PART THREE
Guiding Light
CHAPTER ONE
Annie Bridge was one of four Annie Campbells in the glen. Her cottage was among the largest, with two sizable rooms. Here she had raised three strapping sons after her husband died at Leethoul. When King Fergan had abjured his allegiance to the English in 1511, the oldest had marched off to avenge his father. When Fergan had escaped from captivity in London in 1516 and returned to the Highlands to light the beacon on the hills again, the other two had followed the laird to Parline Field. For the last three years, Annie had lived alone.
She was a gaunt, white-haired woman with all the softness and compassion of a grindstone. Her face and hands were dried to brown leather by a lifetime's toil and weather. She was stooped but unbending, and she peered menacingly at the world as if daring it to try anything more. She detested the English with passion, and she would do anything at all for a man who had killed one of them. She was also an excellent cook.
Toby had slept, eaten, slept again, washed, and shaved. Every muscle in his body ached and his joints were stiff as gateposts. Normally he enjoyed that familiar feeling — it was a sign of growth and progress and greater strength in future. Now he could find no satisfaction in it. About this same time yesterday, he had prided himself on perfecting the powerful body he had been born with, but then he had watched his own hands crush the life out of men and twist iron bars like dough. Strength was no longer a virtue. The demon had made a mockery of his ambitions.
With sunset angering the western sky, he was eating another meal. The table in the front room held more food than even he could have consumed in a week, although Helga Burnside always told him he ate more than the entire Sassenach garrison. He felt very odd, struggling to come to terms with the sudden shift in his life. He kept picturing ice on a burn — the sudden thaw that turned a smooth white pavement into a foaming torrent. Toby Strangerson's world had just broken up like that, with him not very far across yet.
He should be mourning Granny Nan. He should be worrying about the demon in his heart, the English hunting him, the dangerous passage through Glen Orchy, even the rebels who were probably waiting to recruit him at the far end — and yet all he could feel was a shivering excitement that he was leaving the glen at last to seek his fortune in the world. He chewed, and he wondered.
Seated in the doorway to catch the light, Annie sewed with quick, deft strokes. She turned her head to see how he was faring. 'Take more of that beef! And of the goose. The fat'll keep you warm in the hills.'
Toby reached out to slice the beef. Fall was the best time of year for eating, the time when the cattle were slaughtered and even the poor could hope to eat meat. Annie snapped at him to stop being so picky, take a decent helping.
'I'll beggar you!' he protested.
For a fleeting moment, something lit her craggy face as a ray of sun on a snowy day turned drabness to diamonds. 'Boy, you don't know what it means to me to feed a man again. It warms my old heart to see you put it away. Empty the board and I'll keep filling it gladly.'
What was a man to do but keep eating?
Ask a few discreet questions with his mouth full?
For instance: 'Any word from the castle?'
Annie lifted her work to her teeth and bit off a thread. 'Aye. The Sassenachs have been in a pretty turmoil, I'm glad to say. They've put guards on the roads, and they're riding the hills.'
Toby chewed for a while, waiting for more. Then he asked, 'Not searching the village or threatening to take hostages?'
'Now why would they be doing that?' Annie raised a needle to eye level and squinted to thread it. 'Why would they be looking in the village when there's a horse missing?'
'Oh. The horse hasn't been found?'
'Well, they've not thought to look under Murray MacDougal's bed yet.'
Fortunately Toby was not trying to swallow anything just at that moment. He laughed. He laughed the laugh that Granny Nan always said was worse than a clap of thunder and would excite the hob. He felt guilty at being able to laugh already, with her not a full day dead yet.
If Falcon was still missing, then the Sassenachs must assume their quarry had ridden off to join the rebels. Annie's serene approval suggested that he might risk other, more dangerous questions.
'And how do they account for my escape from the dungeon?'
The old woman looked at him sharply. 'You were there, weren't you?'
'But what I remember and what they tell may not walk hand in hand.'
She nodded, stitching again. 'It was that fool woman, they say — the one that wanted to hire you. She went down to the cells to persuade you to change your mind about entering her service.' The old woman's voice changed timbre. 'That's what they're saying she was after, and I don't want to hear any details if it's not the case. They say you knifed her. They're calling you a mad beast and very dangerous.'
Toby chewed, marveling that he could speak so easily with old Annie. Usually his tongue froze solid when there were women nearby. He realized she had not mentioned any dead bodies in the dungeon.
'I don't hold with ladies being knifed,' Annie added. 'As a rule. But there's rules and there's rules, and if that one is what they say she is, then it's a true shame you didn't do a better job while you were at it.'
So Valda had explained the wound in her breast. How had she accounted for the table, the scroll, the blood-stained bowl, and all the other gear of her gramarye? Perhaps she had hexed them out of sight, but what had become of the bodies… or had there been no bodies? Toby had brained one man and broken another's neck. His demon vision had seen the four as other than human, and the lack of mention of bodies was unwelcome confirmation. The bodies had recovered and walked away. If someone now broke Toby Strangerson's neck… would he do the same?
Again Annie bit a thread. 'Here, try them on.'
He rose and went to accept the trews she had been making. She ostentatiously turned her back to observe the sunset, but Toby turned his back, too. He removed his belt, letting his plaid hang from his shoulder while he pulled the trews on. The new tweed was pleasantly rough on his legs and came with its own fresh peaty smell, but he hated the thought of having to wear such a restrictive garment. He laced up the embarrassing flap in the front and then let Annie inspect the result.
'They're fine,' he said. 'Perfect fit. I don't know how to—'
'Bend over. Yes, they'll do. I wish there was time for me to make you a shirt, too, and a jerkin. Couldn't manage boots, of course…'
'You've done more than enough already. But you'll excuse me if I stay with the plaid for now?' He stepped by her and went outside, round to the back of the house in search of an area large enough to dress in.
He was unhappy at the thought of giving up his plaid. Legs and arms covered? Feet crammed into boots? But if he was going off to the Lowlands and other foreign parts, Annie had insisted, then he would have to dress like a Sassenach. The same idea had evidently occurred to others. Neighbors had delivered two shirts, a tabard, and a pair of boots — curiosities that had found their way to the glen years ago by one way or another and been lying in clothes chests ever since. None of them had come close to fitting him.
It was troubling — were these tributes rewards for killing Godwin Forrester, blood money? Or did the glen really care about Toby Strangerson after all? Likely he was just being handed his fare out of town and good riddance.
He returned with the trews over his arm. Annie took them as he returned to the table.
'I'll put them in with your things.' She fussed with his bundle, which she seemed to have been adding to all day. 'You'd best be putting this in your sporran for safekeeping.' She dropped Grannie Nan's purse in front of him.
As he obeyed, his fingers found something in there already. He took it out and looked at it properly for the first time. It was clear and angular, one end broken and the other perfectly faceted, gleaming in rich purple — amethyst, obviously, for amethyst was common in the glen. A wandering tinker might pay a couple of pennies for a
