Malcolm said something to the men in Gaelic, and the anger began to bleed from them. They seemed to buy the story. Iain’s eyes narrowed. “So what brings you here, then?”
Dylan shrugged, as if it weren’t such a big deal to get on a ship and spend several months in passage to a place that wasn’t his home to visit distant relatives who did not expect him or even know he existed. “I came to see my father’s people.”
“And did you forget to bring your gear?”
He shrugged again. “I travel light?” When that wasn’t received with the intended humor, he added quickly, “I was robbed. At the docks in . . .” Dang, not knowing where Glen Ciorram was, he couldn’t know where the nearest port town was. “At the docks, after I arrived. I was mug . . . uh, jumped . . . um, accosted . . .”
Malcolm grinned and said, “Now, I’m having a little trouble believing you would let yourself be robbed.”
The others laughed, except Iain who still scowled. Dylan gave a dry smile, then chafed at the bindings on his wrists. “I can be outnumbered. I was, and I lost my lug . . . uh, belongings. And my . . . um . . . purse.” Was that right? Did men carry purses then? The others gave no outward sign, so Dylan figured he was okay on that account.
“You’ve nae sporran, neither. Nor weapons. They truly made off with everything.” He gestured to Dylan’s shoes. “It’s fortunate they left you your brogues, or what you might call them. Boots, perhaps?” The others snickered again. Dylan’s shoes were rubber-soled suede, ankle-high chukka boots. They were the closest to hand-sewn brogues he’d been able to find at the mall.
Dylan tried to laugh with them, but started to black out. He went to his knees, then began to retch. He knew the signs. Concussion. Oh, joy.
There was more muttering in Gaelic among the men while Dylan’s gut hitched, but at least Iain Mór no longer sounded like he was after blood.
A woman’s calm voice came from behind him. She spoke to the men, then said to him in English, “They’ll be taking your bindings off now for you to drink this.”
He looked up at her. A trickle of sweat ran down the side of his face as Malcolm came at him with a dirk. Dylan let him cut the bindings around his wrists.
It was a relief to his shoulders to bring his arms around front, and he rubbed his wrists, still looking at the woman. She was a delight to the eye, a kind face among those who condemned and threatened. Her gleaming blonde hair fell mostly loose, with a thin braid down one side. Woven into the plait was the thinnest of white ribbons with a blue embroidered edge. Her eyes were wide and deep, deep blue, and the sympathy in them touched him at the core. She offered him a shallow wooden cup with handles, half-filled with liquid.
“Drink this. It’ll ease your head.”
He held the cup to his mouth and took a sip. The liquid was vile, and tasted bitter as it went down. His face screwed up with disgust, but the woman urged him with a murmur to continue drinking. At the second sip, he realized that anything tasting this bad must work or nobody would drink it. So he held his breath and downed the rest, then returned the cup and watched her walk back to the hearth. Wearing a white overdress with thin blue lines of plaid, she moved with a grace and confidence that was rare even among the athletic women he knew.
Iain Mór growled, “What might you be staring at, lad?”
Dylan’s gaze went to the floor and he said nothing. He figured he’d best watch himself. The woman was probably Iain’s wife. Trophy wife, more than likely, judging from her youth and beauty, and Iain’s age and social status.
Malcolm said to Iain, “He’ll sleep in my chamber tonight while the rest of us keep watch with Alasdair.” Since he spoke English, Dylan knew he was supposed to hear and understand.
Iain’s reaction was something angry in Gaelic.
Malcolm answered him in English. “Coll can stay by the door.” He indicated the blond teenager, who narrowed his eyes at Dylan. Again, Dylan knew he was supposed to hear.
Iain stared at the floor a moment, considering, then looked at Malcolm and nodded. “Aye.”
Malcolm said something in Gaelic to the other men, then to Dylan, “Come along.” Dylan climbed to his feet to follow the length of the hall, through a heavy wooden door dotted with iron studs, into a corridor. Two of the dogs came along at his heels. “Have you people who’re expecting you?” Malcolm’s manner was sure and calm, as if whatever answer Dylan might give would be fine with him. The corridor was dim, lit sparsely by infrequent but large candles set in sconces along the wall. Long shadows crawled everywhere over stone turned orange by firelight. The darkness and the rock all around gave a sense of being buried alive, as if the corridor were a small cave from which there might be no escape.
