Parris Afton Bonds (11 page)

"The fact that I have contacts within the Knights Templar Order doesn't mean they will give me the information we seek," Arch shouted.

Kathryn pulled her fur-lined hood aga
inst her cheek. The harsh, sea-laden winds frosted her lips and plowed the tiny fishing boat up over another spumy crest.

Maybe this was a punishment for her lie to Malcolm. Yet the truth behind her journey might have wrought his end.

Indeed, it was a pilgrimage of sorts. The first stage of the journey was to yon island of Iona, the burial place of Scottish kings until the eleventh century and the site of a monastery chosen by the Irish monk Columba from whence to spread Christianity.

Her
leather gloves did little to keep out the unseasonable cold that made her fingers ache. Another sign that she was too old to be chasing off on an adventure that did not promise anything. That was, if she discounted this intimate time spent with Arch.

He g
ave her solace in these agonizing weeks when she wasn’t sure what had become of Enya. He was actively helping her in the search, as well he should. Most of all, his presence reminded her of the simple pleasure of being with someone who knew her as she had been. Of being with someone who had loved that girl . . . and loved the woman she had become.

She grabbed the railing as the skiff dipped into another trough, then lurched drunkenly to the starboard side. Arch
’s hand shot around her waist to steady her. For just a minute they were as one, the length of them from shoulder to their knee. Her eyes locked with his. She saw there that same longing for all that might have been and now was too late to ever be.

He was the one to break the spell. "Look. There is the
lighthouse. Soon we’ll put into port.”

The westerlies were piling up high breakers against the rocky ridges of Machir Bay on the Argyle island of Islay. The seascape was bleak, and gannets dove through the bare branches of wind-twisted trees. Below the ro
ck-rooted lighthouse, the boat’s hull skidded onto a beach, shingled with ground granite washed down from the island’s glacial interior.

Arch dropped over the side to help the old fisherman pull the skiff ashore. The empty land, the Icelandic winds, the cl
ear water, and the coldness of the air made her feel isolated from all that was warm and human. She was grateful for the reassurance of Arch’s large hands, spanning her waist to help her alight from the boat.

He thanked the weather-wrinkled fisherman in Ga
elic, passed him a handful of forty crowns and a portion of their goat cheese, then took her elbow. "I asked the old man to return here this evening when the tide is in,” he told her. “That should give us enough time to accomplish what we came for."

They s
et out walking, she trying to keep stride with his longer legs. Her skirts dragged across sand and salty grass draped with strands of seaweed. At last, she and Arch reached a more solid support of pebbles, rocks, and boulders. “Where do we go from here?” she asked.

He pulled his cloak
’s hood up over his wind-lashed red curls. "Beyond. Past the sea caves. In yon dense oakwood.”

The coastal trek led by barnacle geese who, in conjunction with a multitude of seals, provided an unexpected, noisy background. One
old, asthmatic bull protested their presence. They skirted his domain and tramped past King’s Cave. It was almost concealed by plumes and fans of white spray rising from hidden reefs.

Here, so Arch told her, was where a disheartened Robert the Bruce was in
spired by the patience and determination of a web-spinning spider.

Kathryn
’s determination to find Enya was infinite. But the distant woodland, with the tallest trees in Scotland, remained just that.

Her suede boots were wet, her feet cold, her teeth chatt
ering. There was no shelter from the whistling, whipping wind. She halted in a midst of brown bracken. Her blue lips were compressed so as not to betray her quivering jaw. "How . . . much farther?"

He wrapped an arm around her shoulders and tucked her into
the hollow of his body. His hunter’s-green cloak of thick, soft wool enveloped her. "According to my source of information, not more than an hour or more.”

"We'll, I hope your source is reliable.”

“The Knights Templar are the most reliable source on the face of this earth. At their zenith they were the most powerful and influential organization in the whole of Christendom, with the single possible exception of the papacy."

She knew he talked to keep her mind off her misery. Pausing to help her negotiate a
tiny burn flowing from rounded, tree-crowned hills above, he then resumed his discourse. "With the power to make or break monarchs, they were bankers for Europe’s kings and advisers to Eastern potentates. There are those who claim the warrior-monks, knight-mystics are custodians of an arcane wisdom that transcends Christianity.”

