A short time later, walking uphill toward the open gateway in the castle’s high, massive curtain wall, Fiona stared in wonder. The house at Ormiston Mains, where she was born, despite being just across the river Teviot from the oft-warlike Scottish Borders, possessed no curtain wall. Evidently, though, here in the Highlands, such added security was necessary even on an island in the middle of a loch that seemed to sit in the middle of nowhere. The thought made her shiver, and she began to wonder if their uneventful journey had been unusually uneventful.
She had seen from the boat that the fortress covered the nearer half of the island, leaving its northern end densely wooded. As they passed through the gateway to the courtyard, she saw the castle’s four-story keep occupying the far southwest corner of the curtain wall. The fortress boasted two smaller towers, one at the north end near the gateway, the other at the southeast corner. Inside the wall, the bailey contained a number of outbuildings as well as the keep.
“Welcome to Rothiemurchus,” Marsi said when she caught up with them. “You and Àdham must visit us often, Fiona. But let me introduce you to the two people hurrying toward us—Ivor’s mother and father, Lady Ealga and Shaw Mòr.”
Since Marsi had said she was the proud mother of four children, all of them married with bairns of their own, Fiona had expected to meet a crowd. However, the group joining them for supper included only other members of their party plus the graying, but nonetheless legendary, Shaw Mòr; Lady Ealga; and the castle servants and men-at-arms who slept on the island or would guard it through the night.
Fiona was tired enough by then to reject supper in favor of her bed. But civility demanded that she sup with her hosts and bear her part in the conversation. However, Lady Ealga’s eyes were as keen as any archer’s were, because as soon as gillies began clearing platters, she spoke to Marsi, who said, “Ealga suspects that you are aching for a bath and a soft bed, Fiona. My Kate will assist you.”
Fiona accepted the decision with relief, had her bath, and was asleep before Àdham came to bed. She did not stir until he woke her the next morning with teasing kisses. As a result of what followed, she barely had time to break her fast and take polite leave of her new friends before they were on their way again.
Chapter 14
The Blair Castle horses stayed in the stables with their equerry to rest. So, with Malcolm, Malcolm’s men-at-arms, Àdham’s three lads, and Gilli Roy—who preferred to ride with the men-at-arms and seemed to Fiona to be avoiding both his father and Àdham—their traveling party was half the size it had been. The scenery continued to impress her, but she missed Lady Marsi and her Kate. She had enjoyed their company.
A short time later, the party reached a fork in the trail and bade farewell to Malcolm, Gilli Roy, and their men.
Before Malcolm turned away, he said in Scots, “I’ll expect to hear from ye in good time, Àdham, so I’ll no delay ye now. I ken fine that ye’re eager to get home. Ye’ll come see us anon, though, and bring your lady tae meet my Mora.”
“I will, sir,” Àdham said, shaking his hand.
“Will we be safe with just Duff, Rory, and MacNab?” Fiona asked nervously as they waved again and followed Sirius on a barely discernible path northward.
“We should be,” Àdham said confidently, raising a hand to protect Donsie as she settled into her favored position, draped across the back of his neck. “We’re in mostly Mackintosh country from here to Inverness. Lochindorb, some distance ahead, is a royal castle. Over a hundred years ago, before Robert the Bruce ended their occupancy there, Clan Comyn controlled it.”
“The damnable Comyns,” she murmured with a teasing smile.
“Aye, and they still talk as if the Bruce stole it from them. Now, Mar’s people oversee it as part of his earldom. He was born there and lived there as Lord of the North before he married the Countess of Mar. As you likely know, he is also a close cousin to Jamie. We all address him as Mar these days, so you may not know that he was christened Alexander. With Jamie and Joanna as popular as they are with the common folk and a general enmity toward Alexander of the Isles . . .”
Fiona nodded. She liked listening to him. She had still not asked him about his kinship to Atholl, though, and hoped that the lack was due not to loss of courage but to the presence, and ears, of Duff and Rory—not to mention MacNab, whose taciturn silence she had begun to find a bit off-putting.
