Chapter 21
The pearl was the size of Lyall’s fingernail, yet perfect and round, with the same milky sheen of the moon.
River pearls came from the mussels that lined the shores of the river.
They were small and imperfect, in colors of pink and brown and gray, with knots and marks and sometimes they had large dark holes in them.
He had found river pearls when he was a lad, years back, another lifetime ago, when he was careless and young and free to comb the shores of the river, innocent enough to make wishes on magic trees, to fish and play at war and pretend life was less idyllic than it had been, back when he roamed the wild woods not comprehending the hard truths of life.
But he had never found a pearl like the one he was staring down at.
Nestled in soft, tender and pale flesh, surrounded by the pearlescent wall of the shell, the pearl was huge, it was flawless, and it was in the last mussel…
the one they argued over….the one he offered her… the one she had insisted he eat.
Glenna stared at it in such shock, almost as if the pearl had spoken. He knew that because of her life as a thief, she understood its value and its rarity. When she finally spoke it was with the reference of a truly larcenous soul. “It is beautiful.”
He glanced down at it, then held out the shell. “Here.”
“I cannot take it.” She looked up at him, clearly stunned, and said quietly, “ ‘Tis yours.”
He shook his head. “What am I to do with a pearl like this? I have jewels,” he lied. His stepfather had jewels. “Take it, Glenna.”
“Nay.”
“If I keep it, you will merely steal it from my bags at some point,” he teased, knowing it was most likely true.
“You do not trust me,” she said, but even she could not pull off that false humility; it just was not the Glenna he knew.
“Nay, I am not a fool.” He laughed. “How much silver have you taken from me?”
“I have not counted,” she said proudly, chin up a bit. However, she had not taken her eyes off the jewel he dangled right in front of her nose. Had wealth a scent, her nose would have twitched.
“If you do not take it,” he said casually. “I suppose I shall be forced to throw it back in the river.”
She looked from him to the pearl and paused—oh, she wanted it—but she stubbornly shook her head. “ ‘Tis yours, Montrose.”
He sighed heavily. “Then as mine, I can do whatever I wish with it.” He started to rise. “Even toss it back where it came from.”
“Nay! Nay!” She scrambled over so swiftly to grab his arm she almost made him light-headed. “Montrose! Do not!”
Moments later she sat across from him, crossed legged, with the pearl cupped tentatively in her hands as if it were more delicate than a robin’s egg, her expression filled with awe and a little touch of avarice that was Glenna.
He wanted to laugh out loud and his first instinct was to swing her up into his arms and kiss her senseless. But he stopped himself and stayed there, savoring what was an odd feeling--a great and overwhelming sense of gratification at merely watching her.
Not much later, he had second thoughts, after he had banked the small fire and before they had made pallet on the ground or gone to sleep, that she came over, pearl clutched tightly in her fist, and placed her other hand on his chest as she stood up on tiptoe and gave him a tender kiss.
“Thank you, Montrose. This is the loveliest gift I have ever been given.”
He called himself a fool as he watched her walk away from him, Glenna Canmore, the king’s daughter, with the chance at a future full of more than pearls, more than jewels, and he turned away from her and all the fine sense of joy left in her wake.
His hands clenching into fists at his sides and his face skyward, he stood there powerless. Everything he saw, even with his eyes closed, was tinged in bitter yellow—something else passed from father to son, he thought as the taste of betrayal swelled in his mouth.
And for a mere moment, he had to fight the sudden urge to hang his head in shame….because of what he was going to do to her.
“What in the name of Heaven and Hell are you doing to me, witch?”
Glenna froze. She was lying on the ground and tucked snugly under her woolen blanket. Yet Montrose was talking? She lay still and stopped breathing, and didn’t dare open her eyes.
Did she actually hear him speak? Or had she imagined it, a dream or wish or mind-trick? Did he believe she was still asleep? Was he even really there? What would she do if she opened her eyes only to stare back into his?
Oh God’s toes! She could not see a thing with her eyes closed!
