Chapter Twenty-One
Alec’s toes dug into the rocks surrounding Kisimul as he hauled his frozen, sopping body onto the shore. Even in summer, the North Atlantic water was known to freeze men, drowning them with numbness. But when his limbs began to slack, he kept them cutting through the water, the bright glow of the fire inside Kisimul his constant beacon.
For an instant, Alec’s hope flared. There, on the outside of the wall, leaning against it, were two women. Daisy and Weylyn’s dog, Ares, barked at him, jumping into and then out of the water. The two other dogs barked next to the women. He drew himself up to standing and ran toward them. Millie, a bleeding cut on her forehead, and Bessy Cameron.
“What have ye done?” Alec asked, and Bessy clung to Millie. The old woman’s eyes blinked open, and she shook her head, patting Bessy’s back as the younger woman sobbed. Millie made the sign of the cross with two fingers and then the sign of the devil with horns on her head.
“The priest? Is the devil?” he asked.
Millie nodded and ran a finger across her throat, then pointed to Bessy. Bessy had killed the priest? Maybe he wasn’t understanding Millie’s signals, but he didn’t have time to waste. “Where are the others, the children and Mairi?”
Bessy wailed, her piercing voice reaching inside Alec to twist his heart. Millie’s eyes were wet, and she slowly shook her head. A chill sparked inside him, running down his spine. “Nay,” he yelled, turning from them to run to the gate. Daisy followed on his heels. He looked down at the dog. “Where are they? Where is your mistress?” Alec yanked off his sopping shirt and threw his arm to point into the smoke-filled bailey. “Find her!”
The dog ran in through the arch, and Alec followed, holding the wet shirt loosely over his nose and mouth. All the buildings seemed to be ablaze, with the worst coming from the great hall. He almost stumbled over the body of Father Lassiter where he lay, a knife sticking out of his throat, point forward. Bessy had stabbed him from behind. Was he responsible for the fire?
Daisy’s barks cut through the suffocating haze. Alec crouched lower where the air was fresher. As a breeze cut down from the night sky, it cleared enough that he saw Daisy standing before the charred door of the great hall. “Nay,” Alec whispered, his lips brushing the wet shirt before his face. “Nay. God, don’t take them.”
He’d left them on Kisimul because he’d thought them safe. Kisimul would never fall, but a traitor had imprisoned them inside to die. He used his wet shirt to beat against the flames, hitting the charred side of the door. The glowing wood collapsed to ash near his feet. The heat burned his nose, and the smoke wound down his throat, making him cough. “Nay,” he yelled and hacked. Daisy kept trying to leap inside, but the flames wouldn’t allow it. Inside was a furnace like he’d never seen before. How could he reach them? How can they be alive?
“MacNeil!” Tor Maclean ran into the bailey, arm over his mouth. “Mairi? Is she here?” Behind him Cullen Duffie, Kenneth, and Ian followed, all of them covering their faces with arms and shirts. As they gathered in the center, they crouched lower.
Wild desperation mixed with fury inside Alec. He shook his head. “I don’t know. Mairi.” He looked to Kenneth and Ian. “Cinnia and Weylyn. I…I don’t know where they are.” The words threatened to crack Alec wide open. If they died…he would die. “We have to reach them, and the dog thinks they are in there.” He pointed to the gutted great hall, fire still eating up the wood inside like a ravaging beast.
“In there!” Tor shouted, standing.
Cullen grabbed his arm, stopping him from running inside. “Water. Form a bucket line. Buckets, MacNeil. Where are they?”
Alec looked at the flames. Run inside. Could he reach them before he died? How far would he get? Someone grabbed his shoulders, dragging him backward onto the ground from right before the door. “Alec,” Ian yelled in his face. “Alec MacNeil.” Alec finally moved his gaze to Ian. His best friend looked ravished with anger and bitter desperation. “They aren’t dead until we see it. They are still alive right now. Let’s get this fire out.”
