by Fiona Faris
“What?” Uilleam prompted him.
“I was wondering whether a way out our impasse might be to send word to Cailean that we will surrender ourselves to him if, and only if, he first turns Shona and Siusan over to an intermediary; the MacIains of Lochaber, for example. As soon as they were safe out of his hands, we could turn ourselves over to him. Cailean would then have the security that, if we failed to do so, the intermediary would return the hostages to the Campbells. And we would have the security that Shona and Siusan would indeed go free.”
Uilleam pursed his lips and nodded slowly.
“That could work,” he said. “Though I’d rather we could rescue the women and win clean away ourselves. I’m rather attached to this hide of mine.”
“I can’t see how we could manage both,” Angus sighed, bringing the poker down hard on a clump of peat and sending sparks flying dangerously towards the thatch. “There are only the two of us…”
“Three!” a voice rang out from the door.
Uilleam and Angus sprang to their feet, their dirks drawn and flashing in their hands. Rob’s wife squealed with fright and clutched her infants to her.
The drenched figure that had just appeared in the doorway threw back the plaid from his head.
“James!” Angus exclaimed.
His son stood dripping in the gloom, a grim smile on his lips, nervous apprehension at how he would be received still in his eyes.
“What the hell are you doing here?” Uilleam growled. “I thought you had forsaken your people.”
James’s look of apprehension turned into a dark glour.
“I came as soon as I heard the news,” he snarled back. “Some drovers from Badenoch brought word with them to Crieff of the battle.”
“Then how did you find us?” Angus asked. “How did you know to look for us here?”
James huffed a laugh.
“Your trail was not hard to follow. I suspected you would have withdrawn into the upper reaches of the glen. And the rumors in the neighborhood are strong that you had taken refuge with MacDiarmid. I’m surprised that the Campbells did not get here before me. They cannot be looking for you very hard.”
“And I am surprised you haven’t gone running off to your friend, Cailean Campbell, with news of our whereabouts, so thick the two of you are together,” Uilleam sneered.
His words struck James like a blow. He bowed his head and looked at his feet.
“Aye, well…” he murmured. “Cailean Campbell is a friend of mine no longer, after the treachery he has shown to my family.” He suddenly looked up, his eyes ardent with appeal. “Forgive me, Father; I should never have trusted him. And I should have trusted better to your judgment and not abandoned you by going off in the sulks to Crieff with the cattle drive.”
Angus pulled himself up to his full height and fixed his son with a solemn gaze.
“It is over, James,” he said, accepting his son’s apology and setting things right between them. “I too should not have trusted the Campbells at the very beginning and pledged Siusan to Cailean as a token of my faith in them. They have betrayed grievously the trust we both put in them.”
Uilleam cleared his throat.
“Aye, well,” he said. “You cannot say you were not warned.” Then he too drew himself up to his full height and gave James a grave nod. “But, as Angus says, it is over. And I am glad that it is over.”
He held out his hand stiffly to James, and James just as stiffly stepped forward to accept it.
“So,” Uilleam said more brightly, lifting the mood of gloom tension from the reunion. “Now we are three. That puts an entirely different complexion on things.”
Angus looked puzzled.
“How do you mean?”
Uilleam grinned.
“Well, having one of Cailean Campbell’s trustees in our camp may well provide us with the key that will unlock Kylquhurne Castle.”
A grin slowly spread across Angus’ face.
“I like yer thinking,” Angus said, already anticipating what Uilleam was about to propose.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Kylquhurne Castle
The following day
“It is touching that you should come to plead for your sister and your mother, but I am at a loss as to what you can offer me for their return.”
Cailean Campbell and James Gunn were sitting in the solar of Kylquhurne Castle. The rain was falling steadily, and outside the solar window, James could see Siusan and his mother languishing, soaked and bedraggled, in the cage that hung from the gallows on the roof above.
“I am pleading on the basis of the past services I have rendered to you, on the basis of our friendship.”
“Our friendship!” Cailean sniffed in derision. “We were never ‘friends’. You were useful to me, that is all, and now your usefulness is over. You should know me well by now,” he added. “I am not the sentimental kind. Your usefulness to me in the past is now neither here nor there. Unless you can bring to me your father’s head on a plate, and that of the thieving rogue, Uilleam MacGregor, I have no reason to be handing over my two trump cards to you. You can see that, can’t you?”
James colored and looked at his feet.
“My father’s head…” he mumbled. “That could be arranged.”
Cailean looked at him in amused disbelief.
“What was that?” he said. “You would be prepared to sell your own father for the lives of those two chattels…? Why, that is low even for you, James.” He thought for a moment as if calculating a deal. “And the MacGregor chiel?”
