The Night Side (21 page)

Nothing in his life
Became him like the leaving it; he died
As one that had been studied in his death,
To throw away the dearest thing he ow’d,
As ‘twere a careless trifle.

—
William Shakespeare,
Macbeth

Colin and Frances finally had time for a private discussion after the castle’s inhabitants retired to bed. While the Balfour men were being reunited with their loving wives and going to their rest in welcoming arms, Colin and Frances were still arguing about future plans, matters of trust, and eavesdropping.

The latest words of accusation and disappointment still hung in the air between them, waiting for something—perhaps words of forgiveness—to dissipate them when the moon began to set.

At last breaking off from the battle of gazes, Frances glanced over at the pillow beside her, the bolster on which Colin—
her husband, lord, and master,
she reminded herself—was supposed to rest, and saw a small sheet of parchment tucked beneath it.

“Frances,” he said softly. “Perhaps this is not the moment—”

Hands suddenly trembling, she lifted the paper and read:

To Frances

It is a short time since I kissed you,

And from that morn lov’d you true;

Your graceful form and raven hair,

May with a fabl’d Diana compare;

Your voice, so honey sweet,

Still on my heart does seem to beat;

And ‘twas the first wish of my life,

To win thee for my wife;

Deign, ma belle, a sign to send,

And may your heart my plea defend.

She looked up at Colin, her eyes wide. It was a bad poem, but the sentiment behind it was lovely beyond expectation and a gift she had not expected. Her hurt and anger began to drain away.

Her lips parted, but before she could speak there came an urgent knocking upon their door. Three short knocks, a pause, and then two more.

Colin went immediately to the chamber door and drew back the bolt. MacJannet, carrying a lantern and his sword, slipped inside.

“The boy’s gone and there’s blood on the chamber floor. A few drops only, but—”

“And the hound? Where is Harry?” Colin reached for his own sword, donning it along with some cloak of purpose that made him look suddenly hard and tall, and showed Frances clearly the difference between annoyance and true rage in her husband. She would never mistake one for the other again.

Suddenly the Colin in her chamber was a stranger to her.

“He’s been locked up below with a bone. Probably
lured there by our traitor. I suppose we are a bit late in bricking up the last passage.”

MacJannet’s words struck fear into Frances’s heart, driving away all other emotions. “George is gone?” she whispered. “He has been taken?”

“Roust the household and free the hound.” Colin’s voice was harsh. “See that everyone is armed. We go to hunt.”

“Anne Balfour?” MacJannet asked.

“I’ll deal with her.”

As MacJannet slipped from the room, Colin turned and gave his wife a short look, which she could not interpret in the dim light. It was cold enough to chill her, yet she knew none of the anger was directed at her. “Bolt the door behind me and do not leave the chamber.”

“But,” Frances began, pushing the covers from her trembling legs. “I must come. It is George—”

“This may be a trick!” Colin answered. “We can’t know how many are in the castle. We may soon be overrun. They have one prisoner. Let us not be generous and give them two.”

It seemed for an instant that he would leave on those words. But then he took the three steps to her side, and pulling her close, he kissed her briefly.

“Don’t let our possible last words be angry ones,” he murmured. Then: “Say you love me—and then bolt the door behind me.”

“I love you,” she answered, not thinking whether this reply was true or not, only knowing that she needed to answer him at once.

“And I you, Frances.”

It wasn’t until he was gone that the full import of
what he said entered Frances’s mind. But once there, the seed rooted quickly.

Last words…We may be overrun.

I love you.

And I you.

“
Mon Dieu
!”

Frances stood for a moment, trembling with fear and cold, and also the beginnings of rage. Then she made her decision. Instead of reaching for the bolt, she turned toward her pannier, reaching for her heaviest club. She tarried only long enough to thrust her feet into her shoes and then she was out the door.

No one was going to take George and Colin from her, not while she had breath left in her body! She had waited too long for happiness!

Colin stood over a weeping Anne Balfour. Her lips were bloodless and he had seen overboiled tripe with better color.

“I did not know he would take the boy! I thought the plot at an end when I left the note telling him of your marriage.”

