I own nothing in this story that seems familar, but you know that already! Poor Holly and I wish it were otherwise.

Much bowing and scraping to the beta team for this one. You truly are the goddesses of editing. Thank you.

This chapter is dedicated to scratchtheplans , thank you for your kind review! *shameless plug here* If you haven't checked out her Tristan story "Your Tears Are Empty" you should give it a go, it's really well written!

"The leaves of memory seemed to make a mournful rustling in the dark." - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Chapter 7

Tristan was unfamiliar with the sense of impatience that seemed to make his limbs restless and his thoughts jumbled as questions circled over and over again in his mind. He had already paced the length of the glen so many times that he had worn visible a path through the light snow. At intervals he would check the sky, noting the slow progression from day to dusk with an edginess that he found wholly irritating.

Where was she? Why did she not show herself? Tristan tucked his hands close to his body, his breath clouding in the cold air. A drawn-out sigh made a stream of white so thick that he stopped long enough to realize how idiotic he was being. Wrapping his over-tunic tighter about his body, he shuffled listlessly toward the edge of the glen.

The familiar sensation of bark scraping against his back as he slid against the tree trunk and into a sitting position centered his inner turmoil as he landed unceremoniously on ground.

The cold snow seeped into his breeches and he sniffed, rubbing his nose, chastising himself for his own foolishness, foolishness for waiting for a dead woman to appear. If Mâtar were here now she'd probably pat him on the cheek, eyes laughing, enjoying this rare show of annoyance.

Just as the dappled light of evening turned into the muted shades of dusk, Tristan felt a distinct shift in the air around him.

The faintest hint of lavender tickled his nose and he felt his lips curl in wry amusement. A thin tendril of mist slowly slithered its way toward him from the mound that was once the old poacher's hut. The mist seemed to gather in on itself, becoming solid as it progressed.

It was only moments later that Holly appeared seated at his left, a hairsbreadth between them. Her face was turned in profile and she seemed to be staring into the distance.

Tristan should have, by all rights, been startled by her sudden appearance but all he noted was the delicate curve of her jaw and the smoothness of her glowing skin in the darkness.

Many long moments passed before she finally spoke. Holly seemed as willing as he to avoid discussing their last encounter in the glen. She did, however, seem hesitant to start the conversation, which was unlike her. Holly turned to look at him, her face solemn; brushing a loose tendril of hair behind her ear, the sound of a dried leaf crunching between her fingers as she did so was as crisp as the snap of a ripe apple.

There seemed to be a thousand questions flashing behind those bright brown eyes but he knew he had the answers to none of them.

So Tristan decided to ask one of his own.

"Does the babe still live?" Holly's eyes flickered with pain so distinct in its intensity that it seemed to make her glow even brighter.

"I am not certain. She was stolen from us as an infant. I would like to think that I would have some knowledge of her passing as I have felt the death of every one of my kin since my own." Tristan nodded, realizing that she would indeed feel the severing of each of her blood ties to this earth.

Mâtar had once explained to him that the spirit lived on long after the physical body was gone, yet sometimes the only reason for the spirit to linger was their earthly ties. If the ties were severed the spirit had no true reason fore existing. They would then choose to move on or remain.

In Holly's case she had chosen the latter, though why she had chosen so remained a mystery to him.

"She? The babe was a girl?" Tristan asked.

"Yes, her name was Enid and she as dearly loved," Holly answered with a sad smile. Her eyes blinked slowly but not before he noticed the sheen of tears. Her show of emotion sometimes caught Tristan unawares. She might have been dead but her emotions were clearly something very much alive.

"Who stole her?" It was the next logical question he could ask without focusing overmuch on her haunted expression.

"Her father."

Holly sighed at his imploring look. She would have to explain it all for him to understand her particular plight. As painful as the memories obviously were for her, Tristan felt that he needed to understand what brought her to him. Why else was he here with her now discussing something that had happened decades ago?

"Why would a father steal his own child?"

