by Fiona Faris
“There was nothing we could do, Angus Mor,” he mourned. “There was no one to fight them. Forgive us! I feel it sore that we could not defend the women.”
“There is nothing to forgive, Ranald,” he assured the old man gently, though he was addressing them all. “I know your worth, and there was nothing you could have done. God knows I could not keep them safe myself.”
He gazed up at the tower of the keep, considering what he should do next. He could not bear the thought of Clyth becoming home to a garrison of Campbells. After a few moments, he addressed his clansfolk.
“Take the beasts and provisions and return to your kinsfolk on the crofts. I hereby release you from your service. Make ready and go now, quickly.”
The clansfolk melted away. They gathered the cattle from the outer ward and loaded the horses from the stables with as many of the provisions from the stores as they could carry. Meanwhile, Angus, Uilleam, and his few remaining warriors dismantled the outhouses, stables, and workshops and hefted the straw and wood into the undercroft of the keep.
Soon, the clansfolk were dispersing throughout the glen, driving cattle and pigs and horses before them. Angus, with tears streaming down his cheeks, took a torch from one of his men and thrust it into the tinder-dry straw they had packed into the empty cellars.
“I will have no Campbells living at Clyth,” he declared, as the straw caught, and the castle keep went up in flames.
The men watched in grim silence as they watched more than stone and mortar crack and crumble under the heat of the flames; they saw in the flames the end of their clan too. Some wept openly and unashamedly for their loss, but Angus Mor stood tall and somber, the reflection of the flames ardent in his eyes. Uilleam, too, stood dry-eyed and solemn his face set in stony fortitude, his red hair seemingly aflame too in the pitch-black night.
“Gleann Urchaidh!” Angus cried out in salute, as the roof fell in and a corner of the tower collapsed with a tremendous crash.
“Gleann Urchaidh!” echoed his men, though it was a subdued and hollow cry.
“Gleann Urchaidh no more,” Uilleam murmured.
He turned away and gathered up the reins of his pony.
Only a few hours earlier, Siusan and Shona had ridden down Glen Orchy towards Loch Awe and Kylquhurne Castle, surrounded by a cohort of Cailean’s men.
They looked for all the world as if they were a pair of fine ladies traveling with an escort of loyal retainers. Cailean rode by their side, dapper in his dark blue tunic with gold piping and blue tartan trews, a flat bonnet with a long eagle feather set at a jaunty angle on his head. It was almost dark when the narrow silver plate of Loch Awe stretched out before them, with the dark mass of Kylquhurne Castle standing stark against it.
“Tell us,” Siusan began. They were the first words she had deigned to give him since they had set out from Clyth. “My father and Uilleam MacGregor, did they die in the battle?”
Cailean laughed lightly.
“No, no, they got away,” he replied. “They scampered up the braes like hares with lurchers snapping at their tails.” He indicated the darkening hills with a sweep of his hand. “They will be up there, somewhere, licking their wounds in some hole in the ground. But they will come to wish they had died,” he added, “once I have gotten hold of them. Mark my words!”
Shona sneered.
“And how do you propose to get ahold of them?” she enquired. “Angus knows these hills like the back of his hand. They will be far away by the time you Campbells have worked out the north from the south.”
Cailean threw back his head and laughed.
“Well said, Mistress Gunn! But that is where you come in. You see, when word gets out that I have you and your daughter as guests in my house, I imagine that Angus and the MacGregor chiel will be keen to be reunited with you. And when they come, I shall flay the skin from their backs; I have a Frenchman in my service who can do just that and has promised to teach me how. It will be grand to have your husband to practice on. And as for you two… Well, once you have served your purpose in luring them to my knife, I can always give you as a reward to the Frenchman to play with. I’m sure he will enjoy your daughter particularly. She has such a soft silky skin…”
“They will never come,” Siusan spat. “They will know it is a trap.”
Cailean chuckled.
“You think not?” he asked. “How long do you think they will be able to bear the sight of the two of you hanging in cages from my battlements, starving, lying in your own filth, and exposed to the elements?”
“You are a monster!” Siusan exclaimed in horror.
Cailean received it almost as a compliment.
“I do what I must, for the sake of my clan,” he said.
“Ye do whit ye will tae sate yer sordid appetites,” Siusan corrected him, her voice dripping with disdain.
Cailean appraised her with amusement.
“You do me a disservice, Siusan, my dear. I am rather a connoisseur. I could enjoy you like I might a fine wine, but – alas! – I must forgo that undoubted pleasure to ensure I can secure the far more sublime delight of making your Uilleam sing and beg for my mercy. I can’t imagine why you preferred his rough pawing,” he added spitefully, “to the finer agony of my more sophisticated lovemaking. Maybe there is too much of the slut in you.”
Siusan blanched. Pure hatred steeled her eyes.
