Traveling by ferry wasn’t any better. Since she had to stowaway or hand over Marjorie’s marriage ring (that Marjorie had removed from her finger two days after her husband died), she couldn’t leave her hiding spot to even stretch her legs.
As they were anchoring in the harbor, she was discovered but managed to escape her captor and leap overboard.
She didn’t consider herself a braw lass. She did things to survive. Like killing the MacDonald chief long ago. Aye, she’d killed him. She had been sold to him and became his slave. He had always beat her, but one night he tried to have his way with her. She hadn’t meant to kill him. She didn’t even know what it was to kill a man. She wanted him off her, and grew desperate for a weapon to help.
Knowing where men kept their daggers, she reached for his in his belt. Without hesitation, she slashed it at him. She cut an artery in his neck and he bled to death in his bed. She screamed, alerting his men. She had been taken before the council and declared guilty, punishable by death. Immediately.
Dragged outside, they tossed her into the dirt and picked up stones to hurl at the murderess.
She was eight summers old at the time.
She’d heard from the priest at May Hall that murder would not be forgiven by God. If she lived out the rest of her days as a nun, mayhap then God would forgive her.
But the church in Kiliwhimin had no room to take her for morethan a night. They advised her to travel to Aberchalder at the northern end of Loch Oich and visit the abbey there.
She set out the next morning and after getting lost for several hours, arrived in Aberchalder two days later, but the abbey there was closed. She couldn’t stop. Chief MacRae could be in a village close by searching for her.
She reached Laggan, a small village in the Great Glen along the Caledonian Canal and remained there for another two days. By then, her feet were swollen and blistered. She was exhausted and starving.
Since leaving her home, she had learned how to read a compass, how to steal, lie, disappear, and survive without softness. Her life had changed. She was alone again the way she was when she was a child—and so far, she had kept herself alive. That was something to be proud of, wasn’t it? She could do it. She could live on her own. But where? There were no vacant houses to inhabit, no abbeys to join. She had no idea where to go. She only knew that hunger plagued her. Catching squirrels or trapping a quail now and then was not enough. She longed for a full meal. Hunger drove her onward to a small hamlet on the southern shores of Loch Lochy. There were no taverns or inns where she could eat, but one of the fishermen from a nearby crofting settlement, gave her three of the fish he’d caught that day and he wouldn’t take a pence for them.
“A lad must eat to grow strong,” he said and gave her a friendly whack on the back.
She laughed and nodded, remembering that she was supposed to be a lad.
She didn’t stay in the hamlet, or with the fisherman for longer than she needed to. She wasn’t far enough away from Raigmore or Beauly. She had to keep moving until she found an abbey that would take her.
She didn’t stop again, climbing up hills and walking through glens only to reach more hills and more glens. Her body had grown stronger during her escape with all the uphill terrain—and shequickly remembered how to swing a weapon without hesitating, when a ruffian leaped out from the trees and tried to grab her. She’d been using her stick as a cane for her tired legs, but when it hit the attacker in the head, it knocked him out cold.
She decided to keep the stick with her.
She kept going until she could see Ben Nevis jutting upward in the distance, with gossamer mist swirling over its high crest. She would love to hide beneath the protective shadow of a mountain—just for a few days.
Making Ben Nevis her destination, she pushed herself farther along until a large castle loomed ahead, just beyond a field of heather, and in the midst of smaller, thatched-roof cottages and other structures. A chief’s residence most likely. Of which clan she had no idea. She didn’t know where she was yet, but she spotted an inn and as she moved closer, she smelled the salivating aromas of seasoned meats and honeyed bread wafting through the air.
Reaching into a pocket hanging from her breeches, she felt for the last trinket she could sell for food and a bed.
Despite its name, the Doomsday Inn & Tavern looked like any other inn and tavern in any other town or village. But, perhaps its name was a warning about staying in a place such as this, with its band of deadly looking ruffians sprinkled throughout.
With exhaustion slipping over her, Ismay decided that, rather than be molested by one of these men, she would turn around and leave. Safer to sleep behind someone’s house than in a house full of men. Stepping back outside, the sound of roaring thunder broke the silence of the night. She looked up. Would she have to go back inside because of rain? But the sky was clear. The sound vibrated through her feet this time. Closer. She turned toward the loud sound and saw a herd of cattle running by about a hundred feet away.
She pulled her cloak closer around herself and walked away from the inn. There was likely someone’s barn close by. She would sleepthere. She was hungry, but the stale bread in her bag would have to do.
It was better than becoming wife to a chief.
Chapter Two
Mist settled overthe ground and covered Constantine Cameron, Chief of the clan Cameron where he and his men, most of whom were his kin, lay in wait for the pesky MacKintoshes and their cattle. Constantine had sent a warning to the MacKintosh chief that the Camerons would take any herd the MacKintosh brought through Cameron land. But his warning had gone unheeded.
Unforgivable.
He had received word last eve from his uncle Robert Cameron in Fort William, of the traveling MacKintoshes. Constantine would stop them here at the foot of Gulvain and make certain his point was made.
While he waited, clothed in gossamer thread and chilled to the bone in the late summer Highland dawn, he let the silence fill him. He welcomed it over memories of the accusing glares of his wife’s parents and the prison of his past that haunted him.
Now, if he focused on the silence hard enough, all he heard was the breath of thirty-six Camerons hidden in the mist around him.
They were good at waiting. Patience had won his men many battles over the years. He and his men had held off hundreds of Cromwell’s forces when the Camerons were called to act as an outpost to guard the Earl of Glencairn’s army. They had waited almost forty-eight hours for the Cromwellians to appear. When they did, their enemies were quickly defeated. After that, they fought for two straightyears of fearlessly butchering enemy Cromwellian forces. Their victories had earned Constantine the title of Deliverer of the Highland Army, and written praise from their exiled king, Charles.
