Island of the Swans by Ciji Ware

like auburn seaweed. Jane raised the young woman’s mouth out of the water, but Matilda appeared unconscious. Desperately, she pulled Matilda’s body partway into the dinghy, ripping at the closings of her heavy, water-logged skirt that made lifting her almost impossible. Finally, Jane was able to heave the lifeless form to the bottom of the craft, gasping at her brief glimpse of the crimson bloodstains streaking down Matilda’s inner thighs. She quickly turned her head away from the angry boils blistering the woman’s neck.
    Jane glanced up to see Jock’s bulky form, still and gray on a low rise sloping up from the bank. A balding man leaned down to press his ear to Jock’s chest.
    “’E’s dead,” he announced to several tanners standing nearby. “’Tis his heart, I’ll wager, from the looks o’ ’im.”
    “Who’s that tarted-up wench what’s interfered with Jock’s business?” growled one of Sinclair’s cronies. “We’ll do the same to her, soon’s we get our hands on the saucebox!”
    Hearing this, Jane began paddling frantically toward the far shore. She had no time to wonder what she would do, once she arrived there, but simply put her head down and pulled on the oar with every ounce of strength she had remaining.
    “Stay where you are !” shouted a deep voice from the opposite shore. “Don’t come closer to the bank, Jenny lass!”
    Jane raised her eyes and gazed toward the rim of the narrow loch. In the distance she thought she could discern the hulking form of Simon Fraser. Closer-by, a tall figure with hair the shade of his own roan gelding was poised on horseback at the water’s edge. He was unarmed, and the mob was advancing around to the north side of the loch toward him.
    “ Thomas !” she screamed, her suppressed terror surfacing in her cry.
    “Keep to the center, love,” he shouted. “Catherine’s gone for the constable.”
    “ Go , Thomas! Ride away!” she cried, noticing for the first time that the tanners were heading toward her old friend, brandishing scraping knives and cudgels.
    “I will… I will… but turn the wee craft back toward Castle Hill, Jenny lass, and keep your eyes on me. When the mob gets t’where I’m standin’, give ’em the slip by rowing back to where you came. I’ll be there. Now turn !”
    Jane’s upper arms began to cramp, but she forced herself quietly to reverse her craft’s direction.
    Thomas waited on the shore until the last possible moment. Then he dug his heels into his horse’s flank and galloped beyond the reach of three or four dozen men who were howling for revenge.
    Gasping for breath, she charted the progress of a brigade of town watchmen proceeding down Ramsay Lane from behind Castle Rock toward the loch. She watched the tiny specks that she knew were Thomas Fraser and his godfather, Simon, gallop at top speed the long way around North Loch, a distance of about half a mile. She was only a score of yards from the shore when the constable and his men arrived at the bank.
    The figure of Thomas loomed larger and larger as Jane struggled with the oar to pole her way in. He was now over six feet tall, and his broad shoulders and slim waist erased forever her memory of the pathetically thin figure of her childhood. Only his face, with its slightly gaunt features, was familiar. That most-cherished face, its tanned, unfreckled skin barely camouflaging the high Celtic color of his cheeks and his hair. As the dinghy’s prow nosed into the muck clinging to the bank, Jane’s hands reached out toward his dark, garnet mane. Thomas roughly clasped her to his chest.
    As soon as he had lifted her out of the boat, Jane started to tremble uncontrollably.
    “Matilda?” she cried, shuddering despite the warmth of the afternoon sun.
    “Drowned,” said Simon Fraser, matter-of-factly. He reined in his horse and surveyed the scene. “Your interference didn’t make a bit o’ difference, now, did it, lass?” he added. “Mayhap there’s a