Blue Bells of Scotland: Book One of the Blue Bells Trilogy (58 page)

"Niall! Move, laddie! What ails ye!" Roger pushed him from behind.

Shawn felt a gentle breeze on his shoulder, and heard up and down the forest glen another echo. He swore it was his own name, carried back on the breeze again.

* * *

Niall raced through the pines and birches with the sureness of the stag. He leapt a small burn and kept running, flashing in and out of trees trying to stay near the path. Was he crazy, feeling he knew where it had been? They had many hours' start on him, he guessed. But traveling alone, he would move faster than the long, winding column of Hugh's men, snaking down through the forest trails, burdened with animals, weapons, and supplies. In mid-afternoon, he slowed long enough to pluck berries from the brush and gulp from a stream, to take his bearings and steady his course. Heat shimmered, columns of light stabbing down through the lofty trees. Ahead, something flashed the sun back into his eyes. But he could see nothing there. He closed his eyes and listened, still as the earth. At first he heard only the burn. Then the trill of a bird.

And the tramping of many feet.

"Shawn!" he called out, as loudly as he could. He dropped to his knees, palms on the ground, and tried to quiet the beating of his heart, listening intently. He raised his head, cupped his hands to his mouth and shouted again. "Shawwwwn! SHAWN! SHAWWWWN!" He braced his hands against his thighs, listening.

This time he clearly heard the tread of feet.

"You okay, man?" A pair of sandals crunched on a twig and stepped into Niall's field of vision: stocky, leather sandals with thick soles and brown, woolen socks. Niall raised his eyes from the feet, up past baggy short trews to a shirt bursting with wild red and blue flowers. A young man, his hair bound back in a long ponytail, round bits of glass in front of his eyes, and a large pack strapped over his shoulders, stared back, his head cocked to one side. Niall stared up at him; he conflicted bizarrely with what Niall had expected to see.

And yet—wasn't that his name, that he heard barked out, just now, across the stream?

* * *

Heat shimmered, dancing down green among the leafy overhead canopy, and dappling the narrow trail. Branches hung heavy and still in the heat. A squirrel darted, disappearing before the eye could catch it. Shawn glanced at the men to his right and left, marching in their tunics, and plaids swinging over each shoulder. Their fiery hair blazed even in the dim light of the forest. He looked back across the stream they were even now fording, and blinked hard at the American college student in Bermudas, Hawaiian shirt, and Birkenstocks on the far bank. He stopped in his tracks. Roger slammed into him, shouting, "Niall! Keep movin', laddie!" and shoving him forward. He stared back frantically. The college student was gone. A trick of a desperate mind.

* * *

"You okay?" the man asked again.

"Never better in seven hundred years!" Niall answered, and at the man's alarmed look, reassured him, "A jest, only a jest. Do I look that auld?" He climbed to his feet.

The man smiled, an off-kilter smile, unsure what the joke really was. He scanned Niall's tunic and boots. "If you need help," he said, "I've got a cell phone."

Ah, yes, the cell phones. "Can you call Amy?" Niall asked. At the man's doubtful look, he added, "Amy Nelson, with the orchestra."

"Do you have her number?" the man asked. "I remember an American orchestra. In fact," his voice rose in excitement, "aren't you...."

"The hotel," Niall said. "She's staying in Inverness, the hotel with the lions, the castle...."

"You're really okay? I know that hotel. My friend's in Inverness." He placed a call, spoke briefly, and hung up. In five minutes, five minutes of awkward silence and staring at each other amidst the ferns and moss and sounds of the forest, the phone trilled an old folk song. Niall looked at it in amazement. "
Blue Bells,
" the man apologized. "It seemed appropriate." He answered it. "Uh-huh. Yeah. Amy Nelson. He's right here. We'll wait. I think he'll wait." Niall nodded. "Yeah," the man confirmed into the phone. "He'll wait. Okay, in a sec, then." He snapped the instrument shut again. "He's at the hotel. He's got them looking for her. She'll call me."

Niall looked frantically down the mountain. Hugh couldn't get too far in the time this was eating up. Shawn had gotten Allene safely to Hugh, and had gone to great lengths to leave Amy a message. Niall would see that she got it. Who knew what would happen at Stirling. It might be the last message Amy ever had from him. From either of them.

The phone rang. A frantic, high-pitched squawking erupted from it. "Yeah, yeah, calm down," the man soothed. "He's right here. Says he's fine." His doubtful look at Niall's tunic and boots suggested he wasn't so sure.

