tits. It was almost as if she was nothing but a long pair of legs and a vagina to the assholes at Davis, Franklin, and Wooley. They didn’t care that she was a certified paralegal, or that she was much better qualified than the ugly guy they had just hired to hold the title. They would rather have Lily in the position of “eye-candy-in-chief,” all while working her to death.
When she was honest with herself though, it wasn’t hard to understand why they wanted her to act as the company eye candy. In addition to her obvious physical assets of a large bust and round derriere, she also possessed with long, dark auburn hair that perfectly complemented her stunningly bright and large blue eyes. Her slightly hollowed cheeks and strong, thin chin perfectly balanced her face, and her legs were toned much more than the average, a testament to the multiple marathons, half-marathons, 10 and 5ks that she competed in every year. All in all, she was easily one of the prettiest women in Daytona Beach.
That day at lunchtime, she told the partners that she had finished her work, and told Reginald that she was leaving for her vacation. “Don’t you get lost in time over there! Make sure you come back!” he had answered, his eyes raking the plunging neckline of her blouse.
“I won’t!” Lily answered, all while thinking to herself that if she could help it, she definitely wouldn’t…come back. “Asshole,” she said to herself, as she walked out the front door of the office she so despised.
As she rode down A1A listening to P!NK’s most recent album, “The Truth About Love,” she cranked up the music and lost herself in her own world for a few moments. After she got home, showered, threw her suitcases in the back of her car, ate some lunch, and watched a last little bit of American television before leaving, she headed off to Tyler Yancey’s office for her appointment.
She had been very close to her Great Aunt Yvonne, who raised her from the time she turned eleven. When her mother had been killed in a car accident, her father wanted nothing to do with Lily, so the deadbeat asshole gladly signed his rights as a parent over to Yvonne, who was Lily’s mother’s aunt. Yvonne had not had any children of her own, but Great Uncle Harold, Aunt “Vonny’s” husband, had a daughter from a previous marriage. His granddaughter, Rose, was the same age as Lily.
As an only child, Lily had never known what it would be like to have a sibling, and Rose quickly became something of a surrogate sister. Rose’s father had abandoned her before she was born, leaving her to be raised by her mother, who had barely graduated high-school. Because her mother had to work two jobs to provide for her, Rose spent a lot of time with Lily’s Uncle Harold and Aunt Vonny. Now that Aunt Vonny had passed away, Lily had no family left besides Rose. Rose, of course, was not even related to her technically, but might as well have been.
When Lily arrived at the lawyer’s office, Rose eyed her white halter top and short blue shorts and immediately began laughing, her cigarette dangerously close to falling out of her mouth. “Hey, ho!”
“Hey yourself, skank!” Lily answered, breaking out into a wide grin. It was a normal routine of theirs to greet each other with insults, but it could not have been clearer to the average on-looker that they were close. “How’ve you been?” Lily asked as they embraced.
“I’m okay…it’s still hard to believe that Vonny is gone, you know?”
“Yeah, I’m really going to miss her.”
“What do you think she left you?”
“Probably $10 million…”
“Wishful thinking, much?”
“Considering that she didn’t have two pennies to rub together, yeah.”
“Yeah…I guess the fact that she paid for our college was our inheritance, huh?”
“Couldn’t have asked f0r more.”
“So, why are you dressed like a whore?” Rose said, snuffing out her cigarette, “You thinking that the lawyer will give you more if he thinks you’ll give him a blowjob in the car out back?”
“Well, I figured it couldn’t hurt” she joked, punching her on the left shoulder before opening the door to the small storefront that Tyler Yancey had rented for a law office.
“Hmmm…you’ve got a point there. Seriously, though…why?” Rose pressed, walking through the open door.
“I’ve got a plane to catch in a few hours, figured I’d make it easier for them to strip search me,” Lily answered sarcastically.
“I forgot! Where are you going, again? Ireland?”
“No, Scotland.”
“What’s the difference?” Rose asked as the lawyer walked from behind a small partition.
“Only the North Channel of the Irish Sea,” Yancey answered before Lily could open her mouth. “Ladies, thank you for coming. Shall we begin?”
“Aren’t we expecting anyone else?” Rose asked.
“No, you are the only two who Mrs. Henry made specific bequests to, and you are the only two who she specifically requested to be here. Shall we begin?”
“Sure,” Rose answered, sitting down in an office chair by the front door as Lily took a seat beside her.
“The last will and testament of Yvonne T. Henry,” the lawyer read aloud, “It is my wish that with exception of two personal effects, to be named herein, all of my assets be liquidated, and used to settle my final debts. First, my necklace of sterling silver and amethyst is bequeathed to my grand-niece, Lily O. Rey, along with the letter that accompanies it. Additionally, Lily is to receive one half of the monetary value of my estate, or two million dollars, whichever is less.” Trevor paused to take a sip of water while this sank into Lily’s consciousness. He then continued, “Secondly, my antique dining set, incorporating sterling silver cutlery and fine china plate are bequeathed to Rose S. Tolliver, along with the letter that accompanies the set. Additionally, Rose is to receive one half of the monetary value of my estate, or two million dollars, whichever is less. If there are any funds available after the monetary value of my estate has been determined, I leave everything to the Florida Cancer Society, in remembrance of my late husband, Harold M. Henry.”
Lily and Rose sat there in shock as the attorney reached behind the partit
ion and handed each of them a fine wooden chest, containing their bequests. “Naturally, we are unable to give you your financial inheritance, but we can arrange to have it deposited in your personal bank accounts.”
“How much was it?” Rose asked, obviously still in shock.
“You will each receive $1.98 million.”
“Wow,” Lily said quietly a few moments later, when they had exited the office.
“Did you know?” Rose asked.
“Know? Know what?”
“That Gramma Vonny was rich?”
“No…” Lily said before carefully opening the case and removing the yellowed envelope that sat inside on top of the pristine necklace. Opening the envelope, she found a letter dated in 1999, written in her Aunt Vonny’s minute, tidy handwriting:
My Dearest Lily,
I do not know if you were aware that the necklace I have left you exists. It has been passed down through the generations from our ancestors, always to the first-born woman of the next generation. If your mother had not passed, it would have been left to her; however, as you are the only surviving woman in our line from the generations after my own, it is now yours. I have had it appraised, and the certificate of authenticity, signed by the Department chairwoman of the University of Florida’s Anthropology Department, will verify that it originated in the early fourteenth century in our ancestral homeland of Scotland.
Also, family legend says that the necklace conceals a power that only one woman, the descendant of our ancestor, would be able to unlock. Unfortunately, I do not have any way of knowing (or passing on to you) what that power is. I can only tell you that many women in our line have borne her name, including you—Lily.
I know that it has long been your ambition to visit the land of our ancestors, so perhaps you can be the one to solve the mystery of our family necklace. Maybe you can one day visit the home of the first Lily in our family, Culcreuch Castle in Fintry, to ascertain the roots of the legend, and the power that the necklace possesses.
