Chapter 2: The Gaelic Word
The cliffside camp was not a place for rest. It was a strategic perch, chosen for its defensibility, not its comfort. Elizabeth’s tent, a small English island in a sea of Highland plaids, was pitched perhaps a dozen yards from the lip of the gorge. Below, the burn roared, a constant, white-noise fury that vibrated up through the bedrock. It sounded like anger.
Inside, she lay rigid on the thin pallet, wrapped in her cloak. She was not sleeping. She was listening.
The men’s voices were a low rumble outside, interwoven with the hiss and crackle of the central fire. They spoke in Gaelic, a language that felt all edges and hard sounds to her ear. She’d picked up a few words in the last few days—uisge for water, beinn for mountain. But one word cut through the unfamiliar stream again and again, sharp as a blade.
Sasannach.
She knew that one. Every Percy child knew that one. It meant more than ‘English.’ It meant outsider, invader, enemy. It was spat, not spoken.
A burst of laughter followed it, rough and short. Then a lower comment, a grunt of agreement. Silence settled, filled only by the greedy scream of the water below. Her pride, already raw from the journey’s constant, quiet scrutiny, ignited into a hot, painful coil in her chest. She wasn’t a fool. She hadn’t expected a parade. But this—this audible disdain from the men who were now her only shield in a foreign land—felt like a physical chill.
The flap of her tent moved. A shadow, massive and familiar, blocked the faint firelight from outside. Lachlan ducked inside, bringing with him the smell of smoke and cold night air. He didn’t speak, simply stood there, filling the cramped space. He was checking on her, she realized. A king’s duty to his treaty-piece.
“What did they say?” Her voice came out quieter than she intended, but level.
He stilled. “Who?”
“Your men. Just now. By the fire. They were talking, then they laughed. What did they say?”
He was silent for a long moment. She could just make out the planes of his face in the dark. “It’s of no matter.”
“It is to me.” She pushed herself up to sit, the wool of her cloak scratching her neck. “You said you preferred truth. So tell me. Was it about the ‘Sasannach’ in the wee tent? Was it about how I ride, or how I eat, or how I breathe your Scottish air wrong?”
Another pause. She heard him exhale, a slow, measured sound. “Aye. It was.”
“Which part?”
“All of it, Elizabeth.” He rarely used her name. It usually sounded like he was testing the weight of it. Now it just sounded tired. “They said your seat is too fine for a Highland pony. That you chew your oatcake like it’s sugared marzipan. And that you are a Sassenach princess who will wilt at the first real frost and leave us with a war anyway.”
The words landed, each one a small, precise slap. She had asked for it. She hadn’t expected the sheer mundane cruelty of it. Not threats, just… contempt. She looked down at her hands, clenched in her lap. The hurt was acute, surprisingly personal. She was trying. God above, she was trying to be brave, to be uncomplaining, to be something other than the burden they all clearly saw.
“I see.” The words were tight.
“They don’t know you,” he said, and his voice had dropped, gruffer. “They know your uncle’s taxes. They know the burnings last autumn, led by a man wearing your cousin’s livery. They know a hundred years of blood. You are a symbol. Symbols are easy to dislike.”
“I am a person,” she said, the heat returning, pushing back the hurt. “I am a person who is here, against her will, trying to make the best of a terrible bargain. I didn’t burn your crofts. I write terrible poetry and I’m good with horses and I miss my brother so much it feels like a stone in my throat. That’s the person. Not the symbol.”
The roar of the burn filled the tent. Lachlan didn’t move.
“I know,” he said finally. The two words were so simple, so devoid of his usual granite certainty, that she looked up. His expression was shadowed, unreadable. “I know you are a person. They do not. They may not for a long time. Their trust is earned in years, not handshakes. My duty is to keep you safe from steel. I cannot keep you safe from their words. Or from their silence.”
It was the longest speech he’d ever made to her. It wasn’t an apology. It was something harder: an unpalatable truth, served straight. She realized, with a dull thud of understanding, that he was being honest. This was the reality. The mocking was the gentle option. The other option was a knife in the dark.
The anger leaked out of her, leaving a cold, clear emptiness. “They’re not wrong about the oatcake,” she muttered, rubbing her eyes. “It’s like eating gravel held together with spite. My jaw aches.”
A beat. Then a low, rough noise that took her a second to identify as a chuckle. It was a sound she’d never heard from him. “It’s an acquired taste.”
“I don’t want to acquire it. I want a proper loaf of bread. With a crust. And butter.”
“You’ll get porridge tomorrow. And you’ll eat it, or you’ll faint before noon.” He turned to leave, then stopped. “What they said about your riding was wrong. You’ve a good seat. My men wouldn’t know a good seat from a bad one. They ride like sacks of turnips.”
He was gone before she could respond, the tent flap falling shut behind him, leaving her in a darkness that felt slightly less hostile.
She listened again. The voices by the fire were quieter now. The word Sasannach did not come. She heard the soft clink of a flask, the stirring of the fire. Normal sounds. She lay back down, the cold from the ground seeping through the pallet. The hurt was still there, a tender bruise on her spirit. But he had told her the truth. He hadn’t softened it or pretended it away. He had seen her pride bristle and he had given her the weapon of reality, however blunt.
It was, she thought, a form of respect. Perhaps the only kind he knew how to give.
Just before dawn, as a thin, gray light began to bleed into the tent, the flap moved again. She started, but it was only a large, calloused hand, depositing a folded wool blanket, thick and densely woven, onto the ground just inside. The hand withdrew.
The blanket smelled of peat smoke and lanolin. It was scratchy, and undoubtedly Scottish. It was also the warmest thing she’d touched in days. She pulled it over her, the weight of it solid and strangely comforting. Outside, she could hear him moving, his voice giving low, morning orders. The symbol, she knew, would have to wait for her breakfast porridge. The person wrapped herself in the offered wool and, for the first time since the twisted oak, slept.