She bent her knees and bounded outward. As the wind took her, she arrowed her arms toward the water.
* * *
An angel flew out of the inferno and sank into the water. Surely it was the most beautiful and terrifying sight he had ever witnessed. Gawain ran forward, water lapping at his boots.
He searched, but did not see the pale slip of a girl who had leaped from the tower window. A hundred and more swans glided on the flame-bright surface of the loch, but he saw no human form among them. Several birds launched upward to circle overhead.
Behind him, the bellow and crackle of the fire grew louder. He heard the commander, Sir Walter de Soulis, continue his demand that the lady of the castle come out and give up her home to him.
Bastard, Gawain thought succinctly. He hoped the woman and her servants, whom he had glanced earlier at some of the windows, had found an escape. But he knew they could be dead inside the blazing castle. He was not certain that the girl who had leaped free had survived, either.
"You—Avenel! Did the girl come out of the water?" a knight called as he ran toward him.
Gawain turned. "Nay. She may be gone—drowned."
Another knight came forward and peered at the loch. "Drowned or fallen on the rocks—or even killed by those birds. Swans can fight like demons."
"Sir Walter wants her captured," the first man said. "The mother and the rest have fled into the forest, they say."
"And we may find the girl's body tomorrow," the other said.
Gawain looked up at a soaring swan. "Scots claim that when someone drowns, their soul enters the body of a swan," he mused.
"How do you know that?" one of the men asked.
"I heard it as a boy. My... nurse was Scottish. There is a legend about enchanted swans on this very loch, if I recall. Supposedly the first swans of Elladoune, long ago, were drowned souls. Each new swan is the soul of someone deceased, they say."
One knight looked at the other. "Sir Walter will want to hear about this."
"Tell him the girl went into the water and has not come up," Gawain said. "She's gone, no doubt. A swan flew up from the spot where she fell. I have been watching."
"I saw that too," the first knight said. "Enchanted swans or none, Edward of England owns this loch now, and he wants rebels, not children or swans. Come ahead. We'll have to tell Sir Walter the girl has drowned." He looked up at the white birds circling overhead. "How could she change into a swan?"
"The longer I serve in Scotland, the more I believe anything can happen here," his comrade drawled as they walked away.
Gawain remained to scan the water. He had deliberately told the knights that tale of enchantment so that they would hesitate to search for her. If the girl had survived, he wanted to give her a chance to escape. He dimly remembered, as a boy, having to flee in the night from unseen enemies; the girl's situation had triggered his sympathy and his interest.
The burning silhouette of the castle was reflected in the loch. As a lad, he had believed in the eternal magic of Elladoune, yet the English had destroyed a legend in mere hours.
Memories stirred through him here and everywhere he went in Scotland as part of King Edward's Scottish campaign. None of these knights knew of his Scottish origins—or the fact that his birthplace, Glenshie Castle, was somewhere close to Elladoune.
Yet he did not even know where Glenshie was located.
Glancing toward the hills, he knew one of them hid his boyhood home in its lee. Years ago, he had vowed to find Glenshie and claim his inheritance for his own. Now that he was a king's knight, that secret dream seemed remote and impossible.
He walked along the rocky base that edged the tower. The water lapped at the promontory and sparks from the blaze sizzled in the loch like fallen stars. Searching the loch's surface, he was not yet ready to give up on finding the girl.
Moments later, he saw the lift of a pale arm and glimpsed a face amid the swans. She was there, he was sure now—although he did not know if she was a drowned or a living thing.
He yanked off his red surcoat and pulled at the leather ties of his chain-mail hood and hauberk. He laid his sword and belt aside, and struggled out of the steel mesh, his quilted coat, and his boots. He piled his gear, all but his trews, in the fiery shadow of the tower.
No one watched as he slipped into the water. He did not ask for help, expecting none. His fellow knights were here to claim and conquer, not to defend and rescue.
