“Who killed him?”
“Robin Innis.”
“Good.” Though Dylan wasn’t quite ready to assume the innocence of Iain, he was glad Coll’s brother hadn’t been the one to kill him. He held Cait while she cried again. When she recovered he asked, “How did you get out of the castle without being followed?”
“A rope ladder is kept for escape purposes down the North Tower garderobe. Gracie pulled it up after me, and will let it down again when darkness is complete. I swam from the island.” She held his sark in her fists and looked into his eyes. “They’re waiting for you to return. You cannae go back.” There was a moment of silence, then she sobbed and added, “Ever.”
His heart sank as his future crumbled.
Her voice was low and gentle, and she laid her hand on his chest. “Dylan, we cannae be married now. You’re an outlaw. They will kill you if they ever find you.”
He didn’t want to believe his life was over. “I didn’t do anything.”
“It matters not. They’ll kill you because they can, and because they dinnae care whether you did anything or not. The Captain’s only interest now is that you never appear to have gotten away with sedition. Since you appear guilty, you must bear punishment. If he gets his hands on you, you’ll die or be imprisoned one way or another. And it would be in his best interest if you never lived to stand trial. You cannae stay here. You must return to Virginia.”
As the world turned to dust around him, his mind cast about for what to do. Going home wasn’t an option. His home in Tennessee wouldn’t exist for a long time yet. He held her tight, afraid to let go.
She loosened his hold, then opened the kilt to bring him inside. It was warm there, and soft. He kissed her. “Love me,” she said. She helped him pull his sark off over his head and they lay back. He untied his legging straps and stripped the sheepskin and leather from his legs, kicked off his shoes, and eased into her arms and kissed her. His mind gladly slipped into a place where the English couldn’t come.
Cait rolled over on top of him. She took his hands, and pressed them to the ground at his sides, indicating he should keep them there. He shivered as he lay there, waiting to see what she would do.
The kilt still draped across her shoulders, she leaned over him to feel of his chest. She tried to fluff his appallingly straight chest hairs, without success, and brushed a nipple ever so lightly. He shuddered and reached for her, but she pushed his hand away and felt of his nipple again, apparently fascinated it could go erect. Breathing became difficult for him.
Her voice was low and husky. “I’ve never touched a man like this before.” Dylan in fact had never been touched quite like that before, having known mostly women who expected him to do the touching. He’d always been pleased enough to oblige. She said, “I wish to know you, all of you, to remember you always.”
She explored him like a new toy, tugged on hair here and there, made him giggle by poking his armpits, pinched muscles, stroked skin, and all she would allow him to do was lie there. She reached down to squeeze parts of him that made him quiver and gasp, and when she kissed him there, took him into her mouth, he moaned and dug his heels into the ground. In a daze, he lifted his head and reached out to feel of her golden hair that shone in the firelight.
She returned to his mouth for tongue-sparring kisses, and straddled him so he eased into her warm body. He put his arms around her waist and held her to him, and wished he could put his entire self into her and stay forever.
Their lovemaking was bittersweet this time, with none of the joy of before. It was a mutual comforting, to put in temporary abeyance the grief they both knew lay ahead. Afterward, he arranged his plaid over them and they slept for a short time.
He awoke during the dead of night when even the creatures of darkness had gone to rest and the world paused for a silent moment before dawn. Cait had dislodged herself from his arms and was on the other side of the fire. When he stirred, she looked up and gave him a thin smile. He watched her walk back, a golden goddess in the moonlight, wide shoulders back and hips swaying with an unself-conscious stride. She slipped in under the plaid to lie with her back to him. He wrapped himself around her and their legs entwined. He murmured, “I’m going to beat this, Cait. They can’t get away with this.”
She did not reply, but rolled onto her back and looked into his face. With one finger she traced the line of his eyebrow. Her gaze was dreamy, and she said, “I love how your brow curves up when you are angry or puzzled.” That took him aback, and she said, “Aye, like that.”
He chuckled and rubbed the eyebrow.
