Anne climbed clumsily to her feet. Her eyes, tattooed with purple circles about the lids, were glued to the thick stick in Frances’s hands. “Aye, he has a boat there.”
“Then we shall go to the cellars. Do not tempt me, Anne, unless you are eager to die, for I shall strike you dead if you try to escape.” And in that moment, Frances absolutely meant those words. “Light that lantern and hold it before you as we go.”
Frances pulled back the bolt from the door and opened it wide. Once the lantern was lit, she gestured for Anne to go ahead of her. The keep was eerily quiet. Everyone, except perhaps the children, had been roused and sent out to seek George and his kidnappers. She and Anne might as well have been the only two people left in the world.
They went down the stairs as quickly as Anne’s trembling legs would take her. The keep was not in total darkness, but most of the torches had been snapped up by searchers, and those that remained cast wholly inadequate light, which had a tendency to waver alarmingly in the eddies caused by the women’s passage.
Frances had hoped to find someone still in the cellars, but all had gone on into the dungeon. She and Anne were still on their own. She wanted to call out to Colin, but knew the acoustics might betray her quavering voice and her position to an enemy hiding in the cellar or the secret passage.
Anne found the door behind the empty whisky barrels still open, but hesitated on the threshold, with her lantern held high.
“Go on,” Frances said.
“I have never been inside,” Anne answered fearfully. “I do not know the way from here. We might get lost.”
This gave Frances pause. She knew about sea caves’ evil reputation. She looked about consideringly until she saw the end of a badly charred torch wedged between two casks. Keeping an eye on Anne, she quickly retrieved it.
“We shall use soot to mark the walls if we come to a divide,” she suggested. “Go on. We are wasting time. We must hasten if we are to stop this tragedy.”
Anne nodded reluctantly and then stepped into the dark passage. Frances, though very determined to go on, found that she also had to pause at the doorway and gather her courage before journeying on.
The sea passage was narrow—so narrow that she would be unable to swing her club. It sloped downward steeply and was very dark and damp. It was also filled with unpleasant rustlings and whispers, which caused much churning in her imagination.
A sudden rush of dizziness hit her as she stared into the black, traveling from ankles to heart and then on to her head. Frances wanted to blame the terrible feeling on bad air, but she knew it was fear. Fear for George, fear of whoever waited in the darkness, fear of the dark itself.
“Colin,” she whispered, invoking his name like a talisman. It did not help her nerves when a low moaning filled the passage and washed over them, making Anne catch her breath and momentarily freeze. “That was only the ocean or the wind. For George you must be courageous,” she encouraged herself, stepping after Anne. She called softly: “Hurry. We must hurry!”
She did not admit to herself that the moan might have come from George, but the unspoken fear forced her onward when her timid mind called to her to go back to the safety of the light and other people.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
When shall we three meet again?
In thunder, lightning, or in rain?
—William Shakespeare, Macbeth
Frances and Anne had just entered the dripping sea cave and started toward the two struggling figures they found there when Frances felt a presence behind her. Before she could do more than half spin around, an arm in a saffron sark snaked out and wrapped itself about her throat, pulling her tightly against a barrel chest. The man smelled of sweat and whisky. Frances opened her mouth to scream but only managed a short cry before her air was blocked off by the brutal living clamp at her neck.
She struggled, but the man was fantastically strong, and one look at Anne’s shocked face and shrinking posture told Frances that she could expect no help from that quarter.
“Gi’e us a hand here, Iain!” the man puffed as he tried to subdue her.
As the villain began to drag her toward the front of the cave where a large lantern glowed, Frances tightened her hands about her club, preparing to defend herself. Her assailant’s most vulnerable parts were his naked shins. She prayed for a true aim and the strength to deliver a crippling blow. She knew she was unlikely to have another chance once the second man finished with the frantically struggling George and added his efforts to restraining her.
