Panic hit him. By luck or by God, he grabbed a handful of her wet tunic and gripped the ballast stone with his other arm as another wave washed over them. If he had not broken his ribs before, if he did not know that pain, he was not certain he could have saved her. The ship righted and he clung hard to her clothes. She coughed and spat. He held fast, saltwater stinging his eyes, then he felt her move, crawling onto him, her arms clinging to his thigh.
“Montrose.” Her voice was waterlogged, panicked.
He hauled her up to his chest with one hand and sheer determination and held her fast. “Wrap your legs around my waist, your arms around my neck. Hang on tightly.” He crawled over the square stone, then pulled them upright, his feet slipping on the slick deck, but he gripped a line overhead and held them steady. Before the next wave washed the deck, he made a run for the hold, slipping and sliding the last short distance.
The wooden hatch was closed and he gripped the iron hatch ring just before the ship’s motion sent them down onto the deck boards. He lay over her, protecting her with his whole body as the vessel moved straight up the side of a wave and more water sluiced over and past them, before the ship pitched downward again and hit the floor of a wave so hard he heard hergrunt from the impact and pain from his ribs almost blinded him.
He took two deep breaths, then quickly got to his knees, jerked open the hold, shoved her down and slammed it shut just as another wave came and sent him tumbling across the deck. He hit hard against the side of the ship. His ribs sent piercing pain down his whole body. The air left his lungs.
Suddenly the water was lifting him, up and up. He reached out blindly and grasped a rope, pulling himself hand over hand until he hit the knot at an iron line cleat and held on with everything he had.
Below decks the oarsmen still rowed, their master shouting, his voice distant in the sound of the wind and sloshing sea, almost as if they were on another ship. Soaked, Lyall’s clothing kept weighing him down. He tried to pull off his gambeson, but it was stuck on a shoulder, tugging, pulling him with the next wave. The ironwork inside of it was impossible to cut with his knife, so he hacked at the leather seam, the blade slicing into arm and he felt the instant sting of saltwater.
The hatch flew open with a loud thud, and Glenna’s head, black hair wet, straggling and loose, came up through. “Montrose!” she screamed.
He realized she was going to climb out and try to come to him. “Nay! Stay there! Close the hatch!”
But she only looked at him with such a look of fierce determination that he knew what she was going to do. Foolishly, she braced her hands on the edge of the hold and started to pull herself up and out.
He had one chance, a break between waves and pitches of the storm, and he shoved off from the side of the ship, sliding, almost swimming across the deck toward her. His hands closed over the edge of the hatch. Then she was pulling him down head-first, her fists tugging on his sodden undertunic as he fell down into the hold.
Water rushed in and over them, a nearby lantern hissed andthe tallow candle went out, but other lanterns with candles as thick as his forearm rocked and flickered from iron hooks on the mid beams. Somehow she managed to slam the hatch closed. Standing on the ladder, she turned toward him. “Montrose?”
Unable to move, he lay flat on his back on the wet boards, the air driven from his chest, as if he had been thrown from a horse. He could hear the panic cries of the horses back in the aft deck, hear their hooves stomping on the boards. He tried to move but the edges of his vision began to darken. He was going to black out. Panic swelled in him as he watched the world fade...
Lastly, limned inside his last circle of vision was Glenna, hair like a tangle of black seaweed, leaning closely over him. Her frightened eyes searched his face.
A moment later her small fist jabbed him hard in the belly.
He gasped, sucked in a breath, and air, sweet, wet air, filled his chest… His ribs protested and pain like a lance down his right side. Starry bright light swam before his damp eyes. When the shadows of pain disappeared, he was breathing again, shallow breaths, because his ribs were still so battered that he dared not take even half of a deep breath.
She grabbed his shirt and shook him. “Montrose? Montrose!Montrose!”
“I hear you,” he said, then winced. “Stop shaking me, woman.” She let go and he slowly pulled himself upright, wincing, head down for a moment, his arms resting on his raised knees. His search for more breath was not a simple one.
When he felt he could speak, he met her worried gaze with a dark look. “That was a most foolish thing to do.”
“To hit you in the belly? I think not. You can breathe again.”
“No. Not your fist in my belly. I thank you for that. ‘Twas folly for you to open that hatch.”
The ship pitched again and she fell into him. He pulled her against him and she did not fight him; she settled into his side as easily as if she were grateful for his presence. They did notspeak, and he wondered if her thoughts were where his were: what might have been? Was she wondering like he was how long he would have withstood the tormented seas.
Below deck the oarsman still shouted his commands. The oars slapped at the water, and a man screamed out that his strake had broken. There was a ruckus. The horses were skittish; he could hear the thuds of their hooves shifting on the boards, and Glenna’s hound got up and padded over to them.
The realization of how close they had come to dying hit him, and he thought of Robert Grey, Mairi’s husband who had drowned last winter in a shipwreck. What would his death in the same manner have done to his sister? Lyall closed his eyes and took a deep breath.
Glenna shifted and placed her arm around the dog, who laid his big hairy head on her lap and put one paw on Lyall’s leg. The boat rocked again, hard, lurching as if it was ready to pitch over, and she looked above them, at the thick wooden rafters that creaked and moaned dangerously, sounding to Lyall as if even the ribs of the ship were about to crack.
“You may call my actions folly, Montrose, but I do not,” Glenna said to him. “We are most likely going to die in the middle of the strait.” She looked up at him, her face unreadable. “Call me a fool, but I shall feel better if we die together.”
He closed his eyes and rested his chin on her damp head, aware that she had probably saved his life. He could feel the warmth from her small body and from the closeness of the furry hound and he could rest his tight jaw…a trick he used to keep his teeth from chattering. He felt his arm relax, holding her comfortably--this woman who had taken such a risk to save him, and his memory went back in years…to another time.
7
Fifteen years earlier
Lyall Robertson had ceased to be the boy who wandered all over the forest and played at war with the tall trees of Dunkelden Wood, the boy who had out-fished his older brother, and believed that if you touched a tree trunk you could change fate. Charred images of the utter and complete destruction of his great home, of that cowardly yellow flag, and the bitter image of his dead brother were burned deeply into the darkest recesses of his young mind and nothing, not even the slow healing of time could fade his memories or touch the bleakness in him, where accusations lie unchanged: he was the son of a traitor. He dared not ever let himself remember for long the boy he had once been. The past was done; it was unchangeable.
