A Kingdom of Dreams (2 page)

"The Wolf is coming!" one of the women cried, clutching her babe protectively to her breast. "God have
pity
on us."

" 'Tis Merrick he'll strike at," a man shouted, his voice rising in fear. " 'Tis the laird of Merrick he'll want in his jaws, but 'tis Belkirk he'll devour on the way."

Suddenly the air was filled with gruesome predictions of fire and death and slaughter, and the children crowded around Jenny, clinging to her in mute horror. To the Scots, be they wealthy noble or lowly villager, the Black Wolf was more evil than the devil himself, and more dangerous, for the devil was a spirit, while the Wolf was flesh and blood—the living Lord of Evil—a monstrous being who threatened their existence, right here on earth. He was the malevolent specter that the Scots used to terrify their offspring into behaving. "The Wolf will get you," was the warning issued to keep children from straying into the woods or leaving their beds at night, or from disobeying their elders.

Impatient with such hysteria over what was, to her, more myth than man, Jenny raised her voice in order to be heard over the din.
" 'Tis more likely," she called, putting her arms around the terrified children who'd crowded against her at the first mention of the Wolf's name, "that he'll go back to his heathen king so that he can lick the wounds we gave him at Cornwall while he tells great lies to exaggerate his victory. And if he does not do that, he'll choose a weaker keep than Merrick for his attack—one he's a chance of breeching."

Her words and her tone of amused disdain brought startled gazes flying to her face, but it wasn't merely false bravado that had made Jenny speak so: She was a Merrick, and a Merrick never admitted to fear of any man. She had heard that hundreds of times when her father spoke to her stepbrothers, and she had adopted his creed for her own. Furthermore, the villagers were frightening the children, which she refused to let continue.

Mary tugged at Jenny's skirts to get her attention, and in a shrill little voice, she asked, "Isn't
you
afeert of the Black Wolf, Lady Jenny?"

"Of course not!" Jenny said with a bright, reassuring smile.

"They say," young Tom interjected in an awed voice, "the Wolf is as tall as a tree!"

"A tree!" Jenny chuckled, trying to make a huge joke of the Wolf and all the lore surrounding him. "If he is, 'twould be a sight worth seeing when he tries to mount his horse! Why, 'twould take
four
squires to hoist him up there!"

The absurdity of that image made some of the children giggle, exactly as Jenny had hoped.

"I heert," said young Will with an eloquent shudder, "he tears down walls with his bare hands and drinks blood!"

"Yuk!" said Jenny with twinkling eyes. "Then 'tis only indigestion which makes him so mean. If he comes to Belkirk, we'll offer him some good Scottish ale instead."

"My pa said," put in another child, "he rides with a giant beside him, a Goliath called Arik who carries a war axe and chops up children…"

"I heert—" another child interrupted ominously.

Jenny cut in lightly, "Let me tell you what
I
have heard." With a bright smile, she began to shepherd them toward the abbey, which was out of sight just beyond a bend down the road. "
I
heard," she improvised gaily, "that he's so very old that he has to squint to see, just like this—"

She screwed up her face in a comical exaggeration of a befuddled, near-blind person peering around blankly, and the children giggled.

As they walked along, Jenny kept up the same light-hearted teasing comments, and the children fell in with the game, adding their own suggestions to make the Wolf seem absurd.

But despite the laughter and seeming gaiety of the moment, the sky had suddenly darkened as a bank of heavy clouds rolled in, and the air was turning bitingly cold, whipping Jenny's cloak about her, as if nature herself brooded at the mention of such evil.

Jenny was about to make another joke at the Wolf's expense, but she broke off abruptly as a group of mounted clansmen rounded the bend from the abbey, coming toward her down the road. A beautiful girl, clad as Jenny was in the somber gray gown, white wimple, and short gray veil of a novice nun, was mounted in front of the leader, sitting demurely sideways in his saddle, her timid smile confirming what Jenny already knew.

With a silent cry of joy, Jenny started to dash forward, then checked the unladylike impulse and made herself stay where she was. Her eyes clung to her father, then drifted briefly over her clansmen, who were staring past her with the same grim disapproval they'd shown her for years—ever since her stepbrother had successfully circulated his horrible tale.

