Stirling, Scotland

The Year of Our Lord, 1681

 

 

                                                                                                 Chapter One

 

Miss Elspeth Woodburn opened the door from inside her room and peeked into the short corridor. No one was out there.

Holding a basin of water with a rag floating inside, she stepped out of her room with her long, pale blonde braid swinging behind her.

She’d waited two hours after midnight, until she was sure the sleeping dwale she had mixed into the keep’s water supply had taken effect. Her father, the Baron of Dunley, Lord William Woodburn, might never forgive her. Her friends, the guardsmen of Dunley Keep might not either, but she had to get into the dungeon.

            She had first laid eyes on her father’s prisoner this morning, when he was being dragged into the keep, no doubt to the dungeon. She could not tell his age, if he was young or old, or if he would live until nightfall.  Covered in blood, his face was barely recognizable as a human man. She could tell from her position on top of the outside stairs, however, that his left eye was swollen shut. Blood dried in his hair, darkened his plaid and stained his boots. Most alarming though was the blood that still flowed from a wound in the upper left region of his chest.

            Who was he? Would he die in her home? Why had he been brought here? Who had beaten him until he was unrecognizable? Surely nothing he had done was deserving of such punishment.

            Admittedly, she didn’t know much about the politics of the country, save that Presbyterians, as was her father, were against the king having supreme authority in religious affairs. The king’s people, or Royalists, as they were called, were their enemies. She knew things were growing more serious, with Presbyterian Covenanters disappearing and later showing up dead. But her father had not picked up a sword against any of the king’s men. Was her father’s prisoner a Royalist? Or a simple thief?

Her older brother, Roderick didn’t know when she had gone to him this afternoon.

“I must help him.”

“Father will have ye whipped,” he had warned.

“He will punish me, indeed,” she’d acknowledged.

“And this prisoner is worth it?”

“I wish to help anyone in such terrible distress. No matter who they are.”

She remembered Roddy’s chuckle, but he’d agreed to tell her what to do.

She crept silently passed Kenneth, a guard who was passed out cold on the floor. Kenneth was always positioned at the end of the corridor. She wasn’t sure if her father stationed him there or if it was Kenneth’s personal desire to protect her.

“Fergive me, Kenneth,” she pleaded, leaving him.

The guards would not sleep long. She just needed time to get into the prisoner’s cell, tend to his wounds, and then leave.

She hurried down the stairs and then stepped into the shadows on the first landing, careful not to be seen. Only silence met her ears.

Staying close to the wall, she made her way down two more corridors, passed two more sleeping guards, and then hurried to the stairs descending to the keep’s dungeon.

She had to help the stranger. It was what she loved best–helping others. And that did not just apply to Dunley’s villagers. Whoever or whatever was in need, Elspeth could be counted on to lend her aid. Her desire to help others was what drove her to endless study of the plants and flowers in the vicinity. She knew enough in her mere seventeen years to heal almost any malady. The village physician had even suggested to her father that he send her to be privately tutored. And Brother Algred had admired her to her father, calling her a true blessing from God.

Mayhap, she considered hurrying on her way, if she helped the prisoner, it would atone for whatever sin her father and his men may have committed today by possibly taking another life outside of war. 

Suddenly, she stopped. What if the man was a murderer? What if he murdered another man, or a family? How dangerous was it for her to go to him with all her father’s guards under a sleeping influence?

Aye, she was a fool and would definitely pay the consequence when her father woke up. But the man in the dungeon might die and she had to try to help him.

Girding herself up, she continued. The poor man was too injured to harm her.

She had always been ‘too compassionate fer this harsh world’, her father had often said of her growing up. She did feel things deeply. Until she was ten and five, she believed everyone felt mercy the same. It took her two years to finally, sadly convince herself that most didn’t feel any compassion at all.

She would never become so hardened, so cold.

She reached the dungeon entryway and stepped into the darkness. With just a few melting candles to light the way, she wove around a corner and came to Gilchrist Allen, a commander in her father’s small army, sitting at a table with his head face down on the wooden surface.

She bit her lip. She hoped he wasn’t furious with her when he woke up. She knew all her father’s men. At peacetime, they protected her from unseen enemies. They were her friends. She hoped they wouldn’t hate her.

She would worry about it later. Now, a cold chill ran down her back like the hand of the devil urging her onward.

Picking a candle off the wall, she fit it into a small sconce and held it up to her eyes.

Beyond a locked door of wrought iron bars, the prisoner’s wrists looked to be chained to a post splayed across his shoulders. The post held him up, just off the floor, where he half knelt-half laid on the dirty ground.