It occurred to Dylan to suggest there would be a search party out after him by daybreak, but he knew he couldn’t pull off that bald a lie, particularly one that would be disproved in a short matter of time. Neither could he keep the desolation from his voice as the realization hit home. Nowhere to go. “No,” he said, “I didn’t know myself I would end up here.” Where was that stupid faerie, anyway?
Malcolm lifted a candle from a sconce and guided him down the corridor then up stone stairs that spiraled steeply clockwise. The dogs’ claws clicked on the stone as they climbed behind the men. The walls on either side came together overhead, and it was like climbing in a tunnel. The sense of being buried was even more intense, though they were going up. There were landings, and at each landing was one door set into a small, odd-shaped alcove to the left of the steps. These areas were dark, and Malcolm’s candle made wild shadows on the odd-angled walls. Dylan looked up the stairs and saw more darkness.
Malcolm said as he continued upward, “Is your family dead, then? I expect your father must be dead.”
“Why do you say that?”
Malcolm glanced at him with surprise. “Sure, I dinnae ken how a man can leave his family—to pick up and leave his home. I could never bring myself to it. Not even if I had to.”
“I didn’t have a whole lot of choice.”
Malcolm grinned. “Her Majesty has taken to transporting folk back to Scotland, then?”
Dylan laughed. “No. I just . . .” He plied his scrambled brain for a good lie, but nothing came. He was left with the truth. “I just . . . blacked out one afternoon, and next thing I knew I was in Scotland.”
“Oh, aye,” said Malcolm with a full understanding Dylan envied, “a press gang. You’re lucky to have escaped. Are they looking for you, lad?”
Dylan didn’t know what a press gang was. He wanted off the subject, and said simply, “No. Nobody is after me.” There was a long pause while they climbed, then Dylan asked point blank, “Why aren’t I dead?”
Malcolm answered without hesitation. “Roderick Matheson, who we have not seen in almost forty years, was my mother’s brother and Iain, Coll, and Artair’s father’s brother. I was a child when I last saw him, but you have the look of him about your eyes. If not for that, you’d be in chains in the gatehouse prison tower, have nae doubt. I dinnae think we’d have kilt ye already, even were you a spy.”
The voice was as matter-of-fact as ever, and gave Dylan a shudder.
They stopped at the fifth landing, and Malcolm led him into a mostly round chamber, where a large fireplace dominated the interior wall and the heavy ceiling beams disappeared into gloom above the center of the room. They were carved with a crude floral design. Dylan was surprised to see the high windows fully glazed with small panes, some colored. Glass windows in this century, in this country, usually meant wealth.
A four-poster bed stood near one of the windows. A bulky, carved wooden chair was near the hearth, and at the far end of the room were an armoire and a small set of bookshelves. At the foot of the bed stood a low table with fine, turned legs, bearing a ewer and basin of etched pewter. Castle, glass, pewter, turned wood . . . yeah, rich folks.
Malcolm waved his hand at the bed. “I’ll nae be needing the bed tonight, so make yourself at home. And Gra
cie should be in with—”
A knock on the door interrupted. A small, graying woman entered, carrying some towels. Her face was so badly scarred as to look deformed, and Dylan guessed she was a survivor of smallpox. She smiled at him with thin lips, then went about her business, laying the towels next to the ewer, taking long glances at Dylan the entire time. Dylan looked over at Malcolm, wondering if this castle was really so short of beds that he needed to sleep in Malcolm’s, or if he was up here only to be watched. They were high in one of the towers, with probably only one way out. One obvious way, in any case. Dylan guessed there would be more than just Coll posted outside the door, and others along the route to the outside.
He relaxed. That was okay with him. He had nowhere to go.
Malcolm gestured to the ewer. “You’ll want to wash your face.”
