Putting the torch in the ground, he turned Colum over. To his surprise, the older man let out a groan and opened his eyes, coughing feebly and reaching up a claw-like hand to grasp at Murdo’s collar. He was wounded in the chest, and there was a trickle of blood forming at the side of his mouth.
“Murdo, tis really ye?”
“Aye, Colum, it is. Whit happened here?”
“They came for the lassies. They bound them and flung them ower horses and rode awa’. They let them get a good start ‘afore they sounded the retreat. The raid... it was for them, alone. They attacked the front o’ the house for a distraction and then lay in wait here for the women. Ach, man, they hae got me an’ a’. They knocked me on the head, but when I crawled away tae try tae bring help one o’ the bastards stuck me...”
He coughed again and winced at the pain.
Murdo drew a breath to speak, but Colum cut across him. “Naw, haud yer wheesht, let me say my piece. I dinnae hae much time left, listen. Ye hae done the right thing in marrying the lassie, she is a good woman, and she will be a good mother tae the heirs o’ the clan. Dae whitever it takes tae get her back, Murdo, ye hear me? Whitever it takes. Get her back and when ye hae children, tell them o’ me, d’ye hear? Tell them o’ me.”
He gasped.
“Murdo, the bible in my top pocket, quickly now.”
Murdo took the little book from where the priest had indicated and placed it carefully in the old man’s hand. Colum clutched it to his chest and closed his eyes, his lips moving in silent prayer.
“Murdo,” he whispered after a moment, “Tell Emily. I am so glad I saw ye married.”
Those were his last words.
* * *
Morning came cold and dank, and it was a sorry sight that Murdo saw revealed in the grey light. The grass around the front of the house was bloodied and trampled, half the fighting men were dead or wounded. The grain store to the side had not been saved, though the fire had not spread, and a great deal of the stores had been lost. The Watchtower by the bridge had been taken by stealth and set fire to, and though the fire had not spread, it had done a great deal of damage to the ground floor. The smell of wet ashes hung over the dismal scene.
Murdo, Ewan, and James had taken a few hours’ sleep, deciding they did not have enough men to mount an immediate rescue expedition. Now, they stood on the grass before the house and spoke together. Eilidh was woozy and sick, but unharmed beyond a cut on her head which looked worse than it was, and James was all afire with the need for revenge.
“Aye,” said Murdo, “but we must take counsel. Where hae they been taken? We must find out. My guess is they will hae gone tae Fort William, that being the nearest garrison. We havnae enough men tae mount a raid there, and so we must send for reinforcements ‘afore we move.”
“Ye are right, son,” said James, “though it sticks in my craw tae wait. If we head out now without preparation, they will just pick us aff in the wild. Ewan, ye must lead a scouting party toward Fort William and see whit ye can find out. Meanwhile, we must send messages south tae our allies the McGraws, and north tae the MacPherson castle at Newtonmore and tae our allies the Grants. We must hae men if we are tae raid such a strong fortress as the castle at Fort William.”
“War,” muttered Ewan. “Shall we ne’er be free o’ it? Could we no’ offer a truce tae yon garrison at Fort William and exchange the women for something; for gold maybe or even for a treaty?”
“Would ye buy peace wi’ yer freedom?” snapped James. “Naw, Ewan, dinnae speak craven counsel. Well, dae ye ken that they would break any treaty as swift as make it, and we would get naething. This Major Clairmont will want blood. Ye must put the scouting party together without delay.”
Ewan bowed his head in assent.
“A treaty indeed,” muttered James. A good man is Ewan, but a MacPhail still. He’s nae MacPherson, and that is plain tae see.”
* * *
In the days following their capture, Emily and Alice were pleased and surprised to be almost entirely ignored. They were in a kind of limbo, and it was an unnerving experience. They wandered the castle at will, and as soon as they realised they were indeed allowed to roam freely without limitations, they quickly took advantage of the situation.
The house steward, Thomas McCrimmon, was everywhere in evidence and seemed to be the only man in the castle with any time for them. He was attentive to their needs and had orders to bring them whatever they wished. For the moment they ate and drank well, keeping to their room for their meals. They dressed well and kept a cosy fire in their room, and McCrimmon seemed to delight in their every request. He had a store of women’s’ clothes in the castle – how or why God only knew; the man was endlessly resourceful – and Emily and Alice grew bolder over the next few days, asking for warm clothes so that they could sit on the tower top, or sturdy boots to support them in wandering around the corridors of the castle. They even provided their own key for the bedroom. McCrimmon would wink and leer knowingly at them, but he would say nothing, and by the time a week had passed they had acquired quite a collection of items which would prove useful in the event of an escape.
“D’you think he’d bring us a brace of pistols if we asked?” said Emily to Alice one morning, as they wandered the halls, and they both laughed.
