“Naught in waiting, I ken. As for after. . .” Keppoch shrugged broad shoulders. The cairngorm set in his plaid brooch glinted bloody amber in tree-filtered sunset. “ ’Twill be for Jamie to say, and Willie to do.”
Softly Breadalbane asked, “Will you sign a bond?”
Keppoch stilled. “A bond.”
“What you have just said. Sign your name to the words. A treaty in writing.”
Dark brows arched again. “You’d have it on paper?”
The earl smiled temperately, certain of his course. “William is no’ a man who honors the word of a Highlander. He is ignorant, and rude.”
Coll of the Cows laughed ironically. “No worse than Jamie, then, who rots in France and forgets altogether he is a Stuart. But an oath is an oath. . . aye, then. I’ll sign this treaty. You’ll have my name, and eight of my tacksmen.”
Breadalbane rose. “I thank you for it, Coll. You are a wise man.”
The wide mouth twisted again. “I am a Gael; I wouldna turn from any battle, nor look to another weapon save my claymore and my dirk. But only a fool would believe steel might win against so much cannon.” The young face hardened; Breadalbane had won a skirmish, but not the war. “Bring me your truce paper, then. . . you’ll have my name on it. But—” Keppoch put out a delaying hand. “There is something more, aye? Something given in return.”
Breadalbane was surprised only that it had taken this long for Keppoch to ask what he was prepared to offer; others had demanded it sooner. But Coll MacDonald was young, his suspicions as yet unseasoned. And so the earl explained it clearly, so that Coll of the Cows would hear the most powerful of inducements. It was, in its five-part simplicity, the most clever of all his plans.
“Private Articles,” Breadalbane explained, and he ticked them off on his hand, so intimately acquainted with them as a man should be who wrote them.
MacDonald of Keppoch had lost his smile, and his irony. “Proof of these ‘Private Articles’ would get you beheaded for treason. Rumor could ruin you.”
“If it were proved true that they were from me, indeed.” The earl smiled. “But such things as honor demand sacrifices, and risks.”
“And these are yours, aye?”
“And these are mine. Aye.”
There was no more respect in Keppoch’s eyes than had existed before, but a grudging acknowledgment that at least the Earl of Breadalbane knew enough to come into the Highlands with something of worth with which to bargain. Too many too often did not.
The young chief turned, plaid swinging, and strode away swiftly, making little noise in bare feet against summer turf and fir needles. Breadalbane waited until Coll of the Cows had disappeared before he permitted himself a broad, jubilant grin of sheer elation.
Coll MacDonald of Keppoch. He had the others already, save for three: Robert Stewart of Appin, MacDonald of Glengarry, and MacIain of Glencoe. Three men only, and the Highlands were his.
Breadalbane laughed. And William’s.
Cat rescued her skirts as the hem snagged, snatching fabric off plundered cornstalks. With so much commotion behind her, so many tanglings of shouts and jests in Gaelic, she remembered her history. There was a tale told of old Achallader, before the castle was built, of an English mercenary with no Gaelic who, riding through, staked his horse for forage in the cornfield, and when discovered by the Fletchers, who held the Achallader lands, was asked his business. Having no Gaelic he could perforce offer no answer, and so after a warning to leave—in Gaelic, and thus unheeded—they killed him.
The township near the castle had also been burned after Killiecrankie. But on the brae above the ruins, swelling gently out of turf, was a green mound known as Uaigh a’Choigrich, the Grave of a Stranger, after the English soldier. It was there Cat went, climbing through rubble, skirting trees, to gaze down upon the fields which once had been carefully tended, which once grew Fletcher, then Campbell corn, yet now lay beaten down beneath the feet of a hundred Highland chieftains and their followers.
A dun-gray haze rose up from the field to drift upon the air, a smoky tapestry through which Cat counted the colors, the shining bits of pewter and iron, the glint of honest steel. It was summer and verdant with brilliant hues, all rich as new-dyed wool, none of it the brooding, blood-dark colors of winter, all brown and gray and black. At sunset the sky was gilded carnelian and salmon and orchid, tinted against the deeper violet haze of the heather-clad braes, the blazing vermilion of cloudberries, the spark of new-kindled fires leaping here and here and here.
