Highland Master

by Amanda Scott

  “The Mackintosh is in charge then, is he?” Fin murmured.

  “Aye, sir,” Aodán replied. “He said to tell ye, though, if ye did make it back here tonight, that although Sir Ivor and Shaw should be able to keep the trouble well east and south o’ us for a time, all here will obey ye as they would Himself. And we will, sir. See you, he and the ladies be already thinking o’ their beds.”

  By the time Fin, Catriona, and their attendants entered the great hall, it was plain that the ladies and the Mackintosh were ready to retire.

  Fin talked briefly with Mackintosh, who assured him that their guards would give warning of any trouble in good time. Then, wondering if his usually reliable instinct for danger had simply misled him, Fin took his lady wife to her bed, lingered there most pleasantly with her, and slept until Aodán woke him.

  “Them devilish Comyns ha’ captured our lads ashore,” he breathed in Fin’s ear. “Worse than that, sir, they’ve kept our last boat and mean to drown us all as we sleep, because they’ve dammed up the loch at the outflowing burn!”

  When a wet paw stroked Catriona’s cheek, she awoke to find Boreas’s small shadow shivering on her pillow and Fin no longer lying beside her.

  Rising and donning a robe, she gathered up the shivering kitten and, noting that its paws and belly were wet, cuddled it as she went to the window and opened the shutter. Instead of the rain she expected to see, she saw stars amid the clouds.

  She could see only three lights on the ramparts, so the watchers had sighted Comyns, and Aodán had left a signal. She hoped it meant nothing worse than that.

  Leaving the shutter open when she turned back, she could see that Boreas was not in the room and the door stood ajar. Through the crack, about the width of the kitten, dim golden light from a cresset on the landing peeked in.

  Drying the kitten as well as she could and leaving it in her still-warm place on the bed, she grabbed her shift from the floor where Fin had flung it and took her old kirtle off its hook. Dressing hastily, she belted her dirk around her hips under her skirt, snatched a warm shawl from the same hook, and hurried downstairs.

  Peeking into the great hall from the landing to be sure Fin was not there, she went on down to the scullery and the postern door. There, she set aside the bar, opened the door, and moved quickly to scan the yard. The lights above revealed that it was empty, and she saw only two men on the ramparts, both looking outward.

  She hurried to the gate and found it a couple of inches open.

  Wondering how far Fin might have gone, she eased the gate open more to let herself out and then pulled it nearly shut again.

  When she saw no torch and heard naught to indicate where Fin might be, it dawned on her that he might just have gone to the garderobe. But Boreas would not have followed him there, and the kitten had got wet somewhere. Instinct and logic told her that the open gate meant all three had gone outside the wall.

  As she turned toward the landing, she heard footsteps approaching. Although she hoped it was Fin, she stepped silently into the shadows until she could be sure.

  Instead, she recognized Aodán’s shape against the watery flatness behind him as he strode to the gate, eased through the opening, and shut it with a click.

  She realized then that if Fin was not outside the wall, she would have some uncomfortable explaining to do. A shiver shot up her spine, and she amended that thought. He would be furious and would say she ought to have spoken to Aodán and gone back inside with him. She could still rap on the gate, but she told herself that she did not dare make such noise. Besides, she was curious.

  The woods were black. No moon shone yet, and clouds had moved in to hide the stars. Had it not been for the faint gleam of water to guide them through the thickly growing trees, he and Aodán would have blundered into things.

  After Aodán had wakened him, he had dressed and come outside with him to see how far the water had risen, bringing Boreas along to keep the dog from waking Catriona. When the kitten darted through the doorway and down the stairs, he had left the door ajar so that it would not scratch to get back in.

  The two men had not talked until they began sloshing through water. Even then, the woods gave them cover, so Fin doubted that anyone saw them.

  The night was still, though, quieter than usual.

  “Ye can usually hear the roar o’ the water running out on such a still night,” Aodán had said then. “How fast will it rise, sir?”

