Blue Bells of Scotland: Book One of the Blue Bells Trilogy (55 page)

"Hugh will see that you canna fight, and station you on Coxet Hill. You'll be safe, Niall."

Shawn knew what the English would do to the people of Coxet Hill, if they broke through the Scots. "I'll fight," he said.

They stared at each other for a long time, Allene's jaw set. Certainty settled on him. "We've had this conversation before, haven't we."

"Aye.

"Is that who you want me to be, Allene? The man who hides on Coxet Hill?"

She lowered her eyes. "I'll get Brother David." She gathered her skirts and climbed to her feet.

"Put the needle in the fire, first!" Shawn shouted after her.

Brother David followed her back through the trees, needle and thread in hand. He handed Shawn a tough piece of leather. "Bite it," he said. Allene took his hand.

"What am I doing?" he muttered, looking at the needle. He closed his eyes; tensed, waited.

Brother David's hands clamped down on calf and knee, holding him tight. The needle dug in, sending shards of pain shooting like slivers of broken glass up and down his leg. He jerked against Brother David's grip. He gritted his teeth as the coarse thread tugged his skin.

She poked again, whispering, "I'm sorry, Niall, hush now, I'm sorry." She tugged and stabbed, stabbed and tugged. Sweat prickled his forehead. Against his will, he imagined red, raw flesh being stitched and drawn together. He tried to slow his breathing and stop the shuddering intakes of breath, each time the needle pushed through his skin again.

"Bite the strap," said Brother David.

He bit the leather, eyes squeezed tight, as the needle gouged in again, determined not to sully Niall's name, in case the man ever came back to reclaim it. "What am I doing?" he muttered. "I could have stayed on Coxet Hill."

* * *

Allene covered the eighteen stitches with salve and wrapped them tight in clean linens. Shawn sat on the edge of the field the rest of the day, watching the men drill. He rehearsed each move in his mind.
Thrust. Jab. Parry
. He copied their moves with his arms, slowly, then faster and faster, exactly as he'd learned
Blue Bells
so many years ago; exactly as he'd learned the pieces on harp.
Thrust. Jab. Parry.
He watched every move they made, rehearsed it slowly in his mind, and made it his own.

Twenty-four hours later, rested and bandaged, Shawn limped onto the field, hefting a sword. He swung it, slowly, as he'd watched them do; as he'd rehearsed in his mind. He swung it again, in the arcing patterns he'd memorized,
adagio, moderato, allegro.
The thought of the English swarming Coxet Hill gave power to each swing; his jaws gripped together against the pain in his leg and the blisters rising on his palms, as he perfected the motion and built his strength.
Allegro, presto, vivace,
he increased the tempo of each pattern till they became part of him.

Central Scotland

Streaks of pink and coral silhouetted black hills undulating in every direction. Trees towered around Niall, a sparser forest than he'd known, but still thick with oaks, and silver-barked birches. White mist curled around the trees, turning them a mystic gray-green, and softening every edge.

He squatted on the rocky bank of a stream and drank, energized by the shock of cold; he straightened his tunic, and checked that his dirk was snug in his boot. The morning air defied his discouragement, with its crisp energy.

Despite the wolf, a wolf which the man on the train said did not exist in present-day Scotland, the trails and trees he'd expected had not materialized through yesterday's full day of hiking. He wondered if he could be in the wrong place. The landscape had looked very different in the future Scotland.

Hugh's mountain should have been distinctive: a pair of sharp crags with a small rounded sunrise of a hill dawning behind them. But though he'd searched the southern horizon, hour after hour, the rising sun formation did not show itself.

He rose from the stream. "Am I on a fool's errand?" He shouted it into the forest. His voice echoed back, faint as a lost soul. Shawn might have stayed at the castle. He and Allene might have been killed on the way or taken to an English castle for sport. Niall crossed himself and whispered an
Ave.
Even Shawn didn't deserve that.

Or the time switch just might not happen again, even if they brushed shoulders in space.

He dropped to his knees as he had every morning of his life, this time on the forest's earthy floor. Discouragement crouched on his shoulder like a gargoyle. Immediate, clear-cut answers, always rare, had been in especially short supply lately. Nonetheless, he imagined Jesus, walking the shores of Galilee, perhaps misty at dawn like his own forest, and prayed, "In the name of Christ Jesus, crucified, I arise." He conversed for half an hour, while birds chirped around him. He asked for guidance, for protection of his loved ones, for anything else that would delay the moment of standing up and facing his hopeless task.

