Snow Raven (42 page)

Ran glanced at his namesake, the glittering black waters as impenetrable as his gaze. No emotion showed on his profile, except possibly a quiet resolve. She prayed it was not a sign of surrender. Merry squeezed his waist with her linked hands, reminding him she was there.

* * *

EDZELL’S MEDIEVAL BATTLEMENTS AND turrets had never looked more ominous, sketched against a rumbling gray sky. The storm had followed them, winging swiftly in from the west, roiling above them now like an omen of darkest intent.

Ran’s mount was spent, and limped the last half mile. Sir Jasper forced the couple to walk. Merry never knew how she found her own last reserves of strength, but somehow they were there when she most needed them, and she was able to keep up with Ran as they abandoned the horse grazing on the hill and slowly picked their way down through the rocks with their escort.

The castle loomed strangely silent and forbidding above them. There seemed nobody on watch. They were able to reach the gates without sounding an alarm. It was a sign something odd was going on within Edzell’s walls, but Sir Jasper was too cheered by the lack of defense to care.

“Obviously Lady Deuchar is wiser than her brother,” the Englishman chuckled as he drew his mount to a halt in the courtyard. “Else the Tudors took the fight out of her, and I would hardly complain in either case.”

Ran shrugged, somewhat nonplussed by the eerie silence. Perhaps the residents had escaped by some unusual means. He remembered his mother complaining about a secret passage used by the original Lindsays. It had been sealed off once, but the wood boards had rotted away and the children had found and used the old tunnel in their games of hide-and-seek. He tried to remember exactly where it was. In later years, he had roamed around Edzell several times, trying to find it again, but unable to find any sign of a hidden door. While Wickham and the others dismounted and secured their captives, a few men poked around in the hall and returned to report the keep was deserted.

Sir Jasper frowned and stroked his goatee, then nodded. “The lady and her household have obviously fled, but it matters not. I have everything I need right here, and the queen’s men are unlikely to return after such a thorough inspection.” He chuckled as he kicked at a ripped tapestry left lying trampled in the mud. Merry was horrified by the obvious ransacking which had taken place during the English occupation, but Ran squeezed her arm reassuringly, a silent reminder objects could be replaced, people could not.

Fortunately Darra and her retainers had escaped, doubtless halfway to Edinburgh by now and appealing to James Stuart for protection. The true danger came now not from the queen, but a madman posing as English gentry.

The first order of business for Sir Jasper was accessing the dungeons. When he ordered Hugo to the task of escorting the prisoners there, Merry paled but remained stalwart beside Ran. The giant prodded them forward with the tip of his blade, with Ran at a healthy distance.

“I’ll go first,” Ran said, silently holding Merry back above the stairs descending into the gloom. “’Tis dangerous when you don’t know the way. Stay close behind.” He gave her a faint, reassuring smile, and started down the stone steps, her hand securely in his.

“There are steps to the bottom, but some are broken.” Ran’s voice was muffled as he helped her down after him, Hugo’s weapon urging them both. Merry clutched at Ran’s and they crept carefully down the crumbling steps into the black void below.

An icy wind sighed and moaned around them, propelled by some unseen force beyond the abyss that loomed ahead. Only Ran’s hand—strong, solid, and warm with life—kept Merry from turning and trying to flee back to the safety of the familiar world above, Hugo’s sword be damned. Finally they reached the bottom of Edzell’s dungeons, the damp, musty smells embracing them like death itself. Merry shivered. As they moved cautiously onward, down narrow corridors, bits of earth and rock debris crumbled from the rough walls around them. Merry felt several clods strike her.

Ran’s voice echoed back to her. “There’s a torch up ahead. Just a wee bit farther.”

Merry fancied the unstable walls around them were beginning to collapse inward. Her breathing quickened, every step seemed to bring her inches closer to the edge of losing control. Panic swept over her like a cold, suffocating fog. She held Ran’s hand in a vise like grip. Sensing her terror, he spoke again, very softly in his Scottish burr:

“Easy, m’love. Almost there. Concentrate on the light, Merry. The light.”

