Seeing him with his twig sword in hand, striding ahead of her, she heard his cousin Anna’s voice repeating in her memory, “This is who your friend Jamie is named for,” and she frowned.
“Jamie?”
“Aye?”
“You’re not to be a soldier. Not for real,” she told him, as he turned round, with a question in his eyes.
“Why’s that?”
She could not tell him.
Jamie swung his sword in play, and Lily raised her own to parry his the way she had been taught.
“Your daddie is a soldier,” Jamie said, “and so is mine.”
“I ken that, but I’d not wish ye to be one.”
“I’ve no wish to be a soldier,” he admitted, to her great relief.
They found the others waiting for them at the bottom of the gardens of the house at Abercairney, where the river slid by at a languid pace and gave a view of the two islands that divided the calm waters.
Anna was not there—she was fifteen now, and had lately fancied herself grown too old for games, as had her brother William, one year younger, who was similarly absent.
But the other Moray boys were ready with their weapons: Robin, who at thirteen stood the tallest and could win at any argument; the youngest, Maurice, only six, who still kept up as best he could, and in between them John, eleven and a half this summer, and in restless motion.
John’s sword was a thing of wonder. Fashioned out of wood, it looked astonishingly real, and had a scabbard he had made for it of leather. What John did, he did with purpose.
Lily knew he wished to be a soldier, a dream shared by Jamie’s brother Pat, who stepped out now in front of them.
“Ye took your time,” Pat said to Jamie.
“Aye, well, she had work to finish.”
“We’ve been waiting ages,” Pat complained.
Lily began a quick apology, but Robin Moray, stepping up behind her, placed a reassuring hand upon her shoulder. “Never mind, you’re here now.” Turning to his younger sister, he asked, “What’s the game to be?”
Emelia, with her fair hair loose about her shoulders, stood a moment by the sundial, thinking. She was good at organizing games. Sometimes they’d all be bold adventurers, exploring on the island, or a band of privateers at war with Spain, or questing knights in search of dragons. But today, as if her thoughts had somehow been drawn back into the same current of memory Lily’s had, she chose a game they’d not played since last summer: “Covenanters and Montrose.”
John grinned. He loved this game. “I’ll be Montrose.”
Pat leapt in next. “And I’ll be Grandfather.”
Emelia turned to Robin, but he knew what she was going to ask. He said, “Shall I be Argyll?”
“Would ye, please?” Emelia gave her older brother a look of pure gratitude.
“Ye mind the rules?” asked Robin, looking at the youngest of the children to make sure. “When Argyll captures ye, then ye become a Covenanter, and ye have to fight on my side.”
Maurice pointed out, “John never does.”
“Well, John is an exception,” Robin granted. “He will never fight against the king, on principle, and so we have to throw him in the dungeon, but that isn’t as much fun, I promise.”
Even with the head start he agreed to give them, Lily knew how tricky it would be to hide from Robin. He was clever.
But she thought she knew the perfect place.
“Come on,” she said to Jamie, as she led him back through tangled woods and underbrush, toward the castle of Inchbrakie.
When they reached the old moat, now a dry and sloping gully, Lily pointed to a spot within the green space it encircled.
“There.”
And Jamie’s smile was quick and understanding, for he knew the tales his cousins had been telling her this winter past in their play schoolroom—the same tales that he’d been hearing his whole life. He knew his kinsman, the great Marquis of Montrose, while being chased by Argyll’s men, had famously avoided capture by concealing himself in this yew tree Lily was now pointing to: the great Inchbrakie Yew, which had been standing here for centuries, an ancient guard upon the castle.
What better place to hide when playing Covenanters and Montrose?
They broke from cover cautiously and raced across the clearing. Jamie made a stirrup with his hands and boosted her up to the nearest branch the way she’d seen grooms help people mount horses, and then, being able to jump higher, he scrambled after her.
The tree was imposing, its trunk broader round than her father was tall, and its branches spread out in a thick fall of twisting dark needles that caught at her skirts as she climbed. But it held them securely, the greenery closing around them again like a screen as they settled themselves high enough that they wouldn’t be noticed by anyone walking beneath.