Heaven and the Heather (39 page)

“She is queen,” Sabine whispered. “With two suitors, and I cannot have one.”

Niall.
He was certain to be in his valley, his
glen
, in the shadow of the mountain he called
Tulaichean
, Little Hill. Nothing was little in these Highlands, everything, life included, existed grandly, no less.

The carriage came to an abrupt halt. Sabine canted forward almost onto Lady Fleming.

“Why have we stopped?” she asked. “The day is not half over.”

“I do not question Her Majesty,” Lady Fleming said opening the door and stepping from the carriage.

“Sweet Saint Giles,” she sighed and followed the Lady to the outside.

Castle Campbell Dubh loomed all around her.

“Why are we stopping here?” she asked. Lady Fleming did not answer her having hurried to the queen’s carriage.

There was something different about this place. It was not gloomy and full of whispers and furtive glances by those who inhabited it. The bailey was filled with the glorious bustle of people, wares, and livestock. Some of the people wore the Highland plaid, some of them were dressed as peasant farmers, all of them wearing bright faces full of shining hope.

“
Mademoiselle
Sabine!”

She turned. Rory ambled up to her and gave her a tight embrace.

“Why are you here?” she forced herself to ask. “Is this not Campbell’s castle and land?”

“My chief saved me from the gallows,” Rory said. “But ye should ask why ye’re here. I’m off to guide Her Majesty on a tour of the Highlands. She has asked me to lead her through the whole of her kingdom.”

He sauntered off, cocksure and no threat to anyone, just a lost soul who had found that he had worth to queen and clan. And he carried with him the mystery of why he was in suddenly good favor with the queen. Sabine could not have been more confused.

 
A sudden, great clamor rose from one of the arched doors to the bailey. “Bloody beastie! I’ll not let ye escape from being our dinner this night!” an achingly familiar Scottish voice shouted.

A black and white blur raced across the cobbles and scatterings of straw and manure. Sabine, eyes wide in horror, watched it come right toward her. Her entire body and mind focused on that demonic thing rushing at her. She cringed just as the thing was scooped up by strong hands, the same hands that had embraced every inch of her body sending her into a feverish ecstasy. Sabine froze in terror and delight.

The world ceased spinning, her heart stopped beating, and her breath abandoned her.

Niall stood, a squirming, clucking chicken in the crook of his arm. He gave her a small bow. “Ye’re a sight I’d never thought I’d see in
my
castle.”

“Y—your castle?” she managed to ask.

“Aye,” he said proudly, “’tis mine.”

“’Tis
mine
,” another Scottish voice said from behind her, one decidedly female.

Sabine did not take Niall from her sight. Agnes, the Highland witch, stepped into her periphery for only a moment.

“The castle ’tis mine,” she repeated. “My brother hasnae use for it.”

She swished away as quickly as she had come, attracting impolite stares from the men in Highland dress, all except Niall. He kept his gaze firmly on Sabine.

“The castle now belongs to my clan,” he said.

Sabine stood still with Niall and so many questions before her. She asked the first one that came to her mind.

“You and Agnes…are you married to her? To join your clans?”

Niall dropped the chicken, and it angrily zig-zagged away. He seized Sabine and held her so tight, she could barely breathe and did not mind. He kissed her there in the bailey before anyone who dared to watch. Before he broke the kiss, she had her answer.

“I will miss you forever,” she whispered. “I leave my heart here with you.”

“Warm comfort, my love,” he said. “A treasure greater than all of Scotland.”

“Greater than all of Scotland, you say?” a royal voice said.

Niall and Sabine straightened at the sound of Her Majesty’s voice.

Sabine immediately curtsied and Niall bowed.

“Yer Majesty,” he said with a nod.

“Is this castle that we have given you and your clan agreeable to you?” she asked.

Niall’s blue eyes flashed. “With all due respect, Yer Majesty, ye have given me and my clan nothing. This has been earned by many generations of MacGregors who have been forced to hide and deny their name and right to peace. Yer wisdom is a great blessing to all of us, Yer Majesty.”

Mary glanced at Lord Darnley who stood quietly by staring up at the surrounding walls. “Your blessing goes against that of a great many others. We hope to rule Scotland with fairness and justice for all of its subjects…including the Highlands.”

Niall bowed. “I must ask though, Yer Majesty, as I have been amply rewarded for my service to ye, ’twas Sabine who brought the matter of Campbell’s plot to my attention. What reward does she get?”

“The one which I have already given her.”

Sabine stepped forward. “What is that, Your Majesty?”

Mary waved a hand, each finger adorned with a jewel encrusted ring, at a valise sitting alone in the midst of the bailey. Sabine’s. She had not seen anyone bring it from the carriage, had not seen much else since she saw Niall.

“
Comment?
I do not understand,” she said.

Mary reached out and grasped Sabine’s right hand.

With her free hand, Mary reached into a gilded, velvet bag at her hip. She removed the miniature portrait of Lord Darnley that Sabine had painted just a fortnight ago. He had sat silent in his chamber, eyes distant as if he was not sure he was up to the task of marrying Scotland’s sovereign. Worried about this new challenge, Bothwell, perchance. Sabine looked at the portrait, painted in thousands of tiny brush strokes.

“I believe you have something similar on your person?” Mary asked, speaking to her not with her Royal tone of voice, but with one of a woman speaking to another woman.

Sabine withdrew a miniature of Niall from the top of her gown, one she had painted from memory. She must have left it on the table in her chamber to dry. Any one could have seen it including her queen.

“Such vivid memory should not be allowed to fade,” Mary said. “You will not have much use for that portrait in the future.”

