by Anne Greene
Her own marriage legally bound Avondale to protect the MacMurry castle, land and tenants. In exchange, he received a fruitful wife and a very large dowry.
And now she knew why he’d had to lower his standards to wed a lowly daughter of a baron. Her heart twisted. Nevertheless, she would stand by him at any cost. And she would make this marriage a happy one. No matter how many black times he experienced when he could not account for his time. If only he would let her help him. Her mind returned to the conversation with Fiona.
“Ah, you sly lass. You are wise beyond your years. Please don’t tell me you are in love with a fugitive Highlander.”
“And so I won’t.”
Cailin sighed. She had asked the question the wrong way. She turned her irritation at herself to the coachman and banged her parasol against the carriage roof. “Mikey, can we not drive faster?”
Mikey’s voice floated down from the driver’s seat. “Nay, Milady. The horses be pulling hard. I donna want to wind them.”
“Is something wrong, Cailin?”
“No, of course not.” She must discover if Fiona was bewitched by a Highland fugitive. The gleam in Fiona’s eyes worried her, but Cailin dredged up a smile, sprinkled it with sugar, and smoothed her gloves over her wrists like she wished she could smooth her concern. “I packed all the herbs, unguents, and poultices I could find into the boot, along with several pots of good beef stew and some yeast biscuit dough.”
Fiona smiled. “I think a batch of haggis, and some tatties and neeps would be appreciated as well.”
“I asked cook if she could supply those. She sniffed and said she didn’t know how to fix them. She made a face and asked, did I think she was a Highlander?”
Fiona’s sunny disposition bubbled into laughter. “The bairns will love the stew. We can set the biscuit dough into the frying pan, tighten down the lid, and make an oven over the coals in the fireplace. The bairns will have a lunch fit for a king.”
“And tonight when we get them safe to the broch, Mikey’s wife has promised to prepare a dinner of cold chicken, scones and bannocks, new cheese, and tea.”
“But, do we have room inside this coach for all eight bairns and my sisters-in-law as well?”
Cailin eyed the interior and tried to imagine fitting all the MacCaulays into the expansive space. “This carriage easily accommodates six adults. You and I can hold the youngest two on our laps, and their mums can each hold one. With the extra shirts and trews we brought, they will fool the soldiers.”
“The soldiers might decide to kill them.”
“Women and children? Surely not.”
“Ye do not ken the English.”
“Well, if we are stopped, I shall do all the talking.” Cailin pulled back the curtain and peeked outside. “Why are we slowing?”
The carriage swayed to a stop. The trap-door on the rooftop opened, and Mikey called down, “The road ahead be blocked with a road crew. It appears the English be widening this drive. They be spanning a bridge across yon river.”
“Why do ye suppose?” Fiona tilted her head. “This road but leads to the Highlands. Nowhere else.”
“I wager the king plans to build forts along this route and patrol the roads day and night. The fat German king be sending the Black Watch to make certain the Highlanders donna carry weapons or play the pipes. Hold on. ‘Twill be rough as we go around.” Mikey slammed the trap shut.
As the carriage slowly jerked over rocks and rough ground, Cailin gazed out at the laboring men. She opened the curtain wide as they crept past, so the musket-toting redcoats might get a full view of the two well-dressed ladies bedecked in jewels sitting inside.
The muskets held locked-on bayonets.
Hair on her nape shivered. A tremor scurried down her spine. Fiona had said the lobsterbacks had their way with Highland women, and then bayoneted them. She cradled her stomach.
Metal clinked against rock. She peered past the mounted soldiers to watch the closely guarded laborers clanking along the carriage path, dragging leg irons and wielding pickaxes. The men, young and not so young, looked to be ragged and ill-fed Highland Scots. Yet they plied their picks and axes earnestly, making their ring echo across the glen as they struck rock.
As their carriage rumbled slowly past, one chained man’s deep set, hopeless gaze met hers. “Do you recognize any of the prisoners?”
