“You are three and twenty. It is time.”
Anne nodded. Another statement she’d heard often in the last few months. Not one of the various suitors her parents had suggested to her was without charm. Each was possessed of some attribute, some quality that made him acceptable. None of them drank to excess. Each came from good family. They were all able to provide for her and any children who would be born to them. But they did not have eyes the shade of midnight. Or a face so strong and vital that she recalled it even in her dreams.
“Have you ever wanted something so much, Hannah, that you would have given everything you owned for it?”
“What would you wish for, Anne Sinclair, that you are not provided?”
To touch him
.
Last night’s vision had been the strongest of all. Stephen had stood in a tunnel of darkness, shadows of gray and black swirling around him. His hand had been outstretched as if, after all these years, he could finally see her. He seemed to implore her. He spoke, but his words were snatched away by gusts of angry wind. She had stretched out her own hand until she thought their fingers might touch. But instead of coming closer, Anne felt as if she were moving farther and farther away from him. He then looked beyond her and she became frightened by the look in his eyes. She did not have the courage to turn and look at what was behind her. Disaster? Death itself? Anne only knew that she had stood between Stephen and this terrible thing. But whatever it had been, it frightened her and made her fear for him.
Instead of answering her, Anne asked her own question. “Have you never wanted to leave the island, Hannah?”
The silence in the small cottage had a sound all its own. Not unlike a bell whose peal deadened all other noise.
“I leave it often enough.”
“Once or twice a year. No more.”
“Why do you ask that of me, Anne?”
She turned, faced Hannah resolutely. “Because I want you to come with me.”
“Where?” Hannah came and stood beside Anne. The question was spoken, but the knowledge was already there on the older woman’s face. An odd destination, one of heart more than of place.
“You do not even know if he’s real,” she said incredulously.
“He is real, Hannah.”
“Because you wish him to be? The world would be a fine place if all our wishes would come true, Anne. But it does not happen.” Hannah’s face seemed to change. The anger vanished and in its place was a look of sadness before it, too, was gone.
“Have you not the sense God gave a gnat? A journey with no destination? Instead of being afraid you were a witch, you should have feared becoming a fool.”
“Would you have me remain here all the rest of my life, Hannah? Without knowing if he was real or not?”
“Yes,” Hannah said bluntly.
Anne smiled. “Give me a week, Hannah. That is all I ask. One week from my life. If I do not find him, then I’ll return to Dunniwerth and be the meek woman you wish of me.”
“You’ve never been meek a day of your life, Anne Sinclair,” Hannah said wryly. “The idea is madness, Anne.”
“No,” Anne said softly. “The madness would be in not heeding this feeling.” She turned away, faced the window again. “I can feel him, Hannah.” She placed her clenched fist in the middle of her chest. “As if the spirit of him lives in me as well as in his soul. Don’t tell me he’s not real. Or that this longing I feel is only a dream.”
He calls to me
. Even now, as she stood in Hannah’s cottage, it was as if she could hear him. A voice without sound. Words without speech. A longing so strong that she could not deny it. It was instinct and craving and something even more earthy and elemental. How did she explain it? Perhaps she could not.
She could not tell anyone what she felt at this moment. Not even Hannah. Perhaps she didn’t know the right words. Or they’d never been crafted. She was afraid and confident. Confused and certain. Extremes. That’s how she measured this feeling.
She turned. “Come with me, Hannah.”
“Or else you will do this thing alone?”
“I am not that foolish, Hannah.”
“But you will convince someone else,” she said dryly. “Who will explain this idiocy to your parents?”
“What could I say, Hannah? That I’ve held this from them all my life? Their hurt would vie with their disbelief.”
“Where will you go? How would you find this man who does not exist?”
“He exists,” Anne said, closing her eyes as if she saw the route in her mind. “Three days ride due south. A road veers beside a deserted abbey, and there we need to head west.”
“A vision, Anne?”
She blinked open her eyes. “Directions, Hannah.”
