The Chieftain (21 page)

If
he returned. For that fear at least was real. She drew her knees up to her chin and closed her eyes and prayed fervently for his safe return.

The first hesitant greyness of the dawn had lightened the clouds when Hector slipped silent as a shadow into their hiding place. Isobel had not heard him coming, alert though she was to every sound.

He did not look at her, simply went to Duncan and knelt at his side to make sure he was well. Isobel did not dare to ask him what he had found at Ardshee, for she could not see his face well enough to judge his mood. She wondered fleetingly if he had forgotten she was there.

She heard him shake Duncan gently awake, and when the older man sat up, rubbing his eyes, tell him briefly that his wife and children were alive and well.

‘I cannot say more now,’ he added. ‘We must be on our way before daylight.’

‘Why is that?’ broke in Isobel sharply. ‘Surely the soldiers will not be on us so soon?’

‘They are camped about half a mile from here,’ Hector told her without looking round. ‘They were already stirring when I passed. It seems likely they plan to move forward to take us at first light. I think they will not be certain we are here, but there are few enough hiding places in these parts. We will be safer in the open.’

Isobel felt her heartbeat quicken with alarm. She had not somehow expected this new danger, though perhaps she should have done. She had seen enough of John Campbell’s hatred of Hector to know he would not lightly give up the pursuit.

They set out almost at once, pausing only to drink from a burn near their ruined shelter, before hurrying on with Hector leading the way. It was already light enough to make out the shapes of rocks and trees and the undulations of the landscape. It was also still raining steadily, and all three pulled their plaids well over their heads to provide some protection from the drenching wetness. Isobel noticed that Hector’s clothes were already sodden. She hoped that Highlanders were by nature as impervious to the damp as they seemed to be to starvation and exhaustion. Hector appeared tireless even now, after a day and a night of almost continuous activity. For all she knew he had been walking and running since the battle.

They followed the burn down to where it ran into a small loch lying quiet and steel-grey, its surface pitted with rain, in a hollow of the hills. Hector led them round its edge, over rocky hummocks and miniature bays of fine sand, and on to the mountainside beyond.

After that there were few landmarks that presented themselves to Isobel, but only an apparently endless succession of tussocks of grass and patches of heather, varied with rocks and marshy places designed only to make the way more arduous. It seemed as if every summit they reached only led to another. The sole comfort was that there was neither sight nor sound of pursuit. It looked as if Hector’s prompt action had saved them again. Even so they did not pause, moving as silently as if there were soldiers listening behind every stone.

At last they came to a small glen driven deep into the mountains and Hector led them to the inadequate shelter of a little wood.

‘We shall rest here,’ he said, in the toneless voice he seemed to use all the time now.
 

They crouched down where the trees grew most thickly, the two men side by side and Isobel a little way off.
 

She knew it would be sensible to go closer, for warmth and shelter, but she was afraid to intrude where she was not wanted. Hector had not looked at her today as he had in that dreadful moment yesterday, but he had scarcely looked at her at all, and then without any trace of warmth. Now his first thoughts were for his other companion.

‘Catriona is well, and the children too,’ he said to Duncan. ‘They are more fortunate than most, for they contrived by some miracle to escape the soldiers’ attention—I think perhaps our coming was just in time to save one or two of them in the same way. So you can be comforted, and when it is quieter you will be able to go home. So long as we do not go back to Ardshee now I think they will be left in peace.’

Isobel saw Duncan bend his head on his hands in thankfulness at the news. But there was one urgent question Hector had not answered, and she burst out:

‘Mairi—What of Mairi?’

Unmistakably, hatred lit Hector’s eyes as he turned to her, and she recoiled as if he had struck her.

‘She is dead, did you not know?’ He spoke harshly, clearly expecting no answer. ‘But of course you did not, for you had run away by then.’

It took Isobel a moment or two to grasp what he meant, and then she was swept by a piercing mixture of grief and regret, underlaid with relief. ‘So…She died long before the soldiers came? Oh, I am thankful she was spared—!’

‘Perhaps it was her knowledge of my wife’s unkindness that killed her,’ returned Hector unpleasantly. ‘I only know she died in January, and they brought me word of it. That was when I learned you had gone, and that you were to bear a child.’ The cold eyes scanned her searchingly. ‘You do not look as if that was true.’

‘I lost the baby,’ Isobel told him in a faltering whisper. Even now, after all that had happened, the memory pained her, filling her eyes with tears. Would it have been different if she had stayed in Mairi’s care? Would the child have lived, and Mairi too?

As if in echo of her thoughts, Hector went on, ‘That was one result of your flight from Ardshee I suppose? Then you killed my child as surely as you killed my brother.’ He ignored her anguished protest and went on. ‘Why did you come back? What possible reason could you have, in God’s name? Did your parents throw you out?’

She longed to tell him the truth, but feared the bitter contempt of his response. So she said only, ‘It was not that. But I... I did make a solemn vow, once, even if I was forced to it... and... I wanted to show I was - worthy - of you...’

He gave a harsh laugh, abrupt and utterly without warmth.

‘Oh you have shown it, Isobel MacLean, you have shown it—! Only I wonder what I am to have deserved you—’

‘I did not choose to marry you, remember.’ She was so close to tears that her voice sounded rough and petulant, concealing the pain she felt.

‘You did not, God help me!’ he agreed bitterly.
 

A silence followed, uncomfortable and prolonged. It was Duncan who broke it, placing his hand on Hector’s arm.

‘Your foster-brother Hugh—how is it with him?’

Hector turned away from Isobel, his expression at once softer, full of a gentler grief. ‘All is well with him now, Duncan. Thank God they had not used his body as foully as they did those of the dead on Drummossie Moor. The women will see to his burying.’