She continued to trace a finger over his face. “And your lip.” Her finger touched his lower lip. “Your mouth is a delight.” He couldn’t help a grin at that, and she said, “I love to see you smile.”
Then he stopped smiling. “Quit memorizing my face. I’m not going anywhere. Ever. I’ll be right there with you on the day you die. I swear it.” He kissed her hair, settled beside her with his arms tight around her, and dropped back to sleep.
The next time he woke, it was sunrise. Cait had dressed and left, and the ground where Dylan lay was very cold and hard. He dressed, then reached into his sporran for the bannock he’d intended to eat on the road to Killilan the day before. But instead his fingers found something damp, which he pulled out to examine. It was a letter, bearing his name in Cait’s hand. A warm feeling stole over him to have word from her, but it turned to a cold sweat as her ring fell from the folded paper.
A Dhilein, my love, when I told you why we could not marry, I gave only part of the reason. You know my father had made plans for me to marry someone else before he learned of our own plans. Now that it is no longer possible for me to marry you, he is taking me to Edinburgh in the morning to marry Connor Ramsay. Connor is a wealthy merchant in the city. As luck would have it, Father had never informed Mr. Ramsay of our engagement, and so the marriage will be none the worse for that, at least. Please forgive me for telling you in this way, for I could not bear to see your heart broken. Know that, whatever my name and whatever my circumstance, my heart and my soul will be yours unto my death.
Dylan’s body clenched, and rage turned his vision red. He started to crumple the letter but stopped. He turned, wishing for something to hit, someone to hurt, but there was only himself. With a deep, shuddering breath, he carefully folded the letter and replaced it in his sporran. Then he ate his stale provisions, and as his head began to clear he thought of the future. It was so deeply unsure, he couldn’t know if he would survive what he now knew lay ahead. So he looked around at the broch and its stray fallen stones.
One large one lay under the spreading branches of the oak tree, and Dylan went to it. Squatting, he dug his fingers under an edge and lifted. His back strained, and for a moment he thought he would fail, but by stubborn will he turned it onto its side. Creepy-crawly bugs slithered and scurried at the intrusion, but Dylan ignored them. He took his money pouch from his sporran, and removed the five gold guineas, leaving only one silver threepence. One-by-one he laid the guineas in a row on the ground under the stone. He thought a moment, then pulled Cait’s letter from his sporran and dropped it on top of the coins. Moving around to the other side of the rock, he shoved it back down exactly where it had been and smoothed the growth on the side that had been pressed. When he finished, the stone looked as if it had never been moved.
He looked around with the Goddess Stone for Sinann and wondered where she was. He would need to tell her of the money so, in case of his death, she could make sure Cait received it.
Then he untied the cord on which hung his crucifix, slipped Cait’s ring onto it, then tied it again and slipped it all back under his sark. His baldric slung across his chest, he went after Cait.
The detachment of English soldiers was still bivouacked outside the castle. Coming around the foot of the wooded hill, hidden by trees, Dylan saw Bedford standing outside his tent, his interest focused on the castle gate. Other Redcoats stood by, their mu
skets ready. Dylan slipped into the glen, by one of the near houses, and made his way toward the loch, zigzagging down dikes and strolling like one of the villagers. Those working in the fields who saw him recognized him, of course. But nobody uttered a word to him, nor about him, except Marsaili’s daughter who was coming from Nana Pettigrew’s house. She hurried over to tug on his sleeve, and whispered that a soldier was visiting the seamstress. He thanked her and climbed over a dike to put it between himself and that house.
Cait was in the castle, and there was no way for him to get in except through the gatehouse. He stopped at a vantage point by the last house before the drawbridge, hidden by a copse of holly. Storming the gate would be suicide. His gut churned, and he bit his lips until he tasted blood. Needing to see Cait and talk to her was a fire in his blood. He could hardly see for wanting to get past those soldiers.
Then his heart leapt. The castle gate slowly opened, and through it rode Malcolm, Iain, and Cait, with Robin bringing up the rear. It was a somber group, and they stoically bore search and interrogation from the Redcoats before continuing on their way across the drawbridge. Dylan slipped along the dike toward a peat house and waited.