...of facing the truth that God was not conversing back.

His stomach rumbled, dragging him to his feet. He brushed at his knees. "Give us this day our daily bread," he said ruefully, straightening up. He crossed himself, looked around, and added, "Or berries." He took a handful of blackberries from a bush and pressed his toes, in his leather boots, into the forest floor, enjoying it after the boxy tennis shoes and the city sidewalks.

He walked back to the stream for a last drink, hoping to spot a squirrel or some breakfast heartier than berries. Mist swirled around his calves, touching the edge of his tunic before drifting away. A pine marten froze on a rock by the stream, front paws planted, head stretched up and cocked, its white chest blending with the mist. Its round, black eyes fixed, unblinking, on Niall, hoping not to be seen.

A corner of Niall's mouth twitched upward at its delusion of invisibility. He reached for his slingshot. The cat-like creature darted away, scampering up a tree. Niall's gaze followed, higher and higher, skimming over the bark. The marten disappeared into the new June leaves. He squinted upwards, slingshot poised. The tremble of a shadowy branch suggested where the animal had leapt from the limb. It had escaped him. Defeated, Niall's gaze skimmed down the mist-shrouded tree, past the silhouetted mountains to the north, more rounded shapes, more sharp peaks, stretching like a green, rolling sea as far as his view could reach.

A squirrel chittered somewhere above him.

He reached for another handful of berries and chewed slowly, studying the formation to the north: a hill rose gradually to a plateau, before sloping down again. Behind it rose two peaks, one on either side like horns on the helmet of the Northern invaders of years ago. It niggled at his mind. Why, he couldn't say. He'd never seen that formation.

Central Scotland, 1314

Deep in the woods, Shawn dropped his end of the great buck on the forest floor, and collapsed onto a giant fallen oak. Every inch of his body begged for rest. Men plunked down around him. Roger dug flint from his sporran and sparked a fire against the evening chill. They had been hunting since dawn, before daylight chased the thick mist from the ground.

Over the last days, with his leg on the mend, Shawn had drilled for war and helped prepare weapons, food, and animals for the journey to Stirling. It had been a trick, learning what Niall should know without revealing the full extent of his ignorance. Memories from the re-enactment camps helped. Still, Allene raised her eyes often enough over sewing, concern creasing her forehead. Some of the men looked surprised. But they accepted the explanation of the head wound and did their best to help him.

He did his best to learn: shooting, skinning, lunging, feinting, leaping, jabbing. They drilled twice a day. Those who fell short scrubbed Hugh's rock, the Heart, with pine cones and leaves.

They practiced everything except running, for if they ran, no one would stop bloodthirsty England's attack on their sons and daughters. Those who didn't drill with energy and vigor scrubbed Hugh's rock.

Every night, Shawn and Brother David sang songs of valor and victory. Anyone who did not sing with courage and gusto scrubbed Hugh's rock.

Not once did Shawn scrub the Heart.

But in the quiet of the nights, with midges dive-bombing his plaid, he felt separate. None of them seemed concerned about killing or being killed. It gnawed at him: could he swing the sword with killing force into another human being? He would do what he must, he told himself, to prevent the Sassenach doing worse. It did no good to fret.

Now, on the log in the forest, Shawn swallowed deeply of the ale in his skin, and ran his sleeve across his mouth. One of the men clapped him on the back. "Nice shot on that buck, Niall."

"That's our Niall!" An older man chuckled. "Takin' it down even as it charges him."

"'Twas naught." Actually, he'd never even seen the buck streaking toward him. The arrow had sprung from his bow when he tripped on a root. It had been sheer luck, both good and bad, that had landed the arrow in the animal's foreleg. Still, he couldn't stop a smile of smug satisfaction.

"You slowed him so Roger could take him down."

Roger, by the fire, grunted. The other man took a swallow of his own ale, and they sat silently, shoulder to shoulder, watching Roger nurse the newborn flames into blasts of heat. Several men busied themselves with the carcasses. Shawn turned to watch. He should help. But he didn't know what to do, any more than he'd known what to do when they'd bled and disemboweled the animals. He watched them bind the buck's hooves, and jumped up to help hoist it into a tree for the night.

