by Fiona Faris
Uilleam felt a sharp sting of fury from his father’s refusal to fight. It was the last thing he would have expected from Iain Mor, who had once single-handed fought off a band of MacColl raiders who had come to lift the two-three cattle of one of his clansmen. He felt his knuckles crack, so tight were the fists forming at his side, his fingernails piercing the thick pads of his palms. He could taste the bile rising in his throat again, the disgust he felt at his father for his not being ready to stand up for the honor of the clan, for his own honor as a man.
“I ne’er would hae thought I’d see the day when my own father, the Great Iain Mor, would shame me as a coward.”
With a bellow that filled the entire hall, Iain drew his dirk.
There was a flash of polished steel as the blade cleared the sheath on Iain’s belt. It was matched by the flash of madness in Iain’s eyes, as he lunged towards his son with a jab to his stomach.
A gasp of horror arose from the clansfolk in the hall. The messenger and waiting groom ducked aside and stepped from the dais to the relative safety of the hall floor.
Energized by a bolt of terror, Uilleam sprang back and knocked aside Iain’s lunging arm with a sweep of his own. But Iain's momentum carried him forward, and he crashed into Uilleam like a charging bear. His arms went around him, and they tumbled to the dais, Iain winding Uilleam as his full weight came down on his ribs.
After his initial fright, Uilleam was more bewildered than anything. He had been caught totally off-guard, and now his father had a complete advantage over him. He also did not know how hard to fight back. He did not want to hurt the old man, but he did not want the old man to eviscerate him either.
He struggled to prise Iain off of him, while he wriggled out from beneath his considerable weight.
Suddenly, he felt Iain's fingers winding themselves into his hair and dragging him around. Iain knelt behind him, his powerful arm clamped around Uilleam’s neck and the point of his dagger pricking his throat.
"Peace, Faither!" Uilleam grunted, throwing his arms to the side in a gesture of surrender.
“Aye, peace, son.” Iain growled into ear Uilleam’s ear. “But mind, I would sooner cut my own son's throat than hae him call my honor intae doubt.”
The others in the hall were looking on in subdued horror, their eyes wide with alarm, their breaths caught in their throats. Uilleam was mortified at what they had just witnessed. He closed his eyes in shame and embarrassment. Somewhere in the hall, a deerhound whined and whimpered.
Uilleam could barely breathe past the powerful arm that was compressing his windpipe. He was petrified by the prick of the dirk point just below his ear, pressing against the pulse of his carotid artery. He tasted the rusty tang of blood in his mouth, no doubt, he reckoned, a consequence of the initial blow that his father had delivered to his cheek.
He regretted his words, the insult to his father and clan chief. Iain Mor was no coward, he knew; he stood no slight from any man, not even from his son.
“It is o’er,” Iain declared.
He released Uilleam and staggered to his feet. He held out a hand, which his son grasped, and hauled Uilleam up to his feet.
As they stood breast to breast, their eyes met, and a look of mutual affection and respect passed between them. The anxiety that had screwed Uilleam’s whole body to the sticking place, with the thought that their relationship might have been irretrievably broken, drained away.
Uilleam drew his father into an embrace. It seemed that the whole hall exhaled a sigh of relief. The change in the atmosphere was palpable. Peace had been restored, a crisis averted, and the hall went back about its business as if nothing untoward had transpired.
Iain resumed his seat at the table and indicated that Uilleam should do the same.
As he pulled back his chair, Uilleam noticed that his father’s head was oozing blood from a slight wound at the side, somewhere above the hairline. But he did not draw attention to it; nor did Iain mention the thin trail of blood that dribbled from the corner of his son’s mouth.
“Understand,” Iain explained, pouring them each another tankard of ale from the flagon, “I do no’ want tae fight a full-scale battle with the Campbells; I want tae win that battle. An’ fer that tae happen, we must first secure the alliance with the Gunns an’ work with them tae secure the support o’ as many o’ the other smaller clans as we can.”
Realization dawned in Uilleam’s mind. He saw immediately that his father was right. A full-scale attack on the Campbells would be desperate folly. The MacGregors would be annihilated, and no purpose would be served.
He nodded, closing his eyes as if to shut out the vision of his earlier impetuous response to the news that the messenger had brought from Clyth.
“I understand,” he said. “But can we do nothing? Surely there is something we can do tae assert oor right, tae show the Campbells that they cannae act with complete impunity, that there is some fight in us yet.”
"Aye, there is," Iain said. "Ye can take two fighting men tae Inveraray Castle under cover o’ darkness an’ steal the Gunn lassie back. Once we have secured her an’, with her, the alliance with the Gunns, ye might hae yer battle."
A wide grin blossomed on Uilleam's face.
"Aye, Faither, I like yer thinking," he said, draining his tankard and rising to his feet to make ready. "It may be just kicking the Campbell arse an’ running away, but it will give me great satisfaction tae do just that."