Eventually, turning west, away from the river Spey, they emerged onto a grassy plateau. Àdham reined in, and following his gaze to a loch three times the size of Loch an Eilein, many feet down a steep slope below them, Fiona saw a larger stronghold than Rothiemurchus on an island in the middle of the loch.
“Is it common here for men to build their castles on islands?”
“Many have, aye, because they are easy to defend,” Àdham said. “That is Lochindorb. Castle Finlagh perches a good distance up a steep hillside, atop a knoll. On clear days, you can see the Moray Firth from its ramparts and upper windows”
“Will we stop at Lochindorb for the night?”
“Nae, for it lies too far off our path. I’d liefer keep going.”
His confidence was contagious, and although Fiona was uneasy about sleeping on the ground, the bed he made for them that night atop leaves and pine branches in an alcove of boulders that sheltered them from a chilly wind was more comfortable than the one she had shared with Marsi two nights before.
MacNab and Duff tactfully bore young Rory and Sirius some distance away, giving Fiona and Àdham privacy enough for coupling. Due to the wind, she kept on her shift and he his tunic. Then, lying on their sides like spoons, he covered them with his plaid and her cloak. Soon, Donsie snuggled in with her warm back against Fiona’s stomach. Lulled by purring and soft night bird calls, they slept.
In the midst of a pleasant dream of swimming and playing in the river Teviot with Àdham, Fiona abruptly awoke in darkness with a large hand clapped across her mouth and her hair twisted up in someone’s fist. Àdham and Donsie had vanished.
Something hissed in the distance. But a nearby clang of steel overwhelmed the hissing as that fist and large hand dragged her clumsily—furious, terrified, and struggling madly if ineffectively—from her pine-bough bed.
Àdham, wakened minutes before to silence by a cold, wet nose urgently nudging his bare neck, had eased himself from the still-sleeping Fiona and risen to his feet. The silence and the still-quiet Sirius at his side, staring straight ahead, told him an enemy lurked there. Keeping low and making no sound, he slid his sword from its scabbard and stepped swiftly but silently away from the pine-bough bed, hoping to draw any enemy away from it.
Two shadows loomed before him, both bulkier than Duff and shorter than MacNab. As the first one leaped toward him and Àdham raised his sword to counter the coming blow, he heard clanging swords in the distance and knew that either Duff or MacNab was also fighting for his life.
With only starlight now, all he saw of his opponent was his shape, and it was just as hard to detect stones and shrubs on the ground around them. He had all he could do to keep an occasional eye on the second chap where he hovered nearby.
Someone to his right said quietly, “Loch Moigh,” and he recognized Duff’s voice just as two more swords engaged each other.
With his second, would-be opponent busy, Àdham dispatched the first, only to see a third man run toward him from the shadows with sword at the ready.
Just then, he heard a cry from Duff, off to his right.
Terrified, Fiona struggled fiercely, trying to free her hair from whoever had grabbed it and to bite the hand against her mouth so she could scream. To her surprise, as she fought, her terror became anger. Moments later, at the sounds of nearby clanging swords, it turned to fury. If someone was trying to kill Àdham . . . !
Digging all ten fingernails into the hand clamped over her mouth and squealing as loudly as she could against that
hand, she heard with deep satisfaction a grunt of pain from her assailant. Then came a hiss and a snarl; whereupon, the attacker, crying out, abruptly let go of her and reeled away.
Fiona scrambled away in the opposite direction. But, having recognized Donsie’s snarl, she stopped and turned, wishing that she had a real weapon.
“Dinna think ye’ll get far, lass,” her erstwhile assailant growled, moving toward her. “I ha’ five men wi’ me. Ye’ll be ours in a trice. Aye, and a widow.”
Keeping an eye on him as she stepped away, she noted the denser darkness of the boulders outlining their sleeping place. Hoping that Àdham had left a dirk or some other weapon buried in the pine boughs, she moved toward them.
Her attacker darted in front of her, stumbled on their bedding, but quickly recovered his balance and reached to grab her right arm.
As he did, a huge rock, seemingly launched from the starlit sky behind him, cracked him on the head. Collapsing at her feet, he took no further interest in her.
