Master of Shadows

by Neil Oliver

  A man’s voice, speaking in a language she had forgotten she knew.

  ‘Bad enough,’ came the reply. ‘Bitch got me a good one.’

  ‘Still bleeding?’

  ‘No … no, that’s stopped, thank God. But the wound needs tighter binding.’

  ‘And riding?’

  ‘I’ll ride all right – even if it kills me. He said to keep to the trail the pilgrims follow, but heading east. I don’t know how you feel, but I’d rather die on the road than fail to meet him.’

  While the conversation went on, her eyes grew accustomed to the dark. The man she had seen – and the other she had not – was on the other side of the fire, tending to three horses tethered to the same pine tree. It was not just the language that had taken her by surprise – though English was rarely heard in Galicia, even this close to Santiago de Compostela, where pilgrims from around the world were commonplace.

  What had struck her most forcefully was the accent. Her captors were Scottish. Slowly, so as not to alert them to the fact that she was awake, she arched her aching back and reached downwards with her arms, towards her heels. At the same time she flexed her legs, risking cramp in her calves as she sought to form herself into an O, with hands and feet touching behind her back.

  ‘We should have buried Tom.’

  ‘And how would we have done that? The ground’s hard as iron. Did you mean to dig a grave with your sword?’

  ‘Ach, I know. But come on – it’s our Tom we’re talking about, my own sister’s child. I should’ve seen to him myself. Laid him out and covered him at least.’

  ‘We should’ve made her do it. Forget it now. We had to leave him. Did you want to wait while folk – men, maybe – came looking for us … after they’d found the women and girls – nuns, mark you?’

  There was no reply, just a sound, perhaps the scraping of feet.

  ‘If I was you, I’d worry less about poor dead Tom and more about your everlasting soul!’

  He laughed, a cruel laugh that turned into a coughing fit. After hacking for a few moments, he spat thickly.

  ‘Have you ever seen the like of it – her, I mean … the way she handled that axe?’

  It was their first mention of her existence, and her body stiffened.

  The other snorted in an attempt at derision, but it convinced neither him nor his companion.

  ‘Come on!’ he hissed. ‘And when she went for the knives … Jesus Christ, if you hadn’t skelped the living daylights out of her when you did … well, I don’t know what …’

  ‘She’d have butchered you like a spring lamb, is what.’

  ‘Aye, she might well,’ said the other. ‘I’ll not deny it.’

  There was silence then for a few moments and she closed her eyes, willing the pain in her head to recede.

  ‘Who is she, anyway?’

  ‘Stop asking me that! No one ever said. All I know – and all you need to know – is that she belongs to Sir Robert Jardine. I’ll tell you this – he’s welcome to her.’

  Her eyes were open again, and wide. A chill ran the length of her as though the fire had suddenly been extinguished and replaced by a blast from Brother North Wind.

  Jardine. Sir Robert Jardine. She remembered the last time she had lain bound hand and foot, his prisoner. His face came back to her, clear as though he were here now, lying on top of her and pressing his face into her own so that his foul breath enveloped her, filling her nose and seeming to cling to her skin and hair. The years peeled away like wind-blown paper.

  Long ago he had made of her a gaming piece, to be moved upon the board and exchanged for all the stuff of his dreams. Robert Jardine … and if he had her, what of Patrick Grant? She had escaped – they had escaped – and she had turned her back on all of it. She blushed red hot with the truth that she had lived half a life, denied herself everything, in order to be safe. All at once the sacrifice, the price paid, seemed meaningless and obscene. She had surrendered all in hopes of disappearing from the world – and now the world was back, and she was back, and all that she had given up counted for nothing. These men had torn a gash in the thin curtain separating then from now, and she was Jardine’s prisoner all over again. It might as well always have been so.

