TheScotandI






Seven



There were dungeons in the original castle but none in the brand-new edifice that Prince Albert had built for his queen only thirty years before. Alex came to himself in a cellar that had been converted to a cell. There was a barred window high in the wall. The light was fading, and he wondered how long he had been drifting in and out of consciousness.
“Alex?”
The hoarse voice came from a cot on the other side of the cell, Gavin’s voice, weak and wavering. The sound of it had Alex dragging himself off the floor and stumbling toward the noise. There was only one cot in the cell.
He could barely make out his brother’s face. “What happened to you, Gavin?”
Gavin let out a shaky laugh. “I didn’t know your job was so dangerous,” he said. “There was I at our hunting lodge, waiting for you to turn up, when some red-faced villain tried to arrest me for murder. I resisted, and he took a shot at me.”
“He shot you?”
“Don’t worry. He didn’t hit me, but he ruined my coat and trousers. The bullet, luckily for me, went right through my pocket. An inch to two to the right, and he would have unmanned me.”
Relief flooded through Alex, not because Gavin was still the same playful gallant but because no one who was seriously injured could have strung so many sentences together.
“The thing is,” Gavin went on, “your colonel didn’t like the answers I gave when they brought me in for questioning. I tried to tell him about the woman we were pursuing, and he wouldn’t listen. He accused me of trying to kill the queen.” His voice changed color, gentled, and he said, “You know that Dickens was stabbed in the back?”
“I know,” Alex replied.
“I’m sorry. I know how much you liked and trusted him.” He shifted his position and groaned. “Nothing to worry about,” he said. “The colonel had his soldiers beat me, rather badly. I think they may have cracked one of my ribs.”
“Let me take a look.”
Gavin sucked in a breath when Alex gingerly pressed a hand to his side. “You’re bleeding,” Alex said.
“The bullet may have nicked me in passing, but no harm done. One of the orderlies tended to the wound, a very nice fellow by the name of Wilson. I don’t think Foster is very popular in the castle.”
Alex’s tone was savage. “What you need is a doctor!”
Gavin chuckled. “I’m a prisoner, Alex, not a guest. I was lucky to have an orderly take a look at me. I’m fine, really.”
Alex could hardly control his anger or his frustration. One way or another, they were going to get out of here, even if he had to carry his brother on his back. Then he’d take care of the colonel.
Gavin said, “What are you thinking?”
Alex shook his head. “None of it makes sense. Dickens wasn’t attached to Special Branch or the Secret Service. He was in charge of security at the castle. He was a policeman. Why would anyone want to kill him?”
“I have no idea.”
“How did it happen? Do you know?”
“All they’ve told me is that Dickens was in his office when he was stabbed.”
“But we weren’t anywhere near there.”
Alex tried to visualize how the drama had played out. They’d gone to the stable for horses so that they could go after the woman who had shot Ramsey. They hadn’t heard a scuffle or anyone call out. He turned the problem over in his mind. Finally, he said, “Who was the last person to see Dickens alive?”
“I have no idea.” Gavin shrugged. “I took that fellow who was shot to get medical attention, left him with the doctor, and made straight for the terrace to meet you. I don’t know what happened after that.”
Alex tried to put himself in Dickens’s shoes. What had he seen or heard that made someone want to kill him? Where was Ramsey at the crucial time? Was someone else involved? A member of Demos? Was the girl a distraction?
She’d given him Dugald’s cloak to keep him warm. She’d stopped that stinking cart to check on him on that bumpy ride to Inver. Whatever else she was, she was no coldhearted killer.
But she was a member of Demos, if he could trust his vision.
Gavin said, “Did you catch up with the woman we were tracking?”
“Mmm? Oh, yes, and I was wondering whether she was telling the truth. She said that Ramsey had a revolver, but I didn’t see it.”
“You’re thinking Ramsey may have murdered Dickens?”
“It’s possible.”
“Then why not shoot Dickens—oh, I see. The shot would be heard, and everyone would come running. But Ramsey was a victim, too, wasn’t he? And why would he kill Dickens?”
“If I knew the answer to that question, I’d be a seer.”
Gavin chuckled. “What if the girl lied?”
Alex’s answer was clipped. “Well, we know that she didn’t kill Dickens. We were hot on her trail, remember?”
“Ouch,” said Gavin. “You like this woman, I can tell. What are you doing?”
Alex had abruptly risen and was exploring the four corners of the cell. “I’m looking for a way out.”
“What about your section chief? Why isn’t he here to take our statements?”
