DARE THE WILD WIND (19 page)

His gaze avoided hers.  Abruptly she understood.  The British doctors hadn't been at pains to look after the welfare of captured Rebels.  Bitterly she wondered if they had troubled to examine them. 

"Where were they taken?" she asked in a tight, barely
  controlled voice. 

"To the fleet on
Moray Firth.  To be sent south, to England."

Panic dizzied Brenna. 
Cam was wounded, and being sent out of Scotland on a British ship, where she had no hope of arranging an escape, either by bribery or stealth.  Struggling to rein in her fear, she offered the corporal payment for his services.  But he would take nothing.  He bade them a swift farewell.

"Get as far away from the English camp as you can, and stay out of sight."  Then he was gone.  Brenna turned to Fenella. 

"If you want Canmore, you can ride him back to Lochmarnoch."

Fenella cast an uneasy glance at the horse.  "What would I do with him?  I can't so much as mount him on my own."

"I can't ask you to go with me, not without any word of Iain."

"You're going on to
Inverness?" 

Brenna's face gave Fenella her answer.  Fenella's eyes didn't waver when they met Brenna's.  "Then don't try and send me back.  My father won't have me under his roof after this.  If Iain is still alive, he's with the other prisoners."

By day as they rode toward
Inverness the choppy, pewter sheened water of Moray Firth was visible to the north beyond Drummoissie Moor.  The town sat where the smaller inlet of Inverness Firth met the River Ness.  Past Black Isle and its fertile farms, they came in sight of Cawdor Castle and Inverness.  A gateway since the time of the Vikings, Inverness sat on a narrow bridge of land that divided the Northern Highlands from the Grampians and the rest of Scotland.  Sacked and burned many times, unlike Edinburgh, it was no more than a simple country market town by the sea. 

Malcolm and dozens of their neighbors would be in
Inverness, celebrating the Duke of Cumberland's victory.  They would have to take care not to be recognized. 

Plaids drawn over their faces, Brenna and Fenella skirted the fringes of the town to make for the harbor.  British men
of war rode at anchor on the cloud darkened sea, guarding the transports that brought troops and supplies to the Duke of Cumberland.  Brenna's chest constricted at the sight of the ugly hulks.  They would serve as prison ships for Cam and Iain.  They had set out so bravely, to end as captives chained in the fetid holds of British frigates.

Brenna had to believe
Cam was still alive.  She had to hold onto her faith in his strength, in the endurance and spirit that had made him the champion three years running at the summer gatherings between the clans.  But how would he fare if no one cleaned and dressed his wounds or gave him any care?       

At the wharf, they caught sight of a crowd.  Nearly all were women, some bent with age, and the rest younger, a dozen with children clinging to their skirts.  Brenna slid off Canmore, tethering the horse to the stub of a broken piling.  Two infantry
men and a sergeant stood at the head of the pier with fixed bayonets, holding the press of pleading women back.  Brenna could see their object, two small dinghies left tied to the pier.

"Be gone, the lot of you," the sergeant barked with a curse. 

"Let us pass!" a frenzied woman screamed, leaping at him with clawing fingers.  Others surged against the crossed and bayoneted rifles barring their way to the pier.  The soldiers shoved the women back, sending them sprawling, and swiftly the sergeant raised the butt of his gun to club the attacking woman to the ground.

Paralyzed, Brenna watched the stock drive down, heard the crack of wood against bone.  The woman pitched to her knees, dazed and swaying.  Blood streamed from a gash above her brow.

"Trull."  The sergeant spat at the woman and kicked her.

A dark mist of rage rose behind Brenna's eyes, and she plunged through the crowd.  Falling back, the other women tried to pull the soldiers' victims away from the sergeant's booted feet.  Brenna threw herself between the sergeant and the bleeding woman.

"You pig.  Is this how Englishmen treat their mothers and daughters?"

Her slicing contempt took him aback for a second.   "It's how we treat traitor's strumpets," he said with a glowering look.  "Will you have what this drab got?"

