In the Time of Kings (3 page)

“I was going to say I had urges, Ross. That’s all. I wasn’t going to elaborate on it. Certainly not name names.”

“Oh. Really?”

“Yeah, really.”

“Look, I’m sorry. I just want you to myself. I always have.” Shoving my hands in my pockets, I scuff my shoes over the concrete. Then I let my gaze sweep over her body in a much more grown-up, suggestive way. “I want to be next to you, kiss you all over, touch you in places no one but me knows of, make love to you all night long, first thing in the morning, halfway through the afternoon, in your dentist’s chair, behind my lectern. I’d rather do you than eat, drink, or sleep.”

Crossing her arms, she cocks her head at me. “Is that the only reason you married me?”

“No, I married you because I can’t think of being with anyone else, ever. I married you because you’re my reason for being. I married you because when I saw you again, after all those years, I knew what true love was. And I knew what ‘forever’ meant.”

Her stance softens. Playfully, she presses a fingertip against my sternum. “How can I stay mad at you when you talk to me like that?”

Our lips meet in a kiss as she raises herself on tiptoes. I draw her against me and she tilts her hips, pressing them against mine.

“I can’t wait until we’re alone,” she whispers, her tongue flicking over my teeth playfully. “And I don’t care who sees us right now or what they think.”

I moan at the promise, my kisses growing more passionate.

Suddenly, a big claw slams squarely into my back, crushing the air out of me. Claire and I topple to the ground. A long, slobbery tongue scrapes against my cheek, leaving a trail of slime.

“Sorry, sorry!” A middle-aged woman wearing a red jogging suit jerks at the leash to rein her leggy mutt in. Reluctantly, the playful Great Dane lopes away beside her, nudging her sideways with its oversized muzzle.

Had I not realized how ridiculous I looked, sprawled out there on the cement with dog drool dripping down the side of my face, I might be mad at Claire for laughing so hard. Instinctively, I check for my glasses. They’re still there, although slightly askew. I finger the frames to make sure they’re not bent.

The two teenagers are gawking at us, now. Claire is still laughing. I scowl at her, but notice she’s holding up the plastic bag with our lunch inside it.

“Look, I saved it.” She wipes at my face with a stiff paper napkin, then helps me to my feet. “There’s a good spot over there.”

We squat at the base of Sir Walter Scott’s imposingly tall statue and are immediately surrounded by a mob of pigeons, cooing and strutting in a tightening circle.

“Here? Are you sure? I don’t like how they’re looking at us, Claire.”

“Who?” She scoops a pile of rice into each of our meals and digs in. It always amazes me how she can wolf down more calories than I can, even though I’m a good fifty pounds more. The woman has the metabolism of a hummingbird on diet pills.

I point with my plastic spoon and whisper, “
Them
.”

She stops in mid-chew, swallows. “Birds? Oh my God. You’re serious, aren’t you?”

“Just look at them.” I wave my spoon back and forth, thinking they’ll take it as the threat I intend it to be. Instead, four more glossy-feathered gangsters land nearby and the level of cooing rises to a din that drowns out the Maroon 5 song from the iPod of the chick nearest us who’s sporting three nose rings and a neon blue Mohawk. “It’s like they’re conspiring. Waiting for the right moment to —”

A sticky lump of rice mixed with saag paneer smacks me in the temple, slides down my cheek and drips onto my shirt collar. Claire grins wickedly, one hand gripping the handle of her spoon and the fingers of the other one cranking the business end back with a fresh load of ammunition. “There’s more where that came from if you don’t stuff that overactive, paranoid imagination of yours.”

I crane my neck toward her to give her a peck on the cheek, signaling my submission. Just as my lips brush her face, the flap of wings startles us and we gasp in unison. A pigeon dives in and gobbles up the rice.

“See,” I say. “Told you they had a plan, didn’t I?”

Leaning our foreheads together, we laugh until our stomachs ache and our eyes swim with tears. If anyone is watching us, wondering if we’re deliriously drunk or just plain mad, we don’t give a rat’s fanny.