The castle ruins stood stark against the horizon, jutting skyward from brick-strewn ground. She wondered what the chiefs and tacksmen and gillies thought to look upon the rubble, the cracked and blackened brickwork, the rigid corners still standing as sentinel to the fallen. Did they think of MacDonalds, who had plundered Campbell lands and laid waste to a Campbell castle? Did they think of Breadalbane, whose claim now was of broken brick and blackened rubble? Did they think of Killiecrankie and revel in victory, naming Achallader a symbol of Jacobite strength in the wake of Jacobite triumph?
Cat looked upon the ruins. She thought of none of those things, symbols or otherwise, but of a man instead. Of Dair MacDonald, who was, she knew, somewhere below tending his father, who had himself set fire to Achallader while his second-born son and Robert Stewart rode on to Glen Lyon.
A curl of music came up from the field below. She heard harp and the faint skirling rise of a bagpipe lament, the ceol mor, keening now not of war but of the brooding of the soul, of grief, of the indescribable longing of a Highlander for his past, bred so close to the barrow-graves of the Norse and the habits of the Celt.
She knew there were those who cursed the pipes, Lowlanders and Sassenachs, who lacked the blood of the Highlands, the burn-water and usquabae that ran so hot in their veins. But she was not one of them.
Another piper took up the lament. The ceol mor squeezed Cat’s heart, winding itself around her bones until she believed they might break of the longing. There was pipe-born grief, and taut yearning, and a loneliness of spirit she could not fully acknowledge, not knowing its name, its need.
She closed her eyes. The music took her, and its promise—and then of a sudden and unexpected the fire was in her: the kindling of her soul, the blossoming of arousal that sent a long convulsive shiver through every portion of her flesh, so that it moved upon the bones.
She was twenty years old. She was innocent of men. She was a woman, no longer a lass; and in that moment, at last, after years of ignorance, she was aware of the tides in her body, the beating of her blood against the fragile vessels that contained it, and the heat of tingling flesh birthing dampness in private places.
As the pipe music rode fir-smoke to Uaigh a’Choigrich, high on the brae above MacDonald-razed Achallader that once was Campbell-built, Cat could not but know what it was she wanted, how badly she wanted it, and that she could not have it.
He was after all MacDonald, and she a Campbell.
The shout came from behind. “Alasdair!” He twitched as a man does, hearing his name, yet hesitated only a moment before going on; it was a common name, as he had once told Cat Campbell before her father’s door.
There. She was in his mind again. Still. . . The first shout was closely followed by another in a voice that was too familiar, and it added the Gaelic diminutive that set him apart from his father. “Alasdair Og!”
He swore beneath his breath and swung around, scowling. John came up quickly, undaunted by the black expression. “What is it?” Dair asked. “Can it no’ wait?”
“MacIain wants you,” John answered. “And I wouldna take that face to him this moment, were I you. . . he’s had better moods himself, with no need to see it in his son.”
“His son is his own man, with his own moods,” Dair countered curtly, then regretted it; it was none of his brother’s doing, nor even his father’s. “Forgive me, John—but there is a task that needs doing.”
John MacDonald was disinclined to surr
ender the course assigned by his father. “Aye, well, I dinna doubt you’ll have a chance to do it—after. ’Tis MacDonald business.”
“So is this.”
“And Campbell.”
“So is this.”
“Oh, aye?” John did not hide his curiosity. “Has Breadalbane come to you already, then, in hopes of winning one of MacIain’s sons?”
Astounded, Dair was immediately diverted. “Does he mean to?”
“I imagine so.”
Suspicion bloomed in place of shock. “Has he come to you?”
“Earlier, aye.”
It was very nearly inconceivable. “To say what?”
John’s tone was ineffably dry, but Dair knew the ironic glint in his eyes. “To suggest he is a friend to the Jacobite cause.”
“Breadalbane? He is William’s man!”
