The peaks were topped with snow. Even at the height of summer, some peaks never thawed. He recalled the first time his father took him up there. He’d been eight years old when plague struck.
For six months they lived off the land away from the village, waiting to see if the symptoms emerged. Only when spring turned into summer did his father decide they were safe. Somehow, they had survived when the rest of the village had perished. All his fault. A guilt he would bear to his death.
“We’re fortunate,” his father told him when he asked if they could go home. “We have been given a chance for a fresh start. We shall travel to Castle Sinclair. Fortunes are made there, my boy. One day you’ll be laird.”
Tavish smiled but he knew it was nonsense. The lordship passed from father to first son, never to a distant relative raised in poverty and unknown to any at the castle. Still, what harm in letting his father dream?
First, they climbed the mountain, Fingal offering thanks to God from the highest peak for saving his son from the ravages of illness that regularly swept the Highlands. When he was done, the two of them descended the steep slopes to the worn track that led east to the castle.
The mountains watched over him and his father as they settled into life at the castle. His father’s skills as a blacksmith were put to good use while Tavish was taken into the laird’s household, taught the manners of a squire.
When they saw how good his skills were with a sword, he went from potential squire to potential knight. By the time he was fifteen he was being tipped for future laird, having made himself indispensable during several skirmishes with rival clans. Then it all went wrong. All because of one twelve-year-old girl and her flowers.
She brought them back from the island. “Orange heather,” Lilias said, almost stumbling out of the boat when it scraped the bottom of the loch. She ran up the shore to him, flowers held out in front of her. “I got them for you.”
Tavish patted the ground next to him. He needed to do this gently but tact had never been his strongest characteristic. “Ye know you’re no supposed tae row out there alone. What if you’d fallen in?”
“Then you would have come and saved me. It would have been magical.”
“I didn’t even know you were there. Ye would be deed and bloated in the water.”
“You would have saved me.” She looked up at him with the utterly certain conviction of hero worship. He never knew why she’d latched onto him. For the last year, she’d been bringing him more and more flowers, sweetmeats from the kitchen, even fetching water from the well for him while he sweated in sword practice. No matter how many times he sent her away she kept coming back.
He got to his feet. It was time to end this nonsense once and for all. “Take those flowers tae Margaret.”
“Are you going to marry her?”
Tavish shook his head. “Whatever gave ye that foolish idea?”
“I saw the way she was looking at you when she arrived.”
“I’m a blacksmith’s son. She’s a princess.”
“So? You’re going to be laird one day. Everyone’s saying it. Then you could be king and her your queen.”
“It’s not that simple, Lilias. Margaret is going to marry Edward Caernarvon.”
“So, who are you going to marry?”
“I’m not going tae marry anyone.”
“You could marry me. Hey, where’s your locket gone?”
Tavish felt for his neck, his hand touching nothing. He couldn’t tell her that Margaret had snatched it from him that morning. How could he tell anyone the heir to the throne was a thief?
“I must have lost it.”
“You gave it to her as a keepsake. I knew it. You love her, not me.” She was on her feet in a shot. “I see how you’re looking at me. You think I’m just a stupid child who doesn’t know how the world works. You’re going to marry the stupid princess and you should have just said so.”
She stormed off up the beach. “Lilias,” he shouted after her.
She ignored him, breaking into a run. He swore to himself. There would be no peace to fishing anymore. His father would come and berate him for not keeping the laird’s favourite niece onside.
He headed back. By the time he made it to the castle she’d disappeared. He found the place alive with activity, the coming of the heir to the throne had thrown the entire castle into turmoil.
Fresh rushes had been laid across the courtyard, there were bouquets everywhere. The forge had been damped down for the first time in months. It was strange walking past it without feeling heat coming from the flames.
He stayed away from the great hall. Margaret had been set up in there with her retinue, entertained by the laird and his musicians. The sound of a lyre echoed from the windows, soon lost among the noise of conversation and laughter.
He didn’t want to see Margaret, not after what had happened that morning. He’d found her in his chamber, rummaging through his things. His father was nowhere to be seen. He wasn’t sure of the etiquette of asking a future queen what she thought she was doing.
He coughed politely and she turned to face him.
“I sneaked away,” she said. “I wanted to see you.”
“Me?” He got his first proper look at the future queen. She was little older than Lilias, thin nose, bony cheeks, ice white hair. She looked far more Nordic than Highland. She had a curl to her smile that suggested she was terribly amused by everything she saw, alongside being perfectly at home telling others what to do.
“You. I saw you when I arrived, sweating at the forge, that chest of yours glistening in the light. I wanted to see if you looked as handsome up close and you do. What’s that around your neck?” She took a step toward him, pointing at the locket.
He pulled it over his head, passing it to her. “It belonged to my mother.”
“I like it. I shall have it. Here, you may have mine in return.”
“I dinnae want yours-”
“Are you refusing a gift from your future queen?” She gave him a look that said execution was a click of the fingers away.
