Authors: Lord of the Isles
The barn was empty. Shouting for a gillie, and recalling that his own horse was lame, he chose the first one he came to, which happened to be a prized young bay of Lachlan’s. As a gillie came running in response to his shout, he pressed a bit firmly into the horse’s mouth and slipped the bridle on.
“I’m taking this one,” he said unnecessarily, as he flung the reins over the horse’s head and leaped to its back.
The lad looked at him in dismay. “D’ye no want a saddle, laird?”
“Nay,” he said. “Have you seen my lady?”
“Aye, sir,” said a second lad, stepping into the barn behind the first one. “Lady Cristina rode out twenty minutes ago, mayhap a bit longer. Told one o’ the other lads she were riding t’ yon cliffs.”
Recognizing him as Mairi’s gillie, he said curtly, “East or west, Ian?”
“That I dinna ken, sir,” Ian said, adding as Hector wrenched the bay’s head toward the wide doorway, “Ye should ken, laird, that the lady Isobel followed straightaway afterward, saying she meant t’ catch up wi’ her.”
Hector gave Ian a direct look, feeling instant irritation when the lad bit his lower lip. “What else?” he demanded. “Don’t try telling me it is your normal custom to allow that child to ride off alone, for I won’t believe you.”
“Nay, sir, but she did say she meant to catch Lady Cristina. The lady Isobel is not known for telling untruths.”
When Hector continued to glower, Ian said, “I canna say aught were amiss, laird, but Lady Isobel did seem . . . She looked gey fierce!” he added bluntly.
“Angry?”
“Nay, no so much angry as determined . . . mayhap concerned. I did shout at her t’ tell me if aught were amiss, but she just waved and rode on.”
“Anyone else?” Hector asked dryly.
“Nay, laird.”
“Did the lady Cristina appear to be in a hurry?”
“Well, she did take her horse without a saddle, but so did Lady Isobel. They, both o’ them, ride like the wind and dinna care for ladies’ saddles.”
“Aye, that means naught,” Hector agreed.
Feeling a sudden if inexplicable sense of urgency, he urged the bay to a lope past the castle and onto the grassy slope above. He was nearing the hilltop when a flurry of distant movement to his right drew his notice. Squinting into the distance, with increasing wind, and sunlight casting dancing shadows and bits of golden glare, it was a moment before he realized that someone—more than one person—seemed to be dancing on
Creag na Corps
. Then he realized with shock that they were not dancing but struggling, and by their flying skirts, they were women.
“Are they mad?” he muttered to himself, already spurring the bay to a faster pace. It occurred to him that by ordering his lass home, he might have upset her so much that she had attempted to take her own life.
Spurring harder, he prayed that the good Lord would not allow her to do anything so foolhardy. He had never imagined she could be so impulsive, or so foolish, and did not want to believe it now, but if anything happened to her . . .
He could not finish the thought. He hoped that Mariota was one of the women with her, and would be strong enough to hold her until he could reach them and tell Cristina that he wanted only to keep her safe, that his temper never meant anything, and his strongest flashes burned out as surely as lightning bolts did. Even as that thought crossed his mind, he saw two of the strugglers fall over the cliff.
Crying out in anguish, he kicked the galloping horse as hard as he could.
U
nable at first to make herself look over the edge, Cristina stood in abject horror for a long moment before she heard voices calling to her from below. Hope surging, she stepped carefully near the overhanging edge of rock and looked down.
The cliff did not, as she had supposed, slant inward at that point, although the rock overhung the edge by at least a foot. Below it, the cliff wall bulged out like a middle-aged man who had for years drunk more ale than was good for him. But like that same man, below the bulge, the rest of the wall plunged straight and sheer.
A few feet below her, Isobel clung to a terrifyingly scrawny shrub jutting from the bulge, and below her, Mariota clutched a fist-sized rock poking out from the wall with one hand and a slightly larger shrub than Isobel’s with the other.
“I think this plant is tearing loose,” Isobel said, sounding far calmer, Cristina knew, than she would sound under similar circumstances.
“Let me see if I can reach you,” she said. Lowering herself to all fours, she stretched out flat on the rock, inched forward, and reached a hand toward the child. The distance was much more than she could manage. “Can you pull yourself up to grab my hand?” she asked, knowing the answer but hoping Isobel might see a way.
