[Druids Bidding 02.0] RenFaire Druids: Dunskey Castle Prequels

by Jane Stain

  Emily searched his eyes for the reason behind her being brought to his time before, knowing he probably was unaware and just doing his druid masters’ bidding. “Why was I brought here before? What did I do while I was here?”

  Dall blushed. He kept his arms around her, though. “A whole passel of women from your renaissance festivals was brought to me, to see which one I … cared for.”

  Emily felt her mouth drop open. She heard Dall continue talking, faster and faster as if to get as many words in as he could before she … she didn’t know what.

  “And I do care for you, Emily. I did choose you out of two dozen women. That must needs count for something, aye?”

  Emily still wasn’t sure how she felt about this. She blinked again and again, letting her subconscious mind mull it over. She was a physical person, a kinesthetic learner, and her teacher training classes had helped her understand that most of her thinking was done outside of her awareness.

  Dall was still talking. “Aw lass, do you not see? That is why we were already drawn to each other the first time you remember seeing me. We had already shared our special smile. It had already worked on you, lass.”

  Emily noted that she wasn’t crying or getting angry. “Dall, it’s OK. I understand you didn’t have any choice in it. Thank you for telling me. You didn’t have to do that, and I appreciate it.”

  He kissed her then, and they were busy for several minutes. “Anyhow, I did think that you should know, because Eamann knows. He was there.”

  She put her hands on Dall’s chest. “I really don’t want to go see that man.”

  Dall raised his strong chin. “I do not, either, Drusilla. But it is not often what we want in life that we must do.”

  Emily didn’t know about that, but she got her phone out again and checked the settings. “Ready?”

  Their time and space travel went off without a hitch this time. Only Eamann was in his dungeon an hour before their original attempt. When he saw Dall and Emily enter, he simply nodded toward the stairs with his nose in an ancient scroll and his fingers examining a clay tablet of some sort.

  Most of the castle was asleep, so Dall and Emily went up to their new room and busied themselves until they heard signs that others were greeting the day.

  They enjoyed the morning meal with the larger red-kilted MacGregor clan, and then someone yelled out, “Colin’s here.”

  Emily gripped Dall’s hand hard under the table as Colin and his blue-kilted kin entered the hall. As he took the empty throne at the head of the table next to the ordinary chair where Alasdair MacGregor sat, she fought to keep her hatred of Cailean Liath Campbell out of her eyes. After all, the man had not yet done the deeds she hated him for. Still, she had a fleeting temptation to find something poisonous and slip it in Colin’s wine.

  As usual, Colin had shown up to take Dall and all the men out to do his dirty work at the Campbell borders. “Drink your fill and laugh your best this night,” he said to the men, “for on the morrow we go on patrol.”

  The highlander men all cheered and toasted to that, but Emily noticed that among the women, only the widows joined in. The rest seemed to hate Colin almost as much as she herself did. Fortunately for the women, Colin paid them no mind. Emily was relieved to also be beneath the notice of the other Campbell men, now that she dressed in her husband’s plaid and wore his mother’s ring.

  The men were gone a whole week, back two weeks, gone three days, and then stayed at the castle. Just as it had been the last time Emily was at the castle, some of the men didn’t come home, and others came home injured. Eamann took the patients who needed limbs hacked off down into his dungeon surgery, but he left their daily care and basic wound stitching up to the women.

  Emily was put to work with the rest of the women and all but the smallest children: mostly tending the sick and injured and helping prepare meals. She enjoyed being a part of the MacGregor clan, and the other women all treated her like one of them. She was, now.

  Life at the castle without Dall was miserable only in that Emily missed him and worried for his safety. Day to day, it was nice. She’d never had any brothers or sisters, and these other women whose husbands were also in peril felt more like sisters than her in-laws did. Her in-laws were so isolated that they were tightly knit. Except Dall’s mother. Emily felt great warmth from her mother-in-law.

  These other women had left their homes to follow their men to the clan’s base of operations just like Emily had. Besides, she spent more time with them, time without the men around. She and her new sisters traded advice about everything from cooking and child-rearing to the marriage bed. It was almost like being with Vange, and Emily figured in ten years, being in the castle alone with these women would feel just like being with her best friend.

  One odd thing happened that helped Emily out immensely in the long run.

  She didn’t know if it was because she was now part of the clan and no longer a guest, or if the favor she had gained for saving Alasdair from choking had worn off, but now everyone expected Emily to learn Gaelic. They were helpful and patient but insistent with her, no longer speaking English for her benefit.

  Emily cringed at the mistakes she knew she was making when she spoke their language, so much so that she was afraid to speak at all for the first day. But no one teased her. They just patiently corrected her. It helped that she was doing the tasks they were describing and holding the tools they were naming. That made her learn Gaelic much faster than she had learned French in a classroom.

  She was glad to be learning Gaelic, especially if that meant she might have more power over the ‘wee phone app’. She was so glad, in fact, that she volunteered for odd jobs just to learn the Gaelic names of the things involved: weeding the vegetable and herb garden, helping the others dust and straighten the cluttered rooms of the castle.

