by Aileen Adams
“Of course,” he said, sweeping his arm across the landscape. “But where would ye even begin to look? Now and again, some come looking for it, disappear into the woods, never to return. Killed by outlaws, wild animals… There’s been more than a few thieves, scoundrels, and criminals hiding in those forests. I suppose they have also heard of the legend and come to look for it.” He frowned again, gazing down at her, his own hands resting on his hips. “I’m serious. It’s dangerous in those woods.”
“Yes, I know that. Just the other day, before the fire, I heard riders come through the forest behind my house—”
He stiffened. “What? Who were they? Did ye see them?”
“No, I didn’t see them,” she said, turning to him. “I was looking for berries and heard horses. I hid, so they didn’t see me. I’m not that foolish.”
“Ye didn’t see them?”
She shook her head. “No, I hid. I didn’t want them to see me. I waited here in the woods for quite some time before I returned.”
He didn’t like that, not one bit. She was out here, alone, without any way to defend herself, with no one to defend her. “Other than that stick ye clobbered me with, ye don’t have any weapons, is that correct?”
She shook her head.
He pulled his dirk from his waistband and handed it to her, handle first. “Here. Take this. Keep it with ye at all times.”
She hesitated to reach for it, but he didn’t take it back. Finally, she wrapped her small hand around the hilt. Her gown was loose, without a waistband or belt or anything else to slide the knife into. She shrugged. “I’ll find something to carry it in, maybe make a pocket in the gown.”
“I know you’ve got troubles, but don’t make them worse. Ye don’t know this land nor the people. Ye don’t know the animals that roam the forests. I would caution ye against going into those woods or up into those mountains looking for a treasure that doesn’t exist, or if it does, it’s been buried for decades, likely to never again see the light of day.”
Despite his warning, his heart sank as he saw her once again gazing toward the mountains, her eyes scanning the forests to the east. He knew she was going to search for the mythical treasure regardless of what he said, irrespective of his warnings. He wanted to reach out, grasp her shoulders, and give her a gentle shake to emphasize his request, but he had no right. She was a grown woman, stubborn, perhaps too much so for her own good, but as he’d learned in the short time he had gotten acquainted with her, Iona Douglas was a woman determined to be as independent as possible, one who was not afraid to push against expectations, and for that he could hardly blame her.
The problem was, when she got herself into more trouble—and it wasn’t a matter of if but when—it would be up to him to fix it. If something happened to her, how could he not feel responsible? And yet, how could he protect someone who didn’t want protection?
18
Iona tied another small strip of linen torn from her undergown to a tree branch as she gazed deeper into the ever-darkening cluster of trees, underbrush, and shrubs nearby. Yes, the sheriff had warned her not to go off by herself into the woods, but she was a grown woman, she had some exploring to do, and she was making sure that she wouldn’t get lost. She had been walking for a couple of hours, meandering really, looking for anything out of place that might indicate where the treasure might be hidden. She knew very well that the treasure might not even exist, that she was probably wasting her time, but really, what else did she have to do?
She had spent several hours earlier this morning continuing to recover what she could from the ruins. She had a good stock of stones, some salvageable planking from the flooring that, after some cleaning and scrubbing, would be suitable for exterior walls, and, she hoped, enough of the larger timbers to construct a frame for the house that she planned on building. It wasn’t going to be large, not much bigger than the sheriff’s office actually, enough room for a bed, a small table… and that would probably have to do. She didn’t know how to build the chimney, so for now, or at least until winter struck, she planned on cooking outside in a fire pit. After that, she wasn’t sure. Maybe Beitris’s husband, Alasdair, would help her construct a small fireplace which could double as a baking hearth.
Pleased by her progress this morning, she had decided to take the afternoon to do a bit more exploring in the forests. While she kept the sheriff’s warning in mind and carefully listened to everything going on around her, her eyes constantly darting this way and that, peering cautiously into the shadows, she had wanted to search deeper into the woods surrounding her property. In addition to the fabric strips that she tied to branches every so often to mark her path, she’d also constructed small cairns of stones. When an adequate number of stones weren’t available, she made small piles out of pine cones and branches. She felt confident she wouldn’t get lost. Besides, she wasn’t going terribly far.
The forest was rich with elder, a tall, scraggly shrub with tiny, creamy white flowers whose rich scent fascinated her. Numerous flowering shrubs had grown on the Isle of Skye, and she’d loved the celandines, marigolds, and meadowsweet, and of course, numerous types of thistles bloomed in rich blues and purples. Still, these shrubs were different, and their delicate flowers attracted her attention, especially the elder. She paused to study the flowers, amazed at their intricacy, their design, their colors. Birds hovered nearby as she marked the spot because the elder would offer a number of medicinal properties that she might find useful.
She moved on, narrowly avoiding impalement by the bristling stems of a wild rose. With a frown, she gave the shrub a wide berth and gazed upward. The canopy overhead, crowded with massive pines, fir, and other trees which she could not readily identify, blacked out much of the sunlight, allowing only occasional rays of sunshine to bathe the forest floor in a soft, whitish-yellow glow. Still, the shadows and lack of full sunlight gave the forest a gloomy appearance and gave the impression that it was much closer to dusk than it really was.