Step by step her fears receded as Merry fixated on the faint, single glow from a torch at the far end of the dungeon and listened to her husband’s soothing voice. Soon only the wind was left to tease at her hair and wrap its icy, invisible tendrils around her heart. Memories of being accidentally shut up in the cellar as a child, of screaming until she was hoarse, until she vomited with fear, rose to choke her now. She was terrified of the horrid darkness, of dying here sealed up in a living tomb, but she feared being alone more. With Ran, it was bearable. She forced down the hysteria, scrabbling for a grip on sanity if only to rub her dignity in Sir Jasper’s face.

Suddenly they were free of the twisting corridors. The cold, damp walls of Edzell’s dungeon surrounded them instead, but these walls were comforting compared to the narrow confines of the steps coming down. Merry took in great, deep gulps of the dank air. She saw Ran regarding the wildly flickering torch fixed above them in an iron sconce with something akin to fascination.

“Somebody’s just come and gone this way,” he said, frowning. “Look, Hugo.”

The giant regarded him suspiciously. He waved the point of the blade at Ran. “Step over there.”

Ran shrugged, started to move. The moment he pulled his hand free of Merry’s, he pushed her back behind him and leapt for the bigger man in a calculated gamble. Hugo swore, stumbling back a couple paces, but managed to keep his grip on the weapon. Merry heard the impact of bodies, the whistle of steel screamed.

“Nay!”

Ran did not fall before her dazed, terrified eyes. Instead, the arc of a blade from the shadows knocked the claymore from Hugo’s two-fisted grip, sent the heavy weapon spinning end over end. It came to rest with a clatter upon the dungeon floor, seconds before Ran met his end at the point of the same blade.

A chuckle rang off the mossy stone walls. “Why, Hugo, I never dreamed the disarming trick you taught me would come in so handy one day.”

Stunned, Hugo stared at the shadows where Gilbert Lindsay materialized. So did Ran and Merry. For the innocence of youth had been replaced by a grim demeanor they hardly recognized. Gone was the laughing lad with the twinkling eyes, in his stead a young man determined to preserve his family at any cost.

Nothing resembling empathy flickered across Gil’s face as he looked at Hugo, though his voice shook slightly. “You were as a brother to me,” he said. “I trusted you with my secrets, my very life. This is how you repay us all …”

“Ye snivelin’ little cur, I
am
yer brother,” Hugo sneered back, when he regained his composure. “Bastard kin, aye, but nae less a Lindsay for it.” The giant pointed a thick finger accusingly at Ran. “The Wolf of Badanloch ken it all along.”

Gil’s blade did not waver from Hugo’s throat. Merry had never imagined his violet-blue eyes could be so icy. “I know not what you speak of, Hugo,” he said congenially. “I am The Wolf of Badanloch.” He acknowledged Ran with a nod. “With all due respect to my honorable predecessor.”

Comprehension dawned. Ran stared at his younger brother. “Gil—”

“I’ll brook no quarrel about it, Ran,” Gil said calmly. “Take Merry now, and go. My men have secured Edzell from without. We are thrice in number. Darra and the staff are safe at Auchmull.”

“Wickham?”

“Dead.” Gil’s voice was flat, cold. “He will not trouble you again.”

Ran nodded, gazing at Gil a long moment as if to memorize the youth he had been, or the man he had become. Merry, too, sought the handsome young man’s face for a vestige of the Gilbert Lindsay she had known, but he had vanished. Part of her mourned, but another realized it was inevitable. The brutal Highlands had won.

Gil was waiting for them to leave. “Go, please.” His gaze had dismissed them, now rested unwavering upon Hugo.

His order brought Merry from her reverie. With a final look at his brother, Ran gripped her tightly by the elbow, guiding her out past the men back down the narrow corridor. Merry fled, stumbling and gasping, across tile dank dungeon to the spiral of steps leading upward into the main hold. Just as she gained the first stair, she heard a man’s piercing scream of agony behind them.

“Don’t look,” Ran commanded her grimly, and with a sob of quiet despair, Merry obediently turned her head and denied herself any further knowledge of the harsh justice being exacted in their wake.

* * *

RAN GAZED AT HER, surprised. “You are certain?” he asked. “You don’t wish to return to Court?”

Merry looked at the man facing her in Auchmull’s great hall. She shook her head.

“Nay, Ran. With your permission, I would very much like to remain Lady Lindsay. And occupy the family residence, as well.”

