The Queen's Lady

PROLOGUE

PART I:
Homecoming

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

PART II:
The Queen Triumphant

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

PART III:
Passion and Defeat

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

Before the fire

G
WENYTH HEARD THE SOUND
of footsteps and the clang of metal, and knew the guards were on their way to her cell.

Her time had come.

Despite knowing since the beginning that she was doomed, despite her determination to die defiant, scornful and with dignity, she felt her blood grow cold and congeal in her veins. Easy to be brave before the time, but now, faced with the reality of the moment, she was terrified.

She closed her eyes, seeking strength.

At least she could stand on her own two feet. She would not have to be dragged out to the pyre like so many pathetic souls who had been “led” into confession. Those who had seen the evil of their ways through the thumbscrews, the rack or any of the other methods used to encourage a prisoner to talk, could rarely walk on their own. She had given her interrogators what they had wanted from the beginning, standing tall and, she hoped, making a mockery of her judges through her sarcastic confession. She had saved the Crown a great deal of money, since the monsters who tortured prisoners to draw out the truth had to be paid for their heinous work.

And she had saved herself the ignominy of being dragged—broken, bleeding and disfigured—to the stake.

Another clank of metal, and footsteps drawing closer.

Breathe,
she commanded herself. She could and would die with dignity. She was whole, and she had to be grateful that she could walk to her execution, having seen what they were capable of doing. But the terror….

She stood as straight as a ramrod, not from pride but because she had grown so cold it was as if she were made of ice, unable to bend. Not for long, though, she mocked herself. The flames would quickly thaw her with their deep and deadly caress. Instead of adding to the agony of the punishment, further torturing the doomed and broken souls delivered to their kiss, the flames were meant to see that such damned creatures were destroyed completely, ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Before the flames were ignited, the condemned was usually strangled. Usually.

But when the judges were infuriated, the flames might be lit too quickly, without allowing the executioner time to hasten the end and lessen the agony. She had made enemies. She had spoken up for others; she had fought for herself. Her death was unlikely to be quick.

She'd made too many enemies, and that had led to her conviction and impending death. It had been easy to put the pieces together—after her arrest.

There were many who believed in the devil, believed that witchcraft was the source of all evil in the world—including the queen Gwenyth had served with such loyalty. They believed that mankind was weak, that Satan came in the night, that pacts were signed in blood, and curses and spells cast upon the innocent. They thought confession could save the eternal soul, that excruciating torture and death were the only way back into the arms of the Almighty. In fact, they were in the majority, for now; in Scotland and most of Europe, the practice of witchcraft was a capital crime.

She was not guilty of witchcraft, and her judges knew it. Her crime was one of loyalty, of love for a queen who, with her reckless passions, had damned them all.

Not that the cause mattered, nor the sham of a trial and the cruelty of the judgment against her. She was about to die. That was the only thing that mattered now.

Would she falter? What would happen when she felt the scorching touch of the first flames? Would she scream? Of course she would; she would be in agony.

She had been right and righteous.

Little good that did now.

And beyond the fear of death and pain, she was sorry. She hadn't realized how much she had traded away in adhering to her ideals. The pain of what she was leaving behind had become a ragged, bleeding wound in her heart, burning as if salt had been poured on the tender flesh. Nothing they were about to do to her body could be as heinous as the agony tearing at her soul. For once she was gone….

What would happen to Daniel?

Nothing, surely. God could not be so cruel. The trial, the execution…they were meant to silence her and her alone. Daniel was safe. He was with those who loved him, and surely his father would allow no harm to befall him. No matter what she had done or how she had defied him.

The footsteps came closer, stopped just outside her cell. For a moment she was blinded by the light of the lantern they had brought with them into the darkness of the dungeon. She could tell there were three of them, but nothing more. Then her vision cleared and for a moment her heart took flight.

He
was there.

Surely he could not mean for her life to end this way. Despite his anger, his warnings, his threats, he couldn't have intended
this.
He had told her often enough—accurately, she had to admit—that she was far too like the queen she had served, rashly speaking her mind and blind to the dangers inherent in such honesty. But still, could he really be a part of this charade, this spectacle of political injustice and machination? He had held her in his arms, given her a brief, shimmering glimpse of how the heart could rule the mind, how passion could destroy sanity, how love could sweep away all sense.

They had shared so much.
Too
much.

And yet…

Men could betray one another as quickly as the wind shifted. For their own lives, for the sake of position and wealth, property and prosperity. Was he indeed a part of this travesty? For she had not been mistaken.

Rowan was here in all his grandeur. His wheaten hair was golden in the flickering torchlight, and he epitomized nobility in every way—kilted in his colors, a sweeping, fur-trimmed cape adding to the breadth of his swordsman's shoulders. He stood before her now, flanked by her judge and her executioner, chiseled features grim and condemning, eyes as dark as coal, cold and disdainful. Long fingers of ice reached up and gripped her heart. How foolish she had been to believe he had come to her rescue.

He had not come to help her but to further condemn her. He was not immune to the political machinations of the day. Like so many of the nobility, with skills honed through years of bloodshed, he was adept at straddling a wall, then landing on the winning side in battle, whether on the field or in the halls of government.

She stared at him without moving, the other men invisible to her. She forced herself to ignore her own filthy and disheveled state—clothing torn and damp, crusted with the dirt and mold of her dungeon cell. She refused to allow herself to falter beneath his stare. Despite the rags that clung to her now, she remained still and regal, determined to end her life with grace. He watched her, his scorching blue eyes so dark with condemnation that they appeared to her like stygian pits, a glimpse into the hell into which she would find herself cast once she had breathed her last in this life and endured the final agony of the fire.

