Heaven and the Heather - By Elizabeth Holcombe Page 0,1
that I shall marry a good man.”
She peered over the wood railing down to the slate-black water below her. It was all she saw of this Scotland. The good man was there, beyond the mist, waiting for her, by the queen’s command and her promise to Sabine’s father.
Her intended was a man she had only met briefly when he had come to France to express his deepest sorrow to Mary after the death of her mother, Marie de Guise. He was a Scottish noble, not a savage. His appearances gave her reason to believe that, to hope that, but her heart would not soften to this man, this Lord John Campbell, self-proclaimed master of the mysterious Highland Kingdom. He was a tamer of the people who lived there, so he said.
“Le pays des sauvages,” she murmured. “The country of the savages . . . l’Écosse. Scotland. The Highlands.”
She had heard the whispered rumors of Mary’s attendants. She felt she knew well of this Scotland and of its Highland wilds. Men were said to wear clothes which bared their legs. Women were said not to wear shoes. These savage people lived as they wished, sweeping down from their remote hills and mountains with long, terrible swords, ready to fight and die for the meager life they lived in the wild. These were things she had heard ever since Mary had proclaimed that she and the whole of her court would go to Scotland.
Sabine strained to catch a glimpse, but the weather was against her. She gripped the gunwale. One hand held fast to the crusty wood better than the other. The mist was as thick as an Alpine blizzard. An impenetrable curtain to her curiosity.
Hope rose in her, because she had a way to escape royal servitude—this land of savages, and the man who by the queen’s command would marry her.
She would make her life her own, even with the mark of her father’s anger upon her crippled right hand. That, one day, too, would not exist. Hope was a gift she had given herself. Hope was her companion since the day she was forced from home five years ago.
Sabine reached down under her sapphire velvet cloak, which hung heavy and damp from her shoulders. She forced two gnarled fingers around the string of a soft leather sac pinned at her hip. She could not hear the crinkle or clink under the leather, but the small vibrations against her fingertips echoed the only bit of security and familiarity she had known.
Scraps of paper rested inside. Worthless to anyone except her. Sabine clenched her eyes shut, her right hand cramped a little. She fingered a small, fist-sized woolen ball. Each day, with its help, ignoring the pain in her hand became a little easier.
She extended her fingers as far as she was able. The tips of her two middle fingers brushed the cool, familiar feel of four gold pieces. Four? She stretched her fingers again, ignoring the pain, held her breath, and made a quick mental count.
Un . . . deux . . . trois . . . quatre. . . .
“Cinq.” She breathed. “Good.”
These five pieces of gold, a gift from her mother countless years ago before she died, would save Sabine’s life. These five pieces would give her freedom from all that lay before her like a borderless dark path, dismal and foreboding. She would never marry a man she barely had made acquaintance, much less loved, and for the keeping of a royal promise to her father. The queen would never see the folly of that promise, ’twould be treason to inform her.
With the gold she could travel far away from the savage land that remained veiled behind a stubborn mist. The queen would not miss her. She had ten other attendants and five ladies-in-waiting. Sabine could return to France, sort things out, then continue with the course of her life, by her will.
“Hope,” she breathed, “mon amie.”
Above her on the masts, the great sails lowered, shouts from the galley’s crew shattered the muted, misty silence.
“Le port! L’Écosse!”
She opened her eyes and stared forward. But where? As much as she strained, she could not see a thing! Her fears of coming to this land would be easier to face if they indeed had a face. Mist was all she had seen after they had rounded the east coast of England, ruled by Mary’s cousin, the flame-haired Queen Elizabeth, and protected by her fleet of overbearing ships.