Donnald Ramsey, Baron Montrose, lord of Rossie, Mar, Brechin, and Kirriemur, rode over the last hill, his knights and men-at-arms flanking him and the pennant of the house of Ramsey whipping in the fresh, rain-cooled island winds. Below him stood a grass-roofed cottage of stone built into the side of a knoll and looking solitary and strangely peaceful considering the plots and skirmishes shadowing the mainland.

His first thought was that Sutherland had been right, for the girl to be stowed away in these barren outlands assured her safety. Yesterday’s downpour had stopped and the sun had baked away the rain on the ground. The ship landed onto the island in the light of a clear morning, and their ride across the slopes and rises of the island had been swift because the leagues of heath and moorlands soaked up the rains and only occasionally did they hit any mud to slow them. He preferred the mud to dust which strayed into the nose and made the chest tight and breathing difficult after a few days of riding in a cloud of it.

Off in the far distance the seas were a misty purple—beyond, the unknown edges of the world—but closer, nearer to the cottage horses pranced about a paddock, the extension of a stone and plank stable also topped with a roof of bright green grass and appearing as if the hillside rolled right over it.

The figure of a young man carrying a hayfork came running over the rise from the paddock and another, taller one came around the side of the house as Ramsey and his men closed in, and when the man saw them approaching, he picked up a wood axe and planted his feet apart.

Ramsey was unsure what the two of them thought they could do with a hayfork and woodaxe when pitted against a score of trained knights and twice as many men-at-arms. Amused, he raised a hand as he reined in barely a rod away from the cottage door.

The young man from the paddock stopped next to the other, panting to catch his breath. Clearly they were brothers; their faces were the same, both with sharp, hawk-like noses and dimpled square chins. Only their hair and height distinguished them apart.

“Put down the hayfork,” Ramsey told him. “No one intends to harm you.”

“If you mean no harm, then there is no need for me to put down the hayfork,” he said rebelliously.

The knight and men-at-arms took exception and there was clattering of drawn weapons and mounts shifting into protective positions.

“Quiet, El,” the tall, ginger-haired one said and he stepped in front his brother, eyeing them uneasily.

“I’ve come to speak with Sir Hume Gordon.”

“I am Alastair Gordon and my younger brother Elgin. Our father is dead, my lord.” He lowered his weapon.

“Stand down,” Ramsey quietly ordered, then turned back to the Gordons. “When?”

“Why does it matter?” Elgin Gordon asked.

“Where is Glenna?” Ramsey shot back. Her name all but snapped in the air. In the telling silence the brothers exchanged uneasy looks. Ramsey could smell trouble like one could smell bad fish.

“She is gone, “Alastair Gordon told him.

“Gone?” Ramsey paused meaningfully. “What do you mean she is gone?” Without waiting for an answer, he turned to this men. “Search inside and search the paddock and stable.”

“He told you the truth. She is not here,” Elgin said angrily.

“Stop, El.” His brother shoved him behind him and said harshly, “Put down the fork.”

“By the order of the king I am here to take custody of Glenna Canmore and provide safe escort to Rossie, where she will be under constant guard and protection. There is concern her father’s enemies have learned of her. I am Baron Montrose.”

“You lie!,” Elgin shouted, foolishly raising the fork.

His men responded and closed in a protective circle around him, while others pounced on Elgin Gordon, disarming him and holding both brothers captive.

“Baron Montrose took her!” Elgin said.

“I doubt that,” Ramsey said wryly, “Since I am the Baron Montrose and clearly I do not have her. My men wear my badges. My pennant flies thus. Note my shield.”

“He had the same shield!”

The men came back before Ramsey could question him.

“She is not here, my lord.”

“He was alone,” Elgin said.

Despite the look they had exchanged, he saw the Gordons were not lying to keep and protect her as he had thought. A sinking feeling hit his belly. “Alone? He had no men or guard? Did you not find that questionable?” It was fast becoming clear that these men who lived in a place so far out would know little of the way of things.

