Love Above All

By

Smashwords Edition

Published by Flora Speer At Smashwords

Copyright © 2015 by Flora Speer

Cover Design Copyright, 2015,

By http://DgitalDonna.com

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The Scottish –English Border

October, A.D. 1115

The leather thong was painfully tight around
her wrists. Fionna hadn’t counted on that. She had been promised –
ah, but it no longer mattered what she’d been told to make her come
quietly to this terrible place.

She was standing at the edge of a cliff with
her hands bound behind her back, and she finally understood beyond
any doubt that the promises her brothers had made were lies. Though
the night was dark, with the moon not yet risen, she could sense
the void that lay just before her feet and she noticed the faint
gleam of water far below. If Murdoch and Gillemore had their way
that wee bit of brightness was the last light she would ever
see.

But she wasn’t finished yet. She still had a
serious protest left, one that ought to appeal to any man who
hadn’t forsaken his hope of heaven in the Afterlife, and so she
addressed the brother who stood at her left side, the sibling she
deemed likely to feel at least a smidgen of guilt.

“Gillemore, please,” she begged, “you know
you don’t want to murder your own blood kin. You’ll be damned
forever if you do.”

“Don’t tell him what he wants,” Murdoch
shouted into her right ear. The sound was painful to Fionna, making
her wince. Murdoch never spoke softly, so he did not lower his
voice as he continued. “This is your fault, not ours. You have no
right to eavesdrop on a private conversation.”

“I wasn’t eavesdropping. I told you before,
Gillemore came out of the room and grabbed me as I was passing by,
and then he dragged me before you to accuse me. Why won’t you
believe me?”

“Because you’re lying,” Murdoch told her, his
words dripping with the cold viciousness in which he excelled.
“Sweet sister, do you imagine we’re fools? You know too much; you
heard all our plans. We aren’t going to give you a chance to reveal
what we said in that room to anyone with the power to stop us.”

I wouldn’t betray you,” Fionna insisted. “I’m
loyal to my own kin.”

“I don’t trust you,” Murdoch declared loudly.
“Neither you, nor Janet. Lying bitches, both of you, and both of
you will get what you deserve. Can you hear Liddel Water running
below us? After all the heavy rain during the last week, it’s
higher than it has been for years – so high that your body will be
washed right down to Solway Firth and out to sea. You’ll never be
found. Fishes will eat you, Fionna. That’s what happens to sisters
who cross their brothers.”

“You promised if I’d agree to come quietly,
you’d leave Janet alone,” Fionna reminded him, grasping at the one
hope left to her.

“Oh, we’ll leave her alone,” Gillemore said.
“For now, that is. Janet is welcome to stay at Abercorn until Colum
returns from France with the money from King Louis. But once he’s
back on Scottish soil, Colum will expect the second part of his
reward for seeing to the transportation and sale of the English spy
we caught, and he’s eager to wed Janet. Though, what he sees in
that whey-faced wench I don’t know.”

Fionna did know. Murdoch’s friend, Colum, was
a hard-drinking bully. Fionna was convinced that Colum saw in Janet
a potential victim, not a woman to cherish.

“I should have known better than to believe
your promises about Janet,” she exclaimed bitterly. “You never
intended to honor your word to me. You have no decency left at all,
and no sense of honor.”

“You have no right to talk about my honor,”
Murdoch yelled at her. “I’ve heard enough from you.”

Without warning he shoved hard on Fionna’s
shoulder. Unbalanced by the sudden push she tumbled over the edge
of the cliff. She heard a laugh above the sound of her own
despairing cry. An instant later she realized the cliff wasn’t as
high as she’d thought, for she smacked into the water so soon and
so abruptly that the impact tore the breath from her lungs.

As she plunged through icy depths both
protest and outrage were forgotten in favor of trying to survive.
She was a fairly good swimmer, thanks to childhood summers spent
trying to keep up with her older siblings. More than once she had
beaten Gillemore in a race across the loch. But on those occasions
her hands were not tied and whenever she had chosen to dive, she
had done so with air in her lungs. Nor was the loch near the
fortress of Dungalash ever as cold as the river, or the water so
black and deep.

Terrified and disoriented, Fionna tried to
gulp in enough air to shout her protest aloud. She breathed water,
instead. The icy chill flowed into her lungs and her stomach, and
for a moment she believed she was doomed.

Then her feet hit the solid river bottom and
without thought she pushed off, kicking her way upward until she
surfaced, gasping and choking. Telling herself to stay calm, she
tried to float on her back. But floating was an almost impossible
feat so long as her arms were immobilized. Worse, her woolen skirt
was dragging her down, and waterborne storm debris slammed against
her.

Without the moon she couldn’t see much, and
she couldn’t hear a thing over the noise of the rushing water. She
guessed her brothers had departed from the riverbank at once, to
avoid being observed by anyone who might accuse them of murder. Or,
perhaps, she was far beyond them by now, for she could tell she was
drifting on the current, heading toward the firth, just as Murdoch
had predicted.

No! She wouldn’t give up. She couldn’t allow
Murdoch and Gillemore to hand Janet over to their brutal friend.
Fear for her sister made Fionna kick hard against the flow of
water. Her clothing hampered every attempt at movement, heavy wool
twisting around her legs. She kept sinking and bobbing up again, so
her face was too often under water, but outrage and fury and
determination not to fall victim to the brothers who had lied to
her drove her on. She had to survive for Janet’s sake, and reach
her sister before Murdoch and Gillemore did, before Colum returned
from France.

