Highland Thunder (Isle of Mull Series) Page 2

  “Edward was handed the reins to our great kingdom long ago. Do you think he will give them back and allow another to lead? John is an instrument, nothing more.”

  “What can be done?” Duncan had asked. “Who do we fight for?”

  “For Scotland,” Ronan said. “A real Scottish army led by a true Scottish king shall rise one day and bring Edward to his knees. We will watch for his coming and take up the march when our king calls.”

  Duncan shook his head sadly as he stared down at Cormac who lay on the ground, heaving air into his fatigued lungs. He offered Cormac his hand.

  “Aye, Cormac. Ronan predicted right. John is spineless.”

  “You mean he was spineless,” Jamie interjected.

  Duncan grunted in response. King John had at last taken a stand against Edward when the English king ordered a tax on Scotland to pay for his campaign against the French. Instead of yielding as John had done thus far in all things, John made a treaty with King Phillip of France against the English.

  “Nay, Jamie. He still played the coward. He should have united his people, formed an army. ‘Tis what King Alexander would have done. Instead, he skulked behind Edward’s back and made a treaty he was in no position to uphold. John has not the wit or the might to unite a Scottish army if the French called for aid, which King Phillip must know.” Duncan eyed his men grimly. “Treaty or no, the French will be no help to us, and the rest of Scotland will suffer for John’s petulance just as Berwick did.” Duncan was certain the Scottish king must have expected Edward to retaliate, but no one could have predicted the blood bath that swept Berwick.

  His thoughts returned to the once great city that, in one day’s time, had been reduced to a graveyard. He managed to escape with his life, but he was certain his soul lay behind in the bloody streets. The horror twisted around him as though he was entangled in the very entrails that poured forth from the bodies of the slain. His fists clenched his head as he fought the direction of his thoughts, but once again he was struck by the question of what could have been done. Again the same cold, heartless answer arrested his courage with impotent finality—nothing. His mind drifted then to the moment when he knew Berwick was done for…

  When the alarm from the Berwick garrison sounded, the Mull MacKinnon gained access to the wall to measure the threat they would soon face. None of them spoke at first. What they saw was vast and sudden. Duncan’s blood ran cold when his eyes scanned the far-reaching English army.

  “’Tis an army assembled and ready. Why have they only now sounded an alarm?” Cormac said. “There must be twenty thousand men.”

  “Nay,” Jamie said, shaking his head. “’Tis at least thirty thousand; I’d wager my life on it. Not that it is worth much at this moment,” he uttered under his breath.

  Duncan’s lips twitched into an almost grin at Cormac’s wide gaze. “I believe you have frightened the wee one,” Duncan whispered.

  The wall was now crowded by castle guards who began hackling and mocking the growing army below. Then in amazement Duncan watched as the Scottish soldiers turned about and flipped up their kilts, bearing their arses to the English troops.

  “Are you mad?” Duncan growled at them.

  “You worry for naught, my friend,” one of the guards said between bouts of laughter. Duncan pushed off the hand that came to rest on his shoulder, but the guard continued undeterred. “This is not a simple stronghold. Berwick is the greatest city in Scotland. Edward does not make war. He merely seeks to intimidate, and we are proving his failure.”

  “Idiot,” Duncan snapped as he gestured to the shifting troops below. “They head for the North bank. ‘Tis low tide. They will march unhampered into the city. The River Tweed and your arrogance are Berwick’s weaknesses—both will prove our failure.”

  “Duncan is right,” Ewan shouted to his men. “To the stables, lads. A king does not fund an army that large without a thirst for blood.”

  But the Mull Mackinnon never made it to the stables.

  In the passing of an instant, Berwick was no longer the greatest city in Scotland. The fiery depths of hell rose to the surface of the world, unleashing King Edward’s fury.

  Resting beneath the forest canopy, Duncan stared numbly at the shadow of leaves moving in the cool, spring breeze. His ears still rang with the screams of children, and then he remembered Rose, the sweet lass with the apples.