"Amy." Niall took the phone as he'd seen others do. Her voice, coming out of the small instrument, amazed him. He pulled it from his ear and stared. The hiker looked at him quizzically, took the phone, gently turned it around, and handed it back.

He put it back to his ear, baffled by the man's look of pitying concern. "Amy." He stared desperately down the mountain after the ghosts of men long gone. "Listen to me."

Amy sobbed and gasped and chattered hysterically.

"Amy," he repeated. "I'm fine. I haven't much time." She quieted, amid several sobs and gasps, and he said, "Shawn reached Hugh. I found the camp early this morning, but he's already left." Her voice came over the line again, upset. "Doona ask how I ken," Niall insisted more urgently. "But he's heading down the mountain right now. I think I'm five minutes behind him." Five minutes and seven hundred years, he thought wryly. "He's going to Stirling. But he left you a message. Hugh's rock, the one I told you he loved to keep so perfect. He took a great chance, Amy, carving it under Hugh's verra nose. It said,
Amy—so sorry
. He's changed, Amy. He wanted you to know, and I want you to know, he's become the man you always saw in him. It says he's going to Stirling, it says Iona. I doona ken what that means. I'll get him back to you, if I can."

Niall handed the phone to its owner, thanking him, while Amy's agitated voice still flowed freely.

The man snapped the phone shut. "I just came that way," he said. "There's no one there."

Niall had already crossed the stream, soaking his feet, and plunged back into the forest.

Inverness, Scotland, Present

Amy pressed the end button. As her knees gave way, Rob eased her onto one of the lobby's overstuffed couches. Dana dropped beside her, comforting her. Musicians milled, eager for gossip, whispering Shawn's name. Rob patted her shoulder awkwardly. "They're calling the police," he said. "They'll find him." He thanked the young man and shook his hand.

"No prob," the boy said. He snapped his phone shut and ambled to a far corner of the lobby to pretend he wasn't watching curiously.

"I have to get out of here," Amy said. Her heart beat hard. Her body trembled, inside and out. Dana slid an arm around Amy's shoulder. "Come on," she said.

Trossachs

Ghostly sounds echoed among the trees: tack jingling, ponies whickering, gruff voices singing. Sometimes the sounds came from ahead, sometimes behind, sometimes all around, but always faint and far away, no matter how fast Niall ran. His frequent calls, hands cupped around his mouth, of Allene! Shawn! Hugh! ALLENE! went unanswered. In the late afternoon, thin mist gathered.

He stopped, breathing heavily, on a deer track. A cloaked shadow formed ahead, slipping amidst the silver birches. "Shawn! Answer me, Shawn!" The figure melted away. Silence came back to him, but for birdsong and the sudden crescendo-diminuendo of a car flashing around the curving mountain road below.

Anger swept through him, anger at Shawn for not answering, anger at God—likewise, for not answering. Anger at whatever dangled his own time before him, constantly snatching it away. He slammed his palm into a tree, his jaw tight, and ran, chasing mist and shadows. Anger surged through his legs, faster and faster. Late afternoon became evening. The fog thickened.

He burst from the forest, into a field. Sharp grass crunched under his boots. He swore he saw a big, shaggy man—Will!—off to his right, spun, and found it was only mist. Shaggy highland cattle bolted in their stiff-legged gallop and turned back to snort with wide, soft noses and luminous brown eyes. He ran again, tearing apart white ribbons of fog before him.

And suddenly, a stone circle rose, hovering above the boiling mist, in the middle of the field. He skidded to his knees in their midst. "Was it your sick magic!" he demanded. He pounded one with his closed fist. Pounded it over and over. "Take me back! Let me back to protect Allene!" He pounded till his fist hurt; till his arm hurt, till his eyes stung from tears a warrior would not shed.

He pounded till he had no energy left and dropped his head against the tallest stone, rising from the mist.

And the Lord was not in the earthquake.

It was one of the last verses the Laird had read before this switch happened. His earthquake subsided.

And the Lord was not in the wind.

The aftershocks trembled away. A gentle breeze curled through the stones.

Shawn was the whisper that came on the breeze. Shawn had changed, and he was there with Allene. A feeble flame of hope quivered in Niall's heart.