Without thinking of anything but saving him, Elspeth snatched the keys to the door from the table and then tucked her fingers into Gilchrist’s pocket and removed another key–the key to the stranger’s chains and hurried to the door.

She unlocked it and pulled the heavy door open. The prisoner didn’t stir. She prayed he wasn’t dead. She went to him slowly. When he still didn’t stir, she knelt beside him. She looked at his face bent toward the ground.

“Sir?” she tried. When he said nothing, she fit Gilchrist’s key into the locks binding his wrists. The instant he was free, his body crumbled to the ground.

Elspeth reached for the basin to bring it closer.

Taking his collar in her fists, she tore his shirt down his chest to expose his wound. The bleeding had stopped but the wound needed her care.

Reaching into a fold in her skirts, she removed two pouches. One of yarrow to stop the bleeding, and the other made from Bog Myrtle to destroy any unwanted disease that tried to infect him. She’d known he would need her medicines and made sure to bring her supply of sphagnum moss for dressing.

She wrung water from the rag and carefully applied it to his flesh. Still, he did not stir. She bent her head to his chest to listen for a heartbeat. Was she too late?

            She sat up straight and saw that he was alive. His eye that wasn’t swollen had opened and was moving over her face. It was the color of charcoal clouds ready to burst forth torrents of water.

            His awakening jarred her. How dangerous was he? How close to death was he?

She could barely make out his face beneath all the blood and dirt caked onto it. Not knowing what to say and a little afraid to say anything at all, she dipped the rag into the bloody water and rinsed and wrung it in her hands.

            “I willna hurt ye,” she promised on a whisper and lifted the rag to his face.

            His eyelid grew heavy, and he closed it again.

            Poor soul, she thought, almost in tears at his condition.

            But there wasn’t any time to contemplate him. She quickly mixed the ingredients of her pouches with water and made poultices for his wound, then dressed it with the moss. Hopefully, he would escape and live a better life.

But first, he had to get out of here.

“Sir.” She gave him a gentle shake. “Ye must wake up and escape. Do ye hear me, my lord? Ye must leave now. There is nae time to–” A noise from above silenced her. Something crashed to the floor upstairs. Someone had awakened!

            She dropped what was in her hands and rushed out of the cell and into the shadows. Truly, she didn’t know why she was hiding. The guards would know it had been she who made them sleep.

            Someone carrying a torch came rushing down the stairs. Elspeth almost stepped out of the shadows, but the man approaching out of the darkness was not anyone she had ever seen before. He wore a dark bonnet atop auburn waves.  Deep red, also, were the mustache and beard covering his set, merciless jaw.

            What? Her mind raced. Who…?

            “Jamie! Doun here!” he shouted upstairs then narrowed his eyes on the man in the cell. He swore and then hurried to Gilchrist.

            No! Elspeth watched in utter horror while the intruder ran his sword into Gilchrist’s back, almost impaling him to the table.

            She clamped her hand over her mouth to keep silent, even while tears poured from her eyes. Gilchrist was dead because of her. How could she ever forgive herself for rendering him helpless?

            She made a strangled sound, for her guilt weighed heavy.

The murderous Highlander looked toward the shadows.

            Another man with bright golden waves entered the dungeon, distracting the first. They were Highlanders. The first carried a long claymore, and the other, a flintlock pistol.

            They hurried into the open cell and to the prisoner as three more strangers entered the dungeon.

            Elspeth watched from the shadows as they gently laid hands on the prisoner. The first man spoke quietly to the others and watched as they lifted him in their arms.

            “Damn it, Logan,” said the second man with the pistol, “how could ye get caught?” 

“Thank the Good Lord we found ye,” another Highlander said. He was brutish and bulky with dark hair and beard and carried his friend under his arm without help from anyone else. “Though, ye know we would have burned every Presbyterian village to the ground to find ye.”

Elspeth nearly went down in a faint. The village…her home.

            “Aye,” the first man agreed, and looked down at the bloody rag and basin of water, the chains and post dangling from the high wall.

            Watching from the shadows, Elspeth’s heart nearly burst out of her chest.

“And fer takin’ care of our enemies withoot us havin’ to lift our swords,” said the one with the pistol.

            Horribly, it was she who they should thank for that. She closed her eyes trying to stop herself from being ill. She’d put the guards to sleep. The village was without protection because of her! Her family–!

            She almost rushed out. It took every ounce of strength she possessed to wait until the men left the dungeon with their friend.

            The instant they were gone, she raced to the stairs. She didn’t make it far when something smashed into the back of her head and sent her sprawling onto the hard ground.

            Above her, a man’s laughter echoed through her ears just before the world went black.