“How many of our enemy have you let inside, and which clan are they? The Gunns?”

“Nay, I cannot—”

Colin raised his sword, his face and voice as cold as the iron in his hands. “You’ll name them now or go to Hell with your soul dyed in sin.”

“’Tis Iain Dubh of the MacDonnells,” she choked out, stricken eyes on the sword above her. Knowing the MacLeod’s history with this man, she clearly expected to be struck down for naming him to the laird’s cousin.

“Why, Anne? Tell me why,” Frances whispered, coming into the room. The fingers that held her club were as white as her night rail. “George never did you any harm. He is just a boy.”

“I did it because I loved him,” Anne wept, dropping her face into her hands. Clearly, she did not mean George. “And he said he would not marry me if I did not let him in…But it is only Iain Dubh and his brother, I swear. No other was with them. He promised. He said he would not hurt the boy—just take him away.”

“No other was with him then,” Colin answered. “But who knows how many may have followed once the tunnel was opened. And you are a stupid woman if you believed that George’s life would be spared. Why should it be?”

Anne Balfour wept harder.

Colin raised his sword again, prepared to strike, but then paused.

Lucien de Talle entered the room, his sword also drawn. “Finish it,” he said harshly.

“Nay, we may need her. It is possible that she may have some useful knowledge. I’ll question her later.”

Lucien digested this and then finally nodded. He turned on his heel and left the chamber. His voice called back: “They went to the dungeons. There is a trail of blood on the stairs.”

“I know,” Colin answered. “Start looking for a passage in the east wall.”

“Make haste! Or we shall go without you.”

“I’m coming! Frances, stay with her,” Colin said, turning to Frances as he lowered his voice. “Do not get close enough for her to grab you. I’d not put it past her to stick a dagger in you if she can. Bolt the door
behind me—and this time do as I say! If she tries to leave the chamber, kill her. If we don’t find the passage I shall return to fetch her. Be here.”

Frances swallowed once but she did not flinch at the commands. She managed a nod.

“I’ll find George, Frances. I swear it. You must have faith,
cherie.
”

The door closed sharply behind Colin, and this time Frances did throw the bolt. “It is not about faith,” she whispered, listening to the many footsteps hurrying by in the passage. “It is about love—and duty.”

“He promised! He promised! He said we should escape together,” Anne wept, still huddled on the floor. “We would go away tonight.”

“Be still!” Frances ordered, swinging her club hard and making the air whistle with menace. Rage made her voice shake. “Weeping solves nothing. He has abandoned you. You are lost. But George may not yet be dead. So you will tell me now: what was this plan you made? Where might they have taken George? Where is this secret passage you opened for them?”

A shocked Anne looked up. Whatever she saw in her kinswoman’s face frightened her into tearlessness.

“I do not need to wait for Colin to question you,” Frances warned softly, again swinging her club.

“It’s in the cellar—in the cave maze.” Anne’s voice quavered.

“Get up!” Frances ordered. “You will show me where this passage is. Does it lead to the sea as Colin suspects?”

Anne climbed clumsily to her feet. Her eyes, tattooed with purple circles about the lids, were glued to
the thick stick in Frances’s hands. “Aye, he has a boat there.”

“Then we shall go to the cellars. Do not tempt me, Anne, unless you are eager to die, for I shall strike you dead if you try to escape.” And in that moment, Frances absolutely meant those words. “Light that lantern and hold it before you as we go.”

Frances pulled back the bolt from the door and opened it wide. Once the lantern was lit, she gestured for Anne to go ahead of her. The keep was eerily quiet. Everyone, except perhaps the children, had been roused and sent out to seek George and his kidnappers. She and Anne might as well have been the only two people left in the world.

They went down the stairs as quickly as Anne’s trembling legs would take her. The keep was not in total darkness, but most of the torches had been snapped up by searchers, and those that remained cast wholly inadequate light, which had a tendency to waver alarmingly in the eddies caused by the women’s passage.