“ ’Tisn’t what he claims here.” John shrugged in eloquent dismissal; he would conjure no explanation for a man such as the earl. “He’s said naught to MacIain yet, and took care with me to say naught a man might construe as politics; he kens a laird’s pride, in such matters as precedence, and MacIain’s is fiercer than most. But he’s said enough. I thought he might have asked for you.”
Dair shook his head. “Breadalbane will say naught to me. I am a second son; he’s no need to speak to me of politics and James Stuart.” He glanced slantwise, and quickly, toward the trees and the brae beyond. His mind strayed from politics; she had gone in that direction. But his own curiosity roused in response to John’s last comment. “What did you tell him?”
John pressed a flattened hand against his plaid. “That I was not yet MacIain of Glencoe—and a man, even a Campbell and an earl, would do best to ask the one who still was.”
Dair grinned; he could see it, and hear his brother’s dry diplomacy. “Wise man. . .” But renewed consternation replaced amusement. “Does MacIain believe he’s come to me?”
John hitched a single shoulder. “I didna ask what he wanted you for. Would you, if he sent you after me?”
“I would not. . .” Dair glanced again impatiently toward the brae overlooking the encampment. “ ’Tis only—”
“You’d best go, Alasdair. He’ll no’ wait all night.”
He shut his teeth with a click. “Where, then?”
“There.” John motioned with a jerk of his head toward a cluster of fires. “Back there, with Glengarry. They are none too content, either of them, with Breadalbane’s topic, or the mood of the meeting. Pick your path with care.”
“Why? Do they think the lairds will forswear the oath to Jamie?
John sighed. Patiently he said, “I dinna ken what they think, Alasdair, other than what they’ve said. But if you want to ken for yourself, you might go and learn it.” He glanced over a brooch-pinned shoulder, then smiled at his younger brother. “Before he comes here himself and clouts ye over the lug-hole for keeping him waiting, aye?”
Cat came down slowly, picking her way through the gloaming as light left the day. Below the brae fires bled one into another until the field was a lake of flame, moat to the castle ruins. She saw people before the fire: kilted men, tunic-skirted women, some wearing kerches, some wearing bonnets according to their gender, with light sparking off brooches and badges. One of them, somewhere in their midst, was Alasdair Og MacDonald.
Resolution wavered. With effort she steadied it. She had come to a decision on the Grave of a Stranger and would not shirk it no matter how difficult; he was deserving of it if for no other reason than he had survived to hear the words. But it would be hard, gey hard, to say those words to him.
She did not know his direction, but others would know where Glencoe and his sons were. She asked a man, and he told her; now there was no reason to turn from the task save cowardice, and she would not tolerate that.
Until she came near the fire and saw him there with MacIain.
Cat stopped short. She had but to raise her voice and call his name, and he would turn, would see her, would be made aware of her presence near a fire no Campbell was welcome to, especially Glenlyon’s daughter.
There was too much between them, so much, a shared but separate horror of what had nearly happened on a hill on Rannoch Moor. She recalled his face, so stark and bloodless; recalled the sound of her father’s blade against the horse’s rump; recalled the lurch of the garron that stripped it of its rider.
And the nightmare of him hanged, legs beginning to kick.
Cat shut her eyes. When she opened them again he was there still beside the fire, poised in profile, blind to her, mute and very still, the good bones of his face shrouded on one side by darkness, the other bled white by light.
She had forgotten how very huge MacIain was, so much larger than anyone else, towering over others clustered near the fire. Riotous white hair flowed like snowmelt onto his shoulders, curling upswept moustaches shrouded his moving mouth. MacIain spoke steadily and with some vehemence; she could see the jaw working, shielded by beard, but heard no clarity in his speech, occluded by pipes and harps, that told her what he said.
Cat looked at the son. His posture was taut; his language, even in silence, spoke to her of regret, of deep concern, of a dutiful obedience to listen and hold his silence no matter what he might be thinking within the skull.
