Highlander's Forbidden Love: Only love can heal the scars of the past...

by Faris, Fiona

  Matthew slipped him a sidelong look.

  “I suspect you would not be too unhappy if things did not turn out well tonight?” he ventured.

  Gilbert let out a long sigh.

  “To tell you the truth, Matthew, I would not,” he conceded. “It is a tangled knot we find ourselves in, and I’ll be damned if I can find a loose end to unfankle it. It is not like war, lad, when you are ranked on one side, and the enemy is lined up opposite you. Then the matter is simple. In this case, the lines are indistinct, and it is a battle we cannot win because our ‘enemy’ wears the face of both friend and foe.”

  It was Matthew’s turn to sigh.

  “To speak plainly, sir, I would rather be facing the Saracens in Espayne than engaged in this work tonight.”

  “In a few hours it will be over, and we may return home, our duty done,” Gilbert assured him. “And you may get to fight your Saracens yet,” he added, slapping him heartily on the shoulder. “King Robert would still have his crusade.”

  Matthew grinned wryly. He prayed that the night would pass without incident.

  It was then that he remembered, in a sudden flash of inspiration, where he had seen the innkeeper before.

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Aberdon

  The Seagait

  The French sailors staggered merrily down the Seagait towards the shore. Their master knew that they would only have a few hours to sleep off their merriment and that he would have a crew of tired hands and sore heads to coax and cajole and bully when the tide turned the following morning, but he was confident that his seasoned men would be equal to the task of getting the crayer under sail once the ebb had carried them out of the river mouth and into the open sea. After all, they invariably let their hair down when in port, and it would not be the first or the last time that they got the vessel underway while they were still half-drunk from the night before. Indeed, he doubted if they could do it any better when they were sober.

  The men crowded around the two mates who had joined them late at the inn until they were almost invisible to anyone who might meet them on the street. The two keep their hoods up and their heads down as they were bumped and jostled by the close mass of bodies around them. The master led the boisterous, singing scrum quickly down the brae, keen to get them on board the ship and safely asleep among the timber they were returning with to France.

  As they reached the wharf, they ran into a troop of armed men heading in the opposite direction, with Matthew Fitt at its head.

  “Stay!” Matthew commanded the drunken crew.

  “Piss off!” one of the sailors called, and the scrum tried to push its way through the crowd of troopers.

  “Stay, I tell you,” Matthew said, raising his voice, “or so help me God you will be stayed in a pool of your own blood.”

  The master pushed himself between his and Matthew’s men.

  “And who are you, I ask you, to command us to ‘stay’?”

  “I am Matthew Fitt, commander of this detachment of men belonging to Gilbert Hay, Earl of Errol and High Constable of Scotland. I command you to stay in the name of Robert, the Bruce, King of Scots.”

  The shipmaster was impressed. His eyes wavered uncertainly for a brief moment, and he swallowed nervously.

  “And for what cause do you seek to detain the honest subjects of the King of France?”

  Matthew cast a look over the sailor’s crew.

  “We want to assure ourselves that you are not harboring criminals who belong to and are answerable to King Robert.”

  The shipmaster drew himself up to his full height, his face puce with indignation.

  “Well, I can assure you we are not,” he said through gritted teeth. “Now, let us past.”

  He laid a forearm across Matthew’s chest and made to push by him aside. Matthew swept the arm up and away, and the master felt the tip of Matthew’s long dirk pressing into his throat.

  “Do not dare to lay hands on me, sir,” he warned in a low voice which only the shipmaster could hear. “Men!” he cried to his party. “Search the crew. We’re looking for the Comyn and… his woman.”

  The men-at-arms began pushing their way into the scrum, splitting it up into isolated knots of three or four men. The sailors, who were unarmed, resisted, shoving at the men who were manhandling them, and spitting and cursing. Somehow, they succeeded in keeping the two late arrivals out of the soldiers’ reach.

  “You two!” Matthew pointed at the two. “Come over here!”

  They didn’t move. They didn’t look up, but Matthew thought he saw words pass between them.

  “You men,” he said again, indicating to four pikemen. “Bring those two hooded men to me.”

  The sailors tried to block their progress towards their two comrades, but the pikemen herded them aside with the shafts of their weapons.

  Suddenly, the two took to their heels and broke from the group. The other sailors seized and grappled with the men-at-arms, as the pair raced across the street and disappeared into a dark vennel.

  “After them!” Matthew shouted.

  He set off himself in hot pursuit, but the shipmaster stuck out a heel and Matthew tumbled over his outstretched leg. Pushing himself quickly to his feet, he resumed the chase, disappearing down the vennel behind several of his men.

  The vennel led to the next main thoroughfare that led down to the quayside. As Matthew emerged onto the street, he heard a call from another vennel opposite.

  “This way, sir,” one of his men cried.

