Post by The Grape Gatsby! on Mar 15, 2015 23:18:18 GMT
♣ Prologue
“I’m not certain you understand, my lord,” the woman told him, her voice cold. She did not meet his eyes and instead occupied herself with following the intricate threadwork in the tapestry by the bed. The patterns were enough distraction to keep her eyes from watering at the words her mouth formed, directed at the one man she did not want to talk to right now. He did not even try to regain her gaze, and answered her casually as he drew back the bedsheet.
“And I’m not certain I want to understand.”
She did not understand how he could be so utterly indifferent, and particularly after the things she had told him thus far.
He rose from the bed without so much as a glance toward her and moved to the far end of the chamber to dress.
The woman withheld the tears welling in her eyes.
She did not want to look toward where he was, but she had little else to do. He ran her entire life now. She was not the same woman she’d once been, and that was what hurt her most. With a slight whimper, she gathered her strength and rose from the bed, drawing her dressing gown around her cold frame and leaving the room. She held her breath as she passed the man, whose gleaming back was facing her, and let it out when, finally, she was out of the room.
With silent steps, not wishing to be heard by any of the manor’s staff, the woman moved down the corridor toward her own chambers, the way lit by several torches along the wall. All she wanted was to reclaim her former title and the respect that accompanied it, lower though it may have been—and she wanted this man to stop lording over her life. Maybe she was simply too resentful, but the woman was afraid she could no more handle her current situation.
She just wished to be home and sitting in her garden, not here in the folds of a life she could not have dreamed in a nightmare.
This man would be the end of her.
♣ One
The weather here never reflected the hearts of the people.
The afternoon was chilly, but it was nothing that was out of place. The weather in these parts was particularly noted for being damp and cold, and when the sun was out as it was today, it should be considered a fine day for anything. Of course, there was work to be done—the work here was never finished—but Annys MacCulloch had other ideas. Her work was that of a different sort, a special skill that she alone held at this estate, and for which she was renowned throughout Scotland.
She could go freely to the fields, to the heart of the lowlands, and do as she pleased, for her craft seemed to rely on it. And there were days she would be gone from the time the onyx sky turned golden until the time that very same golden sky reverted to its onyx—a full day’s work was never an easy task for it burdened the mind and the soul.
The fields were always beautiful this time of year, when the heather was in full bloom and the impending autumn lingered on the breeze, just strong enough to taste on the tongue and the fringes of the heart. Annys could feel the change of the seasons as she could every year, and it stirred a strange feeling in her heart. For, this year, she felt that there was a change in her wake, some aligning of the stars that beckoned and bid her alter. Surely, surely she would not be leaving Scotland. In fact, Annys was wary of leaving her estate at all anymore—the years she had spent in the English court were long since gone, but their bitter aftertaste was not. She had been a good lady-in-waiting, but the atrocities of the court had marred her once so innocent mind and she felt that living again in Scotland was doing her well. This was truly her home, and ever would it be. Well she wished that one day she could die here.
But it was not to be.
One day she would venture off beyond these walls she’d so carefully constructed and she would not be the responsibility of impatient parents who, while they had loved her, did not need the extra burden of a daughter too old for keeping at the manor.
Then again, Annys could pay her own way. She held her own fortune, unbeknownst to those outside this manor, and that was the reason she was allowed to stay as it were. If she’d not been spectacular and unreasonably talented, she would by now have been forced into marriage and given away without a second thought.
But she was.
Annys was something of her own kind. There were suitors aplenty in her life but she chose to ignore them all, choosing instead to fancy herself falling in love and running away with a nice lowlander who would come up to save a damsel in distress. In fact, that fantasy was not so much what she wanted as what her too-disillusioned mind wanted to write of. Peril, strife, danger. Love, passion, loyalty. Annys saw herself as the deliverer and not the recipient. She was not the actor; she was the playwright. She could not live the lives that she wrote and it was no different than the thousands of other idyllic writers that had gone before, searching after prizes they knew they never could have.
Annys was a poet.
Moreover, Annys Davina MacCulloch was the Poet of the Pond, renowned throughout all of Scotland, England, and France for the skill and poise of a warm-witted and satirical pen. She was the writer that every poor and blooming poet wished to be, and she was the matriarch of a new age in verse that expressed individual sympathies and retribution against tyranny. But she was anonymous.
As far as the rest of the world knew, the Poet of the Pond was a nobleman with no other useful hobby or a priest with time to spare away from the altar; perhaps a schoolteacher with a passion for wooing those he loved or a courtly gentleman who wished to climb the vines of rank with the ink of lust and early passion—alas, this was not the case, but only one family understood and only one woman held the secrets of the Poet for herself. She could not reveal herself and yet she could not keep silent. The poems and the songs and the revelations had to voice her suppressed thoughts and desires in her stead.
And the Pond?—it was her only safe haven. It was ambiguous to the public but to Annys it was a couple acres of pure paradise, nestled in a valley of the most favored country in God’s eye of beauty. It was in the center of a great highland plain, and while it was not beautiful, it was justified. It balanced the harmony of earth and water and sky, and on summer days such as this was, reflected the clouds and birds overhead.
Was not balance the very substance of life? Was not harmony the raison d’être? Annys explored these concepts and loved them—she was a woman of remarkable moral stability and yet unfathomable genius; this made her the one and only human who ever could hold the title of Poet of the Pond. She was schooled beyond normal means for a woman, and her time at court had been but a reminder to her of the place she held among men—subservience. This was why she could stand to be nowhere but at home, on this grand highland estate, sanctioned by King Charles himself. Her family, the MacCullochs of Scotland, had built a castle beside an older keep, and the land around them constituted their vast holdings. They were no minor clan; in fact, Annys’s father was the earl and chief.
