Glenna opened the weathered stable door barely enough for her to see down the narrow back lane, which was empty. The smell of smoke and the sound of distant voices carried back to her. Before she could close the door, the black suddenly came trotting ‘round the corner and down the back alley. He was riderless.

Montrose?

Oh God… She moved swiftly, throwing open the stable door and running down the shadowy lane toward his horse, which was skittish and looked as if he would bolt if there had been any sign of open road.

Cooing and talking softly, she approached him, watching his ears flicker and his eyes dart to hers, then she easily grasped the reins. “Come, my laddie,” she said to him. “Come…” In a half run, she led the horse back to the stable. Montrose was in trouble. If she went to help him, the mob would recognize and overtake her.

Her thoughts sped toward some kind of plan, and a moment later she pulled off her hat, unbraiding her hair as she walked with determined steps toward the stall and Skye. Inside her satchel was the package Alastair had given her and she touched it before she moved past it to take out the stolen gown, the only one she owned; this was her only chance. Surely the spicewife would be the only person to recognize it. She had filched it a long three summers before. She changed her shoes, from peasant boots to an expertly tanned and tooled pair of costly red leather lambskin shoes only a noblewoman could afford. She had stolen them near Invergowrie and knew they would show from the jagged edges of the gown as proof of what she was about to claim. But they were too big and slipped when she walked. She ran her fingers through her long hair, wavy and full after its tight braiding, and felt the relief from her scalp from no tight braids. She took a deep breath and glanced out the doors.

She did not dare abandon him when she needed him to get off the island so she could escape safely. Neither a woman nor a lad traveling alone was safe to ferry across the sound. Both El and Al made her swear on her life she would never try to do so.

So she told herself, she needed Montrose for her own safety.

Minutes later, black hair flowing down over her shoulders and back, his signet ring in one fist and her knee up near the pommel and she precariously rode the black back down the lane, praying for balance and courage as she headed for the main road, hoping she could pull off the guise.

What she saw ahead of her did little to ease her nerves. A crowd hovered to either side of Montrose, who was splayed unmoving on the ground and from the looks of the dirt trail, had been dragged over to the side of the road. A group of men were passing buckets of sea water to put out the hay fire and the burning cart. Smoke was everywhere and she could feel it burn her chest.

“Get away from him!” Glenna commanded, waving smoke away, and she rode straight into the middle of the mob. The crowd parted slightly. Montrose was almost unrecognizable. His skin was not burned or charred away--Glenna had unfortunately seen a burned man once and it was horrifically unforgettable--yet his whole face was black with ash and smoke, his clothing singed or burnt where it was covered with chips of ash and pieces of burnt hay. Even his golden hair was ash grey. There was a deep red-blue welt in the crucifix shape of a sword hilt across the skin of his palm, which lay limply next to his fallen weapon. He was so still her heart stopped.

Then he moaned loudly, which gave her great hope, and she released a breath she had not known she had been holding.

“’Tis my gown! I stitched it myself! Look at her! She is wearing my gown!”

Glenna turned and rode directly up to the spicewife, mere a hand’s breadth away from the stubborn woman, her chin high so she could look down at the woman when she waved an arm and said, “What is this? You worry over some measly piece of cloth and naught for the life of my lord, Baron Montrose.“ She paused meaningfully before adding, “You do not know that all you in Steering have grievously harmed the emissary of Himself the king.”

The woman stepped back, her eyes narrowed in disbelief, silent but looking pointedly at Glenna’s gown and then up to her face. She opened her mouth to speak, but the woman's husband, pulled her back again none too gently, speaking harshly in her ear. That Glenna had implied the whole village was responsible for Montrose’s condition was threat enough.

She turned and closed the small distance to Montrose, the crowd stepping away from the black as she eased him forward, and she stopped and dismounted. Montrose lay still as stone. She knelt down, searching for a sign of movement in his chest, a sign he was breathing, but she saw none. “My lord?”

Nothing. Panic raced through her. She leaned over him, her hair shielding them and pooling on his ash covered chest. “Montrose!” she whispered harshly into his black rimmed ear. “Can you hear me? Montrose! “

He groaned again and his words were lost and sounded deep and raspy as a wolf’s growl. She relaxed somewhat. The man was not dead. The sound made her wonder if his throat was burned, and that perhaps he was gravely injured. Her chest tightened and she touched his jaw and whispered, “I’m sorry.”

She turned to the men hovering around them. “Help him. Please.”

They looked at her dumbfounded, standing there as useless as ears on a stone.

