Mary shuddered, lifted her skirts, and stumbled deeper into the stream. It was shallow, the water only coming up to her thighs. She had attained her goal—but now what?
In that instant, God smiled, and she was inspired. Mary began to fight the current, surging upriver. Duncan would think her heading south, heading home. Although there was nowhere Mary wanted to be as desperately as Alnwick, she would be a fool to try to reach home on foot now. Once Duncan lost her trail in the stream, he would try to outwit her, sending his hounds to the south, hoping for them to pick up her scent again. But she was not going south—and they would not find her trail there.
The going was slow and difficult, and each labored breath Mary took was painful. Every few minutes she had to stop to allow her wild pulse to slow. Then she would push on again. She had long since stopped noticing the cold, for she was so frozen now that she was numb.
Mary did not know how much time had passed or how far she had gone when she heard the hounds howl with renewed fervor. She froze. The water swirled about her, and she had to fight to keep her balance. Their ecstatic braying filled the night, sounding loudly now, sounding impossibly close. Mary shrank with dread. The dogs had found her trail.
Mary glanced wildly around, trying to discern her whereabouts. It was hopeless, she thought. Numb with cold and with fear, being stalked so ruthlessly, she could not recognize a single tree or rock. She pushed through the stream, wading out onto the opposite bank. She peered up through the forest canopy, looking for a star to guide her.
The North Star winked at her. Mary gritted with resolve and pushed on. She stumbled and almost fell. Her hands, she realized, were bloody, from the many trees and boulders she had grasped in her headlong flight through the woods. Worse, she had beaten holes in her slippers in the stream on the rocky bed, but she must not dwell on how painful every step was. The hounds howled and snarled and yapped and yelped, even closer, beginning to fight with one another as they closed in upon her. Mary began to run. It could not be that far, she told herself, it could not be more than a few miles—please God.
Mary was soaking wet, shivering violently, and at the last of her strength. She pounded on the wall, her fists bloody, calling out yet again. But she was so weak, her voice had no power, and the guards on the watchtower did not hear her.
She had been pounding on the wall forever, it seemed, and she was so faint now, she could barely lift her fist. Then it occurred to her that she could no longer hear the hounds—that she hadn’t heard them in some time.
But there was no elation, no exultation, no sense of triumph or victory. There was only freezing cold, gut-wrenching pain, and sheer desperation.
“Please,” Mary whispered, sobbing, sliding to the ground. “Please, let me in, please.” She crumbled into a heap, and then, blessedly, her mind slipped into darkness.
At dawn one of the guards upon the watchtower noticed the small human heap sprawled just to the side of the raised drawbridge. “Some beggar wench, no doubt,” he said to himself, and went on about his business.
But the laird of the keep had decided to go hunting that day and had deferred his administrative duties to his steward in order that he might leave at sunrise. The portcullis was raised, the drawbridge opened. A dozen mounted Scotsmen clattered over the wooden bridge behind the young laird.
One of his cousins spotted her instantly. “Doug, it appears we’ve got some beggar-whore lying at our doorstep.”
Doug Mackinnon shrugged, riding on. Then he glimpsed a strand of impossibly bright gold hair, hair he had only seen on one woman, and he whirled his beast around. “No, ’tis not possible,” he said beneath his breath. But he spurred his stallion over to the crumpled wench and dismounted, ignoring the guffaws and crude remarks his own men were making.
His heart suddenly in his throat, Doug turned the wretch over. His eyes widened in shock and he gasped, the sound strangled with anguish. Instantly he lifted Mary into his arms. He cried out again as her cloak fell open and her huge, swollen belly was revealed.
“Get a physic,” he snapped. “Get a midwife, too. And … send word to Stephen de Warenne.”
Doug turned and ran across the drawbridge with Mary in his arms.
Mary woke up when hot broth was forced past her lips. The room swayed before her, as if it were in motion, and she still shivered spasmodically, despite the chamber’s blazing fire and the many blankets piled upon her. A pain ripped through her insides. Mary blanched, choking off a cry.
“Dear heart, ’tis all right now,” a familiar voice murmured.
Mary blinked. Gradually her vision steadied and cleared. The man sitting by her hip on the bed, who was also holding her hand, came into focus. She was startled to see that it was Doug Mackinnon, and for a moment, she was confused.
“I found you in a heap upon the ground in front of the watchtower,” Doug said softly. He stroked her hair. “’Tis over now, Mary. Whatever has happened, ’tis over.”
In a horrid flash, Mary recalled that she had been escaping Duncan and his wolfhounds. She cried out. “Duncan captured me. He was holding me a prisoner, Doug.” Tears filled her eyes and she would have gripped Doug’s hands, but her own hands were swathed in bandages. Her voice was so hoarse from shouting to the watchmen that it was barely audible, and Doug had to lean close to understand her. “He intended to hold my child as a hostage forever—to insure Stephen’s support—my own brother!”
“The bastard,” Doug hissed. But he was relieved. He had heard a rumor recently, one that held that Stephen de Warenne was tearing up the countryside, searching for his wife. Doug had, like so many others, heard of how Mary had defected to the cause of Scotland during the war last November. Thus he had been distraught at the thought that she had hated her husband so much that she would run away from him again, for that had been the obvious conclusion to be drawn. He was unable to stop himself from loving Mary, and although she was married to another, he could not want her to be so unhappy. And when he had seen her condition, he had been even more distressed, for her marriage must be unbearable to cause her to flee in such a state. Now, learning the truth, he was inordinately relieved.
Yet perhaps he was also somewhat, secretly, dismayed. Doug barely realized that he caressed Mary’s hair. The sight of her, so pregnant and so weak, crying and in his bed, was enough to make all of the old yearning come surging to the fore no matter how much he tried to ignore such emotions.
Doug immediately shoved such disturbing thoughts aside. He was furious with Duncan, a King he would never support, a man he, and many other Scots, considered more English than anything else, and nothing but a puppet of William Rufus’s.
Then Mary said, “Where is Stephen? How I need him. Oh, God, how I need him!” She cried out as another pain ripped through her.
Doug felt a piercing deep within him and realized, then and there, no matter how noble and selfless he had tried to be, that deep within his heart, he had still harbored hope for them, and now that hope was finally, irrevocably, laid to rest by her obvious love for her husband.
“Stephen,” Mary whispered, her eyes focused not on Doug, but behind him.
“I am here,” Stephen said from the doorway.
Doug whirled, standing, pale. But Stephen did not even look at him, having eyes only for Mary. He crossed the room with long, resolute strides, his muddy cloak swirling about him.
