Highlander's Stolen Destiny: A Medieval Scottish Historical Romance Book Read online

  “What happened to him?” asked Elizabeth and Mary in unison. They were both riveted by the tale.

  “He came back that very same afternoon with his net full of fish,” said Freya matter-of-factly. She took a sip of wine and smiled at Mary and Elizabeth. “Ye see, strange stories and folklore about not leaving on a voyage when the sky is too clear can be true. Or when a priest walks past ye before ye set off. Or ye dinnae pray rightly. They do not all have to portend evil things. I believe in them to a point. However, I also believe that fate and our ability to change it and to flow with it is more important. We are not powerless, ye ken? We are the masters of our own destiny.”

  Elizabeth smiled and reached across her sister to tap Freya on her arm. “You are a wonderful teller of tales and very wise.” She swallowed. “Are there any others? I mean ones that the people here really believe in? Something that any person in the clan would never do without?”

  The other woman smiled. “Aye, there are plenty more things we in the clans believe in.” She pleated her brow. “White will set ye right is one of them,” said Freya with a stern expression on her face.

  “Oh… and what does that mean?”

  “It is something both the men and women of the clans all over the Highlands believe in. Children are taught it from a very young age by their elders. The power of this legend remains with them for all of their lives.” She leaned in closer to Elizabeth. “While purple heather may bloom in abundance on our hillsides, white heather does not. But it is supposedly very, very lucky indeed… white heather, ye ken?” In thought, Freya took a sip of wine.

  “Why is that?” asked Mary, beating her sister to it.

  “Well, the origins of this lie in a Celtic legend dating from the third century.” Freya sipped some more wine. “Malvina, daughter of the legendary warrior-poet, Ossian, cried after finding out her lover had died in battle, her tears supposedly turning purple heather white. Malvina then declared, ‘Although it is the symbol of my sorrow, may the white heather bring good fortune to all who find it’.”

  Mary and Elizabeth exchanged glances. “That is beautiful and so sad at the same time,” said Elizabeth. “So, what does it mean exactly?”

  “The clansmen wear white heather to battle for protection. Their wives, mothers, and lovers give it to them before they leave in the hope they will return home unscathed.”

  “Golly, I should have gotten one for Alastair before he left,” said Mary, looking incredibly worried. “He needs all the help he can get… My sons too.” The last words passed her lips in scarcely a whisper.

  Freya smiled at Mary. “Just one moment. There is no need for ye to worry yerself, Mary.” She turned to her eldest daughter who sat next to her further down the table and said a few words into her ear.

  Skye pushed her chair back, got to her feet, and walked up to her future mother-in-law. She bent lower so that she could whisper into her ear from behind. “My Lady, I have taken care of that small matter to which my mother referred.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Mary.

  “I gave a sprig of white heather to all of the laddies before they left for Perth. They are all blessed. None of them will die; they will all return home safely.”

  “Oh, Skye, come here.” Mary took her into her arms. “Stop calling me ‘my Lady’. I am Ma, Mother or Mary, or anything else that sounds familiar and sweet.”

  “I promise, Ma,” said Skye, feeling her heart swell with happiness at having two formidable mothers in her life. She frowned when the hubbub noise in the Great Hall died down to but a whisper. She and Mary pulled away from each other at the same time. Their heads shifted to the right and left simultaneously to look down the entire length of the hall.

  “Da,” cried Skye, bringing her hand to cover her mouth.

  “Mungo,” said Mary, getting to her feet, “what happened? Where are the others?” She gulped. “Where’s…”

  9

  The Day of the Battle

  * * *

  Scottish camp at Beaurepaire, Northern England, 17 October, 1346

  * * *

  It was still early in the morning. Most of the men in the Scottish host still slumbered in their billets whether that was in tents or on the spot where they had dropped the previous night, tired from the march. The sky was shrouded in mist. It appeared as if the place where the camp lay was at the bottom of a pail of milk. Visibility barely carried for a few paces from one’s nose. For the rest, it was silent like a graveyard.