“I am the Lady Montrose,” she lied easily and held out his signet ring as proof. “You must help my lord husband.”

Suddenly the men began to move swiftly, giving her helpful words of kindness. The smithy and his laddie rushed back carrying a long wooden door, and four of the men lifted the baron onto it.

“Where can we take him?” She asked, looking up and down the crowded village road. “Is there an herbwife? There must be someone who can help me.”

“You! Laddie!” the smithy said to his young apprentice with a gentle swipe at his head. “Go fetch Old Gladdys.”

Someone gasped. The smithy ignored them and turned back to her. “We shall take him to the tavern, milady. The old woman will come and help ye care for him.”

A fearful muttering spread back over the crowd, “Old Gladdys? The witch? Not her, surely….”

Glenna faced the smith. “Why are they wary?”

“The old woman ferried across from the mainland one day,” he explained.

“’Twas the day of the summer solstice,” someone else said in the dire tone of a Greek chorus.

The smithy looked at Glenna, shaking his head with exasperation. “She is naught but an old crone claiming healing powers. Some are suspicious. A few call her a witch because of her potions and strange Welsh ways, and she herself claims to be some kind of Druid, as if they still exist.” He laughed at the idea.

An older woman standing nearby crossed herself and mumbled something dark about witches and witchcraft existing beyond time.

“For as many who believe she is a witch, or question her sense and words,” the smithy continued, “there are twice as many who have been saved by her potions and will argue she is truly an angel.”

“Aye, milady,” said another woman, elbowing her way to the front of the crowd. “Old Gladdys saved my husband when he was injured from a scythe and his arm festered.”

“She saved my babe!” said another.

“And my daughter in childbed.”

“I care not what she is called,” Glenna said. “Only that she is skilled.”

“Take solace, milady. She has yet to send a single soul to his grave.”

“Although looking at her could surely do the trick,” a young man said and some of the crowd laughed. “Hers is not the face of an angel.”

But the men were already lifting the board with Montrose to their shoulders and moving slowly and carefully toward the tavern. Glenna turned to follow, but a rough hand on her arm stopped her. The spice woman would not let things be.

“I would advise you to take your hand away, spicewife,“ Glenna said imperiously, and she faced the woman once again. Then she glanced over her shoulder where the men were carrying Montrose and realized the woman’s husband was one of the men helping him.

Her gaze met the woman’s briefly, and then she turned to the black’s saddle and reached into Montrose’s bags. With a handful of silver, enough to buy more fine gowns than she could ever imagine, she pressed the coins into the woman’s rough hands and then held them tightly in her own. “I say to you that my young brother gave me this gown as a gift. What say you, spice seller?”

The woman slightly opened her hands and glanced down, her reaction first shock as the coins caught the sunlight and shone in her palm like fish skin, then she looked up at Glenna and smiled as brightly as the sun when she said, “I say your brother has a fine eye, milady.”

* * *

Inside the Steering alehouse, the men carrying Montrose set him down atop two oak tavern tables shoved together and stood around arguing over what should be done first, all of them talking to Glenna at once. The scent of stale ale made her belly wallow and her head was spinning. She was greatly worried. Montrose was still out.

The whole of the village, curious and noisy, looked to be shoving their way into the small room to see the great lord felled and almost burnt to death in the middle of Steering. A tavern maid set down a tray with some pieces of linen, a wooden bowl, and a ewer of water on the table next to him. The girl called Glenna milady, so she was feeling less fearful of discovery and more afraid of what she would do if Montrose didn’t awaken.

While all were discussing remedies and cures encompassing everything from a poultice of mustard, goose blood, and cow spittle to a tisane of St John’s Wort, Glenna wrung out the cloth in the cool water and laid it on his filthy brow, thinking she should pour the water over his head like she did when El got drunk last year and fell off his horse and wouldn’t awaken. If that did not bring Montrose ‘round, at least it would clean his face, she thought with humor as black as his sooty skin.

From the doorway came a strange and sudden murmuring, and the crowd parted slightly as a small old woman elbowed and twisted her way through the thick throng of people gathering in the small back room of the tavern. She wore a long, dark woolen tunic, the side panels embroidered with colorful images of suns and crescent moons, animal-like figures in odd positions. A huge cat-like creature standing on hind legs and reaching upward toward a large silver moon was stitched entirely of a silvery thread. The tunic was belted to her thin waist with a hammered metal girdle that had strange and ancient looking markings engraved into it. In her right hand she carried a long willow staff strung with small brightly-colored, cloth herb bags, one with cattails sticking out of it. A long bladder pipe also hung down from the bend in the staff.