This was the other reasonable excuse to keep Annys at home; she was the oldest of his children and would thereby inherit the clan upon his death. Were she bound to another clan or family, her brother would instead inherit—her father likely had thought such a thing would happen but lately it had become apparent that she wanted and deserved the position.
Times, however, had changed in the past couple of months, and there was news from England of unrest. This had worried Annys and she thought that perhaps the Stuart king in power should trouble for his life—if she was not mistaken in her studies, it was not entirely uncommon for greed and political differences to be the foundations of something sinister—an overthrow, a coup.
If what she had heard from her father was correct and not embellished, Parliament had become restless in its attempts to rein in the whims of the Stuart king, and there were speculations that he would have to be replaced.
Should he ever upset that legislative body so, Annys did fear for his reign.
There had been plenty in her readings that suggested a fatal end for not only him but his line, and she did not wish to think of the cost in blood that rebellions always cost. Why, had Richard III not won the throne with an ocean of scarlet? Had he not killed the two princes where they lay and given rise to a whole slew of conspiracies? Shakespeare was a bearer of messages, as well, and Annys recognized his skill at the quill with a great deal of admiration.
She strove to be a legend by the day her body gave itself up to the dust of the earth. The Poet of the Pond, as fashionable as she may have been now, could only live forever if lips always repeated her poems. And writers, just as dress styles and composers, seemed to be of a finicky nature in the tastes of society. They came and they went, remembered for a second in time and then bequeathed to the torrential storms of forgotten feats and saints.
It was all she wanted; to be recalled for centuries past when she left.
And words—oh! What powerful things they could be—were the tools of her trade, tools that she could share with others and that would last endlessly.
It made Annys chuckle to think such things. Did it make her naïve, then? To think she could possibly live forever through her poems? If it did, she would have to excuse the thoughts and keep dreaming. There were few ways else to make it in this life.
And as she sat day in and day out beside her little pond in the Valley of the Water of the Spirit, or so it was in one of her poems, Annys believed she understood the simplicities and the intricacies of the world. She thought she could taste any fruit that life bore and yet also could she reach any burden that life placed before her. It was not a bad thing, not really. Scotland was a place of vivacious spring and sweltering summer; a place of crisp autumn and tumultuous winter. The rain was a common sight but it heightened the beauty of the land, wafting the smell of the heather over the hills and to the air of the Scottish keeps.
There was nowhere else for Annys. Scotland was her home and there would never be somewhere else quite so wonderful if she lived to be ninety-nine. She had been elsewhere; for a Scottish lady, she was well-travelled and well-versed in the ways of the English nobility—but she would trade all of that to die within the comfort of the Scottish lochs, the lowland fields, the highland mountains. This was home.
And for someone so renowned, it ever should be.
♣ Two
Annys’s premonition had, as she feared, been correct—poets seldom encountered visions and dreams that did not mean anything and she was no exception.
The keep of the MacCulloch clan was a shabby thing, built at least five or six generations prior and apparently never well-kept. To hold tradition, the keep still stood and functioned as a storage facility, but there had been built a new castle, one that had been overseen by Annys’s father and had been her home since she was two. And it was at this very castle that Annys received the most troubling news of her youth. She had thought that, by surviving suitors so long, she would be more or less unwanted at twenty-two, but it seemed that it was not so.
She had the political situation of the country and the eye of the king to blame, and no less.
There was high tension now in the lording English government, and Scotland looked to soon be playing the villain. However, Annys’s time in court had won her the favor and respect of King Charles—one of the only other humans who knew that she wrote poetry, though he did not know her nom de plume—and now it seemed he wished to do her a kindness, at least from his viewpoint.
He meant to form an alliance for the MacCullochs to protect them against the coming storm, to let them latch on to the English security should Parliament rebel. From the standpoint of the court, it seemed to be a good plan and a courtesy to the clan, her father being chief and all, but from where Annys stood, it was one of the worst things to happen.
She learned the news from her mother, perhaps to quell her temper and deliver the blow more softly. But that only upset Annys more, to know that her father was too much a coward to do else.
“Annys, dear…” her mother pleaded.
“Mother, ye canna! I’ve a life ahead of me—I’ve made me own path, and ye canna take that frae me!”
“Speak in your proper tone, Annys MacCulloch. You will accept your king’s offer and your suitor’s hand. Your father has hereby approved of the match and the clan will be all the better off for this match. You’ve had your twenty-two years. You’ve been a free woman. It’s time to take up your cross of responsibility and go aid our clan.”
“I willna speak in such a manner, and I willna gae! I make ye money, Mother, money, and I should want t’ gae t’ London fer work ‘afore I marry any man I dinna love!”
“Annys…”
“I dinna want that.”
“Annys MacCulloch.”
“Mother.”
Her mother, Mairi MacCulloch, stood from where she had been sitting and faced the window, away from the eyes of her cross daughter. Her tone was slow and cautious as she asserted, “Annys, you are getting married whether you so choose or not. There are poets aplenty in England, and if the bloodshed begins soon--God knows there is tension--we are in danger for things far more precious than words. We must have this alliance, Annys, and you are the key. You—why, you are the most important woman in this clan, in Scotland. You can save us, Annys. Be a lady.”
