But he’d deemed his sins significant enough to confess them all. Wardlaw said men learned much from Augustine’s writing. Too much, Fiona decided, fearing that the bishop might describe the saint’s every sin before he was done.
Usually, she liked learning about other people. But real people, not men who had lived so long ago that one’s imagination boggled at such a distance of time. Nor did she know aught of Augustine’s Italy or Africa, or care about such faraway places. She was more curious about places and events nearer at hand.
Although she had served the Queen for four months, including the previous fortnight here in Edinburgh, she had seen only the part of town that lay on the road from Stirling and from Edinburgh’s hilltop castle to the abbey. She knew Stirling better. They had stayed in its castle for six weeks, and the village below was small.
The royal household, being numerous, moved often so that overfilled garderobes could be thoroughly refreshed before their graces’ return.
Noting that his grace watched the bishop, Lady Fiona suspected that he also had an eye on the Queen beside him. She sat in a two-elbow chair like his own, and everyone knew they were deeply in love, even after six years of marriage.
James was not the only one who loved Joanna. Everyone loved her.
Had she not brought peace with England and shown from the first how kind she was? Although born and raised an Englishwoman, she had said that she wanted to be considered as rightfully Scottish as the King, who had married her and brought her home with him at the end of his long English captivity.
She had even changed her name from English Joan to Scottish Joanna to show how much she loved her new country.
A sudden disturbance at the other end of the nave’s long aisle, at Fiona’s left, diverted her thoughts and silenced Bishop Wardlaw midsentence. Turning to peer down the center aisle, Fiona beheld an extraordinary sight.
Striding barefoot toward the altar was a tall, muscular, bare-legged man with shoulder-length, unkempt, tawny hair and an equally shaggy beard and mustache.
He wore only a midthigh-length, saffron-dyed shirt, and he carried a long, wicked-looking sword, pointed upward and bared.
Gasping at the sight, Fiona heard echoing gasps and hastily stifled cries from the congregation. Turning to look from a gaping Joanna to the King beside her, she saw James calmly stand and look at Bishop Wardlaw, now silent in the pulpit.
Three weeks past his thirty-sixth birthday, the dark-eyed King retained his boyish features and tousled auburn hair, but Fiona saw no hint now of the childlike look that so many described when they spoke of him.
King and bishop gazed at each other for a long moment. When the bishop raised his flyaway gray eyebrows, James grimaced and shook his head.
Then, facing the congregation and the man striding toward him, the King looked calm again, even speculative, leading Fiona to decide that he knew the fierce-looking man and felt no fear of him.
When the Queen seemed about to rise, a vague gesture from his grace stilled her in her chair. She clasped her hands together. Her face was unnaturally pale.
James had been King of Scots for over six years. He stood, patiently waiting, and watched the intruder without a trace of unease.
In contrast, Fiona easily detected Bishop Wardlaw’s disquiet. As she watched, he opened his mouth and then pressed his lips firmly together again.
Looking back down the aisle, she found the newcomer much closer. Despite his proud bearing, he was clearly a barbarian. He was also inches taller and looser of limb than the square-built, heavy-shouldered King. The closer the man came, the larger his sword appeared to be.
A shiver shot up Fiona’s spine.
The King was unarmed. Doubtless, every other man in the kirk was, too.
When the barbarian stopped just a few feet away from her, she winced at his rank odor. She also noted that his saffron tunic was bulkier than she had thought, and it was quilted. It concealed less than half of his long, muscular thighs.
Looking up, she saw that he stared unblinkingly at James.
The King stood a step above him, but the barbarian looked to be the taller of the two. His sword seemed enormous now, making her fear that she was too close.
His bearded chin jutted. He locked his gaze with the King’s.
Then, deftly, he flipped the sword to grasp it by its blade point. He held that obviously weighty weapon long enough to drop to a knee.
Then, briefly bowing his head, he proffered the sword hilt-first to James.
Grasping the hilt but making no move yet to take the weapon, James was silent for a long, unnerving moment.