Frances had hoped to find someone still in the cellars, but all had gone on into the dungeon. She and Anne were still on their own. She wanted to call out to Colin, but knew the acoustics might betray her quavering voice and her position to an enemy hiding in the cellar or the secret passage.

Anne found the door behind the empty whisky barrels still open, but hesitated on the threshold, with her lantern held high.

“Go on,” Frances said.

“I have never been inside,” Anne answered fearfully. “I do not know the way from here. We might get lost.”

This gave Frances pause. She knew about sea caves’ evil reputation. She looked about consideringly until she saw the end of a badly charred torch wedged between two casks. Keeping an eye on Anne, she quickly retrieved it.

“We shall use soot to mark the walls if we come to a divide,” she suggested. “Go on. We are wasting time. We must hasten if we are to stop this tragedy.”

Anne nodded reluctantly and then stepped into the dark passage. Frances, though very determined to go on, found that she also had to pause at the doorway and gather her courage before journeying on.

The sea passage was narrow—so narrow that she would be unable to swing her club. It sloped downward steeply and was very dark and damp. It was also filled with unpleasant rustlings and whispers, which caused much churning in her imagination.

A sudden rush of dizziness hit her as she stared into the black, traveling from ankles to heart and then on to her head. Frances wanted to blame the terrible feeling on bad air, but she knew it was fear. Fear for George, fear of whoever waited in the darkness, fear of the dark itself.

“Colin,” she whispered, invoking his name like a talisman. It did not help her nerves when a low moaning filled the passage and washed over them, making Anne catch her breath and momentarily freeze. “That was only the ocean or the wind. For George you must be courageous,” she encouraged herself, stepping after Anne. She called softly: “Hurry. We must hurry!”

She did not admit to herself that the moan might have come from George, but the unspoken fear forced her onward when her timid mind called to her to go back to the safety of the light and other people.

When shall we three meet again?
In thunder, lightning, or in rain?

—
William Shakespeare,
Macbeth

Frances and Anne had just entered the dripping sea cave and started toward the two struggling figures they found there when Frances felt a presence behind her. Before she could do more than half spin around, an arm in a saffron sark snaked out and wrapped itself about her throat, pulling her tightly against a barrel chest. The man smelled of sweat and whisky. Frances opened her mouth to scream but only managed a short cry before her air was blocked off by the brutal living clamp at her neck.

She struggled, but the man was fantastically strong, and one look at Anne’s shocked face and shrinking posture told Frances that she could expect no help from that quarter.

“Gi’e us a hand here, Iain!” the man puffed as he tried to subdue her.

As the villain began to drag her toward the front of the cave where a large lantern glowed, Frances tightened her hands about her club, preparing to defend herself. Her assailant’s most vulnerable parts were his
naked shins. She prayed for a true aim and the strength to deliver a crippling blow. She knew she was unlikely to have another chance once the second man finished with the frantically struggling George and added his efforts to restraining her.

A familiar ghost, the sad lady who had been in his chamber on his wedding night, appeared before Colin and pointed back the way they had come. He spun about abruptly.

“The cellar!” he exclaimed. “The passage has to be there! This is too far belowground anyway.”

Lucien looked skeptical, but MacJannet never questioned Colin’s judgment. He could not see spirits as Colin did, but he did not doubt that one was near. Colin’s nerves were on the jump that night, but those nerves had an uncanny ability to know trouble when it was near. As Colin hurried back toward the cellars, MacJannet followed, hobbling as quickly as he could.

Harry was heard woo-wooing frantically as he, too, took up the hunt.

“Damnation!” Colin swore, his voice echoing in the long stone room. “We went right past this stack of overturned barrels! The door is bloody obvious.”

“What?” MacJannet demanded, taken aback. He refrained from cursing, but felt blasphemous every time his leg twinged. “I am certain it was not thus when we passed before. Something has overturned these barrels. Maybe the hound has found a scent?”

“They dragged George down to the dungeon. He hasn’t been in here. Who then?”

The worried ghost floated nearby, still pointing. Colin nodded and pulled the old door wide. A faint noise
crawled up from the dank blackness. Colin stopped breathing and listened intently. “Bloody hell!”

“What?”