A silence hung in the air for several minutes and was not lifted until the chirping of a bird beyond the walls sounded.
Annys sighed. What choice did she have? She could run away but that would be a disgrace to the MacCulloch name and to her father—and moreover, to the king of England, who reigned supreme in her homeland. Even more, she could then never come back because she would be exiled.
Oh, but the life of a writer sounded divine.
“I cannot live without words,” she breathed quietly, her Scottish dialect fading back into the proper English accent she’d inherited from the court.
“I…” her mother trailed off, for once not having the words to express what she needed to say. After a moment, she said softly, looking back at her daughter, “Perhaps you will not have to. But… Annys, please be careful. I know the things you write. You will get married, and you will be a proper wife. Do not destroy this alliance, Annys. Do not let any writing get in the way of that.”
“I resent that, Mother, I really do.”
“I know.”
The laird’s wife had a forgiving voice, a far more understanding tone than she’d had several minutes prior. Annys looked up at her, eyes still sparkling with ire, and then turned away. She could never let her family down, and Mairi MacCulloch knew that. She was playing on her daughter’s weakness, holding the upper hand.
Annys shook her head.
“No, you don’t. You don’t know. Twenty-two years, and I thought I was safe from sharing some stranger’s bed. Now, out of the blue, you decide it’s time to force your one and only daughter into some alliance with England, even though she brings good fortune to the family through her work. Work! I do the work that men do, Mother, and you expect me to become a lowly woman?”
Mairi heaved a sigh. “Yes, Annys, I do.”
“Father’s been raising me to be the next chief of the clan!”
“You could not be. Old traditions must die now, Annys. Your brother, by the English and the royal standard, must inherit. You cannot be an earl. Since that title was so generously bestowed upon us by our good King Charles, our tradition must follow a new path.”
“Tradition! You think that just because we have ties to the royal halls we must forget that we are Scots?”
“Annys!”
“It’s true! Since when are we allies of England? We should hate them, Mother. I still do.”
“You should not.”
“But, alas, here I stand and I do.”
Annys had taken enough this day and now that she knew there would be very little free movement in the confines of this promise, she no longer wished to argue. She knew that she was right, and that was all that mattered in her head. If a Scot she really was, why did she not wish to join some rebellion against the crown?
No, perhaps her family, her clan, thought that being so near the English border required that they abandon their centuries of Scottish prominence. Perhaps it was their lust for power and title that made the word ‘earl’ mean more than ‘laird’ and that caused the tartan of the MacCulloch clan to be little more than a decoration upon a surname.
This she did not like.
If her father was truly going to forsake his true land for the favors of the English king, she could do little to stop him… but the Poet of the Pond held a better hand than he. With her alternate identity, Annys had the power of influence, and it was a beautiful thing.
She could not stop the marriage.
Outside her pen, she was still but a woman and could not disobey what her mother and father bid her do. There would have to be another way to change her father’s heart, to tell him that he was wrong.
Because there was no doubt in Annys’s mind that she was absolutely right. She refused to trade pride for a title or honor for protection. Even if she was sweet to the king’s face, Annys did not trust him, Stuart or otherwise, and she held the highland value of freedom from the high-regarded crown. Why change now?
Change was never good, not for Scotland.
It had brought years and centuries of heartache, and Annys would never embrace the tyranny of another nation.
Why did things have to be so unjust?
Why could she not live as the Scots had so long lived, under the security of their own forces and keeps, without being directly intertwined in the workings of the English political stage?
With thoughts of vengeance and despair, Annys headed for her chamber and the one place she could make sense of anything: her desk. She took up her quill and began to scratch on a half-used scrap of parchment, not caring about anything but the way her heart yearned for self-justification.
A prince made of blood cannot claim right
To a throne of rose or a throne of light
But a prince of peace cannot fight the one
Whose strength and malice implied has won;
And to paradox we are thus driven
For blood runs thick and peace so thin
The wrongful king then takes the crown
And peace is left alone to drown.
Take thou thy side but heed this curse:
Blood is strong but greed is worse.
Annys sat back in her chair, now feeling better and glad to have the words off her heart. For now, her burden was lifted a little and she could at least try to… sleep. It would be fleeting tonight, she was sure, but she could try.
Matters of the state were overpowering her life and governing all the things that Annys thought she had control over. But she was but a woman. She could do little more than write and until she thought of a decent alternative, she was now engaged. To whom? She did not even know.
She had not asked.
♣ Three
His name was Dravendale, and he was an earl.
In fact, he was one of the most upstanding and revered of the English noble class and if she didn't hate the fact that she was being forced into a marriage with him, Annys would have been very surprised that such a high match was made. She was the daughter of a chief and an earl, but she was Scottish. Rarely did a Scot wed any sort of English nobility--apparently, this was quite the occasion.
He was Lord Tristan Dravendale, Second Earl of Devon, and resided on a large estate in the English countryside, though he was a friend of King Charles.
Annys had heard of him before but had never thought much of it until now. She could not recall what he looked like or how old he was, and more than that she did not know his character, his soul. That was the most important part of a man, she had been told and rightly believed. Should he be the stereotypical nobleman--vain, self-centered, misogynistic--she could never be happy. That was what Annys feared most.
The date for the wedding had been set already. For a month, Annys would wait in agony to meet fate face to face, for a month she could still be the Poet of the Pond, for a month she would still be free. But when the time came, she would be given away as a bride to a man she did not know so that she may secure the wishes of others. Whether they were her family of not did not matter. She only wished to remain alone, and the choice of doing so had been stolen away from her.