She could still hear the clanging swords.
“This way, m’lady,” a voice hissed as one of the boulders in the pile rose up before her. “Nae one will see us back this-a-way, and we’ll be out o’ their way.”
Recognizing Rory with astonishment, she said, “Where did you come from?”
“Yonder, where MacNab and me were. I sent Sirius tae find Sir Àdham. But I kent ye’d need me help more than MacNab or Duff would. Sithee, when I left MacNab, he were a-fighting two o’ them bastards.”
“What should we do with this one?” she asked, deciding that he could call their attackers anything he liked.
“Nowt,” Rory said firmly. “Best we get away from him, lest I didna kill the . . . the man. Ye mustna let them see ye, though. Come intae these bushes wi’ me.”
“Did you recognize any of them?” she murmured.
“Nae more than ye did. I can see nowt save shadows, so mind your step.”
Hurrying as fast as she safely could to follow him, she heard him add on a chuckle, “I ha’ that wee, vicious cat here wi’ me now. She’s a one, she is.”
“Hew, get up or we’re sped!” Grabbing his cousin by the shoulders, Dae dragged him away from the boulders into the darkness beyond them. When Hew struggled to free himself, Dae breathed a sigh of relief. “Can ye get tae your feet?”
“Aye,” Hew muttered. “But keep low. What of the others?”
“Two o’ them four chaps that Atholl sent with us went for his squire and equerry,” Dae hissed back. “T’other two went for MacFinlagh. He put his first one down quick, so I slid away when the second one went for ’im. I couldna tell which were which then, let alone take on the likes o’ MacFinlagh wi’ a sword. At home, I wield a Jedburgh axe. Be davers, Hew, I hope ye dinna try aught like this again.”
“Where are the others now?”
“The one’s likely dead, but yonder ye can still hear swords. How did he get ye, Hew, and where’s the lass?”
“I had her till one o’ them clouted me from behind. But we’ll get her back.”
“Aye, sure, but what do we do now? We canna stay here or they’ll see us.”
“We’ll make for the loch below,” Hew muttered. “I ken Lochindorb’s lands like me own. They’ll no try tae follow us down to the loch, either. I can tell ye that.”
Fearing for Fiona’s safety and realizing that his own would mean little to him if she were dead, molested, or badly terrified, Àdham felled his second attacker and turned to find Duff still fighting the third but gasping and stumbling as he did.
Stepping in to finish that battle, Àdham turned from the fallen attacker and said, “Art injured, Duff?”
“Aye, sir, he cut me left arm, and me sword grew gey heavy for one hand. I thank ’e for putting him doon. I’ve bound up me wound wi’ a strip o’ me plaid.”
MacNab appeared out of the darkness then and said, “I have one dead, sir.”
“Then we have four dead, and I do not want to waste time burying them, nor do we have tools to do so. Moreover, Duff is injured. We cannot leave their bodies out in the open like this, though. We’ll cover them with rocks.”
“There may be more of those louts about,” MacNab said.
“Mayhap there are, but I must find my lady.”
“I’m here, Àdham, with Rory,” Fiona said, emerging from the dark shadows and into his open arms.
He held her tight, noting that the hair-thin vestige of a crescent moon rising now, belatedly, would aid them little in the gory task to come.
“There were two others,” Fiona said. “Rory and I just heard them scuttling away down that very steep hill toward the loch.”
“Did either of them hurt you?” he demanded.
“One of them woke me by grabbing me by the hair,” she said. “He covered my mouth and dragged me from our bed. But he will have scars, I think, from my fingernails. Donsie attacked him, so I got away. He would have caught me, though, if Rory hadn’t cracked him on the head with a rock from atop those boulders.”
“You did well, both of you,” he said. “I’m sorry about this, lass. I should have asked Ivor to send an escort with us.”
“Do you know who they were, Àdham?”
“I could see little more than my opponents’ shadows. But, this near Lochindorb, they might well have been Comyns.”
“At least, we are all still alive,” she said. “That is what matters. In troth, although I was terrified at first, the one that grabbed me angered me more than he frightened me. Then, it was over so fast that I scarcely had time to stay afraid. But might they not find reinforcements below and attack us again?”