By the look on her face, it was clear that she had startled the older woman. “There are not that many places named Langlinais. One of the peddlers I spoke to thinks he knows it.”
Hannah pursed her lips, frowned again. Then she nodded once, a sharp jab of chin. Concession, then, in a gesture.
A
nne thought that the only jarring note to their journey was the ease with which it was accomplished. Her parents had departed two days earlier for Edinburgh. It was a coincidence of timing due more to her father’s wish to sign the Solemn League and Covenant than to happenstance. But to Anne it was as unexpected as it was blessed. It made their own departure from Dunniwerth one performed without explanations.
They wound their way south from Dunniwerth. A strange procession comprised of herself, Hannah and Ian, the tormenter of her childhood now grown and one of her father’s most trusted soldiers. Douglas, a sweet young man of slow wits and amiable disposition, made the fourth.
Hannah lost no opportunity to voice her displeasure of this quest. Ian seconded each complaint. He’d refused to accompany her at first, had agreed to do so only afer she’d made it clear that she would continue her journey with or without him.
“Tell me why you’re set to go to England, at least,” he’d said.
She’d studied him for a long moment, wondering if he would understand something so fey as her visions, her dreams of Stephen. Or would he ridicule her just as he had when they were children? She’d said nothing, remaining silent even in the face of his obvious disapproval.
Anne felt suspended in time as the days passed, neither wishing to go back, but almost afraid to reach their destination.
What would she say to Stephen when she found him?
I have seen you since you were a boy. Do you remember the time you raced over the meadow? Your horse threw you, and you lay there for the longest time. I was afraid you were dead. But then you began to laugh, arms and legs flung out on the grass, your face lifted to the sun
.
A hundred memories. She’d become accustomed to his presence in her life. A nightly ritual. Washing her face and hands, kneeling for her prayers, scrambling in between the sheets and waiting until sleep came. At that moment before dreams, murmuring his name. A blessing or perhaps a summons. It did not often happen, but when the visions came, when she saw him, she smiled her way into her dreams.
She was a Sinclair, and Sinclairs were always brave. A family motto if not a clan’s. She would need her courage. Not only if she did find him, but more importantly if she did not.
You do not even know if he’s real
. Hannah’s words. The only rebuttal? The image of Stephen laughing at something hidden from her. The sight of him standing so straight and tall atop the tower, staring into the distance as if he could see his future there and anticipated it. A hidden fist clenched as he endured his father’s harsh words. She’d watched as he sat intent upon his studies and other times when he’d laughed with abandon.
Could she have simply wanted him to be real so much that she had imagined him? No.
As an only child, sometimes she had been lonely. Her free hours had been spent in drawing and imagining. She was, upon occasion, even known to talk to Stephen as if he were a playmate she’d devised for herself. There were nights when she’d begged for another story from Gordon, who was talented in such things. She had sat there captivated by heroes and mystics, curses and prophecies.
She could not deny that she had been a child immersed, sometimes, in a world of her own creating. Even her sketches mirrored her love of fantasy.
But she had not imagined Stephen. Not a boy with midnight blue eyes and a dimple on his left cheek. Not a man with a tiny scar near his right eye.
If she had dreamed him, she would have made him less sober these last years. Given him a smile that came more often. She would have given him back the laughter he seemed to have lost in his childhood.
He was real. He had to be. And somehow she needed to find him.
It was not fancy that sent her on this journey. Nor boredom. She had been to Edinburgh twice, and the discomfort of the journey had not endeared travel to her. The feeling she experienced now was something she did not quite understand. It was as if she were being driven to do it and had no choice. The yearning within her was so strong that it felt elemental. As natural as birds flying south or the first flowers of spring popping up beneath the icy crust of earth. A quest that she could not help but perform.
Even Hannah had understood how important this journey was to her. She would have, if she had not found someone to accompany her, traveled on her own. An act of madness, perhaps.
Was she mad? Or simply in the thrall of something she didn’t understand? She would know the answer to that question when she found him. And if she didn’t.
