“What is evil incarnate?”
“Let me explain.”
Chapter 16
“May I please hold it?”
They sat cross-legged in a circle on a rug in front of the fire in the nursery. The afternoon sky had darkened bringing with it rain and a chill that even a hot bowl of soup hadn’t been able to vanquish. Jean and Fergus joined them with a set of blocks for the toddler to play with while they surveyed their treasure and invented stories as to its origin. Since Niall offered the query without reaching to snatch the necklace from Aila’s hand and managed to instill only a moderate amount of schmaltz to his elongatedplease, she offered him the piece.
She felt bad about taking the necklace with her when she’d left the mill. In her defense, she hadn’t had clear opportunity to transfer it back to Boyce without drawing Derne’s attention. She’d make certain to return it tomorrow. In the meantime, it wouldn’t hurt to examine it thoroughly to see if there were something more to the legend. What she’d been able to determine thus far was that, after all the fuss they’d made over it, the clan Boyce of her time would have found their treasure as anti-climactic as she.
The necklace wasn’t really even a piece of jewelry. Boyce’s mother and wife had been right in their opinions of its wearability. It was more of a chunky pewter pendant or medallion almost three inches in diameter affixed to an equally weighty chain. No precious metal, no jewels. The priceless treasure generations of Boyces had sought was little more than cheap antique store fodder.
To her. The children were fascinated.
“It’s heavy.”
“Aye, it is.”
“Let me see!” Effie reached for it.
Before the situation descended into a tug-of-war, Aila promised Effie a turn in five minutes,ifshe waited patiently. Otherwise, she would get no chance to hold it. They’d made progress on basic manners over the course of the day. From what she’d deduced from the children and Jean, they hadn’t merely been spoiled since their mother’s death. They’d been permitted to run amok under the auspices of allowing them to mourn her passing. Only recently had Finn realized how out of control they’d become and tried to reign them in.
What had been so obvious to Aila, which she gathered he did not see, was that the pair now wielded their raucous behavior as a tool to garner attention. The more they misbehaved, the more time he spent with them. The vicious cycle would be difficult to break. She’d do her best to make certain he understood the problem before she left it to him to solve. What more could she do?
She studiously disregarded the wee, nagging voice inside her suggesting she stay as long as needed to assist him. The heavy ache in her chest spawned by the thought of leaving was not as simple to ignore.
For all their flaws, she liked Niall and Effie. Despite all of Finn’s, she liked him too.
As heavily flawed as she was herself, imperfection never bothered her. Acceptance was what mattered. She tried to see the good qualities in people with the hope they would do the same with her. To see her as she was and not try to change who she was at her core.
Tempering the children’s errant behavior might have smacked of hypocrisy. As they were young and still learning — and she knew, not little monsters deep down — she excused her attempts to mold their character.
She stifled Niall’s protest when she announced it was Effie’s turn with the necklace with a quiet admonishment on the importance of sharing that had Jean rolling her eyes. The nursemaid thought Aila’s effort an exercise in futility. Aila meant to prove her wrong.
“It’s a deer.” Effie smiled. “I like deer. They’re pretty. And here is a lion?”
“That’s right,” Aila agreed.
The medallion was shaped like a heraldic shield. The upper left quadrant depicted a rampant lion. The upper right, a circle that could have been the sun or the moon. Below it in the bottom right quarter was the head of a stag, and in the area beneath the lion were two hands encased in armor gauntlets clasping an upright sword between them. The images were lifted in detailed relief with more depth than Aila had seen before. While she couldn’t put her finger on why she thought so, the herald looked familiar.
“What do these words mean?” Effie asked, tracing the raised lettering that ran around the edge of the shield with her finger.
“Veritas Vincit Hostes Nostros,” Niall read in stilted syllables.
“Do ye ken Latin?” Aila asked him.
“Nay, I dinnae. Da does,” he said. “He learned it at university.”
She recognized only one of the words herself.Veritas. Truth. As inIn Vino Veritas. A handy saying in reality. Not much help here. Jean, too, shrugged while Fergus crawled out of her lap to take his turn with the treasure. After a quick glance at Aila, Effie offered it to him.
“Maybe we could go out to the work site and ask him,” Aila suggested as she praised the girl’s generosity with a smile and a squeeze of her shoulders.
The children shared a look, the most solemn she’d seen from them yet, before Niall shook his head. “We cannae interrupt him while he works.”
As they had, many times, Aila was puzzled. “Why no’?”
“We overheard him this morn….”
