The Rock Read online

  Jamie shook his head. “I did. Thommy isn’t going to be a knight. He’s going to be a smithy like his father.”

  Thommy was surprised that the young lord knew who he was.

  “You mean you don’t have to practice all day with a wooden sword like Jamie does?”

  Thom shook his head. “Sometimes I get to watch my da work on them though—steel ones,” he clarified.

  “I’ll be getting a steel one soon,” Jamie boasted, with an eye to Joanna.

  “Maybe you’ll make one for Jamie?” Ella asked him.

  Thommy shrugged, not wanting to confess that all he did right now was carry the charcoal and pump the bellows. “Maybe.” He took Joanna’s arm, knowing he was going to have to drag her away. “Come on, Jo. We should probably go.”

  She resisted, and before he could stop her she asked the two Douglases, “Do you want to come along?”

  “Sure,” Ella said so quickly he knew she must have been waiting for the invitation. She turned to her brother, who wasn’t looking quite as certain. “We can go riding tomorrow. It’s such a hot day.” She turned back to Joanna. “I don’t know how to swim, but Jamie does.”

  “I don’t know either,” Joanna said.

  “I could teach you sometime,” Jamie offered.

  Ella looked at her brother as if he’d just grown a second head. “How come when I ask you to teach me, you always say lasses don’t need to know how to swim?”

  Thommy tried not to laugh at the boy’s red, I’m-going-to-throttle-you-later expression. He sure was glad he didn’t have a sister.

  The girls, however, were oblivious to Jamie’s discomfort. Joanna, at a year older than Ella, had already perfected the eye roll, which she executed in his direction. “Thommy says the same thing when I ask him to teach me to climb,” Joanna said to Ella. “He climbs the rocks up near Sandford with the other lads from the village. But he’s the only one who goes up the Devil’s slide.”

  “Really?” Ella’s eyes widened, looking at him as if he were some kind of hero from a bard’s tale.

  Maybe having a sister wouldn’t be bad all the time—not if Jo was going to talk about him like that.

  Jo nodded, and then looked at Jamie. “Do you know how to climb, too?”

  “Of course,” Jamie said, as if surprised that there was even a question.

  Thommy was amazed that Jamie didn’t split the seams of his fine doublet with the way his chest and shoulders seemed to puff up.

  Ella gave her brother a funny look and opened her mouth as if she were going to argue, when Jamie cut her off. “Do you want to go or not, Ella?”

  The little girl let out a cheer of delight and linked her arm with Jo’s. As if they’d known each other forever, they skipped off ahead, not giving Jamie a chance to change his mind.

  The two boys took one look at each other, shook their heads in tandem as if to say “lasses,” and followed.

  As it turned out, before the day was over, the two girls weren’t the only ones who were fast friends.

  The boys swam in the burn for a couple of hours while Jo and Ella sat on the edge with their toes in the water, when one of the other boys from the village—Iain, the constable’s son—suggested they play a game of hide-and-find.

  The dense forest of big, domed oak trees, downy birch, and hazel trees, with the thick bracken and mossy underwood, was ideal, providing plenty of places to hide. It had been a warm spring, otherwise the ground would be a carpet of faerie flowers. The blueish purple flowers that were shaped like a bell had been his mother’s favorite.

  Thommy had played it many times before, but he explained the rules to Jamie. All the boys except for one would hide. The one who didn’t hide—the finder—would have to cover his eyes and count to a hundred before trying to find them. The rest of the boys couldn’t move once the hundred count was up.

  Jamie, apparently confident in his tracking abilities, volunteered to be the “finder.” It was then that the trouble started, when Ella—who apparently wasn’t used to being excluded—objected to the no-lasses rule. Although it really wasn’t a rule because up until that point they hadn’t needed one: all the village lasses had understood that they weren’t included.

  “But that’s not fair,” Ella said with a surprisingly mulish look on her cherub’s face. “I’m smaller than all of you, I can hide the best.”

  The boys looked at each other as if she were daft. Everyone knew lasses didn’t best lads. They instinctively looked to Jamie to do something. Normally, they would look to Thommy, but under the circumstances he was happy to defer his role as leader.

  Jamie tried reasoning with her, but when that didn’t work, he grew frustrated and just told her that was the rule, and if she didn’t want to follow it, they would go home.

  That stopped her. Ella slammed her mouth shut, pursed her lips together as if sucking on a lemon, and plopped down angrily on a rock with her small arms crossed in front of her. The wee lass apparently had a stubborn streak.

  The other boys looked relieved, and Jamie tried to act as if her agreement had been expected, but Thommy thought he detected a whiff of relief.

  Jo, who could normally be counted on to be reasonable but had been surprisingly vocal in her support of her new friend, shot Jamie a disappointed look (his star apparently having dimmed), and sat down beside Ella to wait.

  At least that’s what they were supposed to do, but when Thommy and Jamie came to collect them after the game was done (Jamie had been correct in his estimation of his tracking skills), the girls were gone. Apparently stubborn and willful, he amended.

  At first they were more annoyed than worried. The other lads had gone home, so he and Jamie split up, Jamie yelling threats to his sister, while Thommy yelled some of his own to Jo.

  Thommy found Jo after a few minutes. She’d picked a good hiding place under a fallen tree covered in a veil of moss, but she’d neglected to ensure her skirts were tucked completely out of view.

  It took far longer to find Ella. Actually, they didn’t find her. Jamie finally had the smart idea to shout out that she’d won, she could come out now, when a moment later they heard a soft cry in response.

  Realizing where it was coming from, Thommy felt his heart tumble to the ground. Dread quickly rose up to take its place.

  The light was already fading as he gazed up into the branches of the massive old oak tree to see the tiny lass perched on a branch about fifty feet above him. Lord have mercy, how in Christendom had she climbed up so high?

  His stomach churned like he’d just drunk a glass of soured milk, thinking about what would happen if she fell.

  “God’s blood, Ella, what are you doing up there?” Jamie said. “Come down before you break your neck.”

  Thommy thought he heard a sniffle. “I can’t. I’m stuck.”

  “What do you mean you’re stuck?” Jamie said. “Just climb down the same way you went up.”

  “I don’t remember how.”

  She started to cry and Thommy couldn’t take it anymore. “I’ll get her,” he said.

  Jamie shook his head. “I’ll go. She’s my sister.” A fact he didn’t sound very happy about at the moment.

  Jo looked terrified. “Are you sure? It’s getting dark, and Thommy’s the best climber in the village.”

  Thommy winced. He was old enough—and proud enough himself—to understand that Jamie would never back down now. Unintentionally Jo had just thrown down a gauntlet. Jamie was the young lord; it was inconceivable that he could be outdone by a village lad—especially in front of a lass he wanted to impress.

  Jamie removed his velvet doublet and started up the tree. Thommy and Jo were quiet as they watched the lad navigate the lower maze of branches. It was so dark in the canopy of leaves that Thommy could barely see, when Jamie glanced down and stopped about halfway up.

  “What happened?” Joanna said, her eyes round and filled with worry. “Why did he stop? Why isn’t he moving?”

  “I don’t know,” T