Just in Time for a Highlander

by Gwyn Cready

  He waited a moment for another arrow—he’d just as soon have a chance to see his death hurtling toward him—then, concluding his attacker had meant to catch Duncan’s attention not put him in an early grave, he crouched down and picked up the arrow.

  There was nothing distinctive about the design. It was very plain, with feather fletches, and looked more or less like the same ones Abby had used—Duncan froze. Squinting, he gazed up at Lachlan’s tower, did a quick spatial calculation, and followed the castle roofline till he found what must be the window by Abby’s desk. It was impossible to tell from where specifically the arrow had been launched, but Abby’s window could not be ruled out. His heart sank.

  The arrow’s shaft was unmarked, though a small piece of paper, no wider than his thumb, had been quilled around it. He unrolled the paper. “Leave now and never return” had been written in a tight script. He tried to remember the look of the writing in the expense book on Abby’s desk, but nothing concrete came to him.

  He shoved the note in his sporran and took the stairs to the battlement wall two at a time.

  This chapel was in considerably better shape than the one on the banks of the Esk. Red, blue, and emerald glass sparkled in the intricate scenes rendered in the window over the door, and numerous grotesques lined the chapel’s roofline. The heavy door was propped open, and Duncan was surprised to see no more than a half dozen men. They stood in a close circle near the altar, most of them members of Rosston’s sept. Unfortunately, Rosston was among them. Duncan stepped inside.

  The men fell silent when they saw him. Duncan wondered if there was a bow stashed nearby.

  “I saw ye trip,” said one wearing a dun-colored cap. “Take care on those cobbles.” As the warning seemed less concerned than amused, Duncan refrained from offering his thanks.

  Rosston stood with his hands on his hips. With his dark coloring, sullen expression, and Abby’s neat black stitches anchoring a fiery length of crimson across his chin, he looked like a cross between Oscar De La Hoya and a five-year-old child.

  Duncan sighed. He walked up to Rosston, purposefully moved the arrow from under his right arm to under his left, and extended a hand.

  “My apologies, Lord Kerr.”

  In truth, Rosston owed him as much of an apology as Duncan owed him, and possibly even a thank-you given what followed the smackdown, but Duncan knew the melee had upset Abby and he held himself responsible. He also knew that, unlike Duncan himself, Rosston looked liked he’d been dragged through a hedgerow by a four-inch chain.

  Rosston did not take the proffered hand.

  “Lady Kerr,” one of the men said, and Duncan let his hand fall to his side.

  Abby stood at the door, bow over her shoulder, beside Jock. The subtle greens and browns she wore made her look like a forest goddess in some Edward Burne-Jones painting. The look on her face made it clear she had witnessed Duncan’s exchange with Rosston.

  “Gentlemen,” she said flatly, managing in three syllables to greet the group, imply the seriousness of what was to come, and suggesting at least one among them did not measure up to the characteristics inherent in the word. In this case, Rosston was her target, and the look she cast in his direction carried such stinging disapproval, Duncan nearly felt sorry for the man.

  Rosston made an unregretful noise.

  Duncan withdrew the arrow from under his arm and placed it with a firm snap on the priest’s table. Abby’s eyes narrowed, but he saw nothing in them that might betray a previous knowledge.

  He was taking a seat on the front pew when a warning noise from Abby brought him up again.

  “We will hardly be making our council here, Mr. MacHarg.”

  “No, of course not.”

  Rosston but not Abby caught the hint of mock obsequiousness in his voice and surprised him by smiling.

  “Come, gentlemen,” Abby said.

  They trouped through a side door and down a dark stairwell—Was the entire bloody place lined with hidden stairs?—into a windowless, though Duncan thought probably not staircase-less, room. With only the scant light coming down the stairwell to guide them, the men took seats at benches on either side of a long table. Duncan wondered if the space had once been a classroom. Abby, perhaps responding to the sense of the place, clasped her hands behind her, teacher-like, until, one by one, the men fell silent.

  “We have a problem with the English,” she said.

  One of the younger men snickered, but Rosston sat straighter and Duncan heard the strain in her voice.

  “I’ve called you here today,” she said, “because I know I can trust you. I received word today from someone on the English side who is sympathetic to our cause.”

  Undine again? Or is there another informant?

  “Bridgewater is making immediate plans to attack, despite the fact the English army has strict orders from the queen not to stir things up during this delicate time.”

  The “delicate time” Abby referred to being the negotiations for the Act of Union, the treaty that would strip Scotland of its independence in exchange for ensuring the financial health of a few influential Scots. Duncan, swallowing his disgust, thought of the lines from Robert Burns:

  We’re bought and sold for English gold,

  Such a parcel of rogues in a nation!

  “The time is delicate for Clan Kerr as well,” she added. “’Tis no surprise to anyone that we are in desperate financial straits. We can make a go of it with the canal if I can get a loan from the bank.”

  Rosston held his tongue this time. Duncan realized with a shock that Abby and Rosston must have reached an agreement on the subject. There was a palpable sense of negotiated truce in the air, and he wondered what other subjects they’d come to terms on. Oh God, how he regretted that fight with Rosston.