Fiona shrank back from the window, her face drained of color. “Aye. I know many of them. They’re men from a number of different glens.” She shook her head. “None of them fought at Culloden. They’re herdsmen and crofters. Each has a wife and bairns.” She crinkled her forehead. “What will happen to the bairns with their pas being prisoners?”
“Perhaps we can rescue some of them.” Cailin glanced back at the twenty or so laboring men, their bare, sweating backs bent, their emaciated limbs extending beneath tattered trews. Their gaunt faces looked grim and set. The ring of their picks on solid rock sounded a lament.
Still, a shaft of joy filtered through her. She’d been right.
The English soldiers had barely spared a glance at their passing. Soon the clang of the picks faded beneath the louder creaking of the carriage.
For a long while, neither she nor Fiona spoke.
Her mind remained on the plight of the Highland crofters and their families. The coach rattled on through the darkly shadowed pass, and then entered a fern-rusted glen. They jolted, bounced, and rocked nearer the crest of the tall purple hill melting into grey sky.
She loved the wild solitude of the Highlands with its treeless moors, rugged cliffs, and tiny villages of five or more homes nestled into the protected glens. She loved the wind-flayed desolation of the mountains, and realized Fiona had to really miss her home. She knew the lass longed for her family.
They neared the river’s source, born in the peat moors of the mountains. A fine, cold vapor drifted above the rushing water. How did people make a living in this somber expanse so high in these mist-capped mountains?
Fiona gasped. “Look!”
22
Cailin pulled in a sharp breath. Her gloved hand crept to her mouth. The recently burned out cottage and brye told its own sad story. Overgrown weeds and thistles ran riot around the ruined croft. “The place looks abandoned.”
Fiona’s eyes were wide, her hands clasped as if she were praying.
“Tomorrow we’ll return to see if anyone still remains here. Were they friends of yours?”
“Aye. The McCoy didna send any men to Culloden. I donna expect the older lads are around. They were twelve and thirteen. Old enough the English took them.”
“Surely not!”
“Ye donna ken the English.” Fiona scrunched her eyes shut. The sun glinted on a single leaked tear.
Oh yes, she knew of the English. She knew of Lord Henry Mabry, and his obscene demands Megan had escaped that fateful day inside the stable. She remained forever thankful that Shamus, the groom, had run to Megan’s rescue. That incident firmed Megan’s resolve to escape the betrothal and run off to marry Brody.
She’d seen the dreadful wounds inflicted on the hunted men inside the broch. She’d heard the stories of how English soldiers raped and molested innocent Highland women and children. She’d heard of the horrible massacre at Culloden. “I know more of the English than I would like.” Something from her tone apparently alerted Fiona.
The lass glanced at her, all wide eyes. “But ye are—”
“Never mind! Though I wed one, the war makes me hate the English almost as much as you do.”
The horses slowed. Pressed back against the cushions as the coach settled aslant at an angle heading higher up the mountain, she wondered why her Lowland Scots always sided with the English. She’d not found the Highlanders to be barbarians. Rather the opposite. Englishmen seemed to have won that title.
Fiona leaned forward and peered out her window. Anxiety and expectation fought each other on her expressive face. “I pray our cottage is no…not burned.”
/> “So do I.” Cailin drew her cape closer about her shoulders to ward off the shiver that had nothing to do with the darkening sky.
After what seemed a long pull uphill, the road petered out. The coach slowed, and then ground to a halt.
Cailin didn’t wait for Mikey to come around to assist her. She pulled down the handle and pushed open the door. From her side of the coach she couldn’t see the MacCaulay cottage. But the site looked hauntingly beautiful, even with black storm clouds closing in.
As she descended the two small steps, she inhaled a deep breath of liquid gold air, so sweet she wanted to simply stand and breathe in the freshness. She looked out over a gentle glen nestled in the highest nook of the mountain.
Above her, the shrill of an eagle with his wings outstretched in graceful flight, symbolized the freedom surrounding her. The gaunt majesty fairly took her breath away.
Here in the midst of this beauty and silence, Fiona had lived. This beautiful land had helped form the strength and integrity that screamed through everything she did. She had to be homesick.