A familiar ghost, the sad lady who had been in his chamber on his wedding night, appeared before Colin and pointed back the way they had come. He spun about abruptly.
“The cellar!” he exclaimed. “The passage has to be there! This is too far belowground anyway.”
Lucien looked skeptical, but MacJannet never questioned Colin’s judgment. He could not see spirits as Colin did, but he did not doubt that one was near. Colin’s nerves were on the jump that night, but those nerves had an uncanny ability to know trouble when it was near. As Colin hurried back toward the cellars, MacJannet followed, hobbling as quickly as he could.
Harry was heard woo-wooing frantically as he, too, took up the hunt.
“Damnation!” Colin swore, his voice echoing in the long stone room. “We went right past this stack of overturned barrels! The door is bloody obvious.”
“What?” MacJannet demanded, taken aback. He refrained from cursing, but felt blasphemous every time his leg twinged. “I am certain it was not thus when we passed before. Something has overturned these barrels. Maybe the hound has found a scent?”
“They dragged George down to the dungeon. He hasn’t been in here. Who then?”
The worried ghost floated nearby, still pointing. Colin nodded and pulled the old door wide. A faint noise crawled up from the dank blackness. Colin stopped breathing and listened intently. “Bloody hell!”
“What?”
“That was Frances!” He was certain of this even without the ghost’s admonition. “The MacDonnells have her, too!”
Without hesitation Francis swung her club downward at her assailant’s legs. At her attacker’s sharp cry and stumble, she threw herself against his strangling arm. To her surprise, the ploy worked.
Once free of her human noose, she spun about, raising her arms high. Frances next delivered a mighty swing, connecting with the side of the man’s tammed head, with her full strength behind the blow. There was a horrible cracking noise as his tam flew into the air. The man grunted and then dropped like a stone onto the cave’s wet floor.
Hearing a shout behind her, Frances spun about, raising her club again. “George, beware!” she screamed as she began another mighty swing.
Colin rushed recklessly down the rough passage that led toward the sea cave, following the spirit. He couldn’t hear much beyond the echoes of his feet, his ragged breathing, and the moaning of the sea. The lantern shed sufficient light so that he could see when to duck, but the leather soles of his shoes were confoundedly slippery and much of his time was spent recovering his balance after near-accidents.
Suddenly there came the sound of something large and wet hitting stone. Colin had heard enough cracking skulls to recognize the sound of a head hitting something solid. A heavy thud followed.
“Frances got one!” he called back to MacJannet, pride at her courage battling with terror in his heart.
There came a high thin scream of someone either facing Hell or slipping over the edge of sanity. It didn’t sound like either Frances or George, but with the distortion of noise in the cavern, it wasn’t possible to identify the noise enough to know that it was even human.
Forgetting all caution, Colin threw himself toward the dim glimmer at the end of the tunnel. He threw his lantern aside as soon as the passage broadened, and he drew his sword as he leapt into the chamber.
He took in the scene at a glance. Anne Balfour, keening like a banshee, was huddled over a man’s body. Frances, w
ith her club raised, was prepared to do further harm to the remaining kidnapper if she could get around his human shield—George.
Colin took a flanking position, but he also hesitated at the sight of the naked blade pressed into George’s bare throat. The boy’s eyes were wide with fear, but he wasn’t screaming.
A livid MacJannet erupted into the chamber behind Colin, followed by an even more enraged Harry, who howled his anger at the man who had taken his beloved George and locked him in the dungeon. More footsteps and cursing voices echoed down the passage.
“Let the lad go, man,” Colin said. Harry crouched beside Colin, clearly furious but also uncharacteristically cautious.
“You can take your boat and go. We’ll not stop you,” Colin said. “But hurt that boy and I’ll spit you where you stand.”
“I’m takin’ the boat—and the laddie.” The voice was laced with equal parts of hate and fear.
“Non. This you shall not do!” Frances took a step forward. The sad ghost also darted in, trying but unable to affect events on the human plane.
