Mary Stuart crosses the Solway.
Draughts of spiced wine warmed the failing night,
the thin mist chill off the waters;
shouts, she thought, and hooves behind
in the hills, that far prison in the silent loch,
her battle lost, she stirred and her heart
opened to hands upon her in the dark.
Day broke, birds in the spring woods, sweet and loud.
Shipped oars glittered as the sea lifted the skiff
pressed it up onto the shore;
scrape and gnash of shingle;
hurried deference and whispers in the growing light;
long lick of tide under the keel.
Frail bird of her hand in his,
a thick shawl over the cropped glory of her hair,
gleam of a golden cross, caught in her cold hand.
Her fare dismissed, he bent his head,
she accepted the bristled kiss upon her fingers.
A falcon stooped and fell like a black star.
Hands, gnarled with bitter weather
and the bite of wet lines, shook out the fluttering sails,
the cutter found the wind, drove out across the firth,
left the lightening bonny banks behind.
An hour or more, she stepped upon her cousin’s realm,
shivered and tightened her shawl against the cold winds rising.
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