Chapter Forty-Four

NED MURRAY MARCH 1490

The horseman reined in on the bank of the river and stared across at the gray stone house. His cousin, Graham, who'd jumped at the chance to escape Carlisle for a day of riding and drinking outdoors, grunted.

"We'll nae be crossing that today," Graham said.

There had been a bridge here, once. No longer. But he didn't need to cross the river to examine the house at closer range. All he had to do was shut his eyes and he could see the house as he remembered it: the grandest, strongest house in the North, the encircling wall tall and thick, the double gate swinging open into a forecourt busy with grooms and maids and men-at-arms, the indoors walled with tapestries and fresh rushes underfoot, the solar on the third floor, from where all the surrounding countryside could be seen. From where, if she were watching, the lady of the house could see him now.

Graham had whistled the dog after him and took his horse to explore farther upstream. Ned remained mounted, remembering.

When he'd realized that he would be in Carlisle twenty years to the day after he'd fled, he knew he had to return. Finally. He'd been back and forth across the border dozens of times in his adulthood without any desire to look upon his home. He knew it was abandoned. He knew it was held by the crown "in the interest of a proven heir to the previous owner, Lady Ismay Deacon." But he had been taught to distrust crowns, especially the English one that changed hands like hot coals.

When he was twelve, four years after the flight across the border, his tutor had given him a ring engraved with England's royal seal and told him his mother had left instructions that it be used in case of dire need. It wasn't until much later that Ned had realized his tutor, Ascham, had been in love with his mother. Had she known and returned the feeling, or had she closed her heart to anyone but his own dead father?

He knew the rumors—widespread among his mother's Murray relatives—that he was a bastard son of the late Edward IV. Ned knew he wasn't. Though his mother had only ever told him two things about his father, it was enough for him to make his own guess as he grew older: that his father had died in battle, and that he himself bore his father's name.

Edmund.

He'd never tried to take advantage of what he knew or guessed. Not when one unknown uncle had followed the other on the English throne. Not now that the English queen was his own first cousin. When he'd realized that Havencross had been invaded by armed men and that, whatever she'd promised, his mother had died because of it—somehow, somewhere—he had thrown off his childhood love of war and glory. He was content in Galloway, farming and trading and making enough money to build his own stone house for his own family.

For one moment, his heart twisted as he gazed upon the house across the river, and he wanted to say I wish you could have met Marsali, Mother. She is kind, practical, and beautiful—like you were.

"Ned!"

Graham came trotting back with the dog running freely across the moorland. "Have you seen all you came for? We'll reach Carlisle in the dark if we don't head back now."

Ned Murray released a deep breath. "I'm finished here."

But as he turned his horse's head, his eyes caught a shimmery, shivery light across the river. It came from the back corner of the house, in the direction of the ruined priory chapel. Ned stilled and watched as the shimmer formed into an outline—a tall, pale boy with fair hair and wide eyes. He didn't have to be closer to hear what the boy said: "Come hide with me."

It was eerie and remarkable, and maybe he should have been frightened, but the Scots had their own appreciation for the uncanny.

As Ned kicked his horse into motion and followed Graham westward, it comforted him to know that some part of Edmund Deacon remained at Havencross, engaged in a long, patient vigil for his mother's soul.