Robert’s expression remained calm and resolute. “I dunnae,” he whispered back. “But she must not be far.”
A very panicked look came over Andrew’s face as he tossed the saddle to the back of his horse. “We didn’t get to rescue Ian, Robert!” His hands shook from the cold and the fear that washed over him.
“Now she won’t be proud. She’ll just be angry!” He didn’t like the thought of a very angry mother. The plan had been to rescue Ian. With Ian safe and sound, their mum would be far less likely to skin them alive. Without Ian, the chances of surviving their mother’s wrath were nil. Suddenly, he didn’t feel well. Not well at all.
~~~
Robert and Andrew listened sombrely to the events that had unfolded after they’d run away. A tremendous amount of guilt fell on their shoulders.
“Do ye ken the name, lads? Do ye ken who this Traig might be?” Richard asked the boys as they rode north to Aberdeen.
Robert’s brow furrowed in contemplation. “Nay,” he said after thinking on it for a few moments. “The only Traig I remember was Ian’s da. But he died when Ian was a wean, so could no’ be him.”
“How did he die?” Findley asked. Maggy wasn’t the only one in history to play dead for a time.
“I’m no’ sure, but I think I heard Maggy speak on it once. English soldiers attacked Traig and Liam’s da when they were travelin’ to Dundee. But I canna be sure of it. ’Twas a long time ago.”
Robert didn’t care who the man was that took his mum and had killed Patrick. It changed nothing. Patrick was still dead and his mum missing.
“’Tis all me fault,” he said, his voice barely audible over the sounds of the horses trudging through muck and mud.
For a moment Findley thought of letting Robert believe just that. But he knew what guilt could do to a boy. It would eat him alive.
“Nay,” Findley told him as he cast a glance toward Robert. His shoulders were slumped and his face had gone horribly pale. “Either way, he’d have found a way of takin’ yer mum.”
Robert’s eyes were glued to his horse’s mane. He was certain Findley was only trying to make him feel better. “Nay, had I been there, I could have stopped him,” he mumbled.
Findley reached over and pulled Robert’s horse to a stop alongside his own. “Aye, had ye been there and done somethin’ foolish, it could be you layin’ dead instead of Patrick.”
Robert finally looked up. The grief and guilt in Robert’s eyes was enough to tell Findley the boy was truly remorseful. He had to remind himself that Robert was just that. A boy. Aye, he had turned three and ten more than a month ago, but he was still a boy.
“And how do ye think yer mum would respond to losin’ ye?” Findley asked him.
It mattered not. Mayhap had he not talked Andrew into running off with him, Patrick might still be alive and their mum would be safe.
“Robert,” Findley began. “Yer a fine young lad. I see great potential in ye and a good future fer ye.”
Robert cast him a disbelieving look and turned his face away.
“I’m not just blowin’ air up yer kilt, lad. I mean what I say and I say what I mean. None of us is perfect and we all make mistakes. The trick is to learn from them.”
Robert nodded his head, only half listening. His mind was elsewhere, worrying about his mother and brother.
Findley let out a heavy sigh, shook his head, and thumped the boy upside his head. “Listen to me, ye fool!”
Robert rubbed the side of his head, his face twisted into frustration and a bit of anger as he finally looked at Findley.
“Ye made a mistake and used poor judgment. ’Tis no because yer stupid, ’tis because yer young and inexperienced,” Findley told him.
If Findley was trying to make him feel better, he was doing a poor job of it.
“If ye really want to be a fine warrior someday, then ye must first learn to listen to yer leader, listen to those with more experience and wisdom.”
Robert stared at Findley. “How am I to be a fine warrior if I keep gettin’ left behind any time there’s trouble?” he asked him sullenly.
Findley sighed again. The boy was a stubborn fool. “Ye’ll keep getting left behind with that attitude, lad. Ye can’t just go in to a fight with swords drawn and vengeance on yer mind. Ye must have a plan of action!”
“I did have a plan of action and it didn’t involve drawn swords or fightin’.”
A look of surprise and confusion came to Findley’s face. “What do ye mean?”
Robert let out a short breath. “We’d planned on just going up to the gates and askin’ to be let in.”
