Blue Bells of Scotland: Book One of the Blue Bells Trilogy (15 page)

"Edward is sending reinforcements to Stirling," intoned the Laird. His old, blue eyes met Shawn's. "If Stirling falls, the English invade Scotland, taking our land, killing our people. We need Hugh, but he and his men are in hiding. You remember naught?"

"Couldn't you just let him have the castle?" Shawn suggested. "I mean, it's a big country, there are castles to go around."

Two men drew their dirks from their boots and placed them firmly on the table, giving him stony stares. "What traitorous speech is this?" queried one.

"Would you have us all dead?" demanded another, leaning forward. "Have you forgotten your own brothers?"

"Have you forgotten what the English did at Stirling Bridge?" asked the small lord in shock. "Have you forgotten your own father at Falkirk!"

The Laird scrutinized Shawn's face, and held up his hand for peace. "Niall has ever been the most loyal, dutiful, and courageous among us. Were it not so, his life would have been forfeit that day behind the oven."

"For...." Shawn started to say, For kissing your daughter? Oh, man, you don't know how much more I have in mind! A glance at the daggers gave him a moment's wisdom. He held his tongue.

"The blow to the head has undoubtedly affected him. He does not understand what he is saying. Niall." He turned back to Shawn. "The English will not stop at Stirling. Do you not remember the slaughter of the Camerons at Falkirk? Your mother's own people, women and children run through. Wee bairns hanging by their necks. Surely you remember? Would you see your kin here suffer the same fate?"

Shawn shook his head, unnerved. He recalled the name Falkirk, though barely: there had been a very pretty and buxom girl in history, far more interesting than old, dry stories. These people were deep in their game; their acting so impeccable, they appeared to fully believe the danger.

"D' ye remember, Niall?"

Shawn nodded. He would leave on this journey, walk back to Inverness, and everything would be fine, as it always was in his life.

"Do you understand the importance of Stirling?"

Shawn nodded again.

"If Niall has become forgetful," one man asked, "if he doesna ken the year even, how will he reach Hugh? He is the only one who knows the way."

Inverness, Scotland

The sounds reached Niall first: hushed footsteps and voices, drifting like the whisper of the loch through his window at night. He listened with half an ear, the rhythm and cadences brushing over him like the steady
lap lap lap
of water against the tower walls. Next came small clinks and whirrs and hums, and he felt a firm mattress beneath him. Soft clouds pillowed his head in darkness.

"Coming 'round," said a man, speaking a peculiar English. Niall's mind wandered to the puzzle of the broken down walls, but as quickly slipped back into darkness, a darkness filled with bizarre dreams of shiny metal wagons hurtling down wide roads at incredible speeds with no horses to pull them. Delirium! It had to be delirium! Inhuman voices had screeched and wailed, and lights spun and flashed like a thousand comets streaking through the night. A choir of urgent, white-robed angels tumbled him onto a cot with wheels and shot down a white tunnel, shouting in demonic voices.

The dreams faded to blackness. The whispers came again. "Lucky! ...just on time." Black faded to gray. Niall twitched, feeling for his knife.

"Is he waking up?" It was the woman, the woman from outside the castle.

He tensed. She was real.

Her voice trembled, as Allene's had, on learning of her brother's death. "I'll never forgive myself."

The gray paled, and became a bright light shining through his lids. He squeezed his eyes shut, remembering the broken walls, and fought his instinct to scramble to his feet fighting. He relaxed his face, relaxed his arm under what must be her fingers on his bare skin, and listened.

"He's moving." That was the man, Rob.

So they were both real, not delirium. Then were the broken down walls real? And the crouching beast? Those must be fever-driven hallucinations, even if the man and woman weren't. He lay still, breathing slowly. His head felt much better. He could think clearly. His body felt cool again. They'd healed him, he realized. He must be in their castle, with their physicians or monks.

"Thank goodness we left so early to get him," the woman said.

Footsteps sounded, and a man spoke. "He should be wakin' up any minute now, lass. Ye say he was fine when ye left him last night? I’ve never seen an infection move sae fast. He'd ha' been dead in a day a' most. And an arrow wound…."