“Frances!” Colin warned. He didn’t want her placing herself between the man and his own sword.
“He shall not take George!” she answered furiously. “I’ll kill George first.” Her threat was fierce and Colin almost believed her. He hoped the would-be kidnapper believed her, too.
The ghost suddenly tipped back her head and let out a silent scream. Instantly a keening, higher and more piercing than Anne’s and Harry’s combined, filled the chamber. Frances froze at the sound.
“Mon Dieu!”
The echo had barely died away when Tearlach and Lucien hurtled into the room.
“Can you not silence that beast, mon ami?” Lucien demanded. “He is curdling my blood.”
A second and even louder howling reverberated in the cavern. Frances flinched away from the sound and the man holding George began to tremble.
“What manner of beast is that?” Lucien demanded.
“’Tis the hellhound! A creature frae the night side.” Tearlach’s voice was barely heard over the unnatural echoes that lingered longer they should have. “Someone is about tae die.”
“Get it away!” the kidnapper screamed. “Get it away or I’ll kill the laddie!”
With a third eerie howling that nearly stopped the blood with dams of icy terror, the true hellhound of the Balfours appeared. One moment there was nothing, and then a black shape stalked out of the shadows. Colin had seen many spirits in his life, but none like this beast.
The kidnapper’s eyes widened at the sight of the infernal hound, and a tiny mewl of terror escaped his lips. The knife that had been at George’s throat was turned toward the black beast that stalked either him or the boy: none could tell for sure who was the target.
“Get away! Get away!” the MacDonnell screamed.
With a sudden wrench that left his torn shirt behind, the agile George was able to break away from his captor. If the intruder had hoped that the hound would follow George, his wishes were dashed in the instant before he died. The Bokey hound was apparently still loyal to his Balfour masters. He had died once to protect his laird and would again. The ghost pointed at the kidnapper in silent command, and the beast leapt.
The man ran for the sea in a desperate bid for freedom, perhaps recalling the legend that said ghosts could not travel over water. There was a clatter of toenails on hard stone, and a second voice rose in canine anguish as Harry also launched himself at the intruder’s fleeing form. Frances jumped back toward the mouth of the cave and the figures rushing down on her, and then vanished in the blackness as the panicked man fled toward what he hoped would be salvation.
Harry and the Bokey hound both launched themselves into the air. For an instant, the two beasts were joined, one sandy brown and the other a black shadow. Both bodies flew at the trespasser, teeth showing.
The man screamed once and fell to the cave floor under the weight of the hounds, half of his body outside the cave. It was difficult for anyone to see what happened then, as the lantern near the man’s feet was tipped over and the shutter fell half closed, but there could be no denying that when Harry jumped back from the man’s body a moment later, his prey was dead. The man’s head rested at an unnatural angle that only occurred when a neck was broken.
The ghost remained for a moment longer, then wavered like a candle flame caught in a wind and went out.
For a long moment no one moved, then Tearlach threw off his paralysis and went to stand over the body while George knelt to embrace the trembling Harry.
“You are an excellent hound! So brave and smart. Oh Harry!” the boy said, burying his face in the dog’s ruffed neck.
Harry licked the boy’s neck and ear, comforting him as best he could. The dog himself seemed bewildered, and Colin wondered if he had been in control at the time of the attack or if the spectral hound had somehow possessed him.
“Frances!” Colin called, putting up his sword. “Where are you?”
Frances came stumbling out of gloom at the front of the cave and then, regaining her balance, she hurled herself into Colin’s arms. Her hands and hem were wet from where she had stumbled in the surf. Colin didn’t complain about the wet and cold.
“Colin, it was the real hound,” she cried into his shirt as he ran his hands over her, assuring himself that she had met with no injury.
“Aye, I saw it.”
“We all did and I pray I never witness such a thing again,” MacJannet said amazedly, coming forward awkwardly and putting an arm around George and urging him to his feet. “Lad, are you hurt?”