Iain watched pensively as his son strode from the hall. He had the feeling that a die had irretrievably been cast. He prayed that he would not regret the outcome of the events he had just set in motion.
Chapter Eleven
The early hours of the following morning
That night, Uilleam dreamt of his prize.
He dreamt that he was riding pell-mell on his white stallion on a trail through the forest, the trees flashing by him in a blur. He did not know where he was going or why, but he felt that he would know it when he got there.
He arrived at a small stone chapel. The stone was damp and stained green with moss and algae, as were the grave-markers that jutted, many askew, through the long grass and brambles that surrounded the chapel. The trunks and branches of the overhanging trees were whiskered gray with lichen. From inside came the sonorous intonations of the priest's voice, ringing like a bell.
Uilleam rode up to the chapel, but the doors were closed against him. He leaned from his saddle and shook the massive iron ring of the door handle, but the door was locked, and the handle wouldn't turn. He rattled the handle violently and hammered on the door with the heel of his first, bellowing at the top of his voice, demanding entry, but his demands were ignored. He wheeled his horse around. The stallion reared, its eyes wild with fury, and pounded the door with its hooves.
Sparks flew, as the iron of its shod feet struck the studded iron straps that reinforced the wood; the wood began to splinter and fly like darts past Uilleam's head. Before long, the doors gave way and flew open on screaming hinges, banging back against the walls.
Uilleam paused for a brief moment, letting his eyes become accustomed to the dimmer light inside the chapel.
"Where is my Siusan?" he roared.
And then he saw her, standing before the altar at the end of the aisle, pretty in a long snow-white damask gown and, on her head, a tall conical hennin with several white gauze veils, one of which was demurely covering her face. Beside her stood Cailean Campbell, a dandy in a scarlet doublet and breacan trews, a highly polished ornamental rapier looped through a sheath on his belt, and a cap with a long golden eagle feather set jauntily on his head.
The stallion pranced, reared once again, then Uilleam spurred it on down the aisle at a brisk trot.
"Come with me, lass," he offered in a deep low voice, throwing down his sword in contempt of the wedding company and hold out his hand to the Gunn lass. She took it, and he lifted her lightly onto the horse's withers in front of him, clasping her tightly to him with an arm abou
t her waist.
And then they were off. He wheeled the horse and galloped back up the aisle and through the chapel doors, Siusan's veils streaming out behind them.
He rode hard through the forest, his eyes narrowed with purpose and determination and fixed on the path in front of him. He rode until they reached a bank that sloped down to a grassy dell, through which a small burn gurgled. Here, he reined the stallion to a halt, jumped down from the saddle, placed his two broad palms on Siusan's waist, and lifted her down as if she were no weight at all.
He carried her across to the bank and threw her down on the moss and heather. Lifting the kilt of his belted plaid, he exposed his manhood. It stood long and hard. Throwing up the skirts of Siusan's wedding dress, he ran a hand over her and found her already warm and wet. Without further hesitation, he fell onto his knees between her legs and drove himself into her, hard and deep.
She yelped with pain, but the yelp almost immediately subsided into a throaty moan and sob. He began to thrust, while he tore at the bodice of her dress to reveal her heavy breasts. Supporting himself on the bank with one hand, he raked the other over those breasts, kneading and caressing, all the while thrusting quickly and forcefully against her hips. Before long, she had grabbed fistfuls of the bower on which he was taking her and was arching against him, heaving and gasping as she came. He came too, with a roar that sent the crows tumbling up through the canopy of the trees, filling her with his seed in long copious spurts...
He awoke in his corner of the great hall, bathed in perspiration from the heat of his bed, his breath coming in trembling gasps, his manhood throbbing painfully between his legs.
After a moment of disorientation, he realized where he was and chuckled softly.
"Aye, she'll be a cannie ride," he murmured to himself.
He knew that he would not be able to go back to sleep, not right away, not in the state of excitement he found himself in. He rose and lit the stub of a candle from the embers of the fire.
He would have that Gunn wench, he resolved, and he would take her from right under the noses of the damned Campbells.
The next morning, in the narrow courtyard of Meggernie Castle, Uilleam and the two clansmen who were to accompany him on the raid, Lewis MacClay and Gillespie MacMillan swung up into their saddles and made ready to leave.
All three were wearing belted plaids and bonnets, and each carried a broadsword and targe strapped to his back and a long dirk in his belt. All three were barefoot. Uilleam was mounted on his favorite white stallion, with Lewis and Gillespie on roans. A fourth horse, which they were taking to bring Siusan back on once she had been ‘lifted’ from the Campbells, was attached by a long lead rope to Uilleam's saddle horn.
Their departure was marked with little ceremony. The castle servants were going about their chores as usual. A stable lad was wheeling a grossly overloaded barrow of soiled straw to the midden, three scullery sluts were collecting water in large wooden pails from the well, and the clang of hammer on anvil was ringing out from the smiddy. Even Iain had not found it necessary to see them off, let alone wish them well, on their venture.
