Susan King - [Celtic Nights 02] (4 page)

He turned and saw that most of the swans had disappeared. The remaining few glided elegantly over the water. The shore was empty, though shouts continued on the other side of the castle.

Gawain stood cautiously, holding the girl in his arms. The soft floor sucked at his feet as he waded to shore. Water sluiced from them as if they were kelpies rising from the depths. Slung in his arms, sopping wet, she was yet a light burden.

Glancing uneasily toward the castle, he ran along the bank away from the burning tower toward the forest. People waited there in the shadows. A woman stepped between the trees.

"Mother!" the girl said. "Set me down." He did, sweeping his arm around her to hurry her toward the trees.

The shadowed figures came closer, reaching out. A woman pulled the girl into her embrace and swathed her in a thick plaid. Someone offered a blanket to Gawain. He refused it.

The girl turned to look up at him. Her eyes were luminous; in shadows and moonlight, he could not tell their color.

"I am Juliana Lindsay," she said. "Tell me your name, so that I can ask the angels to watch over you."

He frowned. If he told her the name given him at birth—Gabhan MacDuff—she might know him for a local Highlander, and despise him for being with the English. If he told her his English name, Gawain Avenel, she would loathe him for that.

She shivered, waiting, her cheeks pale, hair hanging like strands of honey. He touched her chin with a fingertip.

"Swan Maiden," he murmured. "Call me your Swan Knight in your prayers, and the angels will find me."

She nodded, watching him. Her mother drew her back.

"They are coming this way, knight," the mother said.

"I will lead them away from here. Go! All of you—go!" He waved them back into the forest and turned to run toward the castle, where the inferno still raged, bright and ferocious. As he went, he felt keenly as if the girl and the others watched him from the cover of the trees.

For a moment, he felt the odd sensation that he left heaven behind him and ran toward hell.

Chapter 2

Scotland, Perthshire

Spring 1306

Quicksilver and pale as the moonlight, she glided out of the forest and into the clearing. Glancing over her shoulder, she heard pounding hoofbeats and the male shouts that commanded her to stop, to wait.

She turned to watch them, slowly, deliberately, though her heart beat like a war drum. Lingering would be foolhardy, but she always made sure they saw her; she had done so for years.

Nearby, she knew that a group of people ran through the forest in another direction. They conveyed a burden, large and cumbersome: a wooden war machine on creaking wheels, partially dismantled, its struts stacked on a pony cart. Once it was conveyed through the forest, the engine would be transported along the river at night, until it reached the rebel camp.

The king's men must not discover it.

She waited in a translucent beam of moonlight. The two knights spurred toward her through the trees.

"The Swan Maiden!" one of them shouted. She forced herself to be still as their horses crashed through the shadows.

Then she whirled and ran toward the loch, shedding the white feathered cloak that covered her head and shoulders and tossing it aside. She stepped into the water and crouched quickly, her pale tunic billowing around her. Her blond hair fanned out and floated as she surged.

Arrowing through the water, she neared a cluster of swans and ducks gliding on the loch and swam into their midst. The birds ignored her, accustomed to her presence. When a curious cygnet swam too close, she pushed it gently away.

Treading water, she watched the shore. The knights burst into the clearing and dismounted. Running along the bank, they scanned the loch, pointed. One of them bent, then held up a white feather fallen from the cloak.

She watched, hidden within the ring of swans. The men walked to the water's edge. One of them picked up a stone and flung it, and it sank near the birds. They scattered with fuss and noise.

Her protective circle gone, she dove under and lunged toward a rocky shelf. Pulling herself along its striated contours, she rose up and slid out of the water under the shelter of an overhanging pine.

Friends waited there, holding out a plaid. Juliana wrapped the woven length around herself, slicked back her wet hair, and smiled. Then they turned together to run into the forest.

* * *

Amber firelight danced over familiar faces. Seated on the earthen floor of the cave, Juliana scanned the group assembled there, then turned her attention to her guardian, seated beside her. Abbot Malcolm cleared his throat.

"At last, my friends," he said quietly. "What we have risked so much to gain may be in our grasp. The report I heard this day will greatly aid our effort." He spoke in rapid Gaelic. "I have a plan, but there is danger. Juliana will risk a great deal this time."

She kept her expression calm. Around the firelit circle, the people summoned by Abbot Malcolm of Inchfillan waited. Her guardian's white tonsure was pristine in the light, his round cheeks pink, his blue gaze keen as he looked at her.

"Father Abbot," she murmured. "If we can win back Elladoune Castle and gain back our lands, I will do whatever I must."

"Father Abbot," one of the men asked, "what has happened?"

Malcolm folded his hands. Juliana knew what he would say. She and her younger brothers lived in the abbot's own house, outside the precinct of the monastery, and Malcolm had discussed his thoughts with her earlier.

Anyone who did not know her kinsman and guardian well—such as the English knights garrisoned in Elladoune—assumed that he was merely a pleasant old man, concerned only about his little Celtic abbey, and the lost souls he guided along the right path.

Some of his lost souls—rebels all—watched him now.

What Malcolm hid from their English enemies, Juliana knew, was a ferocious loyalty to Scotland. He was more lion than rotund lamb. Years ago, Abbot Malcolm had taken under his wing several dispossessed Scots, transforming them into forest rebels. Juliana felt proud to be among them.