Brenna reached for the
skeen ochle
concealed in the loose sleeve of her gown, and drew the short dagger from its scabbard.  "Don't lift a hand to her again."

Spewing an obscenity, he reached out to wrest the knife from her grasp.  Brenna dodged, eluding him.  Then, behind her, fingers bit into her arm with desperate strength, dragging her backward.

"My lady," Fenella cried in barely
  contained terror.  "Come away."

The sergeant froze for a second.  His fingers clenched convulsively.  "Quality, is it?" he ground out in a guttural voice.  Then the uncertainty in his thick, blotchy face festered to suspicion.  "And where are your fine clothes,
my lady
?"

"I'll answer to nothing to the likes of you," Brenna said, the hilt of the dagger still tightly in her grip.

"You Satan's shrew," he snarled.  "I'll teach you to threaten an officer of the King."

He seized her wrist and wrenched it.  Pain lanced through Brenna's arm, and the dagger flew to the stones above the water.

"Now we'll see the tune you dance for your betters."

       Brenna cried out as he knotted a hand in her streaming hair.  He jerked her to face him, so close she gagged at his foul breath. 

"Oh, please, sir," Fenella broke in, her voice shaking.  "Don't...don't you see she's not right?"

He turned to glare into her pale face.  "She'll be right enough when I've done with her." 

"Have pity," Fenella quavered.  "You must see she's daft."         

Brenna blinked in shock despite the sergeant's agonizing grip.  But the pain had cleared her head,
enough to warn her not to speak.

"She's cracked in the pate to interfere with an officer of the Crown," he snapped, but the hand tangled in Brenna's hair loosened a little at the soft, humble tone of Fenella's voice.

Fenella's eyes had gone round and pleading, and he took in her golden hair and oval face with sudden interest, his vanity fed by the power he held over them both.

"Oh, I beg you.  Forgive my poor lady.  When she's like this, she hardly knows what it is she does."    

"Then how is it she comes so easily by a knife?"  The sergeant gave Brenna's head another excruciating jerk.  Brenna couldn't choke back a small scream of fury and pain.    

Fenella's voice rose, urgent and frantic.  "You mustn't excite her.  She'll go into a fit.  Foams at the mouth, she does, and bites."

A flash of disgust crossed his face.  "Bites?" he sputtered. 

"Like a rabid dog," another, clearly British, voice cut in firmly. 

He wheeled, and Brenna caught a glimpse of a spare, richly
dressed woman stepping from a coach drawn up on the quay.

"What are you about here, sergeant?" she asked with a sweeping glance at the crowd.  The woman Brenna tried to defend had regained enough of her senses to inch backward away.  Out of his reach, she was helped to her feet and led stumbling away.

Brenna felt his stance grow defensive. 

"We're charged with keeping order on the pier."

"Surely not such a difficult task with a few helpless women?" the Englishwoman countered acerbically.  "Why are you shaking that child by the hair?"

"Begging your pardon, your ladyship, but she came at me with a knife."
 

The dark
  haired woman scanned the wooden planking at their feet.  "What knife is that, sergeant?"    

"I took it away from her, and threw it in the water," he blustered uneasily.      

The slender woman let out an impatient, belittling breath.  "Then I should think it should be
safe for you to let her go." 

A flush crept up his neck at the cool mockery in the woman's voice. 

"Did you hear  me, sergeant?  Release the girl."

He hesitated, and her tone turned brisk. 

"I don't doubt the girl may have tried to strike you, sergeant.  But she's hardly responsible for what she may do.  Her father has the child watched, but as her maid can tell you, it's not an easy task.  Unhappily, she gets away and roams about until the Lord Mayor sends out his men to find her." 

"The Lord Mayor?"  Caution crept into the sergeant's tone.

"The poor demented girl's father.  It's a scandal, of course, but the Lord Mayor dotes on his daughter, and despises anyone who tries to tell him she should be better confined."