"That's insane," said the woman. Amy, Niall remembered. It rolled through his mind pleasingly, and he almost drifted back to sleep, thinking about her long black hair. He gave himself a sharp reminder he was betrothed, and kept listening, hoping for answers, and accustoming himself to the cadence of their speech. Bit by bit, they became easier to understand. "How in the world could he have been shot by an arrow?"

"It appeared several days old." The heavy voice spoke with authority.

"That's impossible," Amy said. "He was fine last night. I know I shouldn't have left him, but I was back in less than eight hours."

"The police have some questions," the physician said.

Heavy footsteps sounded, a scraping on the floor, a settling of bodies, new voices, both male; more talk. Niall tried to weave some tapestry of explanation from the tangled threads of events and conversation. They thought he was someone called Shawn. The raven-haired woman in undergarments thought she'd left him in the tower last night. Guilt consumed her, though why, Niall couldn't quite pin down.

"He was gambling." The man, Rob, spoke tentatively. "But he paid the guy off." A flurry of anger erupted from Amy, shouting about a ring. The new voices begged for calm. A brief silence fell.

Then Amy spoke again. "He said he was Niall Campbell." Niall's ears strained at the sound of his own name. "He didn't seem to know us. He was talking about MacDonalds and MacDougalls."

"'Tis Glenmirril," said one of the new voices. "Ye said ye took the tour. Niall Campbell is mentioned on it, is he not, Angus?"

"There's a tapestry of him," said Amy, "and it's funny, it's just a tapestry, but he looked like Shawn, the long hair, something in the eyes."

"Niall Campbell is known to those who study Glenmirril's history," said a rougher voice. "He was betrothed to MacDonald's daughter. He went to raise troops for the Battle of the Pools."

Niall's mind sharpened like steel on whetstone. The Pools was what the English called the boggy area south of Stirling—the place Bruce would likely gather his army. And though the Sassenach tongue was his second language, they seemed to be speaking of him in past tense, as he would speak of Kenneth MacAlpin.

"They say he was injured stealing the MacDougall's cattle just before leaving on that mission."

Niall's hackles rose.
Those were our cattle!
But he held himself quietly, waiting for more information.

"History never mentions him again after leaving to raise the army," continued the rough voice. This one spoke the Sassenach tongue more in the manner to which Niall was accustomed. "They believe he died in the wilderness of his injuries."

"Now tha's no what I heard," said the other. "I heard a castle traitor hunted him down, sold him to the English, watched him hung, drawn, and quartered." They argued briefly over how he had died.

Niall breathed deeply, torn between amusement and disbelief. Only one answer accounted for broken walls and these people speaking about him as if he'd been long dead. But that was impossible. He did not believe a word of old Rabbie's tales, not King Herla, not Thomas the Rhymer, none of it.

Amy interrupted them. "Okay, but why is Shawn saying he's this guy? That was seven hundred years ago."

Niall grunted, only forcibly keeping himself from shooting upright. Seven hundred years! He reassured himself quickly. Only a fool believed everything he heard. Especially from the English. One did not skip centuries any more than one skipped heather-covered hills. A ruse, that was it!

"Is he okay?" asked Amy. A soft hand fell on his forehead. He forced himself to lie quietly. He needed a calm head. But her touch tingled through him.

The man who must be the physician spoke. "He's fine. Just coming to. Serious infection and fever like his can cause delusions. I'd say he heard the name, and it stuck."

"He wasn't paying that much attention," said Amy.

"But you pointed out the tapestry to him." That was Rob. "You showed him this guy looked like him. That would stick, for Shawn, and then he hits his head and gets a high fever, and it all gets mixed together."

"But the accent," said Amy.

"I've heard of that," Rob said. "I saw on the internet about these people who could only speak with foreign accents after a head injury."

It was without a doubt a Sassenach deception, Niall decided. The two newcomers began asking questions. Niall listened, feeling strength grow in his arms. Whatever they'd done for him, he hadn't felt so good since the moment he lifted his tunic to the MacDougalls, just before the hiss of that arrow.

While they talked about this Shawn, he listened, wondering why the English would heal him. Perhaps the ruse was on them, and they really believed him to be this Shawn? He lay still, deciding his next move, soaking in the patterns of their speech, rolling their accents around his mind, and feeling the motions of his tongue that would reproduce the sounds, just as he copied the Laird or old Rabbie.

Heavy footsteps trod away. The room became quiet.

