Captured Hearts and Stolen Kisses

by Ceci Giltenan et al.

  Probably for some ale, John thought bitterly as he turned to help Muriella to her feet. Her legs were numb from sitting for so long without moving; she swayed for a moment before her husband caught her around the waist. She blinked as the doors swung open and the sunlight—the first in weeks—assaulted her eyes unexpectedly.

  "No! Leave me be!"

  Muriella looked up at the sound of that voice to see a woman hovering in the doorway. She was bent forward, her plain cloak wrapped close around her body, the hood pulled low so her face was barely visible. The men watching the door tried to block her path, but she pushed them aside. Before they could stop her, she crossed the hall until she stood in front of John and Muriella. "I came!" she cried in a voice not at all like her own. Her shoulders were hunched forward and her hands shook.

  "Elizabeth!" John stood unmoving, appalled at the sight of his sister dressed as a peasant and nearly hysterical.

  Muriella saw at once that Elizabeth would not be able to stand much longer. She slipped out of John's grasp to take his sister's arm, drawing the woman closer to the fire.

  Elizabeth trembled, speaking brokenly. "He told me I must not come. He told me... I thought... he left me alone." She pulled the hood farther over her face and stared blankly into the flames.

  Muriella drew a bench forward and pressed her sister-in-law onto it. She had moved by instinct when she saw Elizabeth's pallid face. The woman was frightened, that much was clear, even to Muriella's clouded brain.

  John, who had also recognized Elizabeth's agitation, brought two goblets of wine. One he gave to his sister, who took it without looking at him. The other he handed to his wife. "Drink it," he told her.

  Muriella swallowed the liquid rapidly, surprised to feel it burning down her throat, awakening her insides from their numb sleep. When she was finished, she gave the goblet to John and knelt next to Elizabeth. "Tell me," she said. Elizabeth ran her tongue across her lips and struggled to find the words she wanted. With a sigh, she reached out to touch Muriella's shoulder. "Lachlan forbade me to come to my father's funeral," she said at last.

  "What!" John exclaimed.

  "'He was my father,' I told him. 'And my enemy,' he said. I told him I must go and he... he..."'

  "Did he threaten ye?" John leaned toward his sister, lifting her chin with one finger. "Did he?"

  "No, he simply forbade me. Then he left." She shook her brother's hand away. "I believe he thought I wouldn't ever disobey him."

  John snorted with disgust. "Aye, Elizabeth. Ye made him believe it."

  Muriella put a restraining hand on John's arm. "Please," she said.

  Her husband opened his mouth to object, but when he saw Muriella’s expression, he decided to leave her to deal with Elizabeth. He was not in a tolerant mood just now. Without another word, he left the two women alone.

  Elizabeth was glad her brother had gone. Staring at her feet, she continued in a low voice, "After he went away, I sat before the fire with my sewing. 'I must do as he bids me,' I told myself. Yet I am twenty-five years old, and no longer a young bride who cannot think on her own." She paused, stricken with sudden remorse. "I haven't ever done this to Lachlan before. My father and I haven't been close for a long time now, ye ken, and it doesn't seem right to hurt my husband for him. Mayhap I shouldn't have come."

  Muriella covered Elizabeth's cold hand with her own. "Ye did the right thing."

  "'Tis no’ right to disobey yer husband."

  Muriella looked away. "Lachlan was wrong to try to keep ye at Duart," she insisted.

  Elizabeth did not appear to be listening. "But as I sat there staring into the fire, I saw my father's face among the flames. It hovered there and I thought, He will burn. He is burning. The flames..." She raised her head to meet Muriella's compassionate gaze. "They hated each other, did ye know that? My father made me choose, ye see, and it had to be Lachlan. He couldn't ever accept that. After yer wedding he told me my husband was an enemy to the clan and that I should leave him. He said I could live here just as I used to, that he'd protect me. I think he really believed I'd stay with him, but I couldn't do it." She looked up at Muriella, seeking her approval. "He didn't understand. Do ye know, he hasn't spoken kindly to me since then? But I had to choose my husband."