“He had to go to Whitehall on the queen’s business,” Alex replied, “but I’m sure when he returns, he’ll soon sort Colonel Foster out.”
“Maybe we should wait for him to arrive and be good little boys?”
“Foster doesn’t play nice, Gavin. I’m not sure that you can take another beating. And if Durward is delayed, who knows what Foster will do to get us to confess? If he sets his soldiers on us again, I swear I’ll kill him. Durward won’t be able to help us, then.”
Gavin had no reply to this.
After a few minutes, Alex came back to Gavin and sat at the foot of the pallet with his back to the wall. “They have to feed us, bring us water. That’s when we will make our bid for freedom.”
“Fine. Whatever you say.”
This carefree response startled a laugh out of Alex. “I’m baffled,” he said. “You were nicked by a bullet and took a sadistic beating, yet you sound quite chipper. How do you do it?”
“Ah, well,” responded Gavin, “you could say I’m putting my muse to the test.”
“What?”
“The gift I got from Granny. I can put thoughts into people’s minds. So I thought, why not put them into my own mind? And it worked. The pain became manageable. I can move more easily. The trouble is, I haven’t had enough practice and become distracted.”
“If that’s the case, why didn’t you stop the soldiers from beating you?”
“I’m a seer, not a magician, and my gift doesn’t work with everyone.”
“What about me? Can you put thoughts into my mind?”
“No, more’s the pity.”
Alex was pleased to hear it. He didn’t want anyone meddling with his mind. Hardly had the thought occurred to him than he remembered his vague uneasiness as he approached the castle: he was riding into danger and Gavin was there.
“Of course,” Gavin went on, “I may improve with practice.”
“Just remember, two can play at that game.”
Each heard the smile in the other’s voice. After a moment’s thought, Gavin said, “So what do we do now?”
“We rest.”
“Fine. Then you can tell me what you’ve been keeping to yourself.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Come on, Alex. I’m not a simpleton. Durward just happens to be in Whitehall on the queen’s business? Durward and the queen are inseparable. So I’ll ask you again: What’s really going on? Where is Durward? Where is the queen? And where is the woman we were after?”
Alex debated for a moment as though he’d come to a fork in the road and he was deciding which way to go. At length, he said, “I never wanted to involve you in this, for your own protection, but it’s gone way beyond that. But you’re right. You are involved whether I like it or not.” He shifted slightly to ease the pain in his back.
“You may remember that some years ago a group called Demos caused quite a stir. They detonated a few bombs in Edinburgh and London to draw attention to their aims.”
“Yes, I remember. They wanted Scotland to become a republic, didn’t they?”
“They did. But they weren’t vicious with it, not to begin with. They bombed empty buildings, that sort of thing. No one got hurt and no one took them seriously until . . .”
“Until . . .” Gavin gently prompted.
“Until one of my handpicked agents infiltrated the group. As it turns out, she wasn’t my agent but was working for Demos. She set things up so that three of my agents were ambushed, blown up, in fact. I was supposed to be with them, but I was searching another part of the building.” He shook his head. “Suffice it to say that we began to take Demos seriously after that. In fact, we hounded them out of existence. We thought that was the end of it.”
There was a short silence, then Gavin said, “What happened to your handpicked agent?”
“She died in mysterious circumstances.”
“I see,” Gavin said softly.
Alex shifted again. “In the last year or so, Demos has returned with a vengeance.”
“Were they responsible for those bombs going off in London last year?”
“The Irish took the credit for that so we may never know. What we do know is that Demos decided to do something spectacular to make us all sit up. They decided to assassinate the queen.”
“And you know this because—?”
“One of Demos’s agents turned coat and informed us anonymously by letter. This time, we took the threat seriously. We didn’t want loose tongues to scare Demos off, so we set things up with a decoy queen.”
“A decoy? You mean that wasn’t the queen at the reception?”
“No, it was someone who acted the part of the queen. We set a trap hoping to ensnare an assassin.” Alex went on at some length, answering the many questions that occurred to Gavin. Finally, Gavin shook his head.
“What?” asked Alex.
“What I can’t understand is why you became involved. I thought you were happy breaking codes in Whitehall.” On the next breath, Gavin answered his own question. “It’s a personal vendetta, then? They murdered your agents, and you want them to pay for it?”
“Wouldn’t you if you were in my shoes?”
“I’m amazed,” said Gavin, sounding irritated in spite of his words. “You’re still playing the part of the elder brother, even in the Secret Service. You can’t blame yourself for everything that goes wrong. I’m sure your agents understood the risks they were running.”