The tear worked its way from the corner of his eye and trailed, burning, down his face. He wanted to be with her. But Shawn—somehow—had gotten her this far; he would continue to care for her.

Niall climbed slowly to his feet. Mist arched like cats around his knees. His plan had been to follow Hugh to Stirling. There was still hope. He turned from the fading sun, and settled into a sad, but determined and steady jog.

* * *

Rob pushed at the gathering crowd. "Leave her alone," he said. "Let us through. Bill, tell Conrad to meet us in Shawn's room." He wrapped his arm around her waist. In minutes, he and Dana and Celine had her settled in the window seat overlooking the garden, a steadying mug of hot coffee—Shawn's mug with the golden trombone, the mug Niall loved—in her hands.

A knock sounded on the door. Aaron entered, seating himself beside her and Celine, keeping their silent vigil.

The days of questioning by police and Conrad and Rob and even Caroline tumbled inside her. They'd kept at her, sympathetic but relentless, till she broke down and repeated his story, hating herself for the fool she must appear.

Days of self-doubt gathered like storm clouds. How could she have considered such an insane story, even for a second? She touched the crucifix, hidden inside her shirt. She hadn't told them about it, afraid they'd take it. Had she abandoned a demented man in the forest when he needed help? But his eyes had been clear and rational, his voice steady; he'd understood her doubt. He'd spoken with such detailed knowledge of life in a medieval castle. Worry over Niall and Shawn sat, heavy as Wagnerian opera, in her stomach. Her breakdown in the lobby made her face flame.

"It's okay." Celine's voice fluttered like a butterfly. She held Amy's hand and patted it.

"You're not crazy," Aaron said. "He's not Shawn, and those coins you told me about, they came from somewhere." She slipped the crucifix from her neck, and handed it to him. They stared at each other.

Rob and Dana paced across the room, whispering to one another in agitation.

"He found where Shawn was," Amy said to Celine and Aaron. The dark clouds of self-doubt drew down into funnel clouds. She focused through them to the pinprick of light, telling them about Hugh's Heart, and the message, short as it was. "How much did it take to carve something so deep it lasted seven hundred years? Could he really have changed?"

She repeated the message.
"Amy, so sorry. Iona J."
She looked from Aaron to Celine. "What does Iona mean?"

"It's the island where they bury the kings of Scotland," Aaron said. "It's on the other side of the country from Bannockburn. It has nothing to do with it, as far as I know."

She wrapped her hands around Shawn's mug, seeing Niall at the table sipping coffee by the hour, studying maps and mining the internet. She breathed in the specialty coffee Shawn loved. She'd always seen it in Shawn's eyes when he lied, though she tried to convince herself otherwise. And since the day she'd faced Niall and his dagger, behind the castle, she'd seen sincerity, always, in his eyes.

She believed him. He'd found a rock with a message from Shawn. Wherever, whenever he was, something had called forth in him the man she'd always seen. Her thoughts blew like tumbleweeds, fearing for Niall and Shawn both. She knew how the battle for Stirling would end.

* * * * *

Chapter Twenty

Stirling, 1314

Shawn's first sight of Stirling Castle made him stop and grab for another breath. It rose, a stern beacon of refuge, representing the safety and lives of so many. James, Owen, Adam with his seven daughters, all the men he'd come to know, stood, or sat on their sturdy Highland ponies. He knew a great deal about their wives and children and parents, waiting at home for word of them.

Allene curled her hand around his arm. All of them stared up at Stirling, stark and bold on the eastern horizon, etched against the evening sky. Sunlight glinted off what must be an archer's helmet or soldier's shield, on the ramparts. He imagined the English huddled inside, waiting for rescue Shawn prayed would not come.

"Aye, they'll be here," Brother David said. Only faint yellow bruises shadowed his eyes now. The gypsies' herbs, days of rest, and crisp mountain air all seemed to have returned his strength, though he still limped. "Edward fights not for Stirling, but for his name, which is scorned throughout England."

Shawn understood. He'd fight for Allene, he'd fight for survival. Even more, he'd fight to get back to Amy and redeem his name.

Up ahead Hugh shouted. The men pulled their eyes from Stirling Castle and wheeled south. A mile on, in the forest at the edge of the great bog, they found the Scottish camp. Dozens of clans had gathered from the highlands and the lowlands. Banners streamed. The biggest of all bore a red lion rearing on a field of brilliant gold-yellow. "The Bruce," Brother David told him, following his gaze.