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Tosia’s mind spun, as did the room. She placed her hand on her forehead and grabbed the rough edge of the table with the other.
Suddenly, everything she thought she knew about her mother, their life in this small croft, herself in this world, was called into question, and her view of her mother was clouded when she lifted her eyes.
“I had written a letter over a fortnight ago, and the Good King Robert the Bruce took time from his busy command and graced me with a response. I wrote him when the funds from your father began to run low. And he has offered a solution.”
Tosia and Tavish stared at their mother with hanging mouths and stunned silence. Their mother had a relationship with the great Simon Fraser? She wrote to the king? Better yet, he wrote her back?
A spike of fear shot over Tosia’s back at that thought. The King wrote back. By God, what solution could a man focused on war offer? She gulped the lump in her throat back down and focused on her mother’s words.
“Tavish,” their mother’s gaze crested past Tosia to her brother. His wide-eyed face blanched to a pasty white. Tosia reached out a hand to help steady him as their mother continued. “The king has offered to take you into his household to be employed as a squire. This is a noble calling. One day, by the grace of God and our king, ye might be a formidable knight in the Bruce’s army.”
Tavish shuddered under Tosia’s palm. If becoming a squire in the king’s army was her brother’s fate, what could hers be? The king’s wife was held prisoner, did he have a court for ladies’ maids? What other option did the king have for her? Or was she to remain here with her mother?
Her mother coughed into a rag and wiped her face which was nearly as pasty as Tavish. Nay, staying with her mother was not an option — even a great fool could see the woman was not for long in this world.
Tosia’s lips quivered, and she bit her lip, willing herself not to cry.
“Tosia, the king has quite a different solution for ye. Please keep an open mind and know that neither your mother nor the good king, for whom your father was a staunch supporter, would steer ye wrong.”
At her mother’s words, Tosia couldn’t stop the tears. Full, warm drops rimmed her eyelashes and dropped to her cheeks. Her fate was worse.
“Dinna weep, Tosia, for many a lass would give everything they have to be in your position. The king has decided that ye are to be wed to one of his closest advisers, one of his most powerful knights, the very man who is helping to turn the tide on the English.”
Tosia heard none of that. The only word that permeated the fog of her mind was the word wed.
What? Marry one of the king’s men?
She’d never been prepared for something like that, never been trained to be the wife of one of the king’s men. She was a crofter’s daughter! She had no dowry, no position, nothing.
Why would the king arrange a marriage for her? And to so important a man? Just how prominent was her father?
“Tosia, have ye heard me? Ye are to wed an important man!”
“Who?” Tavish finally spoke up. His eyes narrowed at their mother. “Ye refer to him as the king’s man, an important man, yet ye dinna speak his name. What are ye hiding, Mother? Is the man verra old? What is so wrong that ye will no’ speak his name?”
“Tavish!” she gasped with a sharp tone. “Dinna speak that way, especially of the king.”
Tavish dropped his gaze but didn’t pause his words that poured forth as Tosia sat and stared at him. “What’s wrong with this man, Mother, that the king would be willing to marry him off to an unknown lass?”
Their mother took a wet breath and wiped at her mouth with the blood-stained rag.
“The man. ‘Tis Sir James Douglas.”
Several silent heartbeats passed before anyone spoke. No one needed to. The very name sent a shaft of fear into the chest of anyone who heard it. They might live on the outskirts of civilization, but everyone in Scotland knew that name.
Nay, Tosia thought. Nay, nay, nay . . .
“Black Douglas?” Tavish whispered. “The villainous blackguard of the King’s commanders? That Black James Douglas?”
Tosia’s tongue was as frozen as the rest of her. Everything inside her protested, screamed nay so loudly her brain cringed. But not a single word formed on her lips.
Douglas? The Black Douglas? The mountain-sized, black haired warrior? The man renowned for his loathsome and bloody attacks against the English?
Her mother must have misread the missive. Surely, she must be wrong.
