Days of Gold (6 page)

When they reached his house in Scotland, it was late afternoon, and Edilean was tired to her very bones. Her hair was straggling about her face and she was so dirty she itched. She looked out the coach window and saw the tall, narrow old “castle” and wanted to cry. The thing wasn’t a castle such as she’d imagined, but a tower made of stones that looked like they wanted to go back to the earth they’d come from.

On the long trip her uncle hadn’t addressed a dozen words to her and he’d never once made an inquiry about her comfort. By the time they reached Scotland, she knew that whatever he wanted from her, it wasn’t going to be good.

She stepped out of the coach into a stone courtyard, where there were what seemed to be a hundred people staring at her in curiosity. They were all wearing pieces of woolen fabric that had been woven
in a pattern of squares and lines. The women had on coarse skirts held in place about their waists with thick leather belts, while the men wore wool trousers and big shirts.

What Edilean liked about them was that a few of them were smiling at her. It wasn’t a full smile, but she could see it in their eyes. She knew she must look awful, but they didn’t seem to mind. An older man came forward and offered his hand to help her down the coach steps. It seemed as though it had been a year since she’d had such kindness. Turning, she smiled at all of them. “Thank you,” she said loudly. “Thank you for your welcome.”

Some of the people looked embarrassed by her words, but some of them smiled a bit more.

Her uncle walked toward the old wooden steps leading up to the second floor of the tower, leaving Edilean to make her own way. Right then she knew that this was her only chance to make a good first impression. She’d always been easy in company, and she felt that these people were open to friendliness. Instead of following her uncle inside, she walked about the courtyard and introduced herself as Edilean Talbot. She admired babies and complimented the women on the huge brooches they wore to keep their tartans on their shoulders. She went into the stables and talked to a wonderful man named Malcolm about the horses.

“I think you’ll like this one,” he said in an accent so heavy that Edilean had trouble understanding him.

She followed him to the end stall and there she saw Marmy, her dappled gray mare. Edilean couldn’t help her tears as she nuzzled the horse’s nose. Her mare was the one constant in her life. When she was in school, Marmy was boarded nearby, and when she visited anyone, her horse was sent ahead so Edilean would have her own mare to ride.

“She’s glad to see you,” Malcolm said.

“And I’m glad to see her. We’ve been together since I was just twelve. She likes her oats.”

“Aye, she does.”

Edilean spent several minutes talking to the man, having him repeat things she didn’t understand, then finally, she went into the tower.

That her uncle’d had her horse brought to Scotland made Edilean think more kindly of him and she wanted to thank him. He was nowhere to be seen, but there was a maid there, a tiny woman named Morag, who took Edilean almost to the top and showed her a cold, bare room that was to be hers. Edilean was shocked at the ugliness of it, but she kept her face from showing her feelings as she turned to Morag and thanked her for her help.

For a couple of days, Edilean hardly left her room. Morag saw that she had food and water and was given the necessities, but Edilean needed rest and to prepare herself for whatever her uncle had planned for her. Her intuition told her it was going to be bad.

When he finally called her to him, it was worse than she thought. He bolted the heavy door behind her so no one could hear them, then he sat down between two men who repulsed her. One was old and ugly; the other was young but had eyes like a mad dog. Her uncle told her that on her birthday, at one minute after midnight, she was to marry one of the men. “You’re to
choose
one of them.” The way he said the word made it sound as though he thought it was the biggest joke in the world.

“I’m sorry,” Edilean said politely, “but I cannot marry either of them, for I’m already engaged.”

The three men stared at her as though they’d never heard the word before.

“Engaged to marry,” she said, this time louder. It wasn’t exactly the truth, since James hadn’t asked her yet, but she knew he would.

“That engagement is broken,” her uncle said at last. “You’re going to marry one of these men. Care to choose now?”

“No!” Edilean said as she backed away from the three of them.

“We’ll wait then,” her uncle said, then turned away, as though there was to be no more discussion.

