Chapter 23
The lapping water sounded no closer, but the air in Àdham’s prison was icy cold, making him wonder if his jailers meant to freeze him to death in his tunic.
They had not talked to him or to each other, nor had he seen their faces, but he did vaguely recall flopping facedown over what must have been a garron, and later into a tipsy boat. With his hands bound behind him and an opaque sack of sorts covering his aching head, he had been sure they meant to drown him.
Then, the boat had bumped onto land, and when they hauled him out, he’d lost consciousness again.
Fiona huddled in the shrubbery with Sirius, listening intently for any sound to warn her that someone else might be nearby. But the first awareness she had of Rory’s return was when the dog stiffened alertly and then began wagging its tail just before the boy murmured, “It’s me; dinna shriek.”
“Did you see guards?” she murmured.
“Aye, sure, so he must be there, ’cause naebody else be missing that I ha’ ken of,” Rory whispered. “But they be at t’other end o’ the loch, round a wee fire tae keep theirselves warm and out o’ the wind. Hew Comyn canna be here, and if he does come, they’ll be gey sorry about that fire. But I were glad tae see it.”
“Are they between us and the place where we can see the island?”
“We’ll go t’other way. Ye’ll see their fire then, so ye’ll ken where they be.”
“Might they have left other guards to keep watch over the island or on it?”
“’Haps they might, but I didna see nae one the way I went, nor did I see a boat at that end o’ the island. I’ll go ahead o’ ye tae show ye the way. Ye need only keep low and kilt up your skirts so ye willna make a din a-dragging ’em.”
“I can go quietly,” she said. “Just show me where that island is.”
Rory did not respond but moved ahead, so Fiona followed him, trying to keep silent. She soon saw the tiny fire on the upper shore across the loch and realized that, like most lochs she had seen, this one was at least twice as long as it was wide. She saw the island, too, a third of the way up from their end but closer to the opposite shore. The water glistened, revealing the shape of the heavily wooded island. More stars reflected on the water, so the mist was dissipating.
Glancing up, Fiona noticed light showing through clouds in the east. The moon, usually her friend, threatened now to betray her.
She tried to imagine how far a count of two hundred would take her.
He walked along a narrow, silvery path, surrounded by blackness. An odd herbal scent stirred his senses but revealed nothing about his location. Nor did he seem to have a destination in mind . . . if he had a mind. Perhaps he was dead.
He thought about that as he followed the path. His feet moved without any sense of hard ground beneath them. Perhaps he walked on clouds.
His body seemed abruptly to upend then and drift until he was lying down. Sirius sat beside him, lapping his cheek. Lips touched his, stirring confusion.
Dogs did not have such lips. Then Sirius vanished as if he had never been, and he was in bed with Fiona. His body stirred pleasurably. He pulled her closer and began to fondle her, eager to awaken her passions as he could so easily do.
Water dripped on him . . .
. . . icy water that soaked through his tunic as a freezing hand cupped his cheek and a soft, familiar voice said, “Oh, Àdham, love, prithee speak, but quietly! Say it is you, for I cannot see you. Oh, my love, please do not be dead!”
Much nicer than Mar’s shaking and bellowing at him.
He blinked, and there was light enough now to see her shape. But surely he was still dreaming, for she could not possibly . . .
“Àdham, say something.”
“You’re dripping on me.” His voice, to his own ears, was harsh and not his but someone else’s, more proof that he still dreamed. “What did you call me?”
“What do you mean? I said your name.”
Water dripped on him again, and his senses reeled. He was certainly not in bed with his wife, but his wife was with him and had no business to be anywhere near wherever he was now. He tried to sit up, but his stretched-out limbs painfully recalled him to his current circumstances.
“Where the devil are we?” he asked. “How did you get here?”
“Some Comyns captured you,” she said. “You are in a dreadful shack on an island in a loch southeast of Raitt. At least, so Rory told me.”
“Rory? Is he here, too, then?”
“Aye, on the shore, watching for wandering guards.”
“Shore? Island? Do you mean to say that you swam here?”
“Aye, but underwater, just as I did in the Tay. I was in no danger, for no one saw me. The guards are keeping warm by a fire some distance from here.”