Fifteen minutes later, too stuffed to move, we recline against the base of the statue, fingers woven together, comfortable in our silence. An old couple now shares the bench that had belonged to the teenagers, who scurried off with worried looks after the girl got a cell phone call — probably one of her parents asking her where the hell she’s been. The old man still has a full head of steel gray hair, but judging by the many lines in his face and the liver spotted skin, he has to be in his mid eighties. Beside his wife rests a polished ebony cane, the end carved into the figure of a swan so that the neck serves as the handle. She lays her head against his shoulder and puts her hand in his. They talk for a long time, laughing at one another’s jokes, each taking a sincere interest in what the other has to say. Whenever they fall silent, there is always a look of serene contentment on both their weathered faces.

“Sixty years from now,” I say wistfully, “I want that to be us, Claire.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because they’re happy just being together. My parents ... they were never happy.”

“I don’t think that was your mom’s fault.”

“Me either. But I feel like I’ll live my whole life trying to make you happy, just because of all the fighting I saw growing up.”

“Ross, don’t worry. You don’t have to prove anything. You’re nothing like your dad.”

“I hope you’re right. I mean, I know you are. But that old couple there, they deserve to be together for a long, long time. As much as I miss my mom, maybe it was a tiny blessing that she died when she did. Looking back, I can’t understand why she didn’t just leave him. Maybe she could have had a few happy years, if she had.”

“Maybe she saw something in him no one else does? Maybe he used to be different?”

“Yeah, well, life is full of ‘maybes’. I can only work with the facts and the fact is he’s a jerk, to put it mildly.”

The old couple bends forward to go, but the woman struggles to stand. Her husband gets up, his back hunched, and gives her his forearm. When she’s steady, he helps her shift her weight to the cane, then moves to her side. It must take them ten minutes to move from their bench to the sidewalk and begin down the street.

“Promise me something, Ross.”

“Anything.”

“If, for some reason, we don’t both make it to that age, promise me you won’t mourn me forever. That you’ll find someone else to make you happy. I can’t stand the thought of you being alone.”

“That’s a weird request to make on our honeymoon, don’t you think?”

“I just want you to be happy, that’s all. It’s important to me. Promise?”

“Sure, I promise. Same goes for you.” I give her a peck on the cheek. “Besides, you’re not allowed to die. Ever. I won’t allow it.”

“Hate to break it to you, honey, but people don’t live forever. Love, though ...
Love
never dies.”

Our fingers interlace. In that moment, I’m aware of nothing but the sound of her breathing, the heat from her hand and her thigh pressed against mine.

When you love someone with all your heart, the only thing that matters is being with them. You always think that love means forever, but the truth is you don’t really know.

Because in the blink of an eye, everything can change.

––––––––

Western Highlands, Scotland — 2013

T
he rugged landscape of the Western Highlands races by, stone-capped peaks parting filamentous clouds of ivory. Red shaggy cattle wander in loose clumps through the valleys, while curly-horned sheep cling to higher ground. I rest my cheek against the glass of the train window, my view obscured by the smeared fingerprints of previous passengers. The constant ‘thunk-thunk, thunk-thunk’ of the wheels on the tracks jars my skull, so I slide down further in my seat and lean my head back. I pull out the printed pages I’ve been carrying with me and unfold them: copies of the Scottish side of my family tree. I can’t lay claim to any royal ancestry, but there are several prominent families on it: Gordon, Graham, Campbell, MacNeil, Sinclair ...

While I’m no more than an amateur genealogist — hundreds of ancestors just a few keystrokes away — the idea that some of my forebears played pivotal roles in history is a rush, however vicarious. The past first took on meaning for me when I started sorting through my belongings in preparation for moving in with Claire and pulled out the partial family tree my mom had given me before she died. It only went back to the mid 1700’s, but one long weekend later, I had made it four centuries further back. There were plenty of branches that ended abruptly, but naturally I’d taken the most interest in the Sinclairs. Trying to figure out that one piece of the puzzle made me realize I could spend years researching this and never have all the answers.

Beside me, Claire naps contentedly, her navy blue hoodie wadded up and tucked against her shoulder for a pillow. I envy her that ability, being able to sleep anywhere. I stir at every sound, as if I sense some primal need to keep vigil in case of attack.

Through the window, the ruins of a square keep crown a distant crag. One corner of its curtain wall has completely collapsed, making me wonder whether siege engines or time alone ravaged it. People once lived there, far above the surrounding mountains and deeply carved glens, and within its stone embrace they found shelter — from the elements, from their enemies. For awhile, at least.

