Authors: Highland Fling
“No weapons, Kate! You know the English law forbids any Highlander to go armed. That means womenfolk, too, you lackwit. You would endanger us all!”
Letting her skirt fall back into place just as MacDrumin knocked two heads together with a crack that could be heard above the rest of the din, then flung the pair aside to leap to the aid of another of his men, Kate said scornfully, “Endanger them? ’Tis not myself who endangers them, Mag. The laird must be crazed to take on a Campbell and his tame excisemen. Our lads canna win.”
Nor did they. Although the eight MacDrumin men defended their casks with such vigor that more than one enemy head was broken, at last they stood silent, glaring defiantly at the party of excisemen and at the man who, despite being a Scotsman and a Highlander like themselves, was clearly the enemy leader.
Burly, dark-haired Fergus Campbell stood with his feet apart and his hamlike hands on his hips, smirking at them, his triumph clear. “Now, then, where be your ponies hidden, MacDrumin?”
“What ponies are those, Fergus, my lad?”
“Them that was meant tae carry these blasted whisky kegs o’ yours to Inverness, you auld heathen.”
A muttering stir of anger could be heard from the captured men, but MacDrumin, tilting his periwig slightly askew in order to scratch his head, said only, “You seem mighty brave with all your wee men lined up behind you, laddie mine, but if you think I’d be smuggling whisky with my daughter and her pretty friend along for the fun of it all, you are making a rare grand fool of yourself.”
Campbell snarled, “Devil take you, MacDrumin, you’d smuggle whisky with your ailing mother hiding it under her skirt for you!”
“Mayhap I would, lad, but that prospect has naught to do with the present occasion, so if you ken what you mean to do next, you had best proceed with it. I know of no ponies hereabouts, and since my word is vastly more dependable than your own, you would be wise to accept it and not keep these sweet lassies idling about in the cold to no good purpose.”
Campbell snorted in derision, but after a brief colloquy with his companions, he ordered the excisemen and their assistants to load several of the kegs onto their horses, leaving the rest on shore, under guard, until more horses could be fetched from the Highland capital to retrieve them.
The distance to Inverness was less than ten miles, but since they had to walk, it was after two o’clock in the morning before they reached the town. When they came to the great stone prison known as the Tolbooth, and Campbell made it clear that his intent was to house the entire lot of them inside, MacDrumin said gently, “That must be your decision, I agree, but you might bear in mind, lad, that my daughter has been raised a lady and a common jail is no place for one of her ilk. Her friend, too,” he added with a twinkling look at Kate, “would be most out of place there. Won’t like it much myself, come to that, especially since I’ve done naught to deserve such barbarous treatment.”
Campbell slapped a nearby keg. “Naught, eh? We’ll just see that, come morning, when these casks will be opened in the presence of the High Sheriff as the law requires. You can tell his worship then just how ill-treated you all have been.”
One of the Englishmen, who had been gazing speculatively at Kate and Maggie, moved up to Campbell and whispered in his ear. The Scotsman shot a grim look at the women and nodded with visible reluctance. Then, turning back to MacDrumin, he said, “I have no authority to house your daughter and her friend elsewhere, but my companions agree that the Tolbooth is no proper place for them. I can lock you all in one cell together until morning, away from the other prisoners, but that will have to suffice.”
“Aye, it will at that,” MacDrumin said cordially, “and I thank you kindly, Fergus Campbell, for your rare compassion.”
Campbell shot him a suspicious look, but MacDrumin met it with bland innocence. Moments later, the ten Highlanders were alone in a single dark chamber that was infrequently and dimly lit only when parting clouds revealed a scattering of stars through the small barred window high in one wall.
“Can we talk, Papa?” Maggie asked softly.
“Of a certainty, lass, but say naught that you be not full willing for enemy ears to overhear.”
Beside them, Kate made a growling sound. “Whoever that is who just put his hand on my leg, take it away this instant or I’ll feed what’s left of it to my dogs after I have cut it off.”
“No mischief, lads,” MacDrumin said sharply, “and as for you, Kate MacCain, if you have the means by you to carry out that wicked threat, keep it well hid, for even I cannot protect you if the damned English suspect you’ve a weapon on your person.”
A masculine voice interjected a hasty apology. “I didna ken it were you, lass. I’d no ha’ touched ye else. I vow, ’twas nae more than a brush as I shifted m’self on this hard floor.”