"Because his wife had cuckolded him openly, numerous times, and they hated each other. Enid was the only good thing between them. My sister Dara loved her more than life itself and Thaddeus knew this. He had long since abandoned us to the wilds of Brittan unprotected and penniless in order to return to Rome, but not before he hired someone to steal his daughter right from under our noses." Holly paused, her eyes focusing on some point in the darkness but not really seeing.

"Thaddeus' true love was power, and he could wield it over both my sister and I while he remained in possession of Enid. We tried everything we could with our limited resources to locate her and each time we failed, Dara retreated into herself further. I watched as my beautiful sister languished in her grief until she died. There was nothing I could do; our parents were dead and I had no power against Thaddeus and his allies in Rome. I was a poor, unprotected woman destined always for the nunnery." Holly gave him a smile that told him she had been anything but something to pity.

"Can you imagine me a nun?" Her incredulous tone made him smile despite himself.

Holly sighed, taking note of his expression before she continued, "My sister and I were always a pair to be reckoned with. I was the eldest, though Dara was the beauty. When it was put to Thaddeus that he would marry one of us my father didn't even make mention of me. My plain looks and shrewish temper would not make the great Thaddeus a good wife. Dara was betrothed to him at twelve and married at fifteen. Never mind that she had run away several times in between with her lover Thomas, a boy we had known since childhood.

"My father wanted this marriage. It was advantageous. Thaddeus was powerful, in the good graces of the pope and my father had long since lost favor with the Holy Father when he married my mother." There was a disdainful note in her voice that Tristan detected though she hadn't put much inflection into the words.

Holly was quiet for a moment and Tristan used the silence to mull over what she had told him so far.

It seemed that she wanted him to know her story and at the same time she was reluctant to tell him everything.

He picked up an oak leaf that had tumbled against his leg. He idly twirled the stem and watched as the leaf spun in the darkness while waiting for her to gather her words and tell him more.

"After Dara died, it took Thaddeus a little more than a month to return to Brittan. By that time I had managed to sell or trade most of the valuables left to me to pay our debts. I had no servants, save for a maid who refused to leave me. I was intelligent enough to hide a few of my own precious keepsakes; jewels that had belonged to my mother and sister. I had planned on hiring someone to escort me to Rome to start my search for Enid with the coin the gold might fetch me." Holly's bitter smile made Tristan's gut clench with a sense of foreboding as to where her tale was leading.

"One evening, Thaddeus barged into the manor as if he had never left it. He took one look at me in my worn gown standing in the empty parlor and laughed. He laughed at my poverty, laughed at my sense of foolish pride, laughed because he knew I had nowhere to go and that he now had full reign over me. He knew that if he so chose, he could do whatever he wanted with me and no one would stop him." She stopped, took a breath, and turned to look at him, her eyes shining brightly.

"In a desperate effort to get some sort of information from him I confronted him about Enid. He was unmoved by my pleas and told me that I would never find her no matter how hard or how far I looked. " There was a strong will about this woman and Tristan suspected that she must have been a creature to be reckoned with.

"After he refused to tell me anything about Enid, he informed me that he would return on the morrow and I had best have myself removed from the villa. He cared not where I sought shelter, only that I could not live in his house any longer. The next day he tried to force me out several times, but I always found my way back in. He was hardly at home and I knew all of the secrets of the villa and its various passages. I had often helped Dara escape to her lover, Thomas, and knew the trails well." Again Holly smiled and Tristan was tempted to smile back, though he did not.

"This careless game I played carried on for the better part of a fortnight. During the day I would spend my time in neighboring villages looking for work, trying to learn anything I could of the true reasons for Thaddeus' return; fully aware that the empty villa left to him by my father was of little value. As time wore on and the altercations between Thaddeus and I became more frequent and increasingly strained, it was no wonder he did what he did that night."

"Was he the one that hovered over you as you died?" Tristan found himself asking, watching carefully as her expression instantly changed from a mild sort of resignation, as she sat deep in thought, to startled surprise at his question.