Cailin drank in the singular beauty of the Highlands, full of loneliness, harmony, and strength. The land had qualities that built character and perseverance. Far below, the forest smiled with silver birch and oak, and the rushing river slowed until it joined the mirror smooth loch. Looking smaller than a robin’s nest, her castle reflected gleams of light from its battlements and banners.
She rounded behind the carriage to the other side, and her dress boots sank into the peat moss. A peaceful sense of timelessness and beauty surrounded her. Awe rose in her chest as it had when she’d visited the newly rebuilt St. Paul’s Cathedral in London.
She shook her head. She couldn’t stand here gawking. Work awaited. She walked past the blowing horses and found Fiona already farther up the glen.
“We must walk from here.” Fiona called, and held out her gloved hand.
Cailin’s heels dropped deeper into peat as she leaned forward and walked up the steep incline. She took Fiona’s small hand and they hiked together up a barely discernible path. The ground beneath her stylish boots felt soggy in places, although the abundance of rocks and thick tufts of grass kept her boots mostly dry.
“There’s our home!” Fiona bounded ahead, her bright curls bouncing beneath the rim of her bonnet as she ran up the slope.
Cailin pulled in a deep breath. The cottage looked intact. She tilted her head and hid her mouth with her gloved hand. This was Fiona’s cottage? For this she’d been homesick? Cailin gazed around.
The MacCaulay family’s hut blended with the hillside. Blocked with various sizes of stone, with a roof cut from thick turf covered over with thatch, the tiny building would have fit inside Castle Drummond’s entry room…with space to spare.
Fiona started dancing, her new boots tripping in a Scottish jig, her face sparkling. She pirouetted up the path and didn’t stop until she stood on the humble threshold. “Come in, Cailin. Welcome to our home.”
Cailin stepped across the threshold. In a few seconds her eyes adjusted to the gloom. The cottage had no windows. An aged, smoky scent that spoke of peat fires and emptiness wafted to her nostrils. She followed Fiona through the small room floored only with hard-packed earth.
A hole cut into the center of the roof probably would have let out a thin trail of smoke had a fire been laid. The walls were black from peat smoke.
She kept her expression bland, so as not to offend Fiona, and rubbed her arms where the chill penetrated her cape and the woolen sleeves of her day dress. A desolate feeling lodged in her chest. Where were all the relatives they’d come to rescue?
“I donna ken where everyone is.” Fiona’s crushed expression hit Cailin mid-stomach.
Neither of them had expected the cottage to be abandoned.
“I felt certain Jenny and Mary would move in here with their children…” Fiona’s voice trailed off into a bewildered groan.
She stooped and with loving hands moved a peat spade aside and gathered a harp lodged in a dark corner. Made of willow, strung with long, sturdy strings of cut and dried intestines attached with carved bits of bone, the instrument looked crude to Cailin. There were few other furnishings inside the rude cottage.
“The willow makes the music magical.” Fiona strummed her fingers tenderly across the strings of the small harp. “And yet this harp is out of tune.” She stopped strumming and trudged around the center of the room, the movement of her long skirt causing ashes to rise from the dead fire pit. “Magic or no, nay one is home.” Her slender shoulders sagged, and her lower lip trembled. She clutched the harp to her breast.
“Perhaps your sisters-in-law will return soon.”
“Nay. The fire is never left to die. Something’s amiss.” Frowning, she ran back outside. “Oh, I hope we are not too late!”
Cailin glanced at several reed beds lining the walls and at the sturdy wooden table under which a lone stool stood on three legs. A single wooden plate and a horn spoon waited on the table top. A bench leaned against the wall. A large cauldron hung from the ceiling on a pot chain just above the fire pit. There was nothing more to see. No other cooking utensils, no clothes, no signs that anyone lived inside. A layer of dust and ash mantled the wooden table. She crossed the desolate room and joined Fiona outside.
Cailin pulled in a deep breath of fresh air, but it failed to clear the stale stench of emptiness from her lungs.