Sending the children ahead with strict orders to go directly to the abbey, Jenny waited in the middle of the road for what seemed like an eternity until, at last, the group halted in front of her.

Her father, who'd obviously stopped at the abbey where Brenna, Jenny's stepsister, was also staying, swung down from his horse, then he turned to lift Brenna down. Jenny chafed at the delay, but his scrupulous attention to courtesy and dignity was so typical of the great man that a wry smile touched her lips.

Finally, he turned fully toward her, opening his arms wide. Jenny hurtled into his embrace, hugging him fiercely, babbling in her excitement: "Father, I've missed you so! 'Tis nearly two years since I've seen you! Are you well? You look well. You've scarce changed in all this time!"

Gently disentangling her arms from about his neck, Lord Merrick set his daughter slightly away from him while his gaze drifted over her tousled hair, rosy cheeks, and badly rumpled gown. Jenny squirmed inwardly beneath his prolonged scrutiny, praying that he approved of what he saw and that, since he'd obviously stopped at the abbey already, the abbess's report had been pleasing to him.

Two years ago, her behavior had gotten her sent to the abbey; a year ago, Brenna had been sent down here for safety's sake while the laird was at war. Under the abbess's firm guidance, Jenny had come to appreciate her strengths, and to try to overcome her faults. But as her father inspected her from head to toe, she couldn't help wondering if he saw the young lady she was now or the unruly girl she'd been two years ago. His blue eyes finally returned to her face and there was a smile in them. "Ye've become a woman, Jennifer."

Jenny's heart soared; coming from her taciturn father, such a comment constituted high praise. "I've changed in other ways too, Father," she promised, her eyes shining. "I've changed a great deal."

"Not
that
much, my girl." Raising his shaggy white brows, he looked pointedly at the short veil and wimple hanging forgotten from her fingertips.

"Oh!" Jenny said, laughing and anxious to explain. "I was playing hoodman-blind… er… with the children, and it wouldn't fit beneath the hood. Have you seen the abbess? What did Mother Ambrose tell you?"

Laughter sparked in his somber eyes. "She told me," he replied dryly, "that ye've a habit of sitting on yon hill and gazing off into the air, dreaming, which sounds familiar, lassie. And she told me ye've a tendency to nod off in the midst of mass, should the priest sermonize longer than you think seemly, which also sounds familiar."

Jenny's heart sank at this seeming betrayal from the abbess whom she so admired. In a sense, Mother Ambrose was laird of her own grand demesne, controlling revenues from the farmlands and livestock that belonged to the splendid abbey, presiding at table whenever there were visitors, and dealing with all other matters that involved the laymen who worked on the abbey grounds as well as the nuns who lived cloistered within its soaring walls.

Brenna was terrified of the stern woman, but Jenny loved her, and so the abbess's apparent betrayal cut deeply.

Her father's next words banished her disappointment. "Mother Ambrose also told me," he admitted with gruff pride, "that you've a head on your shoulders befitting an abbess herself. She said you're a Merrick through and through, with courage enough to be laird of yer own clan. But you'll no' be that," he warned, dashing Jenny's fondest dream.

With an effort, Jenny kept the smile pinned to her face, refusing to feel the hurt of being deprived of that right—a right that had been promised to her until her father married Brenna's widowed mother and acquired three stepsons in the bargain.

Alexander, the eldest of the three brothers, would assume the position that had been promised to her. That, in itself, wouldn't have been nearly so hard to bear if Alexander had been nice, or even fair-minded, but he was a treacherous, scheming liar, and Jenny knew it, even if her father and her clan did not. Within a year after coming to live at Merrick keep, he'd begun carrying tales about her, tales so slanderous and ghastly, but so cleverly contrived, that, over a period of years, he'd turned her whole clan against her. That loss of her clan's affection still hurt unbearably. Even now, when they were looking through her as if she didn't exist for them, Jenny had to stop herself from pleading with them to forgive her for things she had not done.

William, the middle brother, was like Brenna—sweet and as timid as can be—while Malcolm, the youngest, was as evil and as sneaky as Alexander. "The abbess also said," her father continued, "that you're kind and gentle, but you've spirit, too…"

"She said all that?" Jenny asked, dragging her dismal thoughts from her stepbrothers. "Truly?"

