Much Ado About Highlanders (The Scottish Relic Trilogy)

by May McGoldrick

  James Macpherson shook his head and looked into the horn holding the ale. What a bloody race he belonged to, he thought.

  “And all those bloody lairds and clan chiefs are no better than the most ignorant slop boy,” he muttered. Realizing he’d spoken his thoughts aloud, James looked again at the ale. Stronger than one might expect, he thought.

  James had spent enough time acting as negotiator between leaders in the Highlands to know that regardless of how well they dressed or how small the issue at hand was, getting them to agree on anything was nearly a miracle. Except for one thing: when the word went out that an enemy threatened Highland soil.

  Edinburgh had just been burned by the English navy while the Lowland court of King Jamie ran for cover into Fife. Sir Ralph Evers was pushing north with his army. His treasonous Lowland lackey, Donald Maxwell, had made raids almost to Oban with his men.

  The time had come for the Highlanders to step up and defend their land.

  James pushed his trencher of food away and looked down the long table at the inn’s boisterous revelers. Focusing was becoming a problem, and he held on to the table to slow the room from spinning.

  He and his men had reason to celebrate. Upon reaching Oban, he’d received word from Diarmad. The Macpherson captain was picking up Alexander and Kenna at Hermit’s Rock and taking them up to the River Spey, where they’d go overland with a Macpherson escort to Benmore Castle.

  And Diarmad would be back soon with enough men to stop Maxwell here.

  James knew his older brother would be angry to miss out on a fight, but he had gone to a lot of trouble to get that marriage back on the right foot. Neither appeared to have killed the other during their days together, which was excellent news, and James wouldn’t let anything slow them down until they were delivered to Benmore. Diarmad was also sending word to Magnus MacKay that his daughter was en route to the very place she was supposed to go to six months ago.

  James tried to focus on the half-eaten trencher of food before him. He couldn’t.

  “Brilliant work,” he muttered, congratulating himself. A month ago, he’d met with his own father, Alec Macpherson, and the MacKay laird. The marriage had to work. Both clans needed it. It was left to him to make whatever arrangements needed to be made. His job wasn’t to negotiate an intricate treaty but to play matchmaker for two of the most pigheaded people he knew.

  “Marriage,” James snorted. He’d never been married himself. Never considered it. And the only time he’d ever met a woman that might even tempt him, she’d been promised to someone else. And a bloody Lowlander, at that!

  “You say ‘marriage,’ love?” a wench asked in slurred tones, dropping herself onto his lap. “I’m available, if yer askin’.”

  She laughed and shouted across the table at some blurred shapes. “Ain’t we available for marryin’, Jeannie?”

  James’s head wobbled but he managed to shove the woman off his lap.

  He knew nothing about matchmaking or marriage, so he’d sought out advice from experts. According to his mother and Tess, Colin’s wife, the secret to love appeared to be spending uninterrupted time together. James had been able to arrange that. The plan was brilliant.

  All around him, the tavern where he was staying bustled with Macpherson men and some Campbell warriors who’d already come across from Mull to join them. The food wasn’t sitting well in his stomach. He pushed unsteadily to his feet.

  James needed a bed—somewhere to put his head down and close his eyes for a few hours. That would mean somehow making it up the rickety stairs to the bedchamber he was sharing with a half-dozen Macpherson men.

  One of his men suddenly loomed up in front of him.

  “James, you look about ready to lose your innards.”

  A woman’s voice, shrieking with laughter. “He just promised to marry me, and won’t that be a great surprise to my old man!”

  James pushed his way past them and lunged for the closest door. Behind the tavern, he stumbled and then doubled over, his stomach emptying, even as the ground rolled like a stormy sea.

  He wobbled, trying to stay on his feet. Something was wrong. He hadn’t drunk anywhere near enough to feel this way. Nay, it wasn’t too much food or ale. It was something else.