She found several promising berry bushes as she walked, searching also for anything odd, any unusual shaped tree, one that seemed out of place. Or caves, a couple of which she had discovered in her meanderings and which she had carefully memorized regarding nearby landmarks so that she could return later with a torch.
She wasn’t overly fond of caves, but she was willing to reconnoiter short distances into them, especially if there was a chance she might find a hidden treasure. As she walked through the forest, she also kept an eye out for any footprints or tracks of wild animals. Other than sounds of birds, the scampering of squirrels, and occasional angry chattering from one or the other as she got too close to a nest or a favorite tree, she had heard nothing. No voices, no horses, no nothing.
As far she was concerned, Colin… Sheriff Ramsey’s concerns had been extreme. It was apparent to her that this land was deserted. Unless one was hunting for deer or wild boar, why would travelers venture through these heavily grown woods? Of course, the heavy growth did provide an ideal hiding place for criminals, but she was extra cautious in that aspect. No singing, no humming, trying to move through the thick underbrush as stealthily as possible.
Occasionally, she heard a noise that she couldn’t identify. Was that short snap of a twig caused by a deer? A human foot? A horse? Any time she heard something unusual, she froze and listened intently for several moments before determining the sound had been made by wildlife. Then, she carefully moved on. In some places, the woods grew so densely that she couldn’t see more than fifteen feet in any direction, while at others, she’d be fortunate enough to gaze down into a shallow canyon or gully, or along a mountain slope, the trees tall and stately, blue sky filtering down from above.
Her eyes constantly swept her surroundings, from the ground in front of her to a short distance ahead, constantly seeking something that might give away the hiding place of the treasure Colin had spoken of. Even as she realized her own silliness—if a marker had been so obvious it would’ve been found yea
rs ago—yet, she couldn’t help but hope. She sighed. What was she doing? She was nothing if not practical. Rational. She didn’t put much stock in tales of treasure, at least until now. Desperation? Of course, she was desperate, and that was no secret. Who wouldn’t want to have a few coins to rub together?
Scanning the gently rolling floor of the forest before her, she suddenly spied an object that gave her promise. A cairn, and an old one at that. It appeared like the ones she had been forming until she became distracted, but much, much older, the rocks piled upon one another, creating a triangular pillar, wider at the base, and then narrowing in size until the stones at the top—that reached her waist—were no bigger than the palm of her hand. The rocks, covered with lichen, seemed blackened with loam at the bottom, many of them cracked and chipped.
What was this? This couldn’t possibly be… could it?
She reached out to touch the cairn and then jerked her hand back, a shiver racing down her spine, eyes narrowed as she cast her gaze around. In the distance, she heard the sound of water, bubbling over rocks… perhaps a small waterfall. She snorted. This wasn’t a marker for buried treasure. Possibly a boundary marker. Was this her boundary marker or someone else’s? She tied her last strip of cloth to a low-hanging pine branch nearby and then proceeded to explore, wandering down to the bank of what, at least at this point, was more of a creek than a stream. While she was certainly no expert on land boundaries, it would make sense that a waterway would serve as an adequate boundary marker, but if so, then why the cairn only a short distance away?
“It’s not the treasure,” she muttered to herself.
The birds chattered overhead while a curious black squirrel watched her from a nearby pine bough. It wouldn’t be that easy. It couldn’t be that easy! If the legend were true, the gold, the jewels, whatever the booty was, had been hidden for at least… She knew little about Norsemen, but she did know that there were a people called Vikings. And they had run rampant with their pillaging, raping, and stealing long before she had been born, long before her own parents had been born.
Muttering to herself, she continued moving upstream, away from the banks but close enough to hear it, seeking another cairn or perhaps something else that marked a land boundary. How far had she come from her own property? Or was she still on it? She hadn’t been paying attention to the distance, but it couldn’t have been that far, could it? She’d been strolling when she saw another cairn that looked much like the one she had left behind.
Curious now, she approached, then continued past it, moving away from the water now in what she gauged as a northwesterly direction, forest before her, mountain slope rising sharply in the other direction. She wished she were brave enough to climb one of these trees so that she could view the landscape from above, get an idea of distance and scope but she didn’t dare. She hadn’t climbed a tree since her youth, and if she fell…
She pushed her way through a particularly dense thicket of shrubs, most of which she couldn’t identify, growing among them a number of saplings and pine tree trunks, some of them quite large, towering above, their branches creating a canopy that the sun barely penetrated.
Then, pushing herself between two more shrubs, one of them a berry bush, she noted with satisfaction, she suddenly found herself looking out at a very small meadow, and beyond that, the stone walls of a manor house. The stone and wood structure was easily twice as big as the one she had very briefly lived in, an imposing structure, but not what she could call beautiful or even attractive. Rather, it was dark, gloomy, and intimidating.
The stones looked very old, a good portion of them covered with moss and creeping tendrils of ivy, some of it reaching as high as the upstairs floor and even what she concluded must be an attic space, if those small dormer windows were any indication.
Was the place deserted? Who had built it?