“Sleep, all of you,” MacDrumin said. “We shall need to have our wits about us come the dawning.”
Maggie was as sure as she could be that she would not sleep a wink, for the stone floor was not only cold but damp and there was no place else to sit or lie down. Her father pulled her toward him, however, and with her head against his broad chest and his mantle and her own covering her, she dozed and then slept. When she awoke, she saw by the gray dawn light that MacDrumin still dozed, his periwig tilted rakishly over one eye; but others were stirring, and one man gasped in shock when he awoke to find Kate sleeping with her head resting comfortably on his stomach.
“Och, what’ll I do?” he demanded in a hushed tone.
“Gang softly, Angus,” whispered the big one called Dugald. “Here’s me fecket. See can ye slip it under yon vixen’s head in place o’ yersel’, or I fear ’twill be the last dawning ye’ll see.”
Gratefully, Angus accepted the jacket, and while Maggie held her breath, stifling equal amounts of amusement and apprehension, he moved with exaggerated delicacy and care to shift Kate’s head to a less compromising location.
“What the devil?” Kate sat bolt upright, glaring around in fury as the man scrambled away. “By the rood, Angus,” she snapped, “I’ll snatch ye bald-headed, ye brazen—”
“Nay, nay, lass,” MacDrumin said, laughing. “’Twas none of his doing, so whisst now! ’Twas yourself who sought a pillow softer than the stones upon which to rest your bonny head.”
The others were chuckling now too, although none dared to laugh as hard as their chief did.
Kate looked from one face to another, and though the chuckles quickly faded, their amusement was still plain. She fixed her gaze inquiringly upon Maggie.
“Aye, Papa’s got the right of it,” Maggie said, grinning. “You put your own head on poor Angus’s stomach. I only wish you might have seen his face when he first awoke and found it there.”
Kate smiled. “So long as he knew his danger, that’s all right then. Peace, Angus, I swear I won’t eat you.”
“Well, that puts my mind tae rest,” he said with relief, glancing at the youngest lad, who was climbing onto Dugald’s broad back to peer out the high, barred window. “What’s o’clock, Rory?”
“Nigh onto eight, I make it,” Rory replied.
It was well over an hour later before someone came to hail them before the high sheriff, a plump middle-aged gentleman wearing the full robes and regalia of his office, who peered down at them from his high bench, his round face looking pale beneath his full-bottomed, heavily powdered wig, his blue eyes small but shrewd behind wire-rimmed spectacles.
“MacDrumin, is that you?” he demanded when the chief stood before him.
“Aye, your worship,” MacDrumin replied cheerfully, adjusting his voluminous green-and-black-checked mantle and twitching the sleeves of his saffron-colored shirt into place as though he meant to settle himself for a comfortable visit. “And how does your worship fare these days, and all?”
The sheriff looked at Campbell, and when Maggie’s gaze followed his, she had all she could do to maintain a calm and ladylike demeanor, for the very sight of Fergus Campbell angered her. A thickset man six feet in height, he possessed a cocky arrogance that made her want to prick him with a pin to see if he would yelp like other mortals. His crisp brown hair, ruddy cheeks, and hazel eyes might have made him a handsome man had he not maintained such an air of superiority. And all, she thought, because he and his clan, having chosen to betray their own people to side with the royal forces, had then taken full advantage of that treachery after the royalists had won at Culloden.
In the intervening years, various Campbells had committed untold rape and murder upon their own neighbors, but that was no new thing. Their perfidy at Glencoe sixty years ago, when in cold blood they had murdered the hospitable MacDonalds as they slept, was still a bitter memory throughout the Highlands. In Maggie’s opinion, Campbells were the lowest of the low—worse even than the thieving MacGregors. Seeing Fergus Campbell look at the sheriff now with that annoyingly triumphant smirk in his eyes made her want to hit him.
The sheriff said, “What’s the charge against him, Campbell?”
“Why, that he has been smuggling whisky, your worship, as we ha’ brought the goods along tae prove. Caught him red-handed, we did, in the wee hours of the night, a-rowing his cargo as quiet as a wee mouse across Loch Ness. Owing tae information received, however, we was on the lookout and took him and his lot without loss of a solitary man, though they fought hard with yon wicked cudgels and did bodily harm tae more than one. Had they been able tae overpower us, no doubt they’d ha’ killed us all.”
