Thorn in My Heart (9 page)

He would not presume to pray. How could he possibly ask Almighty God to listen to the prayer of a sinner such as he? Yet another burning coal to add to his head: There'd been no hour of family worship that night, not after his brother and he had turned the kitchen into a batdeground. Every night but this one the supper table would be cleared and the family Bible lifted from its timeworn box by the hearth. “Let us worship God,” the elder McKie would say, his tone solemn, his intentions clear. The household servants would join them, quietly
taking their seats on wooden benches along the far wall. When his father lined out a psalm with a tuneless voice, they'd respond in unison with the familiar words from the Psalter: “Happy is he that hath the God of Jacob for his help, whose hope is in the LORD his God.”

Hope.
Jamie had litde hope left. Evans threat was not an idle one. His brother longed to kill him and soon—before Jamie could marry and produce a son who would inherit Glentrool in his stead. Leaving was a necessity, and so was a hasty marriage.

The LORD of hosts is with us.
His father's favorite prayer from Psalms echoed in Jamie's heart.
The God of Jacob is our refuge.

Refuge.
Hiding among stones, running for his life. An odd place for the laird's newly blessed son to find himself. There was naught to be done but sleep and hope the
morns morn
might bring some relief from his guilt. Jamie unbuttoned his waistcoat and tucked his traveling pouch inside his voluminous shirt for safekeeping, then wrapped himself in the plaid, his cocked hat put aside for the night. He would sleep only a short while, intending to leave before dawn.

Unless Evan found him first.

With a stone beneath his head and a tawny owl hooting
too-whit, too-whit
from a neighboring tree, Jamie shifted on the granite slab until he felt reasonably comfortable. “Let me sleep the sleep of the dead,” he murmured as his eyes drifted shut and his body relaxed into slumber. Beyond the dark circle of stones, a rowan twig snapped in two.

And yet, as angels in some brighter dreams
Call to the soul when man doth sleep,
So some strange thoughts transcend our wonted dreams,
And into glory peep.

H
ENRY
V
AUGHAN

G
od help me!” Jamie bolted to his feet, awake in an instant, his pulse racing. He pressed a hand to his chest, willing his heart to calm and his shallow breaths to lengthen. What had awakened him with such a start? A dream, he decided, struggling to recapture the last threads of it.

The morning sun had yet to show its face above the eastern hills, but already the air was clear. Jamie rubbed the grit from his eyes and shook his head, trying to loosen the strange visions grip on his imagination. But the dream—if it
had
been a dream—refused to be dislodged. A staircase figured into it somehow, taller than any mountain in Galloway. Not a mahogany stair, like the one at Glentrool, this one was bright and shining as a full moon in a midnight sky. Winged creatures moved up and down the stair. And the voice he'd heard! It had rumbled like thunder and roared like the sea.

Even now Jamie's insides trembled as he recalled the vivid images and the words that were spoken: “The land you sleep upon, to you will I give it, and to your seed.” It was true; all the McKie lands would be his someday, even that of Uncle Patrick, who had no heir. But what of his own seed, the children he and his lady cousin—he knew not which one—would someday bear? Was this his father's blessing, revisited in the night, or was it something more?

A light breeze lifted the hair off his neck, sending a chill down his back, waking him further. In a moment the dream would be gone for good. He hastily closed his eyes and washed clean his thoughts. Like a
snippet of a song, a spoken promise came to mind, the words as solid and true as any written on a page: “Behold, I am with you wherever you go, and will bring you again into this land. I will never leave you.”

Who
would be with him? Was that Alec McKie's voice he heard echoing through his dreams?
Nae.
The words were different and the voice like none he had ever heard before. Slowly opening his eyes again, Jamie lifted his gaze to Merrick's peaks and the sky above it, washed with stars. “Who is it?” he whispered to the heavens. “Who is the one who will never leave me?”

Not his father, doomed to leave this world only too soon.

Not his mother, nearly forty years his senior and aging by the hour.

Not his brother, who would leave him for dead if he could.

Who?
Who would never forsake him?

And then Jamie knew. And knowing, he fell to his knees on the hard rock. This was no ordinary dream. The Almighty, the Holy One, had come to him in the dark of night. In a prayer, in a dream, in no more than a vapor, the Maker of heaven and earth had come to his rocky bedside. Had come to watch over him—
him
, James Lachlan McKie—to bless and protect an ungrateful son who'd deceived his father and stolen his brothers blessing.

