Did Cameron truly want her for his wife—or had that been the only way to convince King Robert to allow her to accompany him? So many questions and no time to answer them! And where was Cameron going now?
She watched, her heart pounding, as he strode toward a long, open-sided structure where a small army of blacksmiths labored, their hammers ringing out against anvils. She could see finished armaments hanging from hooks—spears, knives, aye, all manner of weapons—as Cameron ducked inside… only to emerge moments later with a sword that glinted in the sunlight and a round wooden shield.
His expression seemed unreadable as he came toward her, but again that slow, teasing smile spread across his face and made her heart seem to stop.
“Your sword, Lady De Burgh… compliments of King Robert. Lighter and shorter than my own, but deadly all the same. All I ask is that you dinna use it against me, will you swear it?”
“Aye, Cameron—aye!” She smiled, too, as she took the weapon from him, which made him stare at her face as if awestruck, but only for a fleeting moment.
She had no sooner thrust the sword into her belt, Cameron tying the shield with leather straps to her saddle, than he left her to mount his own horse.
His gaze never leaving her as his roared command resounded across the bailey for them to ride out from Dumbarton Castle.
Chapter 12
“Father, can you hear me? I just overheard the guards saying that we’re leaving at dawn for Carlisle—God help us, Papa! Open your eyes if you can, I beg you!”
William De Burgh felt as if he were swimming upward from a deep black loch, the pain so intense in his right shoulder that a fitful sleep was his only refuge. He stared at the anxious face hovering above his own and recognized Daran—but what had become of his handsome son?
Daran’s skin looked ashen beneath a stubbly red beard, his blue eyes wild and stricken, his hair matted and filthy—aye, his clothing, too, and stinking like a cesspit—
“Father, they’re going to kill us! MacGodfrey’s assurances that we would be freed when the ransom comes were lies—all lies! We won’t be here any longer but on our way to Carlisle and an executioner’s axe, thanks to an edict just arrived from King Edward! We will never see our home in Éire again!”
Now William struggled mightily to rouse himself, though when Daran grabbed his tunic with both hands to shake him, he groaned in pain through cracked lips.
He had no strength any longer to scream, his eyes filling with tears at the excruciating torment caused by any movement.
Stinging tears that blinded him as the babbling creature that was his beloved son crumpled into a heap beside the cot and broke into pitiful sobs.
God in heaven, why had his daughter Aislinn been born the stronger one? He had tried so hard to shape Daran into a man—a true warrior!—but now he could see how miserably he had failed.
With the gravity of his son’s words settling over him, William lifted his blurred gaze to the small barred opening in the door of their cell, which emitted the only light from the hall outside.
Emitted the only sounds, too, of the world beyond the dank walls of the dungeon, William wincing at the coarse laughter of the guards who must have heard Daran’s weeping.
Ah, but could he blame his son? The bright prospect of fighting alongside King Robert the Bruce had been extinguished the moment they set foot upon Scottish soil… his kinsman Clive MacGodfrey betraying them.
That cowardly bastard hadn’t even been a part of the attack, but had sent English soldiers posted at the stronghold to slaughter most of William’s men and then take him, Daran, and those few still alive as prisoners. He hadn’t known what transpired after being struck down on that rocky beach until he’d regained consciousness, to find a stoop-shouldered healer tending to his grievous wound while Clive hovered in the background—wringing his hands.
“I told them tae bring you here unharmed! Och, William, you fool! Could you not see that you were outnumbered and drop your sword? It’s only the ransom we want—aye, myself and Earl Seoras MacDougall, my overlord—and not your life!”
Such hatred had welled up within William at Clive’s treachery that for a moment he had forgotten his agony, his gaze falling upon Daran lying on an opposite cot and moaning.
“My son…my son!”
“Aye, at least he showed some sense and threw down his weapon—until he bolted for the ship and was cudgeled on the head. Och, dinna worry, he’ll live… though you, William, I canna say for sure. A stronger blow and your arm would have been severed from your body, but my healer believes you’ll heal if the wound doesna putrefy…”
Putrefy? William could smell the stench of his own rotting flesh and knew he was dying. All of the healer’s poultices and potions had only prolonged his misery, and now this wretched news that they were bound for Carlisle at first light—saints help him, if there was only some way he could save his son!
Daran’s anguished sobbing ringing in his ears, William had never felt more hopeless or more desperate, his mind racing.
Mayhap he could bargain somehow with Clive… promise him three times as much gold if he would secure Daran safe passage back to Ireland. If Clive would supply him with parchment and ink, he would pen a letter to his steward in Wexford just as he’d done two weeks ago when he had demanded their ransom be gathered and brought with all haste to MacGodfrey’s stronghold.
Yet where was the gold? It should have taken Clive’s men only three days to sail across the Irish Sea and deliver that letter, mayhap a few hours for his steward to secure the gold, and then a few days more for those same men to return to the stronghold situated along the Firth of Clyde.
Had something happened to them? A storm? Had they drowned?
If all had gone well, he and Daran and his remaining men would have been released and sailing home before King Edward’s accursed edict had arrived and changed everything! At least then William would have died upon Irish soil…