When the horses passed him, he stepped out of hiding and reached for Cait’s hand. “Cait!”
She was shocked to see him. Iain reined his horse and said in a low voice, “Get off her, lad!”
“Cait, I’ve got to talk to you.”
“Get off, I said!”
“Dylan . . .” Cait squeezed his hand, but then tried to pull free. “Dylan, I love you. Get away, or they’ll kill you. Dinnae let them kill you! I couldnae bear it!” Her eyes were dark with deep sorrow, and the pain in them cut to his core.
Iain drew his sword. Malcolm tried to warn the Laird off, but Iain spurred his horse toward Dylan.
“Cait, don’t do this.” He didn’t know what he expected her to do, but he couldn’t just let her go.
Malcolm went after Iain, who wouldn’t be swayed. The Laird growled, “I’ll kill him!”
Cait’s voice went panicky. “Dylan, please! Get away!” Her horse surged forward and broke their grip, leaving Dylan in the middle of the lane.
At that moment a dragoon stepped out of Nana’s house across the way. Surprised at the scene before him, it took a moment for him to react. But then he unslung his musket, aimed, and fired at Dylan.
The ball caught the back of his left legging. He swallowed the cry of pain and surprise as his leg went out from under him, and he knelt as a fire of agony roared up his leg. Cait screamed. The shot brought the attention of the Redcoats across the drawbridge, and more shots whizzed past him. Cait’s horse danced, and Dylan realized she was in the line of fire. While the English reloaded, he ducked behind the nearby house. Iain, Malcolm, and Robin closed ranks around Cait and kicked their mounts to a gallop as they herded her away from the scene. She shouted his name after him, and it tore at him to run away.
Dylan’s leg gave out again after only a few more steps and he fell headlong. His legging was dark with blood at both ends of the wool, and his shoe squished with wetness. He scrambled to his feet again and made a few more yards dragging the bad leg. The soldiers chased him to the middle of a field, almost to Tormod Matheson’s house, which sat at the foot of a wooded hill. Tormod was in the doorway and waved to him that he should take refuge inside.
But Dylan stopped running and shook his head. He would never make it unseen, and even if he did, Bedford would surely have the village searched again and they would find him. Whoever gave him refuge would be arrested as well. His leg no longer held him. His fingers fumbled at his sporran. He staggered as the world tilted. The talisman of invisibility was just there . . . somewhere. He dug deeper. There it was. But when he turned, the soldiers were already upon him, fire in their eyes. They had him trapped, for he couldn’t get away and remain invisible.
He faced his pursuers on one leg, and held up his hands, gasping for air. The world was already going dark when one of them ran up and tried to clock him on the jaw with the butt of his musket. Dylan dodged it easily by reflex. Come on, either knock me out or give it up, was his last thought before the angry dragoon finally connected and his consciousness ended.
CHAPTER 17
It was a slow, five-day trip south to Ft. William. Dylan was in irons: heavy, hinged cuffs of iron locked to his wrists and connected to each other by three long, thick, iron links. Captain Bedford made the journey with his prisoner, along with three other dragoons. The trip might have been shorter if not for the English horses, which were ill-suited to the rocky terrain. Dylan ate and slept with one hand free but the other cuff attached to one of the men. Escape might have been possible, were he healthy and could overpower his chainmate to run, but his leg was agony to his hip. Walking wasn’t an option, let alone running.
The first night, with his one free hand, he managed to remove the sheepskin from his leg and found the ball had made a bloody tunnel just beneath the skin and come out the other side. The bleeding had stopped on its own, but the muscle was too stiff to use.
The thought of infection terrified him, but because he wasn’t allowed to clean the wound he didn’t know whether to keep the legging on or off. In the end he figured he’d either have an infection or not and there wasn’t much he could do about it. He put the legging back on so as to not lose it, though he did turn the bloody side to the front, away from the wound.
