‘Keep it close and keep it safe, my knight.’
William looked away, his shoulders slumping.
‘I’m no knight, my sweet dove. Would that I was, though. Then we could be married on the morrow, instead ay … instead ay what I’ve got tae dae.’
Aurora started crying, and she threw her arms around William as her body was racked with sobs of unadulterated sadness.
‘Wait Aurora, wait,’ William pleaded. ‘I’ve got something fir you as well. It’s no’ master portrait like yours, but it is something that’s been a treasure tae me, something tha’ I’ve had fir years, tha’ I believe has thus far brought me luck.’
William presented Aurora with a thumb-sized, simply wrought bronze cross, knotted in the ancient Celtic style. At the centre was a small cavity, which had once held a jewel of some sort. The little ornament had been lovingly polished over the years, and it gleamed attractively in the starlight.
‘I found this while digging in a stream when I was a small boy, shortly after I very first arrived at Sir MacTaggart’s estate from London. I kept it e’er since, an’ didnae tell a soul about it. I always thought it’d bring me luck, an’ I was carrying it in my pocket the day I first met you … so it already has. It brought me the best luck in the world.’
‘William … it’s … it’s the most wonderful gift anyone has ever given me. From now on until the day I draw my last breath, I will wear this around my neck. I’ll never take it off.’
‘I’ll bring you back a ruby, or emerald, or sapphire, my love. Something beautiful tae put in it, there in tha’ wee spot where some jewel used tae be.’
‘I don’t need any of those, William. Just bring me you.’
‘Aye, I will, m’lass,’ he whispered, his voice hoarse and cracking. ‘You can count on tha’.’ He reached over to her, and with his right hand he brushed her cheek with soft, caressing fingertips. He cupped his left hand under her chin and placed feather-light kisses all over her face, and then brushed a lock of hair away from her shoulder so that he could nuzzle her neck and throat with tender lips. Aurora stared at the sky for a few exquisite, drawn-out moments while William showered her with affection before she spoke again.
‘The dawn is approaching, William. I have to get back so that our accomplice butler, bless his soul, can sneak me back into the house before my father and the other servants awaken. And you, you have to…’
‘Head off with m’ lads tae report tae the sergeant fir our first day ay training,’ he said in a strained voice, laden with bitter sorrow.
Tears streamed down Aurora’s face as William spoke these words, and a surge of emotion gripped him in throttling coils at the sight of her tear-streaked grief. He leaned in and brushed away the tears with trembling fingers, closing her eyes as he placed gentle kisses on her eyelids.
‘Lie with me one last time,’ she whispered as she held him tightly. ‘One last time, so that we both will remember.’
‘Aye m’lass,’ he replied, almost choking on the words as tears began to run with uncontrollable urgency down his own cheeks. ‘One last time.’
And so, with an almost violent desperation and heady urgency they made love, as they had many times that night, sweating, shuddering, gasping, crying out and writhing with ferocious passion beneath the pile of heavy cloaks, under the watch of the ice-shard stars scattered across the cold November dark. Beneath this dome of eternal beauty, the two lovers danced their mortal dance of lust and heat, while above the Northern Lights whirled their ethereal waltz across the vastness of the heavens … and overseeing all of this, the wheels of fate creaked and turned in mute malevolence.
24
WILLIAM
December 1853. Brighton Cavalry Barracks, England
‘Keep your guard up Private Gisborne, up for God’s sake!’ Sergeant Fray roared in his heavy Liverpudlian accent. ‘Farmer McDougal could drive his bloody hay cart wi’ a team o’ horses through the gaps you leave open! Now raise your bleedin’ sword and try that again!’
William grimaced, shrinking in the face of the sergeant’s beratement. His right arm burned with a crushing agony from the past hour of sword drills, which he just couldn’t seem to get right, and every movement he made blasted sharp shots of pain through his hips and legs, which were aching acutely from the footwork exercises they had been doing.
‘You’d think we were an infantry regiment, wi’ all this damned footwork an’ fencing the sergeant is making us dae,’ he muttered to Michael, who was performing the drills to his left.
Michael flashed him a self-satisfied grin.
‘I dunnae mind, Will. Why, I feel like I’m getting good at this!’
It was true; Michael had taken to soldiering like a duck to water. He was already one of the top swordsmen in their squadron, and able to best soldiers who had years of experience on him. Not only was he handy with a sword, he had also turned out to be a crack shot with a rifle.
William, on the other hand, had proven to be quite hopeless when it came to the art of fighting; this included swordsmanship, unarmed combat, and marksmanship. The only thing he was good at, it seemed, was riding. He had started to regret his decision to join the Lancers within the first few days of beginning training, whereas Michael had relished in their new life from the outset. Paul and Andrew had proved to be efficient, if unenthusiastic, about their training. They missed the relative freedom they had had on Sir MacTaggart’s estate, but they sometimes seemed to enjoy the challenges that came with learning the arts of war. Paul, always the more jovial and extroverted of the pair, got on well with both the new recruits and the old hands of the