  Rose never made it home but not for fault of his generous gift he so naively worried about when he filled her basket with coin. She was not the victim of theft. Duncan closed his eyes against the image of her lifeless body. Her blank stare caught his for an instant as he leapt over the slain. Like a rosy halo, bright red apples were strewn about her head, gleaming as they lay coated in her blood.

  “My Anna begged me to bring her a fine lace wimple,” Cormac confessed to the night.

  Duncan shook Rose from his thoughts. “Your Anna waits only for your return.”

  Cormac grunted in agreement. Then he added in a quiet voice, “A happiness poor Brenna will be denied.”

  “Aye,” Kenneth said. “And poor Calum’s young wife is pregnant. And Hammish. And Alasdair. And Niall. All dead.”

  With a growl, Jamie leapt to his feet, his eyes wide and red with fury. “I’ve seen war before. I have fought and killed men. I watched my own brother bleed to death on the battlefield while I carried on the fight.” He drew his sword and swung, striking a nearby tree. Over and over again, the tree met the force of his anger. “But they were wee bairns and lasses. They beheaded a babe when it had not even taken its first breath and slayed its mother whose legs were still spread, their bodies yet joined by the cord of life.”

  Jamie collapsed to the ground. Duncan scurried over the earth to his kinsman’s side.

  “I never should have gone into that house. Ewan would still be alive. They might all be alive if we pushed on.” Duncan said.

  “Only the devil himself could have passed that house and not offered that poor woman aid,” Jamie said.

  Duncan hung his head, but at his feet he did not see the leaves and ground he knew to be there. Instead he saw the head of a babe only moments old.

  They had been running toward the stables, but then shifted course when they saw it overrun with English soldiers, swinging axe and sword like a scythe at harvest, leaving a wake of death in their path. After turning down an alley, they passed a group of soldiers beating down the side door of a house. But when they passed the front widows, Duncan froze.

  A woman, whose attendants had abandoned her, was lying on a table, legs spread wide as she screamed—perhaps from the birthing pains but also from the terror of what fought to enter her home—a terror she was powerless to stop.

  Duncan did not hesitate. He lunged into the doorway just as the soldiers pushed inside. He raised his sword but was no match for the tidal wave of blades that continued to pour through the side entrance. They charged for the lass who had just pushed the babe’s head and shoulders from her womb. A blade rose to strike but Duncan blocked it. In an instant another sword swung high and came down, meeting its target. Duncan stared in horror as the tiny baby’s head rolled to his feet.

  He was dumbstruck. His arms hung limp as he watched another blade slice the new mother’s throat.

  Then Ewan’s warning penetrated the ringing in his ears, and he turned to see steel flying through the air. But it did not find its intended target. Ewan dove in front of the axe, saving Duncan’s life.

  Cormac furrowed his brow as he guessed the direction of Duncan’s thoughts.

  “Do not blame yourself for Ewan’s death, Duncan. You would have done the same for him.”

  Duncan turned away as he succumbed to sorrow like winter’s destructive hold on the earth, leaving his heart barren and cold. His mind settled on Brenna and Nellore as he faced Cormac once more.

  “But Ewan’s life had more value. It should have been me.”

  Chapter 2

  Isle of Mull, Scotland 1296

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  “Tell me the tale once again, Brenna.”

  Brenna looked up from the dough she was kneading into Anna’s wistful and imploring gaze. As ever, Brenna was struck by how much Anna resembled her mother, Bridget, the chieftain’s lady. Their queer, silver eyes were identical, but the energy behind them differed. Like most women who lived to see fifty winters, Bridget possessed wisdom and insight; only her intuition held greater depth than most. She could discern another’s secrets as though she possessed a map by which to navigate one’s soul. Anna shared the same uncanny ability, but unlike Bridget, her youth gave her lightness, as though she flitted through life on gossamer wings. Barely of age and newly married, Anna thought of nothing but dreams and fancies. She was always soaring through the clouds born on the currents of her own secret delight.

  Brenna sighed; she and Anna could not be more different.