“I’m afraid if I let go with either hand I’ll fall, and I dare not pull harder on this wee shrub,” Isobel said. “My feet are just dangling free, Cristina. I can’t find anything to rest them on, and I’m afraid to move them about any more.”
“What are you waiting for, Cristina?” Mariota demanded. “Do something!”
“Can you help Isobel find purchase for at least one foot?” Cristina asked her.
“I dare not move! I nearly didn’t catch hold of anything as it was, and this is all your fault, Cristina—yours and Isobel’s. You should never have come up here, and having done so, you should have moved away from the cliff when I told you to.”
Seeing nothing to gain by attempting to persuade Mariota that she had done nothing of the sort, Cristina inched forward until her torso hung perilously over the edge. Focusing on Isobel, so she could avoid looking at the plunging drop below her, she gripped the rough edge of the great rock as best she could with one hand and reached again toward her little sister with the other.
“I cannot move any nearer without toppling over, myself,” she said.
“But I can’t possibly reach you,” Isobel said, visibly struggling now to control her fear. “Oh, Cristina, what are we going to do?”
“We are going to get you both back to the castle safely,” Cristina said firmly as she scrambled to her feet. “Don’t move. I’ll be right back.”
“You say that as if we could go somewhere,” Mariota snapped. “Where are
you
going?”
“Just wait,” Cristina said, snatching up her skirts and running back to the palfrey, which stood patiently waiting with its reins dangling to the ground.
Isobel’s pony was nowhere in sight and, cursing its obvious defection but knowing she had no time to look for it, she snatched up the palfrey’s reins, slipped off its bridle, and ran back to the rock.
Twisting the leather lines into a single strong cord and knotting it in two places, she said, “See if you can catch this line, Isobel.”
“Even if she can,” Mariota protested, “it will not reach this far, so how will you get me up? I’m holding nearly all of my weight on a rock that is too small to grip with both hands, and this stupid shrub is going to rip out at any moment.”
“I don’t know how,” Cristina admitted. “Perhaps, if Isobel can grab this line and wrap it around her wrist, you can hold her foot with the hand you are now using to hold the shrub. Then perhaps I can at least hold you both until help arrives.”
“‘Perhaps’ does not reassure me, and what help?” Mariota demanded. “We are the only ones here, and you said you told no one else you were coming.”
“Someone will see us,” Cristina said, confident that Hector must have returned by now and would come after her, as he had before, as soon as he discovered that she had not yet left and was not in their bedchamber.
Dropping to her hands and knees again, she lay flat and wrapped the twisted leather line tightly around her wrist and hand. As she dangled the other end toward Isobel, she glanced toward the castle.
“Can you see anyone?” Isobel asked, still tightly clutching her shrub and making no move toward the makeshift rescue line.
“I see men on the boat landing and a small group near the castle entrance, and at least some of them seem to be looking this way. Oh, thank heaven,” she added, as movement caught her eye some distance to the right and new hope surged through her. “A horseman is galloping up the hill. I think it may be Hector.”
Even as she narrowed her eyes to be sure, Mariota said, “Grab those reins, Isobel, for mercy’s sake. I’m slipping. We cannot wait for anyone else to help us.”
Cristina heard Mariota scrabbling for a foothold, but Isobel remained still, scarcely breathing, staring wretchedly at the leather line but too terrified now to let go with even one hand long enough to reach for it.
“Grab it, Isobel,” Mariota commanded. “We’ll both die if you don’t.”
“Look at me, Isobel,” Cristina said calmly. When the child obediently shifted her gaze, she said, “You can do this, my love. You know you can. The line is just inches above your right hand.”
“I’m so afraid,” the little girl said with a shuddering sob.
“I know you are, but I want you to take a deep breath. Forget your feet. Forget everything but the line just above you. I tied a fat knot near the end of it, as you will see when you look again. You need only grab it above the knot, and your hand will not slip. Don’t look down,” she warned when Isobel began to turn her head. “There is nothing for you to see down there, and Hector will soon be here.”
“But what if—?”