Findley looked at him as if he lost his mind. Robert explained further. “Who would be suspicious of two lost boys? Surely they’d give us shelter for at least a night or two, until our equally lost fathers found us,” he smiled up at Findley.
‘Twas as if a light suddenly came to a dark room. Findley quickly followed Robert’s train of thought. “And ye’d be able to find Ian and keep him safe until we got there.” ’Twas more of a statement than a question.
“Aye,” Robert nodded, looking quite proud of his plan. “And then we’d draw swords and fight!”
Findley rolled his eyes and ran his hand across the top of Robert’s head. It was indeed a good plan. He wasn’t sure, but it might just work. “Ye’ve a devious side to ye lad,” he smiled. “A very devious side.”
“I’d no’ call it devious. I’d call it intelligent.” He looked wounded. He never wanted anyone to think him devious.
“Do no’ take it so personally, lad. ’Tis a good trait to own, Robert.”
It was just like adults to have both a positive as well as negative meaning to the same word. He shook his head slightly and touched the flanks of his horse, moving it forward. They were wasting precious time talking. They had a woman and child to rescue.
~~~
“I’ll ask ye again, Maggy. Where is my son?”
He was squeezing her arms so tight she thought they’d snap in two! She was still reeling from the shock of seeing Traig alive and well. Well, perhaps well wasn’t the right word for he was far from well in the mental sense. He had lost his mind.
“I told ye, Malcolm Buchannan has him! He took him days ago!” she was pleading with him to listen and prayed he would realize she spoke the truth.
“Why would Malcolm do that?” Traig’s voice thundered through the afternoon air. They’d ridden all day and well into last night. They had slept out of doors with no fire and Maggy was frozen to the marrow. He had pulled her up from a sound sleep and threw her up onto his horse before daybreak. They had stopped only once so that she could relieve herself before setting off again.
She was cold, tired, sore, and very hungry. But above all that, she was terrified.
“I told ye before, Traig! He’s mad and he took him to force me to marry him.”
The anger in Traig’s eyes sent a shiver down her spine. His grip on her arms tightened. “But why?” he demanded as he shook her.
Traig only knew that Malcolm Buchannan was offering a very substantial reward for anyone who brought Maggy to him. He had overheard the Buchannan men’s conversation at the inn a few nights past. Seeing that he could seek some amount of revenge for his friend’s betrayal five years ago along with the potential of earning enough coin to start his life anew with his son at his side, taking Maggy had made perfectly good sense. But nothing else did.
“Tell me, Maggy! Tell me the truth or I swear, if I think ye be lyin’, I’ll no hesitate to kill ye!”
Maggy took a deep breath and tried to sound far calmer than she felt at the moment. There was no doubt in her mind that Traig would keep his word.
“Traig, please, you’re hurtin’ me!” she pleaded with him to loosen his grip. “I’ll tell ye everythin’, I swear it. But please, loosen yer hold.”
He tilted his head slightly and looked as if he were trying to read her mind. His expression was filled with hatred and mistrust and doubt. Magg
y could not begin to understand why her once good friend now looked at her with such disgust.
He loosened his grip and sat her down rather harshly onto a fallen tree trunk. Maggy rubbed her arms where he had held them so tightly. She took a deep breath before speaking.
“Gawter is dead, Traig,” she said bluntly. At one time, Gawter and Traig had been the best of friends. It was a friendship that had always confused Maggy. They were as opposite as night and day, but somehow the two men had forged a friendship.
She was fully prepared to see Traig become grief-stricken. Instead, he looked angry, very angry, not at all like a man who had just learned of his best friend’s death.
“I’m sorry, Traig. I ken ye loved him like a brother,” she said softly. She realized that this was not the same man she knew from years ago. No, the man standing before her was filled with hate and anger. Gone was the ready smile, the kind word, or the playful teasing. She didn’t know this stranger.
“How?” he spat at her.
“How what?” she asked, unsure what exactly he wanted from her.
“How did the bastard die?” his voice thundered as he towered over her.