“No, your highness.”
“Good.” She tucked his locket into a fold of her dress, turning back to look out of the window once again. “They wish me to marry Edward. What do you think would happen if I told them I had married a blacksmith’s boy? Wouldn’t that be so funny?”
Tavish shook his head, not that she could see it. There would be war. Edward would attack the clan and hundreds would die. It would be very far from funny.
She looked at him, clapping her hands together. “Do you not think we might be happy together. You with those muscles, and me the queen. We could be most wonderful together.” She turned to face him, her face suddenly cold. “Do you not want to marry me?”
“I wouldnae risk provoking a war.”
“You are the foolish idiot son of a blacksmith. I offer you a kingdom and you turn me down. I can’t believe you would do that. I hate you.”
She marched past him without another word, vanishing down the stairs and leaving him utterly bewildered.
None of it made any sense. Was she serious? Was she joking? Then as the forge was forbidden from being lit, he’d gone fishing. Lilias had brought him flowers and he got his second marriage proposal in one day.
He looked up at the windows of the great hall. Was Margaret telling them all about it? Or was she going to pretend nothing had happened?
His continued his search for Lilias but it proved fruitless. No doubt she was in the hall with Margaret. Eventually, he made his way to his chamber.
If it wasn’t for Margaret’s locket on his bed, he might have been able to convince himself he’d imagined the entire thing. But there it was, proof he hadn’t made it up. She had come to him and proposed, no doubt part of an enormous joke.
“Are ye all right, son?”
He turned to find his father standing in the doorway. “You are no joining them for dinner?”
“I havenae any appetite.”
> “You’re no wearing your mother’s locket. It’s tae keep ye safe, ye ken?”
“I took it off tae go swimming.” The lie came quickly to his lips. He did not want to burden his father with the truth. He looked tired enough. He had been working night and day for weeks in preparation for the arrival of the princess, forging new swords to be given to her retinue as gifts from the clan.
“What happened?” Fingal asked, coming in and closing the door behind him. “Something ails ye.”
Before he could answer there was a sound on the roof above them. A scraping and then a scream falling past the window. By the time Tavish looked out, it was too late. The princess was dead, her body laid below them in the courtyard.
He should have run. He should have left the castle with his father. The two of them had survived living off the land before. They could do it again. But how could he have known that within an hour he’d be hauled before the laird? That Lilias would point an accusing finger at him and tell the story that soon spread across the Highlands like wildfire. “You killed her, Tavish Sinclair. You pushed her from your window.”
“Why?” someone shouted from the packed crowd, all of them eager to get a glimpse of the accused. Questions were thrown his way but his answers were lost in the noise.
“She spurned his advances,” Lilias screamed, her face a picture of aggrieved innocence. She spat the words out, her face turning bright red. “He threw her to her death.”
The crowd gasped.
Tavish looked around. Was there no one who believed him? “I didnae,” he said but his voice was drowned by the noise.
His father waited until there was a lull to speak. “He was with me the entire time.”
The laird called for silence as the noises of the crowd grew louder once more. “You believe in your son’s innocence, Fingal Sinclair?”
Fingal nodded. “He has nothing to do with this.”
“A princess lays dead in the chapel. A nation mourns. We are without an heir. You swear your son had no part to play?”
“I swear.”
“Then how does he account for the fact that when her highness was reached in the courtyard, his mother’s locket was found in her clenched fist?”
“She took it from me,” Tavish said. “I swear it.”
“A princess stealing from a blacksmith’s son?” Lilias shouted. “She tore it from his neck as she fell,” Lilias shouted at the top of her voice. “I saw it happen. Murderer!”
“Murderer!” The word began to echo around the room. Tavish looked from face to face, people he’d known since childhood. They were all twisted with rage, all except his father who was begging them to listen. None did.
He awoke in the dark to echo of their voices still screaming for his death. He might as well plead with the echo as with the clan. His fate was sealed.
Unless he could get this strange woman to help. He lay back down, an idea forming in his mind.
* * *
Tavish awoke to find Lindsey nudging the fire back into life. “Morning,” she said as he sat up and stretched. “How do you feel?”
He grunted in response. “Ye managed to relight the fire.”
“I’m not totally useless,” she said with a smile. “Look, I’m going home and I might never get the chance again to find out the truth. What happened, with the princess I mean?”
He told her what had happened, the dream all too fresh in his mind. When he was done, he finished by saying, “They locked my father in the dungeon and told me he would be killed if I ever returned to the castle. I was banished forever, told to be grateful for the mercy of the clan for not having me hung, drawn, and quartered.”
He retrieved the last of the rabbit meat from the previous night and began to slice it into strips, struggling to cut through the burnt flesh with his blunt knife.
Lindsey was angry on his behalf, her chest puffing up as she spoke. “But Lilias lied. Why would she do that?”
He shrugged. “She was a child. She wanted revenge for me turning her down.”