“By the Fates, I am going to take a tawse to both of you,” he said more sharply than he had intended.
“Aye, sure, and so you may when you are safe,” she replied gently. “But first, we must get you home. And before we can do that, let me see if I can untie you.”
“Why be we a-sneaking past your ain guards, Hew?” Dae asked his cousin as they crept down to the loch shore, where he could see a narrow boat drawn up on the land. “I thought we came here tae make sure they was seeing tae their duties.”
“’Tis true, we did,” Hew agreed. “But they be lazing by yon fire, so I been a-thinking, Dae, and what I think is that Àdham MacFinlagh has crossed a line. At first, I were a-thinking we could use the man tae force Sir Fin o’ the Battles tae give us the lass, but from the time I saw that wee laddie I pointed out tae ye whilst we watched their party making for Rothiemurchus, I ha’ had some other thoughts. That laddie were at hand when our Rab were killed at Lochaber, so I’m thinking now that Àdham MacFinlagh were likely the lout I did see kill Rab.”
“Did ye no ken the man at the time?”
“Nae, then, I did not. I hadna seen him in years, and everyone there had such shaggy beards that nae man could ken much more than that the one he were fighting were likely an enemy. But I ken him now, aye? So I’m thinking that Sir Àdham MacFinlagh may just breathe his last breath tonight. And, thanks tae those louts yonder, nae one save us two will ken how that came about.”
Fiona shivered. Although the water in the loch had felt warmer than the air at first, by the time she had crept ashore on the island, more terrified with each move that someone would shout an alarm, she was freezing. To her relief, the door had only a bar fitted into iron brackets at each end. With effort, she had lifted it away, gently set it down, and pulled the door open.
Even now that Àdham was awake, and with that door ajar, she could barely see him right in front of her. But the faster they could get moving, the better.
As she battled the knots, using Rory’s wee knife, Àdham’s threat echoed briefly in her mind. Giving herself a mental shake then, she decided that she didn’t care what he did, as long as he was alive and back at Finlagh to do it.
With his hands freed, he sat up and leaned forward to deal with the knots at his ankles, but an involuntary cry of pain escaped when he tried to reach forward.
“Ay-de-mi, lass, I can scarce move my arms, let alone my fingers.”
“Let me do it,” she said. “Keep trying to move your arms and hands, though, because you will have to swim, and quietly. I do not suppose they were so helpful as to leave your weapons here with you.”
“In troth, I do not know,” he admitted. “Someone must have attacked me when I left Nairn and then, I think, knocked me on the head for the second time in a sennight. I came somewhat to my senses twice, once on a garron and then when they dumped me into a boat. I expected them to drown me.”
“You can tell me the rest later, but your legs are free now,” she said. “Try to move them, and rub life into them whilst I feel around in here to see if they did leave a weapon. At present, I have only this wee knife of Rory’s.”
“By the Rood, lass,” Àdham murmured wearily as he massaged his legs and feet, “I ought to bellow at you and order you to go home where you would be safe, but all I want is to take you in my arms, hold you tight, and tell you what a mad, brave thing you have done by coming here to rescue me.”
“You’ll likely come to your senses before we reach home,” she said dryly, “but I hope you do not, because I want you to do those other things, just not right now. So rub harder,” she added, “so we can leave this dreadful place.”
Obeying her orders, Àdham struggled to bring feeling back into his extremities. He was certain that the Comyns would not have left weapons in the shack, so he was startled to hear a soft exclamation of triumph from her a few moments later.
“What?” he asked, keeping his voice down as much as he could.
“Someone left a sort of club here,” she replied in a whisper. “It is not a mace or as good as a sword or a dirk, but it may be useful if we meet any Comyns.”
“Likely, it’s the one they bashed me with,” he muttered grimly. “I do not suppose you had the good sense to tell Fin or MacNab that you were coming here.”
“We have no time for scolding,” she murmured. “Fin went to Cawdor, but Rory heard MacNab tell me he’d met someone who thought he’d seen you in Nairn. So, Rory took Sirius near Nairn and told him to find you. When Sirius led him on east of Raitt, Rory came back through your pass and told me about this island.”