She knew that this part of Scotland was pagan to the point of superstition. Belief in things unseen
—along with the mountainous geography—had left it straggling behind in ignorance.

When she and Arch reached high moors, grassed with marram, the journey became easier. She almost took the ancient monument for a random arrangement of boulders. Small, rounded granite-boulder circles and much taller red-sandstone monoliths formed chambere
d cairns.

A wraithlike mist had descended over the stone, and their looming shapes seemed to come alive. It was not difficult to imagine strange rituals taking place here in the misty past of the Celtics.

Arch ushered her through the maze and into a thicket of mossy oaks that cloaked a derelict kirk of crumbled gray stone and fallen timbers. In the kirkyard were some grave slabs and a wealth of stone carvings bearing Masonic motifs: the Celtic cross, the ankh, the cross pattee, the crescent moon of the Mother Goddess with stars.

From the comer of her eye, a shadow moved. Her imagination? When it coalesced into another shape within the kirk
’s fallen doorway, she almost screamed. A scraggly bearded man in a dirty, tattered brown coat with a ragged tartan wrapped around his neck stepped forward with a sprightliness that belied his advanced age. A merlin perched on his shoulder. “Ye be lost?”

"We
’re looking for directions,” Arch said.

The wrinkle-enfolded eyes narrowed so that the old man resembled his pigeon falc
on. "Who be ye?”

"I come by the recommendation of Bernard of Rosslyn Chapel.”

Like a magpie, the man’s frosty gray head canted. "Directions, ye say? Now where is it ye wish to go?”

"I seek the abducted daughter of milady here.”
"And the daughter? Her name?”

"Enya Afton of Ayrshire,”
she said.

It seemed the rheumy eyes flared. "Aye, there is one who knows of her whereabouts.”

She was losing patience. "Arch, I thought you said he would—”

"Sssh,”
Arch said, holding up a silencing palm. "Could we talk with that one?”

"He will meet with ye at the Bellochant Inn in Oban.
‘Tis on the mainland, where the Firth of Lome enters Loche Linnhe.”

"When?”

The wings of the merlin flapped with impatience. "Day after the morrow. As to the hour, he’ll contact ye, of that ye can be sure. Ask him about Ranald’s Reivers.”

Like ghosts, the old man and his merlin faded back into the murk.

Bewildered, she looked at Arch. "That’s all?”

He spread his palms in a helpless gesture. "At least
’til the day after the morrow.” He gave her a consoling grin. "I suggest we repair to Oban and the Bellochant Inn to warm our tootsies.”

She closed her eyes. "That sounds absolutely heavenly."

The Bellochant Inn was heaven and more. A converted hunting lodge, it had a sitting room with a fl
agstone floor and a toasty log fire rather than a peat-burning hearth. The bedroom—one of twelve—to which the rotund host showed them was within earshot of the sea. Here the water, leaving the deep, narrow loch, foamed and fought with the sea tide, creating turbulence and curious cascades that lulled one to sleep.

All but Kathryn.

Arch slept in the adjoining room. The memory of his strong arms encircling her young body and his gentle touch was old yet ever new. How many nights that memory had sustained her during Malcolm’s groping worship of her body, followed by his quick subjugation of it! Since he contracted the hideous disease, her body had not known a man’s touch.

Argyllshire was characterized by long, dark winters. Though only autumn, this night might
have been her longest.

“
There is no point in sitting and waiting,” Arch told her over steaming tea and marmalade and scones the next morning. "Nothing can be done until this contact shows up. Let’s explore, find out what we can on our own."

The idea appeal
ed to her. Throughout the morning she and Arch scoured Oban from waterfront to foothills for information on Ranald's Reivers.

"Of the half a dozen people we
’ve questioned,” she complained at midmorning, "no one knows anything. And this Gaelic. Tis unintelligible!"

"Oban is a fishing fraternity. We
’re foreigners, to their way of thinking.”

"These people aren
’t going to answer any questions about Ranald’s Reivers.”

"Probably not. They stand to lose as much as they gain. Repeated sweeps by the English armies h
ave left lawless wakes in which raid and counter raid have became a way of life here. The Highlander clans survive by communal ventures, including cattle raids. I imagine that Ranald’s Reivers are, in these people’s minds, heroes."