There were fifty of them. All united under one goal, to move and protect the artillery that lumbered behind the Parliamentarian army commanded by General Thomas Penroth.
Their posts of guarding the six cannon had been awarded to them for the reason that they were exemplary soldiers. Not one of them had ever been disciplined. They obeyed orders to the letter. But more importantly, they believed in their cause. They were dedicated to the goal of removing the king from power.
The army was five days’ ride away, but the cannon traveled slower due both to their size and weight and the care that had to be taken with them. Several outriders had been posted to guard the roads both ahead of the artillery and behind it. Capture of the cannon royale could very well determine the outcome of the war, turn the tide in the Royalists’ favor.
One of his men rode up to David Newbury, the lieutenant in charge of the cannon. “There are riders approaching, sir.”
“How many?”
“Not a large group, sir. Two men and two women.”
“Too many to be spies, Samuel. Too few to be of any danger. Still, it’s rumored to be Royalist territory.”
“Should we intercept them, sir?”
“Do so,” he said, frowning.
“They may be nothing more than innocent travelers, sir.”
“I’m aware of that, Samuel,” he said, allowing the barest trace of irritation to color his voice.
It was Ian who saw them first. A party of about twenty men riding toward them from the base of the hill. They were soberly dressed in black garments covered with dust. Well-worn crows.
“I don’t like the odds,” Ian said, his face grim. He glanced at Anne and then at Hannah. “They may be friendly or not. If I give the word, I want you to ride as fast as you can for the other side of the hill. Try to find cover.”
“What will you do, Ian?” Anne asked, glancing at him quickly.
“I’ll be right behind you,” he said with a smile. “I’ve no wish to be a hero on English soil.”
It was not hard to guess Hannah’s thoughts from the look on her face.
This is what I feared all along
. Hannah, however, chose this moment to remain silent, a restraint for which Anne silently thanked her.
She only wished her friend rode with more competence. The past six days had not been easy on Hannah, but fulminating looks had been the only complaint she’d offered. She commanded her horse with tentativeness. If they were forced to flee, speed would be necessary, and that was only accomplished if a rider had control of his mount.
Anne glanced at the route Ian had indicated. There was a narrow track that cut across the hill, a crossing evidently used by farmers to drive cattle or sheep. The problem with taking that path was their ignorance as to what lay on the other side of the hill. Was it meadow or river or impassible terrain?
Such caution might not be necessary. The men who approached them might well be no more than travelers. But as they rode closer, the men at either end edged forward until the line of riders curved toward them. Not unlike a trap.
Anne moved her horse further from Ian, then reached down and gripped Hannah’s reins. The three of them exchanged a look. Douglas, behind and to the left, was in blissful ignorance of what was transpiring.
Ian sat silent until the riders came closer. A man, evidently their leader, separated himself from the group. His glance swept over them, dismissed Anne and Hannah. Anne had received such looks before from men who’d come to Dunniwerth and were ignorant of the fact that she was Robert Sinclair’s daughter. The same men, when introduced to her, fawned all over her in an effort to please. A lesson that had not gone unlearned. Rudeness was a weapon often used against the poor and the defenseless.
Anne gripped the reins tighter and clamped her teeth over words she ached to say. But she was no fool. She’d grown up with warriors. Even now, amidst smiles and bland words, Ian and the man who faced him vied for dominance. One did not get between two men taking each other’s measure. It was a subtle posturing, one she’d watched a thousand times before. At Dunniwerth, however, the prize had been a woman’s favor or a tankard of whiskey. Not the right to travel a road unimpeded.
“We’ve no political leanings,” Ian was saying. “We’re only simple travelers.”
“Scots,” the man said, the inflection in his voice giving the impression that he thought little of their nationality.
“Yes.”
“Your business?”
“Why would you wish to know? Are the roads guarded now?”
“For your purposes, yes.” The look on the other man’s face could only be called a smirk. It did nothing to mitigate the angry red flush on her clansman’s face.