[Druids Bidding 02.0] RenFaire Druids: Dunskey Castle Prequels

by Jane Stain

  Everyone had been watching rehearsal, Emily realized.

  “I hope this play does na give the young ones bad ideas,” said the older woman.

  “It won’t.”

  “How can ye be sae certain?”

  “Both the little brats die in the end.”

  “Och, aye, that wull dae.”

  The first part of the afternoon went much as the morning had. Emily cast all the parts of the play and ran the actors through their lines over and over. Good thing she had seen all 21 of Short Shakespeare’s performances. Fortunately, most of the guys had seen a good many of those performances, too.

  When she found out Mike knew all the lines as well as she did, Emily had Mike take turns with her, feeding the actors their lines. That helped save her voice.

  Rehearsal stopped often for a water run to the loch. Emily took advantage of the relative privacy to wash and to change underwear. Long skirts were starting to make more and more sense to her. They were like a traveling private bathroom.

  She was so glad she had two skirts that she traded one of her sheets of wax paper for a second blouse. The woman was so impressed with the wax paper that she gave Emily her very best blouse for it, a lovely one with flowers and vines embroidered round the neckline.

  When they came to the sword-fighting parts of the play, Emily had difficulty. She knew stage fighting and some real sword-fighting techniques, and the bikers were knife fighters. But when it came to period weapons, they only knew archery. The two actors who wore swords only wore them to look cool.

  So it was a big relief when Dall showed up with a small barrel full of practice swords, even some one-handed Italian ones.

  Well, it was always a relief to see Dall. Who was she kidding?

  “Could ye use a hand teaching the actors how tae handle swords, lass?” He looked … sheepish.

  She was sure the men would rather learn sword techniques from a man than from her. That was why she was so eager to see Dall in action. Yep, that was a good excuse.

  “Could I ever.”

  He looked at her uncertainly.

  Right, she knew better than to use modern slang. She would need to really watch herself. “Yes. Thank you for the help.” She gave Dall her most sincere smile—and resisted the urge to bat her eyelashes at him. He wouldn’t get that joke. “Uh …” Facing everyone now, Emily fought her training a bit. In teacher school they had always said OK to get things going, and OK was way too modern.

  “Well enough,” she tried.

  There, that did it. Everyone looked at her. She was glad she hadn’t had to whistle in front of Dall. That was just too unattractive.

  Now that she had their attention, she went on with her instruction. “In the first fight, two Capulet servants insult two Montague servants until there is a general brawl. Dog, I am going to leave the brawl up to you. You and your crew know how those go.”

  Dog smiled and put everyone through the moves of a brawl, and they were more than convincing. This was going to be good.

  Emily went on. “Romeo’s cousin Benvolio tries to stop the brawl, but Juliet’s cousin Tybalt starts a swordfight with him.” While she spoke, she pointed to the actors playing those parts, and they took the stage in front of the brawlers. “This one needs to be really active.” She looked to Dall.

  “Wull then lass, let us show ye an active fight, sae that ye mayhap can choose the parts that best fit yer play, aye?” Dall smiled.

  Emily nodded eagerly. “That would be awesome.” Awesome was OK to say, right? Apparently so.

  Dall called another kilted highlander over. “Hendry.” The two of them each picked out a one-handed Italian practice sword—and then they were at it. They swung high and low, twirled around making their kilts fly, banged each other’s swords, and even slashed each other’s shirts a bit, yelling and huffing and chests heaving…

  Everyone sat dumbfounded and watched the sword show.

  After Dall and Hendry finished swooshing all over the courtyard for ten minutes, everyone broke out in cheers and applause, just like after Mike recited those first lines.

  The biker playing Benvolio said, “I think you guys should just play the sword-fighting parts.”

  The one who was Tybalt said, “Yeah, really.”

  They both looked impressed, but cast down in spirit.

