Legend of a Highland Lass: Scottish Medieval Highlander Romance

by Kenna Kendrick

  Sean left the house and mounted his horse, not willing to bid goodbye to Campbell as he prepared to leave the village.

  “Wanderer,” Campbell called out from the doorway leading into his house.

  Sean turned around.

  “Be mindful,” Campbell said. “I can see that a man like ye is on a crusade. The English rule these lands now. It is only a matter of time before all of it is taken over.”

  Sean shook his head—he would be damned if he lived to see all of Scotland taken over by the English. “I will be mindful,” was all he could think to say to Campbell.

  “Well…ye are clearly on a mission. What that crusade entails, I do not know, but it is clear that ye have…a death wish. Be careful. Ye may find what ye are looking for…”

  Sean paused. Said nothing. Stared Campbell in the eye and confirmed with his gaze that Campbell’s words were indeed true. With a slow drawing of a breath, Sean turned away, rode out of the village, and set off toward his next destination, ready to do whatever he needed to do to find the man responsible for killing his family and making him the savage that he was today.

  Chapter One

  A group English redcoats wandered into a forested area—and they were being watched from a short distance away. The glow of the moon cut through the trees, slivers of silver coating the ground as the redcoats hopped off of their saddles and prepared to make camp.

  “Lord Cutler will be most displeased,” one of the four redcoats with ginger hair said. “We failed to capture that savage that stole his swords.”

  The knight in the lead, tall and strong and handsome, waved his hand through the air. “Say not another word, Thomas. I am well-aware that our plight has failed.”

  “There were four of us,” another knight added. “How did he escape?”

  The knight in the lead placed his hands on his hips, turning and facing his men as he spoke through gritted teeth. “Are we prepared to have a conversation that will do nothing more than go in circles? We lost the Highlander. It is what it is. I will have to face the consequences that Lord Cutler will dispense once we return to the castle. Enough of this useless banter. Set up camp. We will leave in the morning.”

  The redcoats tethered their horses to the nearby trees and began setting up a fire. Blankets and rolled-up mattresses were set out on the ground as meats and stews were set about being prepared for consumption. The redcoats then gathered in a huddle, crickets chirping off in the distance as the dark of night consumed the forest, and the only glow came from the moonlight overhead and the dull glow of the fire that cast hues of orange on the redcoats faces—and then the crickets ceased chirping. Silence held sway. The redcoats looked around.

  “It is quiet,” one of the redcoats said. “And so quickly, too…”

  They glanced around, fearing that a wild animal—or something else—was lingering close by.

  “It is probably nothing,” the knight in the lead said. “You are just paranoid.”

  But then a twig snapped, the redcoats all standing up and reaching for their weapons in response.

  “Something is out there!” one of them said. “Something is in the trees!”

  “Nonsense,” the lead knight said. “We merely—”

  His words were cut short and followed with a wet smacking noise. The knight in the lead looked down at his torso, a small pool of red forming on his chest from the arrow that had impacted with his chest. As the redcoats all stared on in a daze, they were then rushed on all sides by a group of black and green clad figures with masks over their faces and hoods over their heads.

  “It’s the Scots!” one of the redcoats yelled. “It’s those bastards Scots!”

  The knight in the lead fell to his knees. Another reached for his swords but was swiftly cut down by one of the intruders with a quick blow to his torso with a sword. The last two redcoats left standing retreated immediately, mounting their horses and preparing to make their escape.

  The leader of the intruders, a warrior with a red cloth mask covering their face, attempted to strike down one of the redcoats, huffing and puffing as they ran and prepared to strike. The knight turned, defending himself with his sword and engaging with the leader. He swiped out a hand, trying to land a blow on the leader’s face—but all he managed to do was pull down the mask and reveal the face of a beautiful woman underneath, his face slack and expression nothing shy of shocked as he stared into the eyes of one of the most beautiful women in all of Scotland. The other knight, in the midst of straddling his horse, looked at the woman’s face, her features clear and unmistakable and painting a permanent picture in his mind.

  “You!” he exclaimed. “I know you!”

  The knight engaging the woman leader was then struck with an arrow to the back by one of the archers, landing on the ground before the life evacuated from his body. The last knight left standing retreated from the forest, moving swiftly away as the group of intruders that had killed his companions sheathed their weapons and stood in a circle around the campfire. A few arrows were launched in the man’s direction—and one of them managed to bury itself into the lower part of the man’s back.

  “Damn,” one of the intruders said. “He got away…”

  “Can we give chase?” another said.

  The leader shook her head. “No…he is to far gone…and that arrow he just took will undoubtedly kill him.”

  The leader of the intruders, the woman, slowly pulled down her hood and squinted as she watched the last knight flee from the forest. Her black hair licked with hints of auburn was tied up in a thick bun and combined with the mask and the loose nature of their clothing, one would have never guessed that one of the finest and most fearsome women in all of Scotland was hiding underneath it all.

