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The summer drew nigh as did the Scot’s trampling the English south of the Great Glen. Asper Sinclair announced to the Bruce and his men that he was to travel north to retrieve his brothers and spread word that they were going to start the king’s conquest of the Highlands. Robert embraced him warmly, and James noted the king’s reticence. Sinclair had been by the king’s side since he’d returned from the isles last winter. Sinclair’s absence would create a hole that needed to be filled.
After Sinclair departed, the Bruce turned to the men who crowded the room. MacCollough and his man, Torin, stood to the King’s left as James sat to his right, with Shabib standing behind him, between James and the door. Several other lairds and their representatives had made their way to Auchinleck, MacMillans and MacKenzies having recently arrived, with more riding through the port gate daily. A few of those men sat at this important table as well.
Robert recounted their present successes at beating back the English swarm, which had resulted in a surge of Scotsmen joining to swell the Bruce’s ranks. As James had been present at most of those skirmishes, he only half paid attention. His eyes focused on his sword that he held in between his hands, the tip balanced on the floor. He spun it between his hands, the steel glinting and ringing softly as it rotated.
He kept spinning his sword but lifted his eyes at the Bruce’s next words.
“Which brings me to the message I’ve received on behalf of Edward the Second.”
At this, this entire room fell deathly silent, with only the ringing of James’s sword breaking the thick atmosphere.
“What message?” James asked.
The Bruce’s hooded gaze swept the room, looking pointedly at each man present.
“They want to speak on terms. His representative, Hugh Despenser the Younger, has asked for a meeting at Locherbie to see if a resolution might be reached.”
The words hung in the room, adding to the already thick air. Several of the men shifted in their seats, uncomfortable with any olive branch offered by the weak king, while others smiled, proud of the Scots’ success.
“So our work over the past summer had netted results, and the foppish king now quakes in fear of the Scots drum that beats to the north. None too soon, I might add,” Laird MacMillan announced. Heads nodded in agreement, followed by grumbles.
“I’d nay say as much,” Torin’s deep voice resonated in the cramped chambers. “I dinna trust an Englishman as far as I can throw him.”
“’Tis no’ saying much,” his Laird, Declan, countered with a sharp grin. “Ye could throw a man rather far, ye ken.”
The grumbling became low guffaws at the giant Torin’s expense, and the man reveled in it. James glanced around the chambers, taking the measure of the men and the value they put on the missive. James, for one, had no faith in the message at all. Too often, the English have reached out, only to turn on the Scots at the last minute. This could readily be the same.
The Bruce waved his hand to garner the men’s attention. “Aye, I tend to agree with Torin. I want to move cautiously. Yet, we have struck hard into the heart of the English encroachment in Scotland, and with how weak the new king seems to be, I’d err on the side that they desire to settle this once and for all. To control Scotland was Longshanks’ great desire, no’ necessarily his son’s, after all.”
The men grunted and nodded in agreement. What man didn’t prefer to lay his sword to the side and sleep in his own bed with his wife? James thought. They were tired — tired of battle, tired of the English, tired of death. An opportunity to end all that? Even James was enticed. He spun his sword again.
“Douglas?” the king interrupted his reverie.
James flicked his gaze over his shoulder to Shabib who nodded enigmatically. Shabib would follow James’s lead, as he had thus far. Had any man had a companion as loyal as Shabib? James returned his eyes to the Bruce.
Mayhap a man had.
“What do ye think of this missive?” Robert asked.
James stopped spinning his sword, and gripping the worn hilt in a steady grip, he flipped it up, admiring the weapon that had kept him and those he loved alive to this day.
“Aye, it could be the boy-king wants to end his father’s war. That he’s taken full measure of his recent losses and desires for it to end. But we dinna know what his advisers, some of whom also served his father, have whispered in his ear.” He dropped his sword tip to the stone floor again. “I think as long as we take every precaution, set the time and place, come well prepared for a sneak attack, then we should at least listen to what the emissary has to say.”
The Bruce stared at James, as if weighing his captain’s words. From the look on the other men’s faces, James spoke what the others were thinking, and the Bruce took note of this. He nodded slowly.
“Aye, I believe we are all in agreement. I’ll respond to this missive, and perchance, by the time the leaves change, this war might be at an end.”
At the eventide meal, the Bruce introduced James, Declan, Torin, and the rest of his advisers to the Lairds and chieftains who had arrived over the past several days. The keep and nearby crofts were filled to bursting with men and their kin eager to join the Bruce in the Scots victorious army.
Of the new arrivals, it wasn’t the MacMillan laird or his men who drew James’s attention, rather ‘twas the dark-eyed lass wrapped in a burgundy cape standing shyly with the two other women who’d arrived with the MacMillans. Full, ebony curls escaped from her hood and danced in the setting light of day.
It wasn’t so much what the woman looked like, but what she didn’t look like. The MacMillans were a fair bunch, mostly blonde and tawny hair, light eyes, and pasty skin. This lass with darker hair and shifting, nervous eyes stood out under James’s astute assessment.
More importantly, James didn’t miss the change in Shabib’s stance when the woman appeared outside with the rest of her kin. He stood straighter and patted his cobalt blue robe, brushing away any lingering mud or dust. James struggled to stop the grin that formed on his lips. Shabib didn’t know James watched him.
