Soul of a Highlander: A Scottish Time Travel Romance (Arch Through Time Book 13)

by Katy Baker

  Callum wasn’t sure they’d succeeded. Garlands of spring flowers and acorns that had been placed as offerings, hung on the cross. Once, this had been a place associated with the Fae and the people from all around had come here to send thanks to the Fae for a good harvest or to beg them to intercede on their behalf.

  It seemed that with the poor weather and failing crops, the people of Dun Saith had not taken long to return to their superstitious roots.

  Callum approached the shrine, reaching out and running his hands over the rock. It felt warm and rough to the touch and he could almost feel the power that slumbered deep inside.

  It seemed a lifetime ago that he had stood at this shrine, his father by his side and the other members of the Order ranged in a circle around him, and spoke the vow that would determine the course of his life. He had been a different person then. A young, naive boy who’d wanted nothing more than admittance to the mysterious, honorable world of the Order of the Osprey. Back then he’d had no idea how heavily that vow would weigh on him, how alone it would force him to become.

  “They’re close,” he said aloud, not quite sure who he was talking to. “I canna stop them. Ye have to tell me what to do.”

  If he’d expected an answer from the indifferent stone, then he was sorely disappointed. His mind flashed back to Alfred’s body lying on the river bank and the symbol somebody had carved into his chest. It should have been him lying on that riverbank, not Alfred.

  “Curse them,” he breathed. “How do I fight an enemy I canna see? How do I wage war against shadows?”

  He slumped to the ground and sat with his back against the stone. Warmth radiated into him from the rock, dispelling some of the spring chill. He closed his eyes. He was so weary.

  It began to rain.

  SOPHIE WAS HALFWAY up the path to Barric’s farm when it started to rain again. She muttered a string of choice language, pulled her cloak tighter around her, and carried on walking.

  A week had gone by since the grisly discovery of Alfred’s body and she’d spent that time visiting with the local farmers to try and figure out the cause of the blight and asking after Irene MacAskill.

  Nobody seemed to have heard of the strange old woman and nobody had a clue as to the blight’s cause or how it might be stopped. One thing was clear though: it was spreading. There now wasn’t a croft in the valley unaffected.

  The farm hove into view up ahead. Through the gray curtain of rain she could barely make out the small house where Joan and Fergus lived, it was just a darker smudge in the gloom.

  She reached the door and knocked. Barric answered, his eyebrows rising in surprise when he saw her standing there.

  “Lady Sophie!” he exclaimed. “What are ye doing here? And in this weather too!”

  “Hello, Barric,” she replied. “I came to see how you are all getting on.”

  “Sophie! Sophie!” came a cry from inside. Joan and Fergus came pelting to the door, pushing past their father and throwing their arms around Sophie whilst Wolfie the dog yipped and danced around their feet.

  Sophie laughed delightedly. “Well, that’s quite the welcome! I hope you’ve been behaving for your ma and da?”

  With enthusiastic nods, they chorused that they had. Sophie unslung the bag she’d been carrying over her shoulder and knelt in front of the children. “Is that right? Well, in that case, I think you’ve earned these.”

  She took out a muslin wrapped bundle and unwrapped it to reveal a tray of pastries from the castle kitchens. The children’s eyes lit up and they clapped their hands together in excitement.

  “Oh ye’ve done it now,” Barric said, shaking his head. “They’ll be bouncing off the walls all afternoon. Well, dinna just stand there in the rain. Come in.”

  Sophie handed the tray of pastries to Fergus and then followed the three of them into the house. It consisted of just one large room, smoky and dim. A fireplace dominated one wall with a small table and some benches sitting around it. A bed sat against the far wall with a pale-faced woman sitting propped up on pillows.

  “Ma!” Joan cried, hurrying over to the woman. “Look what Sophie brought us! She’s the one I told ye about. She’s come all the way from London!”

  Barric cleared his throat. “Lady Sophie, I’d like ye to meet Magda, my wife.”