Alex had nothing to say to this.
Gavin heaved a sigh. “How does the woman who shot Ramsey fit into this?”
“I haven’t made up my mind.” Alex shrugged. “She may be the turncoat. I don’t know.”
Gavin waited, and when his brother did not elaborate, he said with a hint of annoyance, “You can’t stop there. I’m entitled to know whether she is on our side or not.”
“She’s not on our side.”
“Then she’s the enemy.”
“She’s not the enemy.” Alex sighed. “I don’t know, all right? I haven’t made up my mind about her.”
Mystified, Gavin said, “Begin at the beginning, and tell me what happened after we split up. Where did she lead you? Did you lose her? Tell me, Alex.”
Alex took his time to put his thoughts in order, and the account he gave his brother was highly expurgated. The sequence of events he related was as accurate as he could make it, but those undercurrents of awareness between himself and the girl, that spark of energy that seemed to ignite between them when he let his guard down, were too personal, too annoying to share.
When he stopped speaking, Gavin suppressed a chortle.
“What?” demanded Alex, the same glower in his voice that was etched on his brow.
“Nothing. Nothing at all. What’s her real name?”
“I have no idea.”
“Something to do with fire, I’ll wager.”
“Why do you say that?”
“I was thinking of Granny, just before she died. You must remember what she foretold for each of her grandsons—you, James, and me.”
Alex’s voice softened to a murmur. “Yes, I remember.”
They were in Drumore Castle, the seat of their cousin James’s family, an imposing edifice that jutted into the North Sea. Granny McEcheran, the “Witch of Drumore” as the locals called her, had summoned her grandsons to her bedside to pass on her psychic legacy.
Her grandsons were men of the world, but because they loved their granny, they had humored her. On her death, she told them, they would become members of an honorable company with a long tradition: the seers of Grampian. They had been highly skeptical but, as it turned out, Granny was right.
Each had received a different gift: James had premonitions of the future that came to him in his dreams; Gavin had the power to put thoughts into people’s minds; and he, Alex, had the gift of sensory perception. When he handled certain objects, pictures formed in his mind. He still had to interpret those pictures, and therein lay a problem. Sometimes he was right, and sometimes he was almost right, and that wasn’t good enough.
Gavin broke into his thoughts. “Granny left each of us with a puzzle to solve, a prediction for the future. Don’t you remember?”
“I remember,” Alex replied. He could hear his granny’s voice as if she were whispering in his ear.
“You will pass through fire, but it will not consume you if you trust your intuition. Hold fast to what you feel, Alex.”
Gavin intoned, “You will pass through fire—”
“I know what Granny said,” retorted Alex. “I don’t need you to remind me. But I fail to see what that has to do with the woman who shot Ramsey.”
“Maybe nothing at all, but if I were you, I’d want to know her name.”
Alex opened his mouth to blast his brother, but the words died on his tongue. A different kind of blast struck the barred window, shattering the glass, and a shower of fragments borne on a ferocious gust of wind hurtled inside.
After a moment of stunned silence, Gavin said, “Good God, what the devil was that?”
“I think it’s the gale all the locals have been predicting in the last week.”
Both brothers listened as a wild dervish raged outside their window. They could hear horses neighing and men shouting and what sounded like trees toppling to the ground.
Gavin said, “No one is going to feed us and water us with that racket going on. They’ll be too busy tying everything down.”
“Well, we’re not tied down,” said Alex. “Trust me, little brother. One way or another, I’m going to get us out of here. Now get out of that cot, and let’s see if we can make a weapon out of it.”
In short order, he had demolished the cot and fashioned a club from one of its supports.
 
 
Mahri, in her boy’s get-up, cowered in the shelter of the rowing boat that she and Dugald had just beached under an outcrop of rock. There was no lightning or thunder, but there was enough rain to float Noah’s ark. That wasn’t the worst of it, though. The gale was strong enough to uproot trees. Pines and poplars were toppling over like skittles, making movement dangerous if not impossible.
Up ahead was Balmoral Castle. She could imagine the chaos inside the castle walls as everyone ran to light oil lamps and candles.
Above the roar of the wind, she shouted, “What do we do now?”
“We wait,” Dugald responded, and just in case she had not heard him, he tethered her with a hand on her arm.