They became a common sight around the castle, and nobody seemed to care, or even acknowledge them. With nothing else to occupy them, they wandered throughout the rambling old building, quietly making a systematic survey of the whole castle. They were careful not to be too systematic, trying to pick at random areas to explore, but over the first week, they managed to get a pretty good idea of the layout of the whole building.
They quickly discovered that the place was heavily guarded. Escape would not be easy. Looking from the windows, they could see a wide brown moat and a long, flat stretch of open ground before the woods. They avoided the third floor above the gatehouse; the officers’ quarters and Clairmont’s office. Only one area was denied to them; the armoury in the western buttress tower.
“You can’t come in here ladies if you please,” the guard pointed out politely yet firmly.
“Oh, I do beg your pardon,” Emily fluttered her eyes. “The thing is, we got rather lost. Where are we now?”
“This is the armoury, and the powder magazine, ma’am, and this corridor leads nowhere else. Your best route is back the way you came.”
It was on the fifth day of this wandering that they found the old chimney. On the floor above the officers’ quarters was a little suite of rooms which had not been occupied for a long time. Alice had taken to trying all the doors as they passed if the coast was clear. Most rooms were empty but for a few dusty pieces of lumber or furniture, but in this particular room they found a case of books. They were delighted with the discovery, and since the sun was streaming through the large window, they set themselves to exploring the bookshelves, exclaiming with delight at what they found there.
They were engaged in this pleasant pastime when they heard a voice they both recognised. The women froze, but the sound came no nearer. It was Clairmont, there was no doubt about it, but where? It took them a few minutes, but they followed the voice around the room until they came to a flimsy panel of wood, nailed onto what seemed to be an old fireplace at one side of the room. On the other side of the room, there was an open hearth, and though it was cold and clean, it was open. From behind this old hearth, the voice of Clairmont was drifting.
The significance of the discovery struck them both at once. There must be some communication with the room below, probably through a section of the disused chimney. They listened carefully at the panel but could not quite make out his words. As they crouched, their eyes met, and each saw the same realisation in the other’s eyes.
They could spy on Clairmont.
Chapter Twenty-Two
The next morning Emily was sick. She flapped her hand at Alice to make her concerned friend back off as she retched into the chamber pot. Whe
n she was done, she was sweating and pale but felt better.
“I don’t know what on earth brought that on,” she said in bewilderment. “Dinner was fine last night, and you ate the same as me.”
“Are ye sure yer alright?” Alice watched with concern.
“Oh, I shall be fine now, although I am hungry!”
They ate together at the little table in their room and quietly discussed how to best make use of their discovery of the chimney.
“We will hae tae remove the panel,” said Alice, “that is the only thing tae dae. If we tak’ the panel aff then we will be able tae hear whit is going on in the room below. Maybe we will be able tae find something that will help us escape, or send a message out?”
“It will give us something to do if nothing else,” Emily sighed. “Honestly, I expected many things when I came to this place, but to die of sheer boredom was not one of them.”
“And that’s another thing,” Alice !interjected. “If anyone asks why we are so interested in that room, we can tell them it’s because o’ the books.”
That night when the castle was asleep, they tiptoed out of their room together and skulked through the darkened corridors to the spy room. Alice had brought the iron poker from their room, and painstakingly levered out the nails holding the panel in place. They took it slowly, dreading to hear a footstep in the corridor or an inquiring voice by the door, but there was nothing. They lifted the panel away and looked down into the darkness beyond.
There was a light at the bottom; faint and shining in a little shaft against the back wall of the chimney section.
“There must be a gap,” whispered Emily. “Down there, there must be an opening into this chimney, which is badly covered and letting some light in.”
“But that means...” whispered Alice.
“Yes. There must be a light on in the room.”
“He’s in there, at this time of night?”
At that moment they heard a cough from below, the scrape of a chair, a few steps, and the chink of a glass. They looked at one another in a mixture of surprise and horror. What if he had heard? But he had not. They leaned the panel up flat against the wall where it had been and quickly left, taking the nails with them.
Over the next few days, spying on Clairmont became their main activity. They learned a great deal about the going’s on of the castle, but most of it utterly useless to their hope for escape. In fact, the things they learned only served to make them feel less able to escape. They learned just how heavily the castle was guarded. There were three hundred soldiers garrisoned here, and one hundred of them were on duty at any given time, guarding the gates and the perimeter. The moat was fifteen feet deep, and the nearby town was loyal to the garrison; no escaped prisoners would risk looking for help there. They sat together on the wall on either side of the old fireplace, the panel pushed to one side and listened until they became sore from sitting. After three days, neither of them felt very hopeful.
Emily was sick in the morning again, twice out of three days. The rest of the time, she was ravenously hungry. The second time it happened, Alice sat her down firmly and looked hard into her eyes.
“Miss Emily,” she asked. “When was the last time bled?”
Emily looked surprised. “Bled? Oh, you mean with the moon? Oh, I don’t know, I hadn’t really thought about it...”