“Where is he? This nobleman who was hurt,” she was saying, her voice clear and as melodic as harp music, a sharp contrast to her hair and face. Using her staff, she shoved a young farmer aside and chided him for not moving swiftly enough.

“Old Gladdys,” she heard some of them whisper as the woman passed them.

“Stop yer gabbling and get ye out of my path. Is not a great lord all but dying?”

Glenna supposed if there were a Druid witch alive at that time she would have looked like Gladdys. The Welsh woman had wild and curly white hair, a face weathered by the sun (and perhaps the wind, a strong wind…a storm…a raging storm) skin like spotted sausage and the sharp black eyes and a nose like a beak of a peregrine falcon. As El would have said, ‘she has a cheese-face, one that could curdle milk.’

But then Glenna had noticed oft times men were all about the look and shape of a woman and cared not a whit for her mind, and even less for her tongue. Her brothers were no different. She preferred to believe that perhaps Gladdys might have been a handsome woman in her youth, which looked to be a long, long time ago.

Gladdys glanced down at Montrose, put her thin, knobby hand on his throat for a moment, then looked away. She unhooked her bladder pipe and blew a loud, discordant note that quieted the voices in the room and said, "Stand back ye!" Then she began to hum and twirl, spinning in a circle, her long white hair the color of morning mist flying outward as she turned, her arms out, the staff almost swiping at the heads of some of the crowd, who backed quickly away. Her humming quickly changed into a chant:

Within heartbeats the room had nearly cleared, most running from the old woman like their hair was afire. Even the believers’ eyes grew wide and they scurried away. Only two merchants and the smithy remained.

“Need ye help with your lord, milady?” the smithy said kindly. “We will stay.”

Glenna declined. “There is no need for you to stay. My thanks to you, all of you. My lord will be grateful,” she added as she pressed a piece of silver into each of their hands, and they shuffled to the door.

“If ye need help, send someone.” And the smithy left, but not before he glanced at Gladdys, then shook his head muttering about her tossing wood on the fire of fools.

With the room empty but for Montrose and the two of them, the old woman grew silent and slowly stopped spinning. For merely a heartbeat, Glenna thought that Gladdys could see her for who she was, and wasn’t, saw into her past and her future, saw her weaknesses and even her escape plan. It was unsettling to have someone look at you as if they could see not only what you hid from the world, but also see inside to the darkest corners of your heart and your head.

The old woman tapped her staff three times and stared at Glenna from sharp and knowing black eyes. It took a trickster to know one.

“That was curious display,” Glenna said to her, skepticism in her tone and waving her hand casually at the old woman’s performance. “Tell me. What exactly does your chant heal?”

The old woman eyed her for a long moment, and then she smiled quite evilly and winked when she said, “An overcrowded room.”

Glenna laughed. But Gladdys was looking at her no more and instead had turned to Montrose. She leaned low over him and used the cloth to clean around his eyes and some of the soot from his face. At the sight of the old woman’s frown, Glenna smile fell away and she stepped closer. “He will wake up.”

Gladdys looked at her. “Ye be the wife?”

“Aye,” Glenna lied, trying to look down her nose as if daring the old woman to doubt her word.

“Hmrph,” was all Gladdys said, a word that carried a load of doubt, and she turned back to Montrose and slid open each of his eyelids with her thumb and peered closely into his eyes. “His eyes be red and swollen from the ash.” She lifted his head from the board and felt around underneath. “And he has a knot the size of me fist on the back of his head.”

She pulled her hand away and began to clean his face and brow and ‘round his closed eyes. As Glenna hovered closer, Gladdys waved her away and said in an irritated tone, “Go and make yerself useful. There, see?” She pointed to her staff leaning against a chair. “Bring me that brown bag, and the green one.” She used her unusually long-fingered hands to squeeze and press gently downward on his chest, and he moaned again.

Glenna stopped, worried.

“Bring me the bags! He’s not dying. ‘Tis but his ribs, and why his breathing is so shallow he looks dead. Most likely he cracked one or two rib bones. Go fetch a bowl and spoon from the maid, and another ewer of water. Go, go.…”

Glenna spent the next few minutes scurrying back and forth and doing exactly as Gladdys demanded, even when she asked her to send someone for a cup of sea water from the nearby sound. She made a poultice and used linen to tightly bind it to his chest.