“He had orders in writing from the king and claimed to be Baron Montrose,” Alastair said defensively. “I can show you the papers he handed me.”

Ramsey had left without the papers when they could not find them. He had more than five shields, all stored in the armory at Rossie. Foolishly he had not been concerned about the papers.

“He was tall,” Alastair Gordon continued. “With light hair—“

“--And a black horse,” Ramsey finished through gritted teeth.

“Aye.”

At that moment he wished he was a handbreadth away from his stepson. His anger was a live thing and his vision turned red from it. His horse baulked because his hands had tightened on the reins. He almost laughed aloud at the bitter irony. Lyall. No one knew where Glenna was but a handful of men. His stepson was not one of them.

“When did they leave?”

“Four days ago.”

To think he thought this a simple errand, despite the number of men with him and word of the king’s protectiveness. He had said as much to Beitris the morn they left Rossie. “I go on a simple errand. You should not worry,” he had told her. Now he had things to say to her, questions to ask, and worry would be the least of what she was feeling. What in the name of God was he up to now?

“Who is he?” Alastair was looking at him, clearly concerned for Glenna. “Why would he take her?”

“He is my stepson. Lyall Robertson.” He did not answer the other question.

“Will he harm her?” Elgin asked.

“No. Do not worry. I will find them and make certain she is safe.” Ramsey turned to his men. We must leave now and ride hard to make the evening tide.” And without another word they rode off.

Alastair and Elgin Gordon stood there, unable to move. “What have we done to her?” Elgin asked.

“Nothing we cannot fix. Get the horses, quickly, and I will gather supplies. We will ride to the Norse side. Oskar will ride back and care for the horses and one of his father ships can take us across the firth without worry about tides. We will not wait for Baron Montrose to save her. We will be far ahead of them. She is our sister and she needs us.”

* * *

Dried lavender and leaves of sage floated in her bath water which was tepid now after sitting in the wooden tub for so long. There was no chill in the air. A coal burner nearby made the small room as warm as if she were bathing out in the sunshine, something she always did during summers at home.

She leaned her head back and closed her eyes tightly. At the fleeting image of the island, those horrible weak tears of hers were once again burning her eyes. She willed them away. But in her mind’s eye were her brothers, nothing but small brown figures waving at her as they stood so far away, down the rolling island hills by their stone house, the paddock toward the north with colts romping and horses easily grazing, overhead the sky giant, cloudless, and blue. She could smell the heather. She could smell the hay and earthy scents of barn and animals, grains and feed, and the scents of home: El’s pheasants roasting on the spit in the fire and Al unlocking the spice boxes with brass keys and carefully measuring cardamom and cinnamon into an iron mead pot.

Hands covering her face she sobbed anyway. She missed El and Al. She missed everything she had known. She even missed the lies she had lived. Right then, she thought as she took a deep, chest-shuddering breath, she did not care about lies. Those lies had been her life. Now nothing was familiar. Now nothing was safe.

Using the back of her hand, she wiped her eyes and nose, then splashed water on her hot face. She sat there still and quiet as she waited for it all to pass. The past days felt as if she had lived a year.

Though she had slept long after first awakening, she still felt out of sorts and fussy. She had not seen Montrose except once, when he thought she was asleep and came to stand over her, watching her in silence. She dared not open her eyes then, for he was such an enigma to her.

She kept splashing water on her hot cheeks and her burning eyes afraid of what this all meant, until her face was so wet water ran down and dripped onto her collarbone and plopped in the bathwater. At least now she could not tell warm water from tears.

She sat up and steeled her spine. If she was going to save herself, she needed courage and to not be a weakling, weeping over something she could never have again. Searching her mind, she tried to find some sense of anger at Al and tried to conjure up all she had felt over the last days--the hard feelings of embarrassment that she was made a fool of, of the king, her father, and all he would do to her.

