“Ye think ye know so much,” Sorely said in a rasping voice. “But I’d wager ye don’t know your mother was murdered.”
“Mind the door,” Lachlan said to Robbie, wanting him out of earshot.
Lachlan was not going to give Sorely the satisfaction of asking. Sorely wanted to tell him, so he waited, hoping the man wouldn’t die before he got the words out.
“Hugh pushed her! Aye, that’s right. Your da has been helping the man who killed her. Isn’t that a laugh?” Blood seeped through Sorely’s teeth in a grisly grin. “I told Hugh that your mother was carrying another child of the chieftain’s, so he got rid of her.”
Lachlan was tempted to put his hand around Sorely’s throat and speed his journey to hell. Instead, he asked, “How would ye know she was with child?”
“Jenny told me,” Sorely said, and tears suddenly filled his eyes. “No one knew, but we were sweethearts.”
Who in the hell was Jenny? Then it struck him. “Jenny was the nursemaid. That’s why ye see her ghost.”
“She was waving to me when she dropped the babe,” Sorely said. “The chieftain didn’t have to cast her adrift at sea. She never meant to harm the child.”
He was blubbering so that Lachlan could almost feel sorry for him—until something else occurred to him. “Ye didn’t try to save Jenny, did ye? Ye didn’t speak to the chieftain on her behalf or go out in a boat to rescue her.”
“I couldn’t!” Sorely choked out. “The chieftain would have banished me, and I would have lost my place in his guard.”
“I guess that explains why she haunted ye.” Lachlan was disgusted with him. “I suppose ye held what the chieftain did to her against Connor.” That’s what his own father had done.
“I was willing to forgive all…when I thought Connor…would make me captain,” Sorely said, his voice growing weaker with each breath. “But he kept delaying…and delaying…”
His voice faded, and his head fell to the side.
“What a sorry excuse for a MacDonald.” Lachlan got up and went to the door. “Ye did well, Robbie. It would have been a damned shame to lose a good man like you to his blade. I’ll report this to the chieftain.”
Lachlan would tell Connor everything except what Sorely said about his mother and father. That was no one’s business but his own.
***
“The MacLeods are coming,” Connor called out, raising his arms. “’Tis time to raise the clan.”
Every man, woman, and child in the castle was gathered around the blazing bonfire that had been built in the center of the castle yard for the ceremony of thecrann tara.
Duncan, Ian, and Alex, the three men Connor trusted above all others, stood to his right, each holding a wooden cross. He thought of their wives and children and prayed the men would survive the battle ahead. To his left stood three of the young Trotternish warriors he and Lachlan had trained.
Duncan’s eyes were fierce as he gave Connor the first wooden cross. “We fight to the death!” he shouted, and all the men cheered.
Connor held the cross in the bonfire until the dry wood caught flame, then he held it high for all to see it blaze against the afternoon sky. It hissed as he doused the flames in the waiting tub of sheep’s blood. He raised the charred cross over his head again and shouted the MacDonald battle cry, “Fraoch Eilean!”
The castle yard reverberated with the deep voices of the men as they shouted it back. Finally, he motioned to Robbie, the first young warrior to his left, who had earned the honor by catching Hugh’s spy.
“Let our men know the MacDonalds are gathering at the standing stone to fight!” Connor shouted, and Robbie took the charred cross from him and ran out the open gate.
Connor repeated the ceremony two more times, taking the crosses from Alex and Ian, and sending each of the young warriors to raise the men in a different part of the peninsula.
Thecrann tarawas a call to every man, whether he be warrior, farmer, or shepherd, to gather at the designated rallying point, prepared to fight for the clan. Most of the clan’s trained warriors came from Sleat and North Uist and were already at the castle. Thecrann tarawould be a test of the confidence Connor’s Trotternish clansmen had in him as chieftain, and he wondered how many of them would come.
When the ceremony was complete, the men shouted and raised their claymores. Connor saw the battle lust in their eyes, and he was glad to see they were ready to fight. The responsibility for the lives of these brave men fell on his shoulders.
He knew he would have found the burden easier to carry if Ilysa were here to send him off to war.
CHAPTER 42
In the glow of sunset, Connor and Ian lay flat on their bellies and watched the MacLeod warriors across the river. There were so many of them converging on the camp that they looked like a swarm of bees returning to the hive.
“Doesn’t look good,” Ian whispered. “Damn MacIain for getting himself killed.”