The old woman mixed the sea water with some powders from the bags, opened his lids and spooned the concoction into his eyes, then waited, counting in Welsh, “Un, dau, tri, pedwar…deg,” before she put more liquid in again. The ritual continued a few more times then she set down the bowl and spoon and stood back, watching him closely as if she were waiting for something.

After a few tense moments she laughed out loud and pointed at him.“There ‘tis. See? The poultice and bindings are good. His breathing is becoming deeper.”

Glenna studied the deeper rise and fall of his chest, watched the golden cross around his neck move as he inhaled deeper than before, and she felt her own relief. He took another deep breath and the cross on the chain fell to the side, revealing a bright red mark near his throat. Like the sword imprint on his palm, this was a burn mark from the cross, which must have grown too hot from the heat of the fire. He'll have a scar, she thought.

He murmured something she did not hear.

“Look there,” Gladdys said with a slight cackle. “He’s calling for his mum.”

“There’s no shame in calling for one’s mother,” Glenna defended quickly, her gaze meeting the woman’s.

“If ye had one,” Gladdys said sharply.

“Aye.” Glenna’s voice drifted off. “If you have one.” She looked away.

Gladdys placed her hand on her shoulder and said kindly, “Fret ye not, girl. Trust old Gladdys. All will be well, but it will take some time for ye.” Then she picked up the pitcher and stuck her finger in it, stared at her finger glistening from the water, then looked inside the ewer for a moment. She looked up. “I believe ‘tis cold enough,” she said and dumped the water on his head.

* * *

Lyall reared up, coughing and choking. Eyes wide open but seeing only blurred light and shadow. He drew a large breath of air and pain shot from his chest like an arrow down through his body, and he groaned loudly, bent double, and a blasphemous curse left his lips. His ribs had been broken many times at tourneys and at the tilt field. The pain was all too familiar. His eyes teared from it, which did not help; they felt full of sand, and he shook his head…his wet head…and his hair slapped and stuck to his cheek. Disoriented, he instinctively reached for his weapon, but his sword belt was gone. He squinted at the smaller blurred figures, women, standing nearby.

The brittle stench of smoke and burnt wood, a smell and taste from his youth he would never forget, was lodged in his nose and on his dry tongue. Light-headed, he raised his hand to his brow, which was hurting, then slid it to the back of his neck, where the skin felt sore, as if burned by the hot sun. What was this? He was a man, not a lad of ten. Where in the bloody hell was he?

A gentle hand touched him, followed by the shadow of a woman, her hair long and flowing brushed against his arm. “You are in Steering, my lord. In a tavern. You were thrown from your horse.”

All came flooding back to him. “Glenna?”

“Aye.”

“Yer wife,” a woman with a musical voice said.

“My what?” Lyall swung his legs over the side and tried to stand. The room swam and he gripped the table till his knuckles felt white.

“My lord, husband,” Glenna said quickly, taking his hand in hers and nearly squeezing all the blood from it. Her other hand pushed hard on his shoulder. “Lie back down, my love,” she said through gritted teeth. “You hit your head and your sense is meandering. Fret not. I am here with you.”

He followed her lead, stayed silent and let her push him back down, curious to see how this played out. His sight was still off and he was weaponless. “Where is my sword? Bring it to me.”

“You must rest,” she insisted, starting to turn away.

He grabbed her by the hand and pulled her down close enough to whisper in her ear, “Afraid I might use it on you…wife?”

“No more afraid than you were of my bow and arrows. You need no weapon,” she hissed back at him. “There is no one here now but the healer. You are safe.”

“That I am lying here on my back and half blinded is proof I am not safe with you nearby,” he said.

“Step back, milady,” said the melodic voice. A strange, full-haired shadow of light and dark loomed over him. “Let me put more mixture into his eyes.”

He released Glenna’s wrist and she scurried back away. “My eyes? What mixture?” he asked the shadow.

“To wash away the ash and soot and soothe your poor eyes.”

“The hay cart fire,” he said flatly, remembering, and he eased back down and let the healer minister her medicine.

“ ‘Twill clear your vision, my lord.”

So he blinked and let her add more.

“Can you see yet?”

“Soon. Try again,” he said encouraging her as she added more liquid to his eyes. It was working. She repeated the process and each time he blinked his vision became clearer, then slowly the shadow above him took sharp form.

His first reaction was to flinch but to do so would have insulted her. Out of appreciation for the old woman’s help, he returned her gaze kindly. He sat up again.

“You can see clearly?” Glenna came nearer.