It looked old, very, very old, but it wasn’t a derelict structure. No pieces of the wall had collapsed, the roof, which looked to be solid shingles of pine or ash or some other wood, was in mostly good condition. The chimneys rising above the rooftop on each short end of the house stood tall and straight.
No, the place wasn’t deserted or abandoned. Or was it? Who lived here? No movement, no sound came from the structure.
She spied what might’ve been an old garden space behind the building, crowded between a rear stone wall and the trees towering over the back of the house, bushes and tall grasses crowding toward the rear wall. In the front, she noted a relatively cleared area, part of the meadow she had viewed, what looked like a buggy path rutted deeply between the sparsely growing grass leading from the front steps into the woods to the south of her. Toward the village.
Multipaned and mullioned windows graced the first floor of the house, though none looked broken or cracked. No village boys roaming around here, throwing rocks at the house. Was this the location of the rumored hauntings? Upstairs, no glass windows in the dormers, some of which were closed off by wooden shutters, some open.
Whoever lived here, or who had lived here, had been well-to-do. Glass windows were rare and typically only affordable to the rich. Her former home on the Isle of Skye had glass windows, but she didn’t care for them much, as looking through them caused distortion and made everything outside look wavy. She preferred shutters.
She stood for several minutes, watching, but saw nothing, heard nothing. Curiosity got the best of her, and she stepped through the thicket, hovering on the edge of the meadow, still shielded by the hanging boughs of a fir tree. Did she dare? Heart thudding dully, she wavered between caution and interest. She wasn’t sure how far she had walked from her own house and property, and for all she knew, she still stood near the borders of hers. Maybe this house was built on her property. She didn’t know. She would have to ask the sheriff or whoever managed land and estates in this region. There had to be someone who had that information.
Well, she had come this far, and since the place seemed deserted, maybe she would take a peek, maybe look in one of those windows. She would be able to tell if the place was abandoned. Maybe a decade of dust would cover everything, like her house had been when she first arrived. If it looked lived in, she would leave immediately.
“You’re a hypocrite.” She spoke the words softly, realizing that she was invading someone else’s privacy much like others had invaded hers.
She had no intention of doing any damage to this property or home though. She wasn’t going to start a fire and try to burn or drive out whoever lived in it. Besides, who would live in such a dark, dreary, neglected place anyway? The house itself might be standing and not falling apart, but the property around it certainly wasn’t well cared for. She saw no signs of life. It was empty.
She took a deep breath, grabbed a handful of her gown in one hand, the other placed over her upper chest, trying to still her beating heart. She should just turn around and leave. She should ignore her curiosity and walk the other way. She didn’t care who lived here.
And yet she found herself stepping away from the thicket, moving ever closer to the house, not too hesitantly, but not rushing either. She crossed the short meadow, which might even have been a lawn at some time in the past, then reached the corner of the structure. It looked even more imposing close-up. She touched one of the stones, her fingers trailing along the chunk of granite, cushioned by a fine coat of green moss growing on its surface. Should she peek in the window? What if someone stood inside, watching her as she crossed the small open area? Her heart pounding now, the hair rising on the back of her neck, the structure suddenly made her shiver, foreboding and ominous. Chances were, so too was its owner.
She needed to leave. Now.
She turned and bumped into something.
Not a something, a somebody.
She gasped in surprise and looked up, eyes widening and mouth dropping open as she stared into the glowering features of Dougal Craig. His eyes dark and narrowed and the grimace as he wore on his face obvious indications of his annoy
ance.
“What are you doing skulking around my house?”
He growled deeply, no sign of friendliness or even boredom on his features, such as he’d worn when he purchased the loaves of her bread the other day.
She stammered. “I… I was looking for berries and—”
“Do you see any berries here?”
A shiver raced down her spine. She stood so close to Dougal she felt the heat emanating from his frame, smelled the leather of his vest, a vague hint of horseflesh. Saw his hands tightened into fists, his frown, the anger…
“I… no, but I saw the house from over there,” she said, lifting a trembling hand to point to the woods surrounding the property. I was just… I was just curious.”
“You were curious.”
He didn’t believe her. The tilt of his head, the look of disbelief on his face, no, he didn’t believe her. Her heart raced now, faster than she imagined it could. She swallowed. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean—”
“You didn’t mean to spy on me? Is that what you mean?”
“I wasn’t spying, honest! I was just curious. I saw this old house, but it looked abandoned, so I…”
He stooped down slightly, towering over her, intimidating and threatening. “It isn’t abandoned, and you have no business snooping around. Go away. Go away now!” He gestured, pointing one arm back toward the woods. “Go!” he shouted.
Swallowing a yelp, Iona nodded jerkily, apologized once more, and lifting the hem of her gown, walked as fast as she could back toward the shelter of the trees. She felt his eyes on her back the entire way. A wild trembling took over her body, and her stomach churned with nausea. What a horrible, mean man was Dougal Craig. She paused at the tree line, risking a quick glance over her shoulder.
Dougal still stood there near the corner of his home, a sword in his hand. Where had the weapon come from? “Go! And don’t come back!”
