by Gwyn Cready
In the Scotland of Duncan’s day, one did not have the right to shoot deer on someone else’s property whether they used a bow or not. “Are we on Kerr land?” he asked cautiously.
“No. It seems we are not very well versed in the rules of hunting.”
Duncan knew what Scotsmen did to the men who stole their livestock. He did not care to discover if English soldiers on the Debatable Lands felt the same sense of proprietariness. “Oh.”
“All the more reason to stay as minimally armed as possible. If we are found, ’twould be nice to have the hunting story hold a ring of truth.”
“But, wait. They are hardly likely to believe the chief of Clan Kerr is unfamiliar with the local laws regarding hunting.”
She laughed, and while he never liked being laughed at, he was glad to see the lines around her eyes relax.
“While most of the soldiers in the regiment have glimpsed Lady Kerr once or twice—and have no doubt described her in vivid detail to their drinking companions, you overestimate an English soldier’s ability to overcome his lack of interest in a sickly, plump married woman.” She opened her cape and turned.
Duncan blinked. She had the baby bump of a last trimester mother-to-be. All in all, he thought he’d rather have the soldiers believe they were stealing deer. Between being engulfed by a large and fairly ridiculous sense of protectiveness and feeling that a pregnant woman offered an English soldier twice the potential for mischief, Duncan’s anxiety tripled.
“I…don’t…think…”
But his thoughts remained half-spoken when a musket shot blasted through the quiet of the afternoon.
“Run,” she said.
They headed deeper into the trees, hurtling over bushes and deadfall.
“Put down the pistol,” she cried. “Hunters dinna use them.”
“And pregnant women dinna long jump over fallen trees.”
The shot had been far enough to their rear that Duncan couldn’t be sure if the person firing had been aiming at them or shooting a turkey, a deer, or some other animal.
But if they were already in someone’s sights, he had no desire to see he and Abby separated from a key source of protection.
After a hazard-filled four-hundred-meter sprint, Abby signaled for them to stop.
Bent over, gasping for air, Duncan said, “I dinna hear anything.”
“No. If the shot was meant for me, I wonder how someone would know we were heading out now.”
“The shot may have been meant for me,” he said, bracing himself for the chortle.
But she didn’t laugh. He glanced up. Did she know something she wasn’t saying? “Someone shot an arrow at me this morning,” he said. “In the bailey. It wasn’t by any chance you, was it?”
“If I wanted to kill you, Duncan, I should hardly do it in public.”
He looked at the thick woods surrounding them and the hairs on his arm stood on end.
This time, she laughed. “Is that why you’re clinging to that pistol like a drowning man with a line?”
“Aye…well…maybe you’re not the only thing I need to protect myself from.”
“Apparently not. Well, it’s not clear either of us were targeted. What we heard could have just been a stray shot.”
She cocked her head, and he knew she, like he, was trying to sort through the rustle of leaves for the sound of footfall.
“Let’s go,” she said.
“Without Jock?”
“At this point, aye. We need to get to Rosston.”
Duncan nodded. If Abby wasn’t the person who’d shot at him, it moved another suspect to the top of his list: Abby’s would-be fiancé.
Thirty-seven
An hour later, they were reaching a place where the pines began to give way to scrub. Abby had been unnaturally silent, failing to laugh after she drew a small wedge of cheese from her pocket and he reminded her she was eating for two. He swore she walked differently with the cushion under her chemise, and it had taken all his willpower not to leap to her aid every time they climbed a ledge or forded a stream.
She stopped behind the last small copse of trees. “This is it,” she said, “where we are to meet Rosston.”
“Then this is the Debatable Lands?” Duncan found it hard to imagine this nondescript barren slope represented anything of value.
“Not here. Do ye see the raised wall there, past that outcropping?”
The “wall” was no more than a small hillock of earth a few feet high and barely discernible, covered like everything else here with patches of rock and grass. “Aye.”
