by Fiona Faris
Uilleam sighed and tapped his foot impatiently for MacGillivray to deliver his intelligence, though part of him dreaded what that intelligence might be.
Thomas held his hands out empty by his sides and bowed his head in apology.
“Well, out with it, man?” Uilleam repeated, a little more sharply.
Thomas fell heavily to his knees, as if all the strength had suddenly drained from his body, his head hanging forward on his chest, his shoulders slumped. A long, heart-rending wail of desolation filled the hall. The dogs whimpered.
Uilleam gave a start, and his eyes grew wide with shock and surprise. He laid his sword back on the table and crouched down in front of his kinsman.
Thomas suddenly threw his head back and howled his anguish at the rafters.
The wail breached Uilleam’s heart and flooded it with compassion for the man. He took Thomas’s shoulders in his hands.
“Come on, man, out with it,” he urged in a firm but gentler voice.
Thomas looked up at him in wide-eyed appeal. It was as if he himself could not quite believe what he was about to tell him and was looking to Uilleam to explain the mystery of it to him.
“Meggernie is no more. The Campbells fell on us, five hundred strong. Everyone was put to the sword, the castle burned to the ground.”
Uilleam’s heart stopped in his chest. From the corner of his eye, he was vaguely aware of Angus, James, and Siusan hurrying into the hall.
“And the women and children?” he whispered reluctantly, his voice catching in his throat, fearful of the reply.
Thomas could not answer. The words lodged in his gullet.
“Thomas?” Uilleam urged, giving the man another gentle shake.
Thomas stared wide-eyed past Uilleam’s shoulder and into the middle-distance. A terrible silence reigned in the hall. Thomas trembled uncontrollably beneath his plaid.
What was he seeing, Uilleam wondered. What ghastly sight was unmanning this normally fearless warrior? Uilleam gently shook him again.
“Out with it, man!”
Thomas’s eyes were transfixed with the horror of what he could see over Uilleam’s shoulder. His lips worked frantically, trying to form the words that his mind would not let him say.
“The women and children, man?” Uilleam repeated for a third time.
A crowd had gathered around the two figures crouched on the floor.
Thomas’s eyes wavered and settled on Uilleam’s once more. He clutched desperately at the strong muscles of Uilleam’s upper arms, his nails all but penetrating his flesh through the fabric of his shirt.
“They have taken to the hills, along with those who were too frail to fight. Addie, your father’s steward, is leading them. But I fear they are pursued by the Campbells. The devils seem bent on putting every last one of us to the sword.”
Uilleam’s heart gave another lurch. He lowered his eyes and swallowed as if he was again afeared to ask the question. When it did come, his voice was small, hollow, and hesitant.
“And my father?’
Thomas shook his shoulders free of Uilleam’s hands and fell back on his heels but made no reply.
Uilleam’s heart raced.Why would Thomas not answer?
“Tell me, Thomas.”
Thomas lowered his eyes. His lips began to work again in agitation.
“Tell me, Thomas.”
Thomas began to sob.
“Tell me.”
“I am afeared of what you will do to me if I say the words,” Thomas tells him.
Uilleam squeezed his shoulders encouragingly.
“Say it. Just say it, man.’’
“Iain Mor is slain.” Tamhas wailed, his cry rising to fill the rafters as if to accuse the whole of heaven. “The Campbells burned him alive in the keep.”
The silence that had fallen over the hall was suddenly undammed, and a deluge of shouts and cries began to tumble in a torrent around him. Uilleam was stunned. For a moment he stood silent, then he let out a roar.
Siusan feelings startled her, and the strength of them took her aback. She had never before felt so keenly for anyone else. She had felt such intense sorry for herself, but never for anyone else. Her own heart ached for him.
She nuzzled his wiry red locks. His hair smelled earthy. A musky heat rose from his body. A stab of affection thrilled her. Could this be the same man whom, not so long ago, she had so despised as a brute and whose harshness had repelled her?
She stroked his cheek with the back of her fingers and moved a wisp of hair away from his brow. Could this be love she was feeling? She had never felt such a connection with another human being before.
She gazed back into his eyes with a quizzical look. But the moment had passed. Uilleam closed his eyes, and when he opened them again, she saw that the intense connection that had passed between them was gone.
Uilleam let out another roar. He roughly pushed the women aside and struggled to his feet.
Siusan grieved the passing of the moment of intimacy they had shared; she longed for its return. But it had gone, she realized, as quickly as it had come.
Uilleam picked up his dirk and sword and started towards the door. His feet dragged with exhaustion.
Siusan eyes grew wide with alarm. Her intuition was telling her that she must not let him leave the hall, that in his desperation he was going to do something reckless and put himself in mortal danger.
“Father! Stop him!” she cried.
Angus moved towards him and grasped his upper arm.
“Where are you going, Uilleam, son?”