He began pacing the grass for so long the monotonous sound of his footsteps might have lulled her into a soft sleep if not for the possibility that he had said those words. His voice had just come to her as real as if he were standing over her and talking.
She kept her breathing soft and slow and even. Before long some part of her could feel the heated warmth of his eyes on her. Oh, he was surely standing there. She knew as instinctively as she knew how to lift a purse.
Odd how she always knew the exact moment when he was looking at her, a kind of sixth sense came over her, a feeling of unearthliness, like when bees hovered right in front of one’s eyes or when the birds vanished just before lightening would strike the earth and set it on fire.
But the feeling, the sense, happened with him alone, as if they were invisibly chained by their thoughts and minds as well as the wild emotion she was keeping secret deep inside her heart.
He wasn’t pacing any longer. The absolute silence came in the amount of time it took for her heart to beat once, like a moment of emotional clarity, or a snatch of color in the night--something warm and pink, like alpenglow, rare and only there in the last breath before night fell or the first glimpse of dawn.
But then the real sounds of night invaded her sense: the chirping song of the insects, the distant rush of river water over rocks and small falls, and the pounding of her own foolish heart.
“I am bewitched,” he said. “And destined to hell. Why do I care about you when I dare not?” His voice was real and it was heavy with emotion when it drifted off. “I cannot…I will not.” He cursed in a low voice and walked away, his footsteps swift and growing distant.
She opened one eye, then turned over just as he disappeared through the trees. Kicking aside the blanket, she knew there was no way she would let him walk away from her after what he’d said, whether or not he'd spoken only because he believed she was asleep.
Up on her feet, she slipped on her shoes and moved stealthily through the woods, staying back far enough for the moon to light his shadow.
The woods grew thick, then opened up. When the roots of a giant, old yew tree almost tripped her, she placed her hand on the bark to steady herself and almost cried out, looking down at her hand as if it were suddenly burned.
She stared at the tree, almost expecting to see a handprint where she had touched it.
Carefully, tentatively, she reached out and then touched it with one finger. No burn. The tree was cool, the bark rough, like every other tree in the woods.
Still, her hand throbbed, and she stared down at it expecting to see something like a slave brand, but her palm appeared perfectly normal.
Yet something…there was something. She stared at the tree, then shook off the strange thoughts that made gooseflesh of the skin on her arms. Silliness.
With no time to dawdle, she rushed on to stay in sight of Montrose, who was moving again and even farther away.
Eventually, he stopped at the top of a rock ledge and stood looking into the distance, his strong profile, sleek nose and square jaw limned in the moonlight like the effigy of an ancient god.
She hung back, unable to see past him or the woods and tall fir trees flanking his sides.
The vision he made reminded her of him poised on the prow of the ship the morning after the storm, and made her breath catch.
She could not have looked away had lightning come down and flashed right there before her eyes.
Suddenly swinging his arms out into the air, he leapt down to the forest floor with a soft thud and a whoosh of breath, and he began to run. She moved swiftly to the ledge, which she found was perched at the forest’s edge, where a short, gentle slope rolled down into a small clearing.
There, she spotted his dark figure running across the field towards a sight she never expected.
In the distance, the dark, burned out ruins of a castle stood atop its motte, looking like the island’s Celtic stone rings: staggered, jagged and great, black against the iridescence of moonlight that shone down turning the field a silvery white, almost as if it were not a night on the cusp of the end of summer and beginning of autumn, but a night in the height of the coldest winter.
She moved down from the ledge and onto the slope.
Around the castle was a wall of thick bushes and brambles and brush, and he ran to a spot that sloped downward into the wall of weeds, and he disappeared.
She moved fast, running breathlessly across the silver field, keeping her eyes on where he had gone and once there, she moved down where a small cave-like tunnel, a black hole really, shone where its weeds were freshly torn aside and its bushes trampled.
Without hesitation she stepped inside and all light disappeared. She froze. Chills ran up her arms. Inside, it was as black as the pit and to her horror it smelled the same. Her skin crawled and she shivered, looking for courage which had disappeared the moment she stepped into the tunnel.