Page 12 of Beyond Dreams

Nothing is real. I’ll be gone soon, she repeated over and over, trying to calm herself once more.

She was directed back to the stool and two women began work on her now mostly dry hair. There was no mirror to see what arrangement they were attempting, but when they began to spin sections of the sides into tight knots, Holly abruptly and impatiently waved them off. She finger-combed her hair loose again. “No. Leave it. I’m not getting married looking like some slutty Princess Leia wannabe.” More importantly, she was pretty sure her loose hair, pulled over her shoulders, would adequately hide how indecent was the bodice of this gown.

Closing her eyes, she focused on her breathing, trying to muster calm in the midst of this current stressful storm.

After a moment, she stood and faced Sidheag. “Let’s just get this over with.”

Chapter Four

Mounted on a coal blackhorse, Duncan MacQuillan led the party through the narrow glen, away from the sea and its salty air, away from Thallane. Summer was in full bloom all around, in field and flower, even as the green bounty of the season was rather shrouded in gray courtesy of the day’s somber sky. A heavy blanket of clouds was draped over the peaks of the hills flanking the glen, but Duncan remained optimistic that any rain might hold off until after they reached Hewgill House. While Thallane sat proudly at the edge of the sea, the MacHeth stronghold had been built around the same time several leagues inland.

There was some oft repeated but unreliable folklore attached to the original MacHeth and the first MacQuillan erecting their fortresses in the same year more than two centuries ago. The tales said that once those men had been brothers-in-arms who had come to then king Alexander’s aid after he’d been attacked by men from Moray and Mearns while holding court at Invergowie. After Eadmer MacHeth and Malcolm MacQuillan had helped the king seek retribution, chasing the infidels to Beauly where they were crushed, the king granted both men bountiful strips of land in Gairloch, along the North Sea, thousands of acres each. If the tales were true, Eadmer had squawked at the benevolence, believing they’d been gifted infertile land, too close to the sea, a belittlement he’d thought, imagining the king had reduced their merit to that of shepherds since rearing sheep might be all the land was good for. Malcolm MacQuillan had not quibbled with the gift, but had offered Eadmer MacHeth the more productive interior land, taking for himself that larger tract along the sea’s rim. Pleased by this, they’d begun to construct their homesteads, Malcolm starting work on the original tower of Thallane, which still stood today. And his land was suitable for crops, he discovered, while the MacHeth learned that his was not. The myth, certainly that adhered to by the MacHeths, would insist that Malcolm had purposefully tricked Eadmer out of the more arable soil. The truth, as known by the MacQuillans for generations now, was that Eadmer knew very little about agriculture and was interested in learning no more. And of greater importance, he was slothful by nature, sluggish to act and react to ideas and improvements, even those that should have been worthy of his consideration.

And so the feud began, if the accounts were to be believed. Before both Malcolm and Eadmer died many years later, they would have met and fought as enemies more than once. Nothing had changed then, for almost two hundred years.

Hopefully, wedding the MacHeth sister and joining the two families would finally put the ancient quarrel to rest.

Duncan glanced down and swiped his hand over his plaid at his chest, where the pleats furrowed slightly. He was garbed in a clean and fine tunic of fawn linen over which his MacQuillan plaid was laid. A thistle brooch of polished pewter held the plaid in place over his heart. At his hip hung the decorative sword that had been his father’s before him, which had been gifted first to Duncan’s grandsire at his wedding by King Alexander III after the Battle of Largs. Another bone of contention that, the MacQuillan’s constant good treaty with the kings of Scotland. In fact, the MacHeths’ latest grievance had come in recent years. Despite their own regular looting and raiding and their regular pilfering of MacQuillan sheep and cattle, Hugh MacHeth had taken issue with Duncan and his MacQuillan army for taking the right flank position in William Wallace’s army, a position of high honor, appointed by Wallace himself, but which MacHeth had alleged as being coerced. As if William Wallace would not have recognized a pretender, or one not committed to the cause, as if he would have assigned the position to a man and army not fit for the role. It was spiteful and trifling shite such as that which peeved Duncan most of all. Had they no common enemy they might unite and fight against? Aye, they did, but the MacHeths didn’t care, pleased to seethe in their mountain retreat, plotting petty revenges.

Duncan would be pleased to put it all to rest. If that might actually be the case. He had only hope, and little more than that, that Hugh MacHeth’s word might be true. After Falkirk, in which both Hugh and his brother had been injured, they’d not appeared anymore on another battlefield aside either Wallace or any other great army fighting for good cause. The spiteful thieving, all they got about these days, Duncan could almost live with—that alone did not necessitate a bloody wedding. Save that Wallace and the Guardian of Scotland had advised they needed peace everywhere in their own land. It was the esteemed Sir John de Soules who’d suggested that aside from the terms of peace between the MacHeths and MacQuillans with the wedding, that the MacHeths should assign fifty of their men-at-arms to the MacQuillan for the duration of the war. Duncan had seized on this idea, pleased to strengthen his own army for the cause and gratified as well that fifty less men would be at Hugh’s beck and call to carry out all the vindictive little schemes against the MacQuillans in the Highlands.

But would Hugh MacHeth adhere to the terms set forth in the betrothal contract?

Agitated by his own rankling thoughts, plagued by more questions and what-ifs than any certainties, Duncan slowed his destrier, allowing Graeme, his captain, to catch up with him.

He and Graeme had grown up together, their mothers having been sisters. They shared not only the same coloring, dark hair and green eyes, but they were of a similar height and build as well. Graeme, however, was construed as having a temper more restrained than Duncan’s—save for when he was riled, when his unleashed temper could be just as fierce as his cousin’s. Duncan counted him among the few men he trusted unconditionally, with his life, his plans, and what few secrets he held.

When Graeme and his chestnut steed came abreast of Duncan and his big black, Duncan said, “I do nae ken if I believe the MacHeth sincere.”

“Aye, you’ve said as much,” Graeme said. “But since Wallace himself and de Soules, the Guardian, have rather commanded this alliance, there is nae much to be done about it.” He ran his hand through his longer hair, pushing it back off his forehead. “Two ways to conceive it,” he proposed. “One, your mistrust is proven worthy and then, we’re no further ahead or behind where we were, still with the MacHeths being thorns in our sides. We might just have at them one day, nae just to answer the trifling but willful nuisances with some suitable response, but with greater force and might, to make it final.” He shrugged then, scratching a bit at his stubbled jaw. “Or, you might find he stays true to his word—to the contract anyway, urged by the mormaer from Skye—and all is well, and one less matter to concern yourself with.” Graeme smirked then, one side of his mouth lifting. “You might better be worried about what you’re going to do with a bride, aside from the obvious. I ken I like to see you thwarted here and there, all in guid fun, mate, but ken I’ve said my prayers for you, that Ceri MacHeth was nae formed in the same manner as any of her brothers. I’d wish a bonnier bride on you rather than that.”

Duncan snorted his appreciation for this concern. Hugh MacHeth was not anything you’d want to spend any long moments staring at if you didn’t have to. “Aye, but by all accounts, the MacHeth sister escaped the hideous curse.”

“I did hear that,” Graeme admitted. “Hope it was nae bandied about simply because they were seeking a groom at the time.” Reaching across the small divide between them, Graeme clapped him on the back. “That’s what darkness is for, Dunc—how the wee bairns are made with the ugly ones. You willna be the first man or woman squeezing eyes shut just to get the deed done.”

Great. So much to look forward to.

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