“Nay, just a bloodied nose. Frances arrived in time. She cracked that man’s head open.” This was said with joy rather than horror. Colin was relieved that it was so.
“Mon Dieu, mon Dieu, mon Dieu,” Lucien muttered, still stunned by what they had witnessed. His previous life had never prepared him for an encounter with anything of a spectral nature.
“My sentiments precisely,” Colin answered. He had encountered many spirits but still found himself shaken by what he had witnessed. He could only imagine what this meant to the others in the cave, who had never seen an apparition. “Yet I think we had best decide what we are going to tell the others about this night. It would be best if we presented a united tale.”
“We tell them nothing of this,” Lucien answered swiftly, waving a hand at the man with the broken neck. “Their beliefs make no allowance for…for…things of this nature. They must believe it was the work of earthly agents or it could go ill for all of us. There can be no talk of demon dogs or a Balfour curse or anything from the night side.”
“That’s all well and good, but there is one here who may not hold her tongue,” Tearlach answered, finally backing away from the corpse. “Have ye all forgotten the traitor?”
They all turned then and looked at the cowering Anne Balfour. She had stopped screaming and crying, and was staring off into space, her eyes blank as an empty mirror. Her complexion was bloodless. For one moment, Colin wondered if she was in fact dead.
“I don’t believe this woman will be saying anything for a long while,” MacJannet answered. “She may never speak again.”
“She’s a woman,” Tearlach retorted. “Ye ken that she’ll speak again. And once she does, there’ll be nae shutting her up again. I say we silence her now.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
I dare do all that may become a man;
Who dares do more, is none.
—William Shakespeare, Macbeth
The conspirators agreed on the story that Colin had killed one of the intruders and Harry the other, sparing the belatedly emotional Frances of accusations of unfemininity for taking part in George’s rescue, from the likely hidebound Balfour males. Why this should suddenly be the cause of mental mortification escaped Tearlach, who was very proud of Frances’s unfeminine calm in the face of disaster, but even he agreed to hold fast to this story when she entreated him for silence.
Thi
s stratagem also conveniently spared those who had not clearly seen the Bokey hound themselves from admitting that the beast existed, or else suspecting that several of their party had run mad while breathing bad cavern air. Any howling would be blamed on Harry and the cave’s unusual acoustics, which did play tricks with voices.
Privately, Colin assured Frances that he thought she was magnificently brave—and that if she ever blatantly disregarded his commands again, he’d lock her in a dungeon for the rest of her life. This was an empty threat, as Pemberton Fells didn’t have one, but Frances promised faithfully to always be dutiful in immediately attending to his wishes.
Colin didn’t believe her, but he supposed the chances of their ever being in a similar situation were so remote that he would not dwell on all the hideous possibilities of what might have happened, had she not had her golf club and a good deal of luck.
Though there was unanimity on the subject of the hound, they had disagreement over the matter of what to do with Anne Balfour. Lucien wanted her dead, as did Tearlach. MacJannet reserved his opinion, but Colin was sure he also agreed that this was the best solution for the traitor.
George would not voice an opinion either, and Colin did not press him. The boy was spending a lot of time practicing archery and talking to his hound. Colin was certain that George would recover his spirits once they were away from Noltland, but the boy’s emotional withdrawal was another reason to make haste away from the haunted and unhappy place.
“At the very least, she should have her thumbs branded, to mark her for the traitor she is,” Colin had argued with his stubborn bride.
But, for once, his lady did not call for blood: “She shall return to her people when she is well enough to travel. Her lover is dead and she is half mad. That is punishment enough.”
“You are too forgiving.” But Colin did not argue further for Anne Balfour’s punishment. The woman looked so frail that it seemed the breath of heaven itself might be too much for her to withstand if it blew upon her. Also, it was as he had explained to Lucien: he had no stomach for warring on women.
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