“Nae,” he said. “Recall that Lochindorb is now under the Earl of Mar’s control. If the villains were Comyns, they likely know the landscape hereabouts, because Comyn of Raitt continues to assert that it rightfully belongs to them. That is why they support Alexander of the Isles, as they do. Raitt expects Alexander to return Lochindorb to him if Alexander can defeat the King.”
“I do recall that Robert the Bruce killed the Red Comyn to keep him from seizing the throne, because Comyn would have submitted to the English King.”
“Aye, but my point was that if our attackers were Comyns, they’ll gain no aid from Mar’s people. So I doubt they will trouble us again before we reach Finlagh. Most of the territory from here west to Glen Mòr is Clan Chattan land. Comyn of Raitt is the only rat in the nest.”
“But you did say that Raitt Castle is near Finlagh, aye?”
“It is just a few miles away, aye. But a range of hills with two crags extends between us. We’ll avoid the public road that crosses Raitt’s land, though, in case Comyns did attack us. There is a pass of sorts, and we can walk the horses.”
“How far is Finlagh from here?”
“About twenty miles, so two days with the horses.”
“In the Borders, raiders can ride fifty miles in a night.”
“Aye, perhaps, but the terrain hereabouts, even near the rivers, is often rugged, steep, and splashed with scree-filled moraines to traverse or circumvent. Our small garrons are sure-footed, but we walk horses more than we ride them.”
She nodded but did not reply, so Àdham knew that she was still fearful.
Nevertheless, her behavior both surprised and pleased him.
He had expected her to be frantic if not beside herself with terror. But she had sounded much as Catriona might have after such an incident.
As he helped MacNab and Duff move the bodies together and bury them with rocks, he decided they would depart as soon as they had finished the task.
He wanted to get home, so that he could be sure that the increasingly intriguing lass he had married would be safe and he could begin the task of tracking down the bastards who had dared try to harm her. It occurred to him then that the task Jamie had given him might aid him in that endeavo
r.
It was good that Fiona would be with Fin and Catriona then, too, because Cat would show her how to go on and look after her when he had to be away.
He would make sure himself, though, that his sometimes too-daring wife understood that she was to enjoy no more solitary moonlight rambles.
Chapter 15
Fiona’s first view of Castle Finlagh was of a massive, grim-looking, four-story, gray stone tower atop a tall grassy knoll halfway down the steep slope below them. They had just crested a dip between two higher peaks north and south of them, and the landscape beyond spread for miles. Some of it was hilly, much of it forested, with somewhat higher hills to the south.
The knoll below them, its sides splashed with heather and bramble, jutted up from the contour of the forested hillside. It sat in a vee between what appeared to be two tumbling burns. The castle clearly dominated the landscape beyond it.
From the pass, some distance south of them now, Àdham had sent Duff, Rory, and MacNab on ahead with their horses, the garrons, and gear, so that he could show Fiona his favorite view of Finlagh.
Stroking the cat cradled in her arms and thinking that Castle Finlagh looked smaller than expected, she said, “It seems gey isolated here. But that tower looks much like our Border peel towers. Likely, it would be harder to approach, though, unless your enemy came, as we do, from above.”
“Are Border castles so isolated, lass? Methinks that Border lords, like Highland lords, have tenants and other dependents living nearby.”
“Aye, sure, but I have seen no tenants’ homes here.”
“Most of our dependents live in the forests, in cottages.”
“Our forests are royal, controlled for his grace by rangers,” she said. “Scott of Buccleuch, whom you met at our wedding feast, is Ranger of Ettrick Forest.”
“Aye, well, our forests are clan properties, and clansmen live in them, including most of our servants. So, Finlagh is not isolated. It may look so from here, because it fills that knoll, but there is a path. The vale beyond,” he added, “is Strathnairn, where the river Nairn flows. It is also Clan Chattan land, full of Mackintoshes and other member clansmen—Davidsons, MacGillivrays, and such. The hills to our right obscure our view, or you would also see the town of Nairn.”
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