  “Depends on the weather,” Fin said, looking up to see that clouds hid most of the stars. “No one here will drown for some time, though.” He hoped that no one at all would drown. But the plain fact was that the steep bowl formed by the hills, plus its single outflowing burn, and many tributaries, meant that the water would rise to whatever height the Comyns had built the dam. And Aodán had said it was high.

  Also, they had no boat. When the men being relieved ashore had not returned in it, Aodán had worried enough to swim over and look for them. Avoiding the landing area, he had scouted the west shoreline to see what he could see before swimming back to wake Fin. The Comyns had struck and struck hard.

  But Fin meant to have the last word.

  “Sir? There be summat I should ha’ told ye afore,” Aodán muttered.

  “What?”

  “The lad, Tadhg. He were wakeful, sir, and I let him go wi’ the boat.”

  “We’ll find them all,” Fin said. “When you go in, wake what men you have in the castle and secure it. I’m going to swim across and see what I can see.”

  “Do I wake the grand lairds, too?”

  Knowing that Rothesay and Alex would each then insist on taking charge, Fin said, “Let them sleep. If you need anyone, wake the Mackintosh first.”

  “Aye, well, wi’ the gate closed, the place should be impregnable to all but the rising water. But I do wish we had a boat. If they’ve destroyed it…”

  Not wanting to think about that, Fin had sent Aodán back and devised his own plan. His night vision was excellent, and he knew that when he was in the water he would see enough to know where he was. In any light, one could tell the difference between water and land, but finding a place from which to swim was less certain.

  Not only was the water higher, but he had always swum the longer way to the loch’s east shore. So he did not know the west shoreline well enough to be sure of the best route to reach it from the island. He would have to feel his way in without splashing about, and the water, he knew, would be icy cold.

  His intent was to see exactly what the Comyns had done and to judge how hard it might be to undo it. He and Aodán had collected a few things that he could carry with him and that might or might not be of help.

  A cold nose touched his hand, and he saw that Boreas had not returned with Aodán. Patting the dog’s head, he murmured, “You’ll have to stay here, lad.”

  He would swim quietly, and most of the enemy would be asleep. But they would have guards at the dam and with the prisoners. Doubtless, they had others to watch the castle and loch, too, as well as they could in the increasing blackness.

  Even so, all of their watchers would get sleepy.

  “I thought you must be out here.”

  Catriona’s quiet voice preceded her as she came up behind him. She was all but invisible when he turned, and he had not heard her approach. The truth was that even now, he could feel her presence more easily than he could discern her shape.

  “What the devil are you doing out here?” he demanded, realizing that Boreas might have tried to warn him that she was coming.

  “The kitten woke me. It was all wet. Why is the water so high?”

  “The Comyns have dammed the outflow. They also captured both sets of guards at the change of watch, and they kept the only remaining boat, too.”

  “Then you will need help,” she murmured. “Whatever you mean to do, you should have someone with you. And since you did not keep Aodán…”

  She left the sentence hanging in the air.

  “I am goin
g alone because one person can keep silent more easily than two,” he said. “Moreover, much of this trouble springs from my having come here.”

  “Piffle,” she said. “Rory Comyn was making mischief long before you came. Granddad did try to make peace with the Comyns. But peace requires that both sides want it, and although many Comyns may agree that they do, Rory is not one of them. But this is foolish talk,” she added. “What else have they done?”

  He told her all that Aodán had discovered. “And Tadhg was with the lads.”

  Exclaiming her shock about the Comyns’ perfidy, she added, “God-a-mercy, at first I thought it had just rained hard whilst we slept! Do they want to drown us all?”

  “They may hope,” he said. “But to do that, the water will have to rise high enough to submerge most of the castle. Their dam cannot be so high, be—”

  “Not yet,” she said grimly. “But we must get rid of it before the water rises higher. How can we do it without a host of men or even a boat?”