Once he had been fiercely proud to be among them. But he loathed what he had seen of the king's army on its northern trek through Scotland. Chivalry and heroics were replaced by cruelty, lust, and the basest qualities of mankind. Witnessing deeds even uglier than the burning of Elladoune, he had continually found ways to avoid committing direct acts of cruelty himself.
The sins on his soul bothered him, and the thought of dishonoring his vows of knighthood disturbed him just as much. Disillusioned by this campaign, he realized that not even his own king upheld the ideals or integrity that Gawain revered.
He swam toward the circle of swans with steady strokes. Treading water, he saw that pale form again, moving among the birds. She swam toward the shore, and he surged after her.
Swans lurched upward, clumsy in the transition from water to air—grace lost, grace regained. Gawain treaded water, watching.
When the commotion of swans cleared, he saw the girl again, nearing the reeds along the shore. He lunged forward to grab her. Though she struggled, he scooped an arm around her and tugged her toward shore. When she began to scream, he cupped his hand over her mouth and stilled in the water, holding her close.
"Hush," he breathed out. "Easy! I have you!"
She twisted in his arms and gasped out an angry, muffled retort. Shouts sounded on shore. He saw the glare of torches and the glint of armor. Cradling the girl in his arms, he glided into the shelter of the reeds, his feet on the soft bottom of the loch now. He held her with him, low in the water.
"Let me go!" she gasped in Gaelic, writhing. He understood her, retaining some of the language from his childhood.
"Quiet," he hissed in English. "Be still."
"Sassenach!" she spat out. He tightened his hand over her mouth. His arm banded her, encountering soft breasts.
"Let go of me!" she snapped in English, and kicked his shin. Struggling, she sank, and he tugged her up. She rose sputtering.
"I only want to help you," he muttered.
"Then do not drown me!" she gasped. He held her more securely under the arms. When she drew breath to scream, he clapped a hand over her mouth again.
"Sweet saints, hush—be mute like a swan!"
"Not all swans are mute," she mumbled behind his hand, and squirmed like a hooked fish.
"That I see, Swan Maiden," he grunted, wrapping a leg around her thighs, tucking her against him like a lover, though passion was the last thing on his mind. "Quiet, if you value your life, or they will catch you."
She stilled then, and slipped her arms around his neck. Her face was silky and wet against his bearded cheek. He felt a fine trembling all along the length of her.
The commander and a few knights walked along the shore and pointed toward the swans, and then at the window from which the girl had escaped. A few swans flapped their wings and hissed loudly. The men backed away.
One bird, huge and gorgeous in the fierce light of the fire, rose from the water and took to the wing, flying so low overhead that Gawain felt the breeze and ducked as it passed.
The girl laughed. "He will not hurt us."
"Hush," Gawain said between his teeth, embarrassed that he had thought otherwise. "You talk too much."
Two knights waded into the reed bed and backed away hastily as the swan circled over their heads, fast and low. Gawain watched, astonished. The bird's protective action could not be deliberate, but he was grateful for it nonetheless.
The girl looked up, her hair streaming around her face. Gawain saw that her eyes were large and dark, her head and shoulders
delicately shaped. Her body was lithe and lean in his arms, her breasts lush against his chest. He held her, breathing in tandem, water lapping around their necks.
"They are gone," she whispered after a moment. Her mouth was close to his. Feeling a strong, misplaced urge to kiss her, he pulled away slightly.
"The knights are there, just over the hill," he murmured.
"The swans are gone, too, farther down the loch. Look."
He turned and saw that most of the swans had disappeared. The remaining few glided elegantly over the water. The shore was empty, though shouts continued on the other side of the castle.
Gawain stood cautiously, holding the girl in his arms. The soft floor sucked at his feet as he waded to shore. Water sluiced from them as if they were kelpies rising from the depths. Slung in his arms, sopping wet, she was yet a light burden.
Glancing uneasily toward the castle, he ran along the bank away from the burning tower toward the forest. People waited there in the shadows. A woman stepped between the trees.
"Mother!" the girl said. "Set me down." He did, sweeping his arm around her to hurry her toward the trees.