Then, his voice carrying throughout the dead-silent kirk, he said, “Ye’ll recall, Cousin Alexander, that when we met over a year ago after the battle at Lochaber, I commanded your unconditional surrender. Ye were disinclined then to obey that command. D’ye agree now to submit to me . . . completely?”
Realizing only then that the barbaric-looking creature was James’s cousin, Alexander, Lord of the Isles, Fiona gazed more curiously at him. The congregation was so quiet that she heard him draw a deep breath and let it out.
“Unhappily, Jamie-lad, I do submit,” he said in heavily accented Scots. “Else, I’d ha’ tae be a rare fool tae stand before ye as defenseless as I be the noo. By my troth, though, had them traitorous Camerons no shifted their allegiance tae ye that day, I’d ha’ won that battle.”
“But I did win,” James said flatly. “I heard ye’d fled to Ireland.”
“I did visit me cousin Donal Balloch there. But I dislike this strife betwixt us, Jamie. Also, that last time ye imprisoned me, after your Justice Court in Inverness, ye didna make me bide long in St. John’s Town o’ Perth.”
James said, “This time, cousin, ye’ll retire to Tantallon Castle, where ye’ll bide at my pleasure as a royal prisoner. Afore ye leave, ye will concede that ye be my vassal and that, whilst ye may be Lord of the Isles, ye’re no the king of them.”
“I hear that Tantallon boasts fine views o’ the Firth o’ Forth and the German Sea,” the Lord of the Isles retorted. “Am I tae find me own way there?”
“You will have a royal escort, well-armed,” James said dryly.
“Moran taing, but first I must break me fast. I’ve no eaten since yesternoon.”
“I have nae will to starve ye,” James said, signaling to someone at the far end of the nave. “But henceforth ye’ll take your meals at Tantallon. Also . . .”
He paused, for Alexander was apparently oblivious, looking around the nave as if he sought supporters among the congregation.
Fiona recalled then that he had supposedly had ten thousand followers at Lochaber. What if some of those men were in the congregation now?
Glancing down the aisle, she saw six men-at-arms striding toward him.
Alexander turned back to the King. “Aye, Jamie, ye had more tae say t’ me?”
“Only that ye’ll behave yourself at Tantallon, cousin, or I’ll make ye shorter by a head. That would end all o’ your mischief.”
Then, as Fiona and the rest of the congregation watched—some in astonishment and others, including Fiona, with relief—the King’s men-at-arms escorted the Lord of the Isles out of the kirk, to imprison him in the great stronghold atop a barren sea cliff on the southeasternmost edge of the Firth of Forth.
Hearing the tall abbey doors close behind them, Fiona fervently hoped that James could keep his barbaric kinsman locked up and well guarded.
Chapter 1
The North Inch of Perth, 25 June 1431
The night had been nearly starless before the clouds moved on.
Now, a pale golden glow edged distant hills to the east, which told twenty-three-year-old Sir Àdham MacFinlagh, riding south on the west bank of the river Tay, that the moon—full tonight—was rising.
Sir Àdham’s night vision was excel
lent, and his shaggy black-and-white dog, Sirius, ranging ahead on the undulating, shrub-lined path, would alert him to any disturbing movement, scent, or noise nearby.
The King’s annual Parliament was meeting in the royal burgh of St. John’s Town of Perth, so the road from Blair Castle, where he had spent the previous night, was safe enough to travel even at that late hour. Nevertheless, as Àdham neared the town, he welcomed the increasing moonlight.
Starlight had already revealed black heights of the town wall a half mile ahead, beyond a rise in the landscape. He could even make out the tall, pointed spire of what he suspected was the Kirk of St. John the Baptist, for whom the town was named. Then, the bridge crossing from the village of Bridgend to St. John’s Town’s High Street gate came into view.