Mary paused and smiled. “I promised your father that you would marry a good man.” She regarded Niall, gave him a lingering up and down stare. “Our Sabine, we leave it to you to make that decision. We are granting you release from our royal service. You, Sabine de Sainte Montagne, have earned that as much as the MacGregor has earned this castle and the surrounding land. We give you leave here. Whether you choose to stay or not is up to you. Holyrood will always welcome you. You make our masques most…interesting.”

With that Mary turned and walked away with Lord Darnley a few paces behind her.

Sabine curtsied. “
Merci beaucoup, Marie Reine
,” she whispered, stunned.

Niall stepped forward. “
Deagh fortan, Màiri Rioghachadh.
”

Mary stopped and turned. She nodded to him. “
Tapadh leibh, MacGregor.
”

He sang with laughter. “Scotland is gonnae be sound and good. With a sovereign like that, there’s hope for all of us.”

The carriages rumbled away. Lady Fleming gave Sabine a curt wave and sharp nod of her head. She waved back. Rory, from his mount beside the cortege, gave a hearty wave to them.

Niall offered Sabine his hand. “Ye wish to take a walk?”

She nodded numbly.

They walked up the stone steps, out of the bailey. Below them the clanspeople and farmers carried out the contented routine of their daily lives. Peace had settled upon them. Sabine wished the same would do for her soul. Her Majesty had left her here to choose her own path.

She squeezed Niall’s hand so tight.

“Ow!” he teased.

They walked beneath the arched doorway along the same corridor Sabine had traveled when her life was more condemned than hopeful. But what hope lay before her? Perchance she should reach out and take what she wanted and not allow fortune to decide for her.

“Or a little bit of both,” she whispered.

“Sorry?” Niall asked. He led her up another flight of stone steps that curled higher than anywhere she had dared go in this castle.

“Rory says you saved him from the gaol?” she thought to ask.

“He’ll wish he was back in the gaol when he takes the queen to the glen to visit my mum. She’ll have his head.”

“Who? The queen?”

“Me mum. She’ll think the cottage isnae properly clean, isnae the place for a queen.”

“’Tis wonderful, Mary will see that. But tell me how did you get Rory released? By employing the same trick you used to take me from the queen on the field of hunt so long ago?”

“This time I had to use my head instead of my heart, or my bloody shoulder,” he replied. “I simply told Her Majesty that Rory is reputed to be the best archer in the Highlands, and that if he wanted to murder her, he would. Instead, he chose to aim that arrow for my shoulder and let me play the hero for the queen.”

Sabine paused on the winding stair. “Really?”

Niall turned and looked at her from over a plaid-covered shoulder. “Bloody hell no! Rory had no idea I would be so daft as to spring into the arrow’s path. D’ye think I willingly wanted that arrow in my shoulder? But the queen believed I did. But I kept the money Rory got from Campbell to do the deed.”

“The one he did not do?”

“Aye…no…aye, now I’m bloody confused. Let’s just press on, aye?”

“Where are we going?”

“Not much farther,” he said cryptically around a grin.

“You are quite the mysterious one,” she said. “Taking me up to where the angels dwell.”

“Not until we get there,” he said.

Up and up, they traveled to what must have been the highest garret of this castle, one Sabine had not seen before.

“What are you going to call your stone palace?” she asked. “Now that you have
earned
it.”

“Castle Gregor,” he replied. “What else would I name it?”

“That was the name I would have chosen.”

His laughter rang down the narrow passage from the top of the stair. They had to walk single file only a few paces before they entered a small round chamber. A startled falcon flew from the window ledge its cry a harsh wake.

Sabine walked to the window, and her breath caught in her throat. The whole of Niall’s kingdom lay before her. The emerald valley and forests glistened full of life in the rays of sun that pierced the blue-gray clouds. The hills, the Highland bens, rose in the western sky offering her a silent beckoning to return into the grandeur. She drew in a deep, cleansing breath. She was there as long as Niall was with her.

“Nice view, aye?” he asked slipping up behind her wrapping his arms about her waist.

“’Tis the most beautiful view I have ever seen.”

“More so than your French mountains?”

“The beauty is different, the way I see things now is different.”

“You have color now. I saw the paintings. Very bonny. Ye know the Highlands.”

Sabine turned in his arms and faced him. “When did you see my paintings?”

“In the gaol, before they released me. The queen sent a page to bring them to me. Ye were sleeping. I gave them my approval, thinking that was what the queen wanted.”

He took her right hand in his and kissed it tenderly. “What say ye about this chamber?”

“’Tis sparse, humble, and quite small,” she replied.

“Is that all ye see about ye?”

She turned to look out of the window. “And despite all that I have just said, this chamber also has all of the life of your Highland home, because I can see it all before me through the window.”

“Aye….,” he whispered. “I see the very same.”

He turned her gently back around. “I have strength here in this humble place with all the riches of the Highlands before me. It has given me the strength to tell ye one very important thing.”

Sabine leaned into him, nuzzling against his firm neck. She closed her eyes letting his words spoken in his unmistakable Scots wash over her.

“I love ye, Sabine.”

“Say it again,” she whispered.

A warm breeze played in through the window teasing strands of her hair from the taut braid she had worn in royal service. Niall untied the silken strips that bound her hair. He buried his face in her breeze-tossed tresses, inhaling deeply.

“I love ye so very much, Sabine.”

She pulled away from him, just enough so that she could look into his eyes.

He captured her in his eternal blue eyes as his words flowed from his lips. “I know this chamber is humble, but two people who love a good view can make it part of this castle, can make it their home.”

“
Their home?
” Sabine asked.

“Aye,” he said with a grin, “the queen abandoned ye here. I thought it best to ask ye to marry me.”