Her blood went cold. Something had happened; something horrible had taken place that changed Traig into this cold, angry monster. The old Traig would never have called Gawter a bastard and would have fought any man to the death for such an insult.
“The pox,” her voice was shaky. “It wiped out nearly all our clan, Traig.”
His face went pale. He began to pace back and forth in front of her, demanding answers to his questions.
“Nearly everyone?”
Maggy nodded her head. “Aye,” she said softly. “I’m sorry, Traig, but Helena didna survive either.” She trembled and waited; ready to comfort him as the sadness of learning of his wife’s death sank in. Mayhap the news of Helena’s death would bring back at least a little part of the Traig she knew and loved like a brother.
“Dead? Helena’s dead?” he asked, more shocked than saddened by the news.
Maggy could only nod her head and dig her fingers into the tree trunk for balance.
He stopped pacing and turned his angry glare toward her. His reaction surprised her more than seeing him alive for the first time. He smiled down at her. ’Twas a happy smile that blended with an evilness she’d only ever seen on one other man before him. “Then she’s dancin’ in hell with yer husband.”
Maggy’s eyebrows knitted together. She was growing more and more confused by his reactions. “Traig, she was yer wife! And Gawter, as much as he was a hard, unkind man, was yer friend!”
“My friend?” he laughed at her and his laughter sent another chill down her spine. “My friend?! Nay, he was a lyin’ cheatin’ bastard who deserved to die at me own hands instead of by a disease!” his voice rose angrily.
Maggy shook her head and tried to make sense of his reaction. “Traig, I dunnae what happened to ye! Why do ye say such things?”
“I speak the truth, Maggy! Gawter was a liar, a cheat. A man with no scruples.”
She stared up at him, her confusion written all over her face. Traig threw his head back and laughed for a moment before he began pacing again. “Ye truly are a bonny lass, even if yer a bit dim-witted.”
Normally she would have been quite insulted by his remark and would have argued back at him. He was too terrifying at the moment to do anything but sit and tremble.
“How did Gawter react after my supposed death?”
Maggy thought on it for a few moments and searched her mind for memories of that time. While she had cried nearly nonstop for many days after learning of Traig’s death, Gawter had remained apparently unmoved by it. Maggy had simply believed it was Gawter being his typically cold and callous self. But she had wondered at that time why he didn’t seem more moved or more saddened by his friend’s death. He and Traig had been like brothers. But Gawter hadn’t shed one tear over Traig’s death.
“Aye, I can see ye thinkin’ on it, lass!” Traig seemed to become more energized as the moments passed. “I’d bet gold to bannocks that he didna shed one tear, didna act at all like a grievin’ friend. Am I right?”
Maggy could only nod her head in agreement.
“And have ye asked yerself why?”
’Twas because he was a cold, cruel man who only cared of himself. Maggy couldn’t speak the words aloud. For some strange reason she felt she needed to help Traig hold on to the good memories he had of their friendship.
“Yer not that dim, Maggy. Ask yerself, why?”
She shuddered when it suddenly occurred to her that Gawter had somehow had a hand in Traig’s supposed death. While Gawter had made more than one attempt on Maggy’s life, she would never have thought him evil enough to kill his best friend. How wrong could she have been?
“Tell me Traig, what happened?” she asked with a scratchy voice.
“I think ye’ve already begun to piece things together. But I’m sure by the shocked look on yer face that ye dunnae all of it, do ye lass?”
Maggy remained quiet and still as she braced herself mentally for the news he was about to give her.
“As ye can see, I be not dead as Gawter told ye. I didna die on the battlefield, as I’m sure he told ye. Nay, Maggy, ’twas a fate far worse than death, that I can assure ye.”
He resumed his pacing, his hands waving in the air as he spoke. He looked as insane as he sounded. “Aye, there was an attack, but no’ from foes. The attack came at Gawter’s own hands. He couldna kill me outright, he was too much a coward for that. Nay, he didna have the guts to do it himself. Instead, he handed me over to English soldiers.”
Maggy’s hand flew to her mouth. Her husband was far more evil than she had ever known.