  Dirk in hand, he sprinted across the street and into the narrow passageway between the gables of two tall tenements. He saw a glimmer of light from a mail tunic a short way ahead of him. Emerging at the far end, he found his men standing in a narrower street, bewildered at the array of pends that confronted them.

  “Split up!” Matthew ordered. “Two men to each pend. If you corner them, raise an alarum. Otherwise, we’ll flush them out onto the next street.”

  “I know these streets, sir,” one of his men spoke up. “Those pends lead to a warren of backcourts and closes. We might never find them.”

  “We must try,” Matthew insisted. “If they escape, they escape, but we must not be found wanting. Sir Gilbert will have our guts for garters if we give up.”

  With a sense of hopelessness, the men entered the labyrinth.

  * * *

  Meanwhile, down on the quayside, the sailors had been gathered and herded back to their boat, where Gilbert and the remainder of his troop received them. He ordered the sailors into a line and obliged them to file past him as they stepped onto the gangplank so that he could confirm that his fugitives were no longer among their number. He knew that, as soon as the sailors had passed on to the ship, they would be outside his jurisdiction.

  Once the sailors were on board, the gangplank was removed, and the master advised to remain on his vessel until the tide turned, at which point they would depart under supervision and not return. Then he arranged for an armed cordon to be formed in a semi-circle on the wharf, to prevent anyone from leaving or, more importantly, from joining the ship, and for the remainder of his men to help Matthew comb the shambles.

  Even if the fugitives remained at large, at least he could be certain that they would not be free to board the Frenchman to make their escape.

  * * *

  Elizabeth and Duncan threw themselves over a wall and into a pigsty. A large pregnant sow, which was lying in the doorway of its wooden shelter, opened one eye and flapped an ear at them but thankfully did not raise a hullabaloo. In the distance, all around, they could hear the shouts of their pursuers and the loud complaints of the residents whose sleep they were disturbing.

  They both scrabbled up in the muck and rested their backs against the sty wall. They were both breathing heavily, and Elizabeth was clutching a stitch in her side.

  “I-I don’t think I can go on.” She gasped. “My legs are cramping, and I can’t get my wind.”

  “We must go on,” Duncan sai
d. “More men-at-arms are arriving all the time. It is only a matter of time before they spy us. Besides,” he added, “we must find a way on to the Frenchman. It leaves with the tide, and if we are not on board when it sets sail, goodness knows when we will find another passage.”

  “Let me have a few minutes, then.” Elizabeth leaned her head back against the wall and closed her eyes.

  “We don’t have a few minutes. They’re coming closer; they will be on us in seconds.”

  Duncan stood and hauled her to her feet. Elizabeth let him help her over the wall, and they set off at a hirpling half-run between the middens and animal pens towards a dark close. The close swallowed them, Elizabeth’s labored breathing echoing off the narrow walls and ceiling.

  The passageway bent this way and that, running down several short flights of rough, uneven steps. They passed several children sleeping in damp doorways, and the occasional rat scurried across the path in front of them as they approached. The ground was littered with vegetable waste, and in places, slippery underfoot. Duncan dragged Elizabeth onward, until they found themselves at the entry, where the close spilled on onto the wharf, several hundred yards downstream of the Frenchman.

  “Damnation!” Duncan swore as they peered around the corner of the entry. “They’ve set up a cordon and lit the area with torches and braziers. We’ll never get aboard from the wharf.”

  Elizabeth stood slumped against the close-mouth. Her legs were shaking uncontrollably, and she was no longer confident that they would take her weight.

  “You must leave me,” she said, tears of pain and frustration streaking her face.

  Duncan looked at her in surprise, as if the very idea was alien.

  “Leave you? Never! I would rather die than abandon you. How could I live with myself, knowing that I had won my freedom at the cost of your life? No, we will find a way.”

  Suddenly, from behind them, came the clatter of mail and footsteps echoing down the close through which they had just passed.

  “One last effort, my love,” Duncan urged, pulling her out into the shadow of the overhanging building. “If we can make it to the bank where the fishermen have beached their boats, we might find a yoal. Then we could approach the Frenchman from the river or, at worst, take it out beyond the estuary and intercept it when it sails out in the morning.”

  But, after only a few steps, Elizabeth stumbled and fell.

  “Go on, Duncan,” she pleaded again. “Leave me.”

  “Never!” he repeated, and stooping down, he hoisted her across his broad shoulders. Running at a crouch, he hurried away in the opposite direction from where the Frenchman was docked and towards the beach.

  He prayed that his own legs would not give out before he had Elizabeth safe.

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Aberdon

  The quayside

  Standing by a burning brazier, Gilbert caught sight of a lambent shadow away to his left, further down the wharf. He narrowed his eyes and peered into the darkness beyond the circle of dancing light. It was nothing, he decided; just a shadow cast by fires he had set up to illuminate the area of the quay immediately around the French crayer.

