The pearl was the size of Lyall’s fingernail, yet perfect and round, with the same milky sheen of the moon. River pearls came from the mussels that lined the shores of the river. They were small and imperfect, in colors of pink and brown and gray, with knots and marks and sometimes they had large dark holes in them.

He had found river pearls when he was a lad, years back, another lifetime ago, when he was careless and young and free to comb the shores of the river, innocent enough to make wishes on magic trees, to fish and play at war and pretend life was less idyllic than it had been, back when he roamed the wild woods not comprehending the hard truths of life.

But he had never found a pearl like the one he was staring down at. Nestled in soft, tender and pale flesh, surrounded by the pearlescent wall of the shell, the pearl was huge, it was flawless, and it was in the last mussel…the one they argued over….the one he offered her…the one she had insisted he eat.

Glenna stared at it in such shock, almost as if the pearl had spoken. He knew that because of her life as a thief, she understood its value and its rarity. When she finally spoke it was with the reference of a truly larcenous soul. “It is beautiful.”

He glanced down at it, then held out the shell. “Here.”

“I cannot take it.” She looked up at him, clearly stunned, and said quietly, “ ‘Tis yours.”

He shook his head. “What am I to do with a pearl like this? I have jewels,” he lied. His stepfather had jewels. “Take it, Glenna.”

“Nay.”

“If I keep it, you will merely steal it from my bags at some point,” he teased, knowing it was most likely true.

“You do not trust me,” she said, but even she could not pull off that false humility; it just was not the Glenna he knew.

“Nay, I am not a fool.” He laughed. “How much silver have you taken from me?”

“I have not counted,” she said proudly, chin up a bit. However, she had not taken her eyes off the jewel he dangled right in front of her nose. Had wealth a scent, her nose would have twitched.

“If you do not take it,” he said casually. “I suppose I shall be forced to throw it back in the river.”

She looked from him to the pearl and paused—oh, she wanted it—but she stubbornly shook her head. “ ‘Tis yours, Montrose.”

He sighed heavily. “Then as mine, I can do whatever I wish with it.” He started to rise. “Even toss it back where it came from.”

“Nay! Nay!” She scrambled over so swiftly to grab his arm she almost made him light-headed. “Montrose! Do not!”

Moments later she sat across from him, crossed legged, with the pearl cupped tentatively in her hands as if it were more delicate than a robin’s egg, her expression filled with awe and a little touch of avarice that was Glenna.

He wanted to laugh out loud and his first instinct was to swing her up into his arms and kiss her senseless. But he stopped himself and stayed there, savoring what was an odd feeling--a great and overwhelming sense of gratification at merely watching her.

Not much later, he had second thoughts, after he had banked the small fire and before they had made pallet on the ground or gone to sleep, that she came over, pearl clutched tightly in her fist, and placed her other hand on his chest as she stood up on tiptoe and gave him a tender kiss. “Thank you, Montrose. This is the loveliest gift I have ever been given.”

He called himself a fool as he watched her walk away from him, Glenna Canmore, the king’s daughter, with the chance at a future full of more than pearls, more than jewels, and he turned away from her and all the fine sense of joy left in her wake.

His hands clenching into fists at his sides and his face skyward, he stood there powerless. Everything he saw, even with his eyes closed, was tinged in bitter yellow—something else passed from father to son, he thought as the taste of betrayal swelled in his mouth.

And for a mere moment, he had to fight the sudden urge to hang his head in shame….because of what he was going to do to her.

* * *

“What in the name of Heaven and Hell are you doing to me, witch?”

Glenna froze. She was lying on the ground and tucked snugly under her woolen blanket. Yet Montrose was talking? She lay still and stopped breathing, and didn’t dare open her eyes.

Did she actually hear him speak? Or had she imagined it, a dream or wish or mind-trick? Did he believe she was still asleep? Was he even really there? What would she do if she opened her eyes only to stare back into his?

Oh God’s toes! She could not see a thing with her eyes closed!

He began pacing the grass for so long the monotonous sound of his footsteps might have lulled her into a soft sleep if not for the possibility that he had said those words. His voice had just come to her as real as if he were standing over her and talking.

She kept her breathing soft and slow and even. Before long some part of her could feel the heated warmth of his eyes on her. Oh, he was surely standing there. She knew as instinctively as she knew how to lift a purse.

Odd how she always knew the exact moment when he was looking at her, a kind of sixth sense came over her, a feeling of unearthliness, like when bees hovered right in front of one’s eyes or when the birds vanished just before lightening would strike the earth and set it on fire. But the feeling, the sense, happened with him alone, as if they were invisibly chained by their thoughts and minds as well as the wild emotion she was keeping secret deep inside her heart.