This was going to be a trial for her, a crucible of strength and will and everything and anything else she was made from. Now she had to live the one nightmare she had never believed would become a reality, and the harsh truth was overbearing. Annys would be a wife, a prize. She did not even know if her husband would give her so much as a half-ounce of respect, and already the thought was stinging her pride bitterly. And a month’s worth of poetry could never make up for the lifetime that she would be barred from soon.
The poems did come, though, in a dynamic flow, expressing everything she had once foolishly thought she would have had time to express in the years to come. She wrote of love, of trust, of hope--and then of all three being crushed in a wave of duty and society. What would become, then, of her persona? Would the Poet of the Pond have to die an early, poetic death? Or would there be someone who would take up the pen in that very name, someone she could trust? There were very few poets that she associated with, mostly because she was restricted by her gender to be anonymous, and of the couple that she did know, she didn’t believe they were vaguely capable of the political satires her pseudonym was renowned for. Then again, would she be suddenly and traitorously found out, given away by a family that expected no more of it from her? The thought caused her a shudder in the cold evening, and Annys ceased to think of it.
She looked out her window in despair, blessing the Scottish hills beyond it with a forlorn half-smile, wishing that she could stay for the rest of her days nestled in their sweet, heather-scented embrace.
It was not to be.
She would be the Countess of Devon, and have all the esteemed titles thereby associated. But those words meant nothing to her, for she was more regal than any king or queen. She knew the great power of words, but titles were so commonly used and so meaningless to real beauty that they could not even count as words to a poet. What mattered were the adjectives that others might grace one with, those words that came sincerely from the soul and that could lift one far higher toward the heavens than some vile title.
The thoughts that filled Annys’s mind were enough to suffice for her life to come. She’d have plenty to mull over while she performed her wifely tasks, while she tried to run a household she’d never been trained to oversee. There had been a time when she was going to be a great leader, yes, but it was going to be that coveted place of chief, that place that was so held only because one had earned the honor and respect of the clan. Her father had such a place, but now Annys was unsure that he truly held it now. At least in her heart, he was no longer a just regent.
It would go to her only brother now.
That coveted position she’d so longed to hold... Chief of the MacCullochs, the first woman in generations and yet the one trained and rightful to do the job.
But now, one day, she might come back for a visit to find her father dead and replaced by Alasdair MacCulloch, her younger brother. That was, if she was lucky enough to one day come back, even if just for a fortnight near Christmas.
But all the same, Alasdair had not been groomed for the place of chief. He was still a boy, really, at sixteen, and all his life he’d played second fiddle to his older sister, whose intelligence had always shone brilliantly and who had for so long been promised, albeit only in inference, that she would one day have the noble responsibility of leading and helping a clan to its future.
No more.
Annys paused midsentence in the poem she was working, taking a deep breath and looking around the room, slightly disoriented by the weight of the thoughts on her heart.
She looked to the letter that lay on the corner of her desk and frowned. Since her slight falling-out with her mother, Annys had been removed from the rest of the family, locked up in her study and wallowing in the future’s curses. This paper had been slipped under her door earlier and to her antipathy, but perhaps now she should open it. Five or more hours had passed since first she’d caught sight of it, and by her writing she had calmed a bit. With one last sigh, Annys pulled away the crude seal and read her mother’s frantic handwriting.
Annie,
The time has come. I have known for a while now that you were to move on from the MacCulloch keep, but I’ve kept it from you and for that I am sorry. You have been bred of the finest Scottish blood and are as noble as any Englishman, Annys, and it would do you well to remember that your family’s name hangs in the balance. You have much to be proud for so you must keep your chin high and your plaid at your side--the court is on your side and should now always be, now that we have sealed this alliance. The earl is a good man; I would not let you go to any less. He has a good name and a chaste reputation, not to mention he is still a young man. You will remain in God’s hands, Annys, and though we cannot watch over you as we always have, you will be alright. As for your writing, I do not know what will become of your poet. For a married woman to keep up such a device would be ill-advised, and you dare not release such power to your husband. I understand how highly you are regarded in England and Scotland alike even though you are anonymous and I wish to high heaven that you could continue. But this is a sacrifice for us all and the MacCullochs cannot hold on to this land without your marriage. You are the most important woman in this clan. Remember it and hold not a spite toward us in your heart.
Mairi MacCulloch
Annys threw the letter down and looked longingly to the fireplace, wishing she had the nerve to also toss it into the flames. The unfortunate truth, however, was that she knew her mother was not completely wrong. Perhaps, actually, was she right about all of it--except the poetry.
It could not be taken from her. Words were like poison that coursed in her blood and drove her at all hours to live the devoted, romanticized, melancholy wonder that was life. No matter who saw it, who criticized it, who tried to stop it, her pen would forever scrawl on. Maybe not so powerfully as before, and perhaps influenced by a life that was not her choice, but it would write always. And forever would her verse live, calling to the masses for reform, for justice, as she began now to inscribe...
To each his own; his no less.
But to her, someone else’s.
To him a vine of fruitfulness,
But to her a plot of grass
To wither and to weather
From this day on to ever
To fall and thus be felled
To no more rule the knell
Of that place she once knew
Of just reward or truth.
His kingdom come or go
Her queendom falling o’er
To each his own; ne’er in vain-
But to her eternal pain.
With this heavy message did Annys finally set down the pen, the work for this day done, and retired to her own chamber, soon to be a room she would no longer see.