  “He saw me,” she said. “That knight saw my face…”

  “Does it matter?” the man beside her said. “He is dead anyway. He bleeds out as we speak.”

  “I saw him before,” the woman said. “Months prior. He tried to proposition me…” She huffed. “Damn it! We must hope that he bleeds out before he reaches his English overlords.” She pulled at her bun, letting her flowing locks fall down over her shoulders as she shook it out and pulled the mask down off of her face. She was beautiful, her soft skin glowing in the deceased redcoats’ campfire as she put away her swords and placed her hands on her hips.

  “Rose,” one of the bandits said. “What now?”

  The leader, Rose MacGillis, gestured to the dead men. “Search their belongings,” she said to her people. “Let’s see how we made out.”

  The intruders began searching the bodies, bags, and horses of the dead English redcoats. They found coin, food, clothing, jewelerly, and various other trinkets. Kelly, Rose’s right-hand-woman, her hair the color of a ruby, cozied up alongside Rose with a small sack filled with coins in her hand.

  “Look here!” Kelly said. “We made out well. This is enough to feed us for at least a week!”

  Rose turned around and looked at her group as they proceeded to take the last remnants of their loots from the fallen redcoats. “Are we finished?” she asked.

  Kelly nodded. “Aye. I believe that’s all of it.”

  “Then the time has come to make our departure…” She turned to leave—but someone called out before they had the chance to disembark.

  “Rose!” one of the men said. “Come! Quickly!”

  Rose looked upon the man calling her name and saw him standing over the lead knight that had taken the arrow to the chest. His eyes were wide, a look of shock completely stretched across his face.

  She came alongside the man. “What is it?”

  The man pointed. “Look! Look who it is…”

  Rose squinted as she looked upon the ashy face of the fallen knight. She looked at his features, his lifeless eyes, his agape mouth. It took her a moment to realize who she was looking at, but once she did—her mouth fell open as she became consumed with shock.

  “Me God…” Rose said with a gasp.
/>   Kelly approached her. “What is it?”

  Rose pointed at the fallen knight. “This man,” she said. “This man is an important member of the English army.”

  Kelly looked at the fallen knight. “I do not recognize him. Who is he?”

  Rose sighed. “His name is Lord Henry of Sanford.” She turned to Kelly. “And he is the nephew of the King of England.”

  Rose and her people had fled from the forested area and retreated to a village a half-day’s ride away. They sat around a table, sans their green and black uniforms and mask, dressed in commoner’s clothing with none of the other denizens in the dimly lit bar made of cobblestone the wiser. The village rested in an area a short distance away from an English stronghold, the entire area for miles consumed by redcoats and lords and suffering under the oppression. The tavern that Rose and her people were in held a thick air of tension, with each Scotsman and woman inside checking over their shoulders in fear that an English noble or knight would show up at any moment.

  Rose was completely dumbfounded. She had been so careful for so many years to make sure that her identity and that of her people was not discovered. The masks were a deliberate choice, the false rumors that were spread about the Scots being led by a man the same. Rose had gone to great lengths to make sure that no one ever discovered who they were—but then they killed the nephew of the King, and then her mask was pulled off, and it was done so by a man that she just so happened to be propositioned by a few days before.

  Fool, she told herself. He only overheard me name because Kelly shouted it out when we were drinking in that tavern. But why, how did we manage to cross paths with him again? Is it fate? Did I bring this upon us?

  “This is a problem,” one of the men said, a man named Brandon, barrel-chested and with a long and thick beard. “Lord Henry of Sanford is a well-revered man. His death will bring about a lot of attention.”

  “There was no way we could have know that it was him,” Kelly said.

  “But,” Rose said, “it is a problem like Brandon has stated, nonetheless. The knight that fled saw me face. He will no doubt report this to his superiors. They’ll send an army. We cannot fight an army.”

  Kelly hung her head. “It is me fault, Rose. I was the one who blurted out yer name.”

  Rose waved her hand through the air. “It does not matter. What’s done is done…”

  Another man at the table, Eric, spoke up next: “This was foolish. We should have never started this campaign of thievery to begin with.”

  “Do not be a fool,” Kelly said. “We agreed long ago that this was the life we were going to lead. We are the Scots—the most feared thieves in all of the Highlands. This one interruption in our routine will not stop us.”

  Rose held up a finger. “It was always a point,” she said, “to make sure that no one saw our faces our learned our true names. But that time has passed now. We have become compromised. The Scots must disband. We must figure out a new way.”

  “We cannot quit,” Kelly said. “After the English destroyed our clan, they left us with no choice but to pillage them in return! How will we live? How will we survive?”