There was a small hint of fear behind her eyes, and he could see how badly she wanted to deny it. Holly shifted away from him, drawing her skirts tighter against her folded legs as if she could still protect herself from the ugly memory.

"I didn't see the blade until it was too late," she replied weakly, her hands brushing reflexively against her chest and Tristan watched in macabre fascination as a dark spot appeared directly over her breasts. The black stain crept along the ghostly fabric of her bodice as if she had just been freshly stabbed. A bitter wind swept through the glen, pushing his hair away from his face and Holly turned to look at him.

"The pain was…startling," her words floated toward him and hung in the air between them like an afterthought. "Even after he stabbed me I somehow found the strength to run. I don't know where it came from, I only knew I needed to get away. He chased me through this glen, but I was bleeding so much that I don't think I could have ever out run him. I managed to lose him in the trees. I ran blindly for what seemed like forever, fear fueling me. I don't remember falling down; I only remember staring up at a canopy of leaves, my limbs heavy." Tristan nodded, he remembered the stark images of her death from his dreams, knew her burning sense of fear as she took her last breaths.

"Thaddeus wept over your body, why?" Holly blinked at his question before she gave him an assessing glance, realizing he had witnessed more of her death than he had originally led her to believe. She gave him a delicate shrug and turned more fully toward him.

The wind had died down as it usually did when she was in a calmer mood. He watched with a wary eye as she scooted even closer to him on the forest floor, her movements disturbing nothing on the ground and making the scene even more surreal.

The black stain on her dress slowly began to fade and Tristan had to tear his gaze away. He was fully aware that he had been staring at her chest this entire time. Had she been alive he would have earned himself a stiff slap across the face. "He was relieved I suppose. Maybe he even felt regret. Even as I was dying, I knew it was never his intention to kill me. His only goal was to keep me from never finding Enid. I think his attack on me was an attempt to keep me from finding her."

"But you did find her, didn't you? That's why he killed you; to keep you from reclaiming her," Tristan queried and was satisfied when she nodded.

"I had found out through a series of strange events where she was being kept and it wasn't in Rome. My maid had had Thaddeus followed, knowing how much I longed to be reunited with my niece. She reported that Enid was safe and being raised by a crofter and his family in a northern village that was about a day's ride away. I had made arrangements to borrow a horse and had a direction and description of the village. I had planned that evening to start my journey. Thaddeus had come home found me in my traveling clothes and guessed."

"Did you intend to get Enid back?"

"Yes."

"The family she was with would never have given her to you." Holly looked affronted at his matter of fact statement.

"How do you know that?" Tristan heard the doubt in her tone.

"Because her father was obviously paying them to keep her. You were her aunt and a poor relation at best. How could you have cared for her?" Holly frowned at him, the expression causing a crease to form above her nose.

"I would have done anything for her. She was my only family and belonged with me, not her useless, power-drunk father who gave her to farmers." Her nose wrinkled in distaste, and for the first time her true Roman heritage shined through. Holly, Tristan thought wryly, was a snob.

"So you died believing that you were going to rescue Enid from being raised on a farm?" When she didn't answer, Tristan knew she would always believe she had been in the right.

He had no intentions of delving into someone else's family squabbles. The child belonged with her father, there was no disputing that fact, no matter that this woman had died believing otherwise.

"When you state it like that it sounds idiotic." The thin veil of sarcasm in her voice did not go unnoticed. Her lips quirked mirroring his own expression and he shook his head at her ruefully.

"Why are you here, Holly?" The seriousness of the question seemed to bring them both back to the present situation; the fact that she was dead and he was able to communicate with her.

She mulled over her answer for some time and it gave him ample opportunity to study her. Tristan had always been reluctant to really look at her but now something about her seemed different.

She seemed more solid, more real if that were possible.