Uilleam stopped and looked into Angus’s face in confusion.
“I am going to avenge my father.”
“Don’t be a fool, man!” James urged. “Your throat will be cut before you come within a mile of Cailean Campbell.”
Uilleam, as if only then becoming aware of James’s presence, peered at him through the gloom in his eyes.
“As for you, James Gunn, if I discover you had any part in this, I will see to it that your guts are fed to the dogs.”
“I had no part in this,” James replied, “and I grieve for your loss. But it has to be said that the MacGregors have brought this upon themselves.” He turned to his father. “Is this not just as I have been warning you, Father? That we cross the Campbells at our peril?”
“Damn you, Gunn!” Uilleam growled and reached for the dirk in his belt.
“Peace!” Angus barked, staying Uilleam’s hand with his own and shooting a dark look at his son. “I will have no blood shed in my hall.”
James stepped away. Uilleam continued to glower at him.
Angus stared intently into Uilleam’s eyes. He was torn. He could understand and admire Uilleam’s need for vengeance, but he also knew that, if he let him leave his hall, the lad would be going to his certain death and that yon death would be futile.
“You must do as you must, and there is no question that Iain Mor must be avenged. But there is more than one way to flay a wolf, Uilleam, lad. James is right; you will surely die if you go hot-trot after Cailean Campbell, and your father will go unavenged as a consequence. Now is the time for a cool head. It was always your father’s scheme to build a confederacy of the smaller clans in Argyll to resist the rise of the Campbells. Isn’t that right? Well, what greater vengeance could there be than to see your father’s scheme come to fruit?”
“I still say we should have nothing to do with such schemes,” James grumbled.
“Silence!” Angus shouted, specks of saliva flying from his lips. “What has just transpired at Meggernie only convinces me the more that the Campbells are not to be trusted. We must fight them; the only question is ‘How?’ Isn’t that so, Uilleam?”
Uilleam nodded dumbly. He was numb with shock.
“Good!” Angus smiled and removed his hand from Uilleam’s. “Now, take half-a-dozen of my men and go and gather the remnants of your clan. Bring them back to Clyth. Meanwhile, I will arrange a gathering of the other clan chiefs, and we will se
e what we can do to avenge Iain Mor’s death. But do not throw everything away by acting rashly, while your blood is up, lad. For then your father’s death will have been for nothing.”
Uilleam nodded again and, his madness calmed by Angus’s words, stepped purposefully towards the door. Iain signaled to a group of his retainers to accompany him, detaining one of them to speak in his ear.
“If the young MacGregor shows any indication of going after the Campbells, bind him fast and bring him back here.”
Siusan watched as her father’s men fall into step around Uilleam. Briefly, her eyes met his, and they exchanged a look that is pregnant with knowing and wonder as the party passed through the hall door.
“Thank you, Father,” she murmured.
Angus placed a hand on his daughter’s arm and squeezed it reassuringly.
She felt relieved. Uilleam, if not safe, was at least out of the immediate danger of self-harm. A warm sensation suffused her breast. Something had changed, she realized. It was as if a spark had leaped between them
She hurried up to her chamber window to watch Uilleam depart. She unlatched the casement and threw the window wide. There he was, taking the halter of his stallion from the groom, the stallion prancing indignantly, striking sparks from the cobbles with its powerful hooves. She drank in the sight of his flaming red hair and beard, his hewn features, his broad, deep chest, his muscular limbs, and her heart soared. Inside that wild, elemental form she had found a sensitive soul, an unexpected softness that she had not even suspected before. That discovery left her feeling as if a whole flock of butterflies had suddenly been released in his heart. Her head spun with elation. She found herself wanting to laugh and cry at the same time.
She felt the whole world shift on its axis.
Everything, she suddenly knew, had changed utterly.
Chapter Twenty
Inveraray Castle
The same day
Meanwhile, at Inveraray Castle, Neil Campbell had calmed sufficiently to chance a meeting with his son. Had Cailean been present when the Campbell chief had received his lieutenants on their return from Glen Strae and heard of the massacre his son had perpetrated, he could not have trusted himself to refrain from strangling the lad with his own bare hands.
“I told you to make an example of them, not slaughter them,” he raged, spittle flying from his lips, as he stalked the floor of Cailean’s cabinet.
Cailean had changed from his battle-gear and into his customary doublet and trews and now sat lounged in his silk upholstered armchair, his legs crossed languidly at the knee, with a goblet of Madeira in his hand.
“Well,” he mused, unconcerned and unrepentant, “what does it matter? The world now contains one less rats’ nest, that is all. No one will mourn them.”
Neil lashed out at Cailean’s highly polished buckled shoes with his own booted foot, knocking his carefully arranged legs into disarray. Cailean squirmed to avoid a splash of the ruby wine from staining the sett of his trews.