  “We shall have to figure it out. But the time has come to bring an end to the Scots. We are disbanded. We shall disappear into the Highlands without a trace. It is our only option.”

  “We have no money after this,” another one of the Scots said. “If we truly choose this to be our last exploit, how will we live?”

  Rose perched forward on the table, a fierce intensity in her eyes. “I need all of ye to listen to me,” she said, an authoritative quality in her tone. “I was chosen to lead us after we lost our people. I was the one who made the decision to live the lives we had, and it was designated long ago that I would be the one to make all the final decisions in regard to the best course of action for all in this band. I trust ye, all of ye, and have heeded yer words good and well, but the time has come to move on. I do not what is in store for us, but I shall make it me priority, as I always have, to figure it out. And that’s exactly what I shall do…”

  The collective tension was thick around the table as the group sipped at their drinks. The atmosphere around them was elated, the other Scotsmen and women in the bar drinking and laughing and singing made their dire nature stand out all the more.

  Rose felt depleted. She felt like she had made a mistake she couldn’t come back from. We did so well for the longest time, she thought. What happened? Where did I go wrong? These people look up to me. I must Do what is in their best interest…and I am not quite sure what that is…

  “So,” Brandon said, “what Do we Do?”

  “We should track the knight down,” another one of the men said. “Finish him off afore he reaches his destination.”

  “That time has passed,” Rose said. “It is too late now.”

  Brandon huffed. “We should have been more vigilant.”

  “Again, that time has passed. We cannot focus on what we could or should have done. It is what it is. We merely need to figure out how we proceed from here.”

  “And what does that look like?”

  Rose looked out toward the fogged glass window to her left, the dark terrain of the Scottish Highlands as hazy as her plan of action. “The knight that fled,” she said, “will no doubt tell his masters what transpired. He knows that he was attacked by us, the Scots. Our reputation is fierce enough at this point that I am sure he has no doubt…he also saw me face. He may not know me name, but he has a description nonetheless…our only course of action now is to flee. We must find some place to hid until this all blows over.”

  “It will not merely blow over,” Brandon noted. “We killed the nephew of the King. The repercussions will be swift and merciless.”

  “I have no doubt,” Rose said, “which is why we must find someplace that they will never think to look.”

  “Where?” Kelly said. “We have stayed in our region for quite some time. There are so many uncharted parts of the Highlands that we do not know about.”

  “Which is why we must find where they are. There must be somewhere we can gae, someplace that the English do not know about.”

  Brandon looked around the tavern like a solution would somehow present himself. When he laid eyes on a man seated at one of the tables—his mouth was open in shock. “Do ye know of the one they call ‘the Wanderer’?”

  Rose looked at Brandon, squinting with a pensive gaze. “Aye,” she said. “He is a rogue. A thief and swordsmen for hire. What of him?”

  “It is said that he knows every area of the Highlands. His knowledge of the country is vast. That is why it is so hard for the English to find him—he knows of where to hide. Perhaps if we seek him out, he can help us. The man has been said to do anything for the right price.”

  Rose pondered the proposal for a brief moment. We are shy on options, she thought. We must flee here as soon as possible. “Where Do we find him?” she asked Brandon. “This man they call the Wanderer?”

  Brandon forked a thumb over his shoulder. “Easy,” he said. “He is sitting right over there.”

  Rose craned her neck and looked around Brandon’s brawny frame. It took her a moment to see him, but after a few seconds of searching she saw the strikingly handsome man with the angular jawline and the brooding eyes seated by himself in the corner—the man that those in the Highlands all knew as the “Wanderer.”

  Chapter Two

  Sean could feel the gaze of the table from the corner. He didn’t know who the collective group of Highlanders were, but based on their body language, he could tell they were a tight unit. He sipped at his drink, pretending not to notice their gazes being directed toward him as he focused straight ahead and only took the occasional look at them through his peripherals.

  They are not a clan, he thought. Perhaps they are thieves.

  He kept a steady hand on his sword, ready to pull it at a moment’s notice. He did not want to engage in a fight—but he would if need be.

  T
he chatter went on at the table for a few minutes, Sean sensing that they were going around and seeing who would be brave enough to approach him. They want something…They know of who I am…

  Eventually, one of them stood—the woman, her hair the color of a raven and features as beautiful as any woman he had ever seen in the Highlands. She reminded Sean in many wives of his deceased wife; the curvatures of the woman’s body similar to that of his passed love. Who is she? he thought. There is…something about her…Sean saw the woman stand, shifting his weight as she approached the table. Do not come over here…Do not bother me…

  But it was a fruitless hope—the woman was closing in, a drink in her hand and an inquisitive glaze in her eye. She approached his table with the utmost confidence, no shred of fear about her as she came two feet shy of him and stood there waiting.