“He is more of a man than you will ever be,” she sneered. “He even smells like a man, and not like some French whore’s boudoir.”
One of Cailean’s men snickered.
Cailean spun around in his saddle to catch the insubordinate, but his glare was met only by a dozen stony faces. He colored and swore.
“You shall pay for your insolence,” he hissed at Siusan. “You too shall be on your knees, begging, at my feet by the time I have finished with you.
He heeled his horse and cantered on a little way ahead, his head held high like a cock on the midden in a vain attempt to restore his dignity.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Rob MacDiarmid’s blackhouse
The following day
“I rescued her before, I can do so again.”
Angus shook his head.
“No, lad; it is different this time,” he replied. “At Inveraray, you took them by surprise. They were not expecting you. This time, they will be waiting for you. That is their whole purpose in taking the women to Kylquhurne; it is to bait a trap.”
Uilleam snarled, and his knuckles whitened as he raised his fist up to his face. Inwardly, he vowed that he would crush Cailean Campbell like a hazelnut.
“But we must do something,” he insisted. “We cannot just leave them there, at Cailean’s mercy.”
They were in the house of a crofter, far up Glen Orchy, near where the young river flowed out of Loch Tulla. They had taken refuge there in the early hours, after leaving the burning pyre of Clyth Castle and dispersing the remaining warriors to the crofts. The pair of them had been exhausted after the events of the previous twenty-four hours, collapsed on pallets of straw in the living-space of Rob MacDiarmid’s blackhouse, ben from the byre, and had slept late into the morning of the following day. Now, they were sitting by the hearth, being gazed upon by Rob MacDiarmid’s three broukit bairns.
“I know, I know,” Angus replied impatiently. “But it would be of no help to them whatsoever were we to end up in a cage beside them. I don’t know what we can do.”
He put his head in his hands and groaned.
Uilleam stood up from the fire and went out of the low blackhouse door. He looked north to Loch Tulla and the mountains beyond. The sky was leaden and overcast and lay oppressive over the land. A curlew flew weeping, high over the face of the loch. The fire of his rage was consuming him; every sinew of his body cried out to be doing something, anything, to be rescuing his love from the clutches of the Campbells, but Angus was right, there was nothing they could do. He knew that Cailean was just waiting for them to act, to do something
impetuous out of the very anger and frustration that was goading him then so that he could spring his trap and capture his prize.
Uilleam remembered the games of chess he used to play with his father, Iain. What was it that his father used to say?
In chess, as in war, as indeed in love, you should never begin by mounting an all-out attack. That just allows your opponent to see what's coming and arrange his defenses accordingly. You need to be far craftier than that. You need to take your time and patiently deploy your forces first, set your traps and misdirections, your bluffs and disguises. It is only when you have done all that, and when your opponent has wandered into your ambuscade, that you make your decisive strike, by which time it is too late for him to do anything about it.
The problem was that he did not have the luxury of time. Siusan could be suffering unimaginable hurt and terrors at that very moment, and he had no pieces to deploy. There was just himself and Angus. There was no stratagem he could employ, no gambit available to him by which he could outwit his opponent. An all-out attack was the only option that his opponent, Cailean, had left him, and an all-out attack would be suicide, no real option at all.
He ground his teeth and beat his temples with his fists. He could not bear his impotence. He had always managed, by sheer brute force or more subtle guile, to meet and overcome the obstacles that obstructed him in getting what he wanted. But now he found himself helpless, and that more than anything else was what enraged him. He was as angry with himself as he was with the Campbells. First his own father and his clan, then the Gunns, and now his beloved Siusan and her mother… He had been unable to save any of them, and this cast a doubt his manhood.
He suddenly became aware that he was being watched. He slowly turned and found the three MacDiarmid infants, barefoot and dirty, their faces smeared with snot and dried tears, staring at him with intensity and without the least shred of self-consciousness, in the way that only small children can. Normally, he would have feinted at them with a roar, to frighten them away and be amused at the terror he had caused them. But this time he did not. He went over and crouched down in front of them.
“What are your names?” he asked them gently,
“I’m Robert Og, this is Michael, and this is Flora,” the tallest of the three and their self-appointed spokesman replied. “I’m the oldest,” he added as an afterthought, in case there should be some doubt.
Flora reached up and patted his thick beard with her hand.
“Are you the Man of Meall Mor?” she asked matter-of-factly.
“Don’t be daft!” Wee Rob chided her. “The Man of Meall Mor is a dark-haired giant. This giant’s hair is red.”
Flora considered this evident truth. It was as her mother told in her story: the Man of Meall Mor was most definitely dark.
“But do you still steal children away who have been bad?” she pressed.
Uilleam laughed.
“No, I don’t steal children, whether they have been good or bad. I make children fly around their houses.”
