Exile’s Bane (7 page)

The cornet spurred his mount along the hilltop and into the mist, moving faster than I would take my horse in the treacherous fog. As though awaiting the cornet’s departure, thick droplets of misty fog flowed over the hill top. One moment the forward sentry stood out in the darkness, the next moment all that remained was a nebulous shape concealed in the mist.

I collected my dignity, pleased that I had not been forced to return to Tor House, but uncomfortable with Duncan’s intentions. He led me, our horses with us, to the side of the massed cavalry into an open spot among a stand of bushes barely visible for the fog, where he took off his red cloak with a flourish and threw it across Ajax’s saddle, followed shortly by his sash and his baldric flipped over the saddle bow, his sword left there, suspended. His breast and back plates, he unbuckled and slipped off.

“What are you doing?”

“Changing clothes.”

“Now? Whatever for?”

He did not answer, intent on unstrapping the bridle gauntlet on his left hand and forearm. Despite my feelings for him, I could not help but fear what other madness he might now pursue.

After he stripped off his gauntlet and his buff coat, he buttoned the heavy hide coat around his back and breast plates and suspended the entire cumbersome package from his black’s saddlebow alongside his sword hanging in its baldric. He then untied a sizable leather roll from behind his saddle, set it down at his feet, and turned back to me, surveying me with grim humor.

“You told me you would not leave Tor House.”

“I have run away.”

“You? But you said . . .?” his words trailed off, mocking me.

I went to him and pressed my fingers over his mouth, irritated at the joke he made of my situation, yet needing his support. His arms came around me, and he pulled me close. The temptation overcame me, and I snuggled against his warm chest. With growing remorse, I knew that I needed and cared for this man.

Tenderly, he pulled strands of long black hair from my face. “You are safe here.” His hand stopped. “This raised bruise—did you run into something? Or did someone hit you?”

Tears came, and I could not stop them. I pulled away, suddenly conscious of smirking cavaliers at mist’s edge who could not help but witness this wanton display. What was I thinking of? How could I stand among the quiet clank and creak of the vanguard of the Royalist Horse and do this? I cleared my throat in distress.

“Who?” he demanded.

“A little bump on my head is nothing,” I said, attempting to regain my composure. “Lord Devlin is a very powerful man and used to having his way.”

He eyed me suspiciously, his dark eyes clouding, then turned and called for another horse.

“I must find supporters,” I insisted. “And failing that, I must get to the King.”

His expression twisted into a resentful smirk, though he said nothing. He reached into the leather roll close by his feet and pulled on a long-sleeved woolen shirt. When his face reappeared his yearning eyes sought mine.

“Within the confines of the war and my responsibilities to Prince Rupert, you have my allegiance and my oath to assist you in any way I can.”

At a loss for words, I sought to contain my amazement. My stiff hand clenched and unclenched on my cloaked chest.

But he went on about his business, as though committing himself to a woman’s cause was an everyday occurrence. He pulled a large black bundle out of the leather roll, collapsing the leather, then carefully set the black bundle atop a wide tuft of grass. After retrieving his gauntlet and sash from the relatively dry safety of his saddle, and rolling up his red cloak, he re-rolled his leather around them, and re-tied the newly stuffed leather roll behind his stallion’s saddle. Out of the black bundle he pulled a big black hat. He twisted his long hair, piled it atop his head and pushed the crushed old hat down over it, then took his baldric and sword off Ajax’s saddlebow, and slipped the baldric on, sword suspended at his side.

Too late to say anything meaningful, I walked around him and looked him over.

“Quite nice,” I said. “You look like an armed tinker.”

“I will escort you to Bolton, yes, as an armed tinker.” He grinned, the light flashing on his russet, day-old beard.

“Why do you want to go to Bolton? Do you doubt my word?”

“Not at all.” He adjusted his pistols and the knife at his belt, then bent over, shook out, and whipped on the remaining black cloak, a wet spot near its hem where it had sat on the soaked grass. “I will escort you to your friend’s house in Bolton and, in the process, do some reconnaissance

I did not believe him. His fearlessness was alarming.

Chapter Six

Some time later, a soldier took Duncan’s black stallion away and left a sway-backed roan in his place beside my edgy Kalimir. I had tired of waiting and was prepared to mount when Duncan, his huge black cloak flapping behind him, rushed out of the thinning fog into the solitary little copse of bushes.

“What are you doing?”

“Returning to Bolton. Are you coming?” I asked, anxious to be away. He had been gone long enough for the sun to finally show its bleary face through the mist.

“Yes.”

“How was your meeting with the general?” I asked.

His copper-colored hair fell over his shoulder as he checked the saddle girth on the roan. He turned back to me with a confident smile.

“The general would rather leave tactical decisions to hardened officers. My presence merely assures that these decisions are made in the manner Prince Rupert prefers.”

“That’s quite a responsibility, isn’t it?”