Dylan touched a crusty spot on his chin that had begun to itch, and went to pour water into the basin. The swelling in his eye wasn’t too bad, but was tender to the touch. As he washed, a cut in his upper lip began to bleed again, and he pressed a towel to it until it stopped. Eventually the blood and dirt were gone from his face and hands. He dried himself with the towel, and found the soreness was easing.
The dogs stared at him with bright eyes, like shaggy, black and white children waiting for some attention. One was mostly white, with random black patches here and there, and the other was black with a white underside. The white one stretched out on the wooden floor. The smaller black one eyed Dylan and sniffed the air. He took a few steps forward.
Dylan reached out. The knot in his gut loosened a little as the black dog rolled onto his back to have his belly scratched. Dylan couldn’t help but grin, and he obliged. “Yeah, you know a Matheson when you see one.”
When he looked up, Malcolm and Gracie were both gone. He sat on the bed and pulled off his shoes, then peeled his red-and-black argyle socks from his feet and stuffed them in the shoes. Those hit the floor. Then he unpinned his plaid and unwound it from his body. He was dirty and sore, and wanted nothing more than to go home. He took the brooch from the plaid and dropped it into a shoe, then unbuckled his belt and pulled off the red-and-black wool. The clothing slipped to the floor on top of the shoes. Stripped to his shirt, he blew out the candle on the window sill, and settled into the linen sheets spread over a straw mattress on the wooden frame.
Leaning on one elbow, Dylan stared at the fire as it dulled to embers, and wondered what he’d done to deserve this. Then he lay down to sleep in his shirt. One of the dogs sighed in the creeping darkness.
CHAPTER 4
Dylan awoke at dawn, alert at the low sound of men’s voices outside the chamber door. He slipped quickly from the bed and moved toward the voices, on silent bare feet, shocked by the cold of the wood floor, shivering in his shirt. The dogs were up, tails sweeping the chill air, ready to play and offering dog-smiles for whomever was coming. Dylan eased to a position by the hearth, where he couldn’t be seen unless the door was completely open. He rubbed down goose bumps in the icy blue dawn that slanted through the wavy-thick panes of the windows.
The door swung toward him, and he stepped back to balance his weight, ready for whatever. The strawberry-blond teenager entered—the one Iain Matheson had called Artair. He was thin, though not skinny or knobby-looking like Malcolm, filled with an energy that seemed to emanate in waves. Like all the other men Dylan had seen here, he wore a full beard, but his was thin, wavy rather than curly, and shiny-reddish. The color was close enough to the shade of his pink skin that it gave the appearance of a face frayed at the edges.
The older blond one, Coll, was behind him. He looked like a mindless enforcer: larger, quieter, more economical of movement. His dull, watery-blue eyes seemed to look straight through Dylan. Malcolm had said these were Iain’s brothers.
Artair peered at Dylan, then at the bare knees below his shirttail. Dylan shifted his weight again in a casual attitude of unconcern, forward and hipshot. “You want something?”
Artair snorted. “I came to ask you that very thing. I expect you’re hungry by now.” His voice betrayed his equal unconcern about Dylan’s welfare, and Dylan shrugged despite his gurgling stomach. “But you’ll most likely be wanting to piss first before you eat, and you’ll have noticed the lack of a chamber pot.” Dylan had a vague idea of what a chamber pot was, but he wouldn’t have known where to find one if he’d decided to look. He was just as happy he needn’t have.
Without waiting for a reply, Artair continued, “You’ll find a garderobe atop the steps. Follow the battlement around, and it’s on the right where the tower meets the curtain. Once you’re done, and if you can find your way back to the Great Hall, there’s breakfast awaiting you. You’ll hurry, or you’ll be eating it cold.”
Dylan thanked him, but Artair’s reply was, “Wouldn’t want you pissing in the corners now.” He and Coll disappeared through the door without closing it. Their footfalls clattered down the stone steps and faded into the distance, and they muttered to each other in Gaelic.
Huh.