Outside the cave, trees swayed in the night breeze. Inside, Malcolm's rebels listened, and leaned forward.

"I met with the sheriff of Glen Fillan today," Malcolm said. "He asked a favor, and posed a threat."

Juliana drummed her fingers anxiously on her unstrung bow, which lay beside her. She felt a desperate urge to act, but knew she and the others must proceed cautiously.

"Walter de Soulis has never cared about our interests," Lucas, once her father's herdsman, said. "He will not help us!"

"He did not fret about the renegades and homeless in the forest and glen, as he usually does—though I try to help him with that persistent problem." Malcolm held up his hands innocently, and some of his listeners smiled.

Juliana glanced toward her two young brothers. Iain and Alec, seven and nine, slept in a corner, curled like puppies on a pile of cloaks. She knew the boys would sleep through anything if tired enough—even a meeting to plan rebellious actions.

"The sheriff said that the garrison leader of Elladoune Castle will depart soon," Malcolm said.

"Good!" one of the men said. "Farewell to him who burned our village, so that we had to live in the forest! Though we still must fend against the man who ruined Elladoune, now made sheriff over us!"

"When the commander leaves, his troops will go with him," the abbot went on. "The English king has ordered them to pursue our new King of Scots, Robert Bruce, and his men, who have gone into the Highland hills in the area north of here. Another garrison will arrive with a new leader for Elladoune."

Red Angus, burly and russet, a former farmer, shook his head. "So one English garrison moves out, and another moves in. Now there will be new faces to learn, new habits and patrol routes. That does not help our cause."

"But this does—for a few weeks, Elladoune will be deserted," Malcolm answered. "Sir Walter wants the monks of Inchfillan to watch the castle gates and tend the sheep and gardens until the new men arrive."

"Aha, that is just what we need!" Robert, a blacksmith, crowed. "We are prepared for it too—with weapons and armor!"

"Exactly," Malcolm said. "God has answered our prayers. We can take over Elladoune."

"And claim it for Scotland!" Angus cried. Malcolm smiled.

Arms raised upward and voices rose. "For Scotland!"

Juliana smiled, and hope bloomed within her like a small flower. Soon they would live in Elladoune Castle again, and then bring the ruined village to life, farming the land and raising herds in peace.

"Juliana," Malcolm said, placing his hand on her shoulder, "will help us carry out our scheme. The soldiers shake with fear when our Swan Maiden appears and disappears as if by magic. We are deeply grateful to her for creating that illusion these past few years."

"Magic, she has—or so say the English," Angus remarked.

"The silent Swan Maiden of Elladoune, who never utters a word," Malcolm agreed. "As long as the Sassenachs believe she might be an enchanted swan, it helps us. We want them to think it, but we do not want her to face terrible risk."

"They will harm her if they capture her," Lucas growled.

"But she plays a quick and clever game," Malcolm said, "never speaking when English are near, and running away as soon as they see her. The Sassenachs are so anxious about entering the forest that we have been able to do much secret work for the cause of Scotland."

"They are fools to believe she is enchanted and not real." Beithag, the oldest woman among them, snorted her disdain. "And it cannot last."

"True." Malcolm sighed. "And that danger is the problem. Walter de Soulis has been sheriff in Glen Fillan for only a little while, but he is not convinced that Juliana is enchanted. He says she is a rebel—even a spy."

"What did you tell him, Father Abbot?" Angus asked with concern.

"I said that my ward is a simple, pious girl who does not speak because of the terrible loss of her home years ago, followed by the death of her father and the cloistering of her mother, whom she has not seen in years." He smiled sympathetically at Juliana, who nodded ruefully. She had accepted long ago that she might never see her mother again; Lady Marjorie had put herself and her deep grief in a convent in the Lowlands a year after her husband's death.

"If De Soulis thinks the girl does not speak," Beithag said, "he has never seen her in a high temper!"

"I told him," Malcolm said, "that when the Swan Maiden appears by the loch, it is a vision, and will bring good luck."

"Still," Beithag's husband, Uilleam, said, "Juliana should cease her actions and stay safe." He nodded his gray, leonine head to underscore his point, and many others nodded in agreement. Uilleam generally said little, Juliana knew, but when he did, the rebels took heed.

"Father Abbot, find your ward a husband to give her babes, and stop asking her to help the cause," Beithag said.

Juliana shook her head. "I want to continue, Mother Beithag. The Swan Maiden can help the work we do. The Sassenachs will not come near this part of the forest, and so we have stockpiled weapons and armor, and built siege engines to transport by darkness. Our work is important."

"Mother Beithag is right," Angus said. "The girl has risked much, and has lost much, and we should ask no more of her. A laird's daughter should wed a Scottish knight and raise sons for Scotland."

"I am raising sons for Scotland. My own brothers," she pointed out, indicating the two boys asleep in the corner.

"Listen," Malcolm said. "The time has come to reclaim Elladoune. We must decide how, and when. If Juliana is willing, we need her assistance."

"That devil De Soulis will destroy our plans no matter what we do," Lucas growled. "The man is invincible. They say his black armor cannot be penetrated. He cannot be defeated."

"He can only be avoided, which we have done," Angus said.

Malcolm sighed. "My brethren and I pray daily about all of these concerns. We have a hundred votive candles burning day and night to call God's attention to our plight."