He wasn’t pacing any longer. The absolute silence came in the amount of time it took for her heart to beat once, like a moment of emotional clarity, or a snatch of color in the night--something warm and pink, like alpenglow, rare and only there in the last breath before night fell or the first glimpse of dawn.

But then the real sounds of night invaded her sense: the chirping song of the insects, the distant rush of river water over rocks and small falls, and the pounding of her own foolish heart.

“I am bewitched,” he said. “And destined to hell. Why do I care about you when I dare not?” His voice was real and it was heavy with emotion when it drifted off. “I cannot…I will not.” He cursed in a low voice and walked away, his footsteps swift and growing distant.

She opened one eye, then turned over just as he disappeared through the trees. Kicking aside the blanket, she knew there was no way she would let him walk away from her after what he’d said, whether or not he'd spoken only because he believed she was asleep.

Up on her feet, she slipped on her shoes and moved stealthily through the woods, staying back far enough for the moon to light his shadow. The woods grew thick, then opened up. When the roots of a giant, old yew tree almost tripped her, she placed her hand on the bark to steady herself and almost cried out, looking down at her hand as if it were suddenly burned. She stared at the tree, almost expecting to see a handprint where she had touched it.

Carefully, tentatively, she reached out and then touched it with one finger. No burn. The tree was cool, the bark rough, like every other tree in the woods.

Still, her hand throbbed, and she stared down at it expecting to see something like a slave brand, but her palm appeared perfectly normal. Yet something…there was something. She stared at the tree, then shook off the strange thoughts that made gooseflesh of the skin on her arms. Silliness. With no time to dawdle, she rushed on to stay in sight of Montrose, who was moving again and even farther away.

Eventually, he stopped at the top of a rock ledge and stood looking into the distance, his strong profile, sleek nose and square jaw limned in the moonlight like the effigy of an ancient god. She hung back, unable to see past him or the woods and tall fir trees flanking his sides. The vision he made reminded her of him poised on the prow of the ship the morning after the storm, and made her breath catch. She could not have looked away had lightning come down and flashed right there before her eyes.

Suddenly swinging his arms out into the air, he leapt down to the forest floor with a soft thud and a whoosh of breath, and he began to run. She moved swiftly to the ledge, which she found was perched at the forest’s edge, where a short, gentle slope rolled down into a small clearing.

There, she spotted his dark figure running across the field towards a sight she never expected. In the distance, the dark, burned out ruins of a castle stood atop its motte, looking like the island’s Celtic stone rings: staggered, jagged and great, black against the iridescence of moonlight that shone down turning the field a silvery white, almost as if it were not a night on the cusp of the end of summer and beginning of autumn, but a night in the height of the coldest winter. She moved down from the ledge and onto the slope.

Around the castle was a wall of thick bushes and brambles and brush, and he ran to a spot that sloped downward into the wall of weeds, and he disappeared. She moved fast, running breathlessly across the silver field, keeping her eyes on where he had gone and once there, she moved down where a small cave-like tunnel, a black hole really, shone where its weeds were freshly torn aside and its bushes trampled.

Without hesitation she stepped inside and all light disappeared. She froze. Chills ran up her arms. Inside, it was as black as the pit and to her horror it smelled the same. Her skin crawled and she shivered, looking for courage which had disappeared the moment she stepped into the tunnel.

In a weak moment she turned back, catching and swallowing a sob that threatened to escape her lips, and she took a step toward the entrance, where there was moonlight and fresh night air. At that moment she heard the hollow echo of his running footsteps deep down the tunnel and she moved away from the safety of the entrance, cautiously touching the damp walls only to keep her balance on the stone and uneven rocks underfoot, telling herself she was not afraid. But it was a lie. Her fear was tangible.

She rounded a bend in the walls and stepped back quickly. At the far end, light shone down from an open trap, revealing the carved rungs of a wooden ladder. She took five slow breaths, then ten, and edged around the corner just was the trap door snapped closed and the tunnel was bathed once again in darkness.

Before long she stood at the top of the ladder, feeling for the door. She counted to twenty before she opened it--not wanting to come face to face with Montrose--barely enough to see and she panned the grounds, then flipped open the trap and climbed out, kneeling down to quietly closed the trapdoor.

For a sweet moment she just breathed in the cool night air and composed herself and her fears. She was outside in the open air. No more dark, dank-tasting tunnel. No imaginary adders under her next blind step.

Around her, the castle was eerily abandoned, with debris covering overturned wagons and the remnants of animal troughs, the gate from an old pen and pieces of burned walls still sitting atop stone bases, all covered in old, broken pieces of burnt wood and years of weeds and dead leaves.

