Traitor or Temptress. Helen Dickson

she angrily pushed away as she resolutely set about tending the ravaged flesh as best she could.

      ‘Why is he shaking, Lorne?’ Rory whispered when they had finished.

      ‘Because he’s weak and cold, I think,’ Lorne replied, covering the youth with the blanket and tucking it securely around him, wishing she could do more. ‘You go now, Rory. I’d like to stay with him a bit longer.’ She tried to smile reassuringly as she nestled close to the unconscious youth in an attempt to warm him with her own body heat.

      Lorne was not aware of falling asleep, but suddenly she jerked, lifting her head and looking at David. She was lying beside him with her arm flung across his waist, and even through the thickness of the blanket she could feel the heat of him. Scrambling to her knees, she could see his skin had no relieving moisture. Now it was stretched dry and fiery with heat. The dim light seemed to accentuate the hollows of his face, and when his eyes flickered open she could see they were fixed and staring, with no sign of recognition. He had the fever, and she was not too young or ignorant to know the reason for this was because the wound must be poisoned and that he could die.

      With fear in her heart, immediately she got to her feet and left the cave, knowing David’s only hope of survival lay in his brother reaching Kinlochalen in time. She would wait for Iain Monroe on the road past the village and direct him to the cave when he arrived. On reaching the glen, she felt her heart sink when she saw Duncan’s father, Ewan Galbraith, and two of his older brothers, Fergus and Lachlan, riding towards her. Duncan had been hoisted up behind Fergus and Rory sat behind Lachlan, his short arms clinging to his brother’s stout waist. Their father led a horse with the body of Donald, the oldest of all the Galbraith brothers, draped over its back.

      With his flame-red hair and imposing stature, Ewan Galbraith was perhaps the most fearsome man Lorne had ever seen. All the Galbraiths were hot blooded and quarrelsome, and it was plain to Lorne that they had been roused to a black fury at being deprived of one of their own kin.

      Wearing the kilted plaid and a blue bonnet on his head, an eagle’s feather kept in place by the silver badge of the Galbraiths, Ewan scowled down at the young girl. ‘What are you doing, wandering in the glen when your father and brothers have ridden down from the moor just minutes ago?’ He growled deep in his throat, taking note of her nervousness and that her eyes darted from Rory to Duncan. ‘Did you not see them?’

      ‘Yes,’ she lied, knowing her voice sounded high and nervous, ‘but I was too far away. I—if I run I’ll catch them.’

      When Lorne turned and fled, Ewan Galbraith did not urge his horse to ride on. Instead he looked at Duncan and followed his gaze, raising his eyes and focusing on what he could just make out to be a red plaid dangling over the edge of the rock concealing the cave. He looked at it long and hard before dismounting and indicating for Fergus and Lachlan to do the same, his questioning gaze coming to rest on Duncan once more.

      ‘The McBryde lassie has been up to something. Do you know what it is, Duncan?’

      Unable to lie to his father even if he wanted to, Duncan stuck out his chest boldly. ‘Aye. She found a wounded man—one of the raiders—in the glen and hid him in the cave.’

      ‘Then we’d best take care of him ourselves, eh?’

      When they were alone Rory turned angry, accusing eyes on his brother. ‘He isn’t a raider and you said you wouldn’t tell,’ he said fiercely, close to tears. ‘You promised Lorne. You promised,’ he cried wretchedly, wanting to pound his brother with his bare fists.

      Duncan jumped down from the horse, glaring at Rory. ‘I promised no such thing. You did.’ Haughtily he strutted up the hill after his father and brothers, trying to look bold, but unable quell the feeling of unease of having betrayed Lorne’s trust quivering inside him.

      Unbeknown to Ewan Galbraith or Lorne McBryde, who was running along the road to the south to await the arrival of David’s brother, hidden in a thicket high up across the glen crouched the lone figure of John Ferguson. With his eight companions murdered by the men of Kinlochalen and Drumgow, he had come down from the moor to search for the injured David.

      John was no stranger to these parts, having been born and raised not far from Drumgow before going south. He knew Ewan Galbraith and Edgar McBryde, lairds of Kinlochalen and Drumgow respectively. Two of the most troublesome, incorrigible families in the Highlands, they were of a warring nature. Having been kept apart from the rest of the world within the Grampian mountains for centuries, these men considered themselves to be true Highlanders—the original possessors of Scotland—and harboured a smouldering resentment for all Lowlanders.

      The Galbraiths and the McBrydes were a curse. Their names were frequently brought before the Privy Council in Edinburgh, on charges of robbery and fire raising, and they were ordered to appear before the Justices, but the order—when someone was brave enough to convey it to them—was always ignored. What might appear as criminal behaviour to the more civilised men in Edinburgh and the Lowlands, was, to the Highlanders, who were reluctant to acknowledge any authority but their own, the settlement of an affair of honour.

      John had observed Lorne McBryde emerge from the small cave and scramble down the steep incline. Her bright golden hair shining like a beacon in the night made it easy to identify her. He had watched her speak to Ewan Galbraith and when she had gone that same man had immediately climbed up to the cave with his sons and dragged David down the glen to Kinlochalen. Unable to help the youth, John silently cursed Lorne McBryde, fully believing that she had betrayed David’s hiding place to the Galbraiths.

      Darkness was creeping over the hills when Lorne tore her gaze away from the road to the south and dejectedly made her way back to David Monroe. She was disappointed and saddened that his brother had failed to appear and didn’t know what she could do to help the injured youth. The glen was quiet, uneasily so. With a dart of terror she climbed up to the cave. David wasn’t there. With an awful constriction of her heart Lorne knew her trust in Duncan had brought about this horror. That was the moment she began to hate him.

      As she scrambled back down to the glen she saw nothing, heard nothing. Running with every nerve at full stretch, her heart and soul in her feet, she approached the village, one picture of what the Galbraiths and her own kin would do to David—might already have done to him—burnt on her brain in agony. Death stalked the quiet streets of Kinlochalen. She was too late.

      A burning curiosity to see the prisoner who had been brought down from the glen had induced the citizens out of doors. They were silent, huddled in groups, but Lorne saw only David’s wretched corpse where it lay in the square by the Mercat Cross, a place where witches and adulterers were scourged. His face was upturned to the sky, as fair and perfect in death as it had been in life.

      There was silence in Kinlochalen for a small space of time as the people and her father and brothers watched the small girl fall to her knees beside the youth and tenderly place her hand on his frozen cheek, her heart seized by a terrible anguish. Tears of hopelessness traced their way down her face, which she raised, fastening her accusing eyes on her father and brothers, noticing that none of the Galbraiths were present.

      ‘Daughter—get up off your knees,’ Edgar McBryde demanded, looking at her with bitterness and contempt.

      Lorne saw the murderous gleam in his eyes, clearly angry at the compassion she showed so unashamedly for this Lowlander, but it did not frighten her. She had gone beyond that. Her small chin jutted courageously upwards and her flashing eyes met his.

      ‘Why? Why did you do this?’ she cried. ‘He was not one of the raiders.’

      ‘The lad was dead when Ewan brought him down from the glen,’ her brother James told her gently, having sensed from what Ewan had said before going home to mourn his son that Lorne had tried to befriend the youth. Once young Rory had told them the young man’s name, a name familiar to them all, they knew that as a consequence of his death, they could expect no mercy from the powerful Monroes in the south.

      Galloping hooves broke the silence. Lorne scrambled to her feet and stood back when a party of about twenty men rode