Patrick’s grin dropped away only to be replaced by a snarling scowl, lips pulled back, yellow teeth showing. Surging forward, Patrick ducked, swinging low for Joshua’s legs. He stopped him soundly without budging, his muscles superior. Deflect and stagger. Bloody hell. Joshua shoved Patrick back, the man almost losing his balance. Instead of following him to swiftly end the contest, Joshua staggered as if the effort had cost him much.
How easy it would be to kill the man now that Kára was safely away. Joshua could lop Patrick’s head off, and then Dishington’s, and then Robert’s. Would the next eldest brother come running out to meet his fate next? Mo chreach! He was the Horseman of War, not the executioner. And when word reached King James, the Sinclairs would suffer whether or not he withdrew his allegiance to his clan. Damn! There were too many factors to deviate from the plan he’d made. Bloody hell.
Strike. Withdraw. Stagger. Cough. Deflect. Swipe downward.
…
Swipe.
“A thin coat will give you the pallor of death,” Amma murmured as she wiped the cloth down Kára’s cheek. “Three days dead.”
…
Swipe. The blade whistled in the growing wind as Patrick sliced downward, and Joshua stopped it with his own sword. “You are dead,” Patrick said as he stood pressing into the crossed swords that separated him from Joshua.
A slow grin crossed Joshua’s mouth. “I may be, but ye, too, will be soon enough. Where will your soul be going when ye are in the grave?” Joshua finished his question with a cough right into Patrick’s face.
Joshua shoved him back and slashed his sword downward.
…
Amma swiped downward from the outside corner of Kára’s eye to her jawline. “There now, pale as death. On to making your skin look sunken in with the blackening.”
…
Joshua made certain to cough again and lowered his arm as if his sword grew heavy. Now he must stagger. Lord, he was hardly breathing hard, and he certainly was no actor. He was a warrior, the Horseman of War, a fierce, hardened swordsman. How did a stagger even look real? He let his knee bend deeply, making him look like he’d lost his balance.
“Do not touch his blackened fingers,” Mathias called out to Patrick.
Patrick’s gaze dropped to the black coating on Joshua’s two fingers. “What are you about?”
When the enemy played their part exactly as prompted, Joshua almost felt redeemed for not noticing the soaring birds in South Ronaldsay. He let a slow smile spread across his mouth that did not match the contempt in his eyes. “We all go at different times and in various ways, but death comes for each of us.”
…
“Death has come for you,” Hilda said as Kára and her amma walked up to the three cottages aboveground at Hillside. Hilda smiled, but a shiver still tickled up Kára’s spine.
She looked over the moor that led to the Earl’s Palace where Joshua was right now playing his part in this outrageous farce. Would it work? Could she possibly be free of the Stuarts? They had threatened her and her family her whole life. Death was the only way to freedom.
…
“To freedom!” Joshua yelled as Patrick struck downward. Joshua twisted the scant amount for the edge of Patrick’s blade to slice into his side. He felt the bite of it into his flesh and knew the sack of chicken blood had been broken. He grunted as he ordered his muscles to give way, and he hit the hard ground, flipping his kilt up at the last second.
The rest of the act was up to his Hillside warriors and his faithful men under Lord Robert. Would he feel Dishington’s blade stab into him? He’d never put his trust in anyone other than his brothers, but he concentrated on making all his muscles go limp, his breath growing shallower.
“Drag him inside,” Robert ordered.
“Nay!” Mathias yelled. “Look. He has black death on him!” Had he spotted Hilda’s handiwork or was he saying what Joshua had told him to say when he’d snuck into his home to tell him about the insane plan?
“We will all perish if ye bring the traitor inside,” Angus yelled from above in the tower. “Keep back.”
Joshua heard the scrapes of boots moving toward him, the crunch of pebbles near his ear. “He seemed weakened,” Patrick said, breathing heavy. “And was coughing.”