A few long deep breaths and she sank lower into the water. Wafting up and around her was the sweet scent flowers and summer herbs. She began to scrub her hair and head vigorously with the ball of soap in her hand and then paused and lifted it to her nose; it smelled of wild honey and almonds, and was a gift from the shy French monk who took her morning food tray and told her he had made a bath for her, led her to the wash room, chattering in an odd mixture of Gaelic, Saxon-Anglaise and French. He said they made soap here at the abbey, much soap, and not merely sturdy lye soap for cleaning, but scented soaps sold at markets. This soap, he told her, was a favorite of the Flemish royal house and had once been purchased by Lady Margaret Pembrooke, for Queen Eleanor.

Nobility… Did her father buy soap from this abbey? She could be using the same soap her father used. That stopped her.

She set the soap aside and slid underwater, rubbing the residue from her soapy scalp then resurfacing with a gasp, only to sink back against the rim of the tub, where she closed her eyes. Soon the chapel bells rang for Matins, sweet and sounding like angel’s music and ringing through the stone hallways of the abbey and out around the abbey’s wattle walls. In the distance, the monks were chanting almost song-like and she began to mentally chant her own words: I hold my own destiny… I hold my own destiny…

The water was cold by the time the monks’ voices had stopped. Outside the tub, she grabbed a fresh linen towel from a stack near the burner and began to dry herself. Next to the towels were her clothes--all of her clothes--clean trouse, hose, tunics, hood and linen, even her gown was folded neatly, with bits of dried lavender sprinkled between the tender folds.

Not a spot of food or drink or dirt, not a bit of ash or grime or a small rip or tear was on the deep green gown when she held it up to her body, and she looked down and saw the ragged bottom was neatly hemmed with seemingly invisible stitches. She picked up the hem and studied it thoughtfully.

She chewed her lip, then and looked around her feeling somewhat enchanted. The odd thought came over her that this was a magical place, where the bells at Compline, Matins and Prime rang like music from Heaven and good things like flower-filled baths and clean, scented clothes just perfectly appeared.

Before the thought had left her, the wooden door swung open and Montrose came in, whistling some bright ditty and casually tossing a ball of saffron-yellow soap. He looked up, saw her, and froze mid-tune, sound dying on lips, which was still split and slightly swollen on one side. She could read a sudden heat of some emotion in his eyes.

In that moment of utterly silent surprise, the door clicked closed behind him and she forgot to breathe. The silken velvet gown slid like soapy water from her arms.

His face changed in a mere heartbeat. His tanned skin grew slightly flushed at the bones of his cheeks as his intent gaze roamed slowly over her, down her body to her very toes, which she curled as she stood there, feeling uneasy and confused at such a look. The expression on his face became full of meaning and emotion, odd, and as if he appeared compelled by some madness to look at her that way, as if she were the answer to all the questions in the world…as if through her he was somehow saved.

How startling, this kind of thing passing between a man and woman. She stared back at him, head cocked slightly, puzzled at what that look could truly mean. What she saw was plain: he did not want to look at her that way. Clearly he was silently fighting this some dark place inside of him.

Like sparks from the blazing blue edges of a fire, his eyes grew dark, intense, and hungry. His shoulders sank as if he had given up, or given in. “God in Heaven above, Glenna… You are the most beautiful woman I have ever seen.”

Though she heard his words, more so she felt his words in her heart and then at the very core of her. Her reaction was to melt again, like she had against the tree in the woods. What was this thing between them? He had not touched her, not kissed her, and she was burning up. From only those words? What was this massively frightening and compelling thing she could not control and came upon her uninvited and without warning? She understood the violence of hatred. She did not understand the violence of love.

Frightened, she scrambled to pick up the gown and cover herself. As she wrapped it around her, she thought she heard him whisper, “No…”

By the time she could find the courage to look up at him, he was staring down at the stone floor.

Had she shamed herself again? “Lyall?” she dared to speak and to her ears her voice was barely there.

He did not answer or look at her, but turned away and shoved a hand through his hair. He grabbed an armful of towels and left her with nothing to look at but the closed door.