  Sophie walked over to the bed and squeezed the woman’s hand. “I’m delighted to meet you. Joan and Fergus have told me all about you.”

  Magda smiled. There were dark rings around her eyes and a sheen of sweat on her brow. Her cheeks were hollow and her lips blue-tinged. “And they’ve told me all about ye,” she said in a weak voice. “It’s good to finally put a face to the name.” She struggled to push herself into a more upright position. “Sit, sit. Be welcome in our home.”

  Sophie took a seat on a bench and reached into her sack once more. She pulled out a large pie with a thick crust on the top, a bottle of mead, a loaf of bread and a crock of butter. “This is for ye,” she said. “Compliments of the cook at the castle.”

  Barric lowered himself onto the bench opposite. “My thanks. Ye are most kind, Lady Sophie.”

  Sophie waved away his thanks, uncomfortable with his gratitude. It was the least she could do. She only hoped she could do more—which was why she’d come.

  “There’s something I wanted to ask you,” Sophie said to Magda. “Could you tell me how you fell ill?”

  “Why do ye ask?” Magda said. “Are ye a healer?”

  “No, but I’m trying to help Rosie figure out what’s wrong with you.”

  Magda sighed. “It was about three weeks ago now,” she said in her weak, raspy voice. “The illness came out of nowhere.”

  “You’ve never had anything like this before?”

  “Never. We’ve always joked that I have the constitution of an ox.”

  Sophie thought about this. The healer, Rosie, had said pretty much the same thing. She’d never seen an illness like it and didn’t know how to treat it.

  “I want you to think back to the day you took ill,” Sophie said. “What were you doing? Did anything out of the ordinary happen?”

  Magda didn’t answer for a moment. She passed a shaky hand across her forehead. Barric moved to her side and gently wiped her brow with a cloth.

  “I’m not sure this is a good idea,” he said to Sophie. “She gets tired easily and we’ve already told the healer all of this.”

  “It’s all right, Barric,” Magda said. “Just pass me something to drink will ye?”

  Barric poured out some weak ale and held the pottery cup to her lips. Magda took a few shallow sips then turned her gaze to Sophie.

  “Naught out of the ordinary happened that I can recall. It was a day like any other except I remember it was particularly wet. It had rained all day. I spent the day out in the southern field that borders the river. I remember I found some early strawberries growing right at the river’s edge.” She smiled faintly. “They were delicious. Then in the evening I took sick. Came on real quick and I havenae been able to shake it since.”

  “But ye’ll be all right willnae ye, Ma?” Fergus asked anxiously from where he and his sister were sat at the table, polishing off the pastries.

  Magda smiled at her son. “Of course I will, my dear. Just need to rest, that’s all. I’ll be as right as rain in no time, ye’ll see.”

  Barric glanced at Sophie and she saw despair in his eyes. He might put on a brave face in front of the children but Sophie could see his real fear.

  She rose to her feet. “Thank you for speaking to me, you’ve been very helpful. I’ll let you rest now.”

  “I’ll see ye out,” Barric said.

  Sophie bid goodbye to Magda and the children and then followed Barric to the door.

  On the threshold Barric said in a low voice, “Do ye know what’s wrong with her?”

  Longing throbbed in his voice and Sophie hated to dash his hopes. “I’m sorry, Barric,” she said, laying a hand on his shoulder. “I don’t know b
ut I’m going to do what I can to find out.”

  Barric nodded at this and opened the door for her. She gave him a smile of farewell and stepped out into the rain. She didn’t return to the castle though. Instead, she turned right out of the house, through the muddy kitchen garden where herbs were struggling to grow in the sodden ground, and crossed into the narrow fields that belonged to Barric and his family.

  In the distance they sloped down towards the river, ending at a cliff that rose sheer above the riverbank. Sophie paused at the field’s edge, looking around. She didn’t know what she hoped to find but something Magda had said tickled at the back of her mind. One of the fields, the one closest to the river was completely devoid of crops and looked freshly turned. She guessed this had held Barric’s blighted turnip crop and he’d pulled them up to stop the blight from spreading. It didn’t seem to be working though and the green shoots in the other fields were starting to turn yellow too.