  “Until I see the dam, I won’t know whether anyone can dismantle it without getting himself killed,” he admitted. “Once I know just what we face, we—”

  “You have no intention of trying to dismantle it alone, do you?”

  He did not reply.

  After waiting impatiently for an answer that did not come, Catriona said tersely, “Just how do you think you could dismantle such a dam by yourself?”

  “Lass, go back inside before I lose my patience with you.”

  “What will you do then, sir? You can scarcely shout at me or beat me without making enough noise to spoil any chance that we have tonight.”

  “I’ll have plenty of time to attend to you later, however.”

  “Well, if you have failed to learn that I do not respond well to arbitrary orders, you should have paid more heed. Did Aodán describe this dam to you?”

  Fin sighed audibly. “He said it looks as if they used two rows of posts with planks stacked on their sides between them to hold back the water whilst they piled logs, branches, and dirt behind them, like a beaver dam behind a board wall.”

  “Then I suspect you mean somehow to bore holes in those planks, because you cannot safely remove them and all that debris alone. But if you don’t bore large enough holes in them, or enough holes, you’ll just make waterspouts to spit through to the other side. And if you bore too many large holes, the force of water pouring through will destroy the dam before you can get away, and the torrent that results will carry you all the way down to the Spey. So, how do you intend to proceed?”

  “Lower your voice, sweetheart. Recall how easily it echoes here.”

  Obediently, she murmured, “But I am right, am I not? You did listen to me.”

  “I did, aye.”

  When he did not go on, she knew that despite the endearment, he was still vexed with her. He wanted her to go inside, and he did not want more argument.

  “Don’t tell me again to go back to bed,” she said. “I mean to stay here or go with you, and I won’t promise not to follow you. I swim as well as you do.”

  “Do you, lass? Mayhap that is true, but you have not pitted your skills against mine yet, so I doubt that it is. You are not as strong as I am.”

  She could not deny that, but the knowledge did not dissuade her. “I don’t need to be as strong as you are,” she said. “I can take the raft.”

  Fin had forgotten about the raft but considered and dismissed it. “Too noisy,” he said. “Trying to paddle that raft from here to the dam would be tiresome as well. It is small, aye, but with you standing on it, they might see it from shore.”

  “Sakes, it is too dark out there to see anything. I can barely see your shape right in front of me. I could hear you breathing as I approached, and I knew that Boreas was out here, too,” she added hastily, not wanting him to think that she would have spoken to just anyone she had met out there.

  “Cat, think,” he said. “Even on the darkest night, can you not see the water well enough from your window to tell that it is not the shore?”

  “I can, aye,” she admitted. “But any watcher seeing the raft would more likely think that it had just floated away from here when the water rose.”

  “You stand whilst you paddle the thing, do you not?”

  “Aye, sure, but if I keep low, I can easily follow you. Sithee, I ken fine how to paddle without making noise. I have often—”

  “Often what?” he demanded sternly.

  Clearly unabashed, she chuckled low in her throat. “Stop trying to come the ogre over me, sir. I’m just thinking that you are more likely to get back safely if we do take the raft. We can swim beside it if you think that would serve us better.”

  “We are not going.”

  “Ay-de-mi, but you will take the raft. If you mean to put holes in that dam, you will need it just to keep you afloat if the dam breaks before you expect it to.”

  “As you said yourself, lass, if it goes, I’ll go with it, raft or no raft,” he said grimly. “And so will anyone else who is nearby on the loch. The current there will be fierce until the loch returns to its natural level.”

  “Then it will be as well if we… that is, if you… are out of the water long before then,” she said. “To avoid disaster, you must mean to plug your holes somehow. Or do you simply mean to bore holes until the dam breaks?”