A man rushed past them and then another, carrying buckets. The ferry Kenneth had ordered built had brought over twenty men, and they were forming a bucket line from the bay, through the gate, and into the bailey. Rotating through the line while holding their breath, working blind, they were able to survive the smoke.
Alec leaped up next to Ian and helped him hobble on his broken leg. He left Ian to be part of the line and ran with Tor and Cullen and a few of their men to pull up more water from the bay. As if God himself was angered, lightning cracked across the sky, cleaving the clouds that had moved in.
“A bloody blessing,” Kenneth called as rain started to fall in heavy drops. A cheer rose up along the line, invigorating the men.
Alec dumped a bucket of seawater into the blazing hall. It spit and sizzled in the smoke. He could see across to where flames shot out of the well room, the door completely burned away. What had made the fire burn so hot, so fast?
He grabbed the bucket from another man and threw it toward the small room off the hall. What was left of the walls burned with vicious, wavering flames, as if they were teased into a demonic frenzy. He’d seen this before on a raid long ago. Pitch—black, sticky pitch would burn with such wickedness.
Alec backed from the room with hacking coughs and looked up at the pelting rain. He wiped two hands down his wet face. Someone had coated the well room in pitch.
Ian ran awkwardly in from the gate. “The lass says the bastard priest wasn’t a priest, and he locked them in the well room.” Men abandoned their areas to converge on the great hall, buckets and axes in hand. Daisy dodged between their legs, rushing in and out, barking as if that helped. Alec took one more gulp of night air and led them inside the still-burning hall, a path of wet ash under his bare feet. Broken glass from the shattered windows stabbed at his soles, but he barely noticed.
He grabbed another bucket from a man, throwing the water inside the blackened well room. The rafters had fallen in, a forest of burned trees laying haphazardly, like a pyre, over the top of the well. The floor of the room above had collapsed with various pieces of furniture, a privacy screen, a broken chest with smoking contents spilled out over everything.
Alec turned in a tight circle as the men worked around him, throwing more water on the burned mess. “Mairi! Cinnia! Weylyn!” he yelled and coughed, spitting out the wet char on his tongue. Where were they? The mound of smoking debris was enormous. Could they be buried? Nay, God. Wrapping the sash of his plaid around his hands, Alec grabbed for a smoldering rafter, his muscles fueled by his desperate hope that he would find them somehow alive.
“Grab the other end!” Alec yelled to Tor, and the two of them lifted the massive beam, rolling it to the side to grab another. The little room filled with men, some throwing water, others lifting beams from the pile. One at a time, smoldering wood and splintered furniture were rolled off until the edge of the well was uncovered. A blue hood lay under it, and Alec snatched it up in his blackened fingers. Mairi’s hood. His gaze met Tor’s. “They are here. Somewhere, they are bloody here.” His words were a snarl, and the two of them dove back into the pile, flipping crumbling wood over and off the edges of the well. With each lift, Alec prayed he wouldn’t find a lifeless limb or dull eyes in a blackened face.
“Where are they?” Cullen asked.
Alec leaped over the moved boards, digging at the charred remains of clothing and burned, fallen plaster. Were they here? The more frantic he became, the faster he moved until he was throwing piles off the well, digging in the black ash and still-hot embers, singeing and blistering his hands.
“Alec,” Ian said, and Kenneth grabbed his shoulders, causing him to stop.
“Maybe they got out,” Kenneth said. “Maybe they are somewhere else in the castle, hiding, away from the flames.”
“Ye said Bessy saw him lock them in here,” Alec said, his gaze moving across the bared parts of the floor. “Pitch was painted on the walls and straw packed in here.” His teeth ground together. “A bloody oven, the bastard trapped them in a God damned furnace.” He held out the wrinkled blue hood that Mairi wore. Ash and water mottled it. “And this was here.”
Ian looked at the gaping hole in the ceiling. “It could have fallen through.”
But Alec’s instincts were screaming at him that they were close. His gaze scanned the wreckage around them, smoking black walls, pools of seawater between charred wood and fallen plaster. Damnation! Where are ye?
