Highlander Betrayed (Guardians of the Targe) (2 page)

“I am your servant, as ever.” Nicholas stood straight again, dropping the musical lilt from his voice with relief and an unsettling feeling he could not pinpoint. “I am to go to Scotland?”

“You are. This task calls for your particular skill at passing for what you are not, though in this case that is perhaps not entirely true. It calls for subtlety, for manipulation, for a greater ability to
win information from unwilling sources than most spies hold. You are most skilled in all these areas, are you not?”

“I am, my lord.”

Edward turned his back on Nicholas and paced away from the window. When he reached the far side of the room he turned back, eyes narrowed as if he weighed the man.

“You know the Stone of Destiny was taken from Scone, in Scotland, and brought to me.”

“The coronation stone of the Scots? I do.”

“It was supposed to break their spirit, make them see that I am the rightful king of Scotland, but the barbarians still refuse to give me their fealty.”

Edward was not termed the “Hammer of the Scots” because he felt affection for the people there. The king had a volatile temper in the best of circumstances, and anything involving the Scots was never the best of circumstances. Nicholas said nothing and kept his expression neutral, though the flicker of pride he felt in the stubborn irascible Scots surprised him.

“It has come to my attention that there is another object that is held in great esteem by the Scots, an object with the power to protect those Highland brutes from invasion, or so says their superstitious tale.” Edward strode to an ornately carved chair that sat near the hearth and threw himself into it, scraping the chair backward over the planked floor. He motioned for Nicholas to come closer.

“It is called the Highland Targe,” the king said, ridicule thick in his voice and in the dismissive wave of his hand.

“A shield?” Nicholas asked, holding his hands toward the heat of the roaring fire. He’d seen targes aplenty as a lad—round, wooden shields, often with short spikes sticking out of their centers. The Scots favored them as weapons as well as for defense.

“The story is that there is a clan in the southwestern Highlands who are the keepers of this Highland Targe. Clearly it has not done its job,” the king said derisively. “But the Highlanders of the area lay great store in its powers and use it as a means of rallying resistance against their rightful king.

“I want you to find this pagan idol. I want you to bring it to me so they will know they cannot keep anything from me, that anything they hold in high esteem, other than their rightful sovereign, shall be taken from them.”

“Do you know more about where this Highland Targe might be, sire?” The Highlands were a wild country, vast, dangerous, and difficult to traverse. And they were beautiful in a way he’d never found elsewhere. A long-buried ache threatened to break loose within him, but he crushed it back into the darkness, as he always did.

“It seems to be somewhere in the vicinity of a village called Oban, on the southwestern coast, though my man in the area has been unable to learn anything more specific than that.

“You will make your way there as soon as possible. Move north as the weather breaks. I trust in your abilities to find the Targe from there.”

“Very good.” He buried the ambivalence that threatened to drown out the familiar thrill of a new undertaking humming in his veins. He had an assignment from the king and he would not let any regrets from his past interfere. “Am I to make contact with your man when I get there?”

“Aye. You know him well already: Archibald of Easton.”

He did. Archie and he often worked together on the king’s business. The man was the closest thing Nicholas had to a friend, but he was not the most skilled spy with whom Nicholas had worked. He tended to take short cuts and rush into things before all the facts were gathered. Still, they had had many a successful adventure on the king’s business.

But… His mind spun quickly through various possibilities. If Archie had been unable to learn no more about the Highland Targe than its general location, the door was open for Nicholas to sweep in and work his particular brand of spying magic, especially since he had lived as a Highlander and understood them as Archie never would.

He would work with Archie, but it would be Nicholas’s efforts that would make the mission a success and would seal Nicholas’s
place as the king’s most favored spy, a position he’d worked long and hard to reach and one he would not forfeit for anyone.

Edward met Nicholas’s eyes and held him in his steely gaze. “Archibald has been instructed to expect you and to share everything he has learned. The two of you may well be able to accomplish what he alone has not been able to.

“I expect you will deliver the prize by midsummer’s eve. If you cannot transport it, destroy it and send me a piece of it as testament to your success. I know my trust in your abilities is not misplaced, Nicholas.”

Pride filled Nicholas’s chest. “I will not fail you, sire.”

“I am counting on that.”

CHAPTER ONE

Scottish Highlands, Spring 1307

R
OWAN
M
AC
G
REGOR OPENED
the wooden shutters, letting the weak spring sunshine into her aunt Elspet MacAlpin’s bedchamber. The large room at the top of the tower that housed the MacAlpin clan chief’s family had small windows that looked both into the castle bailey and out to the glorious country that surrounded Dunlairig Castle.

Rowan took a deep breath of the air flowing in through the window. It was cool and crisp, and filled with the aromas of spring—damp earth, growing plants, new life. The freshness of it quickly overcame the heat of the room and diminished the sickly sweet smell of illness that pervaded the chamber. Briefly Rowan wished she could escape the room and take to the familiar greening slope of the forested ben outside the window. It was a small mountain compared to others that rose around them. This one, though, for all its lack of imposing height, rose steeply from the deep loch below the castle except for the large, nearly flat area the castle perched on, not too far up the slope from the loch.

She took one more deep lungful of the fresh spring air, then turned back to the chamber and the women who were mother and sister to her in her heart, if not her blood. Her aunt loved this time of year and if the fresh air enticed her out of her sickbed, even for a little while, it was worth the chill.

“ ’Tis a beautiful day at last, Mum,” Jeanette, Elspet’s blond-haired, blue-eyed eldest daughter, said, tucking another blanket around the frail woman. “Do you not want to go outside for a wee while?”

Elspet smiled at her daughter and niece, but there was a brittleness to it. “Nay. I shall enjoy it from the comfort of my bed this day.” She turned her face to the gentle breeze. “Perhaps tomorrow, if the weather holds.”

