Page 62 of Highlander’s Quest of Desire

Chapter Twenty-Four

Laird Labert tapped his fingernails on the table and considered the man before him. Tiny, discreet, and nondescript, Foley was the best spy on his payroll. He had kept him abreast of all of General Forester’s activities in Edinburgh, which is why Laird Labert had thought him most suitable of the task of shadowing Bruce and Elspeth. But the information he had given just now was not only incomplete it was very confusing.

“Ye lost them before they reached the River Carron?” he confirmed.

Foley nodded, his curtain of greasy hair swaying before his face. “I was with them when they visited the village church at Falkirk. After that…” he hesitated then said in a rush, “There was a storm.”

“A storm?” Laird Labert raised his eyebrows. “What nonsense! That’s never stopped ye before.”

“It was different this time,” Foley insisted. He looked spooked. “I cannae explain it. One minute the weather was fine, nae a cloud in the sky. Then it started raining so hard I had to find shelter in a cottage. It felt like God was trying to keep me from spying on them.”

“Did ye hit yer head on the mission, or has some sorceress put a curse on you? What superstitious prattle. It was but a summer shower.”

“I’ve seen enough summer showers in my life to ken it was nae a summer shower. Lightning struck a tree in Falkirk, and it was cleaved in half.”

Laird Labert groaned internally but decided to move on. He got up from his chair and stared out the window at the trees, the fields, and the hills that surrounded the valley.

The room was smaller than Master Faraday’s healing room, but Laird Labert felt it was enough to serve as his study. A solid oak desk with enough drawers to hide knickknacks and stolen snacks, a map of his lands on the wall, and ledgers full of figures and calculations. Laird Labert could be found at odd hours of the day and sometimes night, working and planning in his study. Right now, it wasn’t the cheerful place it usually was.

“And ye could nae track them?”

“They left very few tracks.” Foley shrugged. “And the rain and mud made it difficult to find the ones that were there.”

“Then how did ye ken Elspeth was in Dunnottar?” Laird Labert asked.

“I was coming back to Balquhidder when I saw Leo Sinclair. He was buying clothes from a dress shop in the village of stow. I asked around and was told that he was travelling with a woman and two other men. I waited and spied Elspeth. She’s nae well, Laird Labert. Sinclair or one of his men took the hand to her face. Tied to the horse like a prisoner she was.”

Laird Labert clenched his fists, and his mouth soured into a grimace. “I never liked that Sinclair lad. What of Bruce?”

“I didnae see hide nor hair of him, Laird.”

A heavy feeling came to rest on Laird Labert’s chest. Did this mean Bruce was dead? What had possessed him to leave the safety of Balquhidder? There was something Bruce had been hiding from him. Laird Labert was afraid he had involved himself in something dangerous and now paid for it with his life.

He had not lied to Bruce and Elspeth when he had claimed he loved them like a father. The thought of them in pain, and wanting his support, was a physical blow to him.

Their faces loomed in front of his eyes, not as the adults they were now, but as the children he had seen grown up in front of his eyes. Even at this very moment, knowing better, his hopelessly optimistic heart gazed out across the valley hoping Bruce and Elspeth would emerge from a thicket of trees on their horses, safe and on their way home.

Stepping away from the window and the pleasant view of the valley, he started pacing the room. What could he do?

One thing was certain – his suspicions about Leo Sinclair were proven right. The man that had betrayed Bruce to the English had not been a Labert but a Sinclair. This news must have broken Bruce. The lad was determined it was anyone but Leo when the idea had first been presented to him, and Laird Labert understood how hard it would have been for him to turn his convictions about his childhood friend.

But at that moment Leo was not his main concern. Elspeth was in clear and present danger. She needed to be saved. Deciding on a point of action, Laird Labert sat back down on his chair and pulled two sheets of paper to himself. Over the next five minutes he wrote, head bent low on the paper on account of his nearsightedness. Once he was done, he waited for the ink to dry before folding up the missives and sealing them with his crest on wax.

“Foley,” he said, holding out the addressed letters. “Have Kenneth and Sean take horses and deliver these urgently. They can change horses on the way, but they cannae stop for rain or sunshine. I need these delivered before the sun sets tomorrow.”

“Aye, Laird Labert,” Foley said, bowing low. He left on silent feet.

Now all Laird Labert could do was wait.

* * *

The sensation of falling pulled at his navel, and Bruce startled awake. The vaulted sky above him was as blue as a robin’s egg. Bruce sucked in air and expelled it slowly. The nightmare of tumbling down the cliff kept returning to him. He planted his hands palms down on the wooden slats of the cart and lifted his shoulders up, wincing at the pain in his left shoulder.

“Water.” Morris said.

Bruce accepted the water skin from the grizzled hand of the cart owner. He had found Bruce unconscious at the base of the hill he had been pushed off of. The fact that he hadn’t been killed in the fall was a miracle. His shoulder had been displaced, but Morris had fixed in no time.

Morris was the kind of man you could find on any road in Scotland – back stooped, weather-beaten skin as dark as tanned leather, their pace and speech as slow as the day was long. A fount of wisdom and man of many talents, Morris was the salt of Scotland’s good earth.