At that hour, even the broad expanse of water to his left had hushed, looking black and bottomless as it flowed toward the Firth of Tay and the sea. He knew the Tay was a powerful river, but now, it seemed calm and contained, reminding him that sea tides influenced its current. It was low, too, flowing some ten feet below its banks. So the tide was also low but on the turn. The breeze wafting toward him from across the water stirred no more than an occasional ripple.
His path lay between the river and a wide field to his right that, despite big patches of shrubbery and scattered trees, he believed was the infamous North Inch of Perth. The current King’s father, Robert III, had ordered a trial by combat there between the two great Highland confederations, Clan Chattan and the Camerons.
The full result of that great clan battle depended on who told the tale, and Àdham knew little more than that the two sides had had to provide thirty champions each and that the Camerons had lost all but one of theirs. It had happened before his birth, and although a truce had resulted, no one on either side had been eager to discuss the battle with him.
All was quiet on the Inch, too, unnaturally so. Not even a night bird’s call.
His instinctive wariness of new places, augmented by years as a warrior, stirred strong then, as did his Highlander’s mistrust of any town’s dark environs.
His mount was tired after a long day’s ride, and enough of the moon peeked above the hills to light the river and its surrounding landscape, so he dismounted to lead the horse. Absently shifting stray hairs of his beard from his mouth with a finger of his free hand and smoothing them, he scanned the nearby field.
He had not visited St. John’s Town before, but his foster grandfather had explained exactly how he could find their clansmen by following the High Street into the town from its north gate.
He could see the top parts now of a massive dark tower rising above the end of the town wall near the riverbank. Moonlight also revealed that the rise ahead was a low, rocky hillock extending into the water.
A short distance ahead, to his right, orange light revealed two high windows of an otherwise shadowed building inside a wall of its own. Torch-glow suggested that its east-facing wall had a gateway, but the rise hid all save its twin towers.
Rustling shrubbery near the field’s center sharpened the wariness awakened by its hitherto unnatural silence. His skin prickled, too, making him wonder if someone watched him from the Inch or from one of those lighted windows.
The dog’s ears rose at the rustling sound, but when they relaxed almost immediately, Àdham relaxed, too, deciding that he had let his imagination turn a wakeful badger or fox seeking its supper into a bairn’s boggart.
“Whisst now, ye dafty!” the older of the two watchers hissed to the one creeping toward him with what the fool apparently mistook for extreme stealth. “’Tis like a herd o’ kine, ye be, a-pushing through them shrubs!”
“Whisst yourself!” his cousin hissed back. “Some’un’s coming, Hew. A chap on horseback with a dog, and a great sword on his back. D’ye see our quarry yet?”
“Nae,” Hew whispered. “Three men walked over from the town, though, and I saw one go into yon monastery. From here, I couldna be sure if them others went wi’ him or stayed outside. I’m thinking we may ha’ tae wait till they leave, though.”
“Who were they?”
“Sakes, how would I know? But the one as went inside, by his bearing, were a nobleman sure.”
“Deevil’s curse on all three o’ them. We canna bide here much longer! I did think this would be the night. But what if that dog senses us?”
“It’ll hear nowt if ye say nowt,” Hew muttered savagely. “It canna smell us, Dae, because wi’ this breeze a-blowin’ at us from yon river, the dog be upwind of us. This may be our chance tae win freedom for Alexander. So just hush your gob.”
Instead, his cousin Dae hissed, “Look now, Hew. Some’un’s a-hieing down tae the river from yon hedged garden!”
Àdham had seen no sign yet of his squire and the two other lads who followed him more slowly on foot, leading sturdy Highland garrons laden with bundles of the extra clothing and gear that they might need in town.
His sense of watchers had vanished when Sirius remained undisturbed, and he had heard no more himself beyond leaves hushing in the gentle breeze.
Increasing moonlight now turned the river into a wide silver-gilt ribbon. He began watching his steps as the path steepened and grew more rugged. But when he reached the top, he beheld a sight so unexpected that it stopped him in his tracks.
The dog stopped, too, and glanced at him uncertainly. Behind him, the horse whuffled, its sound no more than the fluttering wings of a nervous grouse.