Maybe this Shawn they spoke of was the enemy? They were English, after all. A lucky break for the ill-fated Edward to find someone who looked like Niall, the only man who could find Hugh? They knew there was a traitor in the castle. He pursued this possibility through the chambers of his mind, behind his closed eyelids. Could someone have put a draught in his mead and carried him to this place while he slept? Then someone in the kitchen was working with the traitor. He vowed, with steeled jaw, he would find the man and run him through.

A sniffle, a woman crying softly, broke into his thoughts. "He'll be okay," said Rob. "Uh, do you want something to eat?"

He'll be okay.
The words rolled through Niall's mind, feeling the shape of each vowel.
Do you want something to eat?
More footsteps left the room. Lighter footsteps entered, accompanied by a chirpy feminine voice. Niall felt pressure on his arm, a tug, something cold sliding against his flesh, and his eyes flew open wide.

"Ah, there ye are!" A young woman dressed all in white smiled at him. A long silver needle dangled from her hand. "Ye're just after havin' your I.V. pulled. Ye're doin' grand. The doctor's wantin' to see you down the hall. I heard you play last Saturday, Mr. Kleiner. Wasn't that something!" She bandaged his arm, and danced out of the cell, her voice trilling ahead that 'Mr. Kleiner' had woken up.

Niall stared after her, shocked at her dress kilted all the way to her knees. He pulled his eyes back to the chamber. Bits of metal and things he couldn't name flashed and beeped. It was too much! He shut his eyes. Seven hundred years in the future? It couldn't be. But never had he heard of such things as these.

Amy grasped his hand. "Shawn?" she whispered. "It's me, Amy."

Niall opened his eyes slowly. The words played in his mind.
Shawn. It's me, Amy.

"Amy." He repeated the word carefully.

Glenmirril Castle, Scotland

Shawn listened intently to the discussion, the nausea and headache having thankfully subsided a little. But being effectively captive in a room full of hardened men with wicked-looking daggers, pretending to be someone he wasn't, did nothing to quell the unease in his stomach. He listened for anything that would help him get back to Inverness, once they sent him out. Their fate most certainly did not rest on him. Wasn't his problem, even if they were talking about some actual battle. Which, of course, they couldn't be. This time tomorrow, when he'd figured out what was going on, he'd find it funny, how he'd misunderstood, how he'd actually thought they were telling him he'd traveled back in time.

The men talked endlessly, arguing over the best time to start, the best route for Niall to take, the dangers of nature and man.

"The Great Glen is steep and slippery in places," one lord said.

"Nothing our Niall can't handle."

"With his injury?" the first lord persisted. "He's no yet healed."

"But if there's a quicker or safer way...."

"Edward's spies are everywhere. 'Tis best to stay out of sight."

Several women—the beautiful Allene among them, Shawn noted with appreciative eyes—carried in platters of food and mugs of mead. He felt eyes on him, and turned to see an older lord glaring at him. He pulled his eyes off Allene quickly, not needing another knock on the head.

"Secrecy is paramount. They'd no expect him to go north around the Loch!" declared Conal, one of the young lords, as a woman set a trencher in front of him.

"It would take him directly past MacDougall's kin," said the small, wizened lord. "Well away from any of them is best. Speed is paramount. Can he no cross the loch?"

"In the leaky boat?" said the Laird gravely. "We're no equipped for him to cross the loch."

"And besides, 'tis the obvious way, what Edward's men might guess," retorted Lord Darnley. "Speed is no use if it is into their waiting arms he flies."

"Secrecy is no use if he wanders right up to the portcullis of MacDougall's kin. They'd argue only whether to hang him themselves or turn him over to the English for greater sport."

Another rush of nausea swooped over Shawn. The man appeared to believe this was a real possibility. "I've seen
Braveheart
," he volunteered. "I'll take the safer route."

"Braveheart?"

"William Wallace?" Shawn queried back.

The old lords shook their heads with laughter. "You were a bairn in your mither's arms in his day," the small one said. "Now there was a great man, who asked what would help his people, not—" he pierced Shawn with a hard stare, "what was safe." The others nodded, and the man continued. "'Tis a question of odds. But it remains that Niall was the one trusted with Hugh's hiding place. We canna be sure of the best way to go when we're not even sure exactly where he's going."