“That’s where it begins. The moment we step into the open, we will be on disputed land. I must insist you lay down your pistol.”
With a distinct sense of regret, Duncan put the pistol at the base of one of the trees and covered it with needles. “I do wish,” he said as he stood, “we did not have to be quite so—” He froze. The rocky ledge above them to their west was intimately familiar to him. It was visible from his grand-da’s kitchen window, accessible via the park that was adjacent to his land. Duncan’s mouth moved wordlessly. He had played on this ledge hundreds of times in his childhood. They were standing more or less in the center of what would be, in three hundred years’ time, his grand-da’s garden. He felt slightly dizzy, as if the world had shifted under his feet, and the immediacy yet immense distance of the world he’d left behind took his breath away.
“Duncan, what is it?”
“This is my grand-da’s land. We’re standing on my grand-da’s land.”
“Your grand-da is Angus Eliot?”
He slumped against the tree trunk and sat, head in hands. “No.”
“But—” She stopped, and realization washed over her face. “Oh.”
She crouched down beside him, a trick with her rugby ball–sized belly, and touched his arm. “Duncan, we’ve never talked about this, mostly, I think because I’ve been afraid to ask, but—”
“I come from the twenty-first century. More than three hundred years from now.”
The crouch devolved to a hard plop on the ground. She made a quiet whistle. “I thought, well, I thought a few years, perhaps a decade. I had no idea… I dinna think you should tell anyone.”
“Undine knows.”
“What has she done? What have I done?”
“I suspect we all have a hand in it, somehow. In any case, I should never wish for it not to have happened. Not now.”
But rather than the smile he’d hoped for, her face took on a pained look. “I need to talk to you about Rosston.”
A vise gripped his heart. “What?”
“For better or worse, I am quite in love with you, Duncan. But my responsibilities—”
“I told you I’d help you.”
She took his hand and squeezed. “I should like nothing more. But I must pay the estate taxes this week. ’Tis possible that with the canal loan from Sir Alan, I can negotiate a delay. You told me you need more time to figure out how to get back, and if you and Undine believe that that could happen soon, I would wait. Will it work? Oh, Duncan, I dinna like to put so much on ye, but will ye be able to help us?”
He hated to douse the hope in those eyes. He hated that he was powerless here, that neither his brains, nor his wealth, nor his determination brought him any closer to being able to help her. He was quite confident that with time and access, he could convince Sir Alan to make the loan. But was it fair to let her believe he might be able to help her with a gift of money when in fact the only help he could offer was by convincing Sir Alan to make a loan, an outcome he could not guarantee?
“Duncan?”
He gazed at the delicate bones of her hand. “I canna give you money. I talked to Undine. Nothing of concentrated wealth can travel through time.”
Her eyes turned a forlorn blue. “Oh.”
“But I can convi
nce Sir Alan,” he said hurriedly. “I promise you. It’s what I do.”
“Duncan, you know I canna risk the fate of my clan. If it were just me—”
“Only till Friday,” he said urgently. “Believe in me. Please.”
“You know there’s another way, and you and I have to accept that if—”
“No! Dinna talk to me of Rosston and his gold. Will ye sell yourself for money?”
She looked at him as if he’d slapped her, and in his heart he knew slapping would have wounded her less.
“Yes,” she said, eyes glistening, “I will. And you know it, ye two-faced rogue. Ye were happy enough to buy me when it was your turn. And I will sell myself again if I have to. Whatever it takes to save Clan Kerr.”
“Every man between here and the gates of York?” The words were out of his mouth before he knew what he was saying.
The sting of her slap was not punishment enough. He wished she’d kill him.
“I’m here,” a voice said. “I’m sorry.”
Rosston. Standing twenty feet away, holding his horse’s lead, and looking as if he, too, wished he were dead.
Rosston was wise. He stayed where he was, held his tongue, made no move to punish Duncan for his unpardonable transgression. Why should he? Abby wouldn’t have liked it, and in any case, Duncan had administered his own coup de grâce, saving Rosston the trouble of getting his hands dirty.