This was not how they had planned things when they’d set off from Braemar. She’d paid her shot at the Inver Arms and retrieved all her belongings, including her revolver, and they’d walked the distance to Invercauld, where Dugald had arranged to have a boat waiting. They had set off in the gloaming, not dusk exactly, but not far from it. They’d hoped to row downstream to Balmoral while it was still light, but the dark rain clouds that were spreading out over Deeside had turned the Dee into the river Styx.
Their plan was simple. They were going to pass themselves off as servants of one of the many Gordon lairds in the area, with a couple of crocks of whiskey for Colonel Foster, with the Gordon’s compliments for services rendered. A man like Foster would be flattered by the gesture, even though he might not remember what service he had rendered. Then they’d take the colonel hostage and force him to release his prisoners.
And after that, they’d go their separate ways.
It didn’t look now as though that plan would work.
Dugald said, “I don’t know, lass. This doesn’t look good. Maybe we should give up and try another day.”
“Give up? And give Foster the chance to finish what he started? I will not! Don’t you see, Dugald, the gale has made things easier for us? We don’t need Colonel Foster. It will be as black as pitch in the cellars. All we need do is open the door and spirit the Hepburns away.”
“Ye forgot something.”
“What?”
“The key to the door.”
Mahri let out a half breath. “If you won’t come with me, I’ll go alone.” When she felt him stiffen beside her, she bit down on her lip. “I didn’t mean it, Dugald. You know I wouldn’t do this without your say so. You know the castle’s layout, and I don’t.”
He snorted, but the stiffness went out of him. “There will be a lull,” he said in her ear. “It will only last for a few minutes. Then we run like hell for the castle walls. Have ye got that?”
“Aye.”
A minute went by then another. She heard it now, the silence as the storm abated, heavy, breathless, ominous.
“Now!” shouted Dugald.
She scrambled over the outcrop of granite that they’d sheltered under and bolted for the castle. Her feet had never moved faster as she darted into the cover of the trees; her breath—quick, shallow, and sobbing—seemed loud in her own ears. She stumbled a time or two, but Dugald was right behind her with a guiding hand. When she reached the wall, she clung to it as though it were her long-lost lover. She didn’t want to let go, but Dugald gave her no respite.
He dragged on her arm and pulled her along the wall till they turned the corner to the entrance facing the stables.
And as suddenly as the silence had fallen, the storm erupted again in a roar of rage. There was no one about, everyone was taking cover, but the horses in the stable were stamping and neighing in terror, and dogs were howling like banshees.
Dugald knew his way around the nether regions of the castle, though he’d never set foot abovestairs. He was a deerstalker, and when he had business here, he entered by the tradesmen’s entrance.
He hustled her through the doorway and down a flight of stairs. If it was dark outside, here it was pitch-black.
There was someone in the corridor with them, someone up ahead. “Bugger you, Willie,” a masculine voice said. “I told you to shut the outside door before you opened the door to the cellars. Now see what you’ve done. The lamp has gone out.”
They heard a match strike, saw it falter and go out. A shadow moved, then began to close the distance between them.
“Willie?” This time the voice held a thread of suspicion.
Mahri felt Dugald tense to spring. Fearing the other man might have a gun, she put a restraining hand on Dugald’s arm and pushed past him.
“Please, sir?” She used the most girlish voice she could muster. “Dinna be angry. I’m lost, you see. Can ye tell me what door leads to the kitchen?”
There was a silence, then the man chuckled. As he walked slowly toward her, she heard the clink of metal on metal, like a key on a ring.
“I’ll show you the way,” he said, “if ye gie me a kiss.” He stopped suddenly when he felt the press of her revolver against his ribs.
“One word out of you,” Dugald said, “and I’ll have my wee friend here pull the trigger. Now, take me to the Hepburn.”
A heartbeat of silence went by as the jailer seemed to weigh his options. When he let out a resigned sigh, Mahri began to breathe again, but she was still on edge.
The jailer led them to the end of the corridor. “Here we are.”
It seemed eerily quiet to Mahri. She’d expected the Hepburn to call out, something.
“Unlock the door,” Dugald said. He waited until the jailer complied. “Now, you first.”
Mahri was truly alarmed at the silence. She had visions of the Hepburn’s broken body lying in a heap on the floor. Why was it so quiet in that cell?
A voice from inside whispered, “Water . . . please . . . water.”
Dugald pushed the jailer into the cell, and energy exploded around them. She heard the crack of something hitting the jailer, the whoosh of air from his lungs, then the thud of his body as it hit the floor.
“Hold off!” Dugald roared. “We’ve come to rescue ye both.”
“Dugald?” said Hepburn incredulously.
“Aye, Dugald and Master Thomas.”