  She frowned. The blight seemed to be spreading up from the south-west corner – the area closest to the river. She began picking her way towards that corner, mud sticking to her shoes and bogging down the hem of her dress. Damn it! Why did women in this time wear such cumbersome clothes? Give her a stout pair of overalls and a good raincoat any day of the week!

  By the time she reached the south-west corner, her hair was plastered to her face and her dress spattered with mud. She walked over to the cliff edge then turned back to survey the farm. From here the line of spreading crop disease was obvious—and as she suspected, it all seemed to spread up from the river. Turning, she looked down on the river gorge. Here the cliff dropped away sharply and the river, swollen with the recent rains, gushed past in a white maelstrom of churning water.

  The vegetation growing at the water’s edge had turned yellow and sickly, mirroring the crops in Barric’s field.

  And it was down there that Magda found and ate those strawberries, Sophie thought.

  She leaned out, looking more closely, and spotted things bobbing in the churning water. They were dead fish.

  Realization dawned in a rush. “Poison!” she gasped.

  She heard the footsteps behind her too late. A hand suddenly clamped over her mouth and strong hands grabbed her tightly from behind.

  “You are too clever for your own good,” hissed a voice by her ear. There was something familiar about the voice. Where had she heard it before? “You couldn’t leave well alone, could you? You had to go poking your nose where it didn’t belong? I’m afraid you leave me no choice.”

  Something shoved her violently from behind. She staggered forward, a scream ripping from her lips. The ground disappeared and she was suddenly toppling over the cliff, nothing beneath her but empty air. She had a second to register the white water rushing up to meet her then she smacked into the river with enough force to rip the air from her lungs.

  Bitter cold seeped into her, eating through to her very bones. She fought, trying to claw her way to the surface. But it was too late.

  Blackness carried her away.

  WHY WILLNAE YE ANSWER me? Callum thought, staring at the inert lump of rock in front of him and feeling anger bubbling in his stomach. Why willnae ye help me, damn ye?

  He knew the answer, of course. Irene MacAskill had said it when he’d met her on the path.

  The balance.

  The Fae could not interfere with his choices, at least not directly. There were rules that governed their interactions with mortals, rules they could not break, no matter the damage that caused.

  His lips pulled back from his teeth in a snarl. “This is pointless,” he growled, rising to his feet. “I dinna know why I came here.”

  He turned and pushed his way through the screen of willow branches, and out into the woods. Rain still fell, an insistent patter that drummed on the leaves and turned the ground muddy. Pulling his cloak around him, he set off, heading towards the castle but halted abruptly as he saw something standing in his path. It was a deer.

  It stood still, unafraid, watching Callum with dark, liquid eyes. It walked off a few meters before turning back to look at him. Callum stared at the beast, perplexed. He took a few steps after it and it moved off in the direction of the river but halted again and turned to watch him. Callum’s spine tingled, a shiver walking over his skin. Was it waiting for him to follow? That was ridiculous. No wild animal behaved in such a way. And yet he found himself walking towards it. Sure enough, the deer waited until he was close before bounding off a few steps and waiting again.

  The roar of the river grew louder as he followed the deer until finally he pushed through a screen of bushes and found himself standing on the bank. It ran fast and deep, churning with meltwater from the hills.

  There was no sign of the deer. Callum scanned right and left along the bank, but the beast had disappeared. He shook his head, annoyed at his own foolishness. What had he been thinking? He was about to turn away when something bobbing in the water caught his eye.

  A dark object was speeding towards him, flopping listlessly in the water. A cold shock of realization flashed through him.

  A body! Someone has fallen into the river.

  He was ripping off his cloak and unbuckling his sword before he even finished the thought. He waded into the icy shallows, the cold strong enough to make him gasp. As the body sped closer, he saw that it was a woman. She floated on her back, eyes closed, hair billowing around her as the current sped her along.