  Before Emily could reassure them, Dall did it for her. “I wull na hear o’ it. Ye insult my abilities as a fight leader. I wull hae ye doing these moves by the end o’ two weeks—on stage, if na on the battlefield.”

  They ran through the whole play twice then, having Dall and Hendry stage all the sword-fights. When the two highlanders left to put the barrel of practice swords indoors, Emily and the actors washed up again before supper.

  While they were down at the loch, they saw a boat approaching and rushed up to warn the castle. It turned out to be someone important named Colin Campbell in the boat, with twenty other kilted highlanders.

  When he came in, Campbell made a show of clasping forearms with Alasdair and generally being everyone’s friend, but there was a hard look in his eyes that worried Emily.

  He did draw all the attention at the supper table in much the way Emily had at lunch. This was fine with her.

  It meant she and Dall could have a casual conversation without everyone listening in. They were careful to look away from each other now and then, to avoid being teased for the crazy amount of attention they were giving each other, having only just met 10 hours before.

  Dall started it. “I heard ye tell Alasdair ye came tae Scotland tae see the Highlands.”

  “Yes, and it is beautiful in the way I had heard—and much more. Loch Awe is aptly named. I am in awe.” She smiled about the loch with her mouth, but she smiled admiration at Dall with her eyes.

  “Are ye? I dinna suppose ye hae lochs down there in England, after all.” The way he said England made it a question, and his eyes held many more questions.

  Very conscious of Eamann listening nearby, Emily tried her best to answer Dall’s questions with her own eyes.

  Everyone stayed at the supper table into the evening, singing songs about battles and lovers old long before. Dall and Emily’s eyes continued their discussion about awe, but all their words were about Scotland.

  Much later, Emily and Annis went up to their third-story room. After they had bade each other to have a good night, Emily took her belt with all its pouches and her ‘brooch’ under the covers for safe keeping.

  Emily ducked her head under the covers as well once she heard Annis’s breath go into sleep mode—and turned on her phone, glad she always kept it silenced. She found the Scottish history book she had downloaded, and searched in it for ‘Colin Campbell’.

  Oh no.

  1547: Kilchurn Castle was administratively taken from the MacGregors—constables since about 1400 because of their relation to medieval lord Donnchadh Beag—by the servant of the servitor of Colin Campbell (Cailean Liath).

  1550: Colin Campbell became the 6th Campbell chief and gradually took over all the MacGregor lands with the administrative help of the earl of Argyll. Ironically, Campbell was aided by the MacGregors in this, who served as his infantry and intermarried with the Campbells.

  1569-70: Colin Campbell himself beheaded the MacGregor clan chief Gregor Roy (Griogair Ruadh) under false accusations and gave Glen Strae to his own son instead of to the rightful heir: the son of Gregor Roy and Marion Campbell. The clan’s response was to reclaim their cattle by force—and they were deemed outlaws.

  1604: As a direct result of outlawry alleged by Colin Campbell, King James VI made using the MacGregor name a hanging offense—and he made mating with a MacGregor a tar-and-feathering offense for a woman. The clan dispersed, though many were sold into slavery in the colonies, where they kept the MacGregor name and multiplied, sometimes as McGregor.

  Emily hadn’t slept much the night before, tossing and turning with worry over how to warn Alasdair not to trust Colin Campbell. But when she w
ent down to breakfast, he wasn’t there. Hardly any of the castle men were, just Eamann, Campbell, and a few of those Campbell had brought with him.

  Her actors had remained, and they spent the meal loudly boasting about all they had learned of sword-fighting the day before. Campbell hid it well from them, but Emily could tell by the hard look in his eyes that he thought the actors were useless and ridiculous.

  “It is away they are, set tae keeping Colin’s borders for him” said a soft voice in Emily’s ear.

  Emily turned to the young woman. “Please tell me your name. I don’t want to keep thinking of you as ‘the butter lady’.” She noticed that the man usually seated on the other side of the woman was gone.

  “Mairi.” The woman smiled. “Glad I am tae meet ye.”

