Warrior and the Wanderer (18 page)

“Oh, dear God stop him,” she whispered to herself.

Ian looked as if he was possessed by a demon. He gyrated his lean hips clad in the tight confines of his trews and shook his legs as if he had the palsy. He waved his arms and pointed at the young women with his finger offering them a smoldering stare. They could not help but giggle and bounce in their seats. Bewitched, aye, Bess thought, he was putting them under some sort of spell. After he finished his song and his odd dancing, which looked like he was trying to make love to thin air, she knew he would soon have his head in the noose at the gallows in Mercat Cross. This sort of performance was better offered in the privacy of a bedchamber, not in court before the royals.

He finished his song by extending a note that included the word “die”. Aye, that he would surely do this night.

“Save yerself,” she whispered. “Sing a familiar song to this gathering with your beautiful voice.”

One of the young women sighed heavily when Ian blew her a kiss.

The musicians looked like they had been through a battle. They wiped their sleeves across sweaty foreheads and looked at Ian. He was not finished.

Bess refused to admit to herself that there had been something strangely attractive in Ian’s performance. That beneath the stiff stomacher, under the layers of silk brocade and linen, she felt a primal yearning for this strange man.

The musicians began playing a melody more agreeable in temperament to this audience than the previous song. It sounded oddly familiar and not familiar. Ian relaxed his posture and began to sing.

Bess sat up like her spine was as stiff as the blade of her claymore.

Ian was searching the audience. His amber eyes moved over them as smoothly as his beautiful voice curled around the words of a song she had never heard. He was singing about love, about the feeling of love that his lady had lost. And he sang of the love gone adding a plaintive “whoa-whoa-whoa” to emphasize the anguish of his song.

He found her and his gaze did not waver from her sight as he sang his song.

Bess shifted in her chair. The young women turned and looked at her. Ian stepped down from the front of the stage, over the candles along the edge. He began to walk slowly toward her, his voice delivering the song straight to her in front of everyone. Her face grew so warm. Was the blush blooming on her cheeks visible to the assemblage?

Ian strolled down the center of the aisle, destroying any semblance of protocol by ignoring the royals by singing directly to her. She would have to answer to the queen regent on the ’morrow before stating her case, but she could not care about that this moment. She would save the caring for later.

Ian paused, and gave her a sly wink over a crooked grin.

She blinked hard, her entire body so warm.

Ian strolled past her heading toward the throne, singing his song of love. He stopped several paces from the queen regent and king. He gave them a brief bow, not once breaking the melody.

Bess swiveled her head like an owl’s to get a better look at a man condemning himself before royalty.

Ian knelt before the queen and held his hands out to her.

Her Majesty sat up as straight and attentive as Bess sat. But worry did not etch her royal face. She was smiling, demurely, as Ian ended his song.

Slowly, the queen held out one bejeweled hand. Ian took it in his own and placed a kiss on it.

Then the sound of applause broke the silence.

The king, all of ten years and three, clapped with great enthusiasm. Ian, still kneeling, nodded to him offering him a crooked grin.

“I liked the first song better,” young King James told Ian. His mother smiled.

Bess let her breath out until her bodice no longer strangled her. Ian had enchanted them with his odd manner, songs, and beautiful voice.

He stood and bowed at the royals. “By your leave,” he said.

He backed away a few paces then turned and made his way onto the stage apparently not caring that it was a severe breech of courtly etiquette to turn one’s back on royalty. He disappeared behind the curtains.

Bess gripped the edges of her chair forcing herself not to follow him.

Chapter Ten: The Fan Club

T
he bare wood skeleton of the backstage, put together with nails and pegs, reminded Ian of the shape of the metal scaffolding that had been used to erect the enormous, elaborate stages in the arenas he used to play. When he had a band, and was part of something greater than the sum of his own ego.

The trio of musicians walked past him, casting wary glances in his direction.

“Good work, lads,” Ian said with a nod. “Cheers.”

They nodded and shuffled quickly away from him, snaking a small trail around the open servants door.

They had done bloody well with the music he had given them, transcribed while when he was in prison, with of all things a quill and powdered soot he had mixed with the white of an egg. The guards had done nothing short of making him feel ignorant when they had showed him how to make the ink.

At this moment he felt relief.

Relief that his head and neck was still joined together. The teenage king had enjoyed the Elvis tune as much teenagers from Ian’s mother’s generation had…or would in about four hundred and fifty years. Ian had played for young royalty once before. English princes named William and Harry. They had offered him the same reserved royal enthusiasm, as did this young King James.

The queen regent, well she had enjoyed that old Righteous Brothers tune “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin”. Of course she did. He didn’t know a woman yet who didn’t get that far away look in her eyes when he sang it with the right emotion. But Bess had just stared at him though. And he and seen fright in her eyes.

He promised Bess that you would help her. The queen and her son, the king, were out there. He would go tell them that he rescued Bess from Lachlan MacLean’s death-on-a-rock. She wanted him to do that for her. It would be his encore.

A servant strolled past him bearing a tray with several decanter-looking glasses with a dark burgundy liquid in each one. Steam rose from the wide lips of the decanters. The vapor tapped Ian’s nostrils. Wine, meade to be exact. He knew what that was…

“…Dutch courage,” he whispered.

As the servant passed he reached up and snatched one of the decanters from the pewter tray. The servant didn’t notice.

Standing there holding the decanter by its thick neck, he looked all around the backstage. In another time of his life he would have had catering fit for royalty, only it would have been for himself: Russian caviar (which he would never have eaten, it just looked impressive), green M&M’s (some lackey must have gone troppo picking out the other colors), a never ending supply of Dom Perignon, and lots of enthusiastic and eager groupies.