  Brenna was nearly ten years Anna’s senior, but it was not only age that separated them. Anna enjoyed something, which Brenna had been denied: a childhood. Brenna’s mother died birthing her sister when Brenna was eight. As the eldest, the care of her two brothers and newborn sister had fallen to her. She held tight to the memories of her beloved mother and did her best to show her younger siblings the same love and understanding her mother had always shown her.

  The weight of her duties had silenced the fanciful stirrings of her mind and heart. Gone were the days of racing after her brothers over the moors in search of adventure. She had begun to regard such things as nonsense afforded only to children despite being a child herself. As she grew, Brenna strove to be prudent above all else. She nursed her siblings through fevers; she cooked and cleaned and kept the hearth fire warm for her father’s return from a long day of fishing the waters off Skye.

  He would crack the door open and creep inside, careful not to wake the wee ones.

  Then he would give Brenna a wink and a basket of fresh fish to clean, and he would always ask, “Have you waited to sup with me?”

  “Aye, Da,” she would respond, but scold him into washing before she brought the plates. “You twinkle like the night sky covered in scales like you are.”

  She had loved their suppers together. His copper curls would always dip into the stew, making her laugh. He would smile and shrug, saying his hair was mostly salt, and he always enjoyed the extra flavor.

  They spoke of the children and the happenings in the village—births, deaths, marriages. When she was older, she remembered asking her da why he had never wed again. He reached across the table and squeezed her hand.

  “My honest answer, lass, is because I have you. I hope you do not hate me for being selfish. I ken you were forced into womanhood too soon. But you’ve always been so adept at running the home and seeing to the wee ones, I never felt the need.”

  “But what about you, Da. Do you not miss having a wife?” she asked.

  “Brenna, my sweet lass, my heart is still full of your mother,” he said with his hand on his chest. “No room for anyone else in here. You ken?”

  “Aye, Da.”

  “You make me very proud, Brenna. You will make a man very happy one day.”

  She beamed at his praise but thought little about the prospect of marriage. It was something in the distant future, and she had no time for daydreams.

  Eventually, her body matured to match her mind, and she became a woman grown. She was respected among the women in her village. Many sought her shrewd advice, and one could always count on her remaining calm in the midst of crisis. Her composure never wavered, not even when the warriors from Mull came to the village, and her father introduced her to Ewan MacKinnon whom he chose as her husband.

  It was her duty to wed. She trusted her father’s judgment. Ewan struck her as a kind sort of man. That was all she needed to know. She accepted the betrothal without hesitation and strove from that day on to be as good a wife as she had been sister and mother to her siblings and daughter to her father.

  “You are pensive today,” Anna chimed in, interrupting Brenna’s thoughts. Anna’s silver eyes, so like her mother’s, studied Brenna with interest.

  Anna was Brenna’s favorite among the chieftain’s daughters. Their eldest daughter, Tira, married Brenna’s cousin and lived on Skye. Not having any sons themselves, the chieftain and his lady awaited the coming of Tira’s son, Logan, who would one day be laird. The next two daughters, Isobel and Fiona, were bright, spirited women and lived on Mull with families of their own, but Anna was different from the rest. She took after her mother.

  Anna and Bridget were perplexing creatures with a trace of the fey about them. Although it was rare that Brenna did not know her own heart, often Anna saw past Brenna’s words to a hidden truth. Disarming was the only way to describe the experience. Brenna felt stripped bare and vulnerable. Anna would smile at her discomfort and tell Brenna that the world was full of mystery and magic, and everyone needed to be reminded of this from time to time. Anna would say this with the hope of putting Brenna at ease, but her strange logic served only to add to Brenna’s disquiet. Brenna’s thoughts had little room for mystery or magic. Still, together they always managed to make sense of why Brenna’s heart and mind had not been in accord.