* * *

The dark shadows of the stable hid Lyall from view and he wondered why he was doing this, why he sought her out? He stood back from the doorway in a place where he was aware she could not see him. She sat on a large stone bench in the middle of the abbey garden, combing her long wet hair dry in the warm afternoon air. Her hair glistened like onyx in the sunlight. With one hand on the bench, she leaned over slightly to run a thick ivory narwhal comb all the way through to the very ends, which flowed past the bench.

He leaned against the stable wall, crossing his arms and vowing to not move. The vision was his to watch. Back when he was part of the tourney circuit, he had for a short time taken a woman, his woman, instead of one from the army of whores that was as much a part of the tourneys as the games themselves. Knights honed their skills in the games, changed their life fortunes, and celebrated wins and healed their pride over losses with whores and wine.

She was widowed and independent enough to make Lyall as much her choice as she was his. He walked into his tent one night to find her struggling with a comb knotted in her tangled wet hair. He worked a long time to pull her knotted curls from the teeth of the comb before he continued to run it through her long hair, watching it wave and begin to shine as it dried, and finally burying his face in the clean, clover scent of it.

Combing her hair became a ritual—a prelude to bedding, as strong and powerfully captivating as his sleek touches on her skin and the moans of pleasure against their mouths. Her hair had been as pale as sunlight and moonlight spun together, gold and silver, a thousand different strands of color, and nothing like Glenna’s--that midnight darkness, black, black and more black than even than darkest coat of his great horse, than a rare night with no moon, hair that now was glistening so brightly as she sat combing it in the brilliant sunshine and talking with one of the monks who worked on his knees in a garden plot.

He continued to watch her until her burst of honest laughter made him have to look away. When his woman left him, she told him she needed to return home. He heard later she had left him for another knight willing to wed her. She had lied to him as easily as Glenna had lied to the prior. He did not love his widow and never understood why she felt the need to lie to him. He could never decide if he was irritated because she left him, or because she felt he was so besotted she had to lie to do so.

Most of the knights he knew believed all women lied, that it was in their nature to confound men, believing women could not help themselves, since all were descended from Eve. But the women he had known, his mother and Mairi, told him the brutal truth, oft times hammered him with it like the best of combat knights—they hit him with it between the eyes. From what he observed, his mother and sister were like rare pearls from the twisted black mollusks along the River Tay.

He focused on Glenna talking to the monk, felt all those urges he did not want to feel and thought he was destined to have his sane mind stolen by the one woman he needed to use and forget. Why was that?

His damnation must have been wanting her to begin with, or in his own lies and deceit. He dared not cast the first stone, having too many lies and sins of his own. After the past few days…perhaps, he thought, the truth was over-valued. He watched her laughing with the monk. There was some strange kind of satisfaction in telling a good lie.

His peace was chased suddenly away when the stable lad came in tugging and half-dragging Glenna’s huge stubborn hound by a leather lead. “I found him, my lord. Come, Fergus. Come,” the lad said brightly. “He was hiding in the vineyard but I teased him out with some salted pork.”

The dog looked at him with sorrowful eyes, white and dark and almost pleading, bending his neck to gnaw on the leather lead.

Did the cursed hound somehow know what Lyall intended? Surely an animal did not comprehend words like bath and water and soap.

“Good lad.” He took the leather lead from the boy and wrapped it around his hand. The dog sat on his haunches next to Lyall’s feet.

The boy pulled a small clay pot from his pocket. “This is for you, milord.”

Lyall took the pot.

“Salve for the bruised lip,” the boy said.

Lyall stared at the pot.

“It always works for me, my lord.”

“They beat you here?”

“Nay. Not here. I should have said it has worked for me...before. I am safe here,” he said with a smile that proved his words true. “I no longer need salve for bruises and beatings, for blackened eyes and swollen lips.”

Oh lad, that you had some salve for my blackened heart. He pulled out a coin and tossed it to the boy. “Fetch me some more water from the barrel and then you can leave us.”

The boy ran off in the burst of a young colt, and Lyall asked himself when he had last had so much vigor. He watched his tousled red head disappear from sight and thought that perhaps he had left what lightness he had at Dunkeldon so long ago, before now, when he had become as much as liar as Glenna and did not hold the right to judge her.