  “This place gives me the creeps,” whispered Murtagh, shuddering his bulky frame to make his point. He sat on the back of his horse. The animal did not share in his trepidation as it contently nibbled and ripped on the lush grass by its hooves. Its movements brought forth the occasional clink of the accouterments on its frame… and then almost deathly silence once again when it remained static, munching away happily.

  “Why are ye whispering, Murtagh? It’s not like the enemy’s about,” said Mungo. “They’re all in France,” he added with a chuckle. “Ye are quite the frightened old woman on occasion. What’s a bit of mist, eh? Ye should be used to it coming from the Highlands.”

  Murtagh snorted. “I tell ye there’s something not quite right around here. I dinnae ken what, but I can feel that something’s off; the edgy feeling reaches all the way to my bones. The eerie feel of this morning sort of made me think that whispering was the right thing to do,” he responded somewhat too loudly.

  “Shush, ye great big galoot. And keep yer ears at the ready and yer eyes peeled. Something’s afoot… I can smell it,” said Alastair in a tone that was slightly higher than a whisper but carried enough force to convey his message to the men closest to him.

  With his lips pressed together, Murtagh arched his eyebrows at Mungo. “Ye see… even the laird does not feel comfortable about this morning. He’s as jittery as I ever saw him.”

  “Bah, ye are like a nagging wife, relentless when ye put ye mind to it,” said Mungo. However, he had to admit that he had never heard Alastair sound so uneasy before. The trace of uncertainty in the tone of his voice had been unmistakable.

  “When will this infernal fog lift?” Murtagh hissed between clenched teeth. He tapped on the hilt of his sword to somehow steady his nerves.

  “I dinnae ken, but it reminds me of the day we kidnapped Mary all of those years ago,” said Mungo, reverting to a whisper and squinting as he eyed the thick veil of haze before him. The vapor seemed to become one with the land all around him. Apart from Murtagh’s outline to his left and Doogle’s to his right, he couldn’t see the rest of Alastair’s men that had been ordered by the king to advance very soon.

  “Same as this was it – when ye rescued my ma?” asked Doogle quietly.

  Both Murtagh and Mungo chortled into their beards. “Very good way of putting it, laddie. We definitely rescued her from her miserable kind and a fate worse than death.” Murtagh scratched his nose in thought. “It amazes me to this day how a Sassenach can be such a wonderful woman.”

  “Aye, that she is. She is brave as a clanswoman and strong as a clanswoman,” said Mungo.

  “And beautiful,” added Doogle with flourish. He smiled when he thought of his mother back home at Castle Diabaig. Thinking of her always made him happy. He sometimes wondered if he would ever feel the same affection for a woman that was not his mother. It was nigh impossible for him to comprehend. And yet, his brother, Brice, never ceased to speak of Skye. Maybe one day I might love another woman like that, he thought.

  “Can ye hear that?” asked Brice, who sat on his steed two horses away from where Mungo waited and next to his father.

  Every man in Alastair’s command strained his ears. There was nothing but a spooky silence. The mist was so hushed that it felt as if it sounded like the roar of a waterfall in the distance. Doogle could hear his own heartbeat as the blood hammered against his eardrums. “I cannae hear any—”

  “Haud yer wheesht, Doogle,” hissed out Alastair. “How do ye expect to hear som
ething if ye are talking all the time, eh?”

  “There… do ye hear it?” Brice stretched his neck forward until his left ear was at the same level as his horse’s hide. “There it is again.”

  “Aye, shouts… Men shouting; the sound is getting closer. By God… what is going on?” asked Doogle, at the same time controlling his mare because the animal sensed his trepidation. The animal’s movements were skittish, ears swiveling this way and that, hooves digging out divots in the dew-covered grass, and the tail swishing hither and thither.

  “They must be ransacking Durham, the lucky blighters,” said Murtagh confidently.