"Then it's my duty to return her to her father."

The woman let out a small, dismissive laugh.   "Don't look for a reward for your trouble.  The Lord Mayor can be a testy man.  The girl speaks well enough when she wants, and you've handled her roughly."  She paused to let this sink in. "I don't think I need to remind you the Lord Mayor is host to the Duke of Cumberland himself.  I shouldn't want to explain, if I were you."

"I can't turn her loose to roam the town," the sergeant persisted in a dogged voice. 

"If you insist on an escort," the Englishwoman said crisply, "I'd suggest you allow me to return her home in my coach.  Although we're hardly native to
Inverness, Lord Wittworth and I are acquainted with the family.  If she's paraded through the streets like a madwoman from Bedlam, I promise you the Lord Mayor will go into a proper rage."

    *****

"Get into the coach, and quickly," the Englishwoman urged, "before the brute discovers he's been deceived." 

The liveried footman held out a hand to Brenna to help her up into the
velvet upholstered coach.  Fenella swiftly followed, and then Lady Wittworth settled her wide skirts on the opposite seat with a rustle of silk.   She rapped on the roof with a gold  tipped walking stick. 

"Drive on," she ordered in an imperious voice.  In answer, the driver's whip cracked, and they lurched forward, wheels spattering the gravel beneath them. 

"How can I thank you?" Brenna began.  "I acted like a fool."

"Quite understandable in the circumstances," the other woman said, anger still sparking in her dark eyes.  "The behavior of these soldiers makes me ashamed to call myself an Englishwoman."

She laid the walking stick aside with a small apologetic sound.  "Forgive me for brandishing this as if it were a weapon.  I'm not so decrepit that I require it to walk, but it is useful to get the attention of my driver."

A little past thirty, she wasn't a conventional beauty.  The planes of her face were too sharply defined, but
she had an engaging, generous mouth and skin still fine and unlined.  Her sable brown hair was drawn severely back from her face, but she was gowned in what Brenna surmised must be the latest fashion from London.

"Your friend thought quickly to invent such a tale," she turned a sudden brilliant smile on Fenella. 

Fenella blushed at her praise, and Brenna quickly echoed it.  She hadn't known Fenella could be so resourceful, or that she could lose her own head so completely.  Her outrage at seeing the soldiers bludgeon the women had driven all caution from her mind. 

"You weren't any less inventive, Lady Wittworth," Brenna said.  "The news he has a daughter of my sort will come as a shock to the mayor of
Inverness."     

The corners of the other woman's mouth twitched, and a brief, wry bubble of laughter escaped her.  "The Lord Mayor is far too pompous a man.  He'll benefit from a test of his character." 

"All the same, I'm grateful for what you did."

The flash of mirth vanished from Lady Wittworth's face.  "I couldn't undo the h
arm the soldiers had already done, but I wouldn't allow that swine to mistreat you in the bargain.  Now you must tell me where it's safe to take you."

Brenna hesitated.  Canmore still stood tied at the water's edge.  They couldn't go back for him now.  He had earned his rest, and the care of anyone who sought to claim him. 

"I'm afraid nowhere is really safe.  We have to find someone who knows what ship the Rebel prisoners have been taken to."

"Then you have no one in
Inverness?" Lady Wittworth asked, her winging brows drawing together in a frown.

Brenna shook her head, unwilling to acknowledge Malcolm's presence.  "Both our fianc
és were taken captive at Culloden Moor.  We have to find out what ship they've been taken to."

"You don't intend to try to see them?"

"It's why we've come," Brenna said quickly, reading the Englishwoman's alarm.  "They're wounded.  Fr
om what news we've had, they've received precious little in the way of care.  We have to reach them."

"Dear child, what help do you think you can be?" Lady Wittworth chided in an appalled voice.  "Half a dozen transports are taking on prisoners from the battle.  None of the captains are granting leave to their kin to visit them."