  "Not this time," her sister-in-law said softly.

  Elizabeth looked up in surprise; the thought had not occurred to her before. "No," she said. "Not this time." She held her hands palms upward, examining her fingers as if she could not decide what to do with them.

  Muriella threw her arms around her sister-in-law and felt Elizabeth's shoulders tremble. "The Earl spoke of ye often," she said at last. "He loved ye very much, Elizabeth. He would have wanted ye here."

  Elizabeth considered her doubtfully. "Would he really?"

  "Aye, I know it. I know too that ye wouldn't have been able to forgive yerself if ye'd abandoned the Earl at the end."

  The two women clung together for a moment, then Elizabeth said shakily, "I had to come, no matter what, didn't I?" "Ye did," Muriella assured her.

  "Aye." At that, Elizabeth stood, throwing her hood back from her face. She was no longer afraid to be recognized. Then for the first time she saw the bier in the center of the room. The color drained from her cheeks and she found she could not breathe properly.

  Muriella slipped her arm through Elizabeth's when she realized the procession was ready to leave. "'Tis time," she whispered.

  Six men stood grasping the poles on which the coffin rested, while the priest stood near the door with his brass bell in his hand. Behind him were the five who carried the Earl's armor—his helmet, gauntlets, sword, spurs and shield. Then came the man who bore the Campbell arms. Last was Colin, standing at the foot of the stairs with John beside him. When the new Earl tossed his cloak over his shoulder and nodded, the funeral procession began.

  Muriella stood rigid, frozen next to the fire. She heard the ringing of the bell in the courtyard, but suddenly she could not move. She looked away as the coffin passed. When she glanced up again, John was with her, placing her hand in the crook of his elbow. Behind him the torchbearers began to move. The hundred lights dipped and swayed as each man passed, bowing toward the new Earl. At the end of the line came the pipers.

  Just before John guided her into place, Muriella saw that Elizabeth's eyes glittered unnaturally and her face was white as she bowed her head and stepped into the morning sunlight.

  The gate screamed on its hinges and creaked upward, allowing the procession to file out onto the stony spit of land leading to the shore. The hundreds of Campbells who lined the road joined the entourage as it wound its way toward the church where the second Earl of Argyll would lie from this day forward.

  Each man was intent on his own sorrow, and no one seemed to notice that some of those who wore the Campbell plaid had unfamiliar faces. No one was aware that these men did not look at the bier as it was carried down the hill; instead, they glanced furtively over their shoulders, seeking a single man.

  That man smiled at the backs of those who preceded him. Beneath his cloak, he checked his sword again, pleased to feel the icy metal in his hand. He was near the end of the procession that coiled for nearly a mile through the September hills. The wailing of the pipes seemed to rise from the very ground, skirling around his shoulders. To him the music did not weep; it sang, it promised victory. He was swept up for a moment in the sheer jubilation of his inevitable triumph. This time he would not fail.

  He kept his head lowered so no one would see his face and recognize that he did not belong here. That was why, though she passed within three feet of where he stood, Lachlan Maclean did not see his wife move along the road with Colin at her side.

  ~ * ~

  The interior of the church was murky. The torchbearers stood at intervals along the walls, with one man on either side of the gaping hole in the stone where the Earl's coffin would rest. Unconsciously, Muriella clung to her husband's arm. She thought she would fall; her knees felt we
ak, but somehow she remained standing. As her eyes began to adjust to the gloom, she heard the tolling of the bell overhead: ponderous and grim, it intoned its own monotonous rhythm.

  The six men set the coffin on the cold stone floor, then moved to the rear of the church while Muriella, John, Colin and Elizabeth knelt in a semi-circle, waiting for the priest to begin. Outside, the pipes still raged through the still air. Then the priest spoke.