Holly turned to look at him and for a moment they stared at each other. For a brief instant, Tristan saw her as she once was; inky hair, dark eyes and pale skin, a woman who knew the bitter acidic taste of loneliness and craved something else.

"From the first day I had awoken into… this, I believed I remained for Enid. Only now am I beginning to doubt that." He waited for her to explain herself.

Holly looked at him strangely and when he realized that there would be no explanation forthcoming Tristan became increasingly uncomfortable under her gaze.

He shifted to his feet stiffly. The cold had settled into his bones and he only now just noticed how frigid the temperature was this night.

"Are you going to leave now?" she asked, her words oddly quiet in the darkness.

"It's late," was the only thing he could think of to say.

"The late hour never stopped you before. You've come to me in the early dawn once." Tristan shifted on his feet, gathering his over tunic and furs closer to his body and keenly aware of the way her face was upturned, her pale skin glowing brightly.

"Would you stay if I asked you to?"

"No," he replied, though he was surprised that a part of him had wanted to say yes. Tristan found the fortitude to walk to the edge of the glen, his mind abuzz with everything he had learned this night.

There were many things left unsaid and the mystery of Holly was far from being solved.

"Good night, Sir Tristan," he heard her call from her place where he'd left her.

"Good night Lady Holly," he replied quietly as he walked back through the thick trees.

Reagan sat at a small table in the healing rooms that had a good view of the storage cupboard. Parchment and charcoal pencil in hand, she did a quick visual of the stock she could see from her seat as she absently hummed to herself and tapped her foot to the jaunty rhythm in her head.

Dagonet was rummaging behind her, tending to a villager who had managed to step on the wrong end of an abandoned rake. The poor man's pained gasps could be heard from where he was sitting in the other room.

Reagan tried desperately to concentrate on her task but memories of the previous night and the wicked things her husband had done to her kept surfacing. Blushing rather brightly at one vivid memory, she was convinced that her face would set the parchment aflame were she not careful.

Reagan idly tapped the end of the pencil against the table top, wondering if Lancelot would prefer to take their evening meal in their quarters tonight instead of with the king as planned. Reagan doubted she could dissuade him from his duty, but, she thought with a sly grin, it was worth a try.

Her idle reverie was short-lived, however, as a commotion arose in the main healing rooms. She heard a deep rumble, most likely Dagonet protesting at being interrupted. Another deep voice replied, this one familiar in its abruptness. Reagan leaned back in her chair and peered around the edge of the door to get a better look.

A mistake, as she almost toppled over when Tristan rounded the corner, his arms full of scrolls and parchments tied with thin leather straps.

He dumped them on to her desk without a care for what had been there in the first place. Reagan's chair legs slammed down on the floor abruptly, her knees jarring the top of the desk. She grimaced and rubbed her bruised legs while Tristan stared down at her, arms folded across his chest and looking as forbidding as ever.

"Hello," Reagan said for a lack of anything better to say. She had not seen Tristan for weeks and his sudden appearance here in the healing rooms of all places was startling to say the least.

"Read those to me." Reagan blinked at him in undisguised surprise before looking at the haphazard pile of old parchment on the table. He didn't really ask her so much as order her, and the subtle arch of her eyebrow wasn't enough to get him to elaborate on his request.

"Where did all of these come from?" she managed to ask as she picked up a particularly brittle scroll.

"Arthur."

"Arthur just gave them to you?" Reagan asked dubiously. Tristan did not reply, instead he reached for the abandoned stool in the corner and dragged it roughly against the planked floor before sitting down. He motioned to the pile with a careless wave and Reagan shrugged. She reached up to push a piece of hair out of her eyes, idly wondering if she had time to get it trimmed before dinner with the king, as it was getting longer than she usually preferred.

Tristan gave her a sardonic look; it was almost as if he knew her mind was wandering today. She sniffed primly at him and dropped the scroll as if it were a hot rock.

"I have work to do, my lord." He made a strange noise and rubbed his nose. Reagan suspected he was hiding a grin.