Jamie's mind reeled, his eyes stinging with tears. How was it possible? No one deserved God's favor less than he did.
No one.
Undone, he ran his hands across the stone slab, trying to grasp the astounding truth: Almighty God still cared for his wretched soul. The Father of mercy and God of all consolation had not punished him for his sins. Instead, he had stood by him in the night and offered him hope for the future.

“Bethankit!”
Jamie whispered to the ancient stones. “God be thanked.”

And he
was
grateful. Grateful to be spared his brother's vengeance, to have lived through the night to see another day. Could he put his thanks into words? Speak to the One who'd spoken to him in the night? Jamie sat back on his heels and began as though Thomas Findlay or some other friendly soul were sitting across from him at Glentrool's dining table. “If it please you, be with me, merciful Father. Show me the
way to Auchengray and the way home. Give me bread for each day and clothes to cover my back.”

Jamie's face grew warm as he realized he'd not prayed in such a manner before, right and good as it seemed that Sabbath morning. Dare he ask for provisions so boldly, without making some promise in return? He grabbed the loose rock that had served as his pillow and held it aloft. “May this stone be my witness. If you do as I've asked, a portion of all that I have now and in years to come will belong to you.” With a new and unfamiliar sense of reverence, he placed the rock on top of the cairn and rose to his feet, brushing the dust off his hands.

Around him the air was growing lighter and the sky more dove gray than dark blue. As if he were just now waking and seeing things for the first time, he noticed his borrowed plaid in a
slitterie
heap near his feet, apparendy discarded during his resdess slumber. His gelding Walloch waited elsewhere for him, boarded with the stable lad at House o’ the Hill. At least he'd not dreamed of losing his mount while he slept among the plants and rocks. He rubbed a berry-stained hand across his stubbly face. “You were a tired man, Jamie McKie, to claim a stone for a pillow.”

“Aye,” a gruff male voice behind him answered. “And a fool as well.”

Jamie spun on his boot heel and reached down for his dirk, then froze, his dream forgotten, his hand gripping nothing but air.

“Missing somethin, lad?” An old Gypsy stood a stone's throw away, his arms folded over his chest, a wry grin stretched across his craggy features. “Have ye naught in yer boot but breeches and stockings?”

Jamie straightened, his peaceful thoughts gone, his face hot. Bad enough that he hadn't heard the man approach. He'd also missed the deft fingers that had lifted the dirk from his boot as he slept. Jamie made certain that his words, at least, bore a sharp edge. “I suppose you know the whereabouts of my blade.”

The elderly man's face darkened beneath the brim of his cap. “Nae, I do not. All I know is that on my way to Monnigaff I came upon a daft young man talking to himself while standing on an auld grave. And a rude lad at that, accusing me of stealing his dirk.” The Gypsy lowered his arms with a certain swagger, taking his time about it, and shortened
the distance between them with two firm steps. He was broadly built and short in the legs, his strength apparent from the thickness of his arms. Though his clothes were plain, the silver on his boots shone. So did the fiendish gleam in his eye. “Only a fool would speak so boldly when he has no dagger, no horse, and no friend in sight.”

Jamie realized his mistake and none too soon. “I'm afraid I've misjudged you.” He couldn't bring himself to add “sir.” Not to a weather-beaten tinkler, the traveling sort who lived in a mean tent by the roadside, tinkering and trading. Jamie could flatter the man though. “You have a knack for hammering tin and sharpening blades, do you not? Surely a man wouldn't bother to steal what he could better fashion himself.”

“Aye, I make a fine knife when I put my mind to it.” As if by magic, a slim dagger appeared in the Gypsy's hand. His dark eyes, trained on the deadly blade, no longer met Jamie's gaze. It was some time before the traveler spoke again, his voice low but far from sinister. “I'll not cut ye down, lad. I'm a tinkler, not a murderer.” He sliced the blade through the air, smiling faindy as he did. “Seeing how fate has stolen yer dirk, yell be needin’ a new one.” All at once the Gypsy pinched the blade between his thumb and forefinger and extended the carved bone handle toward Jamie, an unexpected gesture of trust. “Have ye a shilling to spare?”