  She exhaled softly as finally her tethered, booted feet made contact with her fingertips. With a final effort she forced the heels of her hands apart just enough to enable the rough edge of one steel toe cap to make contact with the tight bonds of leather. Her muscles and joints burned white hot with the strain of the posture and she ground her teeth for a few seconds, to retain her focus. With minuscule movements, she rubbed leather against steel.

  ‘Simon ergo Petrus habens gladium eduxit eum: et percussit pontificis servum, et abscidit auriculam ejus dexteram. Erat autem nomen servo Malchus.’

  Her voice cut deep into the night, louder than she had intended, but she was sure she heard the sound of both men turning towards her from where they stood beyond the flames.

  While one remained with the horses, the other, the man who had felled her with his cosh, slowly circled the fire. She had heard the soft whisper of his sword blade as he drew it from its hide-lined scabbard, and he used it now like a walking stick while he limped heavily towards her. He was almost on top of her before he stopped.

  ‘What did you say?’ he asked, so close that the toes of his feet were almost touching her stomach.

  With her eyes fixed not on her captor but on the flames, she repeated the verse, in Latin, from the Gospel according to St John:

  ‘Simon ergo Petrus habens gladium eduxit eum: et percussit pontificis servum, et abscidit auriculam ejus dexteram. Erat autem nomen servo Malchus.’

  He poked at her chest with the toe of one boot.

  ‘Eh? What’s that?’

  She sighed, before continuing in English: ‘Then Simon Peter having a sword drew it, and smote the high priest’s servant, and cut off his right ear. The servant’s name was Malchus.’

  He grunted at her, lost for words.

  ‘What was his name?’ she asked. ‘The dolt whose skull I laid open to the sky?’

  Suddenly comprehending – realising she was making fun of him and his dead companion – he spat his venom at the woman at his feet.

  ‘Fuck you!’ he roared, taking his weight on his sword and drawing back his left leg a second time, intending, in his rage, to kick her hard enough to lift her into the air.

  But as his clumsy left foot, unbalanced by pain and weakness in his right, lunged forward, she whipped both her hands from behind her back. The severed ends of the cut ties of her bindings hung loose from each wrist. Cramp and cold made her slower than she might have wished, but still she had time to parry the kick from where she lay.

  While he gasped and stumbled, she sprang to her feet. Her ankles were still tightly bound, but she kept her balance. Her captor straightened too as best he could, given his wound. He was still holding his sword, but as he turned to face her, she struck him in the throat with her open left hand. Her arm had been as fast and sinuous as a striking snake, and she felt his Adam’s apple collapse beneath the taut webbing of flesh between her thumb and index finger. He dropped heavily to the ground, his throat crushed, the airway blocked.

  The few seconds of the fight had given the other man time to collect his thoughts. He had been frozen, stunned by the lopsided sequence of events. He let out a cry – fury and alarm in equal measures – and leapt towards her through the flames of the campfire. The ends of his long hair sparked alight, along with the fraying threads of his jacket. Before he could reach her, she squatted down, picked up the sword and used it to free her ankles. With both hands tight on the handle, she brought the sword upright and straight in front of her in time to catch her would-be assailant on the point of it. His own weight and momentum ensured he was punctured front and back, sliding down the length of the thing before coming to a rest against its hilt. His face, wide-eyed and dying, brushed against her own for a moment or two, so that she felt the s
tubble on his chin, before she dropped him and the sword down to her right. He slid from its length and flopped lifeless on to the ground like a stillborn calf.

  ‘My, my,’ said a man’s voice from behind her. ‘You’re a handful and no mistake.’

  She pirouetted on the spot, elegant as a dancer, until she had the sword pointed at the latest arrival. He looked to be roughly the same age as her, and handsome, with eyes of green. His head was as cleanly shaven as his chin, and she noticed the light of the campfire’s flames dancing upon his polished pate.

  Flames reach us wherever we are, she thought.

  But for all she had taken in, in a heartbeat, about the man’s appearance, it was his arrow’s cruel steel point that preoccupied her most of all. It was just four long strides away, pointed straight at the end of her nose and backed by all the awful power of a fully drawn war bow of the good red yew.