“I should go,” Duncan said.
“Not till we’re done,” Abby said, as cool as steel. “We’ll need three sets of hands for the body.”
“I can do his part,” Rosston said wryly, and blind with self-loathing, Duncan flew at him.
This time Rosston was better prepared. He twisted away at the last second and Duncan landed hard on a stretch of sunbaked earth.
No one said anything. Abby didn’t even reach for an arrow. She turned, gestured to Rosston, and walked swiftly to the horse.
Rosston looked at Duncan, shook his head, and followed his fellow chief.
You idiot.
He was the most unworthy man in five hundred miles. But he wasn’t a coward and he wasn’t a quitter. He climbed to his feet, dusted off his plaid, and began toward the two people having a quiet discussion over a dead body.
Thirty-eight
Archie was not nearly as dashing as Duncan had imagined. His drawn face was gray and rubbery, and his mouth slack enough to show a mouthful of brown and missing teeth. He had died of pneumonia or something like it—Rosston referred to it as “the cough”—though one of Rosston’s men had thoughtfully put a pistol ball through the man’s heart and poured a jug of pig’s blood over the clothes they’d dressed him in so it looked like he’d been crossed by a brigand on the road.
Duncan had already stuffed Archie’s pockets and sporran with the bits of humanity he and Jock had gathered. Abby clutched the message about the attack and was debating with Rosston where on the body the paper should be hidden. That job was too important to be entrusted to Duncan, apparently, even though the plan had been his. Abby had not said a single word to him since his shameful remark. He felt about as worthy of her notice as Archie. Archie at least was beyond the reach of regret.
Rosston appeared beside him holding the plans. At Duncan’s instruction, the note had been written on silk. “Silk is silent,” he’d explained, “and when it is hidden in clothing, it canna be heard the way parchment can.” It was another lesson he’d learned from World War II novels.
Rosston held the note delicately between his thumb and forefinger, as if it were a lady’s lace handkerchief, which gave him the look of a thuggish Cyrano. He waited expectantly. Duncan sighed and stepped aside, giving him access to the body. Rosston lifted one of Archie’s unbooted feet and, with the precision of a surgeon, ran his hand carefully over the sock, stopping suddenly, triumphant.
“There’s a secret pocket that runs the circumference of the sock,” he said to Duncan. “If ye fold a piece of paper or banknote carefully when ye put it in, ye canna see anything. You’re not the only one with ways to trick the enemy, ye ken.”
Duncan resisted the urge to blacken Rosston’s other eye and said with only slightly forced enthusiasm, “Well done.”
The silk disappeared inside.
Rosston said, “I understand you will say you were hunting deer if you’re found.”
Duncan nodded. “It’s the least I can do after getting her with child, don’t you think?”
Rosston’s dark eyes briefly registered the blow. “’Tis all the more remarkable, then, since she’s the only one capable of using a bow.”
“Well, it is a woman’s sport, after all. Speaking of that, I hear you’re quite the archer as well. Tell me, have you had a chance to shoot much lately?”
“Fouck you.”
“We ought to wad up the silk,” Duncan called to Abby, who had been adjusting the laces on her boot. “To make the hiding place more noticeable. I have my doubts about the general canniness of English soldiers.”
She didn’t register even the hint of a smile.
“I’m afraid your naïveté is showing,” Rosston said. “There’s not a man in the army who doesn’t pick through every scrap on a dead man. They practically use a sieve. If he had a shard of copper under his fingernail, they’d find it and sell it.”
The sound of someone singing in the distance ended the discussion.
“Rosston, take the body and get as far into the trees as you can,” Abby said.
Duncan took a place behind a thick pine. Abby did the same. The singing drew nearer.