Daisy barked, her front feet perching on the still-covered edge of the well. Her tail wagged, and she dropped to circle the low wall around it. “The well,” Alec yelled. It went fifty feet down into the ground that held up the mighty castle. He met Tor as they both leaped toward it, ripping back the planks and plaster. Daisy barked, trying to jump onto the hole.
“Off,” Alec said, pushing the dog to safety. He opened his mouth to call down the dark hole when a sound wafted upward. “Shut your mouths,” he called, and his breath and heart held tight, waiting for the high-pitched whistle he thought he’d heard.
It came again, the dog whistle that he’d given Weylyn to train the new hounds.
“Weylyn? Cinnia? Mairi?” Alec yelled, his voice funneling downward.
“Da?” Weylyn’s little voice hit him, cracking his tight chest open. Alec hung his head between his shoulders as he leaned on the well’s edge, relief nearly crippling him.
“Aye,” he called down. “We will get ye out. Are Cinnia and Mairi with ye?”
“Aye,” Mairi’s voice came up. “The three of us are here. The priest isn’t a priest. He’s a Cameron,” she called up.
“He’s dead,” Tor yelled down. “Are ye all right, Mairi? The children?”
Kenneth helped Alec carefully pull off the last of the wood over the top.
“I think so,” Mairi said, coughing. The haggard, weak sound pushed Alec over the edge of the well.
“I’m coming down to get ye,” he said.
“Bloody good idea,” Mairi whispered from below. “Someone should get blankets for the children.”
Alec grasped the iron rungs built into the wall of the rectangular well, thankful it was large enough to let him pass. His bare toes curled around each rung as he lowered. “How far are ye down?”
“I don’t know,” Mairi answered. “When the roof began to fall, we went as far as we could.”
“I’m just above the water,” Weylyn said.
“Da?” Cinnia’s whisper caught at Alec, and he nearly slipped in his haste to reach her.
“I’m coming, Cinnia,” he said. “Hold on.”
“I’ve got her,” Mairi said. “Don’t fall or we’ll all end up in the water.”
Her voice was still far below, but Alec concentrated on keeping hold of the slippery rungs. “Keep talking,” he said.
“Ye were right,” Mairi said. “About Kisimul.”
“I think ye were right,” he answered, listening for her words, a lifeline to everyone he loved. Aye, loved. “Kisimul is cursed.”
“Not its heart,” Mairi said, her voice beautifully close now.
“Its heart?” Alec asked, coming closer. Step after careful step. It was dark, but he could almost feel the life below his feet.
“Aye,” Mairi said. “The well gave us a way to survive. It is the heart of Kisimul, and it saved us.”
The pressure of gratefulness rose behind Alec’s eyes, and his palm brushed against the damp well wall. Its strength and stability had protected them. He looked down into the blackness. “I think I’ve reached ye,” he said.
“Cinnia first,” Mairi said. “Come on, sweet. Your da is here to take ye up.”
Cinnia’s quiet sobs made Alec’s fists clench around the iron. If Angus Cameron and his bloody priest weren’t already dead, he’d cut them end to end. Letting go with one hand, he reached down. “Grab my hand, Cinnia.” His fingers sifted through the dark air until they brushed against her little cool fingers. “That’s it, climb up to me.”
“Here’s a rung,” Mairi said below. She must be guiding his daughter’s feet. Little by little he pulled her up until Cinnia was in his arms. She clung to him, and he reveled in the feel of her strength.
“I’ll get her up, then I’ll be back for ye two,” Alec said. “Just hold on.”
“Aye, Da,” Weylyn said, and Alec lifted Cinnia up the ladder until the darkness opened up to torchlight and half a dozen faces leaning over the well. Kenneth reached in to lift Cinnia out. Dazed and pale, with smudges of ash over her face, she gave Alec a small nod, and he lowered back down.
“We’ve climbed up a bit,” Mairi said. “Weylyn’s above me now.”