  ‘Drop the sword please, mistress,’ he said. ‘I’m running short of arrows, and broadheads like this one are for downing heavy horses. They’re the very devil to dig out of dead faces. From this range, though, it’ll likely pass straight through and disappear into the trees. Either way, I’d just as soon spare myself the effort.’

  She did as she was told, first lowering and then dropping the heavy sword. Three more men, all of them younger than the first, appeared out of the darkness either side of her.

  One crept forward gingerly and stooped quickly to collect the surrendered weapon before withdrawing to a respectful distance. None of these Scotsmen had felt the need to fear a woman before (at least not since they’d grown old enough to disregard their mothers’ wrath), and the experience was unsettling for all.

  She was looking the archer straight in the eye as he finally eased the tension in his bow and lowered it in front of him, though she noticed he kept it in a state of readiness, the nock at the shaft’s end still engaged upon the string.

  ‘I am no one’s mistress,’ she said.

  18

  From a distance, the little caravan of horses and riders might have seemed like any other party of pilgrims heading east and away from the shrine of St James. In the common speech of Galicia they talked about O Camino de Santiago, the Way of St James. Any number of routes led to the shrine, as symbolised by the grooves in the scallop shell that was the symbol of the pilgrims’ path – many ways, but all of them leading to the same destination.

  On closer inspection, however, an observer might have noticed that the reins of the horse occupying the central position in the line of five were not controlled by its rider. Instead they were fastened to a rope held by the man immediately behind. Furthermore, the rider on the tethered horse, a woman, had her hands tied behind her back.

  She was unconcerned about the discomfort, oblivious even. Lẽna’s mind was wholly occupied processing what scraps of information she had gleaned from her captors’ conversations.

  The name Robert Jardine was one she had not heard spoken out loud for half a lifetime, and had hoped never to hear again. The thought of the man was unpleasant enough, but the way they had described her as his property made her sick to her stomach. It was a notion that stripped away her womanhood to leave her feeling like a child.

  Then there was the manner of the men’s approach, their tactics for handling her: all of it made plain they had been well instructed on the subject of her abilities. None of them had so far given any hint that they either knew, or suspected, the details of her past.

  Three of her captors posed a negligible threat. In any one of several scenarios she had rehearsed in her head, they amounted to little more than static obstacles, inconveniences. The fourth, however, the man holding the reins of her horse, was different. Though she had not encountered the like in twenty years, she had recognised his manner at once. His intelligence was innate, his self-confidence the product of experience. The way he moved, his demeanour, reminded her of herself. Added to that – the quality that made all the difference – was the way he addressed her and treated her. There was no hint of malice or spite, no seeming need on his part to exercise dominance or inflict suffering.

  In every way that mattered he had treated her with courtesy. Evidently he felt he had nothing to prove, no point to make. And so he was to be feared.

  In spite of herself, in spite of her predicament, Lẽna found it pleased her to hear Scottish accents again. There was warmth in the sound that sharpened her thoughts of Patrick Grant, made him seem close by. She was surprised to find she was pleased by the memory of him.

  The ebb and flow of the conversation wafting around her might have sounded like an argument, so combative and aggressive was the tone of much of it. Lẽna knew from experience, however, that she was listening to Scotsmen playing a game with one another, teasing and mocking by turns.

  Nonetheless she kept her gaze fixed straight ahead, over her horse’s head, and feigned disinterest. A burst of laughter rose and then fell, like a wave.

  ‘Where will we meet his lordship anyway?’ It was the voice of one of the younger men, in front of her in the line. As far as she could tell, his name was Jamie and his voice, more than any of the others, reminded her of Patrick.

  ‘Never you mind,’ said the leader, from somewhere behind. ‘Just keep thinking about what needs to be done today.’

  ‘Ach, he’s always like this,’ said another of the young voices. ‘You’ve no idea what it’s like riding with this man. It’s just question after question after question. It’s like being out with a nosy bairn.’