“But you could fix this. All you need to do is go see her and get her to confess. Don’t you see? Get her to tell the truth about what happened and your father will be released. You’ll be allowed back into the clan.”
“I cannae go back without the stone or they’ll kill ma father.”
“What stone?”
About a week after they were accepted into the clan, Quinn came to fetch Tavish. “Come with me,” the old druid said. “I have something to show you.”
Together, they swam across the loch to the island. Tavish climbed out to find Quinn already at the well. How could someone so old swim so fast? He stood shivering as Quinn looked down into the depths of darkness. “Do you know what this is, Tavish?”
“A well.”
Quinn smiled. “It is and it isn’t. It is a portal.”
“A portal?”
“There are many dotted across the Highlands. Places where the gap between times grows thin. Do you understand?”
“Not really.”
“Do you know why you came to the castle?”
“We were hungry.”
“No, it was more than that. You were meant to come. It was the first step toward something much bigger than you know. One day you’ll understand. One day you’ll meet someone who will retrieve the stone and save the clan. When they appear, you must do something for me Tavish. Can you swear you will do me one thing?”
“What is it?”
“It is vitally important she thinks it’s her decision.”
“Who? What are ye talking about?”
“Just promise me.”
“Ah promise.”
He wished he could remember what else Quinn had told him after that. He could only hope it came back to him when they made it to the island. Something important, something he’d long forgotten in the lonely years of exile.
“Clan Sinclair has a stone sacred to us all. The seat of the laird. The MacIntyres stole it a generation ago. At my trial they told me if I brought the stone back, I would prove my innocence.”
“So why not go get the stone?”
“Because the MacIntyres would recognize me from a mile off and I’d be dead before I even caught a glimpse of it. MacIntyre Castle is the best defended in the Highlands. Surrounded by mountains and with only one way in or out. It would need a stranger to get in there and retrieve it.”
“So. Don’t you want to try?”
“They know what ah look like. I wouldnae stand a chance.”
She stood up, an odd smile on her face as she rubbed the back of her neck. “They know what you look like but they don’t know what I look like.”
He didn’t let it show on his face but he was pleased. It had worked. Best of all, she’d thought it was her idea. He might be able to go back to the clan with a clean record at last, put all this behind him.
5
“You cannae do this.”
He was on his feet, standing perfectly still, looking more like an immovable boulder than a man. “You’ll get yourself killed for nae good reason.”
Lindsey tried to explain her plan again. “It’s simple enough. I go into the castle, get this sacred stone of yours out. You take it home. Your father’s let out of the dungeon and you get Lilias to confess she made the whole thing up out of jealousy. Then and only then, I go home.”
“Why would ye take such a risk for me?”
She didn’t speak for a moment. She wasn’t sure how to word it. She couldn’t exactly say it was because when she first suggested it he had smiled and the smile had lit up his face. Getting the stone would mean seeing that smile again and she wanted to see it again. Who went on a suicide mission to make a man smile? It was insane.
“It’s because it’s an injustice that I can help to right,” she said at last. It’s as much for my mom as for you. She believed you were innocent. This will help prove it. We might even be able to change the history books. You vanished after you were sent into exile. Did you k
now that? You were never seen again. This could change all that. The rest of your life might yet be written.”
She also thought but didn’t say out loud, and if you happen to hide Margaret’s locket somewhere at your old house while I watch to see where it’s hidden? Well, that would be quite a nice bonus.
“I cannae let you dae it. It’s too dangerous. We should get ye back tae your time where ye belong.”
“Let me do this for you. I want to help. Just think, a couple of days and you could be reunited with your father, your name cleared. What might the history books say about you then?”
He looked at her closely, his eyes fixed on hers. All of a sudden, she felt completely naked. Then he blinked and the feeling ended leaving her confused, her arms folding across her chest.
“All right,” he said. “On your heed be it. If there’s the slightest hint of danger though, we turn back. Agreed?”
“Agreed.”
“Then I better hide the boat until we come this way again.”
She watched as he dragged the boat back into the undergrowth, covering it with weeds until it was completely hidden from view. “Now we head north,” he said.
“Will we get to see your house on the way?”
“Maybe. Why dae ye ask?”
“No reason. I’m just curious.”
She thought about the ruin her mom had bought, how different it might look in its prime. Would it be weed covered like in her day, the start of its long decline?
Would she be able to persuade him to hide the locket somewhere inside on the way? What if he thought that was the only reason she was doing this? For the money the locket would raise?
They spent some time in the hut before setting off. Tavish packed a knapsack with dried rabbit meat and berries, filling a leather pouch with water from the loch before tying the end with twine.
While he picked supplies, Lindsey hung her modern clothes from a rusty hook in the ceiling. They should be dry by the time she got back, ready to head home again. How long until then?
She watched Tavish gather the last few things. “Ye are sure ye wish to dae this?” he asked as he picked up the knapsack. “Once we begin, there’s nae turning back. The roads are too well guarded.”
Outlaw Highlander: A Scottish Time Travel Romance Page 4