He snatched Wee Rob up and draped his legs over his shoulders, then he gripped Michael under one arm and Flora under the other and went charging around the blackhouse, roaring like the wind. The children laughed and shrieked; Robert Og plunged his fingers into the mass of Uilleam’s red hair and clung on for dear life.
The commotion brought Angus and their mother out from in-by and Big Rob out from the adjoining byre. They laughed at the sight of them, the red-haired giant lumbering around the blackhouse with three ecstatic children suspended about him, scattering the hens in indignant alarm.
Suddenly, the low clouds parted, and a shower of early fall sunshine cascaded down on them. Uilleam’s optimism and faith in his own abilities had returned. He would rescue Siusan; he would find a way. He was the Red-Haired Giant! Uilleam Mor! No Campbell would get the better of him.
Siusan surveyed the room. The painted panels, the embroidered wall-hangings, the dark wood furnishings… All bespoke luxury, as did the expensive-looking knick-knacks that adorned the occasional spindle-shanked tables and the broad marble mantle-shelf above the hearth. The room was also scrupulously clean and well-fired; not a hint of dampness was to be felt in the air. To Siusan it seemed as if she had been taken back to Inveraray; however, the apartment was in the solar of Kylquhurne Castle. Beyond the window, Loch Awe stretched seemingly endless to the west.
“Are these to be our chambers, then?” she sniffed, feigning indifference. “I suppose they will just have to do.”
Cailean laughed.
“Ha, you jest...! No, milady, your accommodation is here,” he sneered. “Come and see.”
He beckoned Siusan and her mother to the window. He unlatched the casement.
“Look.”
Siusan peered from the window. From a gallows construction, overhanging the parapet above the solar, hung a wooden cage, about the size of a garderobe.
“Is it tae yer satisfaction?” he enquired ironically before a vicious smile melted across his face. “Ye will be lodged in there until starvation or exposure take ye. I may feed ye scraps from this window like a beast in a menagerie. But, tae be plain, it might be a blessing tae let ye starve afore the winter comes. But… whitever.” He dismissed the matter with a wave of his fingers as if it were one of small importance.
Siusan spun from the window, her face transfixed with horror.
“No!” she cried and made to rush to her mother.
Cailean threw an arm around her waist and dragged her back.
“Take the old sow and her runt to their pen,” he instructed the group of guards which had accompanied them up the staircase of the tower. “Now, right away, just as they are.”
The guards seized Siusan and Shona and dragged them to the solar door. Siusan scratched and struggled, but the guards held her fast. She continued to struggle vainly as they were dragged up the turret stair and onto the roof.
The chains suspending the wooden cage shrieked and rattled as the cage was pulled up level with the parapet. The women were forced in, and the door nailed shut. Then the cage was lowered once again over the parapet.
“I shall take no pleasure from watching ye dwine away from cold an’ hunger,” Cailean commiserated over the edge of the parapet, though the women could no longer see him. “It is all so unnecessary, such a shameful waste. Yer faither’s fault, o’ course. He should ne’er hae tried tae play his silly games with me. Let us hope that he an’ that filthy thief o’ yers, Uilleam MacGregor, can join us soon. I will give ye both their heads tae play with.”
Rob MacDiarmid assured Angus and Uilleam that they could stay with him for as long as they needed to.
“You are my chief,” he told Angus. “You need not ask for my hospitality.”
After three days, they were still no closer to a plan for rescuing Siusan and Shona. Short of surrendering themselves up to Cailean’s mercy, there was nothing they could realistically do, and they were under no illusion that even they were to hand themselves over, all four of them would die in any case. There was no way Cailean could be trusted to release their womenfolk once he had Angus and Uilleam in his clutches. In fact, this was the one flaw in his stratagem, Uilleam thought; there was no incentive for them to take the bait, no prize they could walk away with, no prospect of a win that could tempt them into venturing the risk in the first place.
But, equally so, they could not just sit back and do nothing. They had to find a way of getting Siusan and Shona out of Kylquhurne Castle.
“Perhaps we should go down to Loch Awe and just take a look,” Uilleam suggested on the third evening, as they sat around the hearth, supping sowens from rough wooden cogies. “You can never know what opportunities will present themselves when you are looking at a problem in the flesh rather than in the abstract just.”
Angus shook his head.
“No, we would be spotted. The ground is flat and barren for a good mile around Kylquhurne; there is no cover behind which we could conceal ourselves. We woul
d be as well marching straight up to the gates, blowing trumpets and waving flags.”
They fell silent. They were still no closer to solving the impasse. A blustery gale blasted the turf walls and threw loud smatterings of rain against the rush thatch above their heads. They huddled around the fire as closely as the hands they cupped around their warm cogies.
Angus picked up the wooden poker and raked the tip of it through the embers that glowed against the firestones at the edge of the hearth. He had a thoughtful look on his face.
“I was thinking, maybe…”
He trailed off, as if reluctant to give voice to what was only a half-formed thought.