As she moved, she could mark buildings that had been, the stable, stalls broken and charred, a large center building that had crumbled, caved in from the sides, with pieces of stairs piled upon each other, and another building nearby with a tall stone fire hearth like that used by a village smithy.

A cross hung at an odd angle over the lone door in the midst of a small burned out chapel; that was where she spotted him, standing at what must have once been an altar, the raised stone dais covered in debris starting at the very toes of his boots. He looked as if he was unable to go any further.

She watched him for a long time, soaking in any clue she could from studying him. Before long, she could almost feel his sorrow, palpable and like the waves of the sea coming at you. Whatever this place was, it was painful to him.

He seemed so far away, a tragedy standing raw and open, his hands open and out in front of him as if in supplication, and she understood she could see him this way only because he believed he was completely alone.

She had not known that such emotion and pain could be found merely in a man’s posture, but there she saw a crushing sense of isolation so clear, as if he were in another world…alone, deserted, adrift and looking lost, the emptiness of which she understood all too well. He was a man at Gethsemane.

The overwhelming need to reach out to him came to her, but she felt if she did so, somehow she would violate him when he was already wounded. Watching his pain made her belly turn and she placed a hand over it and closed her eyes. If only she could know what was wrong, perhaps she could find a way to help him.

Before long watching him in such a state and saying nothing was too difficult. She felt if she stood there longer, she would have to pull him from the depths of that black place he inhabited, so she decided to leave him alone with whatever demons he possessed. She took a deep breath that turned into a sigh, and he spun around, his face hard and his eyes moist, glaring at her as if she were a rude awakening.

“What are you doing here?”

Caught, she had no out so she looked him in the eyes and admitted, “I followed you.”

“I can see that.”

Now, without the need for excuses, she walked toward the altar and looked down, where he had been cutting away the weeds and brambles when she first spotted him. There before him lay two old graves—one covered with a square stone plaque carved with a man’s effigy, and the other a cairn--a crude piling of old rocks. “Who are they?”

He was stonily silent, unwilling to let her in. There were moments, she noticed, like now, where his solitude was like a shield he forced between them and his response was strong enough to make her believe he would gladly turn that shield into a weapon and wield it like some battering ram on anyone who tried to save him. “They are my ghosts.”

“Not any longer,” she said lightly, bending and gently pulling more of the weeds from the cairn. “I am here.” On her knees, she dusted off her hands and glanced up at him. His expression she could not read.

“Uninvited and unwelcome,” he said.

“Nevertheless, you must deal with me.” She continued to pull the weeds from between the rocks. “Why is it secret?”

He was weakening. His hands gave him away; they were in fists at his side.

“I will not leave until you tell me,” she said.

Still, only his glare and silence met her unwavering and calm gaze. Let me help you.

He looked away from her, away from the graves and up to where some rooks were perched ominously on the highest part of the burnt wall, where a half of an old carved cross still hung. She looked from him to the graves set into the altar like those of ancient kings.

“And you call me stubborn.” She brushed the leaves and grass from the stone carving of a man’s face. Sitting back on her heels she looked up at him and said, “He looks like you.”

It was a long time before he spoke. “ ‘Tis my father.”

“And the other?”

“Malcolm, my brother.”

She frowned and stood, then looked around her and at the ruins. “These are your lands?”

“No!” he said sharply.

She stepped back as if his voice slapped her. In that single word, she heard the sound of a dark soul.

“I draw strength here. As I stand before these graves I do not forget.” With a deep concentration she could almost feel, he stared off at some distant memory and time. Both elements hardened his features and it seemed as if he was somewhere desolate and vast; he looked as if he what he carried was insurmountable. “You cannot understand.”

The rooks suddenly cawed and flapped away, one flying after a darting sparrow. When he did look at her, she caught a swift glimpse of emotion she could not name—something fragile and breakable behind the hard mask he wore and his often harsh manner.

Then it was gone, lost in a slim moment of a time, and he said coolly, “We should leave this place.”

The part of her that loved him could not ask him to explain the deaths; she could not ask for more from him. He had needed to be there and she accepted that. But not even to satisfy her natural curiosity could she make him stay where he was a wounded soul, open, bleeding. “Aye. We should leave,” she agreed.

His expression held a hint of an apology and something else, another kind of sorrow, perhaps the same emotion she couldn’t read before. She held out her hand to him.

At first he stared it at as if touching her would be a mortal sin. Waiting for him felt natural to her, as did walking by his side when he joined her, and as did the feel of his warm palm against hers, and the silence cloaking them not in awkwardness, but one of those moments where words spoken aloud were unnecessary.

Each was a little puzzled by the other and lost in the curious darkness of their own thoughts and, hands still clasped, they walked out of the castle ruins together.