“How the devil did Rory know about it?”
“I am sure he will tell you about that when you are safe,” she said softly.
He realized that she was talking to him as if he were an ailing bairn. But just as he was about to point out to her that he was naught of the sort, a wave of dizziness struck him, and he realized that his head still ached like fury.
Likely, her judgment was not as impaired as his own was.
“Can you stand yet?” she asked.
“I will.” But he quickly realized he would need her help even to do that. “Sakes, lass, I’m as weak as a babe.”
Doing her best to help him to his feet, she said, “When did you eat last, and why did you go to Nairn instead of coming straight home?”
“I was with Mar,” he explained, wishing his head would stop pounding. “He keeps a galley in Nairn harbor, and he’d been wounded, so I stayed with him.”
“Do you think you can swim?”
“Aye, sure, more easily than I can walk,” he said. He was standing but hesitated to take a step, lest he find his legs less interested in doing so than he was. His head pounded more than ever, but the dizziness had begun to ease.
“I’ll just fetch that club,” she said. “See if you can walk to the door.”
Even as she was talking, she heard a songbird’s chirp-chirp from the shore. “Someone’s coming,” she whispered. “That was Rory. I told him to make a stir to draw the guards off if they raised an alarm but to give an owl’s hoot or a night bird’s call if he saw someone coming toward this island.”
“Fetch the club, lass. I’ll step out into the trees and look about.”
Moving quickly to the club, Fiona picked it up and was turning toward the door when she heard a new voice outside the shack speaking Gaelic. Although she could not speak it well, her understanding had improved enough for her to get the gist of his words:
“So ye’ve managed to free yourself, have ye? I vow, I’ll string those louts up and take the hide off them for their idleness. But ye’ll get nae farther, Àdham MacFinlagh. I ha’ me sword, as ye see, and this time ye have none.”
Peeking out through the doorway, thinking the voice sounded distantly familiar, she saw a bearded man nearly as tall as Àdham but less broad, wearing a plaid and tunic. Àdham had turned to face him but was backing slowly away toward the shore. A cloud that had occluded the moon was easing past it, and as its light brightened, she saw the other man’s profile. Something about it seemed familiar, too, although his thick beard made identifying him impossible.
Nevertheless, he had threatened Àdham and seemed not to know that Àdham was no longer alone. He said tauntingly, “Ye’ll no get far if ye try tae swim away. If ye ha’ nae ken o’ me, I’ll tell ye I be Hew Comyn o’ Raitt, and I need only tae shout for me lads tae bring ’em down on ye wherever ye might swim ashore.”
“But you cannot best me alone, can you?” Àdham said in Scots. “If I mistake not, the last time I faced one of your lot, you turned tail and ran.”
Recalling what Rory had told her about the day he’d met Àdham, Fiona gripped the club in both hands and began to move into the doorway. Hearing a gasp and slight cough on the other side of the door, she stopped abruptly and kept still.
Afraid to breathe, she watched as a second man passed the opening. He, too, wore a tunic and plaid and carried a sword. He did not speak, but she was as certain as she could be that he was another Comyn.
Àdham had seen the second man, too. He had easily recognized Hew Comyn as one of the two men who had punished Rory at Lochaber. Not that it would aid him now that Hew had the upper hand. He just hoped that Fiona would stay inside the shack and that he could draw the two men farther away from her and regain some of his strength in the doing. If he could not, Hew would kill him.
If his lass remained quiet, she would have a chance to get away . . . unless the Comyns entered the shack again after they killed him.
The second man had not spoken. But he had coughed, so surely Hew Comyn knew he was there. They were both dry, so they must have come to the island in a boat. As the thought crossed his mind, he saw Fiona step out of the shack and had to bite his lip to keep from bellowing at her to get back inside.
Hastily, but still in Scots, he said to Hew Comyn, “What the devil do you two dastards hope to gain by killing me? If you had wanted me dead, you could have killed me straightaway instead of taking the trouble to bring me here.”