“Think now,” said her friend. “Think carefully.”
“Very well,” said Emily, looking a little puzzled, “let me see now. It was before we crossed the river, that’s for certain. In fact, now I think it was just before we left the castle at Inveraray. Can it be that long ago? How long ago was that, now? The last time... it was just after I arrived at the castle. I remember feeling awful on the last days on the road and being glad of the comfort of being in the castle. Goodness, that was some time ago.”
“Nearly ten weeks since ye arrived at Inveraray, miss, if no’ a little mair!” Alice had a twinkle in her eye.
“Well, what of it? What does it mean? And stop calling me ‘miss’! What’s come over you? You’re grinning like a dizzy girl, Alice!”
Alice reached out and took her friend’s hands in hers.
“Whit o’ it? Ye cannae be telling me ye dinnae ken whit it means tae be six weeks late and puking in the morning? Good God Emily, but did ye truly hae nae women about ye when ye were growing up tae teach ye these things?”
“Your mother died when you were young, too,” said Emily defensively. “What do you mean?”
“But I had the castle women around me,” said Alice, “and my father’s sister, ‘afore she went away tae marry. Emily, it means ye are wi’ child! A child is growing within ye!”
Emily’s mouth dropped open.
“Are ye sure, lass?” Murdo had said as she lowered herself onto him in the moonlight by the creek, all those weeks ago. And she had been sure, though she had hardly thought through the full implications of that question. She remembered so vividly it made her shiver with pleasure, the feeling of him surging inside her as they climaxed together. Surging, pouring his seed; that was how it worked, didn’t it? She was not sure.
For a moment, she felt ashamed of her ignorance, but Alice’s face was so full of kindness and delight that the feeling quickly passed, and she found herself smiling too.
“Aye,” said Alice, guessing what her friend was thinking. “That’s how it happens; his seed, yer soil, and a bairn the fruit which comes forth in time. Sickness in the morning, and the ceasing of the monthly bleeding, the hunger, too; they are all signs.”
“How long?”
“Oh, perhaps the passing o’ three seasons. A lass whae comes wi’ child in the winter will bear in the Autumn. Ye hae been wi’ Murdo what, twa, three times? And in the Spring... Aye, it will be near the turning o’ the year ye shall bear yer bairn, all being well. Ye hae time yet.”
“Good...” said Emily quietly. She felt odd as if the breath had been knocked out of her. Lifting both hands, she placed them on her belly, gazing out of their window across the land, over the woods, and off to the distant hills of the north. A child, his child and the heir to the MacPherson clan.
She smiled.
“Well,” she said briskly, standing up and smoothing her hands down her skirts. “Let us go back to our post at the chimney. If I am to bear a child, then I must get out of here before any more time passes. Spying on Clairmont is our best chance of gaining information; let us return to our post.”
They arrived just in time. A conversation had started in the chamber below. The voices were not heated, but they were tense. Hurriedly, Alice and Emily lifted the panel from its position and put their heads near the opening.
“...not happy about them wandering around the castle. They were at the armoury the other day, snooping around. The man on guard told his captain and the captain told me, but I’ll be damned if I let them spy out all the ways of this place and then give us away to the rebels.”
It was Clairmont’s voice, but when he was finished, another voice replied; this time, it was Emily’s father.
“I agree with you, sir, though I think you over-estimate their intelligence. They are barely more than children, and I do not think they have the wit to sell us to the rebels. Besides, our spy will bring us better results than any intelligence they could bring to the rebels, even if they could get a message out. The spy... do you have him in hand?”
“I’ve got him where I want him,” said Clairmont, “but enough of this. If you are in agreement with me, then let us proceed today. I will marry the girl and send her, and her damned maid too, to the estate in Shropshire under armed guard. We will feed the rebels the news that we have them, and the ignorant scoundrels will no doubt come close in the hope of regaining her. Meanwhile, she will be safely married and well on the way to Shropshire and out of harm’s way. That way, the scandal of an officer’s daughter being executed for treason will be avoided.”
“Very well,” said Nasmith. “I shall send someone to fetch the
chaplain.”
Emily and Alice had heard enough. They rose from their spy post and dashed as silently as they could back along the corridor.
“Up to the room, quickly!” hissed Emily, and they fled back to their room.
* * *
There was only one thing Emily was looking for. Alice waited by the door, while her friend rummaged in the mattress where she had hidden it. After a moment, it was in her hand: the rolled paper, signed by witnesses and printed with the seal of Father Colum; her marriage certificate.
“But he wilnae respect that!” said Alice. “He will destroy it, or throw it away!”
“Yes,” said Emily, “but I’ll wager the priest will respect it in the chapel, in front of witnesses. It’s my only chance. If we are married, he can do what he likes with us. I shall never see my husband again!”
Fighting For A Highland Rose (Defenders 0f The Highlands Book 1) Page 16