  The realization came too late, and James Macpherson fell flat on his face.

  In a final moment of awareness, he heard the slurred sound of hushed voices and a set of boots beside his head before the world went dark.

  As the ship pitched again, Kenna braced herself against the bulkhead in the near-darkness of the tiny cabin.

  She had very little space to clean up, and getting out of her wet shift and soiled dress had been a struggle with the Macpherson ship rising and diving into every trough in the sea. The row of holes in the wooden wall let in little air and even less light, but she could hear bits and pieces of Alexander’s discussion with Diarmad next door in the larger cabin beneath the stern deck.

  Sailors from the Macpherson ship had arrived at Hermit’s Rock too quickly. Alexander and Kenna where still wrapped in each other’s arms after making love and swimming and making love and . . . it was all such a blur. Hearing their voices when they came hallooing into the cave had quickly snapped her back to reality. Her face still burned in the darkness as she recalled the smirks and knowing sidelong looks the men exchanged. Alexander didn’t help things, either, by treating her so tenderly in their presence. Not too many days ago, he’d been ordering Diarmad to throw her from the abbey tower into the sea, and they all knew it. And none of this improved during the long row to the ship.

  A young lad had followed them into the cabin when they arrived, carrying in a pitcher of fresh water, a washbowl, and dry cloths. Showing her the tiny space where she could get cleaned up and change, Alexander had motioned to a chest in the cabin, telling her that she’d find dresses and some linen undergarments there. Kenna immediately bristled at the thought of some other woman’s clothing in her husband’s cabin.

  That was a conversation they’d be having in the very near future, she thought.

  Ignoring the chest of clothing, Kenna eyed her own ruined garments. They were disgusting. She couldn’t put them back on. Seeing a line of pegs on the bulkhead and what hung there, she realized she wouldn’t have to.

  Alexander stopped talking the moment Kenna stepped into the room. His gaze traveled from her bare feet and legs to the woolen jerkin that covered a coarse shirt and hung below her knees. She’d also found a rope that she wrapped twice around her waist to hold everything in place. There was nothing she could do with her hair—that untamed wilderness of brown curls had taken on a life of its own. His eyes fixed on her face.

  “You look . . . beautiful.”

  Diarmad looked from Alexander to Kenna and back at Alexander with an expression that clearly said, You’ve gone mad. Stark raving mad.

  She smiled at her husband and strode to the table where the two had been bent over a map. Diarmad moved to the far side of the table. Kenna knew the man still had to be thinking of the scratches and bruises she’d given him when he’d kidnapped her.

  “What’s this about?” she asked, noticing the small flat stones arranged on the map. One was sitting on what she thought must be MacKay land.

  “Diarmad has learned a few things about this English commander named Sir Ralph Evers, who’s pushed his men all the way to the Highlands. And there are rumors about why he’s going so far north.”

  Kenna had never heard the man’s name. “He’s responsible for all the destruction?”

  “It appears to be so.”

  “And he has an army of his own?”

  “Small and fast moving, they say. And not entirely made up of English fighters. Outlaws and rogue Scots, all mercenaries, make up more than half of his command. And from the looks of things, he’s cut his ties with Henry Tudor. There’s something bigger he’s after.”

  Kenna felt the weight of the pouch around her neck. None of this made sense. There was no logical re
ason why there would be any benefit in coming after her, unless it had to do with the tablet. But if that were true, then it meant others had to know of its value.

  She felt the heat rising in her face. There was no way to hide her emotions. Alexander’s gaze never wavered from her. He saw everything. She’d already hinted to him that there was something she was holding back.

  “And Maxwell works for him,” she said.

  “Aye, that bloody Lowlander leads one of three fronts that Evers is pushing into the Highlands,” Diarmad explained. “Maxwell is moving in the west. Another command is moving northward up the eastern coast. Evers has split the country.”

  Kenna was tired of speculating. “What do they want from me? Why is there a price on my head?”