“I’m not certain you understand, my lord,” the woman told him, her voice cold. She did not meet his eyes and instead occupied herself with following the intricate threadwork in the tapestry by the bed. The patterns were enough distraction to keep her eyes from watering at the words her mouth formed, directed at the one man she did not want to talk to right now. He did not even try to regain her gaze, and answered her casually as he drew back the bedsheet.
“And I’m not certain I want to understand.”
She did not understand how he could be so utterly indifferent, and particularly after the things she had told him thus far.
He rose from the bed without so much as a glance toward her and moved to the far end of the chamber to dress.
The woman withheld the tears welling in her eyes.
She did not want to look toward where he was, but she had little else to do. He ran her entire life now. She was not the same woman she’d once been, and that was what hurt her most. With a slight whimper, she gathered her strength and rose from the bed, drawing her dressing gown around her cold frame and leaving the room. She held her breath as she passed the man, whose gleaming back was facing her, and let it out when, finally, she was out of the room.
With silent steps, not wishing to be heard by any of the manor’s staff, the woman moved down the corridor toward her own chambers, the way lit by several torches along the wall. All she wanted was to reclaim her former title and the respect that accompanied it, lower though it may have been—and she wanted this man to stop lording over her life. Maybe she was simply too resentful, but the woman was afraid she could no more handle her current situation.
She just wished to be home and sitting in her garden, not here in the folds of a life she could not have dreamed in a nightmare.
This man would be the end of her.
♣ One
The weather here never reflected the hearts of the people.
The afternoon was chilly, but it was nothing that was out of place. The weather in these parts was particularly noted for being damp and cold, and when the sun was out as it was today, it should be considered a fine day for anything. Of course, there was work to be done—the work here was never finished—but Annys MacCulloch had other ideas. Her work was that of a different sort, a special skill that she alone held at this estate, and for which she was renowned throughout Scotland.
She could go freely to the fields, to the heart of the lowlands, and do as she pleased, for her craft seemed to rely on it. And there were days she would be gone from the time the onyx sky turned golden until the time that very same golden sky reverted to its onyx—a full day’s work was never an easy task for it burdened the mind and the soul.
The fields were always beautiful this time of year, when the heather was in full bloom and the impending autumn lingered on the breeze, just strong enough to taste on the tongue and the fringes of the heart. Annys could feel the change of the seasons as she could every year, and it stirred a strange feeling in her heart. For, this year, she felt that there was a change in her wake, some aligning of the stars that beckoned and bid her alter. Surely, surely she would not be leaving Scotland. In fact, Annys was wary of leaving her estate at all anymore—the years she had spent in the English court were long since gone, but their bitter aftertaste was not. She had been a good lady-in-waiting, but the atrocities of the court had marred her once so innocent mind and she felt that living again in Scotland was doing her well. This was truly her home, and ever would it be. Well she wished that one day she could die here.
But it was not to be.
One day she would venture off beyond these walls she’d so carefully constructed and she would not be the responsibility of impatient parents who, while they had loved her, did not need the extra burden of a daughter too old for keeping at the manor.
Then again, Annys could pay her own way. She held her own fortune, unbeknownst to those outside this manor, and that was the reason she was allowed to stay as it were. If she’d not been spectacular and unreasonably talented, she would by now have been forced into marriage and given away without a second thought.
But she was.
Annys was something of her own kind. There were suitors aplenty in her life but she chose to ignore them all, choosing instead to fancy herself falling in love and running away with a nice lowlander who would come up to save a damsel in distress. In fact, that fantasy was not so much what she wanted as what her too-disillusioned mind wanted to write of. Peril, strife, danger. Love, passion, loyalty. Annys saw herself as the deliverer and not the recipient. She was not the actor; she was the playwright. She could not live the lives that she wrote and it was no different than the thousands of other idyllic writers that had gone before, searching after prizes they knew they never could have.
Annys was a poet.
Moreover, Annys Davina MacCulloch was the Poet of the Pond, renowned throughout all of Scotland, England, and France for the skill and poise of a warm-witted and satirical pen. She was the writer that every poor and blooming poet wished to be, and she was the matriarch of a new age in verse that expressed individual sympathies and retribution against tyranny. But she was anonymous.
As far as the rest of the world knew, the Poet of the Pond was a nobleman with no other useful hobby or a priest with time to spare away from the altar; perhaps a schoolteacher with a passion for wooing those he loved or a courtly gentleman who wished to climb the vines of rank with the ink of lust and early passion—alas, this was not the case, but only one family understood and only one woman held the secrets of the Poet for herself. She could not reveal herself and yet she could not keep silent. The poems and the songs and the revelations had to voice her suppressed thoughts and desires in her stead.
And the Pond?—it was her only safe haven. It was ambiguous to the public but to Annys it was a couple acres of pure paradise, nestled in a valley of the most favored country in God’s eye of beauty. It was in the center of a great highland plain, and while it was not beautiful, it was justified. It balanced the harmony of earth and water and sky, and on summer days such as this was, reflected the clouds and birds overhead.
Was not balance the very substance of life? Was not harmony the raison d’être? Annys explored these concepts and loved them—she was a woman of remarkable moral stability and yet unfathomable genius; this made her the one and only human who ever could hold the title of Poet of the Pond. She was schooled beyond normal means for a woman, and her time at court had been but a reminder to her of the place she held among men—subservience. This was why she could stand to be nowhere but at home, on this grand highland estate, sanctioned by King Charles himself. Her family, the MacCullochs of Scotland, had built a castle beside an older keep, and the land around them constituted their vast holdings. They were no minor clan; in fact, Annys’s father was the earl and chief.
