Emelia turned to Robin, but he knew what she was going to ask. He said, “Shall I be Argyll?”

“Would ye, please?” Emelia gave her older brother a look of pure gratitude.

“Ye mind the rules?” asked Robin, looking at the youngest of the children to make sure. “When Argyll captures ye, then ye become a Covenanter, and ye have to fight on my side.”

Maurice pointed out, “John never does.”

“Well, John is an exception,” Robin granted. “He will never fight against the king, on principle, and so we have to throw him in the dungeon, but that isn’t as much fun, I promise.”

Even with the head start he agreed to give them, Lily knew how tricky it would be to hide from Robin. He was clever.

But she thought she knew the perfect place.

“Come on,” she said to Jamie, as she led him back through tangled woods and underbrush, toward the castle of Inchbrakie.

When they reached the old moat, now a dry and sloping gully, Lily pointed to a spot within the green space it encircled.

“There.”

And Jamie’s smile was quick and understanding, for he knew the tales his cousins had been telling her this winter past in their play schoolroom—the same tales that he’d been hearing his whole life. He knew his kinsman, the great Marquis of Montrose, while being chased by Argyll’s men, had famously avoided capture by concealing himself in this yew tree Lily was now pointing to: the great Inchbrakie Yew, which had been standing here for centuries, an ancient guard upon the castle.

What better place to hide when playing Covenanters and Montrose?

They broke from cover cautiously and raced across the clearing. Jamie made a stirrup with his hands and boosted her up to the nearest branch the way she’d seen grooms help people mount horses, and then, being able to jump higher, he scrambled after her.

The tree was imposing, its trunk broader round than her father was tall, and its branches spread out in a thick fall of twisting dark needles that caught at her skirts as she climbed. But it held them securely, the greenery closing around them again like a screen as they settled themselves high enough that they wouldn’t be noticed by anyone walking beneath.

From here, although they could not see, they heard the echoes of the shouts and laughter as the game went on, and “Argyll” claimed his captives one by one and turned them into Covenanters.

Lily held her breath and held her silence.

She and Jamie waited.

Then a flash of motion chased across the clearing. Something rustled through the branches underneath them. And John’s head popped unexpectedly up on a level with their own. They all three stared in great surprise a moment at each other, then John grinned and hauled himself onto the same branch where they sat.

In a whisper, Jamie warned, “Be careful! This is our tree.”

“I’m Montrose,” said John.

“But Lily found this hiding place for us,” said Jamie.