She met his look with scorn, barely aware that the judge was reading the accusation and the sentence, informing her that the time had come.

“Burned at the stake until dead…ashes cast to the wind…”

She didn't move, didn't blink, simply stood quite still, with her head held high. She realized that Reverend Martin had come up behind the others. She was almost amused to see that they had sent their esteemed lapdog to try to force her into abject terror and a renewed confession, even at the stake. After all, if she were to assure the crowd that she was indeed the devil's pawn, guilty of all manner of horrors, then the whispers that she was innocent, a victim of a political struggle, would not rise to become shouts that stirred resistance the length and breadth of the country.

“Lady Gwenyth MacLeod, you must confess before the crowds, and your death will go easy,” the rector said. “Confess and pray now, for with your deepest repentance, our great Father in Heaven may well see fit to keep you from an eternity in the very bowels of hell.”

She couldn't tear her eyes from Rowan, who appeared so tall and indomitable among the others, though he was still watching her with such loathing. She prayed that her own disgust outshone the fear in her eyes.

“Take care, reverend,” she said softly. “I stand condemned, and if I speak now before the crowd, I will say that I am guilty of nothing. I will not confess to a lie before the crowd, else my Father in Heaven would abandon me. I go to my death, and on to Heaven, because the good Lord knows I am innocent, and that you are using His name to rid yourselves of a political enemy. It is
you,
I fear, who will long rot in hell.”

“Blasphemy!”

She was stunned, for it was Rowan who shouted out the word.

The barred door of her cell was flung wide with terrible violence. Before she knew it, he had seized hold of her, the fingers of one hand threaded cruelly through her hair, forcing her to stare up into his eyes, powerless to escape the touch of his other hand against her cheek.

“She must not be allowed to speak before any crowd. She knows her soul is bound for hell, and she will try only to drag others down into Satan's rancid hole along with her,” Rowan said, his voice rough with hatred and conviction. “Trust me, for I know too well the witchery of her enchantment.”

How could such words fall from his lips? Once he had sworn to love her forever. Before God, he had vowed his love.

Her heart shattered at the thought that he had come not only to bear witness to her agony but to be a part of it.

His hand was large, his fingers long and strangely gentle, despite the fact that he was so accustomed to wielding a sword. She recalled with renewed pain how those fingers had once reached for her only to stroke with the greatest tenderness. And his eyes…eyes that had gazed at her with such delight, such amusement, even anger at times, but most of all with a deep, shattering passion that touched her soul as she could never be touched in the flesh.

Now they were nothing but dark, brutal.

As he stared at her, held her defenseless, he moved, and she realized that he was holding something. It was, she saw, a small glass vial, and he held it to her lips as he bent closer and whispered for her ears alone, “Drink this. Now.”

She stared at him blankly, knowing that she had no choice, and almost smiled, because she saw the flicker of…something in those eyes that were so blue a color that they defied both sea and sky. She saw desperation and something more. Suddenly she recognized what it was. He was playing a part. He had not forgotten her.

“For the love of God, drink this now,” he said.

She closed her eyes and drank.

In an instant, the room began to spin, and she realized that there had been mercy in him, after all, some memory of the sweeping passions they had shared, for he had given her poison to spare her the searing agony of the flames devouring her flesh, roaring until she was nothing but ash cast into the wind.

“She's Satan's bitch! She seeks to make a mockery of us all.” Rowan growled as she felt his hands tighten around her throat.

He wanted them to think that he had strangled her not as an act of mercy, but to keep her silent before the crowd.

Darkness began to encroach upon her vision, and a numbness invaded her limbs. She could no longer stand, and she sank against him, grateful that she would be dead before she was consumed by the fire.

And yet, in those last moments, she raged against the agonizing truth that the man she had once trusted, had loved above life itself, with whom she had shared ecstasy, known paradise, should be the one to take her life.

She saw his eyes again, bright like blue flame, and wondered if those fiery beacons would follow her even unto death.

Her lips moved. “Bastard,” she told him.

“I shall meet you in hell, lady,” he replied, his voice a whisper, and yet, like the fire in his eyes they would surely follow her into eternity.

Was there a smile curving his lips? Was he mocking her, even as she died? Her vision fading, she looked into his eyes for confirmation and saw both sorrow and something more, as if he were trying to convey something to her, something the others must not see.

For as long as she could, she continued to meet his eyes, trying to see all that was in them and to convey her own message to him.

Daniel…

She wanted to say his name, but she dared not. She knew—
knew
—that he would love their son, that Daniel would never want for anything. Rowan would see to that. Unlike her, he would never fall prey to the vicissitudes of power. He had always been a statesman; his enemies never underestimated his strength—or his popularity.

The darkness closed in more fully around her, yet she felt no pain, wishing she had learned the lessons of statesmanship more fully.

That the queen had learned them, as well.

She wondered if she, like Mary, had given way too often to passion and her own convictions, her own definitions of right and wrong. Had there been a better way to stand her ground, to help the woman who even now knew she was in grave peril? The queen, too, might well lose her life; she had already been forced to abandon everything that made life worth living.

How could she have known? How could any of them have known? It had begun with such power and grandeur, such a beautiful and glorious dream. Even as the light faded, she remembered how it had shone once, so long ago.