  Elizabeth was silent while he chanted over the coffin, first in Latin, then in the Gaelic. She was silent when the men on either side of the bier snuffed their torches so the light from behind cast wavering shadows over the mourners' heads. She was silent when the women placed white roses on the lid—white roses in autumn, the sign of early death. She was silent and still while Colin knelt beside the priest, repeating the melancholy Gaelic phrases. But when the men began to lift her father's body and place it inside the hollow stone tunnel at their feet, Elizabeth lunged forward. Falling to her knees, she laid her head against the wood that separated her from the Earl. She screamed once, "Papa!" and clung to the coffin, refusing to move when the men tried to lift her away. The tears came coursing down her cheeks, gathering in a puddle on the lid above her father's feet.

  Releasing her husband's arm, Muriella turned to flee.

  ~ * ~

  The Campbells who were unable to squeeze into the crowded church waited outside, listening to the squeal of the pipes and the tolling of the bell. Some knelt, closing their eyes, while some remained standing, their faces wooden with grief. They did not notice their numbers had dwindled and that slowly, slowly, church and mourners alike were being closed inside a ring of strangers.

  ~ * ~

  Lachlan Maclean watched his men as they crept from among the Campbells, moving back until they stood side-by- side, hands poised above their swords. They only waited for his signal. He smiled. Colin Campbell had thought himself clever, no doubt, sending those men to watch Duart and inform him of Maclean's actions. They were dead now, every one of them. Colin must think him a fool, Maclean thought bitterly. Aye, well, he'd learn the truth soon enough. It occurred to him that he ought to feel guilt at playing this kind of trick on the Campbells. They were helpless, after all, unprepared for anything but grief. Grief for the Earl of Argyll—a man who deserved only hatred and derision. He felt again the rush of desperate frustration that had shaken him at the news of the old Earl's death. He had felt cheated; the English had taken Argyll's life and Maclean had nothing to do with it. Now he would never get his revenge against the man who had figured in his nightmares for so long. But if he could not make the Earl pay for what he had done, then his family would have to pay for him. A tiny voice inside warned him that it was not the same, but he did not listen.

  Despite his doubts, Maclean had carefully planned the attack. So long as he knew Elizabeth was safe at Duart, he would feel no twinge of conscience. He still could not bring himself to hurt her, though since her father's death he found her more and more a burden. He shook his head, trying to dislodge thoughts of his wife, but as he raised his hand, ready to give the sign for which his men were watching, he heard a commotion at the door of the church. Squinting through the sunlight, he saw Muriella step outside and stand for a moment looking frantically about her. Then John pushed through the crowd. He was holding a woman who slumped beside him, her head bent.

  Maclean paused with his hand in midair. There was something familiar about the woman, though her face was covered. She looked up and he moaned, choking on his own voice. By God, it was Elizabeth. He glanced at the circle of men who stood waiting. The Campbells would look up and see them in a moment; then it would be hopeless.

  Elizabeth was weeping, pounding her fists against her brother's chest as the wrenching sobs tore at her throat. Damn ye! Maclean wanted to scream. Damn ye to hell! Turning away, he gave the signal for retreat.

  Chapter 23

  "M'lady! What is it?" Megan whispered faintly.

  Muriella stood in her chamber one week after the burial, her eyes moving ceaselessly from one object to another, unable to stay still. Her hands were poised at her throat, her fingers pressing into the tender skin. She had wept no more tears since the eve of the funeral, but now, though she fought against it, the protective numbness had began at last to slip away, leaving her grief exposed to the bright, cold light of day. Her imagination created grisly portraits of the Earl, his chest a mass of wounds, his skull split down the center. Dead at Flodden Field. She had lost him. He had known the cause was hopeless, yet he had followed the King just the same. The Earl had turned his back on Muriella as surely as Lorna and Isabel had done on that long- ago day at Cawdor.

  "Please," Megan cried, "tell me what ails ye."

  Muriella peered at her friend's familiar face and did not know it. The red mist would not leave her; it lingered, shrouding everything with the same scarlet haze. Her mind was full of images of the past: She was kneeling in the river staring at the crimson that covered Lorna's hand. She was standing in the wedding chamber with its deep red hangings. There was blood everywhere—her own blood gushing from her finger, Andrew Calder's blood spilled over the rock, the Earl's blood soaking into the swampy ground. She was falling. She would fall until the earth closed around her and she could fall no more.