“Aye…wife. As clearly as the day we were wed,” he said wryly and watched her flush. “Ah, one of my favorite memories. Surely you, too, remember it well.”

“Aye,” she agreed, eyeing him suspiciously.

He snatched her hand and pulled her closer, slipping his arm around her waist and resting his hand low on her soft and rounded buttocks. “Tell our tale to the miracle healer here. I’m certain she would find our great romance vastly interesting...a tale for the bards.”

Her eyes narrowed dangerously, and he merely smiled and rubbed circles over and over on her backside. She looked ready to bolt, so he gripped her more tightly. In turn, she cleared her throat loudly and pressed her elbow near his sore ribs and he winced and grabbed her elbow in a tight grip.

She would pay for that, he thought. She tried to edge away a step, but he pulled her back, slapping her buttocks harder. “Stay close, my sweet and tell the tale.”

“It was in the spring, “ Glenna began.

“Winter, sweetings,” he corrected. “After the first snow. Surely you recall as do I, as if it was yesterday, not but barely two years—“

“Six month hence,” she volunteered at the same time, and she hurriedly said, “Two years and six months.”

“The winter air was clear and brisk.”

“ ‘Twas spring,” she said pointedly. “Look, Montrose. Do you wish for me to tell the tale or not? Remember, my love,” she said sweetly, “that you have been recently knocked silly in the head, which would not have happened if I had my bow and arrows.”

“But not even a blow to the head could make me forget meeting you.”

“Most likely because your head is so hard,” she said under her breath.

“On with you, wife. Tell the tale.”

“I do not think so. Since you do not know the time of year we met, it is certain you are still too feeble-minded from your ordeal. You should rest now,” she said, patting his hand overly hard. “One would hate to find you exerted yourself and then turned into a simpleton.”

“It would take more than a conk on the noggin for me to forget that day…you vixen.” He held her to his side in an iron grip. “She was like a cat in heat, so hungry she was for a good man. I carried the scratches on my back for weeks.” He brushed her chin with his knuckle. “Close your mouth, love, else ‘twill catch flies.”

“It is you, my lord husband,” she said quietly, “who is made of the same stuff that attracts the flies.”

“Aye. Sweet as honey,” he said loud and merrily. “That surely is our love. Sweet. Sweet. Sweet.” He nuzzled her ear. “I could lick you all over.”

She gasped and stepped away.

He gave an exaggerated sigh. “I see that our great romance is not to be told of on this day. Therefore I apologize, madam. I believe my wife has grown suddenly modest.”

The old woman turned and reached for her staff, but not before she gave him a quick wink. Lyall shifted, looking around the room, and he spotted his saddlebags in the corner along with Glenna’s belongings. He noticed then the great hound was not at her side and wondered where it was. Slowly he stood and felt the solidness of ground with relief, his legs firmly planted and his head did not swim, his sight clear, perhaps, surprisingly, clearer than before the hay fire.

A few minutes later he handed some silver to the healer. “You have my gratitude, old woman.”

“I am Gladdys,” she said, giving him a penetrating and long and silent look, before she turned to leave. “And I can only heal a hairsbreadth of what has passed.”

His mood, light from all that foolishness with Glenna, waned quickly, and he grew quiet and pensive from the old woman’s knowing look.

She paused in the doorway and faced them both, tapping her staff three times, until Glenna, too, had turned around and was paying attention.

“This room still be over-crowded,“ she said directly to Glenna. “Deceit weighs heavily in the air.”

He stared long and hard at the woman. What was she about?

“Know ye, girl,” she continued. “I have no chant to fix what problems plague ye in the here and now.”

Lyall could see Glenna’s unhappy reaction—her pale skin and tight lips and jaw. She did not like what she’d heard.

The woman’s wise dark gaze moved to him. “Nor can I mend yer troubles, my lord. Ye will find that prize which ye seek and all that goes with it…that which foolish men believe they want, what drives them to do what they will. But understand and trust me when I say to ye both… there are far too many lies inside this room.” And she left them alone.

The room grew heavy with their silence and the strange and unsettling truth in the old woman’s words.

After another tense moment Glenna turned around and laughed bitterly. “Foolish woman and her predictions. Druid? Bah! Lies? Aye, there are too many lies. After yesterday, I’ve had my fill of lies.” She marched toward the doorway. “I’m going to the stables. I need to check on the animals.” And she closed the doors without looking back.

He did not try to stop her, but what Gladdys had said cut to the quick…not about lies, but about truths, and soon he, too, got up and left.