  Diarmad exchanged a look with Alexander and then continued. “There are rumors.”

  “What? What’s being said?”

  “Something happened to Evers when he was fighting in the Borders. He’d been doing his king’s bidding. Burning monasteries. Raiding castles. Torturing and killing anyone he pleased. They say there was an old man named Cairns who died at Evers’s hands. The rumors are that the old man had a gift.”

  Kenna’s heart drummed so hard in her chest that she feared the two men must hear it. She focused on the map to avoid facing her husband’s scrutiny.

  “What kind of a gift?” Alexander asked.

  “It sounds daft, but they say Cairns talked to the dead. The local folk swore to it. If it was witchcraft, no one complained. The old man never brought harm on anyone.”

  “And Evers changed after he killed Cairns?” Alexander repeated.

  Diarmad shrugged. “After Cairns died, Evers stopped following the king’s orders. He went where he pleased. Stopped ravaging the Borders and pushed north. Sent out raiding parties looking for specific people that he wanted. Word went out about bounties offered.”

  “Who were they looking for?” Kenna felt her voice had crept out of a deep well.

  “A woman in clan Munro. And another who’s a MacDonnell.”

  “And me,” Kenna said. It wasn’t a question.

  Three women and Cairns. Could it be that the piece her mother gave her was one of four fragments of a larger stone? Did Cairns have one of them?

  Diarmad nodded.

  “Do you know the names?” Alexander asked. “We should warn their clan.”

  “Nay. That’s all I know of them. But I sent out word to the clan chiefs in both places.”

  Kenna had to stop herself from pulling the pouch from under the shirt. “He put a bounty on me. He knew my name.”

  “They say that your mother was the one they were looking for. Once word came back that she had passed away, Evers sent his men in search of you.”

  “What could your mother possibly have had that is so valuable to him?” Alexander asked.

  Kenna shook her head and focused on the map. Three women and an old man living in different corners of Scotland.

  Questions battered her mind. How did her mother come to have such a thing? And why Sine and not her sister, Emily’s mother? Sine was the elder. Did their mother possess it before Sine? Where did it come from originally?

  And Cairns and the other two. How did they come to have a fragment, if that’s what it was? What connected them? She had the power to heal. If the old man could speak to the dead, what powers were trapped in the other fragments?

  Cairns must have had many of the answers. But he was gone now, and Evers appeared to know what he knew.

  Alexander broke into her thoughts. “Think, Kenna. Did your mother give you anything before she died? Pass anything on to you?”

  She held back what she knew because she didn’t know the entirety of it. Because she wasn’t certain of the source of its power. Now she had to hold it back because of the danger it entailed. She would never bring that kind of peril into the life of the man she loved.

  Kenna fought back the tears and shook her head.

  Chapter 18

  I have drunk poison while he utter’d it.

  James’s stomach heaved and he rolled, lifting himself on his hands and knees in time. Remnants of vile burning liquid spewed out. As the retching subsided, he became aware of noises—the sound of wind and drums—pounding in his head.

  The last thing he remembered was . . . what? He was at the inn in Oban. Nay, he went outside. The stamp of a horse hoof near his head. That’s it. He made it outside the inn. He was on the ground.

  But where was he now?

  The damp smell of oat and earth invaded his senses. Still on his hands and knees, he pried open his eyes and stared at the packed-dirt floor and his own vomit. Near him, beyond the shadows that enveloped him, a thin ray of moonlight stretched down from a barred window high up a stone wall.

  He sat to one side, trying to stay upright. The world outside his head began to spin. His stomach heaved again, but there was nothing left. The dry retching left him panting and sweating. He needed water.

  As his situation became clearer, cold fear pushed into the fogged recesses of his brain. He’d been drugged, poisoned, and thrown into this hole. It had to be Maxwell. The bastard. Fear gave way to anger. He reached for his sword. Gone, of course. He felt for the dirk in his boot. Nothing.