“’Tis the black death,” another soldier called. “Send him back or burn him there where he lies.”
“The tainted smoke will be in the air,” Mathias said. “Take your diseased dead!”
Joshua could tell someone bent closer to him. He tried not to move even to exchange air. “If ye are dead, I will cut my own ballocks off.” The harsh whisper came from John Dishington. Joshua kept his eyes closed and did not breathe.
“Get back,” Calder said, throwing a blanket over him. “We bury Kára Flett today at the chapel in Birsay and will lay him with her. You, Patrick Stuart, could even now be struck with the plague.”
Dishington chuckled, and a brief scuff of the pebbles preceded pain. Bruising pain tore through the cut in Joshua’s side as Dishington kicked him twice.
“What the fok!” yelled Osk, but Joshua kept a tight hold on his breath and movement. If he hadn’t been covered by the blanket, he’d have likely jumped up and taken Dishington’s foul head.
“If he is dead, he will feel naught,” Dishington said. “If he is alive, he deserves worse for acting the coward.”
His words were meant to goad Joshua into revealing himself, and if Calder and Osk did not get him out of there soon, the bastard might get his foking wish. But the ruse would be up, and Kára would not be free of the Stuart family. If he were not actually dead, they might demand to check her thoroughly.
“You are risking the black death,” Mathias called. “I saw a black knot under his kilt. ’Tis a very usual place to spot it. My uncle had it down in the Lowlands. Died within days of getting the black knots. Took my aunt with him, he did.”
More boots scratched at the pebbles, and Joshua tightened his stomach for another kick. But instead, someone grabbed him by the arms while someone else grunted, lifting his legs. “Bloody hell, he is heavy,” Osk said.
They paused. “Out of the way,” Calder said.
Dishington’s voice came from beside Joshua’s covered face. “I will be sure to pay my respects when you put the Horseman of War into the grave.” The man’s laughter faded on the wind as they carried Joshua across the uphill moor.
…
“You look diseased,” Kára said, as she held his blackened fingers up in the dim light of the Hillside cottage.
“Ye look dead,” Joshua replied, his fingers sliding in between her own.
“You will smear off the black,” Hilda said, scolding as she tied a fresh bandage around Joshua’s middle.
Kára’s stomach had turned in on itself when Joshua had removed the blood-soaked tunic. Much of the blood was not his, but a gash across his side showed some definitely was. Now cleaned, sewn, and wrapped, it was protected from the dirt that would soon cover them.
Osk popped inside, breathing hard. “The grave is dug. We widened it for you both. Douglas has chiseled a marker with both your names on it.” He shook his head, looking at his sister. “The sight of it propped next to Da, Ma, and Eydis leaves me cold. Geir, too.”
“I want Geir gone,” Kára said. “He is not to be anywhere near Robert, or his men might take him again.”
“Aye,” Calder said.
“I will take him to your den now,” Hilda said. “Only Osk and Harriett will be there to mourn with Calder and the half dozen men who have not yet set out on foot to find passage to Scotia at the bay of Skaill.”
“Ye should have only one lantern,” Joshua said, turning. “The less anyone can see, the better.”
“And you have something to cover our faces?” Kára asked.
“All set up at the chapel,” Osk said. K�
�ra tried not to notice that he looked worried over the plan.
She squeezed Joshua’s hand. “Will this work?”
In the lowering light that cast through the window, his features were dark. “Patrick and Robert think I am dead with the scene we acted out before the palace. They have only to hear that we were actually buried to believe the whole thing.”
“But what of The Brute?” she asked. Osk had told her how the monster had viciously kicked Joshua in his wound, opening it up even deeper with the toe of his boot. “He will have told them his suspicions.”
Joshua’s gaze slid over the hollow shading Amma had given to the pale paste, making Kára’s face look sunken, on the edge of decay. She had darkened the bruises that were still on her neck from Henry’s attack. “My men,” he said, “Angus and Mathias will have encouraged rumors that people in the village are showing up with blackish buboes in their groins and armpits, saying that the cleric who had visited here was dead on Hoy with the same disease. By the time they realize it is merely a rumor, if they ever do, we will be buried and gone.”
