Prologue

Near Aberfoyle, The Central Highlands of Scotland 1449

I n and around Loch Chon, they would talk for many years of how the fair Lady of Lockhart laughed like a madwoman when her husband hanged her lover—on the very eve of her date with the executioner's ax.

It was an ill wind that drifted across the Highlands in the autumn of 1449, bringing with it first the death of the obese earl of Douglas, whose heart, unable to endure the strain of his gluttony, finally gave out. In that same ill wind, his son William was swept to the title. But William, unlike his father, was fit and capable—so capable, in fact, that the mentors around the boy King James felt threatened, particularly when James, on the verge of manhood, was making a habit of refusing their sage advice. And it was in that rift between king and mentors that William Douglas did indeed see the opportunity to immortalize his power. This he did by supporting the mentor Crichton over the mentor Livingstone, which meant, that anyone aligned with Livingstone was doomed….

Unfortunately, that included Anice of Lockhart, a woman as renowned for her gentle spirit as she was for her beauty, from Loch Katrine to Ballikinrain. Given in matrimony to William's cousin, Eoghann, the laird of Lockhart, along with a dowry of twenty sows, Anice soon discovered that Eoghann was neither seduced by her charm nor a kind or faithful husband, preferring a rough life of hunting and whoring. Nonetheless, Anice bore the feckless Eoghann five sons and one daughter. While Eoghann had no use for the latter, he adored his sons, and often left Anice and the daughter, Margaret, alone. Such a life of misery did the lovely Anice lead that it was little wonder she fell in love with the handsome Kenneth Livingstone.

Some would say that autumn's ill wind brought Kenneth Livingstone, a warrior and a nephew to the king's closest adviser, to the Lockhart keep. And although he was ten years her junior, one look at Anice's lovely face and Kenneth Livingstone knew the woman he would die for.

Likewise, Anice believed she deserved this chance at love; she confided as much to her lady's maid, Inghean, and pursued Kenneth's love with relish, living recklessly, engaging in her adulterous affair openly for anyone to see save Eoghann, for as was his habit, he paid her little mind.

Perhaps Anice would have enjoyed her happiness for many more years had not William become the Douglas earl. Though he could not fault Anice for straying from her marriage—he knew his cousin Eoghann to be a despicable man—he could not forgive her doing so with a Livingstone. Thus her fate was sealed—William dispatched a team of envoys to his cousin's keep to read aloud the decree of death for the adulterers.

While Eoghann did not object to William's decree that Kenneth Livingstone should hang, he did object to the same sentence for his wife, and determined that a beheading was far more appropriate for her perfidy. But he would first imprison her in the old tower so that she might observe the construction of the scaffolding from which she and her lover would meet their deaths.

As Anice's maid Inghean would later recall it for her grandchildren, Anice of Lockhart grew increasingly mad in that last fortnight, stalking about a cold chamber devoid of even the barest of comforts, wild-eyed and clutching a small and hideous sculpture of a beastie. Inghean would never know the significance of the ornamental statue other than to understand that Anice and her lover had shared some secret jest, and Livingstone had commissioned the thing to amuse her. The ornament was ugly—cast in gold, with eyes and mouth made of rubies so that it looked to be screaming, and a tail, braided and interspersed with rubies, that wrapped around its clawed feet.

On the eve of Kenneth's hanging, Anice called Inghean to her. She was holding in her lap something wrapped in cloth. Slowly, she peeled away the cloth to reveal an emerald the size of a goose egg. It was a gift from her mother, she said, the only thing of value she had managed to keep from Eoghann in all the years they had been married. Anice wrapped the emerald again, and speaking low and quickly, implored Inghean to help her. She pressed the wrapped emerald into Inghean's hands, then the ugly beastie, and begged that she take them to her brother, the blacksmith, and beseech him to seal the emerald in the statue's belly for safekeeping. It was, she explained tearfully, her last but most important gift to her daughter, Margaret.

Inghean could not refuse a condemned woman her request. When the deed was done, she returned to the tower, just in time to watch the crowds gather for the hanging of Kenneth Livingstone. She joined her mistress on the battlements around her tower prison and stood, terrified, as Kenneth was led onto the scaffolding. Anice, unwilling to let Eoghann see her fear, cackled like a madwoman.

Then Kenneth looked up, saw Anice standing there, and Anice grabbed Inghean's hand, her fingernails digging deep as they watched the executioner wrap the noose around Kenneth's neck. And as the executioner stepped away, Anice leaned over the battlements so far that Inghean feared she might fall, and screamed, "Fuirich do mi!"

"Wait for me!"

The executioner pulled the rope; Kenneth's fall was quick, as was the break of his neck, and he hung, limp, his suddenly lifeless eyes staring blankly at the roaring crowd gathered before him. Anice let go of Inghean's hand and fell back against the stone wall of the battlement, her body as limp as her lover's.

Later, she asked for the statue and her daughter, Margaret, who was just a girl. "Heed me, lass," she whispered when Margaret was brought to her chamber. "See this that I give ye," she said, taking the statue from Inghean, "and promise me ye'll guard it with yer very life!"

When Margaret did not answer right away, Anice shook her. "Do ye hear me, Maggie?" she insisted. "This that I give ye is more valuable than all the king's jewels. When the time comes and ye fall in love, but yer father gives ye no hope for it, then ye look in the belly of this beastie, do ye ken?"

Margaret glanced fearfully at the awful little thing and nodded.

The next morning, as her husband and her two oldest sons looked on impassively, Anice knelt before the executioner's block.

In one mean strike of the sword, Anice was sent to meet her lover.

As little Margaret grew older, the times grew more turbulent. The earl William died by the king's own hand, and suddenly the nation was plunged into a bitter clan war. Douglas warred with Douglas and with Stuart; all alliances were suddenly suspect. Indeed, the three youngest Lockhart sons took issue with their father and their two older brothers, and made their allegiance known to the Stuarts. In the midst of that bloody clan warfare, Margaret, now fifteen, fell in love with Raibert of Stirling, who pledged his allegiance to the younger Lockharts. Margaret came to Inghean to tell her that she had given the statue to Raibert for safekeeping, that they would flee to England with her brothers. She kissed Inghean good-bye and slipped out into the night.

Inghean never saw the lass again, and in fact, it would be years before she would know that Raibert had been killed in the battle in Otterburn, and that the younger Lockharts had taken the beastie with them to England. The beastie, but not their sister, Maggie, who was left behind with a broken heart and put away in a convent by her father, where she would die a year later by her own hand.

Inghean would live for many years afterward to tell the story of the Lady of Lockhart. Yet over time her memory would fade, and she would forget the very small details. By the end of her blessedly long life, the tale of the Lady of Lockhart had come to be known as the Curse of the Lady of Lockhart, for more than one had seen the madwoman laugh at her lover's hanging, and more than one could believe she had cursed her daughter.

When Inghean at last took leave of this world, the truth of the Lady of Lockhart took leave with her. The so-called curse was separated from fact, and grew to encompass all females born to a Lockhart. The beastie became nothing more than a prized belonging that spawned centuries of clandestine border crossings between England and Scotland by more than one Lockhart wishing to possess it, a practice that would endure for hundreds of years.

By the time Scotland was at last united with her sister England, local legend had it that a daughter born to a Lockhart sire would never marry until she "looked into the belly of the beast." Family lore interpreted this curse to mean that any daughter born to them must face the Devil before she would marry, and the strength of that curse was bolstered by the strange fact that no Lockhart daughter ever married.