Jamie nodded immediately, weak with relief. “Aye, I do.” If it came to it, he'd buy back his own knife to be rid of the man and his foreign ways. “Right here in my leather pouch.” He patted his shirt, surprised when his hand touched nothing but cambric and skin. “Och, it must be wrapped in my plaid.” He bent down to shake the length of wool, chagrined to see nothing fly out but blades of grass and bits of dirt. Had the pouch fallen among the rocks while he tossed and turned in his dreams? Cold dread knotted in the pit of his stomach as he began to search. It had to be there. It
must
be. He jammed his hands down one crevice after another, avoiding the truth as long as possible.

“Ye've not lost yer purse, have ye?”

Jamie finally stood, biting back an oath. “So it appears.” Furious, he
kicked the stone slab, then ignored the pain that shot through his foot. No use denying it: The leather pouch was nowhere to be found. His shirts and bannocks could be spared, but without coin or banknote, his journey was over before it had begun. And to think, he'd promised a portion of it to God! Let the Almighty find his own silver. As to his midnight blessing, God could do with it as he pleased. Clearly his words had not improved Jamie's lot one bit. In mere hours he'd gone from being laird of all the land to a penniless vagrant.

The missing purse no longer of interest, the tinkler squinted at Jamie's stony bed. “Tell me ye didn't sleep among those berries?”

Jamie was in no mood for Gypsy lore. “What of it?” he growled.

“Don't ye know the plant, man? That's belladonna.”

“Bell
what?”

“What a stupid lot ye gentry are!” The Gypsy threw up his hands and stamped about the stony ground like a man possessed. “Ye wrapped yerself up for the night in a patch of plants meant to kill ye.”

“Kill me?” Jamie stepped back, eying the crushed berries on his plaid.

“Ye're lucky ye didn't lose more than yer silver.” The Gypsy, still huffing, came to a halt in front of him. “Let me see yer eyes. Come along; I wont hurt ye. Haven't I already offered ye a blade, and me without one in the other hand ready to cut ye?”

Reluctantly Jamie let the man jerk down his chin and peer into his eyes, ignoring the reek of onions on the Gypsy's breath and the grime on his hands. “What are you looking for, man?”

“Just what I've found. The centers of yer eyes are black as pitch. In a moment, when the sun is brighter, ye'll be squeezin ‘em shut from the pain. I'm surprised ye can even talk. Most times the voice is gone.”

“The voice?” Jamie jerked his chin out of the man's grasp. “What are you saying?”

“Have ye not heard of deadly nightshade?”

Jamie had heard of it all right. Though he was not an expert in plant lore, Scottish history was another matter. “The soldiers of Macbeth poisoned a whole army of Danes with it. Chaucer called it
dwale.”

“Aye, but the Scots call it something else: Jacobs ladder.” Bending over the offensive plant, the tinkler poked at it with his dirk. “They say, the auld wives do, that men who taste the berries of belladonna—or nightshade or dwale or whatever name ye choose—will sleep the sleep of the dead. No wonder ye didn't feel your dirk and pouch slip away.” The Gypsy looked up, his face lit with curiosity. “They also say the berries give a man ferocious dreams. Was that the way of it?”

Jamie slowly nodded, noticing for the first time that morning how lightheaded and wobbly kneed he felt. Last night's dream—the light, the voice, the words, the angels, the tall, bright
thing hcd
seen—had it merely been the leafy spell of Jacobs ladder addling his sleepy brain? How real it had seemed! And how grieved he was to think it might not be. “I dreamed…,” he began, hearing a slight quaver in his voice. “I dreamed I talked to God.”

“Almighty God talkin to the likes of ye? Ha!” The Gypsy spun in a circle, cackling like an old crone, arms flung out wide. The polished tin buttons on his coat caught the first full rays of the sun. “Did no one ever warn ye, lad?” he shouted, delighted with himself. “Ye should never tell a lie on the Sabbath.”

Can wealth give happiness? look round and see
What gay distress! what splendid misery!

E
DWARD
Y
OUNG

L
eana frowned at her reflection in the one decent looking glass in the house, a mirror with half the silvering worn off, mounted over her dressing table.
Serviceable
was the only word one could use to describe her hat. It was the same hat she'd worn every Sunday for four years, and it had not improved with age.