“That would be even easier to arrange,” James assured him. “He is besotted with my sister, the way a puppy-dog is with its indulgent mistress. And besides, he would fall for any ploy that held out the prospect of his putting one over on you. He hates you with a vengeance, and he is blinded by that hate. He would walk into a dungeon and put his own wrists into the manacles on the wall if he thought that, by doing so, he would be in some way spiting you.”
Cailean chuckled at the image this conjured in his head.
“And how would you effect this arrangement?”
James leaned forward in his chair.
“I will tell them that I have interceded with you on their behalf, on the basis of our ‘friendship’, and that for the sake of that friendship you have agreed to release my mother and sister in return just for their submission to you – by swearing an oath of allegiance, say, that acknowledges themselves as your vassals from this time forth. Just think, you could have them mucking out your byres till the end of their days or running about your halls at your beck and call. Whatever you desire of them.”
“And you?” Cailean wondered, his eyes narrowed in suspicion. “What would you gain from all of this?”
“All I would ask is to be allowed to leave Argyll with my mother and sister,” James replied sincerely. “I am just lately back from the Michaelmas Tryst at Crieff. I have a mind to set myself up as a cattle-broker there. Edinburgh and Glasgow are growing towns; their hunger for beef is insatiable. That is where my future lies.”
Cailean’s were eyebrows arched in pleasant surprise. He saw James in a completely new light. It was an ingenious scheme, one which would have been worthy even of Cailean himself in its cunningness and enterprise. It was a scheme that had obviously been long and carefully thought out. Cailean had not realized that James Gunn had such a ruthless, treacherous streak in him, to be willing to sacrifice his own father for the sake of his advancement. The life of a prosperous cattle-broker in the fine burgh of Crieff was certainly far more enviable than that of the chieftain of a minor clan, which was on its last legs, in the backwater of a Highland glen. The motive was entirely credible, Cailean decided.
“Very well,” he conceded. “We may have a deal. You deliver your father and Uilleam MacGregor to me, and you may have your mother and sister. And I shall look forward to enjoying your hospitality the next time I am in Crieff,” he added with a smirk. “At long last, you might be
able to afford a fine table.”
James accepted Cailean’s invitation to spend the night at Kylquhurne. After dine in the great hall, James and his host withdrew to the solar and shared a flask of French brandy, before retiring to their chambers for the night.
Despite the soporific effects of the brandy, James did not undress and go to sleep. He waited until he judged that Cailean would be asleep, before slipping back out to the withdrawing room and opening the window that overlooked the suspended cage.
“Mother! Siusan!” he hissed.
In the utter darkness, he could just barely make out the cage as it dangled over the long drop to the rocky promontory below. He heard a stir and a shuffling in the darkness, then Siusan’s voice. It sounded weak and ravaged. James imagined that his sister had spent much of her captivity so far weeping.
“James? Is that you?”
“Yes.”
“I thought you were in Crieff.”
“I returned as soon as I heard of the battle. The Gunns have been defeated, the clan ruined.”
“I know. Father and Uilleam are on the run. Cailean has brought us here to try and tempt them out into the open.”
“I know all this too,” James told her, after a pause. “I have seen them. We are going to get you out tonight.”
There was a silent pause.
“Tonight? How?”
“Father and Uilleam are waiting by the shore, at the foot of the tower, outside the castle wall. I am to let a rope down to them from this window.”
“They are going to enter the castle?” Siusan gasped, raising her voice above a whisper.
“Ssh! For pity’s sake!” James hissed. “If anyone hears us, we are done for.”
“But they must not come,” Siusan insisted. “Father and Uilleam, they mustn’t come. Cailean will catch them. It is a trap. There are sentries everywhere.”
“The sentries will be watching the gates and walls. None will suspect that anyone will be climbing the sheer wall of the keep. It could never be done without help from within the castle itself, which is where I come in to play my part. ‘Enter James’, as in a makar’s play.”
“But they will make a noise. They will be discovered.”
“We will certainly be discovered if you don’t hold your wheesht!” James whispered, as loudly as he dared. “How are you and mother? Are you injured in any way? Are you able to walk?”
“We are cold, wet, and hungry,” Siusan sobbed. “Mother is asleep. She is exhausted.”
“Can she walk, though?” James pressed, beginning to lose his patience.
“Well, she’s not a cripple,” Siusan snapped back. “Of course, she can walk.”
“Then wake her and stay ready. I am going to fetch the rope.”
“Be careful, James!”
James returned to his chamber and removed a heavy coil of rope from his traveling bag. It was of the sort that drovers used to link their animals together through the rings in their noses. It was long enough to link a herd of fifty cattle – several lengths of strongly twisted hemp spliced together, long enough to reach the ground from the solar window.