  “That is not the sound of triumphant men pillaging a town, Murtagh. That is the sound of retreat and the stink of fear,” said Alastair. “The men that rode forth before us are coming back… and fast.” He took a deep breath before he issued his next command, “Be prepared for the worst. If the English are in pursuit of our laddies, they will need our support. So, be ready to give it.”

  “Aye, my Laird,” murmured all of the men.

  Once more silence soon followed. The clinking noise of equipment beyond the mist became louder. Occasional incoherent shouts could be heard in the distance and then nothing again. Alastair reassured his men that the new arrivals were still some way off. From now on, waiting was the order of the early morning.

  The waiting was always the worst bit. Add that to not being able to see much, and it had the power to drive most men insane. What would normally feel like a short wait turned into almost infinite when the prospect of battle loomed. Thoughts consumed men’s minds and occupied them like parasites. This process took over each person differently.

  Some, and the less courageous, succumb to bouts of shivering and maybe even the release of their bladders. Others sit or stand with steely determination carved onto their features – these men feel little. They void the emotions of trepidation or doubt from their person the moment they try to manifest. Even more men were the philosophical types. It did not have to be literary genius that their minds concocted. A mere train of thoughts about the purpose of life and their place therein would suffice. Or each individual’s preparation for death and its acceptance could be another such notion.

  One thing bound all of these souls together: the love of their clan and the duty they owed to its laird and lady. No clansman worth his salt would let anything come in-between that sacred obligation. Another was their love for the families that they left behind. First, their protection was paramount, and second, honoring them. Returning home in disgrace was something very few clansmen ever risked. If they lived long enough to suffer that shame and return home, the penalty was banishment from the burgh or in the worst case, death.

  “This is unbearable… Say something, Murtagh, anything to take my mind off this waiting.” Doogle had calmed his mare down but not himself. He tapped the hilt of his sword with his fingernails in a rhythmic staccato tone in imitation of Murtagh earlier.

  Murtagh nodded. He knew what Doogle was feeling. He remembered his first time before a battle as if it was yesterday. It was when Alastair’s father was still the laird of the clan. In contrast to this morning, it had been a beautiful sunny day. The English troops arrayed before them had been clear as day for all to see. They came on and on in detailed columns until the carnage began. That moment had come as a release to Murtagh for he was a brave man. Brave men feared the wait more than death itself. It was the cravens that harnessed the wait like addicts, as they both hated and loved it for it was all that was left which separated them from the valley of the shadow of death.

  “You must breathe, laddie… like this.” Murtagh took a deep breath and held it for about four heartbeats before exhaling, “Now, ye take a few more deep breaths… and focus on yer breathing as if there is nothing else.”

  Doogle followed his lead. “It’s working… I feel better,” he said after a few moments.

  Mungo chuckled as he watched the big lad focus all his attention on his respiration and not on the interminable anticipation of what lay beyond the fog. He lifted his head some and frowned.

  “My God, it lifts,” he cried.

  All heads looked up. Up above them, the round orb of the sun could be seen as it burnt off the outer layer of the fog bank up above the Scots. As the moments ticked by, its shape and color became clearer. Mungo looked ahead once more. The mist had lifted gradually, creating a low cloudbank that found its lowest point right above the apex of the hill before the camp. The men in Alastair’s command could finally see what took place on the hill.

  “What in God’s name are they doing?” said Alastair, staring ahead.

  “It looks like our lads, my Laird,” said a clansman further down the line, belonging to the division of over two hundred men.

  “Aye, it does. Ye are right, laddie.” Alastair studied the first of the panicking men on the top of the hill for a few moments. “It does not look like there are any English about.” He took a deep breath. “But it doesn’t mean that they are not out there somewhere… Remain vigilant, lads.”

  “AYE, MY LAIRD!” responded the troop.

  “Remain watchful. Look at ‘em. We should leave those numpties to the flaming English, if it’s them who is behind this. Fancy running away instead of standing and fighting,” snarled out Mungo. “The lot of ‘em are a bloody disgrace.”