“Sinclair, Gordon, Campbell, MacNeil ...” Claire sits up and taps the papers, tracing a finger from left to right until she comes to a dead end. “Geesh, ‘Unknown’ sure shows up a lot, doesn’t he? Or she?”

“Hey, babe. I thought you were asleep?”

“Was. But that sunlight was like a crowbar between my eyelids. I think it’s the first time we’ve seen any sun since we got here.” She yawns, stretches her legs. Her shins bang against the framework of the seat in front of her and she lets out a tiny ‘Ow!’ before pulling herself upright. “So, you’ve been studying that a lot. You aren’t going to drag me around to a bunch of grave sites, are you?”

“Of course not.”

A look of relief passes over her face. “Good, because they make me sad.”

“Just one,” I say, which earns me a frown. “But it’s a battlefield. And you don’t have to go if you don’t want to.”

“No, I’ll go. I can tell it’s important to you.” She squeezes my forearm. “Anyway, where is this place and when are we going there?”

“Outside Berwick. A site called Halidon Hill. And it won’t be until the tail end of our trip. There’s a retired Presbyterian pastor out that way who promised to look into some things for me.”

“Like what?”

I don’t answer immediately. Claire has never shown an interest in genealogy or history before. Normally, she’d switch the subject, so the fact that she’s even asked is a shocker.

“Well, there’s a William Sinclair here, see?” I point to the name. “It says he was born in 1334, but I can’t figure out who his father or mother were. There’s another William Sinclair I found, but he died a few years earlier, so he couldn’t have been
this
William’s father. Maybe he had a brother and that brother named his son after him? It’s all so confusing, but I’m curious who these people were.”

“So this is why you wanted to come to Scotland, huh? To chase ghosts. Here I thought it was for the romance.” She winks at me and I smile back. “What does all this have to do with this Halidon Hill, anyway?”

“I think some of my ancestors may have died there. In fact, I’m sure of it. At any rate, it was a big battle. Huge. Tens of thousands of casualties that day, almost all Scottish. Can you imagine? The entire male line of families wiped out in just a few hours? A lot of people say it didn’t have to happen. That it could have been prevented. You see, Berwick was under siege by Edward Balliol, who’d laid claim to the Scottish throne, and the King of England, Edward III. Sir Archibald Douglas, who was the Guardian of Scotland, came to the town’s defense, but it was all too little, too late.”

Claire mouths an ‘Oh’. Her eyes are taking on that same glazed over look I give her whenever she comes home talking about a disgusting case of tooth decay in a Mountain Dew addict. I can’t help myself, though. I’ve spent hundreds of hours online the past year and I find it exhilarating, like a detective following leads in a murder investigation. Luckily for her, Claire is spared further details when the train’s velocity begins to slow and a white sign with black lettering speeds by just outside our window: Ft. William.

After a filling dinner and an overnight stop in Fort William — where Claire wears me out by ducking into every shop on High Street — we’re off again. A perilous ride on the steam train takes us to Mallaig and from there we hop a ferry to Skye. Our B&B host on the island, a bent-spined lady with a blue bouffant hairdo, raves about the stables near the shore that offer pony trekking.

Claire turns those doe-like brown eyes on me, her lower lip jutting. “Can we?”

“One word: hives.”

“Oh yeah, I forgot.”

“Just be glad I’m not allergic to dogs.”

She wrinkles her nose at me. “If you were, I’d keep the dog and kick you out.”

NOT SO LONG AGO

Balfour, Indiana — 1996

“R
oslin!”

I startle awake, shivering with sweat. Several minutes pass before my heart calms.

Watery sunlight filters through threadbare curtains. Yawning, I stretch my arms, grab my glasses off the nightstand and stare at the bright red numbers on my radio alarm: 7:02 a.m. I kick the sheets off and pad to the bathroom. Five minutes later, I’m dressed in cut-off shorts and a striped polo. It’s too hot for shoes. I’d go shirtless if my mom wouldn’t screech at me to put a shirt on.

Still barefooted, I sneak down carpeted stairs to the kitchen. Tilting the sugar container, I scoop out three spoonfuls, sprinkling each one over my bowl of Kix cereal. Then, hunching over my breakfast at the table, my mouth pressed to the rim of the bowl, I shovel down the sweet goodness and wait for the jolt of energy to enter my bloodstream.