Tosia’s shaking began low in her wame and spread to the rest of her body. Tavish placed a hand on her shoulder, offering his silent support, giving her the one connection to the world she needed, lest she faint away.
“Mother, ye must be wrong,” her voice was less than a whisper. “That man can marry anyone. A powerful lass of a laird. Even as a favor to his king, why pick me?”
Her mother reached across the table to pat Tosia’s shaky hand.
“Ye may think ye aren’t powerful, but ye are the daughter of Simon Fraser, illegitimate or no’. That name alone carries weight with the king, who feels he owes much for the man who at present occupies a spot on a pike next to Sir William Wallace.”
Tosia paled and cleared her throat. “Surely there are other young women, though. He doesn’t know me. Know us.”
“Douglas needs a wife. He doesn’t seem interested in anyone who’s been close to the king’s court, so much as ‘tis right now. Perchance a woman from outside might warm the Douglas’s heart.”
“His icy heart,” Tavish said in a snide tone as he crossed his arms over his chest.
“Mother, this does no’ make sense!” Tosia wailed.
“Quiet!” Her mother’s voice rose before breaking into another fit of bloody coughing. She bent over, spitting into the rag.
“Mother!” Tosia cried. Tavish knocked over his stool as he raced to her side, cradling Maggie in his sinewy arms.
What little color that had remained in their mother’s pallor was gone. She choked and spat.
“Mother —” Tosia began, but her mother waved her hand.
“Ye are to wed this man. Your brother will be a squire in his house. I will write a letter of introduction to the king. Dinna tally. He is already expecting ye, so dinna think to remain here. Please, dinna arouse the king’s ire. He’s doing me, us, a great favor. Please, promise me this, that ye will go right to the king.”
Tosia’s tears fell freely at her mother’s pleas, wetting her cheeks and her mother’s kirtle. She held her hand as Tavish lifted her frail form in his steady arms.
“Bring me my ink and quill to the bed, with a tray,” her mother commanded weakly. “I have a letter to write.”
Tosia waited until her mother busied herself at the bed-table with her quill before bolting from their simple home and racing for the heather-filled field beyond the house. In her rush to leave, to catch her breath from the harrowing news, she’d left her arasaid hanging on its peg beside the hearth.
But she didn’t need it. The air held warm notes, but they didn’t compare to the heat boiling under Tosia’s skin.
She ran until her breath was lost in the wind, whipping her hair in a wild swirl around her head. She ran until her chest was ready to burst and the soles of her feet were sore from the stones that bit through the thin leather of her shoes. The chill in the air went unnoticed until she’d thrown herself into the damp grass, and the roots of a rowan tree caught her when she collapsed against the trunk. The cool dew seeped through her kirtle.
Why? Why had her mother agreed to such an arrangement?
The Black Douglas? The vile man who had decimated his own lands? Who fed men into a Scottish killing field? Who slaughtered without thought or conscience? Where did his violent nature end? A man, nay a demon such as that, would kill her for sure.
The Black Douglas’s reputation had spread from the lowlands to the Highlands, of how he put a whole castle of English to death with only his small band of men. Of how he decapitated his enemies and burned everything — everything! — in his own keep, his own birthright, his very home, and the men inside it, to the ground rather than let the English live there. Who did such a thing? How did anyone conceive such a contemptible idea? He wasn’t a man. He was a monster.
Tosia rested her arms across her knees and dropped her head to her forearms, trying to close out the world. The sooner the world fell away, the sooner she could pretend that her mother was mistaken, that she wasn’t cursed to marry a monster.
How was this the best solution for her? For her brother? Her tears whetted her dirty skirts as she wept away this horrid news.
“Tosia, please. ‘Tis no’ that bad,” Tavish’s voice carried over the hill to her space under the comforting rowan leaves. His voice deepened as he walked closer. “He canna be all bad if he is a friend to the king.”
“How do ye know?” Tosia countered, her voice muffled by her sleeves. “He is the king’s vicious dog, and ye dinna know the king. If he permits his beast to ravage the glen, then how can the king be a good man?”