Kára shivered, wrapping her arms around herself. “Buried and gone. I believe I will have nightmares for the rest of my life about this night.”
Joshua pulled her closer into him, his arms circling to her back. There in the fortification of his strength, her worries seemed nonsensical. I give myself to ye. His words from the night before seemed like an oath. Whatever it meant, she knew he had not given it lightly. His mouth moved to her ear where his whisper tickled a path of warmth into her. “I will chase the nightmares away for the rest of your life, lass.”
He pulled back, looking into her eyes, which widened. The rest of her life? She opened her mouth to ask what that meant.
“Time to wrap you two in your shrouds,” another Hillside warrior named Aiden said, ducking into the cottage. He looked to Joshua. “The scout you left watching the palace returned. He says there is activity in the bailey. Robert and Patrick and The Brute are out with their horses.”
Hilda gave Kára a fierce hug and hurried out the door, calling for Geir. Geir had already said his goodbyes, but he ran back inside right into her arms once more. She wrapped her arms around her strong, brave boy. “Whatever happens,” she said, “you will come out of this stronger. Calder and Osk will get you to safety with the Sinclairs.”
“I would rather have you alive than be safe,” he murmured against her, and she squeezed him harder. He did not yet know how hard life could be if they stayed on Orkney under Robert’s brutal rule. She did. She’d been living it for twenty-six years.
“Joshua will keep me alive,” she said and pulled back.
Geir looked from her to Joshua, his young face looking much too hard. “If it comes down to you or her,” Geir said, “save her.”
Joshua nodded, his fisted hand going over his heart. “I swear it.”
It was enough to loosen Geir’s hold on Kára’s hand, and Aiden dragged him out to take Broch on a mad dash with Hilda to Kára’s hideaway den. Kára stared at the empty doorway and blinked back the unbidden tears. Would it be the last time she ever saw her baby boy?
Calder threw one of the woolen wraps at Osk, and they both shook them out. Joshua bent down to brush a kiss across Kára’s lips. “We will be well,” he said.
“Are you certain?” she whispered.
Calder cleared his throat. “We really need to get you up there. Corpses do not walk to their graves.”
Joshua touched his forehead to hers. “We will be better than well on the morrow,” he murmured.
She nodded against him. “We just need to get through this night.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
“Let your plans be dark and impenetrable as the night, and when you move, fall like a thunderbolt.”
Sun Tzu – The Art of War
The wind whipped at the cloaks of those family members standing above them in the churchyard. Joshua stared up at the slip of dark blue sky that peeked past gray clouds. Darkness was descending, but not fast enough. “Do not let them get too close,” he said. “Only enough to see it is us before ye cover us.”
It was the oddest view to have people gathered around, looking down at him as he lay in his grave. Dirt fenced Kára and him in on all sides as they lay together two feet down in the cold earth.
“Amma will warn them back because of the plague as she sprinkles us with fresh herbs,” Kára said, wrinkling her nose over the smell of the decaying seal hidden beneath a ragged blanket under her. They smelled like a combination of low tide and a three-day-old battlefield.
Wrapped in white linen, he and Kára rested next to each other. Under the cover of another blanket, their hands were free, interlaced together as if in eternal slumber as one. It felt natural, as if there would be no other way to lie next to each other. The warmth in her hand was a testament to their continued living even as cold pressed upward from the frozen ground under them.
“Close your eyes,” Osk whispered. “No breathing or twitching.”
“Stop,” Calder called out, his head turned away. “This is a family burial. You are not welcome here.”
“Welcome or not, I am the Earl of Orkney and have come to see the traitor buried,” Robert intoned from not too far off.
“Both of them,” added Patrick.