The air had grown oppressive with a storm hurrying to overtake them. Black, boiling clouds swirled lower until they all but reached the carriage top down the hill.
Fiona had disappeared somewhere behind the cottage.
Cailin picked her way through the peat and overgrown thistles to the rear of the cottage and found a brye attached to the house. After stepping over the mud-streaked wooden threshold, she discovered that only hanging skins and hides separated the barn from the abandoned cottage.
She wrinkled her nose at the pungent smell of old manure and decayed straw. In her hurry to leave the hut, she’d missed the fur-covered hides. In winter, cattle obviously stayed inside and lived close to the family. Today, the brye, too, stood empty.
Where were the children? Quickly she moved back outside.
A lone calf bawled in the glen and ambled in their direction.
Her heart turned over. How different life at the castle had to be for Fiona and Brody. What an adjustment they must still be making. How their pride must suffer. From these humble beginnings and with seemingly little effort, they’d assumed the aspect of Lowland nobility…but these independent people were now totally dependent on her family.
Could she have adjusted as well had she been transported to this lone cottage so far above the family, meadows, castle, and horses she loved? She pressed her lips together. Being honest with herself, she doubted she possessed the ability to live within such rude, uncomfortable surroundings. Fortunately she didn’t have to.
She shivered and snuggled her cape closer. The air was thinner here and the wind colder. Shadows seemed to grow longer each moment she tarried, and the empty homestead had a lonely, haunting quality that made anxious inroads into her heart. She shivered again.
More than that, the house emitted a sense of pain and loss.
Fiona’s worried face appeared around the far stone corner of the cottage. “A storm is hustling this way.”
Cailin tightened the ribbons to her bonnet and nodded. “Mayhap we should tumble the bairns into the carriage and feed them later.” She lifted her hands, and then helplessly let them drop. “If ever we find any of your family.”
Fiona’s shoulders sagged beneath her elegant blue dress. “I donna ken where they have gone. Looks as if no one has been here for some time. Our poor calf’s ribs are poking out. She looks half-starved.”
“Where can they all be?” Mingled odors of wet earth, wood, growth, and decay surrounded Cailin. She walked to a small knoll and planted her polished shoes on a rocky outcrop. Turning slowly in a circle, she search
ed the rocky area but saw no signs of life. Her bright hope of helping Fiona’s remaining family faded. “Are there caves nearby?” She lifted her head and straightened her shoulders. She must offer a positive slant on the outcome of their journey. “God will show us what to do.”
Fiona turned and walked purposefully back to the front of the cottage. “We must tie the calf to the rear of the carriage and take her to a neighbor. Mayhap the Chattens know where my family has gone.” Fiona’s clever hands were busy fashioning a harness from a rope hanging near the front door. “Did ye ken, Cailin, that a soldier can pass within a foot of a Highlander hidden in hedgerows, and he sees naught, nor even hears a crackle in the thick branches? We be that good at hiding out.”
“Really?” Cailin raised a skeptical brow. Not here, she felt certain. This place had definitely been deserted. Probably weeks past.
With Fiona leading the calf, they walked down to where Mikey already coaxed the horses into a tight semi-circle within the small flat area that fronted the long path up to the cottage.
He gazed down from the driver’s seat. “Before we go home we’ll need to water these horses, Milady.”
She nodded, unable to shake her deep sense of disappointment. They’d come all this way only to find no one. She’d hoped so to bring Fiona’s relatives back to the castle. She yearned to care for the mothers and protect the children, and give them a new home before sending them to be educated in Lowland schools.
“Fine, Mikey, while you water the horses, Fiona and I will search around.”
She’d noticed the patches darkening the horse’s sleek coats as well. The teams shifted, rattling their harnesses, snorting and blowing.
“They need a spot of rest, too. Aye, it’s downhill all the way from here.” Mikey swiped a hanky across the sweat beading his forehead. “‘Tis a difficult descent. But donna fret, I’ll hitch two teams behind the carriage to help keep us from careening down.” Mikey tipped his livery hat and turned to the eight snorting horses.