Oh God, please don’t let anything happen to him!
If only it hadn’t taken her so long to light the beacon. She’d brought a tinderbox and was able to get a small fire going, but the last keeper hadn’t left the basket ready, and it took her some time to gather the wood and twigs, and then climb up and down the rungs on the pole to place them in the iron fire basket.
Her heart seemed to have stopped beating as she rode as fast as she dared through the dark forested path—praying, begging, bargaining every step of the way.
But the sounds from the beach only grew worse as she drew nearer. The fierce clatter of swords that had reverberated in the air dulled as the battle lost its intensity, and the cries took over. They were cries unlike any she’d ever heard, and would haunt her dreams for years to come, but instinctively she knew what it meant: it was the sound of a massacre.
The world seemed a blur, whether from the tears pouring from her eyes or the horrible images spinning through her mind. But by time she reached Stranraer, jumped off her horse, and pushed her way through the hundreds of celebrating clansmen, Margaret seemed to have lost all sense of reality. She felt like she was in a hideous nightmare, a slow-moving world of disbelief and horror, as she raced toward the beach, her path lit by the torches that seemed to have sprung up all around her.
Some of the men recognized her—she heard more than one surprised “my lady”—but no one tried to stop her. She knew why the moment she broke through the trees and the crescent-shaped beach spread out before her: the battle was over.
Her stomach heaved at the sight that met her eyes. Bodies—or parts of bodies—were everywhere. A few patches of light sand were all that remained in the sea of blood and gore. She retched, the sickly, coppery smell overwhelming.
When she lifted her head, she gazed around blindly, not knowing where to look—not knowing how to look—so scared of what she might find.
Eoin. Please, not Eoin.
Her father’s men were dragging bodies into piles. The sudden roar of fire and the first throat-searing, acrid wafts of burning flesh that hit her nose explained why.
With a sharp cry of desperation, she began to frantically search among the bodies. Bile rose to the back of her throat more than once at the grisly images, the faces mutilated beyond recognition, the blood, the unstaring eyes, swirled in front of her, as she picked her way through the dead.
Many were young, and few wore mail. From the saffron-dyedleinesand quiltedcotuns, she realized most were Irishmen. But no blackened nasal helms and black leathercotunsstudded with mail.
“Margaret, what the hell are you doing here?” Duncan had come up behind her, and spun her around by the elbow to face him. “Satan’s stones, as if I need to ask! I couldn’t believe it when one of the men said he saw you. You must be mad coming here like this. It could still be dangerous. Father would be furious to see you.”
“Where is he, Duncan? Where is Father?” she pleaded desperately. “I must see if he knows anything about Eoin.”
Her breath caught as something flickered in his expression—sympathy?
“MacLean is dead, Maggie. Dougal saw him fall.”
“No!” She staggered. “No!” She clutched at Duncan’s arm to steady herself. Eoin couldn’t be dead. “Where is he? If he is dead than show me his body.”
“It’s probably too late.”
“What do you mean, too late?”
His eyes flickered to the far edge of the beach where she could see the flames of a fire beyond a large crowd of men. Her heart froze. Panic raced wildly through ice-cold veins.
She started to run. Duncan yelled after her to stop, but his words were droned out by the hammering of her heart in her ears.
He caught her when she was still a few dozen yards away. “You can’t go over there,” he said furiously, lifting her off the ground from behind by her waist. “Jesus, Maggie, trust me, you don’t want to see that.”
“Why not? What are they—”
A flash of silver above the heads of the men followed by a roar of cheering cut off the question in her throat. She stopped thrashing in her brother’s arms and he turned her around to face him.
“Some of the rebels are being executed,” he explained.
Her eyes widened with horror. Her father was exacting his vengeance with mercilessness and brutality that would be remembered for ages.
“Not your husband,” he assured her. “He was killed on the battlefield.”
Her mind screamed, refusing to believe it. She had to see for herself. “If he is in that pyre, I need to see it, Duncan.”
He must have heard the desperation in her voice. After a moment he let her go. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
She should have listened to him. She reached the edge of the crowd just in time to see the executioner’s sword take its deadly arc across the neck of a man she recognized: Duncan of Mar, the former Earl of Mar’s younger brother, and Robert Bruce’s brother-in-law twice over. Bruce had been married to Duncan’s sister, Isabella, and Bruce’s sister, Christina, had been married to Duncan’s brother Gartnait, the former earl. She looked away, but it wasn’t soon enough.