“That is not the point, you dolt!” he screamed. “As I explained to you before you set out, I have been cultivating for many months now the clans that currently hold the glens east of Loch Awe. That was why you were supposed to be marrying the Gunn bitch in the first place, if you’ll remember. I was hoping to woo the lot of them and avoid a costly war. But now you have ruined any chance of that happening.”
Cailean scoffed.
“You know as well as I do that no love was lost between the MacGregors and their neighbors,” he sneered. “For generations, they have robbed and murdered one another. The clans should be glad that we have put the MacGregors to the sword. They will have peace at last without them.”
“And do you think they now believe that they will have peace from us?” Neil snarled, aiming a slap at Cailean’s carefully combed and pomaded hair. “No, they will be wary of us now. They have seen what lies in store for them, perhaps not slaughter but the end of their lineages for all that. They will understand clearly that the Campbells will swallow them up. And they will be afraid that, if they do not fight, they too will suffer the same fate as their age-old enemies, the MacGregors. They will be more inclined to believe that it might be better to go down fighting than to depend on our clemency, given the example you have shown. Jesus Christ, man! You have just undone all my careful work to bring about a peaceful conquest.”
Cailean stood up and walked away from his father towards the fire. He kicked the pile of logs that lay beside the fireplace, causing them to scatter over the hearth tiles.
“I cannot see why you need to pander to them anyhow,” he whined. “We have an army; they have none. Why can’t we just march in and take their land by force? Why do you persist in wooing them?”
Neil groaned in exasperation. How many times had he explained all this to his son?
“Because if they were to combine their forces, they would have an army.”
“Not a very big one. It would still be no match for ours.”
“No, but it would still be big enough to put us to the considerable expense of having to defeat it in the field.” Neil sighed. “You do not seem to appreciate the cost of things. I was hearing, for example, that you lost upward of thirty good men trying to capture the already defeated Iain MacGregor. What was the point of that, exactly? Do you know the worth of those thirty men to us? Do you appreciate that there will be widows and orphans to feed on top of the loss of those men themselves? If we were to repeat that folly in taking the castles of each of the other clans, we would soon have no army left. You squandered a small fortune in pursuing what was a vain and unnecessary action that is likely to cost us even more in the longer run. Now you have lost us what small trust we had managed to cultivate among the MacGregors’ neighbors.”
Cailean folded his arms and set his jaw against making any apology for his behavior. The MacGregor had defied him to his face, mocked him in front of his men. He could not have let that insult go unpunished. His honor and his vanity could not have allowed it.
And more blood needed to be spilled. There was still that insolent dog, Uilleam, to deal with.
And Cailean was determined that Uilleam MacGregor would not die as easily as his father. Uilleam MacGregor would die in a dark dungeon, suffering the torments of hell.
Chapter Twenty-One
The great hall at Clyth Castle
Three days later
True to his word, Angus had called a conference of the chiefs of the clans to which the Campbell’s expansionist ambitions posed a threat. The gathering was to take place in the great hall at Clyth Castle, and Angus had sent envoys to invite the MacColls, the MacGillemichaels, and the MacLeays. Uilleam would be there to represent the remnant of the MacGregors, while Angus himself would stand for the Gunns. James had refused to have anything to do with the conference and had taken himself off south to Crieff, to sell the black cattle at the Michaelmas Tryst
Siusan was helping her mother, Shona, to prepare the great hall for the arrival of the clan chiefs. As she bustled into the hall, she could hear the roar of the fire that had been set in the crib of the heavy iron grate in the large fireplace at the side of the room. The servants chattered excitedly as they scraped the floor with their besoms, while Shona snapped orders and directions at their heels like a terrier. Baskets of aromatic herbs lay waiting to be strewn among the fresh rushes, once they had been scatted on the swept floor, and the perfume of the rose-scented wax candles that had been set burning all around the hall swelled to disperse the dunk stuffiness of the space.
As she watched her mother command the servants, a wave of affection ran through Siusan. She smiled fondly. It was not often that Shona got to beautify what was, after all, an austere and functional stronghold, and she was clearly making the most of the opportunity. She felt so proud of her mother at that moment, of the household accomplishments she could so rarely practice, of the skill with which she commanded the servants so firmly but fairly. Siusan resolved that, when one day she was mistress o
f a household, she would run it with much the same virtue as her mother.
As she turned to continue with the chore that had brought her to the great hall, Siusan spied Uilleam sitting alone on a bench in the corner of the room well out of the way of all the fuss and palaver that the servants were kicking up. His shoulders were slumped, and his head hung low between them as he contemplated the rough square hands that he was turning over and over in his lap.
A powerful feeling of sympathy stirred in her heart. He looked so forlorn, so alone and lost. He had just lost his father and his clan. She felt for his suffering and was drawn to go to him, to let him know that his grief was shared, that he need not carry it alone.