By midday, failure to fe
rret out information combined with hunger coaxed them to abandon their search for a couple of hours. Like the youths they had once been, they climbed the hills above the inn. Nippy air pinked their cheeks. Sheltering firs dripped the wetness of a fine mist. Below, the coast was riven with a crinkly fretwork of deep inlets, where the sea probed far inland.

On a bed of bell heather, they lunched on tiny, bittersweet blaeberries bordering a spring-fed bum. Without touching, they reclined close to one ot
her; he on his back, her on one side.

“
Arch,” she asked, propping herself up on one elbow, "what happens after this? If... after we find Enya... do you go back to spreading the word of your God?”

He reached across and wiped a smear of blue from the corner
of her mouth. She trembled at his touch. “That’s always a part of me, Kathryn. But I have another side. A side that strives for changes. Changes for the better. You really know so little of me. Despite what . . . we’ve been to each other.”

"Oh, look!" A re
d deer darted from the underbrush, startling them. The diversion was a blessing. All these years of keeping her emotions tamped. They had become numbed, so that now she rarely felt anything. At least, not until Enya’s abduction.

He rose and held out his ha
nd for hers. "Time to go. The more information we can find out about Ranald’s Reivers, the better.”

The waterfront of Oban was less than savory, but it was legitimate. Enough fishing boats plied the river that Kathryn could have crossed the jammed harbor f
rom deck to deck on the moored boats without wetting her feet.

In the guise of a woman of the streets
—rouged cheeks and tight bodice—she easily entered the Stag’s Head Pub with Arch. The pub was located at the end of a cobbled wend. Smoke-darkened beams, a wall paneled with nautical charts, and a peat fire gave the place a warmth that the proprietor and patrons lacked.

Near the fire, three sailors played shove-hal
’penny on a slab of slate. Their weather-beaten visages were less than friendly.

She pulled her
black woolen scarf farther up over her head. "Surely we don’t look any less couth than our cohorts," she whispered to Arch and nodded to her left, where a hump-backed man with an eye patch, no less, hunkered over his tankard of ale.

Arch slid onto the ben
ch opposite her. "I’m sure word is probably out by now that we’ve been asking about Ranald’s Reivers.”

Now that she was warmed, she pushed back the hood of her cloak. “
Wouldn't a reward open someone’s lips?”

He shrugged with an easy grace. She loved that a
bout him, how mobile his body was. His readily smiling lips, his quick mind. "The code of the Highland supposedly governs all conduct, including hospitality.”

"Their hospitality leaves a lot to be desired," she said, accepting one of the mugs their tacitur
n host brought them.

Arch leaned toward her, forearms braced on the table, and lowered his voice. "You have to remember that every Highland family has a Ranald somewhere. Tis common enough a name. Tracing him won
’t be that easy."

The ale she swallowed was
certainly stronger and heavier than that of Ayrshire. What she really could use was a bottle of strong port. "I'm not giving up so easily. Maybe this contact we're—”

"Couldn't help but overhear ye," the patch-eyed man said. He leaned on one arm and fixed t
hem with his good eye. "Ye’re looking for Ranald’s Reivers?”

Arch flicked her a warning glance. "We've heard of them. What do you know of their leader?"

The coarse-looking man took another quaff of his beer, then wiped his mouth with his sleeve before answering. "He is no hero. He uses what he and his reivers take."

Her heart flinched. "Have you heard anything about a young woman he captured recently?"

“That Lowland lass? Enya of the Afton clan?”

“
Aye!" she gasped.

“
What do you know of her whereabouts?" Arch asked.

"Ye might as well count that one as lost. Ranald uses first one place as base, then another."

“If we could contact him,” Arch asked, “do you think we could negotiate for her return?"

Like a parrot, the man cocked his head. “
I think he might give her up. In return for Simon Murdock’s testicles."

A muscle in Arch's cheek flickered. "If that canna be arranged?"

The man rose from his bench and staggered slightly. "If I were the lass, I would rather face the dragon of Loch Ness."

With a we
eping heart, Kathryn watched the man lurch through the maze of tables to the arched door and fling it open. A cold wind whipped at his soiled coat. "Maybe the man who is supposed to contact us can give us more information." She wanted desperately to believe in hope.

"I think that was our contact,”
Arch said. The expression on his face destroyed that last vestige of her hope.