“That was Frances!” He was certain of this even without the ghost’s admonition. “The MacDonnells have her, too!”

Without hesitation Francis swung her club downward at her assailant’s legs. At her attacker’s sharp cry and stumble, she threw herself against his strangling arm. To her surprise, the ploy worked.

Once free of her human noose, she spun about, raising her arms high. Frances next delivered a mighty swing, connecting with the side of the man’s tammed head, with her full strength behind the blow. There was a horrible cracking noise as his tam flew into the air. The man grunted and then dropped like a stone onto the cave’s wet floor.

Hearing a shout behind her, Frances spun about, raising her club again. “George, beware!” she screamed as she began another mighty swing.

Colin rushed recklessly down the rough passage that led toward the sea cave, following the spirit. He couldn’t hear much beyond the echoes of his feet, his ragged breathing, and the moaning of the sea. The lantern shed sufficient light so that he could see when to duck, but the leather soles of his shoes were confoundedly slippery and much of his time was spent recovering his balance after near-accidents.

Suddenly there came the sound of something large and wet hitting stone. Colin had heard enough cracking skulls to recognize the sound of a head hitting something solid. A heavy thud followed.

“Frances got one!” he called back to MacJannet, pride at her courage battling with terror in his heart.

There came a high thin scream of someone either facing Hell or slipping over the edge of sanity. It didn’t sound like either Frances or George, but with the distortion of noise in the cavern, it wasn’t possible to identify the noise enough to know that it was even human.

Forgetting all caution, Colin threw himself toward the dim glimmer at the end of the tunnel. He threw his lantern aside as soon as the passage broadened, and he drew his sword as he leapt into the chamber.

He took in the scene at a glance. Anne Balfour, keening like a banshee, was huddled over a man’s body. Frances, with her club raised, was prepared to do further harm to the remaining kidnapper if she could get around his human shield—George.

Colin took a flanking position, but he also hesitated at the sight of the naked blade pressed into George’s bare throat. The boy’s eyes were wide with fear, but he wasn’t screaming.

A livid MacJannet erupted into the chamber behind Colin, followed by an even more enraged Harry, who howled his anger at the man who had taken his beloved George and locked him in the dungeon. More footsteps and cursing voices echoed down the passage.

“Let the lad go, man,” Colin said. Harry crouched beside Colin, clearly furious but also uncharacteristically cautious.

“You can take your boat and go. We’ll not stop you,” Colin said. “But hurt that boy and I’ll spit you where you stand.”

“I’m takin’ the boat—and the laddie.” The voice was laced with equal parts of hate and fear.

“
Non.
This you shall not do!” Frances took a step forward. The sad ghost also darted in, trying but unable to affect events on the human plane.

“Frances!” Colin warned. He didn’t want her placing herself between the man and his own sword.

“He shall not take George!” she answered furiously. “I’ll kill George first.” Her threat was fierce and Colin almost believed her. He hoped the would-be kidnapper believed her, too.

The ghost suddenly tipped back her head and let out a silent scream. Instantly a keening, higher and more piercing than Anne’s and Harry’s combined, filled the chamber. Frances froze at the sound.

“
Mon Dieu
!”

The echo had barely died away when Tearlach and Lucien hurtled into the room.

“Can you not silence that beast,
mon ami
?” Lucien demanded. “He is curdling my blood.”

A second and even louder howling reverberated in the cavern. Frances flinched away from the sound and the man holding George began to tremble.

“What manner of beast is that?” Lucien demanded.

“’Tis the hellhound! A creature frae the night side.” Tearlach’s voice was barely heard over the unnatural echoes that lingered longer they should have. “Someone is about tae die.”

“Get it away!” the kidnapper screamed. “Get it away or I’ll kill the laddie!”

With a third eerie howling that nearly stopped the blood with dams of icy terror, the true hellhound of the Balfours appeared. One moment there was nothing, and then a black shape stalked out of the shadows. Colin had seen many spirits in his life, but none like this beast.

The kidnapper’s eyes widened at the sight of the infernal hound, and a tiny mewl of terror escaped his lips. The knife that had been at George’s throat was turned toward the black beast that stalked either him or the boy: none could tell for sure who was the target.

