Prologue
September 1428
Caedmaray, Western Isles
Scotland
The island looked like the loneliest place Thomas had ever seen—perhaps it was even the end of the earth.
The ever-present shrieks of the seabirds that had followed the supply boat from Thurso swelled as the living banner of white darts swooped beyond the bow to dive through the sea spray and fog surrounding the rolling green land mass. Caedmaray was small—like a crumpled hat floating upon the water—and seemed to grow no larger as they drew near. No structures penetrated the ceiling of mist, and, indeed, even the rounded crest of the isle’s pinnacle seemed too meek or tired to attempt challenging the dense cloud surrounding itlike a cloche.
The burly captain appeared at Thomas’s side then, seizing the rail near the bow as the supply boat bucked and leaped over angry swells. “Caedmaray,” he confirmed in a shout over the roar of the waves and wind. The stocky cog ship that bore them had departed from Thurso just that morning on indigo water sheeted with white-gray waves. And even though the wind was at their back, hurtling them over the rutted and bucking sea, the journey had taken hours.
“Nae beach to land upon,” the captain continued. “We’ll move the cargo ashore, gain our trade, and be gone. Storm rolling in, English. If we arenae gone within the hour, ’tis dead we’ll all be, to a man. So moveyer arse, ken?”
Thomas nodded.“Aye, Captain.”
Apparently satisfied with Thomas’s curt answer, the captain turned and stomped away as easily as if he were traversing the stone floor of a chapel while only comfortably drunk, but the wild dip of the clouds beyond the rail caused Thomas’s stomach to spasm, even after these many months.
Eight months since he’d fled the woods beyond Loch Acras. The same length of time as would pass before the supplies ship made the dangerous and lengthy journey to Caedmaray once more.
Eight months since he’d bashed in the skull of the dead Carson on the hillside, hoping against hope that Vaughn Hargrave would think it was Thomas Annesley lying dead and would cease his scourging of the Highlands for him. Cease his determination to see destroyed anyone connected with Thomas.
Seven months since he’d crept into Thurso and gained the basest work as an anonymous ship hand on a trading vessel, earning just enough through the balmy summer to buy food to eat in a darkened doorway or filthy alley after the town had gone to sleep. His hands had bled for weeks at first, the sea water and rough work sucking the moisture from his skin and ripping thin, deep wounds into the folds of his fingers more deftlythan any blade.
Thomas’s hands no longer bled, the skin now tough and stiff and slicked like matted wool. Never of ample flesh to begin with, he was whip-thin now, his muscles like cording beneath his tanned skin, his hair long and curling and caught up with a leather strap most days. He looked like any of the other unfortunate young men hired on the trading ships now, and save for his crisp English accent, no one would ever guess that this young, starving worker—little more than a slave—was at one time Baron Annesley, Lord of Darlyrede. It was only when he spoke that the trouble was likely to ensue, and Thomas had spent many days recovering behind an inn from beatings doled out bydrunken Scots.
Thomas watched Caedmaray slowly approach over the rutted, striped waves. The seas were rougher here than Thomas had ever known any sea could be, and it was nearly another hour before the ship dropped anchor some distance from the rocky shore. Then the ship hands slipped out like a strand of pearls, connected to one another by a rope lashed to a boulder on the island, chest deep in the icy, shoving water, passing heavy barrel and bundle and crate over head in vain attempts to keep the cargo dry as it was ferried ashore. The sea burned in Thomas’s eyes and nose, in his lungs and stomach, as he gasped to stay upright on the slick, submerged crags beneath his boots—any cargo lost would come out of his meager pay, and Thomas suspected that he already made half that of the other hands, thanks to his blastedEnglish accent.
The final heavy bundle was passed overhead, and then his mates began slogging past him, pulling themselves hand over hand along the rope toward the ship.
“Low man untethers,” one sailor growled at him as he passed, as if Thomas had somehow forgotten his lowly station. “That be you, English. Mind the slack.”
Thomas turned his head to cast a grim look toward the termination of the rope on the rocky shore, which seemed leagues away as the waves buffeted him. The sky was growing darker, as if it was made of slate, and the angry waves reached up to wet it black. He struggled out of the loop but kept both hands firmly on the rough woven line as he labored up onto the sliding shore to where the rope was tethered. It grew taut, then limp, with no discernable pattern, sending dull twangs into Thomas’s ears. On the next instance of slack, he tossed the loop from the gray stone and followed it back down into the waves as it jerked in his hand, wrenching his shoulder.
Slack. Jerk. Slack.
A wave hit him full force in the face, filling his head with seawater. He choked and sputtered, pulling himself onward, his boots leaving the rocky shelf beneath the waves with each swell.
And then the rope was suddenly gone from his hands witha zing of heat.
Thomas thrashed out into the water as the prow of the ship, still too far away, rose sharply into the air and he was thrown back toward the shore.
Thomas saw the line of men on board frantically pulling and gathering the tether rope. They hurled it over the side once more in Thomas’s direction as he bobbed wildly in the undulating wilderness, but it landed out of his reach and vanished beneath the murk. And the ship was turning now. Turning to portside, wallowing a breathless moment. Thomas saw the burly captain clinging to the rail, peering through the spray as if searching for him. His mouth moved soundlessly, the roar of the wind stealing his words. The captainraised an arm.
“No!” Thomas shouted. He sputtered as water filled his mouth again, treading furiously to stay afloat. “No! Come back!” Another wave crashed over him, plunging him down onto a rock shelf. Thomas kicked up toward the surface again with every bit of strength remaining in his weakened legs, and when he at last gasped the misty air, the stern of the cargo ship was only just visible in the foggy gloom.
He turned and lashed out for the steep, rocky shore, his feet spinning madly at the firmness beneath them, scrambling up the treacherous surface before the next breaker could rush ashore and claim him. He crawled the last bit, dragging himself above the tidemark, falling onto his hip and then turning to his back on his elbows, his gaze searching the now-empty waves while the seabirds circled and screamed above his head. The icy wind cut his sodden clothes and exposed skin like a thousand knives.
They had left him. Left him on godforsaken Caedmaray.
The end of the earth.
He began to shake; from the cold, the wet, the shock—he didn’t know. His limbs felt as if they were made from stone as he struggled to his feet. He turned and saw nothing beyond the beach but painful green—no trees, no brambles. Only long grass, cleaved by a narrow, wet path to the foggy crest of the hill where it met the thick, darkening sky.He started up.
He was afraid, in a nonsensical way, that he would gain the top of the rise only to discover naught but more green on the other side. A lonely island of empty nothing. He knew that was impossible—he’d seen the line of villagers carrying the cargo over the hill himself while he’d been tethered in the violent bay. And yet the loud silence of the wind and sea, the triune landscape of grass and water and sky, gave the impression that he was the only man left alive here at the edge of the world.
But no, just down the hill, there it was—the little cluster of village, figures transporting the cargo along its narrow alleys. Small stone houses sunken into the earth more than halfway up their walls, all parallel with the length of the island. Raised hillocks in the lee of the land—crop beds, perhaps? The little piles of white, striking against the green: sheep. Short, cylindrical stone towers, whose purpose Thomas didn’t recognize, dotted the undulating green beyondthe settlement.