Tavish sat heavily next to her, bumping his shoulder against hers. “The king is fighting for us, for the Scots, after years of tyranny by the English. That stands for something.”
Wiping her damp face on her sleeve, Tosia raised her eyes to Tavish’s matching hazel gaze, one that must have been a gift from their absent father, as their mother had eyes as green as the hills in the morn. Tavish’s eyes were soft, his concern for her painted on his face. Not that his fate was any better, but at least he didn’t have to dread the prospect of marrying the Black Douglas.
Or share a wedding bed with him.
Tosia shuddered.
She didn’t answer her brother — instead she stared into the distance, wondering how far she might make it if she started running and didn’t stop. Tavish nudged her again.
“The King would find ye. There is no place ye can hide, so put that foolish notion from your mind,” Tavish advised.
Tosia pursed her lips. Tavish always seemed to know what she was thinking — they were close enough in age to be oft mistaken as twins, and Tavish acted the role of an older brother often enough. The idea of running had crossed her mind.
“How did ye know what I was thinking?”
Tavish groaned as he stretched his long legs in front of him. “Ye canna hide anything on your face. It speaks louder than your mouth.”
Her lips squeezed harder.
“What am I going to do, Tavish? I canna wed the man. His vile reputation aside, I dinna even know him!”
“Aye, I can see your problem with that. But, this is a union sanctioned by the king to a mighty Laird. Ye will be a lady. And what if the man is a beast with a heart of gold? Stranger things have happened. And he, too, is fighting for his land. And rumor has a way of gaining traction where it shouldn’t. Maybe he’s no’ the demon rumor makes him out to be.”
The wind gusted up and blew locks of her honey-bronze hair across her face. She brushed them aside as she glared at her brother. She hated to admit his words might have merit. This time, she nudged him.
His shoulder was hard, solid muscle. Tosia sighed. When had he grown from a boy to a man?
“Ugh. I hate it when ye make sense. I have no argument against what ye say.”
Tavish got to his feet and reached a dirt-encrusted hand to her. “Come. The sunlight fades and mother will be wanting dinner.” He helped her stand, then whirled her to face him when she bent to brush dirt crumbs from her skirts. “And, my dear sister, I shall be there with ye, and I vow I will no’ let the men lay a wayward hand upon ye.”
Tosia clasped her slender fingers atop his. “Tavish, ye shall be little more than a squire, beholden to your laird. If ye tells ye to step away, your loyalties will have to be with him. Dinna misconstrue this, brother, ye are just as stuck in this new union as I.”
She placed a tender hand on the patchy scruff of his cheek, then stepped away, heading home in the gray gloaming of the night.
Toward home for one of the last times.
They buried their mother on a Sunday, with only the priest in attendance at the church yard. Her lonely grave was set into the far reaches of the cemetery, near the stone wall.
So far from everything, Tosia thought as she studied the loose brown earth on her mother’s grave. So far from me.
Her mother had left instructions, that the king’s men were to arrive on the morrow and retrieve them, to pack lightly, and to keep her in their minds and hearts. That last command was a silly one — Tosia would never forget her mother. Even if she had set up this farce of a marriage.
Tavish remained close to her the rest of the day, which was as gray as they both felt. They spoke little, but what did they have to say? Nothing, nothing that wouldn’t bring sobs and painful reminders of their mother.
Packing what few belongings they was easy. Her nicer flaxen yellow gown, her combs, and she also took her mother’s clean shift, the one she hadn’t been buried in. Tosia thought she might wear it when she felt lonely, and thus expected to wear it often. She hadn’t known how severe her ache for her mother would be until she was gone, and it was an immediate knife in her heart, twisting into that unending pain.
She paused in her packing. Tavish stood next to her, placing his own items in his pack, and she took his hand. They stood there, side by side, holding hands as they stared into the air. It was just the two of them, and Tosia wanted to hold onto him, the last bastion of her home, for as long as she could.