"Reading is work," Tristan said. They stared each other down for a moment, and she reluctantly conceded defeat. Her curiosity over the scrolls proved to be too much.

"If Arthur gave them to you, couldn't you have asked him to read them as well?" The scout's eyes shifted from hers for a moment and Reagan understood that he hadn't exactly asked for these missives. With both eyebrows raised at his non- answer, Reagan reached for the first piece of leather and uncurled the scroll.

She was immediately presented with birth, death, and marriage records; for a moment she had trouble distinguishing the Latin, as the words were faded and the parchment old. Reagan glanced up from the scrolls and back at Tristan.

"What interest have you in deeds, deaths and marriages from almost 50 years past?"

"Much interest." He waved her on and Reagan scanned each scroll again. They were extremely poorly kept, even by Roman standards, and a majority were missing dates. He watched silently as she took her time organizing them by what information was pertained in them and by age, laying them out on the table and the floor.

"I need you to look for a particular name: Thaddeus." Reagan turned to look at him from her spot crouched on the floor.

"A Thaddeus of what?" she asked, hoping that this person Tristan wanted her to find had a unique nomen. But Tristan just shrugged his shoulders and said no more. Reagan took her time scanning each one until her eyes fell upon the name he sought. She was stunned to find that this person was still alive.

"This Thaddeus you seek, he is presumably still alive as his name is not on this list of the dead. It is, however, listed with another family name. A family called Aelianus. He married their daughter Dara." Reagan shifted to find the correct list, pivoting in a semi-circle to point to the exact name. "Strange that she married him sine manu. She remained legally tied to her family, not to her husband."

"That doesn't surprise me." Reagan regarded him quizzically.

Did he already know of these people he was asking her to read about? And if so, how would a taciturn scout who couldn't read have knowledge of a Roman and British family from almost fifty years ago?

"Thaddeus, what was his profession?" Reagan shrugged, and continued to search; usually a name would give some clue as to what that person did.

"I don't know. All I can find is that he was wealthy, so one can assume that he had power as well." She watched him carefully, but was unsatisfied as it seemed the scout had known this already as well. But given his interest in the documents, Reagan knew that there was some vital piece of the puzzle missing.

"I could write to this Thaddeus for you if you wish," she asked hesitantly. Something strange flashed behind his eyes and his countenance suddenly frightened her.

Standing and brushing at her skirts with nervous hands, she wanted to laugh at herself. It had been a good long while since Tristan had made her nervous.

"Don't bother. He'll be arriving at the fort within weeks, I suspect." Tristan's tone was quiet and had a lethal edge to it that surprised her.

"How do you know that?" There was no hiding the surprise in her voice.

"I just do." Tristan stood then; it was startling to Reagan, sometimes, the fluid, graceful way he moved. She watched as he made short work of the scrolls and parchments littered about the floor in the backroom.

"Is there anything else you'd like me to find for you?" she asked as he scooped up the discarded papers. Tristan shook his head at her; a tangled fall of dark hair covered his eyes, obscuring his expression for a moment.

"No. It's already found me." And in his usual manor he ambled from the room, leaving the ambiguous statement hanging in the air as heavy and dark as an unseen presence.

Reagan picked up her charcoal pencil and tried and failed to return to her task. It was impossible to ignore the chills of portent running up and down her spine.

She was not wrong to dread the arrival of the mysterious Thaddeus Tristan was so curious about. She hoped that the scout was wrong and the man never made his way to Hadrian's Wall, for if he did Reagan was sure there would be hell to pay.

AN: Exposition, exposition, exposition *sigh* Glad that's over!

So sorry again for the wait for this chapter. I wanted to get it to where I was comfortable with it before I even showed it to a beta. Can you believe it took over a month?

You won't have to wait that long for Chapter 8, as that is already finished. Chapter 9 is outlined and I should be able to start that this week.

I want to take the time to thank everyone who read/reviewed/alerted the last chapter. If I didn't get back to you I apologize!