“Think only about what you must do. You are looking into my eyes. I want you to shift your gaze down to my hand, to the line I am holding. Then follow that line to the knot. When you see the knot, fix your eye on it. Think about which hand you will use. When you have decided how you will do it, do it quickly. I promise that if you grab it, I will not let you fall.”
“But what about me?” Mariota repeated, breaking the calm that Cristina had tried to instill with her voice.
“One thing at a time,” Cristina said, adding a touch of asperity to her tone and willing Mariota to be silent long enough for Isobel to obey.
“You don’t care about me. You believe that I—”
“Be silent, Mariota. Isobel needs to—”
“Oh, yes, of course, think only about what Isobel needs! She is the only one you care about, isn’t she? I don’t count.”
“Please, Mari—”
The line jerked hard in Cristina’s hand, nearly pulling her over, for in the instant that she shifted her attention to Mariota, Isobel let go of her shrub and lurched to grab the line. Then it jerked again as she grabbed it with both hands, and Cristina held her little sister’s full weight with one hand.
Knowing she could not do so much longer, she quickly moved the hand she had pressed against the rock to keep from slipping and grabbed the line instead.
Fighting to hold tight, shutting her eyes to concentrate, and praying that she would not slide right off the rock, Cristina realized that from such a position she could not pull the child up by herself. As it was, she could barely move or think of anything other than her desperate need to hold on to Isobel and not fall.
As the latter thought crossed her mind, the weight on the line increased sharply and Isobel screamed.
Cristina’s eyes snapped open to see that Mariota had grabbed Isobel’s leg and was apparently trying to climb up the side of the cliff, right over the child.
“Mariota, no!”
Hector heard the screams but could see only trees from where he was. Lashing the poor bay to an even faster pace, he felt as if he were in the dreadful nightmare he had often endured at fifteen, after his mother’s death. In the dream, he had believed he could keep her from dying if he could get to her in time and warn her, but his feet had always seemed mired in mud or sand. No matter how hard he tried, he always knew he would be too late, and he feared that he would be now.
The screams stopped as he reached the hilltop and turned toward the cliffs. Only a wee bit farther, he thought, through the trees to the clearing.
“Please, God,” he muttered, dreading what he would find, “let her be safe.”
Still at full speed as he crossed the clearing, and seeing only a female form stretched flat and slowly sliding over the edge, he wrenched the bay to a plunging standstill by the great rock and flung himself off the horse.
“Mariota, what are you doing?” Cristina shrieked. “Let go of Isobel!”
“I can’t,” Mariota shouted over Isobel’s screams. “I meant just to give her a boost so she could grab the line, but that shrub I was holding came free.”
“No, it didn’t. I can see it,” Cristina said.
“That’s not the same one,” Mariota replied. “That one would never hold me.”
“Please, let go of Isobel,” Cristina cried, digging with her toes, fighting to stop sliding, knowing she was much too far over the edge for safety. “I can’t hold you, Mariota. I’m slipping, and all three of us will fall if you don’t let go.”
“Just hold on to us, Cristina. Hector will be here soon. You said he would.”
As Mariota spoke his name, Cristina heard hoofbeats behind her but feared he would be too late. Her hands, arms, and shoulders throbbed with pain, and she felt certain that to slide even an inch or two more would mean the end of them all.
Isobel screamed again, yelling shrilly at Mariota to let go of her, but Cristina barely heeded her cries. She had shut her eyes again, and so firmly had she fixed her mind on praying that they would not all fall before Hector could reach her, that she had no energy left for anything else. She barely heard the scraping footsteps.
Suddenly, the line was lighter.
As relief flooded her mind, a paralyzing scream drowned out Isobel’s cries, and Cristina’s eyes flashed open to see Mariota plunge to the rocks below.
Despite her shock, she held tight to the line, as Hector threw himself on her and reached out to help her hold Isobel.
Holding himself off Cristina with one hand, Hector grabbed the makeshift line just below her grip with the other and eased the child’s weight from her.
“Let go now, lass,” he said. “I’ve got her.”
“We must pull her up together,” Cristina said, her voice choked with tears. “Mariota gave her life trying to push her to safety. We must not let her fall now.”
“We won’t, but trying to pull together is too dangerous. We’d get in each other’s way, so I’ll roll to my left and you ease back from the edge and get up.”