And I still held my knife.
My attack was more instinctive than calculated. If he reached his sword, I would die. I knew this unconditionally. So I struck again, reaching up to slice the blade of my knife across Aleck’s neck, putting as much driving effort into the assault as I had the first time. The knife cut deep and so cleanly that when it emerged there was but a thin red line across his neck. Within a second, the blood bubbled and spat, staining his neck and his chest. I watched the life leave his eyes in a ghostly, horrific shift. I pushed at his body with as much strength as I could, knowing he was about to slump on top of me. The thought of being trapped beneath his big, lifeless, blood-soaked body was horrifying, and I was desperate to escape him. Even more than I had been when he’d been alive and terrorizing me with the most profound threat a woman can face.
With wild relief, I was able to scramble out from under him. I was covered with his blood.
But I was free of him.
And I needed to find my husband.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
I WAS SHAKEN to my bones. My face was wet with tears, and I felt sticky and hot with drying blood and the residual sweat of my terror.
I would not be expected; this would work in my favor. If I could keep myself hidden, I might be able to find him, and help him. It occurred to me that I would have to go back up to the turret—even though I was more than halfway down the stairs—to get my knife. But then I looked at my bloodied hand and saw that it was there, still held in my white-knuckled grip. This relieved me to the depths of my soul. To retrace my steps and once again lay eyes on Aleck’s corpse was more than I could have handled. I would have done it, but I was glad I didn’t have to.
Our private chambers were empty now. The door was still open. The silk strands I had used to bind Kade’s wrists lay shredded on the floor like shiny, forlorn reminders. Was he still alive? Aye, I knew he would be. It had cost me dearly, but they’d recognized the value of him for the cause of their rebellion. He would be highly useful. The state of him didn’t matter to them, as long as he lived.
He’d be badly beaten, chained, tortured within an inch of his life. All of it, every degree of his pain, was my fault, but I couldn’t berate myself on that count. If I hadn’t done what I done, he’d most certainly be as dead as Aleck.
Kade’s weapons still lay where he’d left them. I picked up one of his weapons belts—the one with his sword and his bone-handled knife, his two favorite weapons, if the time he spent sharpening them was any indication. It was far too big to strap around my waist, so I slung it across my chest. These weapons were exceptionally heavy, and I doubted I could even have wielded the massive sword. But I didn’t intend to use them myself. He would need them, as we made our escape from whoever guarded him. A small stab of dread shot through me as I wondered: would he even believe me enough to allow me to help him? Would he ever trust me again? Would he be so disgusted by me that he’d leave me behind? Or worse, would he kill me?
I made my way down the corridor toward the kitchens. But I was wary. I couldn’t be seen. And I had no idea where the dungeons were actually located. All I knew was that they were rarely used and highly guarded. I’d heard it said that they were in underground tunnels, but I didn’t know for sure.
But then, aye, I remembered. There was one person I could trust who knew exactly where the dungeons were. He’d made the thick chains and installed them in the prison chambers. The very same chains that probably bound my husband’s wrists at this very moment.
I had to find Caleb.
* * *
MY FIRST STOP was the healers’ quarters. Before I entered, I remembered to draw closed the gaping sides of my ripped, bloodied gown. When I pushed the door open, the room was empty. Bubbling pots had been abandoned and several were spilling over. In my distress, I’d almost forgotten that our keep had been invaded by a small but hostile army. The healers had fled, maybe under threat. There were signs that a struggle had taken place: spilled concoctions and broken glass. Without lingering, I went to the shelf where the blue vial of Fee’s drug remained untouched. It was more than half-full. The bottle of whiskey was gone. I grabbed the vial and continued on my way.
I followed a hidden back passage to the kitchens, which, I could hear as I neared them, were bustling with activity. The conversation was not hushed as it had been over past years, or boisterous and industrious, as it had been in recent weeks. It was alarmed, hurried and agitated. And there were calls from the hall that I could hear through the wall: men, demanding food and drink, clanging their cups and their plates. Campbell’s army’s ranks, I guessed, wanting their every appetite satisfied. I prayed silently for my sisters’ safety at the same time I peered around the corner into the crowded kitchens.