“Aye, that he did lassie,” Traig said coldly. “I ken the man to be cruel, but to betray me like that? To betray his best friend? Nay, lassie, not even I thought him that cruel and evil. But betray me he did. He had hired English soldiers to kill me. I was beaten, near death after fighting Gawter. It had been a surprise I hadn’t seen comin’ and I was fully unprepared fer it,” he shook his head in disgust at the memory of that day.
“So he handed me over to the English soldiers that he hired to finish what he had started. I had broken bones and was near death. My only savin’ grace was that the soldiers were even more cruel than Gawter!” he chuckled softly and clasped his hands behind his back. “So they made me a prisoner. They used me to help build towers and walls and fortresses against me own people. For more than five years I languished, Maggy, beaten nearly every day, and forced to work like an animal. Starved if we didna work hard enough or fast enough. They fed their dogs better than us.”
He stopped suddenly and looked down at her. His lips curved upward into a dastardly smile. “Would ye like to ken why?”
Did it really matter why? Somehow he knew he’d tell her.
“He did it fer Helena.”
Helena. Maggy felt like she had just been kicked in the chest. Helena had been her best friend, her confident, and the keeper of one of Maggy’s deepest secrets. Aye, Maggy had known that Gawter strayed and strayed often. She had heard the stories of the whores and wenches he enjoyed while far from home. She also knew of the occasional servant and maid. But Helena? Nay!
“Aye, Maggy, I speak the truth!” he seemed utterly pleased to be bringing such heartache to her.
“Nay! She was me friend!” Maggy could not wrap her head around it. She suddenly felt dizzy and out of breath.
“Maggy, I’d no’ tell ye lies. She and Gawter had been carryin’ on fer quite some time. I didna ken it meself though, until the day he tried to kill me.” He started pacing again, like an animal in a cage. “As I lay on the ground bleedin’ to death, he confessed. He told me he had to kill me so that he and Helena could be together.”
He stopped suddenly and turned to her again. “I must say I was quite surprised to find ye still breathin’.”
She didn’t bother asking why. Nothing h
e could say from this point would surprise her.
“Ye see, lass, after he was to have me killed, he was goin’ to take yer life as well.”
No, that did not surprise her in the least, she snorted disgustedly. Gawter had, on two separate occasions, poisoned her tea. Both times, and only by the grace of God she was certain, she had been found by Claire and Kate. The first attempt on her life had led her to make one of the most difficult decisions of her life. The second attempt had reassured her that she had done the right thing.
“Ye do no’ look surprised, Maggy,” Traig studied her closely for a long moment.
“Nay, I’m not, Traig. He had tried twice to poison me. Once when I was heavy with child and then again when Liam was a wean,” she told him. Her head was beginning to pound. How could Helena of all people, have betrayed her.
Traig nodded his head thoughtfully for a moment. “But the news of Helena’s betrayal, that surprises ye?”
Her shock was beginning to be replaced by anger boiling up in her stomach. “Aye, that it does. I canna believe she would do such a thing! I was her friend and I thought she was mine!” Maggy stood and began to pace, her mind running in a thousand different directions. “How? How could she do that! How could she, after everything, after all she knew?”
The two of them paced and mumbled aloud neither of them paying any attention to what the other was saying. They were lost in their own grief and shock.
Traig stopped suddenly and grabbed Maggy by the arms again. “Ye still haven’t told me why Malcolm has me son.”
Maggy forced a breath through her nostrils. “I took Ian to raise as me own after Helena’s death. We went into hidin’. I didna want Laird Brockton to marry me off. With me parents both dead, and me the mother of Liam who is the heir to all of Gawter’s fortune, Laird Brockton would have wanted me married off within a year’s time! I couldna do that again. While Gawter was cold and cruel, I knew there were worse men than he! So I went into hidin’ and that’s where I’ve been these past three years,” she choked back tears of sorrow, regret and fear.
“A few months ago, Malcolm Buchannan stumbled upon our camp. He recognized me from years ago. I tried to deny it but he refused to believe I was just a peasant. He asked me three times to marry him and each time I refused. The last time he came, I wasna there. I was in the forest looking for herbs to help Ian’s fever.” The memory of that day would haunt her for the rest of her life.
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