  Taking a deep breath, James pushed to his feet. The cell swiveled and tilted. He reached out and found a rough, wood wall and held on until the room began to steady itself.

  His throat was parched, tight. A hot flush washed down his back and the accompanying weakness nearly sent him back to the ground. James pressed his back against the wall. The dungeon floor rolled again, lifting and dropping like a ship in a storm. He didn’t move, but waited.

  How long he stayed there, he didn’t know, but then a heavy door creaked and banged shut somewhere in the distance.

  James tried to think of anything that he might remember after stumbling out of the inn. Hushed voices. Boots. And then nothing. He didn’t know where they’d taken him or how far. It was night, but he had no idea whether he’d been unconscious for a few hours or a few days. Was he even still in the Highlands? And why take him and not kill him? From all he’d heard, this was Evers’s way. For ransom, the English bastard would deliver him piece by piece, one limb at a time, to his family until there was nothing left.

  His eyes scanned the cell. Two pairs of shackles hung from iron rings driven into a wall. A few sacks of last year’s oats were stacked in a corner. Just like every other castle in Scotland, the dungeon served more than one function.

  It was curious that his captors hadn’t put him in chains. Perhaps they didn’t expect him to regain consciousness . . . ever. Ransom would still be sought.

  The small barred window was built high in the wall. There were two doors: One, a stout, oak half door that he guessed led to an adjoining room. A second door had air holes drilled through the wood at eye level.

  James heard heavy footsteps coming down a passage. He slipped into the shadows, pressing his back against the stone wall near the door. He’d strangle any bastard who made the mistake of coming in here.

  The footsteps stopped by the door. James stood motionless, making no sound. He hoped they’d come in. The man had to be staring in through the opening.

  To his disappointment, the footsteps continued down the passage.

  With every passing minute, James’s stomach settled a little more. His strength was returning. The cell was too small to hide any surprises. His gaze moved once again to the barred window. Below it, the iron ring and shackles.

  If he was going to get out, that seemed to be the only way.

  Steeling himself, he darted to the wall, jumped high enough for his boot to find a foothold in the ring, and leaped as high as he could. The ledge of the window was just a few inches beyond his reach, and he tumbled back onto the packed-earth floor.

  He gathered himself for a second attempt. His timing was better this try, and his fingers just caught the stone sill of the window. Hoisting himself up, he managed to ge
t one hand fisted around the bars.

  Even in the darkness, he could see that if he could pry open the barred window, he might be able to squeeze through. It was latched on the inside to keep pilferers out of the grain storage space rather than to keep prisoners in. That’s what the shackles were for.

  As he was thinking about how to break the latch, a woman’s cry reached him from somewhere in the dungeons behind him. James glanced back toward the door. Again, the creaking and the bang, and footsteps approached.

  “Why are you doing this? Where are you taking me?”

  He knew that voice. He let go of the bars and landed softly.

  “Why must I wear this? Remove this hood from my head.”

  A tumble and a sharp gasp.

  “Get up.” The voice was gruff and hard.

  “Don’t yank me so. You’re breaking my arm. I tell you, you’re hurting me.”

  James rushed to the door and peered through the air holes into the dark passageway. They were coming. He saw the back of a man’s head as the group stopped near James’s cell.

  An iron latch scraped and lifted. A door very near screeched on rusty hinges. James moved to the smaller door, and through a tiny slit at the very top he saw a woman roughly shoved in. She hit the ground hard and the door slammed shut behind her.

  She scurried out of his line of vision. He heard her crying softly.

  James waited until the footsteps retreated and they were alone before he spoke.

  “Emily?”

  A sailor’s woolen cap she’d nipped from somewhere. And an oiled leather pouch. And extra food.

  And questions for Alexander’s crew. Where was the square-rigged caravel taking them and how long before they reached there? How do they lower the dory that was lashed to the deck of the ship?