“Excuse me, sir!” she said. “I am
not
going to marry either of these—” She looked them up and down with all the contempt she felt, and lowered her voice. “My father’s will says I may marry a man of my own choosing and I certainly don’t choose either of these... men.”

“You will do what I say,” her uncle said, and raised his hand in dismissal.

“I will not!” Edilean shouted at him. She’d spent most of her life in boarding schools, and she was fed up with people telling her when and how she was to do things.

“You will,” Neville Lawler said, “and if you try to get out of it, I’ll make your life such a misery that you’ll wish you’d never been born. And if you tell any of these nosy Scots about this, I’ll make you sorry. Now get out of my sight!”

The two men beside him looked at Edilean in triumph. The younger one gave her a look up and down that told her what he wanted from her.

Turning, she fled the room.

After that day, war between her and her uncle was declared. Edilean wrote a letter to James and told him the horrific circumstances that had befallen her. But her uncle took the letter from Morag, whom Edilean had given it to to post, and that night read it back to her with great drama in front of the two men, Ballister and Alvoy; then he threw it into the fire.

“You’d better reconcile yourself to your fate,” her uncle said. “You’re here now and you’ll stay here. The gold your father left is
being sent to me two days before your birthday. It will never leave here. As for you,
you
will do whatever your husband wants you to do.” This made the three men laugh heartily.

Edilean spent the rest of the day in her room and realized that it was up to her to save herself.

When Morag brought Edilean her dinner on a tray, she made sure the softhearted woman saw her weeping. “Oh, miss, what ails you?”

“I’ve had a quarrel with the man I love,” Edilean said. “I wrote him an apology but my uncle says he doesn’t deserve such concern. My uncle tore my letter up.” Edilean was watching Morag and saw the color flush her neck. So! It looked like Morag felt some guilt at having the letter that had been entrusted to her taken away.

“You write him again and I’ll be sure it gets to London,” Morag said.

“You won’t let my uncle see it?”

“Trust me. I won’t come between lovers. I was young once.”

“And I’ll bet you had lots of beaux.”

Morag smiled. “In those days the laird liked me, but he married someone else.”

“The laird?”

“The chief.”

“Oh, I see,” Edilean said, but she was too busy composing her letter to James in her head to listen. One thing that she’d seen when her uncle read her first letter aloud was that it was too dramatic, too full of danger and warnings. Her next letter would be calmer, just stating the facts, and telling James everything she knew, including what her uncle said about the gold being brought to Scotland.

She sealed the letter and gave it to Morag, praying that the woman wouldn’t betray her and give it to her uncle. When Edilean
heard nothing from her uncle about the letter, she hoped it had gone through.

Besides appealing to James for help, Edilean decided to try to make her uncle see reason. For days, Edilean argued with him, and she soon learned how far she could push him before he got so exasperated that he raised his hand to her. He never hit her, but that was only because she learned to duck and run quickly.

Outside the tower, or “keep” as she learned it was called, the Scottish people were extremely nice to her. Every day she went riding. On the first day, she tried to escape, planning to ride all the way to London by herself, but her uncle came after her. For all that he was fat and rarely moved, he was a great horseman. He sat atop his big hunter as though he’d been born on it, and he grabbed her reins and halted her. “You try that again and I’ll have your mare shot,” he said, and she knew he meant it.

For weeks, she behaved herself and waited. She had arguments with her uncle, and since he was always careful that the doors were closed, Edilean got the idea that he knew that if she asked the Scots for help they might give it.

A boy, Tam, about fifteen, was assigned to help her on and off her horse every day, and after her escape attempt, he rode a pony behind her. But Edilean knew he couldn’t help her. He was too young, too inexperienced.

But sometimes she saw another Scotsman in the background, and he looked strong enough that he might be able to help. She didn’t know what she was going to need, but, somehow, she was going to have to escape, and she meant to take her father’s gold with her.

The man’s name was Shamus, and she saw the way others got out of his way when he walked by. If she was going to get away from her uncle, she would need someone like him.

