Page 11 of Draped in Plaid
Logan gave a curt nod, his gaze sliding to mine, showing strength in their dark depths. My stomach did about a hundred flips, but I managed to stay steady on my feet.
What was I going to find inside this room? Who had come early? Why was Queen Joan asking for me? Who was Queen Joan?
I closed my eyes and drew in a deep, steadying breath. Preparing myself for what I was going to find. Shoulders thrown back, I allowed myself to be drawn into the room, which smelled thick with blood. I’d not made it two feet into the room before a piercing cry, followed by a second holler sounded. Babies.
I stared at a massive royal bed, deep red velvet curtains pulled back with ropes. Lying on the immense mattress was the tiny, limp, pale body of a woman. Her linen shift was soaked through with sweat, her legs tucked up, and blood pooled on the sheet beneath her. Tendrils of darkened hair, wet with perspiration, curled around her sharp facial features. Her brow was creased and mouth slack with exhaustion. Two female servants stood beside her, each holding a squealing bundle, while a midwife knelt between her thighs caring for her tender birth canal.
The screaming, it had been Queen Joan giving birth to twins.Twins. I couldn’t see only their tiny bundled bodies, but the way the hair lifted on the back of my neck, I had a fairly good idea of who these two babies were.
“You got my message,” the new mother said a thick, wearied, medieval English accent.
“I...” What was I to say? I had no idea what message she spoke of. One wrong word and I could blow our entire mission.
“Give her the babes and leave,” the woman said with much authority to the two servants.
The women nodded, rushing forward, they placed a crying baby in each of my arms. I trembled, not with their little masses, but the weight of what was happening.
Queen Joan of Scotland. Daughter of Isabella of France, wife of King David II of Scotland. Mother of Moira and Shona.
I’d had an idea when I came into the room. Had guessed as much. But still… to have it confirmed.
I stared into their eyes, searching one and then the other. These were my friends in infant form. My friends, so innocent from everything in the world. So fresh, so trusting, so helpless.
I clutched them a little tighter, feeling an overwhelming urgency to protect them with my life. An instant bond, like the one I’d had with my son, Saor.
“Come closer,” Queen Joan said. A servant held water to her lips. The queen drank and then shooed them all out, even the midwife, until the room was empty. “My voice is weak and I would have you know all.”
I nodded, speechless still, my mind a whirl. I crept forward.
“You must take them to safety.” She licked her dry lips, staring at me with glazed eyes. I couldn’t help but wonder—who had she asked for and how did I hold their description? “You are their only hope of escaping death.”
“Death?” I whispered, quickly glancing down at the two innocently sleeping babies.
“My mother, she tried to protect me,” the queen continued. “To keep the secret of my pregnancy from reaching the wrong ears, but I fear they know. They will come and they will kill them.”
“What am I to do?” My chest hurt with the enormity of what she was asking. One wrong move and my two dear friends would simply disappear into time and space. I had the power at this moment to altar history irreparably. Their future was entirely in my hands.
Queen Joan narrowed her eyes. “You already know, why are you asking me?” She pushed herself up on her elbows a little more, doubt creeping into her eyes. Her weary gaze flipped to her daughters, a flash of panic over her face.
I had to calm her, else she sound the alarm and then I’d never know what happened to my friends.
“Albert McAlister,” I whispered, praying against all odds that was the one she’d sought help from. Had to be. Why else would he have been involved? “He sent me.”
“Aye.” Relief flooded her features and she lay back down.
“Do you trust him fully?” I asked, openly curious, and knowing this might spark another pang of fear in her, but I had to know. If it was my task to see the babies to McAlister, then I had to know their mother trusted him.
“With the lives of my two children, aye.” Again, she gave me that stare, wavering in her conviction of me.
I had to think quickly, before she took the babes away, before she changed her mind with her fear of me. “I but wanted to be certain you understood the enormity of your choice.”
“My precious babes.” Joan swiped at the tears that fell large and quick from her eyes and nodded gravely. “My duty to my husband, to our countries, was to birth an heir, to unite us all. But he is a prisoner of the English king, once my king, though now my husband is my king. But not a king at all. King Edward permitted me to visit David in order to conceive, but he did not do so without whispering to me of what would happen should I bear a child.”
“That is cruel,” I murmured, brushing my lips on the foreheads of the babies.
“So very cruel.” She reached for a cup by her bedside, struggling until the lip touched her fingers and she could pull it to her mouth. If I weren’t holding her two babies, I would have helped. “I didn’t even have the heart to tell David he was to be a father. And I never will. We will be separated for the rest of our lives. Of that, I am certain. And it would kill him to know his children were not safe. This must remain a secret. They must live, even if it is without us.”
I nodded, knowing that the history books said there was no heir from Joan and David. Only rumors of the missing princesses.