Halfway down the rough slope, watching the moon, transfixed and unaware of her audience, stood a slender figure in a thin white nightdress or smock. The garment’s long sleeves and gathered neckline hid most of her. But it stopped at her knees, revealing bare calves, ankles, and small feet below.
Àdham’s breath caught in his throat, although anyone watching—had there been such a watcher—would have noted no change in his expression because he had habitually concealed his feelings since childhood. Emotions, after all, were private, not for sharing in the world of men that he customarily inhabited.
The lass, who looked only fifteen or sixteen, stood as still as sculpted marble, as if she focused every ounce of her being moonward.
Dropping the reins, hoping the horse would stay put, as the Blair Castle man who had provided it that morning had promised, Àdham stood still, too, unwilling to break whatever spell the moon goddess or unknown river nymph had cast on her.
Her dark hair, gilded by moonlight, fell past her hips in soft, shimmering waves. The white garment revealed little more than the slenderness of her figure, although his experienced eye detected the soft outline of a generous bosom.
As he watched, he heard only the murmuring river. Then, an owl hooted softly in the distance and Sirius made a petulant sound as if questioning his master’s stillness or his judgment.
Àdham’s wariness stirred again, but the lass did not react. Her gaze remained fixed, eastward, across the river on the rising moon.
To be sure, the moon, looking larger than life, was a splendid sight. More than half of it showed now above the dark mass of hills to the east. It seemed to have come nearer and grown bigger since the night before. Were he a fanciful man—which, decidedly, he was not—he might have called it magical.
Movement drew his gaze back to the lass as she raised her arms out from her sides. Then, to his amazement, she continued to hold them so as she stepped down into the water. She moved slowly and with more grace than one might expect on such a steep, uneven slope. Keeping her balance with outstretched arms, she eased forward until the flowing water reached her knees, her thighs, and then her hips.
Àdham shivered, watching her. Although the late-spring air was temperate, the hour was nearly midnight. The water had to be much colder than the air.
Evidently, though, its chill did not deter her. She took another step, then leaned forward and glided into the water, stroking gently from t
he shore, her head up, her hair spreading behind her on the water’s surface. Still gazing at the moon, she let the current carry her southward, away from him, toward the town and the sea. Then, in an eddying swirl, she vanished beneath the sparkling dark surface.
He watched expectantly, but she did not come up. Suddenly fearful, he dashed after her. Heedless of rocks, the uneven terrain, and other such minor obstacles, he cast off his baldric, belt, and heavy wool plaid as he ran.
Lady Fiona Ormiston savored the rare sense of freedom she felt deep beneath the surface, as her arms swept her forward and her legs kicked hard against the Tay’s strong current, heading back the way she had come. She was smugly pleased that she could hold her breath long enough now to count nearly to two hundred.
She knew that someone had been nearby, for her senses, especially on such moonlit ventures as this one, remained keenly attuned to her surroundings, and as she had waded into the water, she’d heard barely audible sounds of approach on the path northward and had given thanks that she wore her least revealing shift.
Peripherally, just before submerging, she had glimpsed a large, apparently cloaked figure cresting the rise and decided it must be one of the friars or a guard who, despite her caution, had seen her push through the monastery’s garden hedge and followed her. Such a man might watch her, even report her presence to others, but he would not harm her. She hoped whoever it was would be kind enough to return from whence he came without disturbing her or telling anyone else at the monastery that she had come down to the river.
In any event, although it was unusual to see anyone on that path at so late an hour, she would be safe enough in the water even if he was a late-night traveler.
A niggling discomfort stirred then at the intrusive memory of her first secret moonlight swim, years before at her home, Ormiston Mains, which was nearly four days’ distant from St. John’s Town. That night, she had emerged naked from the Teviot to find Davy, the youngest of her brothers, waiting on the riverbank. Eight years older, then sixteen, Davy had disapproved of her nudity and scolded her in that maddeningly calm but cutting manner he had.
The Reluctant Highlander Page 2