Alec reached down for his son, his little hand grasping tightly to his forearm. “Ye just hold on, Mairi. Don’t try to climb. I don’t want ye to fall.”
“I’m not staying here,” she said with a croaking edge of stubbornness. “Lead us up.”
“Don’t fall,” he said.
“Not planning to.”
He began to climb with Weylyn before him, slower this time. “Ye have a stubborn nature, lass,” he said, waiting for her soft voice before he took another step higher. Weylyn didn’t seem to be in a hurry as long as Alec had him against his chest.
“Ye are going to have to get used to it,” she whispered.
Alec stopped, questions cluttering his head, but now was not the time. He needed them safe, out in the light, where he could check them over for injuries. “We are almost to the top,” he said. The climb seemed longer as he stopped to listen for Mairi’s movements. Every other step, he thought he heard her whimper. “Almost there. See the light?”
She didn’t answer. “Mairi?” No answer. “Mairi?” he yelled.
“I can climb,” Weylyn said. “Go get her.” With that, his brave son pulled upward away from him, counting out loud each rung as he moved toward the men at the top.
Alec wanted to dive down the rungs, but he couldn’t knock Mairi or chance pushing her into the deep pool below. “Mairi, answer me.”
“Damnation,” she whispered. “I…I can’t feel my arms anymore.” Her words were like the tiniest of breezes through the leaves of a tree. He felt them more than he heard them.
“Hold on,” he said, using the same voice he used to push his warriors. “Don’t ye dare let go.”
“I love ye, Alec MacNeil,” she whispered. It sounded like good-bye.
“Tell me to my face, Mairi Maclean.” Panic surged through Alec’s muscles as he felt frantically with his toes until they touched the top of her hair. “I’m here. Don’t let go.”
“I don’t… Can’t hold on.”
“Your brother is above. He’ll kill me if I let ye die down here.”
A whispered laugh was right below him. How to get her without knocking her off the ladder? Alec pushed his back against the opposite wall to lower around her. He felt for her arms and realized she’d threaded them through the rungs, her hands limp and dangling. She’d worn herself out keeping his children alive.
He looped an arm around her waist, pulling her up against his chest, and felt her stiffen. “Ye’re hurt,” he said. She didn’t answer. Slowly disentangling her arms from the rungs, he turned her in to him to set her arms over his shoulders. “I’ve got ye. I’m not letting go. Never, Mairi. I’m never letting go of ye.”
“Ye promise,” she murmured, the brush of her lips against his bare chest, completely limp in his arms.
“With all my heart,” he said, lifting her higher with each strong step.
“I see them,” Tor called from above, his arms already reaching for his sister.
“Be careful,” Alec said. “She’s hurt. I’m not sure where or how badly.” He loosened his hold for Tor to take her, but Mairi’s arms wouldn’t let go. “I’ll bring her up,” Alec said, stepping into the torchlight.
“Good God,” Cullen said, and Tor held a blanket up to gently lower it over her shoulders. “Her back.”
Alec stepped over the lip of the well, and a cheer flooded the tight room. Weylyn ran to hug his leg and Kenneth sat holding Cinnia. They seemed to be well. Dirty, exhausted, but smiles on their faces.
“She needs a healer,” Tor said, his face grim, making Alec tuck Mairi against his shoulder. Through the rain, he carried her into the relatively untouched soldiers’ quarters. Millie, her head bandaged, hurried over as Alec set Mairi on the bed Ian had occupied earlier. Slowly he turned her to face the mattress and lowered the blanket.
Anger and fear rose up in him like bile as he stared at the open gashes that had raked through her bodice. Charred and blistered, her flayed skin bled. Weylyn came in with Tor. “She made us climb below her, so when the ceiling caved in, anything that fell down the well would hit her first. She told Cinnia and me to press flat against the wall.”
“Something fell down the hole?” Alec asked, his words gruff.
“Aye,” Weylyn said, blinking back tears. “And it was on fire.”