It was then that I saw Ann.
She gasped at the sight of me, rushing over to me but at the same time hesitant. Her expression startled me with the horror it registered and for the first time, I considered what I must look like. My gown was ripped and almost saturated with Aleck’s drying blood. Across my shoulders hung a holster strung with swords. And still I held the bloodstained murder weapon in my hand.
Several of my sisters and cousins were there, and I felt a surge of relief for their safety. “Bonnie,” I said, clinging to her. She drew back from me, from the gore and the weapons, but I was too out of my mind with my mission to take much notice of her reaction. “Where’s Jamie? Where’s Caleb? I need to find Caleb. I need to get to the dungeons.”
“Stella,” Ann gasped. “Why?”
“They’ve taken him there. I need to get to him,” I said urgently.
“Who, Stella?” Bonnie asked. Her voice sounded odd, as though she were speaking to a spooked animal.
“Kade! They’ve taken Kade. They’re going to beat him. ’Tis already done, I’m sure they’re hurting him. I need to help him. ’Tis my fault, all of it!”
“But, Stella,” said Ann, “what’s happened to you? Have you hurt yourself? Whose blood—?”
“It was Aleck,” I replied quickly. “He’s dead. I killed him.”
There a communal gasp of horror. “You did what?” Clementine asked. “Oh, God, Stella, how? Why?”
“Isn’t it obvious?” I yelled, frantic with my quest. Each second seemed to compound the distance and the channeling effects of Kade’s agony in me. “I had to. He tried to force me, and Campbell and his men took Kade. I need to find Jamie and Caleb. He knows the way to the dungeons. Tell me where they are. Please!” I was holding Bonnie’s shoulders, and her eyes were not on me but on the blade of the knife I still held, which ran through the strands of her long dark hair, cutting a loch, causing it to fall to the floor.
“Aye, Stella!” Bonnie said.
“I’m not asking you to come with me. Just tell me where he is. And Caleb, where’s Caleb? I’ll find the way myself.”
“I don’t know, Stella. I don’t know,” she repeated. “They’re using him as a messenger. He could be anywhere.”
This was unwelcome news, to be sure. I didn’t have time to wander the keep in search of him.
I knew it was a futile question, but I asked it anyway. “You don’t know where the dungeons are, do you? Any of you?”
Bonnie answered as I expected. “Nay. They keep its location secret, even from the men. Only senior officers are privy to that information.” Bonnie was wide-eyed and shaken. As were we all. “Would you have me...come with you, Stella?”
“I’ll go alone. I can keep myself hidden more easily that way.”
“Nay, Stella!” cried Ann. “’Tis too dangerous! I’m coming with you. You need someone with you in case something happens. In case you need help.”
“Nay,” I said, surprised by the raw authority of my own voice. “Clementine. Bonnie. Take some food and go to your chambers. Find the others. Keep yourselves safe.” My father had fortified the locks of our private chambers long ago. I knew them to be virtually unbreakable. “Lock the doors well. Stay there and do not come out until th
e Mackenzie army has not only arrived but also driven the Campbells either back to their keep or to the fiery depths of hell itself.”
My sisters seemed taken aback not only by the tone of my command but also by its somewhat colorful delivery. I couldn’t help being secretly pleased by the thought that my husband would have appreciated that line. I was picturing his face and the tiny quirk at the corner of his mouth when I amused him. The image made me more determined than ever to save him. The ache in my chest was very nearly overwhelming. His agony and mine felt like one and the same.
And my sisters obeyed me.
Except one.
