He glanced from the children to the queen’s body andrealized he did not want to stay inside the tent any longer, so he carried the infants outside with the maid Jonat at his heels. “Your time to serve has come,” he said to the two knights, who gathered their mounts and joined him. To Jonat he said, “I need the birth order. Which is the eldest?”
“She is the quiet one, my lord, wrapped in the crimson coverlet the queen stitched herself with black rooks and borders of white roses and golden braid. My lady named her Glenna, my lord.” Jonat pointed to the sleeping babe draped in soft, silken cloth the color of rubies and cradled in his left arm.
“Gordon,” he said to the largest knight, who mounted and took the firstborn child from him. “Godspeed.” Sir Hume had his orders and was to ride west, to a place far away from the machinations of men of power, and where the child called Glenna would be raised in secret, protected and innocent. Sutherland watched him ride away.
Immediately the babe in Sutherland’s arms--the Canmore she-warrior--began to cry again. Face flaming, she clenched her fists, and some mad part of him wondered if she realized what was happening.
“She is called Caitrin, the second born,” Jonat told him.
Sutherland looked down at her and touched her chin with a finger. She stopped crying, looking up at him with moist eyes as dark as a night sky. Her fine coverlet was like that of her elder sister's, made of silken velvet in the deepest purple with a circle of red roses stitched around a graceful, long-necked white swan wearing a golden collar.
Sir Balin moved his mount forward, but Sutherland held up his free hand, unable to pull his gaze away from the infant in his arms. “Wait. You, maid. Give Sir Balin the last babe.”
Jonat took the pale-haired bairn from the wicker basket, swaddled in sackcloth and handed her to Sir Balin, saying, “She is the youngest and is called Innes.” The knight tucked the infant into his doublet and pulled his heavy fur lined cloak around to protect her from the cold bits of ice that had just begun to fall.
“You have your orders. God be with you,” Sutherland said briskly, and Sir Balin of Dundee rode off toward the east with the babe called Innes. After he disappeared through the stand of birchwood and rowan, Sutherland turned, knowing he still had to take care of silencing the queen’s maid.
Jonat looked at him for a long moment. Her gaze went to his hand on his sword hilt, and she shook her head, fear making her skin paler, her hands in front of her as she backed away. “Nay, do not, my lord. I pray… My lady warned me, before, but I did not believe her death would also bring on my own. Please. I beg for mercy.”
Sutherland took a step, and she turned and ran across the clearing like a frightened doe. Her brown velvet coat caught on the thickets and she pulled at it, crying hysterically, until it tore off the shoulders of her gown, jeweled pins flying, and sobbing, she stumbled into the darkness of the forest trees. The sky high above grew black and ominous, and a white veil of snow began to fall.
The moment he took off after the handmaiden, the babe in his arms began to squall again, so he pulled the infant under his coat, shielding her from the freezing weather. But he stopped at the edge of the clearing when he heard the sound of snarling wolves in the depths of the woods beyond. Lovely Jonat stood little chance of survival. Could be the wolves had her scent now. To chase and catch her, he must leave the babe alone in the clearing, where she would be prime bait.
The wolves and weather made his decision for him. He needed to burn the tent and the queen’s body with it. Nothing could be left behind. Babe still in his arms, he built a pyre over the queen’s body, with the tent and its meager belongings, and he torched it, standing by his mount while the flames burned hot enough to melt the falling snow, which made the fire sizzle and snap.
The child still cried. “Quiet now, little one,” he said, unable to believe what he was going to do. He was sworn by his name tothe child’s father, and on his honor he would do whatever he needed to keep the infant safe.
Her squalls changed to whimpers, pitiful and somehow tied to a weak part of him he had thought was lost, a sweetness he had ever only felt for his younger brother, who had died in the late fall. He held the child closer.
When there was nothing recognizable left in the blackened remains, Sutherland knelt with a quick prayer for his lord’s lady, before he mounted and rode off toward his lands in the north, newborn babe once again squalling in his arms. He viciously cursed to the Heavens over his chosen fealty, while in his mind he planned the fable he would spread about her birth.
The island satlike a sleeping camel on the Western horizon, surrounded by a great, roiling winter sea the color of blue granite. The wind was icy, cold and could be brutal along the coast, but the snow had stopped hours before, when he had hired a wet nurse to serve the needs of the infant tucked deeply inside his cloak.
Sir Hume Gordon was coming home, home to his two young sons, the youngest born while he was away, home to a future that was peaceful. No more calls to war. The only duty left him was to protect the child of his liege lord, his king, a man he had known since before William was crowned king, before the king had fallen in love with the angelic daughter of a great Northern overlord and the worst plague of treachery and war ignited the land.
He turned to the wet nurse and said, "We will cross the Firth, then it is only a half day's ride."
"We should stop soon. To feed your daughter, sir. She will be hungry."
His daughter.
"There will be time before the ship sails," he told her.
And the lie began.
Nothing comes fairer to light than what’s been
long hidden—Scottish Proverb
1
The Western Isles
Under the glare of an extreme sun, Glenna Gordon ran across the island moors toward the brutal cliffs of the coast, her wild black hair as free as the seabirds wheeling in the cloudless blue sky beyond. A great brown beastie of a dog the size of a pony loped by her side, leaving only to romp and bark at the queeping plovers flushed out from the heath. Even in summer, such overly hot weather was rare; its warmth and intensity had burned away whatever morning dew spotted the wild pansies on the heath, and the barbaric heat of the previous day had turned clusters of weeds dry enough to crack beneath her feet.
During this time of year, only a few hours of darkness befell the island and the night before had been short, the air still as stone, and warm. And so the promise of another eternal summer day, one of scorched air and sweaty skin, sent her half a day’s walk to the coast. Down into the cove below the cliffs, the air was cool. Land ended there and the great wide sea began, and went on and outward to the very edges of the world.
Clusters of black and white puffins bobbed on the waterbeyond the surf, and seals lay in brown lumps upon the coastal rocks, barking and squalling at nothing but the air and sea. Her dog raced ahead of her through the shallow water, so she pulled off her wooden shoes, tossed them on a rock, and chased after him along the golden crescent of damp sand, where blue-green saltwater foamed and the tide pulled at her bare ankles.