‘He was a good man,’ added Duncan, and Hector nodded his agreement. The older man went on, as if reciting an old tale, ‘He saved your life on Drummossie Moor. When you fell with that wound to your head he bore you on his back from the field and would not rest until you were far from the fight. And he watched over you to keep you from harm, and from the soldiers who were killing the wounded.’
 

‘And you watched with him,’ Hector reminded him.

‘What happened to the other men who went with you?’ Isobel asked.

Again that cold light gleamed in Hector’s eyes. She told herself she would not question him again.

‘They died, of course - with all the hundreds who fell that day. If any lived I did not hear of it.’

After a while their more immediate needs came to mind. Forgetting her resolution to ask no more questions, she asked: ‘Did you bring any food from Ardshee?’
 

Again came that unpleasant laugh. ‘Food? Where do you imagine I would find food at Ardshee? The soldiers drove off the cattle before they left, and took everything else they could lay their hands on. We have your good friend John Campbell to thank for that.’

‘You know he is no friend of mine!’ she retorted, stung to indignation by his tone. ‘You saw what he did to me—And it’s because of him that I lost the baby.’
 

‘That does surprise me!’ Hector flung at her. ‘I did not know he had such a hand in my wife’s affairs. Did you enlist his aid to rid you of it?’

The injustice of his words stung her to anger.

‘How can you say that? I know only too well what he is, to my cost.’
 

She told him briefly how John had come to take her home, and then how she had learned the truth about him, and how his violence had brought on the miscarriage already threatened by the long journey. When she had finished she saw Hector’s brows draw together fiercely and he burst out,

‘Then I have more than I knew to charge him with—and he shall pay for all the wrong he has done. For taking you away from me. For the death of my unborn child. Above all for the death of my brother. For that I blame you, as for the other things, but John Campbell more even than you, for you are only a weak woman and it was his hand fired the shot that killed my brother.’

All at once he pulled the dirk from his belt and fell onto his knees and laid his hand over the gleaming blade, his eyes burning and terrible words pouring from him like liquid fire.

‘I swear by the Trinity and the Blessed Saints that I shall seek John Campbell all my days until I find him, and that I shall end his life with my own hand. And if I fail in this may I be cursed in all I do, may I meet a coward’s death and lie without burial in a strange land. So let it be to me!’

As Isobel shivered with horror he rose to his feet, slid the dirk back into his belt, and said, ‘But first you must be taken to safety.’
 

She almost retorted that he owed her nothing, that she did not ask him to take care of her, knowing that he hated her as he did.
 

And then she realised what his words implied. So long as he felt responsible for her, so long as she was with him, he would put aside his sworn intention to seek out John Campbell and kill him. And for so long therefore he would be safe from the soldiers who marched under John Campbell’s orders, and who would imprison or kill him the moment he came near their Captain.
 

So she said nothing, and rose to her feet in her turn to follow Hector on the next stage of this seemingly endless journey.

Chapter Seventeen

The days fell into a dreary and repetitive pattern. Mile after mile of heather and grass and bog passed beneath their feet, their only rest when they huddled in cold and darkness in a wood or against a wall or anywhere that offered some hope of shelter. They ate roots and plants, or once a little food given by a kindly Highland woman whom the soldiers had somehow missed. They drank from the burns. They were eaten in their turn by midges. When, now and then, Hector ordered a longer stay - a day or two perhaps - in some precarious hiding place, there was little chance of repose, with the need to be constantly watching for the approach of troops. And always it seemed to rain and rain almost without ceasing.

A glimpse of scarlet through trees, or the familiar sounds of soldiers at work, caused the only breaks in the routine of the days. They had learnt long since that John Campbell was not alone in wreaking a terrible vengeance on the rebels. Isobel thought they must have covered miles retracing their steps to avoid the plundering troops of one regiment or another. She had lost all track of time, and had no longer any idea how long they had been travelling, or what day it was. She grew used to aching legs and sore feet, and when her shoes shredded away to nothing she walked barefoot like the two men and endured the discomfort without complaint. She was relieved at least that the gentler walking in Janet’s company had prepared her a little for this.

But she knew she could cheerfully have borne any hardship if only Hector had shown her some little kindness greater than the cold disdainful courtesy of his manner towards her. She longed almost for the fire of his anger, as preferable to the chilling contempt that marked his every word and action. She recognised she was no more to him than a burdensome responsibility of which he must rid himself as soon as possible. But she did not ask him where he was taking her, for he so clearly wanted as little to do with her as he could. Only to Duncan did he choose to talk at all, and that not often.

One day, when it had rained even more than usual and the wind had blown since dawn with relentless force, they came on a cottage set by itself in a small glen beside a loch. They had eaten nothing of any substance for some days now, and Hector suggested they ask at the house for food and shelter.

They approached it together and knocked on the door, but when it opened at last suspicious eyes examined them through a narrow crack.

‘What are you wanting?’ demanded a man’s voice. The hospitable courtesy Isobel had come to expect even from strangers among Highlanders was entirely lacking in his tone.

‘We should be glad of an hour or two of rest, if you have a little space under your roof,’ replied Hector. ‘And if by chance you could spare us some food—’

The eyes looked them up and down, and then the man said: ‘We have nothing for you. Go on your way and leave us in peace.’

As Hector opened his mouth to protest, the door was shut firmly in his face.

‘God’s curse on him!’ muttered Duncan into his beard, but Hector laid a weary hand on his arm.

‘We can do nothing. Let us go on.’

They were well on their way when a cry from behind caught their attention. A woman came running from the house towards them, waving a package in her hand.