"Ah...the exiled king who lives in England with his close friend Henry. He is not my king. Has he stepped a foot on Scottish soil in my lifetime? Nay, he has not."
"Glenna," Alastair Gordon said with a warning.
The look she gave him would have crack stone. She faced Lyall. “I have not agreed to go with you.”
“The choice is not yours," Lyall told her. "The king has so ordered it.”
She stepped closer, hands on her hips, her head high. “And why should I obey a king who has not been in the land for years, and who I have never seen or known? This king of yours is nothing but a fable to me.”
“Glenna!” Alastair said.
She spun toward Gordon, walking over to stand but a foot away. “Do not speak to me like the older brother you feigned to be. You lied to me. Every day of my life you have lied to me. You made me believe I was safe and loved and bonded to you by our blood.” Tears ran freely down her face and her voice was shaky.
“I have loved you like a sister, blood bond or no blood bond, and because I love you, I warn you. Even women are hanged when they speak as you have just spoken about the king,” Alastair told her.
“They hang women, too, for horse-thievery,” Lyall cut in harshly. “Anyone who steals merely a walnut can lose a hand,whether the thief be a woman, a man, or a child. The axeman cares not. She might curse you for lying to her, and that is between the two of you, but I expect the king would dole out his own punishment for involving her in a life of thievery. Look at all this. Both of you are idiots to involve her in your larceny. What were you thinking?” He pointed a finger at Alastair. “If you knew the truth, Gordon, then you also knew your father swore to protect her. I assume it was you who sent news of her over the years. Someone has been communicating. There were letters signed by Sir Hume and stamped with his own ring.”
“Alastair has my fath---“ Glenna seemed to choke on her words. “--hisfather’s ring. And I will speak however I may about the king, for his exiled ears are not even in his own land and haven’t been for too many years to count. What good is a king who runs from his land?”
“You are unskilled in the lessons of politics. The king is no coward, but merely a man caught in the turmoil of power, a destiny brought on him only by his birth name. I do not expect you, woman, to understand the vagaries, the glories or the demons that drive men, kings or traitors,” Lyall said darkly.
“I care naught about the king,” Glenna said with a wave of her hand. “However there is no question, none at all, about who in this room is the traitor.” She glared at Alastair, who hung his head and couldn’t look at her, and for a brief moment Lyall almost felt sorry for him. Alastair Gordon held all the appearances of a man broken by guilt and hurt.
“I will go with you, my lord,” she continued. “Only because I will not stay a full day longer in this house where I do not belong. But know this. I care nothing for the king or his royal proclamations.”
“I would suggest you find a way to care very much what the king wants and proclaims, Glenna Canmore, because he is your father.”
Glenna lay curledin a ball on her straw mattress, the truth throbbing through her head. Snippets of thoughts, mostly fears, kept her from sleeping. Sir Golden Himself, Baron Montrose, lay in a heap across the door. Light from the fire outlined his still form. Had he chosen to sleep there to keep her from running away? No. There were the wooden shutters she could easily crawl through. And, too, she understood Montrose was not the fool she had called him. He slept so quietly she wondered if he was asleep at all.
From across the room where her brothers lay on their pallets, she could hear their off-pitched snoring, and she cursed Alastair again for his duplicity, and because he could sleep so easily when she could not.
To be angry with him was safer than thinking about the truth--who she actually was, which seemed impossible--and how the knowledge shook her deep into her bones. Her father was the king? Nay, she shook her head and tears spilled down her cheeks. She was frightened, more frightened than she wanted to admit to anyone. She knew nothing of ladies and manors, castles and kings, only the tales Alastair told her as a child, and what did he know? Royal women must have servants and silks, and whole armies to protect them, while she grew up pitching hay and shoveling horse manure…and stealing.
She could ride a horse like the wind, but she did not use a needle or thread and would not know what to do with either. The only gown she owned she had to steal, only to put it on and find it was too big and too long, so she cut the hem with a dagger, and now the gown was shorter on one side than the other and the cloth was fraying badly.
How could her horse skills ever mean even a whit to a king? The king would take one look at her in her peasant’s rags or jagged gown and have her banished, particularly once he saw how poorly skilled she was and that she was so terribly untaught.
What king would tolerate a thief for a daughter? Or he could lock her up in a tower. He was the king. She shuddered at theimages that came to her mind: the executioner’s platform, the axeman’s stone. She closed her eyes tightly and her hands tightened into numb fists.
Perhaps he would do even worse than lock her away.
At that thought she lost control and sobbed into her hands, her knees to her chest. It took a will of iron for her to stop shaking. Her breath caught and she felt like she was dying inside. Her destiny was done. She could bring nothing but shame to her father, to his name and to the whole court, when her finest qualities were the ability to pick a pocket and steal a horse.
Her silly tears wouldn’t change tomorrow. Tears wouldn’t bring back yesterday, when her name was Glenna Gordon and she was happy with her brothers. Crying like a ninny accomplished little more than making her eyes burn and her nose run. She wiped her face and sat up, pushing open the window shutters above the bed.
Outside, there was a clear night sky, darkness being so rare in midsummer and so fleeting, just a few hours of starlight. The only sky she knew was this one—great and unending over the one small stretch of land that had always been home to her. The moors and the sea, the horses she loved and cared for, her brothers with whom she had felt safe and loved…
Now she would have to face all the unknowns—of place and people, an unknown journey with a stranger. Even her own identity was a mystery. There was nothing she could hold onto that was true and familiar. She had no idea how to grieve for what she had lost, because the truth was: her life as she knew it was not hers.
The next morn,Lyall checked to make certain all his belongings were in place, in particular, his money. Though he had left a bag of silver with the Gordons, he wouldn’t put it past those two pilferers to make a switch. He hooked a plump skin ofwater to his saddle pouch, and turned as Glenna readied to mount a big, spirited bay Elgin had brought up from the paddock. Lyall studied the horse appreciatively. “Tell me now if there is a chance I am going to be chased from here to Kingdom Come by the true owner of that horse of yours.”
“You have nothing to fear, Montrose,” Glenna said haughtily, using the title like a seasoned noble. “I was there when she was foaled, and since I have fed and trained her. No one else. Skye is mine.”
“That is well, then. Our journey will be long and I do not relish outrunning a hangman’s noose,” he said. He was jesting, but she did not respond or even look at him. He laughed softly.
She looked up at him. “What is so amusing?”
“Skye, Glenna? Your mount has a name?” He laughed heartily and then thought of his sister, who as a child would have named all the fleas on his dog.