  Emily looked up and listened to the actors boasting for a bit before she addressed the woman again. “Is it so obvious, my attraction to Dall?”

  Mairi’s smile was joyous. “Aye, lass, tae those o’ us who ken love.” She looked over toward Eamann and Campbell. “Which does ne include everyone.”

  The two women watched Campbell hold court for a while. People jumped when he said boo.

  “How long will the men be away?” Emily tried not to pout.

  Mairi was matter-of-fact, like most military wives whose husbands are deployed. “Mayhap as long as a week, but most times ainly three or four days.”

  Emily asked Mairi for a tour of the castle, especially including which rooms had arrow openings to the outside. She also asked Dog to teach her how to shoot, and she practiced while the men loitered over their meals each day. They all kept up their rehearsal schedule for the next five days.

  At first, the men grumbled that they needed Dall and Hendry to keep them doing the sword-fighting parts correctly. Even though she missed Dall too, Emily soon saw to it the actors had confidence in her. With her background in stage-fighting, she really was the better teacher for this, now that the fight choreography was done. The actors needed to make their fight look convincing without it being dangerous, and she knew how to accomplish exactly that.

  Late each night under the covers, Emily read up on the history of the MacGregors and the Campbells. The more she read, the more intrigued she became—and the more worried and sad. She also tinkered around with the Time Management app, peeking into menus and reading screens that popped up here and there. It looked like it could be programed to take her—and anyone touching her—just about anywhere on Earth during any time, but she didn’t dare mess with its current settings. She wanted to see Vange and her parents at least one more time, and she was afraid of getting lost in time.

  During their extended meal periods, Dog worked with Emily on her archery and arrow-making. He and the others also practiced shooting at birds when they flew overhead. They even got one and used its feathers to make more arrows. They were able to collect most of the arrows they shot, but some landed in the loch and were lost.

  On their sixth day at the castle, Emily found out all the Scots women knew how to shoot arrows.

  Really well.

  She and the actors were getting water from the loch when Ewan ran up. “Get back inside the castle.” He was running full tilt, and there was terror in his face, which she figured must be for her sake, or else he would have been running to safety, not to warn her.

  Emily didn’t have to be told twice. She and the actors left the buckets lying there. As they ran, they saw cattle being herded the same direction, and they ran inside the courtyard alongside the cows.

  “Up here.” Mairi called from the stairway facing the road.

  Armed with their bows and equipped with their quivers, the actors and Emily ran up the stairs after Mairi. She led them into the largest third-story room: the one above the front gate spanned that whole wall, with many tall narrow wind openings, facing the road. Most of these windows were already filled with women of the castle, all with bows and arrows. Emily saw that these tall narrow windows were perfect for shooting, giving the archer cover from incoming arrows while letting her arrows through.

  Dog took one of the windows and directed his men to fill the rest of the open ones.

  Emily asked Mairi, “Should the rest of us go around to the back of the castle, to fend off the siege from there?”

  “Och, nay. This wull na be a siege, Emily. ’Twill be a slaughter.” Mairi still was matter-of-fact.

  Emily didn’t have long to worry about that matter-of-fact tone. Almost immediately, the castle women started shooting their arrows.

  Emily wasn’t at a window, so she yelled, “What are they shooting at?”

  From the bottom of Dog’s window, Mike answered her. “A bunch of other highlanders who are chasing the MacGregors and the Campbells.”

  Eerily, all the castle women started made that familiar hooting noise.

  Emily could hear it from other front-facing windows, too, all up and down this wall of the castle. She also heard men groaning as the arrows hit them. Dog and the other actors in windows had started to shoot, too.

  And then men’s voices joined in with the women’s, making the Scots cheer even more eerie.

  “What’s going on?” Emily cried out.

  Mike said, “Dall and them turned around to face the ones chasing them, who are being shot as they run now.”

  Emily couldn’t stand not knowing what was happening. She copied Mike and crouched down to peek out the bottom of Mairi’s window.