A few servants, including Nell and Hertha, watched in sober silence as the laird considered his lady wife’s request. None made a single move to interrupt the moment. They were wise enough not to ask questions. Especially questions concerning the continuing legend of The Wolf of Badanloch, said to suspiciously resemble Gilbert Lindsay, nor would they voice their curiosity about a rumor of a strange pile of ashes supposedly found in Edzell’s dungeon, or what had happened to Sir Jasper Wickham. It was said the Englishman had fled to the Continent to evade the queen’s wrath, and that of the Earl of Essex’s, but his household had been left undisturbed, and many found it odd.

“Are you certain, lass?” Ran repeated, sounding worried.

Merry smiled and held out her hands to him. Ran reached out, enfolded her fingers in his own warm, calloused hands and brought them to his lips. She looked at their entwined hands, unable to tell where his flesh ended and hers began.

“Aye,” she whispered. “As certain and true as the raven flies, m’laird husband.”

Epilogue

March 1603

Richmond Palace

HARINGTON EMERGED FROM THE queen’s bedchamber, shaking his head with grave dismay. “She will not rest, nor eat, nor bestir herself for chapel.”

Merry looked up from her tangled embroidery, quickly set it aside. She had not been able to concentrate upon a single stitch the entire morn, now she knew why. There was something in the air, some foreboding come to fruition she had sensed for a long time. She saw the despair sketched in the eyes of Elizabeth Tudor’s godson and knew the hour was nigh.

She and Ran had come for Twelfth Night at Westminster, despite her husband’s worries over the lengthy journey and its toll on Merry. She had pointed out Fi was quite accustomed to traveling about during all of her pregnancies, Darra had danced until the day of her deliveries, and besides, she would not be outdone by her own twin. Lady Kat was still a neck-or-nothing rider when she had a great belly. Ran could hardly argue with her logic, and indeed he had wisely stopped arguing with Merry at all when it came to their bairns.

He had no complaints with Alasdair just turned three, and Malcolm one. Both were spitting images of their dark-eyed sire; both had been born under highly inconvenient circumstances. Alasdair made his indignant appearance a month early, as she and Ran had ridden out to picnic at Invermark in the meadow. The great Wolf of Badanloch panicked, and Merry still laughed whenever she teased Ran about his midwifery skills.

Malcolm tried to outdo his brother on Burns Night in the middle of a roaring blizzard. This time the midwife could not reach Auchmull, and though Nell was skilled, poor Lord Lindsay was reduced to tearing out his glorious hair by the time the babe showed at dawn. This third child would be born on English soil, a harsh fact for any Highlander to swallow, but word of Elizabeth Tudor’s failing health brought Merry far and fast. Ran could only serve as escort, for he knew his wife would accept no restraint on this matter.

On a stormy day in January, the queen was moved from Westminster to Richmond, and this rare public appearance after months was enough to stir gossipmongers. Superstition was rife because the coronation ring which Elizabeth had never removed before was ordered filed from her finger, as it was cutting off her circulation.

Furthermore, her face had become haggard and her frame shrunken, not unexpected at her age and after such a harsh lingering illness, but the courtiers were cruel and quick to turn, like mongrels on a wounded cur. Merry overheard some of the maids-of-honor laughing when Her Majesty refused to change her gown, the once-vainglorious Tudor queen now reduced to indifference over her toilette. Merry had rapped the ninnies smartly for their mirth, but secretly fretted over the sign. There would be more to come.

The queen’s fierce temper made her more difficult to deal with than ever. She insisted upon keeping a sword at her bedside, and from time to time waved it about and thrust it menacingly at any who distressed her. Quinsy seized her throat in February, she hardly ate, and her fevered fancy led her into muttering of golden days past and calling for Cecil or Dudley.

At such moments Merry was one of the few who could ease her distress, and though great with child, the undaunted Lady Lindsay managed to bustle about with cheerful efficiency and banish the shadows and sickness with her smiles.

Merry met Harington’s sober gaze now, and rose. “Her Grace is restless again?”

“Aye, fearfully so. There is naught which seems to bring comfort or ease.”

The young man was visibly distressed, and Merry patted his arm in passing. He was a spoiled coxcomb, like Essex had been, but in the last hours he was loyal, she saw. “Bring your books,” she said, and entered the queen’s chamber without further aplomb.

He scurried to obey, with a puzzled air. Merry did not wait, but approached the great canopied bed draped with heavy curtain frowning at the silence she encountered.