Like James, Shabib had been without family, a solitary man with a haunted soul, for too long. James raised an eyebrow at his friend. If the Black Douglas found a lass to give him the solace he needed, body and soul, then so might his mysterious companion. And after all the ribbing he’d received from Shabib about his marriage, James wasn’t going to pass on his own opportunity for a tease. He leaned over to Shabib’s stiff form.
“Och, the dark-haired lass seems a bit unnerved. Ye thinks she kens my name? I should introduce her to the Black Douglas. How fast do ye thinks she will run in the opposite direction?”
Then James took a wide step in the woman’s direction. Shabib stayed him with a long-fingered hand.
“Do not cause the woman any more fretfulness. Can you not see she is petrified? She is as a lost doe, trying to find her way in a strange wood.”
James bit the inside of his lip, trying to hide the smile that threatened to burst forth. “Such poesy from so hard a man. I did no’ think ye had it in ye, old friend. Is there something about this lass that I should know?”
Shabib’s face hardened, his lips pursed in irritation at James’s tease.
“Nothing like that,” Shabib grumbled. “I’d say the same of any frightened looking woman in your presence.”
“Och, would ye now?” James’s eyebrow rose high on his forehead, and he barked out a rough laugh, drawing the attention of several nearby men. James merely laughed harder as Shabib’s jaw clenched. “I did no’ see ye doing that for any other lass arriving at the keep. Ye did no’ such thing for Tosia. In fact, ye threw that lass at me, convincing her into the arms of the Black Douglas.”
“She was already claimed for ye by the king . . .” Shabib protested weakly, his voice trailing off. James clapped a heavy hand on his friend’s shoulder, knocking Shabib forward.
“As much as I needed a woman to keep me from losing myself to a life of violence and vengeance, so ye need one too. I’ll inquire if the lass is attached or betrothed. Robert will no’ pass up the opportunity to play matchmaker again.”
James strode off. Shabib grasped for James’s plaid, trying to yank the man back, only to have the wool escape his grip.
Shabib would protest, James thought, smiling. Protest heavily. Claim his vow to his dead wife as the reason for why he could not find love, or at least a willing woman, again. But no God, not even Shabib’s Allah, wanted a man to live a life consumed by vengeance. Shabib’s soul, much like James’s, was at stake, and James would not suffer his friend to such a fate.
If he could find a woman to be the balm to Shabib’s own broken soul, then by God, both his and Shabib’s, James would make sure she ended up in Shabib’s arms.
A day later, as they prepared to leave for the meeting with the English emissary, James came around the side of the stables, covered in a layer of horsehair and hay, only to jerk back out of sight.
Shabib walked the side of the keep toward the bailey, the quiet Frenchwoman by his side. Shabib carried a basket over his arm, but his face, glowing bronze, peered down at the diminutive woman.
Once they reached the edge of the Bailey, where several men and woman labored with stock, worked hides, or sharpened their broadswords, the Frenchwoman reclaimed her basket with a tender hand. She took a moment to turn her refined face and sparkling eyes to the stoic Shabib, whose face belied a softer emotion.
James grinned to himself. Oh, the man who’d lectured James regarding the value of a wife but hesitated to find a way to mend his own heart now appeared enamored by this woman. His grin widened as he peered around the stables again.
The Frenchwoman had departed Shabib’s side, and his friend approached with, was that a smile on his face?
James strolled around the corner of the stables and leaned casually against the dark wooden wall, pretending to be interested in his sgian-dubh dagger. Shabib slowed as he neared James.
“Weel, my old friend. Look what has caught your interest.”
“James,” Shabib said sharply. “You should have more respect for Lena.”
A bold look of awe marked James’s face. “Lena, is it?”
Shabib’s eyes narrowed at the jest. “You overstep. It is nothing as you assume. She is kin to one of the MacMillan women. I was only offering a sympathetic ear to a woman who, like me, has left her home and finds herself fighting a war for people she’s come to call her own.”
Another tease rose to James’s lips, but he silenced it as Shabib’s words permeated his brain.
“Ye call me your own?” James asked.
Shabib dipped his head respectfully. “You are the only family I have now, James. You have been since France. I followed you to this far reach of the world, didn’t I? I consider you my brother.”
James swallowed the lump that formed in his throat. He wasn’t one for emotions — much less comfortable discussing them than Shabib was.
“Ye are a shoulder for Lena to lean on then?” James asked, refocusing their conversation on Shabib’s present interest in the Frenchwoman.
“Yes.”
James clapped his friend, nay, his brother, on his back and walked with him to the stables.
“Well, I know ye dinna want to hear it, but ye need someone to ground ye, just as I did. Perchance this woman, Lena, is a start. The MacMillan laird says she is no’ yet claimed.”
“I’ve had my loves, James,” Shabib said in a tight voice. “My scars run far too deep to find another.”
“The world, the heart, I dinna believe works like that. ‘Tis no’ like bread, where once the pieces are gone, they’re gone. With affairs of the heart, it can only increase. And would your wife want ye to live in solitude for the rest of your days?”
Referencing Shabib’s slain wife again was a risk — the man never spoke of her unless it was absolutely necessary. And from the grim look in Shabib’s face, a risk indeed.
“Dinna look at me like that. Ye know I speak the truth. A harsh truth, but a truth nonetheless.”
They stopped at the doorway to the stables and Shabib had regained his stoic temperament. “An odd sentiment, coming from you, Black Douglas, but one I am pleased ye have found,” he intoned before leaving James to the horses.