  When he wrestled his attention back to the matter at hand, the men were discussing how to rally the clans to the border.

  “No,” Duncan said, interrupting. “We mustn’t let the English army choose the mode of battle or the battlefield. We won’t concede the terms of the fight to them.”

  “What choice do we have?” Jock demanded. “They’re attacking.”

  “Perhaps ye think we can just send a footman over with an invitation,” one of the young men said, then laughed.

  “Well…” Duncan hadn’t totally thought things out before he spoke—a very unwise move. But he’d watched enough war movies to know there was always a way for the good guys to outsmart their enemy. Then it came to him. “Say you’re a man in charge of a large army who’s not supposed to attack but wants to anyhow. What’s the one thing that would make you wait?”

  Rosston held up a hand to stop the snickering. “What?”

  “If you heard the other side was going to attack you.”

  Abby looked at Rosston and nodded. “He’s right.”

  “So we’re going to attack the English army instead, just to choose our own time and battlefield?”

  “Well, it’s always better to do the choosing yourself,” Duncan said, thinking of the choices Abby may have made in the last twelve hours. “It’s called having the weather gage in sailing, and it gives you a distinct advantage. But I’m not suggesting we attack. I’m suggesting we let them think we’re attacking.”

  “Shall we send them a letter?” the capped man said with sarcasm.

  “No,” Duncan said carefully.

  “They’d ken it was a trick. And it would be,” Abby said, getting into the spirit. “We have to make them think they found out about the planned attack on their own, right?”

  Duncan grinned. “That’s right.”

  “How?”

  “I’ve got it! The Man Who Never Was!” Duncan remembered the movie clearly. It had been a fairly pulpy melodrama about England fighting the Germans during World War II. He had watched it with his father on one of the last days bef
ore the bastard did a runner, and his father had downed half a dozen cans of beer and ranted about the plot being “too bloody convoluted.”

  “The man who never was?”

  “It’s a”—he stopped himself before he said movie—“way of confusing your enemy. You plant a dead body with misinformation on it in a place where the other side will find it. For example, if you’re going to attack Sicily, the papers on the body say you’re going to attack Sardinia,” he said, repeating the subject of the planted misinformation in the story. “The trick is making the other side believe the dead person is a person with insider knowledge of your plans.”

  “So we kill Jock?” the man with the cap said with a guffaw.

  “No.” Duncan smiled. “Not required. The dead person just has to seem like a person who would be trusted with Kerr secrets. For example, he’d need to be wearing a plaid, and maybe carrying a flask with Kerr whiskey in it. He’d probably have a letter or two in his sporran in addition to the letter stating the plans for the attack—No, I take it back. The letter about the attack would have to be hidden on him somewhere…”

  “The hollow heel in his boot?”

  “A false back in his sporran?”

  “Written on silk and stuffed into a wooden tooth?”

  Duncan eyed his companions. “You people scare me. Aye, any of those things would do—so long as we could count on the English army finding the letter.”

  The man who’d suggested the wooden tooth grinned, revealing an entire set of them.

  “Seems to me,” Abby said, “the only problem is finding a dead man.”

  One of the younger men sized up Duncan.

  “I’m sure Lady Kerr wasna suggesting we kill someone,” Rosston said, though his tone suggested that wasn’t an unreasonable idea.

  “Then how do we find a body?”

  Christ, the Middle Ages ended like eighteen years ago. Aren’t people dying by the hour? “Well…” Duncan quickly paged through the random snippets of science fiction, horror movies, and episodes of CSI stowed away in the dusty rafters of his brain.

  “We could rob a grave,” Abby suggested.

  “Unfortunately, we can’t have the man be too dead. Alas, poor Yorick and all that. But you’re definitely onto something. Does anyone happen to know the local gravedigger?”

  Thirty-three

  The plan was set. With the help of a bribe, Rosston’s men would procure the area’s most recently deceased body, dress it in Kerr-appropriate attire, and stow it under a blanket on a horse. Duncan felt a little guilty for the desecration of the deceased, but on the whole he thought God and the dead man would approve of an act meant to save others from dying. The man’s family might have a different point of view, however.

  Abby would draft the communiqué that would make the army think the Kerrs were planning an attack. Duncan and Jock were to equip the man with the other sorts of personal items—money, weapons, notes—that would heighten the verisimilitude when he was found. Where to plant him proved to be the biggest obstacle. Since England planned to attack soon, a quick discovery was critical. And they wanted the body to be found by a soldier, not a civilian, to ensure the information got to Bridgewater as fast as possible.

  They finally decided on a tiny sliver of land just along the border known to be patrolled by the English army but little used by others. It was a risk because both countries claimed the land, which was why England patrolled it so heavily. So, the army would not greet trespassers with kindness, especially trespassers from the clan the army was planning to attack.

  Duncan, Jock, and Abby climbed the great stairs of Kerr Castle in silence. They were to execute their tasks and meet again in two hours at a prearranged spot in the forest.

  “Shall we sit down in my office?” Jock said to Duncan.