He shrugged, apparently comfortable with his prince’s instructions and what he must do to fulfill them.

“War is in my blood,” he stated flatly.

“Really? You mean, as a Scot?”

He turned slowly and gave me a vicious, yet culpable look.

“You are not proud of your abilities? They have certainly served the King well.”

He turned away with an unhappy grin.

“What I meant to say,” I amended, seeing his uneasiness, “is that my uncle would kill anyone who dared usurp
his
authority.”

“Oh, to be sure,” he said with a quiet laugh. “But General Gordon considers it a great relief to have someone to deal out the strategy of a march or of a situation, as we are in now.”

He seemed more in control of his feelings, speaking on a subject with which he was comfortable. General Gordon must have been one of those gentlemen without military expertise who had been appointed to his rank as a political favor. Yet he was apparently wise enough to bow to advice from his experienced officers—or in this case, Prince Rupert’s experienced officer.

I placed a slippered foot into the stirrup.

“Don’t do that,” he said gruffly, a warding palm raised at me. “We will leave your horse with the troops. I have another for you, more appropriate to our journey.”

“Like that pitiful nag you have chosen over your own stallion?”

An explosive laugh boomed out of him. “Ajax is a war horse, as is your stallion. Either horse would attract attention in Bolton.”

“I will not part with Kalimir,” I insisted. With a casual hand, I flipped trailing strands of hair back over my shoulder.

“Why not? I’ll see he’s returned to you.”

“I’m sure that is your intention.” I shook my head. “But he is one of the few things my father left to me that has not been taken over by my uncle. I’ll not leave him.”

He opened and shut his mouth, studied the mud and the hardy grasses at his feet, then looked back up at me with a gleam in his gold-flecked eyes.

“If we run into Roundheads, can you play the part of a Puritan lady?”

Smiling within at this man who did not know my shameless nature, I assumed an exaggerated posture of cheek-sucking primness.

“Of course,” I intoned, palms together and raised as in prayer, adoring eyes raised to the sky. “Holy and meek, I am. My husband, Alderman Tucker, awaits my arrival. He would be most distressed were I held up. He might even have to contact his friend, Lord Fairfax, with a serious grievance were I held up too long.”

“Is there an Alderman Tucker in Bolton?” Duncan asked, with a deep-voiced chuckle.

“Yes, and a proper Puritan he is, too, who spouts of his connections with Fairfax.”

“Good. I shall be the lady’s devout servant.” He picked up the oversized black hat.

“You will have to keep your hair covered.”

“Yes, my lady.” He donned the hat and hurriedly tucked up his bright hair.

“I had heard that Prince Rupert engaged in this sort of disguise, to check up on his enemy. It’s true, then?”

His white smile flashed. “Were he here, he would already be in Bolton, one way or the other.”

We passed the cannon I had come upon beforehand, its captured crew and two oxen, which I had not seen at all, struggling now to return the way they had come. The sun remained a watery, early afternoon companion. We were still some ways from town when the weak sunlight began to dissipate the mists around us. We watched the retreating edges for signs of other travelers or of Roundhead troops.

It seemed to take longer to make the return trip then it had taken me to ride this way earlier. Peg would be worried, and that would set Thomas on edge, which was never pleasant. As well, I was still concerned that the house guard might have bumbled into Bolton and gotten themselves hopelessly entrenched.

“We need to move faster,” I called over to Duncan, for the walls of fog had retreated significantly. I pushed Kalimir into a faster pace. Without boots or spurs, all I could do was pummel the horse with my heels, which he responded to well enough.

“Wait,” Duncan called out behind me.

I turned to find him dismounted and awaiting me.

I studied our desolate horizons to be sure no one had appeared, then brought Kalimir back to where he stood. The roan’s reins in one hand, he motioned with the other hand for me to dismount. I did so and faced his stern demeanor in uncomfortable concern.

“I did not press you earlier because I wanted to give you every possible advantage with witnesses around us.”

I clutched my hands together, reins and all, nodded my head, and waited for him to go on.

“Why would Lord Devlin want you dead?” An embarrassed, disbelieving smile crept over his mouth.

“He wants Tor House for himself, and I stand in his way,” I answered without hesitation.

“How so?” He seemed suddenly reticent, his russet brows knitted together. “Women cannot own property.”

“If they have been legally joined with the land, yes they can. My father wanted me to have my own home and so, some years ago, he deeded Tor House into a jointure. I am the heiress of Tor House in my own right.”

“Can you not make this known?”

“It’s not that simple. I must find supporters,” I said, trying to control my rising irritation. I could hardly believe the deed had been destroyed, though I had been forced to witness it.

“So, were you dead, Devlin would inherit Tor House as he did the earldom as the last surviving son of the old earl.” His eyebrows went up and his mouth compressed into an expression of muted acceptance.

“That is exactly the sum of it. He means to see me gone. Should I die in the process, it would not displease him.”