This was the other reasonable excuse to keep Annys at home; she was the oldest of his children and would thereby inherit the clan upon his death. Were she bound to another clan or family, her brother would instead inherit—her father likely had thought such a thing would happen but lately it had become apparent that she wanted and deserved the position.
Times, however, had changed in the past couple of months, and there was news from England of unrest. This had worried Annys and she thought that perhaps the Stuart king in power should trouble for his life—if she was not mistaken in her studies, it was not entirely uncommon for greed and political differences to be the foundations of something sinister—an overthrow, a coup.
If what she had heard from her father was correct and not embellished, Parliament had become restless in its attempts to rein in the whims of the Stuart king, and there were speculations that he would have to be replaced.
Should he ever upset that legislative body so, Annys did fear for his reign.
There had been plenty in her readings that suggested a fatal end for not only him but his line, and she did not wish to think of the cost in blood that rebellions always cost. Why, had Richard III not won the throne with an ocean of scarlet? Had he not killed the two princes where they lay and given rise to a whole slew of conspiracies? Shakespeare was a bearer of messages, as well, and Annys recognized his skill at the quill with a great deal of admiration.
She strove to be a legend by the day her body gave itself up to the dust of the earth. The Poet of the Pond, as fashionable as she may have been now, could only live forever if lips always repeated her poems. And writers, just as dress styles and composers, seemed to be of a finicky nature in the tastes of society. They came and they went, remembered for a second in time and then bequeathed to the torrential storms of forgotten feats and saints.
It was all she wanted; to be recalled for centuries past when she left.
And words—oh! What powerful things they could be—were the tools of her trade, tools that she could share with others and that would last endlessly.
It made Annys chuckle to think such things. Did it make her naïve, then? To think she could possibly live forever through her poems? If it did, she would have to excuse the thoughts and keep dreaming. There were few ways else to make it in this life.
And as she sat day in and day out beside her little pond in the Valley of the Water of the Spirit, or so it was in one of her poems, Annys believed she understood the simplicities and the intricacies of the world. She thought she could taste any fruit that life bore and yet also could she reach any burden that life placed before her. It was not a bad thing, not really. Scotland was a place of vivacious spring and sweltering summer; a place of crisp autumn and tumultuous winter. The rain was a common sight but it heightened the beauty of the land, wafting the smell of the heather over the hills and to the air of the Scottish keeps.
There was nowhere else for Annys. Scotland was her home and there would never be somewhere else quite so wonderful if she lived to be ninety-nine. She had been elsewhere; for a Scottish lady, she was well-travelled and well-versed in the ways of the English nobility—but she would trade all of that to die within the comfort of the Scottish lochs, the lowland fields, the highland mountains. This was home.
And for someone so renowned, it ever should be.
♣ Two
Annys’s premonition had, as she feared, been correct—poets seldom encountered visions and dreams that did not mean anything and she was no exception.
The keep of the MacCulloch clan was a shabby thing, built at least five or six generations prior and apparently never well-kept. To hold tradition, the keep still stood and functioned as a storage facility, but there had been built a new castle, one that had been overseen by Annys’s father and had been her home since she was two. And it was at this very castle that Annys received the most troubling news of her youth. She had thought that, by surviving suitors so long, she would be more or less unwanted at twenty-two, but it seemed that it was not so.
She had the political situation of the country and the eye of the king to blame, and no less.
There was high tension now in the lording English government, and Scotland looked to soon be playing the villain. However, Annys’s time in court had won her the favor and respect of King Charles—one of the only other humans who knew that she wrote poetry, though he did not know her nom de plume—and now it seemed he wished to do her a kindness, at least from his viewpoint.
He meant to form an alliance for the MacCullochs to protect them against the coming storm, to let them latch on to the English security should Parliament rebel. From the standpoint of the court, it seemed to be a good plan and a courtesy to the clan, her father being chief and all, but from where Annys stood, it was one of the worst things to happen.
She learned the news from her mother, perhaps to quell her temper and deliver the blow more softly. But that only upset Annys more, to know that her father was too much a coward to do else.
“Annys, dear…” her mother pleaded.
“Mother, ye canna! I’ve a life ahead of me—I’ve made me own path, and ye canna take that frae me!”
“Speak in your proper tone, Annys MacCulloch. You will accept your king’s offer and your suitor’s hand. Your father has hereby approved of the match and the clan will be all the better off for this match. You’ve had your twenty-two years. You’ve been a free woman. It’s time to take up your cross of responsibility and go aid our clan.”
“I willna speak in such a manner, and I willna gae! I make ye money, Mother, money, and I should want t’ gae t’ London fer work ‘afore I marry any man I dinna love!”
“Annys…”
“I dinna want that.”
“Annys MacCulloch.”
“Mother.”
Her mother, Mairi MacCulloch, stood from where she had been sitting and faced the window, away from the eyes of her cross daughter. Her tone was slow and cautious as she asserted, “Annys, you are getting married whether you so choose or not. There are poets aplenty in England, and if the bloodshed begins soon--God knows there is tension--we are in danger for things far more precious than words. We must have this alliance, Annys, and you are the key. You—why, you are the most important woman in this clan, in Scotland. You can save us, Annys. Be a lady.”