  "I can't bear it!" she moaned, covering her ears to shut out the memory of a mournfully tolling bell. She gazed around her at the gold-and-crimson bed curtains, the walls hung with tapestries shot with scarlet threads. She shuddered from head to foot, then went to the nearest hanging, ripping it from the wall. Blindly, she tore down the next and the next. When all were on the floor, she turned to the bed and began gathering the curtains in her arms.

  Megan stood motionless, so frightened by the look in her mistress's eyes that she could not move. For a moment she could not find her voice. "What are ye doin'? What is it?"

  Muriella laughed without mirth. The Earl had chosen to die for his King and now she was alone. The swirling red mist obsessed her. She must destroy it. Burn it. She dragged the curtains toward the fire.

  Megan stood staring, her hand pressed to her mouth; then she hurried from the chamber, calling for help as she went.

  At the foot of the stairs, John caught her as she started past him. "Megan?"

  She gaped at him, then gasped, "Yer wife! I can't stop her!"

  He asked nothing more, but headed at once for Muriella's room. He had never seen Megan so shaken and it made his own heart beat with dread. When he came to his wife's chamber, he stopped abruptly on the threshold. The tapestries lay among the rushes, some of them torn down the center; the bed curtains were piled near the hearth quite close to the flames, and Muriella stood in the middle of the floor, a red gown in shreds at her feet.

  "Are ye mad?"

  "Aye, I'm mad," she chanted. "Mad, mad, mad!" She twirled away from him, wrapping her arms about her waist, and watched him as he stepped back, unable to take his eyes from her.

  Then the muscles in his face tensed as his eyes glinted gray blue. "I won't believe it," he declared.

  She could hear the anger in his voice, see it in the way he leaned against a chest, crossing his arms before him. She straightened her body slowly, swinging her auburn hair over her shoulders. She was aware of the way the firelight altered her face, increasing its pale sheen. She could feel his penetrating gaze upon her.

  Muriella leaned forward, her body stiff and unbending. She leaned out so far that John thought she would fall into the tapestries at her feet. But she remained upright, swaying, her green eyes flicking from the fire to his face and back again. "What if I lifted my torch from the wall and carried it through the castle, setting all yer tapestries afire, dropping the flames into the rushes? Would ye believe it then?"

  "I'd most certainly beat ye senseless, but I’d no’ believe ye're mad. Do ye intend to try it?" He moved toward her menacingly.

  She stepped back, glowering. She had not frightened him.

  That was strange. Anyone else w
ould have shrunk away from her, but there he stood, unmoved, looking at her with cold blue eyes. As he took another step forward, she drew herself upright. The madness, he noted, had disappeared. Now he saw for the first time how pale she was, how dark were the shadows beneath her eyes. Her face was covered with a fine film of sweat, though the afternoon was chilly. And her eyes glittered with a light he had never seen there before. "Why have ye done this?" he asked, indicating the chaos on the floor between them.

  "They displease me."

  Her tone was cool and imperious, but this time he was not fooled. "Why?"

  "The crimson." She waved her hand toward the scattered fabrics. "It sickens me." She pressed her palm to her forehead as the haze began to cloud her thoughts once more.

  He could see she was sincere. It did sicken her; her eyes were hollow and her cheeks deathly pale. "But why?" he repeated.

  Muriella turned away. "It reminds me of Flodden. There was so much death, so much blood. By the end even the mud was red. Oh, God!" she cried, covering her mouth with her hands.

  "But ye weren't even there!"

  Whirling, Muriella cried, "Don't ye understand yet? I was there! I’m still there. The men who died are gone and don't remember, but I can't escape the battlefield. I live the slaughter over and over, every minute of the day, and even in my dreams at night."

  For a moment, John was too shocked to respond, then he made himself speak calmly. "Ye need to be busy, to keep yer thoughts occupied with other things. 'Twould help ye forget."

  Muriella shook her head in despair. "No," she said.