“Aye, well, me cousin Dae and I had a first thought o’ trading ye for your lady, who might be o’ use tae some o’ us in persuading her da tae speak tae the King on Alexander’s behalf,” Comyn said, shifting to Scots himself. “However, after our victory at Inverlochy, me da says Jamie will ha’ tae let Alexander go, or he’ll see the whole o’ the western Highlands laid waste by Donal Balloch. But I’d also seen our lad Rory wi’ ye and suspected ye were the murderous snaffler wha’ killed our Rab. Now that ye’ve spoken o’ Lochaber, I be gey certain o’ that.”
“’Twas your Rab who attacked me, if you can recall the truth of it.”
“Ye were interfering in what were our business and nane o’ yours.”
Keeping his gaze on Comyn’s eyes and, he hoped, Comyn’s eyes on him, Àdham was nonetheless aware that the second man stood watching them and that Fiona was stealthily moving toward him. His fear for her nearly distracted him from the fact that Hew Comyn had set himself to attack.
Praying that Àdham could keep his attacker’s attention fixed on himself long enough for her to deal with the second man without letting the first kill Àdham, Fiona fixed her gaze on the back of her quarry’s head.
Ignoring her near certainty that even if she clubbed the man before he sensed her behind him, the other villain would kill Àdham and then turn on her, she knew she could not hesitate. If she did, the likeliest outcome would be Àdham’s death and her immediate capture by Rory’s “damnable Comyns.”
Gripping the club in both hands, she moved swiftly but furtively toward her target. Her bare feet made no sound on the grass and dirt beneath them as she moved toward him, raising the club, and then swung it as hard as she could, catching him a resounding crack behind his right ear.
The man dropped with a thud and lay still.
His sword slid silently to the grass beside him.
Sensing motion behind him and hearing the thud, Hew glanced back to see Dae drop his sword and fall. In the growing moonlight, he recognized Ormiston’s daughter, Lady MacFinlagh, standing over Dae in her wet shift, holding their club.
That wet shift held his gaze a split-second too long, for when he turned back toward Àdham with his sword at the ready and murder in his heart, he placed his chin perfectly to meet Àdham’s fist as it flashed past the upheld sword and knocked Hew Comyn flat.
“Lass, get back into the shack and collect those ropes. Quick, now, for I doubt that Hew here will oblige us by staying unconscious much longer, and I’ve little energy left to deal with him if he comes to.”
“What about the other one?”
“Has he moved?”
She shook her head. “Do you think I killed him?”
Her voice shook, and he hated to hear that. Keeping one eye on Hew, he moved to the other man’s side and felt for a pulse in his neck. It was there, weak but steady. “He’s not dead yet, so we’ll tie and gag them, and then we’ll leave them. Go now.”
She went and came back with the four lengths of rope and his plaid.
“I found this in the corner, but there were no other weapons,” she murmured.
“The plaid will be useful,” he said as he deftly tied Hew’s hands behind him with one rope and his feet together with another. “You must be cold.”
“I’ve had no time to think about it,” she said. “How will you get your plaid back to shore, though? It cannot be easy to swim with it or wise to get it wet.”
“Bless you, sweetheart, it’s been wet many times. But these two dastards have doubtless had the kindness to fetch us a boat.” He moved to the one she had clubbed, Dae Comyn, and tied him as he had tied Hew.
“Won’t the guards yonder hear us or see us if we row back across? It would be safer to swim underwater, would it not?”
“Nae, lass, we’ll take their boat. We’ll keep the island between us and that fire, and if those louts have heard naught yet, they’ll not hear us rowing. Wrap my plaid round you whilst I finish tying up this chap. Do you still have Rory’s knife?”
“Aye, I carried it in my teeth when I swam over here,” she said with a smile as she handed it to him.
“We’ll discuss your swim later,” he said. “Wrap yourself up well now.”
He was sure that it had been the sight of Fiona in that clinging wet shift that had held Hew Comyn’s gaze long enough for him to catch him with that punch. He was glad to have had that time. But the idea that Hew had seen her in such disarray made it hard to resist strangling the man or splitting him with his own sword.
Instead, Àdham used the wee knife to cut strips from Dae Comyn’s plaid. Stuffing one into Dae’s mouth, he used the second to tie it there. Then he moved to Hew and did the same. As he was tying that gag in place, Hew’s eyes opened.