A silence hung in the air for several minutes and was not lifted until the chirping of a bird beyond the walls sounded.
Annys sighed. What choice did she have? She could run away but that would be a disgrace to the MacCulloch name and to her father—and moreover, to the king of England, who reigned supreme in her homeland. Even more, she could then never come back because she would be exiled.
Oh, but the life of a writer sounded divine.
“I cannot live without words,” she breathed quietly, her Scottish dialect fading back into the proper English accent she’d inherited from the court.
“I…” her mother trailed off, for once not having the words to express what she needed to say. After a moment, she said softly, looking back at her daughter, “Perhaps you will not have to. But… Annys, please be careful. I know the things you write. You will get married, and you will be a proper wife. Do not destroy this alliance, Annys. Do not let any writing get in the way of that.”
“I resent that, Mother, I really do.”
“I know.”
The laird’s wife had a forgiving voice, a far more understanding tone than she’d had several minutes prior. Annys looked up at her, eyes still sparkling with ire, and then turned away. She could never let her family down, and Mairi MacCulloch knew that. She was playing on her daughter’s weakness, holding the upper hand.
Annys shook her head.
“No, you don’t. You don’t know. Twenty-two years, and I thought I was safe from sharing some stranger’s bed. Now, out of the blue, you decide it’s time to force your one and only daughter into some alliance with England, even though she brings good fortune to the family through her work. Work! I do the work that men do, Mother, and you expect me to become a lowly woman?”
Mairi heaved a sigh. “Yes, Annys, I do.”
“Father’s been raising me to be the next chief of the clan!”
“You could not be. Old traditions must die now, Annys. Your brother, by the English and the royal standard, must inherit. You cannot be an earl. Since that title was so generously bestowed upon us by our good King Charles, our tradition must follow a new path.”
“Tradition! You think that just because we have ties to the royal halls we must forget that we are Scots?”
“Annys!”
“It’s true! Since when are we allies of England? We should hate them, Mother. I still do.”
“You should not.”
“But, alas, here I stand and I do.”
Annys had taken enough this day and now that she knew there would be very little free movement in the confines of this promise, she no longer wished to argue. She knew that she was right, and that was all that mattered in her head. If a Scot she really was, why did she not wish to join some rebellion against the crown?
No, perhaps her family, her clan, thought that being so near the English border required that they abandon their centuries of Scottish prominence. Perhaps it was their lust for power and title that made the word ‘earl’ mean more than ‘laird’ and that caused the tartan of the MacCulloch clan to be little more than a decoration upon a surname.
This she did not like.
If her father was truly going to forsake his true land for the favors of the English king, she could do little to stop him… but the Poet of the Pond held a better hand than he. With her alternate identity, Annys had the power of influence, and it was a beautiful thing.
She could not stop the marriage.
Outside her pen, she was still but a woman and could not disobey what her mother and father bid her do. There would have to be another way to change her father’s heart, to tell him that he was wrong.
Because there was no doubt in Annys’s mind that she was absolutely right. She refused to trade pride for a title or honor for protection. Even if she was sweet to the king’s face, Annys did not trust him, Stuart or otherwise, and she held the highland value of freedom from the high-regarded crown. Why change now?
Change was never good, not for Scotland.
It had brought years and centuries of heartache, and Annys would never embrace the tyranny of another nation.
Why did things have to be so unjust?
Why could she not live as the Scots had so long lived, under the security of their own forces and keeps, without being directly intertwined in the workings of the English political stage?
With thoughts of vengeance and despair, Annys headed for her chamber and the one place she could make sense of anything: her desk. She took up her quill and began to scratch on a half-used scrap of parchment, not caring about anything but the way her heart yearned for self-justification.
A prince made of blood cannot claim right
To a throne of rose or a throne of light
But a prince of peace cannot fight the one
Whose strength and malice implied has won;
And to paradox we are thus driven
For blood runs thick and peace so thin
The wrongful king then takes the crown
And peace is left alone to drown.
Take thou thy side but heed this curse:
Blood is strong but greed is worse.
Annys sat back in her chair, now feeling better and glad to have the words off her heart. For now, her burden was lifted a little and she could at least try to… sleep. It would be fleeting tonight, she was sure, but she could try.
Matters of the state were overpowering her life and governing all the things that Annys thought she had control over. But she was but a woman. She could do little more than write and until she thought of a decent alternative, she was now engaged. To whom? She did not even know.
She had not asked.
♣ Three
His name was Dravendale, and he was an earl.
In fact, he was one of the most upstanding and revered of the English noble class and if she didn't hate the fact that she was being forced into a marriage with him, Annys would have been very surprised that such a high match was made. She was the daughter of a chief and an earl, but she was Scottish. Rarely did a Scot wed any sort of English nobility--apparently, this was quite the occasion.
He was Lord Tristan Dravendale, Second Earl of Devon, and resided on a large estate in the English countryside, though he was a friend of King Charles.
Annys had heard of him before but had never thought much of it until now. She could not recall what he looked like or how old he was, and more than that she did not know his character, his soul. That was the most important part of a man, she had been told and rightly believed. Should he be the stereotypical nobleman--vain, self-centered, misogynistic--she could never be happy. That was what Annys feared most.
The date for the wedding had been set already. For a month, Annys would wait in agony to meet fate face to face, for a month she could still be the Poet of the Pond, for a month she would still be free. But when the time came, she would be given away as a bride to a man she did not know so that she may secure the wishes of others. Whether they were her family of not did not matter. She only wished to remain alone, and the choice of doing so had been stolen away from her.