“Pastime with good company. I love and shall until I die…”
The man was definitely a soldier. The red coat was quite apparent, as were his pistol, sword, and musket. He was possessed of an exquisite tenor voice. The notes, pure and whole, filled the afternoon air.
“Grudge who lust but none deny…”
Abby met Duncan’s eyes, but not long enough for him to communicate his regret. He wished he could beg her forgiveness. This might be the last time they were together for a very long time. But the soldier was nearly upon them.
“So God be pleased thus live will I…”
Up the slight rise of the clearing he went, scanning the edge of the woods as he walked.
The singing stopped, mid-line.
Electricity surged through Duncan’s body. Abby withdrew an arrow and held it, nocked, at her side. From his vantage point Duncan could see the soldier look both ways then head into the woods a stone’s throw beyond them. Had he heard a noise? Then, through the branches, Duncan saw the man loosen the tie on his breeks.
“He’s taking a piss,” Duncan whispered.
Abby nodded, still on high alert.
The woods were too thick to see him once he left the clearing. Duncan padded quietly from tree to tree, hoping for a glimpse.
“What do you see?” Abby whispered.
“Not a goddamned thing.”
“I’m going closer.”
“No.”
“I am hunting a deer, Duncan. ’Twill be all right.” She pelted east, hoping, he supposed, to maintain a safe radius from the soldier, who had been traveling northeast.
He wanted to throttle her. What had happened to the plan of staying together? He listened and looked, but without the knowledge that Abby was safe, he was too distracted to think.
The hell with standing. He’d rather die on the offense than the defense.
He ran in the direction she’d taken, listening for her footsteps, but she’d disappeared, like a doe in a thicket. The woods of Scotland were, after all, her element.
A shot rang out, and he burst into a dead run. Over fallen limbs, under drooping branches, he raked the tree-filled space around him for signs of movement. He dared not yell, for fear he’d bring the soldier to them, not away. For all he knew, the man was sho
oting a grouse for his dinner. He had to find Abby. He had to know if she was—
He heard grunts and the hard thump of a body and headed straight for it.
The soldier had the barrel of his musket against Rosston’s neck, pressing Rosston as hard as he could against a tree. Rosston had his hands on the barrel, pushing it away. His shirt was bathed in blood, and his eyes were practically bulging out of his head. Something flashed in a ray of sunlight. Duncan realized it was the blade of the soldier’s bayonet lodged somewhere near Rosston’s heart.
Where’s Abby? Was she the one who’d been shot?
The horse and Archie were nowhere to be seen. Somewhere, Abby screamed. The soldier bellowed, “Enemy! Help!” Duncan’s heart fired in his chest like a line of cannons. He had a short sword and no more. In a few seconds, Rosston’s throat would be crushed. But he might be bleeding to death anyway.
Should he try to save the man? Or should he let him die?
Duncan drew his sword and charged. At the same instant, the soldier released his grip, and Rosston crumpled slowly to the ground. The soldier pulled the bayonet point out of Rosston, who let out a horrifying wheeze. The soldier turned, saw Duncan. He fumbled, trying to slip the bayonet back on the end of the musket. Duncan was ten strides away. He lifted the sword. The bayonet clicked into place. The soldier grabbed the barrel to raise it, but it was too late. Duncan closed his eyes and swung.
He connected with meat and bone, and his eyes flew open. The man’s arm was half cut off at the shoulder, and blood was spraying everywhere. He would die from that wound. Duncan had killed a living man. The man took a step, and another, then dropped his musket.
“Fuck you,” he growled, clutching the source of the spurting crimson. He screamed, “Clansmen!” Rosston made a faint, high-pitched moan.
“Clansmen!”
Die! Die! But the man kept screaming. Duncan’s sword was covered in blood and gleaming bits of bone and tissue. He shook so hard, he couldn’t focus. He held the point of the sword over the man’s neck and drove it into the ground beneath him. For an instant, the man’s mouth opened wide, as if one more scream would come out, then the light disappeared from his eyes.