  By the time she and Dall trudged back down into Eamann’s cellar to go back to the 21st Century, Emily understood almost everything she heard. She was still shy about forming her own sentences and speaking them aloud, but she could do it. She was able to communicate in Gaelic.

  Emily and Dall got back to the faire site the moment they had left, the Monday morning two weeks after their wedding. Aiden was there alone with them once more. Seeing him brought back Emily’s memory of Lews attacking her at the sparring session the Friday prior. It made her angry.

  Not only was Lews trying to keep her from sparring with the others, but he was also fighting her right to be on staff at the faire. Why, she had no idea. She didn’t care, either. And her anger overcame her embarrassment about speaking in her new language.

  Wanting to show him that she really did fit in now, Emily spoke in Gaelic when she said to Aiden, “If I show up at the sparring match in the mornings, what are the chances you and the others will keep Lews off of me?”

  But Aiden ignored her bold accusation. He looked at her as if he had been considering what she said but had decided not to address it. “I hear you accomplished your mission and everyone in Dall’s time now knows he has remarried. Good. As you know, the renfest opens this coming weekend. Most of our preparations are finished, but we still need help getting the burlap wall up around the backstage area…”

  Emily tuned him out after that, even though the man droned on and on about tasks the two of them would need to complete that week. He had tried to pass himself off as understanding what she had said in Gaelic, but Emily knew he hadn’t. His acting would fool most laymen, but Emily had seen the way the man hesitated. Her trained eye had known he was hesitating out of fear, not out of indecision.

  Aiden kept droning on in English.

  She fought the smile that tried to form on her own lips. She only let it show after the tiresome man had gone through their trailer door and Dall had shut it.

  Dall smiled back at her once he turned around. “Wha—”

  Emily fumbled with Dall’s sporran until she got the little notebook and pen out. She wrote, “Aiden doesn’t understand Gaelic.”


  Dall read it and then looked at her and shrugged. He wrote, “Aye, I do not think anyone here does understand the Gaelic.”

  Fighting the furrowing of her brows, she wrote, “Aren’t any of the faire druids from your time or earlier?”

  “Nay, lass, I do not think so.”

  Her brows furled some more, and she wrote, “You have tried speaking Gaelic with all of them?”

  He wrote again this time, instead of speaking, “Aye, lass. None of them can understand the Gaelic.”

  Emily gave Dall her biggest, most dazzling smile and wrote, “And we’re going to use that to our advantage.”

  Dall smiled back at her and wrote, “I did have a reason for insisting that you learn Gaelic first, you ken?”

  And then they got too happy in the moment to contain themselves. He scooped her up in his arms, grabbed the little notebook, and carried it and her to their bedroom, where they remained a few hours.

  Hours later, when the phone was, ahem, fully charged and the two of them were able to think about anything besides each other, they used the little spiral notebook to discuss their plans.

  She wrote, “We need to get out into the world and bookmark more safe locations.”

  He wrote, “Aye, and your Gaelic needs to get better, lass. Supposing there are other handy commands you could be giving to the wee phone app?”

  They looked at each other and smiled huge smiles. Emily was thinking of all the possibilities, and she was pretty sure Dall was doing the same.

  She wrote, “I suppose we have time for more Gaelic lessons on the weekdays, but I want to get off the Faire site during the Faire weekends so we can mark more safe spots as time travel destinations.”

  He wrote, “More Gaelic first. It is a must.”

  She dug a pen out of her purse so she could write at the same time. “But we’ll be leaving here in a few short weeks, and I need to be able to get to my parents cheaply while we’re in Australia, so our time is best spent marking safe locations in the US right now.”

  Shaking his head and grinning impossibly huge, he wrote, “We have plenty of time, lass.”

  She wrote, “I suppose you can teach me a lot in five days.”

  He wrote, “We can have months if we like, you ken?”

  Finally getting it, she laughed and hugged him and they were busy for another hour. They wrote to each other again over a meal.

  She wrote, “If we’re going to be somewhere for months, then let’s go spend that time with Peadar, Peigi, and Domhnall.”

  They shared their special smile for a moment, and then he wrote, “We can only spend a fortnight there at a time, you ken. I must do my duty at the castle.”

  She wrote, “What if we skipped your time at the castle and moved ahead to the next fortnight you could be with the children?”

  He shook his head and quickly wrote, “Nay, lass. I cannot skip my duty to the castle. It would not be right.”

  She wrote, “We could go back and fill it in later?”

  His brow furrowed. He sat still for a while, obviously in thought. He had stopped eating, too. His food was getting cold on his plate. Finally, he wrote, “Aye, that will do. Howsoever, then there will be many fortnights in a row without seeing the children.” He looked sad.

  She caressed his face and gently shook her head, then wrote, “We can save for visiting the children the time we would normally be riding to the castle and back, if we just Time Travel all the time, using the wee phone app.”

  He smiled and hugged her.

  So that was how they spent three months with his family. Very gradually, Emily’s sisters-in-law opened up to her and let her in as part of the family. She now knew their names and the names of all their children and even the names of a few of the neighbors down the hill. She found out the family had lived in Glen Strae before being asked to take the land they now sat on from the Menzies clan.

