Presently a haggard-looking woman came in to put bunches of heather on the altar. She looked suspiciously at Adam then began to sweep the floor with a worn broom, but she stopped halfway through her task and went into the vestry, coming back a few moments later with a small, sturdy, redheaded man in priestly garb.
He came straight up to Adam and bowed. “I have been expecting you,” he said in English, with the same wary expression in his eyes as the rest of the people Adam had met. “I am father Emmanuel Gordon.”
“I am Adam Cameron,” Adam replied. “I am glad to find someone who understands me. Does nobody here speak English?”
“I do,” Father Emmanuel replied, making a visible effort to control himself. “And so do some of the nobles, but you are in Scotland now and English is a foreign language. Remember, Sassenach, that you are the outsider here.”
There was that word again—Sassenach. What did it mean? He was about to ask, but the priest was speaking again.
“Your uncle was a good friend of mine,” Father Gordon went on. “He looked after his people and did not overtax them. He always had time to listen to his tenants’ woes, but as he became weaker and weaker he could do less and less. English horses damaged the land after they rode over it, despite the peace treaty, and there was a bad harvest last year. This year does not look as if it will be much better, since we have had much less rainfall during the winter than we usually do, and the little that we did have came in the form of violent storms. The Lord has called Laird Malcolm to His side just when we needed him, but I am sure He has reasons of His own.”
He looked Adam straight in the eye. “But He has sent you.” He paused for a moment, and then took pity on Adam. “You look tired. Come and have some ale.”
When they were seated in the priest’s kitchen, Adam handed Father Gordon the letter.
“Did you write this?” he asked.
“Yes, I did.” The priest read it again and frowned, then looked up at Adam. “It seems you are the new Laird...an English Laird. I may as well tell you now, Adam, that you will not be welcome here. The people fear and mistrust the English. In their eyes, you are the enemy.”
“It says here that there is gold,” Adam said, pointing to the relevant sentence in the letter.
Father Gordon shrugged. “I wrote this letter for him, and I can assure you that there might be no gold in Inverinch Castle, and if there is, it is very well hidden.” His voice was firm. “The place is crumbling from neglect, and so are all the nearby farmhouses.” He took a sip of his ale and looked at Adam shrewdly. “The promise of gold was likely to be bait to lure you here, but having said that, Malcolm always told me that young people have young ideas and new ways of thinking. He said you are educated.”
“Yes, but how does that help?” Adam protested. “I know nothing about farming.”
“You have to realize that most people here do not know how to read. He said you could learn quickly, and that you could lead us to a better future,” Father Gordon replied. “He had great faith in you.”
“He had not seen me for years,” Adam pointed out, as if he had never heard the last thing the priest said. “Besides, Father, I am a gambler, a seducer of women, and a drinker. I am not the right man for this,” he said calmly.
“That is why the Lord died for us,” Father Gordon said. “So that our sins could be forgiven.”
Adam thought about this for a moment; the way the priest said it, it all sounded so simple.
Then Father Gordon said, “You cannot do anything until you have seen the task first. Come to the castle.”
Is there anyone here who will welcome me?Adam thought as he trotted along beside the priest who was riding a pony. He had thought that as long as he was at Father Gordon’s side he might be more kindly looked upon, but that did not seem to be the case. Word must have spread about his arrival, because everyone they passed greeted the little priest and shunned Adam. Some even came to stop Father Gordon and asked for a blessing, pointedly ignoring the tall man beside him. Adam could understand their attitude, but it still hurt to be treated this way.
At last they saw the castle looming in the distance. It was in a wonderful defensive position, and looked as if it had risen out of the earth itself from the summit of a great granite rock which was embedded in a green hillside. It occupied the entire crest of the mountain, with twenty-foot high granite walls surrounding it. Inside he could see square towers of varying heights with more crenellated walls around them, but some of the masonry was crumbling and he could even see holes in the structure in some places. There was no gate on the side from which they were approaching, but as they rounded a bend in the road they could see a very impressive one.
Anyone who ever thought that a gate is the weak point in a castle’s defense has never seen this one, Adam thought. The moat was about twenty feet wide and God alone knew how deep, and the gate itself was a masterpiece. It towered fifteen feet high and was made of huge beams of oak which were reinforced with strips of iron an inch thick nailed into the wood in a lattice of four-inch squares all over it. Extending outwards for a foot or so was the portcullis, made of a series of thick steel bars. They saw that it was down, but when the guards saw the priest they opened it and let them in.
Father Gordon was frowning. “The gate is hardly ever shut,” he said to Adam, his tone uneasy. “I wonder if they are expecting trouble.”
They crossed the drawbridge and rode inside to the courtyard, where Adam dismounted and looked around. The stables were on the wall adjacent to the gate, and were made of thick pinewood with a thatched roof. However, there were gaping holes in the thatch and wood around the double-door entry was splintered in places. He went inside and looked around, but fortunately the inside of the place was sound and there had been no recent rain.
He followed Father Gordon around, seeing obvious signs of dereliction everywhere. There were many broken flagstones on the floor of the courtyard, many of the beautiful mosaics in the entrance hall had tiles broken, and when he looked up, he could see that the slates were slipping off many parts of the highest towers.
When they went inside the castle they saw the evidence of woodworm infestation on much of the furniture, banisters, and stairwells. He knew that rotten wood was fragile and dangerous, so this worried him immensely.
The Laird had at one time been wealthy enough to put glass windows in some of the bedrooms, but some of them were cracked now and their shutters were hanging off.
They went down to the kitchen, where thin soup was being made with every scrap of meat and vegetable that could be found. The big pots were half empty.
“Is this all there is to eat?” Adam asked, horrified.
The cooks, hearing his English, jerked their heads around to look at him, their faces set in looks of pure hatred. One of them made an angry remark to the priest in Gaelic; Father Gordon replied briefly and she made a noise of disgust. Father Gordon shook his head, sighed, and patted her shoulder. Then he gave her a quiet, sympathetic answer.
“What did she say?” Adam asked, frowning. He felt oppressed by the hostile atmosphere, even though the three women had turned away from him. Even their backs looked menacing.