The shadowed figures came closer, reaching out. A woman pulled the girl into her embrace and swathed her in a thick plaid. Someone offered a blanket to Gawain. He refused it.
The girl turned to look up at him. Her eyes were luminous; in shadows and moonlight, he could not tell their color.
"I am Juliana Lindsay," she said. "Tell me your name, so that I can ask the angels to watch over you."
He frowned. If he told her the name given him at birth—Gabhan MacDuff—she might know him for a local Highlander, and despise him for being with the English. If he told her his English name, Gawain Avenel, she would loathe him for that.
She shivered, waiting, her cheeks pale, hair hanging like strands of honey. He touched her chin with a fingertip.
"Swan Maiden," he murmured. "Call me your Swan Knight in your prayers, and the angels will find me."
She nodded, watching him. Her mother drew her back.
"They are coming this way, knight," the mother said.
"I will lead them away from here. Go! All of you—go!" He waved them back into the forest and turned to run toward the castle, where the inferno still raged, bright and ferocious. As he went, he felt keenly as if the girl and the others watched him from the cover of the trees.
For a moment, he felt the odd sensation that he left heaven behind him and ran toward hell.
Chapter 2
Scotland, Perthshire
Spring 1306
Quicksilver and pale as the moonlight, she glided out of the forest and into the clearing. Glancing over her shoulder, she heard pounding hoofbeats and the male shouts that commanded her to stop, to wait.
She turned to watch them, slowly, deliberately, though her heart beat like a war drum. Lingering would be foolhardy, but she always made sure they saw her; she had done so for years.
Nearby, she knew that a group of people ran through the forest in another direction. They conveyed a burden, large and cumbersome: a wooden war machine on creaking wheels, partially dismantled, its struts stacked on a pony cart. Once it was conveyed through the forest, the engine would be transported along the river at night, until it reached the rebel camp.
The king's men must not discover it.
She waited in a translucent beam of moonlight. The two knights spurred toward her through the trees.
"The Swan Maiden!" one of them shouted. She forced herself to be still as their horses crashed through the shadows.
Then she whirled and ran toward the loch, shedding the white feathered cloak that covered her head and shoulders and tossing it aside. She stepped into the water and crouched quickly, her pale tunic billowing around her. Her blond hair fanned out and floated as she surged.
Arrowing through the water, she neared a cluster of swans and ducks gliding on the loch and swam into their midst. The birds ignored her, accustomed to her presence. When a curious cygnet swam too close, she pushed it gently away.
Treading water, she watched the shore. The knights burst into the clearing and dismounted. Running along the bank, they scanned the loch, pointed. One of them bent, then held up a white feather fallen from the cloak.
She watched, hidden within the ring of swans. The men walked to the water's edge. One of them picked up a stone and flung it, and it sank near the birds. They scattered with fuss and noise.
Her protective circle gone, she dove under and lunged toward a rocky shelf. Pulling herself along its striated contours, she rose up and slid out of the water under the shelter of an overhanging pine.
Friends waited there, holding out a plaid. Juliana wrapped the woven length around herself, slicked back her wet hair, and smiled. Then they turned together to run into the forest.
* * *
Amber firelight danced over familiar faces. Seated on the earthen floor of the cave, Juliana scanned the group assembled there, then turned her attention to her guardian, seated beside her. Abbot Malcolm cleared his throat.
"At last, my friends," he said quietly. "What we have risked so much to gain may be in our grasp. The report I heard this day will greatly aid our effort." He spoke in rapid Gaelic. "I have a plan, but there is danger. Juliana will risk a great deal this time."
She kept her expression calm. Around the firelit circle, the people summoned by Abbot Malcolm of Inchfillan waited. Her guardian's white tonsure was pristine in the light, his round cheeks pink, his blue gaze keen as he looked at her.
"Father Abbot," she murmured. "If we can win back Elladoune Castle and gain back our lands, I will do whatever I must."
"Father Abbot," one of the men asked, "what has happened?"
Malcolm folded his hands. Juliana knew what he would say. She and her younger brothers lived in the abbot's own house, outside the precinct of the monastery, and Malcolm had discussed his thoughts with her earlier.