  “Who else could it be other than the Sassenachs?” interjected Doogle. “They must have put the fright of the Devil into those men.” He eyed his fellow countrymen as they began to swarm down the hill.

  “Aye – right bunch of diddies those laddies for even letting the English scare them off; it’s us who should be doing the scaring,” grumbled out Mungo, still eyeing the retreating Scots with a feral grimace on his face. It was beyond him how men could run so fast in the, to his mind, wrong direction. “Who else indeed. What say ye, Murtagh? Is it the Sassenachs?” A smile appeared on his face when he saw the expression on his friend’s face. “Ye look a right radge knobdobber.” He hooted laughter because of the disgusted mien gracing other man’s face. “I ken that ye detest retreating men. Ye should see yerself, my brother. It’s as if some dobber took a shite in yer supper.” He slapped the palm of his hand on his thigh in continued mirth.

  Murtagh cleared his throat and spat on the ground beside him, scarcely missing Doogle’s foot. “We left Perth ten days ago, entered England with about twelve thousand men, met hardly any resistance on the way and now look at ‘em –running like a bunch of frightened rabbits,” complained Murtagh, staring at a bedraggled group of Scottish soldiers from the back of his horse. The men he watched crested the hill and began to descend down the other side with even greater haste. Before them ran their fellows toward the Scottish camp below.

  “Aye. But something must’ve terrified them,” said Doogle, looking apprehensive.

  “Ye are off yer head; those men are craven, that’s all,” said Mungo with a grimace. The countenance made the scar that ran diagonally across it look even more pronounced and purpled. It always throbbed when he felt a battle was near.

  “Aye, we’re the fools for expecting to find the whole of Northern England relatively undefended because King Edward the Third is conducting his major campaign in France,” said Alastair, frowning with worry. “I suggest we wait and see how this unfolds before we advance.”

  A murmur of approval from his men and sons followed this remark.

  From what he could make out of the men that descended the hill, was that they belonged to William Douglas’ division. That very same morning, King David had ordered Douglas and his five hundred troops to advance and conduct a raid south of the town of Durham in preparation for the main onslaught. It appeared they were in the process of returning very soon after that command had been issued, and in total disarray.

  Alastair had been ordered to follow William Douglas and his troops a short while after their departure to add pressure to the town of Durham. But what was taking place before him made no sense at all. How cou
ld there be a sufficient amount of English soldiers to force Douglas’ men into flight so? The force must be substantial, he thought. If so, then how had the enemy kept them hidden for such a long time? Alastair felt it in his gut that things did not bode well for the continuance of the campaign.

  “But, my Laird, we have been so fortunate so far. We took Liddesdale, bypassed Carlisle with protection money offered and given to us and marched south to Durham in a little more than a week,” said Mungo, still eyeing the retreating Scotsmen. “Those men must be tent-dwelling Lowlanders for them to retreat in such a fashion.”

  Murtagh snarled. “Aye, cowards the lot of them. A true Highlander would never run away. If ye ask me, we should have killed more of those English bastards on the way down here instead of taking their protection money most of the time.”

  “Like when we sacked the priory of Hexam. Good day that was. We burned everything to a cinder.” Mungo scratched his shaggy black beard that was streaked with gray. “I only hope the king does not accept their next offer of protection money from those two black monks that are currently pestering him in his tent for him to spare Durham.”

  “Aye, that’d take all the fun out of it. If he does that, we’d probably have to wait until we reach Yorkshire before any real fighting takes place,” hissed out Murtagh.

  “I think the two of ye are completely missing the point,” said Callum, who sat astride of his horse with his father and brothers.

  “And why would ye say that, clever boots?” asked Mungo. The way he addressed him was by no means an insult.

  “I am certain the English mobilized their army a while ago without our knowledge. Edward has many of his soldiers with him in France but not all of them… He knew all along that we would attack and take advantage of the situation. This time, it is us who have suffered from hubris. We underestimated the King of England.”