As the days passed, she stopped fighting with her uncle and
began, instead, to ask him questions. What she wanted to know was when the gold was coming in and how it was going to be transported. He wasn’t fooled by her questions and told her to get away from him.

More days passed and there was still no word from James. Had she mistaken him? Did he not want her and her dowry? Was he shrugging his broad shoulders and letting her go?

She seemed to be at the depths of her depression when a man she’d never seen before, a man as tall and as big as James, but with thick black hair that he didn’t tie back, and a beard that looked as though it had never been cut in his life, loosened the cinch on her horse and sent her flying onto the stones. Wasn’t her life bad enough without some man playing hurtful tricks on her? She looked at the shortness of his outrageous garment—something she’d never seen before—and spat some cutting remarks at him. She was glad that when she walked away everyone started laughing at him.

Later, she was angry about what the man had done, but she didn’t tell her uncle about him. She liked the Scots and didn’t want to betray them. Because there was one bad apple didn’t mean that the others were rotten. Besides, everyone she spoke to told her who the man was and that he would never hurt her. They wouldn’t say who had cut her cinch, just that it wasn’t the bearded man.

For days Edilean’s life stayed in the routine she’d developed. But every day she grew more nervous and more frightened as she waited for some word from James. Had he received her letter? Maybe he was in France now and the letter was waiting for him in London. Maybe when he received it, she would already be married.

When it got down to four days before her birthday and there was still no letter, Edilean was so jumpy that she nearly screamed at every sound. Morag asked her what was wrong, but Edilean couldn’t tell her.

When she went out for her ride, her escort was the man Shamus, and she was glad of it. Maybe she could talk to him and tell him... She didn’t know what she could tell him. She was sure he could get her away from there, but then what? She had no relatives to go to, and her friends were still in school, too young to help.

As she sat in the bushes and sketched, as she did every day, she was nearly scared to death by the hairy-faced man jumping out at her. When he shouted, “You are found out!” Edilean wondered why she didn’t die from shock right then and there. She thought he meant that her uncle had found out that she’d written a letter to James.

After the man jumped up and yelled at her, he ran away as though he were five years old. She’d called for Shamus and he came running, but he only saw the man disappearing into the bushes.

“He’s the man who made me fall off my horse,” she said.

“Oh, aye, that he is. A true terror with the women. I wouldn’t get too near him if I were you. He’s not right in the head, if you know what I mean.”

“Where’s he going now?”

“Back to the keep to tell everyone how scared you looked when he jumped out at you. He wants to make them laugh at you.”

“Oh, he does, does he?” She started running for her horse, Shamus right behind her. He easily lifted her onto the saddle, and she took off, using trails that she’d persuaded Tam to show her. He’d been told to keep to the road, but Edilean had smiled and coaxed him into showing her the more secret ways.

When she got back to the keep, the man was already there, and she was pleased to see that no one was laughing at having heard how she’d jumped when he’d leaped from the bushes. She slid off her horse and it was as though weeks of frustration and rage came out and she unleashed them on him. She was so angry she could think
of few words to say, but she kicked him hard in the shin, then hit him with the whip. She’d meant to hit his arm, which was covered by a thick shirt, but he’d bent and the whip hit his neck, cutting him.

She was on the verge of feeling sorry for having done it when he picked her up and dropped her into a horse trough. Yet again, the only consolation she had was that the people seemed to be on
her
side. Dear Morag helped her up the stairs and Edilean went straight to her uncle to tell him what the man had done to her.

She didn’t know what she expected from her uncle, but for him to laugh at her and side with the hairy man wearing what Edilean considered women’s clothing was not it. She left the room, trying not to let the laughing men see her tears.

But the man who was making her life worse than it already was followed her to the roof. She didn’t know what it was about him, maybe because it was so close to her birthday, and because the man was the chief of the McTerns, but in spite of Shamus’s warning, she blurted out the truth about everything and asked him to help her escape.