And then MacIain finished speaking. She saw the giant turn, hitching his plaid higher on a shoulder; he bent his head briefly as another spoke to him, and then they strode away on some purpose of their own. Dair was alone at the fire, and she had no more excuses.
She wished in that moment that it was a cattle raid, which would be easier to deal with. There were fewer risks attached. And then she thought of the raid that had claimed her brother, and the one that nearly claimed Dair, and no longer wished herself there when she could be here, with him.
He turned then and saw her. Firelight glinted off badge, off brooch, set a sheen across his flesh and limned the planes of his face, etching shadows into contours. He saw her and went still, even as still as she.
Around them, bagpipes mourned. She saw revealed by light, above the linen of Dair’s shirt, a dark, shiny rash of rope burn as yet unhealed.
He took a single step toward her, and then another, and within three more strides he was there before her, close enough to touch. She had not fled after all.
“Cat,” he said only, but a world was in the name.
More was in his eyes, she saw: a hill; a lone tree atop it bearing hemp-hung fruit. . . and her father using the claymore to drive the garron away.
He had been cut down alive after all, but in that moment he hanged. In that moment he died.
It filled her chest, her throat, and burst free of both all at once, on a rush, needing to be said, to be put between them like a dirk, a claymore, so they would understand the use of such things if not their intention. “I never believed it of him.” It was a beginning, if badly begin; she had intended other words. “I never believed it, my oath on it—never believed my father such a man as that. And I am ashamed—ashamed—She looked again at the hemp-scraped flesh and put a hand to her mouth, stopping it with fingers; the words she longed to say could not make their way through the tears.
Ceol mor filled the air, riding fir-smoke into night. Dark brows, indistinct in firelight, overshadowed his eyes, damping the whisky-warmth. His hair was more thickly than ever sprinkled with silver threads, shining pale and importunate in the near-black of the rest. Mute, he reached out and caught her wrist, took her hand from her mouth, then carried it to his throat and set the palm against it.
Her fingers spasmed. “Oh—no—”
But he did not permit a retreat. “D’ye feel it? There—beneath your hand?”
She felt much more than he meant, abruptly aware of his touch, his warmth, his maleness. Flesh vibrated faintly as he spoke. Her fingers were rigid. She had not expected this, though she supposed she should have; he would bear her no kindness for being Glenlyon’s daughter, and would have devised punishments if he eve
r saw her again.
The skin was different beneath her hand, the hemp-torn scar pebbled with minute blemishes like a rash in healthy flesh, rubbed slick in other places. But the skin was warm, wholly alive as her own despite the rope’s abuse.
In that moment it did not matter that he was MacDonald, only that he was a man she had, in her stubbornness, in prickly Campbell pride, nearly gotten killed.
“I am sorry,” she said. “My oath on it: I didna think of it. . . I was angry that you meant to lift our cows after all, but I only wanted you stopped. I never thought. . .” Her hand trembled against his throat. “First Robbie,” she said tightly. “My Robbie—and I couldna bear it again.”
It was said, it was done, she was free of the penance. But nothing induced her, in his eyes or in his posture, in the pressure of his fingers, to take her hand away.
His eyes did not waver. “No one kens what another man can do, till ’tis asked of him,” he said. “Not even that man’s daughter.”
He would absolve her of it, when she expected bitterness. It was too much; it hurt. “I thought. . .” Cat drew in a breath and let it out abruptly, willing the pain to go with it as well as tight-coiled tension. “I thought you would hate me.”
She waited. He could say so much now, making weapons of his words. But it was due him because of her father, and owed because of her name; she did not think she could sleep again if this moment were not endured.
His palm pressed hers against the pulse of his throat. “ ’Tis still beating,” he said quietly, “because of you.”
Its rhythm matched her own, quickening at her touch as much as hers was quickened by awareness that he did not mean to punish her for what her father had done.
Even in innocence, she knew. Something in her kindled, answering his touch; something understood the small indications of the body, the lesser ones in speech. Words between words, the implications of tone. Their language, now, was not shaped of old enmities and feuds, drowning in pipes and war cries, but was silent instead, and private, and wholly, intensely intimate.
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