Jeanette shared a worried glance with Rowan. It was a measure of how far the wasting illness had progressed since Elspet first took sick in the fall that she was content to gaze out a window rather than be out in the spring air she loved so dearly.

The chief’s wife had always bustled about, but in spring she would be found planting the kitchen garden, tending the herb beds, overseeing the birthings of the cows. She would welcome each wee beastie into the world with a smile, a prayer, and odd symbols made in the air with graceful movements of her hands. No one alive knew the meaning of the symbols, and yet the MacAlpin cattle prospered even in years where other clans’ herds did not.

Today Elspet lay with her face turned toward the sunshine and her eyes half-closed. This year’s wee beasties would have to fend for themselves.

“Where is Scotia?” she asked quietly. “I have not seen my bairn in two full days.”

Rowan shook her head. Bairn indeed. At ten and eight Scotia was a woman grown, at least in body if not in mind. Scotia still seemed to think she could run amuck with no consequences. Since Elspet had become ill Scotia had gotten into more trouble in the castle than any pack of lads ever could. That she hadn’t come to visit her mother in two days had Rowan muttering words only her Uncle Kenneth, the chief of the MacAlpin clan, ever spoke.

“I’ll find her,” she said to Jeanette and Elspet. “It will not take long.” She leaned over and kissed Elspet’s forehead.

“I thank you, love,” the older woman whispered. “I do so worry about Scotia.”

“As do we all,” Rowan said. Had she ever been so wild? Though she was only three years older than her youngest cousin, the difference in their behavior made Rowan feel much older.

“You will keep her safe when I cannot, aye?” Elspet reached for Rowan, raising her hand just an inch above the blanket.

Rowan took it into her own. The strong, work-roughened hand that once guided her through her tasks was now nothing but fragile skin and bones, as if Elspet were melting away from the inside out. Rowan pressed it to her cheek, willing the heat of her own body to warm her beloved foster mother.

“I promise.” She would not cry. Her place was to be the strength that Jeanette, Scotia, and Uncle Kenneth would need when the center of their family, the heart of their entire clan, left them.

“
We
promise,” Jeanette said.

“She only needs a bit of guidance, my lassies.” Elspet reached for Jeanette but did not let go of Rowan. “She loses her way sometimes.”

Rowan couldn’t help but chuckle quietly at Elspet’s description of her youngest child. Only a mother could have such a soft spot for a child that was perpetually “losing her way.”

“I shall fetch her.” She gently tucked Elspet’s hand under the woolen blanket. Jeanette followed her to the door. “She is so cold, Jeanette,” Rowan whispered.

Jeanette’s eyes filled with unshed tears. “I fear she will not last to see the summer,” she said just as quietly.

Rowan swallowed hard around the thickness in her throat. “I shall find Scotia.” She gave Jeanette’s hand a quick squeeze and left to find her wayward cousin.

N
ICHOLAS TRIED TO
ignore the thorny gorse bushes that surrounded him and his partner, Archibald of Easton, as they watched the top of Dunlairig Castle’s curtain wall, keeping count of how often a guard passed by. It was work that required patience and Archie was already starting to fidget.

Nicholas glanced at the man whom he’d known for more than ten years. They had trained in the art of espionage together and collaborated often, so much so that they knew each other’s strengths and weaknesses, their tastes in women, wine, and missions. This mission was just the sort at which they excelled.

Infiltration, then take and escape. Almost a simple burglary, but with more finesse, more cunning. They’d gathered enough information before arriving at Dunlairig Castle to settle on a plan, but Archie was always impatient with the reconnaissance that had to take place before they made themselves known to their targets. Nicholas had learned the need for such information the hard way long before he’d been trained as an agent of the king, and he never skipped, nor skimped on, getting the lay of the land before engaging with the targets. But they’d been watching the wall for several hours and, truth be told, Nicholas was as fidgety as Archie.

They’d arrived in this spot before sunup after Nicholas had spent almost two months traveling in and around Oban in search of information. Eventually he had gleaned bits and pieces of gossip and stories from the lasses and the drunkards, gaining their trust in a way Archie had not been able to, adding his own information to that which the other man had gathered over the long Scottish winter, to put the puzzle of the Highland Targe’s likely whereabouts together.

A crucial break came when Nicholas happened past an alleyway where he’d espied a little boy playing warrior with a stick for a sword. The lad had shouted, “By the Targe” as he lunged at his imagined foe, stopping Nicholas in his tracks. Half an hour later, he and the boy were fast friends, striking and feinting with their sticks in mock battle. Distracted by the play, the boy had easily been led to talk about the Targe amidst his comments about Bossy Bess, the woman who lived across the way from his family, his little brother who scratched all the time, and the trouble his sister was in for kissing a lad.

Gently, Nicholas had learned that the Targe was something the lad’s mother spoke of when times were hard. She had grown up in Glen Lairig, and the Targe had made life easier, its influence bringing bounty and prosperity to the glen even when all those around them were challenged by weather, sickly livestock, and lean harvests. Later Nicholas had discovered the glen was home to a small branch of the MacAlpin clan about whom no one seemed willing to talk.

The tale he and Archie finally pieced together was one of a shield meant to protect not only the clan but also a route into the Highlands,
set in place by the same ancient people who had left behind stone barrows, stone circles, and cryptically decorated standing stones throughout that part of Scotland.

Nicholas had seen too much of the harsh reality of the world to believe the Targe of the story held any such mythical abilities, but that didn’t matter—the superstitious Highlanders did. And if they believed it could protect them from the English, well, he would play his part in proving them wrong. And thus, the two of them had set off to the east to a castle called Dunlairig.