This was going to be a trial for her, a crucible of strength and will and everything and anything else she was made from. Now she had to live the one nightmare she had never believed would become a reality, and the harsh truth was overbearing. Annys would be a wife, a prize. She did not even know if her husband would give her so much as a half-ounce of respect, and already the thought was stinging her pride bitterly. And a month’s worth of poetry could never make up for the lifetime that she would be barred from soon.
The poems did come, though, in a dynamic flow, expressing everything she had once foolishly thought she would have had time to express in the years to come. She wrote of love, of trust, of hope--and then of all three being crushed in a wave of duty and society. What would become, then, of her persona? Would the Poet of the Pond have to die an early, poetic death? Or would there be someone who would take up the pen in that very name, someone she could trust? There were very few poets that she associated with, mostly because she was restricted by her gender to be anonymous, and of the couple that she did know, she didn’t believe they were vaguely capable of the political satires her pseudonym was renowned for. Then again, would she be suddenly and traitorously found out, given away by a family that expected no more of it from her? The thought caused her a shudder in the cold evening, and Annys ceased to think of it.
She looked out her window in despair, blessing the Scottish hills beyond it with a forlorn half-smile, wishing that she could stay for the rest of her days nestled in their sweet, heather-scented embrace.
It was not to be.
She would be the Countess of Devon, and have all the esteemed titles thereby associated. But those words meant nothing to her, for she was more regal than any king or queen. She knew the great power of words, but titles were so commonly used and so meaningless to real beauty that they could not even count as words to a poet. What mattered were the adjectives that others might grace one with, those words that came sincerely from the soul and that could lift one far higher toward the heavens than some vile title.
The thoughts that filled Annys’s mind were enough to suffice for her life to come. She’d have plenty to mull over while she performed her wifely tasks, while she tried to run a household she’d never been trained to oversee. There had been a time when she was going to be a great leader, yes, but it was going to be that coveted place of chief, that place that was so held only because one had earned the honor and respect of the clan. Her father had such a place, but now Annys was unsure that he truly held it now. At least in her heart, he was no longer a just regent.
It would go to her only brother now.
That coveted position she’d so longed to hold... Chief of the MacCullochs, the first woman in generations and yet the one trained and rightful to do the job.
But now, one day, she might come back for a visit to find her father dead and replaced by Alasdair MacCulloch, her younger brother. That was, if she was lucky enough to one day come back, even if just for a fortnight near Christmas.
But all the same, Alasdair had not been groomed for the place of chief. He was still a boy, really, at sixteen, and all his life he’d played second fiddle to his older sister, whose intelligence had always shone brilliantly and who had for so long been promised, albeit only in inference, that she would one day have the noble responsibility of leading and helping a clan to its future.
No more.
Annys paused midsentence in the poem she was working, taking a deep breath and looking around the room, slightly disoriented by the weight of the thoughts on her heart.
She looked to the letter that lay on the corner of her desk and frowned. Since her slight falling-out with her mother, Annys had been removed from the rest of the family, locked up in her study and wallowing in the future’s curses. This paper had been slipped under her door earlier and to her antipathy, but perhaps now she should open it. Five or more hours had passed since first she’d caught sight of it, and by her writing she had calmed a bit. With one last sigh, Annys pulled away the crude seal and read her mother’s frantic handwriting.
Annie,
The time has come. I have known for a while now that you were to move on from the MacCulloch keep, but I’ve kept it from you and for that I am sorry. You have been bred of the finest Scottish blood and are as noble as any Englishman, Annys, and it would do you well to remember that your family’s name hangs in the balance. You have much to be proud for so you must keep your chin high and your plaid at your side--the court is on your side and should now always be, now that we have sealed this alliance. The earl is a good man; I would not let you go to any less. He has a good name and a chaste reputation, not to mention he is still a young man. You will remain in God’s hands, Annys, and though we cannot watch over you as we always have, you will be alright. As for your writing, I do not know what will become of your poet. For a married woman to keep up such a device would be ill-advised, and you dare not release such power to your husband. I understand how highly you are regarded in England and Scotland alike even though you are anonymous and I wish to high heaven that you could continue. But this is a sacrifice for us all and the MacCullochs cannot hold on to this land without your marriage. You are the most important woman in this clan. Remember it and hold not a spite toward us in your heart.
Mairi MacCulloch
Annys threw the letter down and looked longingly to the fireplace, wishing she had the nerve to also toss it into the flames. The unfortunate truth, however, was that she knew her mother was not completely wrong. Perhaps, actually, was she right about all of it--except the poetry.
It could not be taken from her. Words were like poison that coursed in her blood and drove her at all hours to live the devoted, romanticized, melancholy wonder that was life. No matter who saw it, who criticized it, who tried to stop it, her pen would forever scrawl on. Maybe not so powerfully as before, and perhaps influenced by a life that was not her choice, but it would write always. And forever would her verse live, calling to the masses for reform, for justice, as she began now to inscribe...
To each his own; his no less.
But to her, someone else’s.
To him a vine of fruitfulness,
But to her a plot of grass
To wither and to weather
From this day on to ever
To fall and thus be felled
To no more rule the knell
Of that place she once knew
Of just reward or truth.
His kingdom come or go
Her queendom falling o’er
To each his own; ne’er in vain-
But to her eternal pain.
With this heavy message did Annys finally set down the pen, the work for this day done, and retired to her own chamber, soon to be a room she would no longer see.