  “Aye.” He cast a sidelong glance at Abby. He wanted desperately to speak to her alone. “Let me gather some things in my room. I’ll be there straightaway.”

  Jock nodded and made his way down the hall.

  “We are under watch,” Abby said under her breath. “Talk quietly and keep a respectful distance.”

  Talking quietly and keeping a respectful distance was the last thing Duncan wanted to do. But he obeyed.

  “You know about Rosston’s sentry, then?”

  “Aye,” she said. “Trust is not his greatest strength. But I understand his motivation even if I don’t care for it.”

  She looked so beautiful, standing in the streaming sun like some angelic visitation. Her hair was pinned, but a few chestnut wisps had escaped, framing her face. He had promised to buy her freedom for her, but he had no way to do it. And now he had to tell her, even if it meant he was pushing her into Rosston’s arms—that is, if she hadn’t cast her fate with Rosston already.

  “I need to speak to you about last night,” he said.

  Her eyes flashed, half-cautious, half-amused. “Which part?”

  “The part I need to apologize for.”

  “Ye ken that still gives you a pretty wide field of choice.”

  “It does. I was thinking in particular of my engagement with Rosston.”

  She raised a wicked brow. “Now you’re engaged to him too?”

  Duncan’s heart dropped to the bottom of his chest. “Did ye accept him, lass? I dinna blame ye, ye ken. If I were ye—”

  “You are not me. And I am not a fool.”

  His heart stood poised on the precipice between relief and despair. “Then you are not engaged? I thought after last night—”

  “That I should accept him? Indeed, you would be right. If I was in my right mind, I would. But I’m afraid I am almost as much out of my senses as my da. I am willing to believe a stranger from God only knows where, who holds my heart in his hands, will save me and my clan.”

  She smiled, such a sweet, trusting smile, it hurt him to see it. “Regarding that…” He cleared his throat.

  “Aye?”

  “I have found out from Undine that…” The words caught in his throat, and he swallowed them whole, knowing they’d destroy the perfect happiness he’d found. “…that the spell is stronger than she knew. It may be a while before I can return.”

  Even the tiny clouds of concern that rose in her eyes were too much for him to bear.

  “You needn’t worry, though,” he said quickly. “We have Sir Alan returning from Carlisle on Thursday. I promise we will convince him to invest in your canal.”

  “Then we best ensure the army doesn’t make a move until then, I guess.” She clutched her skirts, gave him a worried smile, and swept away.

  Thirty-four

  Duncan had been told that the bright crimson plaid he wore would not be a welcome addition to the group of travelers, who needed to progress as covertly through the woods as possible. As such, he had switched to a more muted green one and was just trying to decide what if anything to do about a loose button on his cuff when Nab opened the door.

  “Have ye heard of knocking, ye wee whelp?” Duncan said.

  “I kent ye were alone.”

  “What is it? Spill it before I box your ears.”

  “Her ladyship held a secret meeting today.”

  Duncan hid his smile. “Did she?”

  “Aye. With her top advisers.”

  He was a top adviser now. “What was the meeting about?”

  Nab shook his head. “I couldn’t find out.”

  “Half pay for you. Tell me, do ye recognize this hand?” He slipped the note that had been wrapped around the arrow out of his sporran and handed it to the boy.

  Nab frowned. “I don’t. Was it for you?”

  “Who else? It came wrapped around an arrow.”

  “Bloody hell.”

  “Does your mum know you talk like that? Who here can shoot a bow and arrow?”

  “Most everyone, I’d say.”


  “I mean straight and true. As if it were one of Zeus’s thunderbolts.”

  Nab thought. “Her ladyship, of course. She’s the best—though she canna shoot as far as Rosston. He can reach the larch by the river from the battlement wall.”

  Interesting. “Anyone else?”

  “No one else worth remarking on. Do ye think Rosston wants you to leave?” he added eagerly.

  “I’m certain of it. But I just don’t see him resorting to arrows and secret notes, do you?”

  “His fists didn’t do much good.”

  “Och, it takes more than a few punches to get through to a MacHarg.” Duncan folded the note and put it back in his sporran. “We’re far too stubborn.”

  “What’s in the parcel?”

  “What parcel?”

  Nab pointed to the bedside table. Curiosity piqued, Duncan took a seat on the bed and examined the paper-wrapped object. There was no note on the outside or any indication the item was for him. He untied the string around it. Given the wide variety of feelings the inhabitants of Castle Kerr had for him, it could be anything from a bag of sheep shite to a—

  “It’s a sporran!” Nab cried. “A bonny one.”

  It was a bonny one. His grand-da’s had gleaming white horsehair and three black tassels tumbling down the front. This one was not as dressy, but a skilled artisan had made it and the attention to detail was obvious. The leather had been tooled with Celtic knots and tiny silver beads then burnished to a rich golden brown, and the flap was covered with the thickest, darkest fur he had ever run his fingers through—

  Beaver.

  A fiery heat raced up his neck to the tips of his ears.

  Nab gave him a narrow look, and Duncan tried desperately to think of anything but his night with Abby.