She had been quiet until now, but her eyes were lit with the singular feminine tenacity and also the willfulness that were among the strongest threads of her character. It might have been the mention of the Mackenzies that made her decision. If the Mackenzie army was alerted to our dire situation, that meant that the Stuart army would also inevitably learn of it. And that meant that Wilkie Mackenzie might, very soon, be on his way to Glenlochie. There was no way Maisie would allow herself to be holed up and hidden if even the slightest likelihood of his arrival was upon us. And there, amid her stubbornness and her hope, I could see a realization in her eyes, too. “You love him,” she said.
“Aye,” I told her with utter sincerity. “I’ll do whatever it takes to free him.”
She understood, and against every impulse I knew my sister to possess, there were tears in her eyes as she said, “I didn’t mean what I said, Stella. Of course you deserve each other. You and Kade are a perfect match, ’tis obvious to all of us. I’m sorry for what I said to you. I was jealous and heartbroken. And now I’m going to make amends for my horrid behavior.” My sister was a ball of feminine wiles and urges. But she had a good heart. This, I had to—and did—believe. She continued, her eyes shiny with tears. “I didn’t know, Stella. He just looks so much like...and I thought—”
“It doesn’t matter, sister. I knew why you did it. ’Tis of no consequence now.”
Ann was draping a cape over my shoulders and securing it tightly at my neck. “To hide the weapons and the...evidence,” she said, her voice choked from emotion. “Come back safe to us.”
And so Maisie and I took our leave of our sisters in search of the dungeons.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
THE NIGHT WAS eerily dark. Thin black clouds veiled the feeble light of a slivered crescent moon. The keep was far from quiet. The sound of men’s restlessness punctuated the darkness. Metal and leather. Footsteps and shouted commands.
I was glad of the darkness and the noise. We could keep ourselves hidden and stay well clear of the gathered clusters of soldiers, whose raucous activity seemed to suggest that they were well stocked in whiskey and were ready to partake now that the sun had gone down. If we were seen, the consequences were too dire to consider. Women didn’t wander alone, out of doors, and in the dark of night. Not unless they were asking for trouble of one kind or another. And especially not on a night like this, when only a few hours ago, an invading army who had allied themselves with an aggressive and mutinous faction of our clan had infiltrated our keep. With the sole purpose of proving their domination of everything and everyone in their path.
The risks were daunting indeed. But I had no choice but to find Kade and to free him. If there was anything I could do to ease or end his agony, I would do it. No matter what it cost me.
So Maisie and I walked quietly, arm in arm, toward the blacksmith’s hut. I feared for her safety as much as my own, yet I was glad of her stubbornness. I was grateful not to be alone.
The tradesmen’s area was located at the near edge of the village, easily accessible by clan members from the manor and the fields, as well as by the soldiers. There were leatherworkers’ huts, wood turners, inventors, weavers, agricultural equipment builders, stonecutters, glassblowers and metalworkers, among many others. We made sure to keep a comfortable distance from the soldiers’ barracks, which was not far from the tradesmen’s huts. Even from a distance, it was easy to see that the barracks were crowded, noisy and well lit.
Our journey was slightly longer than it should have been, because of this detour, but we found our way over uneven ground.
“I have a sleeping potion in my pocket,” I told Maisie quietly. “And three weapons. If we find the dungeons, we can try to drug the guards.”
Maisie glanced over at me as we walked. “’Tis a good plan, Stella. Once we find these elusive dungeons, which are in a top-secret location privy only to the highest-ranking officers in our fractured army, I’ll hold down the guards while you pour the potion down their throats. And if they don’t submit quietly, we’ll wield our weapons, experts as we are, against the most feared, lethal, bloodthirsty rebels in all the Highlands. I don’t see any problem with your plan whatsoever.”
Of course she was right. I was daft to even be considering doing what we were about to attempt to do. “I have to try,” I whispered.
“I know, sister. I would try, too, if it were me. That’s why I’m here with you. I want to help you. I want to...make it up to you.”
I’d always loved my sister, despite her complex and sometimes-exasperating character, but I had never loved her so much as at that moment. “You don’t have to—”
“Aye. I do. But after this, consider us even.” She laughed lightly and despite our situation, I couldn’t help smiling back at her. “Besides, I have an idea.”