  There was a snorted laugh from the fourth member of the group. He was the rider tasked with bringing up the rear of the party, and he said little. Lẽna suspected there was intelligence somewhere inside him, or at least a careful listener.

  The little caravan continued on its way in silence for a while. They were keeping up a brisk pace and it was obvious they were making for their destination with all haste. The leader, the one holding the reins of Lẽna’s horse on long lines, broke out of step with the rest and urged his own mount to speed up until he was alongside her.

  This had been his practice from the moment they had set out. He watched her, tried to coax her to talk. Always he was attentive, as though her presence fascinated him. He said nothing for a minute or two, but Lẽna was aware of him looking at her yet again.

  She had spent the time assessing him as well. That process had begun the moment she first encountered him, staring at her down the shaft of an arrow pointed at her nose. Lẽna was yet to hear his name. None of the men ever used it and she suspected they were under orders to keep him nameless – at least in her hearing. She wondered why.

  ‘A lonely life you picked for yourself,’ he said.

  She did not reply, and kept looking ahead with what she hoped was an open and unconcerned expression. She had been guarded at all times so far.

  ‘Someone so … capable,’ he said.

  She gave no hint she was even paying attention to him, but she processed the question just the same. Capable, he had said. It was a leading word, suggestive.

  ‘Surely there was more you might have done,’ he said.

  She felt his gaze upon her, intent.

  She exhaled slowly, and the sigh itself was an answer of sorts.

  ‘I miss the rain,’ she said.

  In spite of himself, he made a small, surprised sound, almost a gasp. He had attempted conversations with her for the last three days, always without success. This sudden statement caught him unawares.

  ‘The rain?’ he asked.

  ‘On the island,’ she said, still looking ahead and not at him.

  The words, the language, felt strange in her mouth. She seldom talked to anyone, and then always in the Galician tongue, and so she spoke slowly, as though remembering a taste from childhood.

  ‘It seemed like it rained every day. I hated it at first, but after a while I liked it. It does not rain so often here, and I miss it.’

  She waited to see if her remarks made any sense to him, or perhaps co
nfirmed what he already knew, if anything.

  ‘Islay,’ he said. It was a statement, not a question, and she sighed again.

  He might have asked her something else but she did not hear it. Instead she kept looking straight ahead, just as before, between her horse’s ears. With the rise and fall of the trot she let the years slip away like dead leaves until she looked not at the real world around her, but with the eye of memory at her twelve-year-old self, at the grand and stately home of Alexander MacDonald, Lord of the Isles …

  They had arrived at Finlaggan, on Islay, on horseback. Her father had been at her side as always, on his black warhorse, Minuit.

  ‘Se tenir droit, maintenant,’ he said. Sit up straight, now. ‘Garder tes talons vers le bas.’ Keep your heels down.

  She had been close to dozing in the saddle, her eyes drooping with the fatigue of a seemingly endless journey, but at the sound of her father’s voice she had taken a deep breath and made her best effort to come back to the world and pay attention to his instructions. It was cold (why was it always so cold here?), and while it was not raining, the air around her was sodden so that her clothes and hair were damp.

  In spite of all the uncounted miles, the discomforts and the homesickness, she had made no protest at any of it – but her father had felt her disquiet just the same. She asked no questions, but still he offered answers.

  ‘It matters that you come here,’ he said. ‘You matter much more than I do.’

  His voice was as soft as the mist.

  She looked at him and smiled. She loved him and she trusted him. He knew it, and the thought of it, the feel of it, was like a bruise upon his heart.

  ‘I do not think there is anyone else like you in the whole world,’ he said.

  ‘I do not think there is anyone in the world like you,’ she replied, quick as a flash, her eyes loaded with all the seriousness of her words.

  He swallowed hard. It was easier when he could treat her like a child – when he was giving her instructions and chiding her for any lapse in posture or behaviour.