Her strength was failing, the cold seeping
into her very bones. She felt a dangerous lassitude stealing over
her. All the same, she continued her hopeless struggle. She had
made a promise to her mother on that beloved lady’s deathbed,
swearing to watch over her younger sister and protect her so long
as she and Janet lived. Unlike her brothers, Fionna honored her
promises. To rescue Janet, she would fight to the very end of her
existence, to her last gasp of cold air.

She could no longer tell if she was making
any headway against the current. It seemed to her she was just
swirling around and around. A dark shape loomed over her and rough
bark scraped across her face. She recognized a floating log. If
only her hands were free she could grab onto it. Then she thought
perhaps she could still use it. In frantic desperation she
attempted to heave her torso out of the water and across the log,
hoping to lie on top of it and kick her way to shore with the log
to hold her up.

The log slowly rolled over. Fionna slid down
and under it, into the dark cold of endless night.

“Quentin, what’s wrong?” Cadwallon’s voice
was low, barely above a whisper.

Quentin knew his companion did not approve of
travel after nightfall, especially for men who were carrying
important messages. Neither did Quentin approve, and all of them
would be at Duncaron by now if his horse hadn’t cast a shoe. It was
his favorite mount, a fractious beast that allowed no one but
Quentin on its back. He’d had no choice about stopping at a local
blacksmith’s shop for repairs, or about remaining with the
horse.

If he’d known how long the smith would take
to finish the business, he’d have ordered Cadwallon to ride with
the men-at-arms when he sent them on ahead to inform the master of
Duncaron to expect overnight guests. Braedon, the squire who made
up the third member of their group, was less likely to see
assassins behind every tree or under every bridge. But Braedon was
not quite twenty-one, still inexperienced, and thus a bit rash.
Whereas, the older, steadfastly dependable Cadwallon had proven to
be a remarkable spy, who could ferret out information from places
where no other man would care to dig. When King Henry learned of
Cadwallon’s exploits in Scotland, the knight would be richly
rewarded.

Quentin stared at an odd shape lying to one
side of the far end of the bridge over Liddel Water. He was sure
the shape had just moved, as if it was struggling out of the river
and onto the bank. Upon noticing the movement he had slowed his
horse, which was the action that elicited Cadwallon’s concerned
question. Quentin couldn’t make out what the shape was, couldn’t
decide if it was human or animal. All he could see was an
alteration in density at the edge of the water where the
rain-swollen current swirled and eddied.

With vision grown accustomed to the dim light
provided by starshine and the thin crescent moon that was just
barely risen over the nearest mountain, Quentin surveyed the bridge
he was crossing. It was a narrow, rustic construction, its pilings
made of entire tree trunks. The surface was paved with worn wooden
planks that clattered under the weight of the horses’ hooves. If
anyone was lying in wait to accost them as they left the bridge, he
and his companions had already announced their presence.

The dark shape he’d noticed lay half in the
water and half on grasses that glittered faintly silver with frost.
Because of the sharp contrast between frost and the object, he
could see the outline of the form with surprising clarity. Whatever
it was, it did not move again.

The skin at the back of Quentin’s neck began
to prickle. The men following him must have sensed their leader’s
growing suspicion, for Quentin heard behind him the quiet whisper
of Cadwallon’s sword being withdrawn from its sheath, and he was
aware of Braedon’s sudden, tense stillness.

As Quentin rode off the bridge he swerved to
the left and headed down the sloping riverbank. He dismounted
before he reached the shape. Alert for a trick, he used one foot to
roll it over.

“All the saints protect us!” Cadwallon
exclaimed, and added an oath so coarse it nearly curled Quentin’s
straight black hair. “Just what we don’t need! You’ve found a
corpse!”

With his broadsword still in hand, Cadwallon
leapt to the ground, leaving Braedon to catch his horse’s reins and
hold them as well as those of Quentin’s horse.

Intent on the waterlogged body, Quentin bent
down to brush long strands of wet hair back from a pale face, his
fingers stroking across smooth, cold skin. He sucked in a harsh
breath before glancing up at the other two men.

“Well?” Cadwallon asked, sounding a bit
impatient and keeping his sword poised to strike.

“Not a corpse,” Quentin said, his hand
pressing on a slender throat. “I can feel the blood coursing
through her neck.”

“Her?” Cadwallon exclaimed. “A woman? Someone
caught in the flood and then cast up by the river?”

“So it seems. Braedon, toss me the blanket
that’s fastened behind my saddle. Cadwallon, you’d best stand
guard, in case this is a trap.”

“It’s about time you thought of a possible
attack,” Cadwallon grumbled. He immediately turned his back to
Quentin, so he’d face any impending threat from road or forest.

Braedon was off his horse, too, and reaching
to hand the blanket to Quentin. He saw the bound wrists at the same
time Quentin did.

“It looks to me,” said Braedon, “as if
someone wanted the wench dead.”

“What?” Cadwallon jerked around to see.

Quentin did not respond to the question. Upon
hearing a gasping sound he bent a little closer to attend to what
the woman was trying to say.

“Help. Please, help me.”

The woman spoke in Norman French, and she
barely choked out the plea before she began to cough up copious
amounts of river water.

“I will help you,” Quentin promised. He
knelt, supporting her head and shoulders until the spasms subsided.
Without uttering another word the woman lapsed back into her
previous, unconscious state.