Before he took the dog into the stable troughs, he pocketed the salve pot and started to walk away, but could not help himself and looked out at her again. She was pointing at a bushy plant and talking blithely to the monk. There was joy in her bright face. None could look at her and believe she was a thief or a liar. Sitting there, she looked like the royal daughter she was.

Perhaps she was his recompense. His own actions and lies would lead to his punishment--her.

A sense of inevitable probability came over him—what he was going to have to do with her. Whatever distant and long-lost piece of a good heart that resurfaced ever so briefly could not change that. He felt a small ache in his chest where he supposed some slim ability to hope had just slipped away completely. The feeling was there only to haunt him bitterly. His destiny was done. There was nothing left of him to be saved.

* * *

Glenna set down her comb and leaned over the plot of herb gardens outside the infirmary, pointing to a thick green plant with white buds overtaking a nearby sage plant Brother Leviticus told her was good for melancholy. “And what is this one called?”

“That is ramsons. For intestinal worms,” he said.

She made a face.

He smiled slightly. “But so is white willow bark, which I used in the tea we fed you.”

“I have no worms, brother,” she said indignantly.

“Nay, but it helps with high fevers and mixed with rue and mint will aid with sore ears and throat, mixed with yarrow and elderberry it will increase sweats.” The brother was a cheery sort, with a face like an apple and the brown eyes of a doe. He was a small man, with breadth, and was the abbey herbalist, an expert in teas and medicinals, and apprenticed to Pater Magoon, the infirmarian. He moved across the herb bed, pulling small weeds with a weed fork and pick. He paused toward another thick green plant with small flowers, plucked off a leaf, removed his leather work glove and handed the herb leaf to her. “Chew it.”

She put it in her mouth and chewed thoughtly. The flavor was strong, almost pungent, and familiar. “It taste like meat…like Easter,” she said surprised.

“That’s because the seeds are used to season spring lamb. This is star anise and if you chew its leaves it will help digestion…and tea from it increases mother’s milk” He paused. “Do you and your lord have children?”

“Good Lord…never!” she said laughing and without thinking.

He frowned at her strangely and touched the heavy cross hanging from his neck.

She tried not to wince, her mind spinning quickly. “I’m sorry. I should not have spoken so.” She looked down, then back at him, feigning a meekness foreign to her. “We have been on the road for a long time. I would not do well away from him. My lord husband enjoys the tourneys,” she said vaguely, having no idea if a baron would be at a tourney. She made up her stories as she went. “I could not travel with him so readily were I with child. Surely someday….” She stood to distract him and moved toward the nearest bed, sitting on the boards and wattle that framed it. “What is this woody one with the strong fragrance?”

He dusted his robes off, then joined her. “That is thyme and it is used in salves and poultices. Wild thyme has recently been used by the local midwife to help expel the placenta, and along with yarrow can stop childbed bleeding.”

“I like the smell,” she said smiling.”

“Many have strong fragrance. They are part of the cures. Camphor for ringworm and delirium. Rosemary is used in cooking but is made into salves which work well for wounds and sores, rashes and gouty limbs. If you breathe in the smoke it will cool hot lungs. Quince is for belly pain. Skullcap and valerian for tumors and rabies.”

“You have thistle growing in the corner. What does it cure?”

He looked uncomfortable and leaned very close. Looking all around him, he whispered, ”Hexes.” He then he moved back and quickly made the sign of the cross.

“Ah…” She nodded, biting back a smile. “Magic herbs.”

“There is no magic in God’s house, my lady,” he said seriously. “God gives us these plants to help us. But there is the Devil’s work all about. Many must be used carefully or they will poison, such as wolfbane, and if you brew a tea too strong of bloodbane,” he knelt down next to her, “and too much of this bright red plant, which induces sleep, and the patient might never awaken.”

“Oh is that so? Tell me…how much should one use?” she asked casually.

He held up two fingers. “One can never use more than two leaves.”

Finally, she thought, studying the red plant. Her means of escape.