  It was not that Brenna discredited the existence of magic all together. One mystery gripped her soul like no other. It was a passion she shared with no one. The fierce storms that tore across the moors, igniting the night with fiery lightning, awakened her senses like nothing else could. They were her secret delight. She could sense a storm coming long before the thickening of the air or the smell of it came rolling in from the sea. She knew a storm approached before the clouds’ announcement. In complete opposition to her normal soberness, Brenna rushed into the heart of a storm, no matter how severe and reveled in the pelting rain, the force of the wind, and most of all, the pounding thunder. Thunder unraveled her core, releasing her emotions from their place of constraint, emboldening Brenna with vitality and longing.

  Thunder was magic.

  “Brenna, you can hardly expect me to wait much longer. Will you not tell me the tale?” Anna beseeched, once again releasing Brenna from her thoughts.

  Brenna groaned, “I’ve told you twice already today, and we’ve only just enjoyed the midday meal.”

  “I will not you ask again,” her dear friend promised but then added with a mischievous grin, “today.”

  It was no easy task to deny Anna any request. Brenna soon realized this when she first met the lass seven years ago after arriving on Mull as Ewan’s wife. Anna’s sincerity won Brenna over straightaway, and despite their age difference and other incompatibilities, they had been friends from the start.

  Brenna sighed, “Very well.”

  Her husband, Ewan, along with half a dozen MacKinnon warriors including Anna’s young husband, Cormac, had embarked on a journey to Berwick upon Tweed some weeks ago. Ewan had made the same trek three summers past and had regaled Brenna for days with descriptions of the bustling market town.

  After their men left, Anna, who had started taking her meals with Brenna, sat in rapture, listening to tales of the great city. The passing of time had not dulled her delight nor silenced her requests to hear more. Not a day passed that Anna did not ask Brenna to tell her the tale.

  Brenna always began in the same way…

  “Imagine, if you would, cobbled streets weaving in and around never-ending clusters of stone homes—some towering five stories above the ground. There are no trees or fields, only churches, shops, and homes packed together. Animals and people crowd the streets and alleyways. You must push through the throng, often times choking on the smell of waste both human and animal. The din is continuous and ever changing between the call of local merchants, children at play, the labor of continuous construction and repair, the cry of beggars and those seeking to enlighten minds.”

  “But none of this will prepare the country visitor for the market,” Anna quickly interjected, knowing what Brenna would say next.

 
Brenna smiled, “Would you care to tell the tale? By my troth, I believe you’d tell it better than I.”

  “Nay, Brenna. Your words and voice lift me through the air and fly me over the leagues separating Gribun from Berwick, and suddenly, I am there.” Anna sighed.

  Brenna chuckled as she stood up from the table with the meat of several herring just filleted. “May the Blessed Lord teach you to keep your feet on solid ground, Anna.”

  “Brenna, you ken the market is my favorite part,” Anna said.

  “Aye, Anna. How could I forget?” Brenna laughed. “I will carry on, but you must pay heed to tasks at hand. I asked you to add that leftover barley to the pottage, and there it sits still in the bowl.”

  Anna blushed and hurried over to the simmering pot to pour the extra grain into the stew. Then she returned and began shaping dough into cakes.

  Brenna cleared her throat. “Every week a market is held in the large city square. Stalls are assembled in rows, filling the square to the point of bursting. Each one is equipped with wares and a merchant crying out in promotion of his goods. The guilds are all represented: bakers, butchers, grocers, millers, smiths, and weavers, and there are stalls with every sort of fish catchable in the sea: salmon, herring, and eels—fresh, smoked and salted.”

  “Aye, Brenna. But the fabric. Skip to the part about the fabric.” Anna pleaded as she leaned forward in her seat, the bannock dough in front of her forgotten.

  “Aye, Anna, I shall. Although I do not mind telling you, I do not ken your fascination. Now, where was I?”

  “Begin with the Flemish wool,” Anna said eagerly.

  “Flemish woolens to be sure are fine and soft, but ‘tis because they are made from good Scottish wool—do not forget that, Anna.” Brenna coated the herring in crushed barley then set the pieces sizzling in a pan of hot fat before she continued. “The foreign merchants arrive by guarded caravan, selling tapestries, spices, carpets, and, of course, beautiful fabrics.”