Uilleam was fidgeting impatiently in the saddle. His blood was up, and he was excited and eager to be away. They had a long journey ahead of them, over hard country, which would take them most of the day. The first stage would take them down to the foot of Glen Strae, passing under the noses of the Campbells at their newly built Kylquhurne Castle, at the head of Loch Awe, then over the hills to Glen Shira. At the foot of Glen Shira, just before the river flowed into Loch Fyne, they would leave their horses with a crofter by the name of MacCallum, who was – for his sins – married to a shrew of a MacGregor lass. Under cover of night, they take the crofter’s small fishing coracle the short distance down the northern shore of Loch Fine to Inveraray. There, they would find a way into the castle and to their prize.
“Are you ready, Lewis, Gillespie?” he called out to his companions.
The two scarred and weather-beaten clansmen showed him their broken teeth in what passed for a grin.
"We have been up and ready for hours," Lewis grumbled. "It is you we have been waiting for. What kept you, Uilleam? Could you not free yourself from the tangle of your blankets?"
Gillespie chuckled, and Uilleam returned him a rude gesture.
He sat up straight in his saddle and heeled his mount.
“Then let us go and trouble the Campbells.”
Chapter Twelve
Andrew MacCallum’s croft near Inveraray
Late afternoon of the same day
Their journey took them five hours. It was late afternoon when they arrived at Andrew MacCallum's croft on the shore of a lochain dubh, a black lochan, through which the Shira flowed about half-a-mile from where it disgorged into Loch Fyne. The low blackhouse, with its dry-stone walls and turf roof, through which blue peat-smoke seeped in the gloaming, was a welcome sight to the riders. A large, round leather coracle lay upturned on the stony shore, not far from the midden beside the house.
Andrew MacCallum emerged from the low door, having heard the horses approach.
"Maister MacGregor," he greeted them, casting a nervous eye around the shoreline. "Ye'd better bring your horses to the byre in-by. I hae laid some fresh reeds for them and gathered some hay."
"MacCallum!" Uilleam saluted him heartily. "It is good of you to do us this service."
He and his two companions swung down from their saddles and began leading their mounts through the low door and into the smoky blackhouse.
"It's my wife ye should be thanking," Andrew observed darkly as he stood aside to let them pass. "It's her that insisted we help ye. Gin the Campbells discover I've harbored a MacGregor, they'll shear off my lugs and tak' the croft frae under me. They're my landlords, ye ken."
"Don't you fret," Lewis assured him with a slap on the shoulder. "We will be in and out of here in no time, and the Campbells won't have an inkling of our coming or going. You're safe enough, man."
Andrew gave him a dubious look. He was far from reassured.
After they had stabled their horses in the byre, they went ben to the family's living quarters. Here they sat around the central hearth, on cutty stools on the floor, supping broth and telling tales until the sun dipped below the mountains on the far side of Loch Fyne. Then, Andrew took them out to his boat, which they flipped over onto the smooth dark surface of the black lochan.
"If you're not back by sunrise, mind, I am turning your horses loose and telling anyone who asks that my boat was lifted in the night."
"You can do what you like," Uilleam replied. "If we are not back by sunrise, then we shall be dead and won't care a noddle what you tell them."
He stepped unsteadily into the leather boat, and Andrew handed him one of the paddles.
"Guid luck to ye," he grunted, almost grudgingly. "Gin the Campbells catch ye... well, I wouldna be in your shuin were that to happen.”
With that, he steadied the boat to let Lewis and Gillespie scramble in, then shoved it out onto the glass-like surface of lochan.
The three clansmen paddled the last remaining half-mile of the river from the lochan to Loch Fyne, and then followed the shore of the sea-loch the short distance to Inveraray. As the castle and its village hove into view between the trees that fringed the shore, they swung beneath the three-arched stone bridge beneath which the Aray flowed into the loch and continued paddling the short distance upstream to the castle's outer wall.
They beached the coracle and scurried into the shadow of the wall.
"What now?" Gillespie whispered, as they crouched and pressed themselves against the rough stonework.
"We look for a way in, of course" Uilleam replied, in a tone that suggested that the answer was obvious.
Lewis stared at his shadow in the darkness.
"You mean that you have no plan already for getting in?"
Uilleam stared back at him, shaking his head in disbelief.
"And how could I have such a plan,
" he asked him, "never having been to Inveraray in my life before? We will follow the wall; there will be a postern gate or something."
"Aye, and sentries forby," Gillespie muttered, then sighed, pushing himself away from the wall. "Come on, then. We have come all this way. We might as well take a look."
As it was, they did not have to follow the wall far. After only a few yards, they came upon a low culvert, which carried a broad open drain from the bowels of the castle down to the river. Thankfully, the drain was dry. Unfortunately, the arched culvert was barred.
"If we could loosen at least one of these bars, I wat this would carry us into a kitchen or brew-house," Uilleam said encouragingly.
"Or a latrine," Lewis added cynically.
He examined the brickwork into which the bars were fixed.
