A woman’s screams pierced the air, echoing high in the silent canopy of ancient trees. Dawn was on the cusp of the horizon, light barely beginning to turn the edges of the eastern sky the color of larkspur. Morning mist on the damp ground was still and opaque and hid the wild wolves prowling toward a fringe of thickets in the small glade, where a large striped tent flew the pennant of the royal house of Scotland, and two guardsmen, faithful knights handpicked for their duty, stood watch to protect their lord’s lady.

Inside, a frightened handmaiden tried to comfort her breeding mistress with wintergreen leaves to soothe her bitten lips and a wet cloth on her sweaty brow, but her hands shook as the midwife bent down near the foot of the bed, her hand on a knife at her belt, ready to cut the babes from their mother. The labor had been long and the poor young queen was exhausted, her belly huge—the biggest the midwife said she had ever seen.

Though royal blood ran in the queens veins, her womb was like every other woman’s; it twisted and contorted with excruciating childbed pains the men of the church claimed were a woman’s punishment, Eve’s legacy for leading Adam astray.

The handmaiden pressed a cloth to the queen’s brow. Surely her beloved mistress did nothing to deserve this. Could God truly be this horribly cruel?

In her delirium, the queen had first called for and then cursed her beloved husband for giving her not one child to bear but two. He was in the valley below the Forest of Glengarran, on a wide plain thundering with warriors and their battlecries as the grass beneath their mounts turned red with spilt blood. There he met and fought the men who had betrayed him, and the enemies who would destroy his kingdom and steal his bloodright to rule the land.

Inside the tent, the queen’s urge to push was overpowering and came in hard, fast waves of pain that wracked her sapped and bulging body. She screamed again and bore down until her whole body shook, desperate to expel the babies, then she collapsed on the bed. “Take them.” Her voice was weak and waning. “The pain is too much. Take the babes… I cannot do this…”

The midwife pulled the knife from her belt, and the handmaiden panicked and held up her hand. “Nay! Stop! Wait.” She was crying when she lifted up her limp and sweaty mistress from the bed. “Bear down, milady. You can do this. Please. Bear down!”

And the babes came, the first girl born as peaceful and quiet as the dawn, the other born red-faced and squalling loudly, her small fists in the air as she came into such an ominous and bloodthirsty world. The pale, weak queen looked down at her babes and in a waning but tender voice named the firstborn Glenna and the other Caitrin, the beginnings of joy in her expression, then she frowned and moaned weakly, “Holy Mary Mother of God…. The pain is here again.” She looked at the midwife, panic in her expression, then her eyes rolled back in her head and blood gushed like a river from between her quivering legs. In a matter of moments the life bled out of her and she was gone.

The pair of women stood silent over the bed, where death had come in a mere blink of an eye and the air felt strangely empty. The two infants lay in their dead mother’s arms, one still crying and the other quiet and sweet, unaware of what had happened. The handmaiden made the sign of the cross and knelt down, rosary beads hanging from her chain belt clenched in her hand as she fixed solely on her need to pray for her mistress.

Curiously, the midwife stared at the dead woman’s belly. “God’s teeth! Her belly is moving…”

The maid did not respond and was still kneeling on the floor, chanting her prayer with her head resting on the edge of the bed.

“There’s another child!” the midwife shouted. “Get up! Get up off of the ground and help me, lass! If you need to pray over those beads of yours, pray for this last bairn.” She cut the last infant, another girl, from the woman’s belly and wiped the mucus from her small, blue face, before she held babe up and shook her. Then she spotted the child’s withered foot. She looked down at the infant and said sadly, “Better if she does not breathe, when her life would be so ill-fated and filled with nothing but unhappiness. No man would ever have her.”

And the baby cried out.

The handmaiden who had loved her mistress became angry and took the poor wee child from the bitter midwife before her wicked prophesies spoken over such a small and innocent babe would curse the child. The babe had the palest fringes of silver hair, like the queen’s, whose hair had caught and shone in both the sun and moonlight.

She cleaned the child and wrapped her in swaddling to hide her feet. Under the wrapping, she slipped a sprig of mistletoe for healing and luck, and some wintergreen to keep her safe. Cradling her in her arms, rocking, she stared down into the perfect face of an angel. “She is beautiful, like her mother. You are wrong, old woman. That she lives is the true miracle. This child is the strongest. God does not curse her; God watches her.” The handmaiden faced the midwife and made the sign of the cross. “Before the Lord, I say she will be called Innes, and she lives for no mere man.”

* * *

The earl of Sutherland rode into the woods, his charger’s hooves quiet on the damp earth. In the valley behind him, the battle still raged onward, but inside the stillness of the thick woods, the lack of sound was strange and portentous, not peaceful. He had lived most of his life as a warrior, so he sat straighter in his saddle, an action that was instinctive; silence usually meant an ambush or death. The air was heavy and moist, and felt slow with no ringing echo of sword clanging against sword, no screams of men and horses, the sounds that had been all around him for the past hours.

The moment he came into the clearing, he judged the news was not good. Blood and death was a scent all too familiar to his senses. He dismounted heavily, his sword hilt clanking against his chainmail. The battle had taken its toll on his body, weapons had nicked his mail and his leg muscles felt heavy as granite.

The queen’s guards, valued knights to both her and the king, walked toward him. Sir Hume Gordon nodded toward the tent. “The queen is dead, my lord.” His voice was rough with emotion, and the other knight, Sir Balin of Dundee, made the sign of the cross.

Whatever Sutherland thought and felt at the news he concealed, a skill acquired and honed from years of dealing with enemies and traitors. He said nothing as he strode to the tent, threw back the flap, and entered. The queen lay on the bed, covered with a velvet blanket the color of sapphires, her eyes closed, and her face carried the unmistakable chalk of death.

He turned to Jonat, the queen’s devoted young maid, whom too many men had coveted but with her ties to the queen, none had yet won. She had hair the color of the flames of a bonfire, braided and pulled back from her high and regal brow. ‘Twas a shame that with her mistress’ death the maid would not live to see another sunrise.

Her arms were filled with the two infants, one crying fitfully, tiny pink hands knotted and flailing in the air, and she pulled the babe a little tighter to her chest.

“Where’s the midwife?” he asked looking around him.

“Gone, my lord. She ran off not long after the last babe was born.”

The midwife was no fool. She must have known she, too, would be silenced. He could smell the steely odor of blood and jerked back the blanket covering the queen. Her belly was butchered. “The midwife did this?”

“There was another babe, and the queen was already dead. To save the child, she cut it from her womb.” Jonat stepped back with the infants, away from him, and to his utter dismay he saw a third child in a wicker pannier on the ground.

He stared at the infant and groaned with disbelief. “There are three?”

“Aye, my lord. All daughters.”

He had first thought the other child she spoke of was the second babe in her arms. Now what? His liege’s carefully thought out plan made provisions for two babes. “Hand me the infants, and you bring the other.” She placed the babes in his arms, and the squalling one stopped crying, which made him pause. Her face was red and heated, wrinkled like an apple dried in the sun, but he saw she was a true Canmore, crowned with a thick crop of her father’s black hair and considering all the bawling noise she made, perhaps she had his temper as well. The other looked exactly like the caterwauler, same dark hair, but she was calmly asleep, her fist in her pink mouth.

His orders had been clear: he’d ridden away from the battlefield, left his sovereign, friend, and overlord, the man he’d sworn on his honor to protect, in order to execute the royal plan and make certain the queen and newborn babes would be safe.

He glanced from the children to the queen’s body and realized 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 to the 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 sat like 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.