“Get away! Get away!” the MacDonnell screamed.

With a sudden wrench that left his torn shirt behind, the agile George was able to break away from his captor. If the intruder had hoped that the hound would follow George, his wishes were dashed in the instant before he died. The Bokey hound was apparently still loyal to his Balfour masters. He had died once to protect his laird and would again. The ghost pointed at the kidnapper in silent command, and the beast leapt.

The man ran for the sea in a desperate bid for freedom, perhaps recalling the legend that said ghosts could not travel over water. There was a clatter of toenails on hard stone, and a second voice rose in canine anguish as Harry also launched himself at the intruder’s fleeing form. Frances jumped back toward the mouth of the cave and the figures rushing down on her, and then vanished in the blackness as the panicked man fled toward what he hoped would be salvation.

Harry and the Bokey hound both launched themselves into the air. For an instant, the two beasts were joined, one sandy brown and the other a black shadow. Both bodies flew at the trespasser, teeth showing.

The man screamed once and fell to the cave floor under the weight of the hounds, half of his body outside the cave. It was difficult for anyone to see what
happened then, as the lantern near the man’s feet was tipped over and the shutter fell half closed, but there could be no denying that when Harry jumped back from the man’s body a moment later, his prey was dead. The man’s head rested at an unnatural angle that only occurred when a neck was broken.

The ghost remained for a moment longer, then wavered like a candle flame caught in a wind and went out.

For a long moment no one moved, then Tearlach threw off his paralysis and went to stand over the body while George knelt to embrace the trembling Harry.

“You are an excellent hound! So brave and smart. Oh Harry!” the boy said, burying his face in the dog’s ruffed neck.

Harry licked the boy’s neck and ear, comforting him as best he could. The dog himself seemed bewildered, and Colin wondered if he had been in control at the time of the attack or if the spectral hound had somehow possessed him.

“Frances!” Colin called, putting up his sword. “Where are you?”

Frances came stumbling out of gloom at the front of the cave and then, regaining her balance, she hurled herself into Colin’s arms. Her hands and hem were wet from where she had stumbled in the surf. Colin didn’t complain about the wet and cold.

“Colin, it was the
real
hound,” she cried into his shirt as he ran his hands over her, assuring himself that she had met with no injury.

“Aye, I saw it.”

“We all did and I pray I never witness such a thing again,” MacJannet said amazedly, coming forward
awkwardly and putting an arm around George and urging him to his feet. “Lad, are you hurt?”

“Nay, just a bloodied nose. Frances arrived in time. She cracked that man’s head open.” This was said with joy rather than horror. Colin was relieved that it was so.

“
Mon Dieu, mon Dieu, mon Dieu,
” Lucien muttered, still stunned by what they had witnessed. His previous life had never prepared him for an encounter with anything of a spectral nature.

“My sentiments precisely,” Colin answered. He had encountered many spirits but still found himself shaken by what he had witnessed. He could only imagine what this meant to the others in the cave, who had never seen an apparition. “Yet I think we had best decide what we are going to tell the others about this night. It would be best if we presented a united tale.”

“We tell them nothing of this,” Lucien answered swiftly, waving a hand at the man with the broken neck. “Their beliefs make no allowance for…for…things of this nature. They must believe it was the work of earthly agents or it could go ill for all of us. There can be no talk of demon dogs or a Balfour curse or anything from the night side.”

“That’s all well and good, but there is one here who may not hold her tongue,” Tearlach answered, finally backing away from the corpse. “Have ye all forgotten the traitor?”

They all turned then and looked at the cowering Anne Balfour. She had stopped screaming and crying, and was staring off into space, her eyes blank as an empty mirror. Her complexion was bloodless. For one moment, Colin wondered if she was in fact dead.

“I don’t believe this woman will be saying anything for a long while,” MacJannet answered. “She may never speak again.”

“She’s a woman,” Tearlach retorted. “Ye ken that she’ll speak again. And once she does, there’ll be nae shutting her up again. I say we silence her now.”