“Stay back,” Kára’s grandmother warned, and Joshua felt the pelting of dried herbs on his face. Caught on his lip, he held still, stopping himself from blowing it off. “They are both touched with plague,” she called, and Joshua could hear the tears in her voice.
“We must verify they are dead, plague or not.” Bloody hell. Of course John Dishington was with them.
“You have been warned,” Harriett said. “See what horror you have wrought on my granddaughter.”
“You bury them together?” Patrick asked.
There was a pause. “They wed before you killed my sister,” Osk said, a sneer in his voice that Joshua could plainly hear over the sea breeze. Hopefully, Patrick was getting a nose full of the dead seal.
“You mean,” Robert said, “before she and her rebel people marched against me and my family.”
Keep quiet, Osk. Kára’s brother was always smoldering, ready to explode, but right now nothing good could come from it. Mo chreach. Would he have to act like a ghost and break back into the Earl’s Palace the next eve to rescue Kára’s brother?
“Leave us in our grief,” Calder said, and Joshua could hear Kára’s grandmother crying above the wind.
“The grave is shallow,” Dishington said, his voice closer as if he braved the plague or did not believe any of it.
The blanket, linens, and the heavy targe that lay across Joshua hid the slight rise and fall of their chests. He concentrated on not moving by relaxing his facial muscles. Lord, let the darkness hide any signs of life.
“We baked the earth with a mound of burning peat,” Calder said, “but this was as deep as we could dig before hitting ice.”
“Look, Lord Robert,” Dishington said. “A marker for them. And it says nothing of Joshua Sinclair being the Horseman of War. I believe he has much to answer for before God, how he failed so terribly. Dying not only from a sword strike but also from disease. God has surely forsaken him. Joshua Sinclair, a weak failure of a man.”
The bastard was goading Joshua, daring him to leap up from the grave in vengeful outrage. Kára’s hand tightened in his as if she were afraid that was exactly what he would do, but Joshua lay still, imagining Dishington’s gaze waiting on his face for any twitch of life.
“He even lost at South Ronaldsay,” Dishington continued. “Practically killed that lad who trusted him.”
Joshua summoned his strength to stay still, unmoving as the man slandered him. In times past, Joshua never would have been able to rein in his temper. But the warmth of Kára’s hand rooted him, shielding him from the effects of the m
an’s insults.
“Now leave us to our goodbyes and prayers,” Calder said.
“The marker does not say she took his name,” Patrick said from above their heads.
“There…there was no time to consummate it,” Osk said, sounding like he was at the end of his patience.
Dishington snorted. “If it had been me, I would have leaped upon the woman before the cleric could make the sign of the cross. Joshua Sinclair, a failure of a man, too.”
“Blasphemy,” one of Hillside’s men muttered. As planned, a number of them had moved out of the shadows to encircle the chapel and graveyard, outnumbering Robert and his small band. Would it be enough to deter them from meddling more with the burial?
Harriett began to cry harder, her breathing becoming labored as she crooned in their ancient Norn language.
“Hold your tongue, old woman,” Robert called from a distance.
“I want to see you cover them,” Dishington said. “Completely buried.”
“Stay away from my girl,” Harriett wailed.
“Lord Robert, beware the plague,” a voice called from farther off. It sounded like Mathias. “Your son, and certainly Sheriff Dishington, are too close to the bodies.”
“Back away,” Calder called, “so we can lay them to rest.”
Dishington’s voice came close to Joshua’s face. “I am no fool, Highlander,” he whispered and stood. The sound of his boots crunching pebbles as he spun and strode away allowed Joshua to draw in air once more. The man did not believe he was dead, despite the blood and marks of disease, despite the burial and goading without winning a reaction. John Dishington was not ready to let him go. The realization that he never would stop hunting him hardened inside Joshua’s chest.
As Harriett lowered small treasures into the grave around Kára and him, she whispered, “He watches but cannot see inside the grave. Breathe before we cover you.”
Highland Warrior Page 27