“But why Bolton?”

“I told you. I have a friend there.”

“Who is this friend that you think can help you? What are this person’s allegiances?”

“I don’t see that my friend’s credentials are your concern. Would you rather I had not warned you of the enemy’s presence?” I huffed back to my horse, ready to ride on. Alone, if necessary. But on second thought, I turned back to him. “I don’t blame you for questioning my motives. But I cannot return.”

“I would not be here, nor would you, if I did not trust you.” He stared at me, his mouth tight, his face coloring in frustration. “From what you have told me, were it me, I would do no less. But others may misinterpret your flight, perhaps see you as a traitor.”

He caught me off-guard with his telling view of my situation. Yes, my allegiance
would
be questioned, perhaps even by those very people I needed to approach.

I nodded solemnly, knowing he was right, that the path I had laid out for myself was fraught with deadly unknowns.

We mounted and rode in comradely silence for some time, accompanied by the creak of leather and the horses’ hooves squishing through the mud. The wet cold invaded my nostrils, forestalling any sense of smell. There were no birds, nor birdsong. The eerie, deadened silence descended around us as our mounts moved us into a low area, a foggy netherworld, our only connection with reality the wide pathway that we followed. I rubbed the slick reins in my cramped hand to assure myself this was no dream. The frosted atmosphere must have affected Duncan, as well, for he seemed gloomily spellbound by the drifting walls of fog around us. His gaze tracked morosely from one side to the other.

“It was like this on the mountain,” he said suddenly. “Here, we have a clear road, but then, on those trackless slopes, we constantly lost our sense of direction. You could walk through a mist-cloud to continue up the slope or off a cliff-face, a thousand feet down, never knowing the edge was there.”

I had no idea what he was talking about, but kept my silence and, like him, studied the walls of shifting white mists around us.

“We had climbed for hours,” he went on. “Finally we reached the flat summit of the mountain and set our camp among the stone cairns. I remember the bite of the cold there, the whistling wind, and the restless cloud-mists, so like these around us.”

I shivered, as much from the chill as from the frigid heights he described.

“I remember my mother’s warmth around me, her hot, sobbing breath in my ear, my father’s strong arm around us both at the end. He fought like a demon, but there were too many of them.”

“Why? What happened?” I asked, unable to hold my questions any longer and concerned for the pain welling up in his face, already red and chapped from the unnatural cold.

“Everyone was slaughtered.”

“Everyone?”

“Most of my clan. I lay there, a wee boy and terribly wounded, for many long hours. My back went numb from the cold ground, but I could not move for my mother, who had me pinned. She was dead, and I expected to die, but someone finally came and spirited me away to my grandmother’s home in Durham.” He looked down at himself with a long exhalation, as though awakening from a dream. “Your situation, your fear for your life, your fight for your heritage, speak to me in a way I did not expect.”

“Shocking, are they not, our similarities?” Like me, this man had his own ghosts, just not so literal as my own.

He nodded, chagrined.

“Was it the English who did this to you?” I asked. A sudden yearning for his arms around me once again left me shaky and clinging to my saddle.

“Oh, no.” His gentle smile belied what he must have felt. “Twas Clan Campbell. They caught us on the flat summit of Ben Nevis. My parents, my aunts and uncles, my brother, my sisters.” Pain writhed in his face. “Murdered.”

“But why?”

“They wanted our land, wanted to drive us from the face of the earth.”

I asked a few more questions, but he did not want to discuss it. His reticence was entirely understandable. From my father’s death, I had learned that the only way to heal and go on was to not think about it. And so I left him alone, knowing with a warm spot in my heart that I was no longer alone in that particular agony.

“Where is Ben Nevis?” I asked.

“In the southern Highlands at the head of Loch Linnhe.”

“You must hate the men who did this to you.”

“The Campbells? I did, for many years. But no more. My grandmother Comrie was very strict. She insisted on my education. It gave me perspective.”

“I have heard talk of the name Comrie around York. But I did not know the Comries were a highland clan.”

“Does na matter,” he said, bitterly. His gloved hand reached over and settled on my rein hand. “Twas long ago, and I am well over it. Leave it be.”

I nodded, but he pointed off across my horse’s head.

“Someone is there.”

We had ridden up to higher ground and left the thickest of the mists behind us, only to find two men exposed in the distance, between us and the town. One of them was a Roundhead soldier. They were bent over something, speaking between themselves. The road ran to within fifty feet of them.

“Slouch,” I hissed. “Look like a dispirited servant, for God’s sake.”

“Aye,” Duncan said, his words apparently still touched by his Scottish memories. He reined his horse in to ride behind me, as a proper servant would do.

In the distance, the soldier looked up. Obese, with close cropped hair, he wore no armor. His buff coat rode high up over his belly. At sight of us, his eyes went wide, and he grabbed his matchlock musket, though I could detect no lit matchcord, nor its giveaway smoke.