  Mairi was right. It was a slaughter.

  That night was quiet and somber, with the dead being prepared for shipment to their clan burial grounds and the wounded being moved inside the castle and set up for tending until they either died or were well enough to go home.

  Emily’s sense of responsibility and leadership bade her help. She stopped wounds from bleeding with pressure or a tourniquet, washed wounds with alcohol, and applied her antibiotic ointment. Seeing just two of the castle women stitching wounds, she dug in her pouch for the needles and freely offered one to every woman there, explaining she herself was terrible with needles, but she had a supply back home.

  Explaining she had heard a rumor this prevents the fever, she showed the women a trick she had learned of singeing the needle in the flame of a torch before stitching. Hearing it this way, as a superstition rather than a charm, they were receptive. She was glad.

  After the men’s wounds were stitched, she bandaged them up and made the men as comfortable as she could. She prepared makeshift cots with the cleanest linens available. She washed linens and bandages. It was all that she—or apparently anyone here—knew how to do. She was at this all night and into the morning, and then she slept all the next day and night.

  Not normally a praying person though nominally a Christian, Emily thanked God that Dall had not been hurt. She felt guilty for being relieved about this, because Mairi’s husband had suffered a sword wound, and so had Hendry.

  But the castle men were all in high spirits at having won the fight, especially after Colin and the other Campbells left on Emily’s ninth morning at the castle. They were ‘in their cups’ before they started eating the noon meal.

  Alasdair wasn’t among the drunk, and when Emily came downstairs, he approached her. “So Emily, how is the play coming along?”

  “Oh. Well, I thought we would forget about the play, now that we have all these wounded to take care of.”

  “Nonsense, lass. The men need tae celebrate that they still live. There canna be any better time for a play. ’Twill be on in five days’ time. I hae already sent oot for the audience, and they are coming.” He escorted Emily to her seat beside Dall and left her there with a smile.

  Dall tried to be matter-of-fact, but his eyes were smiling at her. “Wull ye hae a run through the stage directions with me?”

  Dog butted in, a bit drunkenly. “She has been running us through the stage directions without you for the past week, and doing a mighty fine job.”

  Dall looked pleased that the actors supported their teache
r. “Mayhap she can show me a move or two. Eat up, everyone, and let us get oot there.”

  Emily looked around the table, and sure enough, the actors were eating up in a hurry so they could get out there and see the show Dall had promised.

  “Thank you,” she said for Dall’s ears only. “A few minutes ago, we all thought the play had been cancelled. Now you have raised their spirits for it again.”

  For everyone’s ears, Dall said, “Lass, ye should dae less talking and more eating, if ye want the strength tae run all the fight scenes with me oot there.”

  Emily smiled at Dall and kept quiet for the next few minutes, stuffing her face full of food and chewing as fast as she could.

  He offered advice on her eating. “Ye hae a bit on yer upper lip there, lass. Nay, on t’ ither side. Aye, ye got it.”

  Once all the actors were done eating and had been herded out into the courtyard, Emily and Mike ran them through the whole play for the fiftieth time. The actors knew most of their lines and their movements—except for the fight scenes, which were the showpieces of the play.

  Dall was right. While Emily had them moving through the fights safely, the men needed a refresher on how the fights were meant to look.

  As usual, they had brought down the barrel of one-handed practice swords. Emily chose one and moved into Benvolio’s position for the first fight.

  “Now, lass, I wull gae a bit slowly with ye.” Dall raised his sword to block her attack.

  They were off into the choreographed fight, and they did it just the way Dall and Hendry had the week before, full speed ahead. Their swords made satisfying clacking noises whenever they hit, and they both made the convincing grunting noises of exertion while they tramped all over the courtyard.

  Whenever Dall and Emily had one of those moments where their swords were caught in each other and their eyes met, she tried to stare into him the fact that they had been in these positions before when he sparred with her in front of the audience at the faire.