So, here he stood after a royal command performance, about to drink alone and all he could think of was having Bess join him.

She had been frightened when he sang at her. Was her fright because she had thought him a fool or because she had seen his execution as an encore?

He took a long swig of the meade. The heat of the spirit scorched the back of his throat far more than its strength. He stifled a cough just as Spittal stalked up to him with a pageboy in tow.

“MacLean!” he snarled through clenched, yellowed teeth. “What was that vulgar outrage?”

Ian lowered the decanter to his side. “What the hell do you mean, Spittal?”

“That music! I gave you the materials to compose proper music for the king and queen regent. I gave you a tunic I had fashioned for the Duke of Montrose to replace your crimson one. Such a color in court is only proper for clergy or the royals. One would have thought you would subscribe to courtly decorum and not those of a more ‘worldly’ nature. You even took it upon yourself to approach the queen and give her hand a kiss!”

“She gave me her bloody hand,” Ian growled and took another swig of hot meade. “And I kissed it.”

Spittal’s eyes bugged. “See that you remove yourself from this celebration immediately—”

“Beg yer pardon, m’Lord,” a meek voice said.

Spittal turned on the pageboy. “Speak up!”

“Her Majesty has requested the bard.”

Ian smiled and nodded at the nervous lad. The boy beamed up at him despite Spittal’s harsh glare.

“Tell the queen I’ll be along straightaway,” Ian said. “I have something to tell her.”

The page bowed and quickly backed away from Spittal. Ian gave him a conspiratorial wink. The boy took it with a small cocked grin and vanished out into the great hall.

Spittal set his anger back on Ian. “Your time here is short, MacLean.”

“You’re telling me,” Ian said.

“I am an old friend of Lord Lachlan MacLean. I was his father’s tailor and I am indebted to him for my status in this court. I have heard the rumor from the Duke Of Argyll. This charge of murder that Lady Campbell had trumped against Lord MacLean is a falsehood.”

“How do you know about it?” Ian asked, the short hairs on back of his neck raised. “Were you there when Bess’s brother was murdered?”

“Lord MacLean wrote me about the unfortunate incident. He was not involved.”

“You’re a disillusioned bastard,” Ian said.

“It is Lady Campbell who is disillusioned. I know she was in your chamber. She cannot stand behind her annulment to protect her. Until Her Majesty has sanctioned it, Lady Campbell is guilty of infidelity to Lord MacLean. The penalty is life imprisonment.”

Ian gripped the neck of the decanter until it shattered in glass and burgundy droplets. The next thing he gripped was Spittal’s scrawny neck. He slammed him against the back of the stage set making the wooden joists rattle and groan. “You have no proof of this. You’d do best to keep you nasty gob shut!”

“Do you have proof to the contrary?” Spittal mocked. “I think not.”

This was bullshit. The person who needed to be brought before the royal court was not Bess, but Lachlan MacLean.

“Where is Lachlan MacLean?” He gripped Spittal’s neck tighter, practically lifting the man off of his feet. “You two are such good mates. You should know where he is.”

“’Tis no reason to conceal that he’s to Edinburgh. I would think he’s coming here to take back his wife, but his letter did not say so.” He struggled under Ian’s hold on him. “Now, release me.”

Ian let the weasel go, keeping his silence about what he knew: that Lachlan MacLean had no idea Bess was alive. There was only one thing for him to do now. See the queen before Lachlan MacLean had a chance to do so. He had charmed her and the boy king with his songs. Time to tell them that he had found Bess chained to a rock by Lachlan’s own hand.

He stormed away, stomping through the spilled meade and broken glass.

Spittal spoke behind his back. “Lady Campbell will keep herself from the goal if she can prove she has yet to be plucked. ’Tis the only reason Her Majesty would consent to an annulment.”

Ian turned around and stared at him. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“The royal physician would need to examine her,” Spittal replied.

Ian shook his head. “What in the hell is wrong with you people?” He would make sure there was no reason for the queen or anyone to force Bess to submit to that humiliation.

He gladly left Spittal and stepped out from behind the stage and into the arms of his sixteenth century fan club.

A swarm of young women surrounded him. Most of them came up to no more than mid-chest level on him, and all of them probably no more than sixteen. They quickly encircled him, eyelids aflutter, and small bouquets of herb sprigs trembling before their faces. Ian would have been far more comfortable if they were waving CD’s for him to autograph or snapping selfies with him while their backstage passes swung from lanyards around their necks. He looked down at them and offered a grin.

They curtsied in unison.

He glanced around the great hall. The throne was miles away from him, and through a forest of people. He needed to find Bess and take her with him when he went to see the royals. How could he ever let her out of his sight with the shadowy prospect of Lachlan MacLean ready to show up in Edinburg Castle? Or the proof of her virtue under the threat of humiliating scrutiny?

The girls giggled behind their bouquets. So far their repertoire just included staring and giggling.

“I would love to stay and not chat with you ladies, but I have an appointment the queen,” he said taking a step forward.

Without a word, the circle opened and let him pass. Ian worked his way through the crowd with a bottomless supply of “pardon me” and curt bows. The crowd, in turn, had an endless supply of stares as he passed. Was it was uncommon for a bard, an entertainer, to be allowed into the court on a social level?

The throne was only a dozen steps away. Ian paused. Bess was standing off to the side, between him and the throne. She was chatting with a stately looking fellow. As she stood surrounded by the glitz and glamour of her time, she easily outshone them all, royalty included. Ian could not move, paralyzed by the sight of her.

Her lithe, strong body enhanced the rich emerald fabric of her gown. The silk with a raised pattern of small flowers and diamond cross-hatching molded against the upper part of her body enhancing her curves. He had never seen anything so bloody breathtaking. Beauty was beauty, inside and out. And worth saving and protecting.