  Emily played with all the children, but she paid special attention to Peadar, Peigi, and Domhnall. She really wanted them to like her, and she was beginning to have special affection for them, along with their father. She helped mend their clothes and she took her turn watching two-year-old Domhnall every second.

  Almost incidentally, this time spent with family turned Emily into a proficient speaker of Gaelic. But there wasn’t any life-threatening conflict while they were there this time, and so no new Gaelic words of power came to light. Not then and there.

  Emily laughed when they got back to their trailer and she saw their dirty dinner dishes on the table. The food on them was still wet, so she whisked them all into the sink and made quick business of rinsing them and loading the dishwasher, laughing all the while.

  That evening, she took her phone along on their jog, careful to show it to Dall so he wouldn’t say anything they didn’t want the druids to know. They had also been careful about that while they had been gone, leaving the phone in their love nest most of the time and only speaking candidly when they were out of earshot from the house. The modern druids would be foiled if they just spoke in Gaelic, but who knew what druid was on duty monitoring their phone. It was best to keep silent around it about what they knew and what they suspected.

  “Let’s jog up to the top of this hill this time,” Emily said casually to Dall.

  He nodded.

  The two of them looked for a safe place to leave a bookmark that could be used when their trailer was no longer here. They had discussed this, and they could erase it once they got a better bookmark, closer to her parents. Her mom still texted her every morning, but it would be nice to be able to visit safely. And cheaply. Especially from Australia.

  In her mind, Emily had gone over several possible safe destinations the past few months, and she had a few ideas. If she could just get there. She didn’t dare just use the wee phone app’s map and pop over. She might arrive in an area where she could be seen.

  “Emily.”

  She came back to the present moment and followed Dall’s voice through the trees and bushes until she found him. She gasped. “It’s perfect.”

  He had wandered around to the side of a thicket away from the beaten path through the woods up the hill. There was a hole in this side of the thicket just big enough for a person to enter, and then it opened up inside to comfortably allow the two of them to lie down there, if they so desired. The young trees were evergreen, so this location would be concealed even in winter. For at least ten years, anyway.

  Emily got out her phone and bookmarked this destination as Thicket Faire 2, and then they jogged back to their trailer.

  Early the next morning, they showed up at sword practice. Lews was still hostile, but now they were on to him. They took turns sparring so they could watch each other’s backs. That continued all week.

  And then Friday night rolled around and it was time for their Scots guild members to arrive. This time, Dall and Emily were looking forward to that.

  Dall and Emily showed up arm-in-arm to the Scots guild meeting at the picnic tables in the backstage area of the faire on their own this time, without Siobhan needing to pound on their trailer door.

  “Vange.” Emily separated from Dall and ran to hug her friend. And then, according to their plan for how to mark more town destinations, she remarked about some strangers near Vange. “And who are your good-looking friends, here?”

  Vange went with it, smiling and turning to see who Emily meant. “Oh, I don’t know, but I want to.”

  The people behind Vange all laughed, three women and two men who looked to be college age, a few years younger than Emily and Vange.

  The woman who was the most outgoing among them spoke up. “I’m Brittany, and this is Ashley and Cody, MacKenzie, and Dylan.” As Brittany said their names, they bowed with funny individual flourishes. Dylan’s was the best, pretending to flutter an imaginary cloak.

  Emily was delighted. These were fellow drama people. She didn’t know why she was so surprised, really. They were signing up to be actors at the faire. Impr
ovisational street actors rather than stage or film, but actors nonetheless. She spoke to all of them, but she looked at their leader Brittany the most. “Well, you five are our new best friends. Come on, let’s sit together for the meeting.”

  Looking flattered, they followed the faire’s weapons professor’s wife enthusiastically over to the table the farthest away from Siobhan and Ian, who looked like they were about to start the Scots guild meeting.

  Dall had caught up with them, and he smoothly sat on the end of the bench next to Emily and put his arm around her. She knew he was marking his territory, but she enjoyed it.

  Vange chuckled the whole way there and seated herself opposite Emily, between Brittany and Cody, who had his arm around Ashley.

  Emily said in Gaelic to Dall, “Will you please listen to the meeting for both of us while I get to know our friends a bit? That way, you’re the obedient one.”

  Dall nodded yes and smiled at her before turning his attention to Siobhan and Ian, who were addressing everyone.

  “So have you all worked this faire before?” Emily asked the woman next to her.

  MacKenzie said, “Yeah, this is all of our third year as ren fest people.”

  “Oh cool.” Emily said. She turned to Brittany, but couldn’t draw her attention away from Siobhan. Emily turned back to the woman beside her. “So do you know the good party spots in town?”

  MacKenzie named Mr. Simmons’s hotel and said that his club was about as good as it got around here.

  Emily had known this, and it was part of her plan. “Oh yeah, we’ve been there. It is pretty good, but not like a real club in town,” Emily said, catching Vange’s eye and winking. She finally caught Brittany’s eye, too, and she smiled at their leader.