Dylan belted his kilt around himself and pinned it as he’d done yesterday. While he dressed, a cold ball settled in his gut. When he’d last put this on he’d not dreamed it would become his entire wardrobe and the one thing essential to fitting in. It was a good thing he’d not been wearing jeans yesterday.
The dark alcove outside the sleeping chamber was empty and cold. Dylan went up the steps in search of the “garderobe.” If it was a place for him to pee, he figured it must at least resemble a latrine of some sort.
At the top of the steps he found a wooden door that opened onto a battlement. To his left was the peaked wooden ceiling of Malcolm’s quarters, and to the right was a curved, crenelated wall with an arrow loop in each of its raised sections. The fresh air, icy in Dylan’s lungs, made him gasp. A stiff breeze tossed his hair around his face. He leaned on the deep stone embrasure to look out, and found the castle was situated on an island or peninsula near the edge of a small loch. Dark blue water reflected the clouds above, and beyond it brown mountains dotted with exposed granite rose directly from the water in violent contrast to the peaceful loch. The air was so clear and the colors so crystalline that Dylan could only stand and gawk at the beauty of this gray, blue, and green landscape.
When he was able to take his eyes away from the jagged horizon, he looked down and found the castle surrounded by a ruined wall near the water’s edge, torn down so completely there was nothing left but the bare indication there had once been a castle curtain around the perimeter of the land. Some swans floated near the shore, and a smile came to his face which quickly died. He’d never seen a live swan before. They were creatures of faerie tale and myth. People were transformed into swans or they brought the enchantments of the “wee folk.” Faeries, which had once been the stuff of children’s stories, were now hard reality for him, and he could have lived his whole life without ever having seen a swan or a faerie and been perfectly happy.
He couldn’t dawdle long and his need to find that “garderobe” pressed him onward. He found it, just past where the tower battlement met the curtain. It was a tiny room built into the wall, closed off by an extremely narrow wooden door that groaned when he shoved on it, and moved with great protest. He shouldered his way in, ducking through the small opening, then pushed it shut behind him and turned to examine the castle latrine.
Its seat was wooden, a one-holer against the outer wall. A small basket stuffed with hay sat next to the hole, and when he realized what the hay was for, he flinched. “Owww.” There was a smell, but not the stink he’d expected from a centuries-old latrine. In fact it didn’t even smell as bad as the average phone booth in downtown Nashville. Gray dawn slanted through the arrow loop, and up through the hole.
Dylan looked in and saw the ground several stories below. At the foot of the tower, directly under the hole, was a dark mound that occupied one end of a fenced garden. The patch was bare, but the worked ground was bordered by a small rail fenc
e covered with blooming white rose vines.
Idly, he wondered how many of these garderobes there were and what the morning fallout of human waste looked like when viewed from a distance. That struck him as funny. The weirdness of everything around him made him want to giggle, but he swallowed it for fear he might start laughing and never stop.
He sighed, figured it was his turn to add to the pile below, and reached for the hem of his kilt.
“Aye, there’s a bonnie backside! Sure, I came at the right time!”
That faerie! Dylan whirled at the voice behind him. “You! Send me home!” He reached for her, but she rose to the ceiling, out of reach, with a flutter of wings and a tiny laugh.
“After you’ve done what you came to do, lad.”
He cocked his head at her. “What, pee?”
She crossed her arms. “Save my people.”
“Not possible. They’ll fail at Sheriffmuir, at Glen Shiel, and finally at Culloden. Scotland will remain under British rule and won’t even get its own parliament again until almost the end of the twentieth century. Nobody can change history.”
“You can. And you will. You’re the hero who will save the Gaels from the Sassunaich. You’re the one who can free our people, or the sword would never have brought you here when you laid hands on it.”
His eyes narrowed, and he crossed his arms. “I guess you must be an awfully powerful faerie to make a sword do that.”
She fluttered lower and nodded. “Oh, aye! Powerful, indeed!”
“Then how come you can’t save them yourself? Leave me out of your squabbles with the English!”
Her eyes narrowed, and she settled to her feet. She aimed a threatening finger at him. “Lad, there was a time when I would have struck you dead for that!”
Son of the Sword Page 5