  “I do have rags to plug them and a large ball of twine,” he said, realizing that she thought such plugs would keep the dam strong enough to hold but unwilling to increase her fears by explaining that each hole he drilled would weaken that plank regardless of any plugs, that they would just keep outflowing water from interfering with him as he worked his way down to the most vulnerable planks. He would tie the plugs together so that he could pull them free quickly in a hope of relieving the water pressure if any plank began ominously bowing or cracking as he worked.

  That small relief would, he hoped, give him time to get out of the water.

  “A ball of twine is not enough,” she said. “We… you need a rope, a long rope.”

  “I mean only to set the plugs in place tonight if such a plan proves feasible,” he said. “At the pace the water is rising, it won’t reach the great hall until tomorrow afternoon or evening. Tomorrow night, Aodán and I can return if that becomes—”

  “Listen,” she murmured.

  He heard it then, too, the sibilant whisper of raindrops in the canopy above.

  “All the better,” he said, reaching for her and pulling her close. “The rain will help conceal me, sweetheart. I must go, but I will be back as fast as I can. Now, kiss me, cease your fratching, and get back inside that castle and to bed.”

  She leaned into him, putting her arms around him and holding him close. Then she tilted her face up and kissed him, pressing her tongue to his lips.

  Parting them, he savored the taste of her, aware that he might never taste her again if anything went wrong. Plunging his tongue into the softness of her mouth, he moaned softly, wishing that he could carry her back to bed and stay there.

  Reluctantly, he released her.

  “How will you go?” she asked.

  “I had thought of swimming straight down the loch from here,” he said. “But now that the rain has come, I think I can safely swim to the shore instead and walk at least partway and possibly as far as the turning if I can keep near the water.”

  “That path will still be above water, I think. But won’t they be using it?”

  “If any Comyn is wandering about at this hour in the rain, I will attend to him,” Fin said. “He won’t be expecting anyone, and I will. Don’t fret.”

  “Nay, then, I won’t, I promise.”

  “I want you to promise me something else.”

  “Aye, aye, I ken fine what that is. Now go, so you can come back to me.”

  He gave her a hug and stripped off his mantle, keeping only the thin tunic he had donned to come outside, and he kept that only to cushion his sword as he swam. After weeks of hard
ening, his bare feet were tough.

  Handing her his mantle to hold while he fastened the belt that held his dirk in its sheath, he tied the cloth sack that contained his rags, twine, and auger to it. The sack would hamper his swimming more than the sword but was a necessary burden. He had a shorter distance to swim, so it would not hamper him much.

  Confident that Catriona and Boreas would return to the safety of the castle, he walked with her to the place where she said it would be easiest to get in, kissed her once more, waded in, and silently pushed off.

  Rain pelted the water around him, but even angling north as he did, the swim was short, his sense of direction reliable, and he soon decided on his destination.

  Chapter 19

  Catriona watched Fin swim away, relieved to see that he could swim with the heavy sword strapped to his back. But she soon lost sight of him in the rain.

  Satisfied that even a Comyn dependable enough to keep watch in the middle of a rainy night would not see him if she could not, and certain that Fin would win against any single opponent, she turned from the shore but not toward the castle.

  Instead, she went back through the woods and sloshed to the raft tied on end to its tree. Setting Fin’s mantle atop a shrub with thick foliage above it, she began to unwind the long rope binding raft to tree.

  Boreas pressed his nose into her hand.

  “Good lad,” she said. “But you’ll stay here.” Coiling the rope, she tipped the raft over, its cumbrous weight defeating her so that it made a great splash when it landed. She was sure that the noisier rain hid the sound, and as she had hoped, the water was deep enough there for it to float. She would take the rope with her.

  Tying the raft to a sapling, she went back for her paddle. As long as the rain continued, she would paddle standing, as she and Ivor had done as children. There would be no current as there had been then to aid her tonight, though.

  As that thought crossed her mind, another followed. There would be a current after she and Fin destroyed the dam, so getting back to the island might be hard. She wondered how long it would take the loch to return to its normal level.