  Recognition hit him like a punch to the gut. He’d recognize that golden hair, those creamy cheeks, that long-limbed figure anywhere.

  It was Sophie.

  For half a second, less than the length of a heartbeat, he stood stunned, unable to comprehend what he saw. But the next second a cold, visceral fear sent his heart pounding in his chest. Panic stabbed through him.

  Sophie!

  He launched himself into the river, landing with a splash in its icy embrace. The current grabbed him immediately, stronger than he’d expected. He broke the surface and kicked his legs hard towards her. She was moving fast, bobbing along like a piece of flotsam and it took all his strength to make headway against the roar of the current.

  He swam into her path, threw an arm out and managed to grab her wrist as she went hurtling by. The current seized both of them and he felt himself dragged along with her, the freezing white water doing its best to drown them. With a grunt of exertion, he managed to pull her closer, getting an arm around her waist and hauling her other arm across his shoulder to try and keep her head out of the water.

  “Sophie!” he gasped, getting a mouth full of water for his trouble. “Wake up!”

  His words were lost in the roar of the river. She didn’t stir, her head lolling listlessly against his shoulder. Terror spiked through him. What if he was too late? What if she was...

  No! he told himself savagely. She is alive. She has to be!

  As if in answer to his desperate assertion, her eyelids suddenly fluttered although she did not open them.

  Callum kicked, trying to make his way back to the shore, but the current resisted, dragging him in the other direction, deeper into the river. The cold sapped his strength, making his limbs feel like lead, making his breath burn in his chest. He went under for a moment but fought his way back up and broke the surface, coughing and spluttering.

  Damn it all! He would not die like this!

  Summoning every ounce of strength he had left, he dug deep within himself, forcing his tired muscles into one final effort. He kicked, teeth gritted, lungs burning, muscles screaming, and inch by slow inch, he began to make headway. It felt like an eternity, each minute stretching into hours but finally, finally his heels scraped the bottom and he was able to get his feet under him. He stood, water streaming from his body, and lifted Sophie into his arms. Her skin felt deathly cold and she flopped like a rag doll.

  Callum looked around desperately. He’d been swept far downriver and there was no sign of the castle or the village. Dense woodland packed clos
e to the riverbank on either side. The castle was too far away—Sophie needed shelter and warmth right now. The shrine was his only chance.

  He took off, running as fast as he could across the muddy ground, keeping Sophie clamped against his chest. Branches scraped his face, brambles tore at his clothing, but he didn’t allow himself to slow.

  Finally, the shrine came into view ahead and he burst through the hanging willow branches into the sanctuary within. The closely woven willow branches formed a roof overhead so the interior was relatively dry, and much warmer than outside.

  He gently lowered Sophie to the ground and began chafing her arms, trying to get some warmth back into her. She lay inert and did not wake. With growing fear, he pressed his hand against her forehead and found it deathly cold. She needed warmth or she would surely die.

  Biting his lip in frustration, he looked around. Beyond the cocoon of the shrine he could hear the rain still hammering down. He had no chance of lighting a fire in this weather, even if he’d had the tools to do so.

  There was only one choice. He ripped off his soggy plaid and tossed it away. His shirt followed, leaving him naked to the waist with just the skirt of his plaid around his hips. With clumsy fingers he untied the laces of Sophie’s dress then wrestled her out of it, leaving her in only a thin shift. The undergarment was sodden as well but he couldn’t bring himself to remove it. His actions were already way beyond the rules of propriety but he could think of no other way to warm her.

  He seated himself with his back against the rock and lifted Sophie into his lap, pulling her against him so her back pressed against his chest, then wrapped his arms tight around her, praying that his body heat would be enough to keep her alive.

  If he lost her...

  Oh Lord, he prayed. Dinna let me lose her.

  He could feel her heart beating beneath his hand and the sensation of her body against his was enough to send heat of a different kind snaking through him. He stamped it down mercilessly.