They fed him hardtack, the same as the soldiers ate, but quite a bit less of it than they took. By the fifth day he was dizzy from hunger, and the gait of the horse caused a jolt of pain at every step. Every nerve was alert to damage. It was a mixed relief when they arrived at their destination, the stone fort that was Sassunach Central for Scotland during this century.
The garrison was small but bustling, at the shore of a narrow loch, with a small town of wood and turf houses outside the gate. It stood at the foot of a granite mountain that rose straight up from the edge of town. Dylan was taken through a peaked stone arch to the outer bailey, then through the smaller gate to the inner parade ground. Wooden barracks buildings stood on two sides of the three-sided area. One much sturdier structure occupied the third, leaving the rest of the southern battlement clear.
The place was crawling with Redcoats. They brought to mind bright, blood-red roaches, scurrying this way and that about their official business. Dylan’s vision swam, and his head throbbed. He wondered again about infection, and that made him even more ill.
The blond, periwigged Captain hopped lightly from his horse, apparently in good humor. He ordered Dylan sent to a holding cell while he presented himself to the commanding officer of the fort. A very young soldier in a red coat far too large for him came to take their horses. Bedford hurried off to the lone building on the south face.
Dylan was hauled from the horse, but his left leg folded under him. His right leg trembled as it tried to take all his weight. One of his escorts held him up, and half-dragged him across the yard toward the building where Bedford had gone, which Dylan took to be an administration building. But instead of approaching the front door, they took him around to the side, through a narrow gap between it and the next building, where stone steps descended into the foundation. From his escort he was treated to mutterings in Cockney English about “bloody, stinking, lazy, bum-bulling, murderous, heathen Scots.”
In the wedge-shaped area between the buildings was a small two-wheeled cart leaning on its tongue, and inside lay what Dylan thought was a pile of rags. But on second glimpse he realized it was dead bodies, a couple of them in linen shirts stained in various shades of reddish-brown and blackened blood. Flies swarmed and crawled over faces too pale to be human anymore, and Dylan couldn’t be certain all the arms and legs were still attached to the bodies. He wanted to look away as he passed, but found he couldn’t.
Down the steps, beneath the army offices, was a small, dank, stone basement. The smell of the loch outside was strong and fetid there, and added to it was the stench
of human waste and decaying body fluids. Heavy, wood doors studded with iron lined the short corridor into which two wooden support pillars intruded. The soldier on guard opened one with a set of large, clanking keys.
The cell was dark, lit only by one high, barred window. The stone floor was damp, and there was a long, iron bar that ran the length of the small room secured to the floor. Several sets of leg irons were attached to this bar, and the dragoons secured Dylan there by both feet. He wobbled on his right leg, barely touching his left to the floor for balance. Then the Cockney straightened and leered. “Don’t go noplace, now.”
“What, and miss your smiling face?” Dylan reached out to pinch the soldier’s cheek, and had it slapped away.
“Daft ’ighlander.” The soldier took his leave and the room darkened with the door closed.
Dylan slid down the stone wall and sat in the thin film of muck on the cold, stone floor, finally alone. At least, he thought he was alone. As his eyes adjusted to the darkness, he saw a shape across from him that looked like it might be a man slumped against the wall. But it sure didn’t move much. Nor did it sound like it was breathing. Smell was no indication, for the place stank of urine, feces, vomit, and old blood in addition to the dank stone and mud. It could have been a rotting corpse leaping with worms and he wouldn’t have smelled it. But the longer he stared at the shape, the less alive it appeared. He screwed his eyes shut and wished Sinann were here.
Once, before the dim sunlight through the high window died, a soldier came in to give him water ladled from a dirty wooden bucket. He sucked down as much as he was allowed, and was still thirsty when the Redcoat plopped the ladle back in the bucket and left. Dylan sat back against the wall and waited some more. Once the light was gone, the fort was quiet and there were no more visitors to the dungeon. It had been morning when they’d last fed him.
He began to think now, as the initial shock of his arrest wore off and it became clear there was no escape, no cavalry to the rescue, no realization on the part of the English this was all a mistake. Once again his life as he had known it was over. It was also possible his life would soon be over, period.
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