Magda contemplated the hard bread and white cheese on the ground before her. Two days had passed since being captured by the Campbell clan, and she hadn’t consumed much more than water.
Even when Campbell had hustled her roughly onto his horse and off to his distant camp, she’d been in a fog of disbelief. It had quickly shattered, though, on her first night. She’d heard a struggle and, straining her eyes into the darkness, had spied a girl no older than twenty rushing from Campbell’s tent, torn dress clutched to her chest. The sound of the girl’s sobs, convulsive and reedy, had pierced the night, robbing Magda of her appetite, even as she’d felt a remote kernel of resolve crystallize deep inside.
At first, she’d hoped for rescue, fantasizing that every hillock or copse of trees along the road concealed James, who would surely burst out at any moment to save her.
He was out there, somewhere. Did he think of her, she wondered, or was Magda just a brief chapter, now concluded, in his greater adventure? Would he rescue her, if he knew? Or perhaps he already did know of her capture and chose instead to continue on his current course. Her throat closed at the thought, and she blinked rapidly. She’d rather die than let Campbell see her tears.
Campbell squinted at her. His thin, perpetually moist lips peeled from his teeth. “Too good for my food, is it?” He tapped the plate once more with his foot. “I can see to it that you’re offered none, if that’s your preference.”
Knowing she needed to preserve her strength, Magda lifted the cheese to her mouth and gnawed off a bit from the corner. Tart with age, it flaked onto her tongue, its sourness turning her stomach. She made herself dissolve the dry lump in her mouth, and swallow.
“That’s it,” he said, sneering. “Need to keep your strength up. I’ve plans for you, lass. Big plans.”
She eyed him wordlessly, willing him to disappear, not bothering to mask her contempt. Campbell laughed, amused by her impotent outrage. “Eat fast, woman. We’ve a hard day of riding ahead.”
Later, when Magda spotted the girl from the tent— her young eyes empty despite the bright face she tried to don for her equally young husband— the glimmer of resolve she’d felt exploded into a determined rage.
Magda was all alone now, and the one person who’d risk helping her was as good as a world away. It would be up to her to save herself. She’d spent her days plotting, but could come up with only one simple strategy: run.
Another day passed, and Magda’s opportunity never presented itself. They stopped to camp for the night and her dignity demanded she force herself not to limp, pushing the stiff ache in her legs to the back of her mind and rallying muscles that felt wrung out from a day coiled in anticipation.
They’d traveled south along the coast, and it had been hard riding, rocky and treacherous, and spectacularly terrifying with the sea pounding relentlessly, always somewhere to their left.
There would’ve been no way for her to outride the Campbells on such terrain, even if she had been left alone once all day. Even relieving herself had been humiliating, as anonymous clansmen pretended not to watch avidly her quick squats behind those rare tangles of coastal brush that’d been thick enough to conceal her. She swore that, by day’s end, Campbell was choosing such desolate areas for their breaks on purpose.
Her resolve was beginning to blur into something more like despair and she knew she had to escape, immediately. Though Campbell was the only man who had a tent, Magda had considered herself lucky to have been given a swath of broadcloth she could use to protect herself from the elements. She’d been shocked that Campbell had allowed her that concession, and she suspected it was a gesture to his clansmen that she was off-limits. He’d said he had big plans for her, and Magda shivered to think how this temporary protection was related to Campbell’s grand scheme. She had a hunch he was saving her for himself.
She relied on that stretch of broadcloth now, using the semiprivacy to disguise a meager lump of branches and brush as herself, fast asleep under the covers.
Though frightened to leave in the night, she was more terrified of the fate she imagined at the hands of these men. It seemed she waited an eternity for the sun to set, looking out from her scrubby nest, the cold earth intensifying the feverish ache of her muscles. As the granite-colored sky deepened into an indigo bowl overhead, she thought of that night with James under the stars and was comforted to imagine him settling down for the evening underneath the same sky.
A band of light the color of eggplant lit the horizon. It appeared so slowly, Magda wondered if it hadn’t been there all along. But then there was a flicker, like the curtain of the night sky parting, and green lights shimmered overhead. The purple halo cupping the horizon intensified and seemed to shoot up from the earth even as the green swirled overhead like vapor in a witch’s crystal ball. Magda felt humbled by this unexpected gift: her first sight of the Northern Lights. And it emboldened her, its grandeur somehow a reminder of how minuscule humanity was in the scope of things. Campbell and his men seemed suddenly absurd, simply men, fallible, who’d been long dead by the time she’d been born.
Magda sprang from her refuge, feeling gloriously like a wild animal, and ignoring the slap of branches at her cheeks and the bite of rocks at her feet, she ran hard into the night.
“Whatever could you be thinking? That’s good beer, you daftie.” Sibbald whacked James with his riding crop.
“You’ll not strike me, old man,” he said, turning his back to the colonel. James stepped closer to his horse, as the beast continued to lap enthusiastically at the bucket of ale.
“Aye, there’s no stopping him,” Rollo said. “What began as the whimsy of a bored rich boy has become a habit surrounded by no less superstition than an adder spied on an old woman’s doorstep.”
“You call me an old woman?” James kicked the bucket to the corner of the impromptu stall, and slapped his horse on the neck affectionately.
“Aye, I am that.” Rollo shooed away a stableboy who’d come to help him onto his saddle. He clambered onto the mounting block just outside the door to what was once a Christ Church dining hall, now a royal stable. He stopped struggling once he got his belly to his mount, as Rollo used his extraordinary upper-body strength to seat his uncooperative legs in the saddle. “And you move as slow as an old woman on Sunday too.”
“You’ll cease your complaints, Will. At least you’re not the one disguised as a groom.” James nodded to his costume. While Rollo and Sibbald were outfitted like noblemen, James wore threadbare, colorless clothing appropriate for a stableman.
“I’ve always wanted to give you orders.” Rollo’s face cracked into a rare smile. “Now can we move from this place?”
“What?” James asked. He inhaled deeply. “Has Oxford’s rich bouquet become too unbearable for your delicate sensibilities?”
“I beg you to reconsider your obsession with Perthshire,” Rollo said, ignoring his friend’s joke. “Can we not strike at Campbell from someplace closer to Oxford?”
“Perth is a hub of money and politics,” James said, the smile gone from his face. “To triumph over the Covenanters there would be to command victory.
“What’s more, we need to fight a battle of our own choosing. We’ve no artillery, and no cavalry but our own piteous mounts, and that will be our advantage. Our want of metal and mount shall find us fleet of foot. The Highlands will be our weapon, her people our blade.” James smiled. “Why battle in the south, my friend, when we can lead Campbell on a merry ride through the Highlands? ”
“A bloody ride, more like,” Sibbald said, thoughtfully stroking the balding crown of his head.