The sheriff looked steadily at MacDrumin. “Is that so?”
“’Tis true enough that we fought hard,” MacDrumin said, “but what else were we to do when a pack of thieving rogues leapt at us out of the bushes and attempted to steal our lawful property?”
“Have you paid the required duty on that whisky then, sir?”
MacDrumin’s eyes widened. “And, pray now, your worship, what whisky would that be, if you please?”
Fergus Campbell snorted. “What whisky, he says. What whisky indeed? Ha’ ye forgotten so soon then, MacDrumin, that we brought yon kegs along wi’ us the nicht?”
“You have all the characteristics of a popular politician, Fergus Campbell,” MacDrumin said grimly, “a horrible voice, bad breeding, and a vulgar manner; but what I recall, laddie mine, is that you forced us to leave most of our cargo on the shore of Loch Ness, where most likely it will be spoiled by midday today.”
“Aged a few more hours is all it will be,” Campbell said, jeering as he turned. “You, there at the back of the room, roll up them kegs now. We’ll let his worship see for himself this so-called lawful cargo, and if the MacDrumin canna produce papers tae show he’s paid the required duty for making his whisky, he’ll be taking up residence in yon Tolbooth for a good long while.”
The kegs were rolled up beneath the sheriff’s high bench, and when the first was upright again, a man with a pry bar opened it, freeing a smell sour enough to make Maggie wrinkle her nose. Others nearby reacted with similar disgust, and with a startled look of dismay, Campbell leapt forward and peered into the keg.
“Herring!” Turning on the man who had opened it, he demanded, “Where the devil did you come by this keg, man?”
“Why, ’tis one o’ them we captured in the nicht, Fergus Campbell. Ye ken that yerself, for it’s got your ain mark upon it. There.” He pointed to a red slash on the side of the keg.
The sheriff said, “Is that indeed your mark, Mr. Campbell?”
“Aye,” Campbell said grimly, shifting his furious gaze to the innocent-looking MacDrumin.
Maggie schooled her features to ladylike hauteur, not daring to look at Kate.
“Herring, is it?” the sheriff said.
MacDrumin nodded and sighed deeply. “Aye, your worship, and quite worthless now, as anyone can tell by that nasty smell.”
“But why,” the sheriff asked reasonably, “did you not tell Campbell and his gaugers that your kegs contained only herring?”
“Tell them?” MacDrumin looked indignant. “And when, pray tell, was I given a chance to speak a word to yon great lout, Fergus Campbell, or indeed to any of them? Fell upon us out of the night, they did, like thieves trying to steal our lawful goods, then forced us and our innocent lassies to march behind them afterward like common felons. Never once did they ask what was in the kegs. And since when, I ask your worship again, is it a crime for a man to defend his own property from brutal attack?”
The sheriff shifted his stern gaze to Campbell. “Since when, indeed? Mr. Campbell, have you aught to say to that?”
“They carried weapons, your worship!”
“Had they pistols, dirks, or axes?”
“Nay, only cudgels, but—”
“Then they broke no law, did they, Mr. Campbell?”
Campbell grimaced, exchanging glances with several of his men. “Nay, your worship, but I would warn … That is,” he added hastily, catching the sheriffs flintlike gaze, “I would strongly suggest tae Laird MacDrumin that in future he take more care when he travels in the dark of night, for ’tis mighty difficult at such a time tae tell friend from foe.”
“Aye, lad,” MacDrumin said sweetly, “and isn’t that just what I said myself? But, begging your worship’s pardon, who is going to repay me now for all my spoiled herring?”
Maggie, hearing Kate gasp, struggled to conceal her own astonished delight at this additional effrontery on her father’s part, but one glance at the expression of outraged fury on Campbell’s face turned delight to apprehension.
Austerely, the sheriff said, “That, I think, must be a lesson to you, MacDrumin, for Mr. Campbell was but doing his duty and I do believe that you might have made more of a push to identify your goods. You and your men can go, Campbell, but though I will not order you to repay his lordship, you too must take more care, for you have done him an ill service by so grievously misjudging him. Still and all, I will make it plain to him before he leaves that he must in future identify not only himself but his goods.”
There was silence until the disgruntled excisemen and Campbell had gone and the door had been shut behind them. Then the sheriff shifted his keen gaze once more to MacDrumin.
“And the whisky, Andrew,” he said gently. “Did the whisky make it safely to Inverness?”