  Or was it? He detached himself from the picket and began to trot along the quayside to investigate. It would be nothing, he strongly suspected, but he needed to confirm his doubt.

  Soon, he was passing beyond the reach of the circle of flickering yellow light. As he reached the entrance to a dark close, Matthew and four other men-at-arms emerged panting from its narrow mouth.

  “No luck?” Gilbert inquired.

  “None,” Matthew reported. “It’s a maze of courts and alleyways back there. They could be anywhere. Did you see anyone emerge from this entry?”

  “I thought I saw something,” Gilbert said reluctantly, “but it may only have been a trick of the light. I thought I’d venture further along the wharf, just to make sure.”

  “I will accompany you,” Matthew said. “This search is hopeless; they could be anywhere in that rats’ nest up there,” he added, nodding back up the close. “We need to discuss our tactics.”

  Gilbert slapped him encouragingly on the shoulder.

  “Not ‘hopeless’,” he pointed out. “The important thing is that we stop them from getting on that boat. If we oblige them to stay hidden in the town, then we will at least have achieved that.”

  “That is true.” Matthew turned to his companions. “Return to the shambles. Flush them out if you can but, in any event, keep up the search. I’m remaining with the Earl for a while. I will rejoin you presently.”

  “Aye, sir,” the men said raggedly, before heading off back up the close.

  Gilbert and Matthew set off again with long strides along the quayside. Soon they could no longer see each other in the utter darkness of the night.

  “I doubt that this is turning out the way either of us may have hoped,” Gilbert said quietly.

  Matthew gave him a quick sidelong glance.

  “It is unfolding as it must,” he replied slowly, choosing his words carefully. “Though I admit that I would not have been too disappointed had they escaped.”

  Gilbert murmured his assent, and they continued a few steps more in taut silence.

  “I often wish that life could be simpler,” Gilbert confessed with a sigh. “It is a tangled web we weave, full of knots and twists and sticky nubs.”

  Matthew gave a rueful laugh.

  “Aye, life has been simple up till now for a plain soldier like myself. Obey orders and volunteer for nothing, as old Aonghas used to hammer into my skull.”

  “Ah, Aonghas MacNeacail… I miss him terribly.”

  “As do I. Yet, I am strangely unmoved to revenge him on the man who took his life.”

  Gilbert looked at him, startled.

  “But remember, Matthew: it wasn’t the Comyn chiel who took his life; it was that damned fisherman.”

  “Well… the man who was the cause behind why he died.”

  “But that is not the same thing, lad, and we must never forget it. That road leads to endless feuding, which has been the bane of our realm. Imagine if we were all united in peace under the one king… Edward Plantagenet would be quaking in his boots down in London.”

  “Which is likely why he sows discord between us,” Matthew pointed out. “He needs a weak and divided Scotland so that he can be free to pursue his claim on the French throne, as the Duke of Aquitaine.”

  Gilbert sighed.

  “Aye, a tangled web indeed…”

  * * *

  Duncan crouched and laid Elizabeth in the sand, her back propped against the hull of a small open fishing boat.

  “Wait here, my darling, until I can get one of these boats launched.”

  She could not help but smile; she could not have moved from that spot unaided even if she’d tried.

  He turned to the nearest boat and threw his weight against its stern. It did not move, stuck fast on the sand. He moved to the prow of another, smaller yoal, and grasping the gunwale, strained to tug it across the sand to the water’s edge. He could not move that one either. Straightening, he cast around desperately for another, even smaller boat, but he could not see one.

  He resumed trying to push and then pull the yoal, grunting and straining with the effort. The vessel scraped a few inches then stopped. He redoubled his efforts, but the boat would not budge again. His heels slipped and clawed great gashes in the sand; he fell and rose again, fell and rose, until tears were streaming down his cheeks. Elizabeth wept too as she watched his futile efforts, her heart going out to him and almost breaking on his behalf.

  “Stop, Duncan; for pity’s sake stop!”

  But he continued with his hopeless task, simply refusing to accept defeat.

  “Stand away from the boat!”

  Gilbert’s sonorous voice rang out from the darkness.

  Duncan ignored the command and continued heaving, great gasps of effort tearing at his lungs.

  At that moment, the cl
ouds parted, and the weak, watery light of a crescent moon shimmered over the beach. Matthew could just discern Elizabeth’s form slumped against the wooden clinker of another boat. He started towards her.

  “No!” Duncan shouted.

  He left his labor and staggered back across the sand to stand between Matthew and his Elizabeth. He was utterly spent. He fell to his knees but immediately struggled back to his feet again, his dirk in his hand, pointing it defiantly at Matthew. He appeared to be having trouble holding the weight of it with his outstretched arm.