"Goin' to ha' another bairn by the time we get home, aer ye?" Roger spoke into the silence.

All the men looked at Adam, with the missing tooth. He grinned. "Aye, I 'spect so. A wee braw laddie this time, I told the wifey!"

The men chuckled. "After seven lassies, mon? D' ye think sae?" asked one.

"There be no more bonnie lassies in the Highlands than mine," Adam said. "Yer own lad thinks sae," he added, with a wink at James.

"Aye, another year or two, an' they'll be merrit." James thrust a dagger laden with meat over the growing fire, slowly rotating it. Shawn copied him. The fire sizzled and spit as the juices fell into it; the smell of roasting meat revved up the hunger in his stomach. His mouth watered.

"An' they'll ha' their ane braw bairns."

"Would we are there to see them," said James.

"Some of us will be," spoke the oldest man, a veritable bear wearing a cloak. "But I'll gladly die an' it stops Edward."

"Your wife'd sore miss ye, Will."

"I'd sore miss her. Better still that I die than she should fall into the Sassenach's hands. An' I doona come back, tell her I'd die a hoondred times in front of Edward's chargers ere I let 'em at her. We all know what they've done to our women and bairns." Nods went all around the circle. Shawn nodded as well. It seemed judicious.

"An you, Ralph." James spoke again. They turned as one to a tall young man, who would barely be out of high school, in Shawn's own time. "Just merrit." He shook his head.

The young man pulled his dirk, the meat brown and dripping, from the fire, and began to chew. "If I die, I thank my good Lord I had the time wi' her. 'Twould be greater sorrow to die wi' none to mourn ye."

In the flickering firelight, while the men spoke in hushed tones around him, Shawn ran his free hand down the steel length of the sword Hugh had given him. Hugh's words resonated in his heart: "Ye've ever been a man of honor and valor, Niall. I'll be proud to call you kin. I'm proud to fight beside ye."

His boding sense of failure now came from Allene's repeated question: Who else knows the way through the Great Glen? We must know who is betraying us, ere we reach Stirling.

And from his thoughts of Amy. Shawn pulled his dirk from the fire. He eyed it warily and stuck it back in the fire, settling his mind on the meat, rather than think about what he'd done with his time with Amy.

Or who would mourn him.

Central Scotland

Niall jogged steadily northwards, crashing through forest undergrowth. His excitement mounted. He'd made a mistake! Never had he felt such elation at making one! His heart pounded in his chest, strong and sure. His legs drummed a steady rhythm, his leather boots skimmed leaves and pine needles and soft soil. His tunic batted his knees, swishing as he ran; his cloak tore at twigs as he raced by. He'd gotten off the bus too far south!

What appeared, looking down from the northern highlands, as a sun rising between two small crags, seemed, looking up from the flatter south, to be a horned Norse helmet. On the other side of that rounded hill, was Hugh's camp! He was sure of it. The wolf had been real. He'd been in the wrong place, not the wrong time!

Niall picked his way, sometimes quickly, sometimes more slowly, sometimes losing sight of his target, throughout the day. He drank from streams when he found them, ate berries, and managed to trap a trout in a small loch. He dug flint from his sporran and built a fire on the rocky bank, to fix it. His insides churned at the delay.

He prayed constantly as he ran, exhaling
Aves
and
Paters
in rhythm with his running feet. His certainty grew with each long-limbed stride. He was headed toward Hugh's camp, toward Allene.

He stopped on a high ridge, listening. A dull drone reached his ears. There, to his left: his heart sank. Had he really seen a wolf? Or had the man on the train been wrong? Because there, far below, ran a gray ribbon of twenty-first century highway. Two cars sped along, flashing blinding glares of sunlight into his eyes.

Central Scotland, 1314

Shawn lay awake the last night, one among many sleeping under cloaks, long after the fire had died to embers. He imagined the headlines.
Dateline 1314: World-Famous Musician Marches to Hopeless Battle.
He would most likely die. He pondered his life, itemizing what he'd left behind.

One: A pile of articles, posters, and programs—about himself. They didn't matter here, seven hundred years before his time, and, he realized with a sad jolt, they wouldn't matter seven hundred years after his time, either. Not in a hundred years would anyone care about those articles. Not in ten. He put his hands behind his head, staring upward. Trees swayed above, dark shapes blotting out a riot of stars.