“Don’t glower at me like that,” Àdham said. “You were a fool to spend time taunting me and staring overlong at my lady. I’d liefer kill you for that, but I won’t. It will shame you enough, I think, for your lads to find you like this. Also, if you freeze to death overnight, it will be God’s doing, not mine. After what I saw at Inverlochy, you should be glad I don’t take my revenge for that out on you.”
Straightening, glad that his legs felt like his legs again and that his fingers had managed the ropes, he knew that he still had to get Fiona, Rory, and himself away from Comyn land before the louts near the fire decided to tend to their duty.
They found the boat and saw that the Comyns had thoughtfully wrapped the oars to keep them from banging against the oarlocks. After that, it was easy to keep the island between them and the guardsmen as Àdham rowed gently to shore.
Keeping low, so that their moving figures would draw no attention from the opposite shore, they made their way back to where Rory and Sirius waited.
“I saw ye a-coming, or I’d ha’ hooted,” he told them in hushed tones as he handed Fiona her kirtle and she quickly donned it and laced its bodice. “Sirius alerted a wee while ago, so I think some’un else be a-coming yonder.”
Fiona murmured, “We’ll be trapped between them.”
“Nae, then, m’lady,” Rory said. “His tail be a-wagging.”
“Come, lass,” Àdham said. “We’ll go to meet them.”
“S-Sir Àdham?” Rory’s voice faltered.
“What is it, laddie?”
“Be ye vexed wi’ me, sir?”
“We’ll talk some later,” Àdham said quietly, resting a gentle hand on the boy’s shaggy curls. “But you did me a great boon tonight, guarding my lady.”
“Ye shouldna be vexed wi’ her, either, I think,” Rory said with more of his usual confidence. “I dinna ken how anyone else could ha’ swum there without making the water move about. The stars were out, ye ken, so even them fool louts yonder might had seen big ripples and got up tae see what caused ’em. But she stayed underwater the whole time.”
“I am sure she did,” Àdham said, urging the boy forward. “You lead the way now, and go quietly, lest your judgment about Sirius’s welcome was faulty.”
He soon learned that the boy and Sirius were right, for he heard a quiet “Loch Moigh” ahead and recognized Fin’s voice.
So did Fiona, for her footsteps behind Àdham came to a stop.
Recognizing that quiet voice as Fin’s, Fiona froze where she was, certain that he would react more vehemently than Àdham had—thus far, anyway—to finding that she had deceived everyone and sneaked out of the castle with Rory.
She stood still for only seconds, though, before Àdham turned and reached for her. Drawing her near, he bent to speak into her ear. “There will be a reckoning, mo chridhe. But it will come from me, not from anyone else.”
At that moment, his words were less than reassuring, because she knew that he was as answerable to Fin as she was. But she had to continue walking, even so.
They met Fin moments later, and to her further chagrin, MacNab was with him. Even by moonlight, she could see disapproval in the lanky squire’s expression when his cool gaze came to rest on her.
There was no more conversation until they were away from the loch and nearing the top of the pass with the moon behind them and Castle Finlagh below on its knoll, making a shadowy picture against the starry northwestern sky.
Then, at last, Àdham broke the silence. “How did you know, sir?”
Such was their kinship and ease of discourse that Fin answered matter-of-factly, “We learned that two of the Thane of Cawdor’s tenants had mentioned meeting you near Nairn. So MacNab and I went to Cawdor to talk to them. MacNab had also spoken to Hew Comyn and a cousin of his, whose insolence to MacNab stirred his suspicions that they knew more than they admitted knowing. I had heard about that island prison of Comyn’s, so we came along to see if they had put you there. Evidently,” he added gently, “someone else had heard about the island, too.”
Fiona shivered at his tone.
Rory, walking beside her, looked up at her and opened his mouth, but she shook her head. She knew if he spoke, he might admit to having insisted that Fin would take too many men along if he hastened to Raitt’s loch.
That, she decided, was no admission to make just then.
Àdham remained quiet for a time before he said, “It was fortunate for me that the two of them did come along, sir.”
“Which of you is going to tell me just how you escaped?”
Àdham looked at Fiona.