Anyone who did not know her kinsman and guardian well—such as the English knights garrisoned in Elladoune—assumed that he was merely a pleasant old man, concerned only about his little Celtic abbey, and the lost souls he guided along the right path.
Some of his lost souls—rebels all—watched him now.
What Malcolm hid from their English enemies, Juliana knew, was a ferocious loyalty to Scotland. He was more lion than rotund lamb. Years ago, Abbot Malcolm had taken under his wing several dispossessed Scots, transforming them into forest rebels. Juliana felt proud to be among them.
Outside the cave, trees swayed in the night breeze. Inside, Malcolm's rebels listened, and leaned forward.
"I met with the sheriff of Glen Fillan today," Malcolm said. "He asked a favor, and posed a threat."
Juliana drummed her fingers anxiously on her unstrung bow, which lay beside her. She felt a desperate urge to act, but knew she and the others must proceed cautiously.
"Walter de Soulis has never cared about our interests," Lucas, once her father's herdsman, said. "He will not help us!"
"He did not fret about the renegades and homeless in the forest and glen, as he usually does—though I try to help him with that persistent problem." Malcolm held up his hands innocently, and some of his listeners smiled.
Juliana glanced toward her two young brothers. Iain and Alec, seven and nine, slept in a corner, curled like puppies on a pile of cloaks. She knew the boys would sleep through anything if tired enough—even a meeting to plan rebellious actions.
"The sheriff said that the garrison leader of Elladoune Castle will depart soon," Malcolm said.
"Good!" one of the men said. "Farewell to him who burned our village, so that we had to live in the forest! Though we still must fend against the man who ruined Elladoune, now made sheriff over us!"
"When the commander leaves, his troops will go with him," the abbot went on. "The English king has ordered them to pursue our new King of Scots, Robert Bruce, and his men, who have gone into the Highland hills in the area north of here. Another garrison
will arrive with a new leader for Elladoune."
Red Angus, burly and russet, a former farmer, shook his head. "So one English garrison moves out, and another moves in. Now there will be new faces to learn, new habits and patrol routes. That does not help our cause."
"But this does—for a few weeks, Elladoune will be deserted," Malcolm answered. "Sir Walter wants the monks of Inchfillan to watch the castle gates and tend the sheep and gardens until the new men arrive."
"Aha, that is just what we need!" Robert, a blacksmith, crowed. "We are prepared for it too—with weapons and armor!"
"Exactly," Malcolm said. "God has answered our prayers. We can take over Elladoune."
"And claim it for Scotland!" Angus cried. Malcolm smiled.
Arms raised upward and voices rose. "For Scotland!"
Juliana smiled, and hope bloomed within her like a small flower. Soon they would live in Elladoune Castle again, and then bring the ruined village to life, farming the land and raising herds in peace.
"Juliana," Malcolm said, placing his hand on her shoulder, "will help us carry out our scheme. The soldiers shake with fear when our Swan Maiden appears and disappears as if by magic. We are deeply grateful to her for creating that illusion these past few years."
"Magic, she has—or so say the English," Angus remarked.
"The silent Swan Maiden of Elladoune, who never utters a word," Malcolm agreed. "As long as the Sassenachs believe she might be an enchanted swan, it helps us. We want them to think it, but we do not want her to face terrible risk."
"They will harm her if they capture her," Lucas growled.
"But she plays a quick and clever game," Malcolm said, "never speaking when English are near, and running away as soon as they see her. The Sassenachs are so anxious about entering the forest that we have been able to do much secret work for the cause of Scotland."
"They are fools to believe she is enchanted and not real." Beithag, the oldest woman among them, snorted her disdain. "And it cannot last."
"True." Malcolm sighed. "And that danger is the problem. Walter de Soulis has been sheriff in Glen Fillan for only a little while, but he is not convinced that Juliana is enchanted. He says she is a rebel—even a spy."
Susan King - [Celtic Nights 02] Page 2