He looped the coil over his shoulder and returned to the solar. He secured one end around the central mullion of the window, weighted the other end with a horseshoe to prevent the rope from being blown in the wind, and quickly fed it hand-over-hand down the wall of the tower until it reached the ground.
A tug on the rope signaled that Angus and Uilleam had it in their grasp.
The rope tightened and complained as it strained under the weight of the two men. James prayed that the mullion would hold, that it would not be pulled from its seating in the surrounding stonework. He also grew anxious at the way the rope was rubbing on the edge of the stone sill. He tore a strip of cloth from the hem of his shirt and made a wad of it, then eased it between the rope and the sill to keep the strands from fraying.
All the time, as Uilleam and Angus scaled the rope, James was on tenterhooks. He knew that a single sound, and scrape or a knock on the stonework, would alert the sentries who manned the battlements. He silently thanked God for the moonless, overcast night; as he peered down over the sill, all he could see was pitch-darkness, and all he could hear was the gentle rhythmic lapping of the water on the loch’s shore.
With a grunt, Uilleam’s broad forearms came above the window sill. James helped him haul himself through the window and into the solar. Shortly afterward, he was followed by Angus.
Angus was wan and breathless from the exertion. He stood in the middle of the room with his hands on his knees, drawing in vast drafts of breath.
“By here,” he remarked, “I’m getting far too old for this kind of carry on. This is a young man’s game.”
“Are there any guards on the tower roof?” Uilleam asked in a whisper.
“None that I know of,” James reported. “But there is a guard on the door to the roof, and the door itself is locked.”
Uilleam nodded and slipped from the solar and into the passageway beyond.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Later the same day
With a grunt, the guard fell, and the only other sound was the jingle of keys as Uilleam took them from the guard’s limp body. He looked about, hoping Siusan didn’t see. Even now, with all they had been through, she still didn’t enjoy watching him injure enemies, no matter how necessary it might be.
The slumped body of the guard would hardly be the only casualty that evening, of that Uilleam was certain. They were only getting started now. Whatever was to come would likely not be pretty and would most likely be filled with death and anguish. Whichever side it was that faced the most loss, he didn’t know yet.
But now they had a clear passage to the roof as he unlocked the door. He had made this plan from where he and Angus had been waiting at the shoreline until they realized that James was not coming out and they would certainly be going in. Their plans were still only half-formed as they had only James’s word to go on and had not seen the stronghold for itself yet.
Even with half-formed plans, Uilleam was determined that his death would be a small price to pay in ensuring that Siusan made it out alive that night. So long as she was safe, he didn’t care what happened to the rest of them.
Uilleam made his way back to the solar to alert the Gunns to come quickly.
“Right, we’ve got a clear passage if you come quickly,” he urged, cutting Siusan’s bonds easily with a swift stroke of his sword. Uilleam saw that Siusan had woken her mother while he had checked on the guard and the woman was rising to her feet where he cut her ropes as well.
A moment of hesitation could mean the difference between escape and death, but Uilleam gave them a chance to get their bearings, especially Shona who seemed frightened and ill-equipped to handle the mess of it all. He saw then how Siusan could not be his only priority. This was a fragile woman. Siusan was still a woman of spirit. He supposed it was unlikely that Shona would be better equipped at rescuing herself than Siusan would.
But once she was to her feet and seemed a bit less disoriented, Uilleam decided they had best press onward. He ushered the company to follow. Siusan and James came behind him with their mother and Angus bringing up the rear.
Uilleam looked again down the corridor. The turret stairs were straight ahead, but if he looked to his left, he saw that the stairs coming up to the solar were still wide open. There were closed doors to other rooms around, and Uilleam didn’t know if those other rooms currently had occupants or not. It was a grave risk, trying to get through alive when they had so little information about their surroundings. Still, they had to move forward.
In the middle of the corridor with the turret stairs on one end and the set of stairs coming up behind, it was too late when the company realized they were caught. With soldiers filing into the corridor from the lower floors and a series of doors flying open from the rooms around them, it was clear that they had little chance of escape save for the turret, which they had managed to reach the s
tairs for.
Siusan and her mother were being pushed into the small stairwell leading up to the turret, while James, Uilleam, and Angus had their swords drawn to give the women a chance of escape.
Before Uilleam could react, another sound cut through the air.
“And here he is. The cattle-thieving bugger. You know, I think he does more with the cattle than just steal them. Sound about right, boys?” Cailean’s voice insulted as he came in closer. His men had completed filled the corridor around the Gunns and Uilleam.
“There’s only one bugger I see,” James spat in anger.
Cailean laughed. “Oh really? Because if I recall, you were following me around, begging for my approval not so long ago. So what does that make you?”