"Aye." Jenny would normally have rejoiced in that answer, but she was watching her father's face, and it was becoming more grim and tense than she had ever seen it. Even his voice was strained as he said, " 'Tis well you've given up your heathenish ways and that you're all the things you've become, Jennifer."

He paused as if unable or unwilling to continue, and Jenny prodded gently, "Why is that, Father?"

"Because," he said, drawing a long, harsh breath, "the future of the clan will depend on your answer to my next question."

His words trumpeted in her mind like blasts from a clarion, leaving Jenny dazed with excitement and joy: "
The future of the clan depends on you
…"She was so happy, she could scarcely trust her ears. It was as if she were up on the hill overlooking the abbey, dreaming her favorite daydream—the one where her father always came to her and said, "
Jennifer, the future of the clan depends on you. Not your stepbrothers. You
." It was the chance she'd been dreaming of to prove her mettle to her clansmen and to win back their affection. In that daydream, she was always called upon to perform some incredible feat of daring, some brave and dangerous deed, like scaling the wall of the Black Wolf's castle and capturing him single-handedly. But no matter how daunting the task, she never questioned it, nor hesitated a second to accept the challenge.

She searched her father's face. "What would you have me do?" she asked eagerly. "Tell me, and I will! I'll do any—"

"Will you
marry
Edric MacPherson?"

"Whaaat?" gasped the horrified heroine of Jenny's daydream. Edric MacPherson was older than her father; a wizened, frightening man who'd looked at her in a way that made her skin crawl ever since she'd begun to change from girl to maiden.

"Will you, or will you no'?"

Jenny's delicate auburn brows snapped together. "Why?" asked the heroine who never questioned.

A strange, haunted look darkened his face. "We took a beating at Cornwall, lass—we lost half our men. Alexander was killed in battle. He died like a Merrick," he added with grim pride, "fighting to the end."

"I'm glad for your sake, Papa," she said, unable to feel more than a brief pang of sorrow for the stepbrother who'd made her life into a hell. Now, as she often had in the past, she wished there were something
she
could do to make him proud of
her
. "I know you loved him as if he were your own son."

Accepting her sympathy with a brief nod, he returned to the discussion at hand: "There were many amongst the clans who were opposed to going to Cornwall to fight for King James's cause, but the clans followed me anyway. 'Tis no secret to the English that 'twas my influence which brought the clans to Cornwall, and now the English king wants vengeance. He's sendin' the Wolf to Scotland to attack Merrick keep." Ragged pain edged his deep voice as he admitted, "We'll no' be able to withstand a siege now, not unless the MacPherson clan comes to support us in our fight. The MacPherson has enough influence with a dozen other clans to force them to join us as well."

Jenny's mind was reeling. Alexander was dead, and the Wolf really
was
coming to attack her home…

Her father's harsh voice snapped her out of her daze. "Jennifer! Do you ken what I've been saying? MacPherson has promised to join in our fight, but only if you'll have him for husband."

Through her mother, Jenny was a countess and heiress to a rich estate which marched with MacPherson's. "He wants my lands?" she said almost hopefully, remembering the awful way Edric MacPherson's eyes had wandered down her body when he'd stopped at the abbey a year ago to pay a "social call" upon her.

"Aye."

"Couldn't we just
give
them to him in return for his support?" she volunteered desperately, ready—willing—to sacrifice a splendid demesne without hesitation, for the good of her people.

"He'd not agree to that!" her father said angrily. "There's honor in fighting for kin, but he could no' send his people into a fight that's no' their own, and then take your lands in payment to
him
."

"But, surely, if he wants my lands badly enough, there's some way—"

"He wants
you
. He sent word to me in Cornwall." His gaze drifted over Jenny's face, registering the startling changes that had altered her face from its thin, freckled, girlish plainness into a face of almost exotic beauty. "Ye've your mother's look about ye now, lass, and it's whetted the appetites of an old man. I'd no' ask this of you if there was any other way." Gruffly, he reminded her, "You used to plead wi' me to name you laird. Ye said there was naught you wouldna' do fer yer clan…"