“What idea?”
“Just leave it to me, when the time comes.” She paused as we made our way over a small stream, stepping on dry, upraised rocks to get across. “What is it that changed your mind about him? About Kade?”
I thought about this. “I don’t know. I realized I’m a better, happier, stronger person when I’m with him.” It took me a moment to try to put it into words. “He makes me feel powerful...yet protected at the same time.”
“I know what you mean.” She fell quiet then, and I understood why.
“You’ll find someone else, Maisie. I know you will. I’m going to help you.”
“We’ll see,” she said. We needed to keep silent then as we drew closer to the buildings.
We had reached the village. At this time of night, few people were around. Most had gone back to their cabins in the residential areas, or to their farmhouses. The occasional window was lit from within by candlelight as we passed by, and we were able to reach the hut without being seen. It was clear long before we reached it that there were no candles burning in Caleb’s windows. When we tried the door, it was locked.
“What do we do now, Stella?” Maisie whispered.
“We try to find the dungeon on our own,” I replied, not at all sure how to go about doing that.
As if in an answer to my silent prayer, I heard laughter. A man’s laughter. From somewhere afar, over the rise of a large, rounded hill. The sound of it was familiar to me. I knew who it was from the beatings I’d been subjected to at his hand, and Aleck’s.
Hugh.
He’d found it amusing, my tears and my pleas. He’d enjoyed the small power it afforded him, to bully someone weaker than himself, and at his laird’s orders no less. Something about the unbalanced hierarchy of it had satisfied him. It occurred to me then that he didn’t know of Aleck’s death yet. No one did, aside from me and my sisters. It also occurred to me that Hugh was Aleck’s right-hand man; they always trained together, fought together, planned together: if Aleck was the cause of the division within our army, and the instigator of the Campbell alliance, then Hugh would no doubt be a part of it, as well. And if Aleck wasn’t entertaining Campbell and his officers—he was occupied, they knew, with other pressing matters—then that task would have fallen into Hugh’s hands.
Hugh would be with Campbell and his men. The very men who had taken my husband away.
There were other voices, too, and laughter.
I pulled Maisie along with me, cautiously. “This way,” I whispered.
As we drew closer, the voices grew
louder. There were many of them, maybe eight or ten. It would have been Campbell’s senior officers, I guessed. Gathered, very possibly, around the entrance of the dungeons.
The area behind the hill, as we made our way around, was covered in shrubby bushes and tall grasses; the brushy fauna seemed overabundant in the open space of the grasslands, as though it might have been planted there to disguise a doorway. At least I hoped that to be true and I was looking for evidence that it might be. And I was glad of the shrubbery; it would allow us to stay hidden.
From our distance, we peeked through the shielding branches to see a number of men gathered. I counted them: eight in total. Seven of them were seated in an uneven semicircle around a small fire. They were talking and passing around a bottle of whiskey. The eighth was lying on the ground; he appeared to be asleep. I focused more carefully. I could identify Hugh, and I could see that the other men were Campbell’s top-ranking officers. The sleeping man, I thought but couldn’t be entirely sure, was Laird Campbell himself. Several hours, perhaps, had passed since my husband had been taken by these men. More than enough time to inflict very real damage on a prisoner. Campbell appeared to be taking a respite from his torturous pursuits, satisfied perhaps that he had made a good job of it for now.
Behind them, near where Campbell slept, was the unmistakable shine of metal.
Hinges. And the frame of a door.
The dungeons. Clever, I thought, to situate the prisons so close to the barracks, but underground, with a secret entrance, hidden from enemies who might try to retrieve their prisoners.
I knew we had found it. I knew that behind that door was my husband.
Somehow we needed to get past these men.
The bottle of whiskey was placed to the side and I could see that it was less than a quarter full. If I could somehow pour the sleeping drug into it, I thought the proportions would be right: enough to knock them out for an hour, maybe more.
Juliette Miller - [Clan MacKenzie 02] Page 26
