Chapter 19

G iff found Henry standing before the great hall fire, apparently oblivious to smoke billowing in great gusts from its chimney. The vaulted ceiling was high, and the smoke drifted upward, but it stung Giff’s eyes and made breathing a penance.

“They’re at Wick Bay south of Noss Head,” Henry said. “There’s good shelter for them there. Our bay is open to winds coming from the north or east, except here, where the inlet behind the headland provides some protection.”

“You’ve set men to watch them?”

“Aye, sure, just as I’m sure Fife has ordered men to watch us here.”

“I won’t worry about his, although if you want to send your lads hunting, I won’t object. Capturing one or two of his men might tell us more than we know now, such as whether Fife has reason for allying himself with France and Rome in this business, other than to exploit de Gredin’s treasure hunt in aid of his own effort to undermine the vast powers of the Sinclairs and Logans, and others of their ilk.”

“We might well learn something,” Henry said. “But I’ve no wish to increase Fife’s enmity by seizing his men. He’s made it clear these past years that he not only resents my Norse title but wants to weaken every powerful clan, thinking thereby to increase Stewart power. ’Tis well known that he did all he could in the Borders to undermine Douglas. But if Fife demands hospitality, I’ll feel obliged to provide it.”

“If he were a fellow Highlander, perhaps, but he’s not,” Giff said.

“Our rules of hospitality do not reserve it only for Highlanders.”

“Aye, sure, but if you think you can trust that lot of villains inside—”

Henry’s chuckle silenced him. “Rules of survival supersede all else, Giff. Come to that, mayhap we should invite Fife in. It would keep him closer, easier to watch.”

“Do as you like, but stay that invitation till I’m gone,” Giff said brusquely.

Henry’s eyebrows shot up. “Have I offended you, lad?”

Giff grimaced. “Nay, but my lass put me in a temper. I told her she must stay here, but she declares she won’t. And, in troth, Henry, I don’t want to leave her. She tells me she would hate not knowing my fate until someone deigned to reveal it to her. Sakes, I cannot blame her, especially when I doubt she would be in any more danger on the ship, even in a storm, than she has been with that lot chasing us.”

“What of your own judgment whilst she is aboard?” Henry asked, frowning. “Would you act the same to save the Stone? What then, if Fife does catch you?”

“She said I should see that he doesn’t,” Giff said.

Henry laughed, and suddenly Giff was able to see the humor, too. He saw something else just as suddenly, a way he might further protect the Stone.

He might have shared that thought with Henry, particularly as it ought to allay some people’s fears of his so-called recklessness. But he had no wish to debate the newborn idea until he’d considered it more, if then. In any event, Sidony walked in from the stair hall just then, looking serene and perfectly at home as she moved toward the dais, where a basket of rolls and a pitcher of ale still sat on the table.

Taking a roll, she deigned at last to note their presence, smiling as she made a slight curtsy in Henry’s direction. “Good morrow, my lord. Your countess has been very generous. I have enough garments now to clothe me for a year.”

“I’m sure you are welcome to them, lass. Did you sleep well, or did last night’s fierce winds and crashing seas disturb you?”

“I slept well, thank you. That bed is most comfortable, although it did not rock me to sleep as the one aboard the Serpent does,” she added with a gleam that told Giff if not Henry that she knew where Henry meant the conversation to go.

Henry persisted. “A ship is scarcely the safest bed during a storm. Our Pentland Firth is particularly noted for its storms, and this one will certainly grow worse.”

“My husband promised to provide me with a proper home, sir,” she said with her demurest smile. “I mean to see that he does so as soon as possible.”

Giff’s idea stirred again with a simple adjustment and took firmer shape, for what protected the Stone might also provide protection for Sidony. He said, “She is right, Henry. I did say, after all, that she could make this decision for herself. And I do not think Fife and his lot will catch us if we can get safely away in the darkness.”

“Sakes, but it’s madness to go out on this bay when you won’t be able to see your hand before your face,” Henry objected.

“He’s sailed in the dark these past two nights,” Sidony pointed out.

“I do know that neither this bay nor the firth is at all like being on open sea well away from the coast, Henry,” Giff said before Henry could point out the same thing. “But I’ve a good compass and a fine partner in Maxwell. And once we round Duncansby, I do know the firth and its habits well enough to get us safely to Cape Wrath and then southward.” Just how far south they would all go, he did not say.

“But what if they do follow you?” Henry asked.

“If they do, and it’s still storming, they’re mad,” Giff said. “They’ll perish on the Boars of Duncansby or the Men of Mey, for they won’t be expecting either hazard. For days, they’ve kept us in sight and done what we’ve done. I doubt anyone on those ships kens the firth waters as you or I do, so if I can steal a full day’s march on them, I’ll make Cape Wrath easily. Sithee, they cannot know where I’m headed.”

“Fife may guess,” Henry warned. “There are few choices if he learns you’ve not gone to Orkney or stayed here. All he needs to do is stop at one village or another and ask if the Serpent has passed by. Ships, even my own, do not so commonly sail west in these waters that folks won’t take notice.”

Giff was watching Sidony, whose eyes shone bright with expectation. He said, “You still mean to go with me, sweetheart?”

“I do,” she said firmly. “What are the Boars of Duncansby?”

They left not long after midnight while the sky and all around them was pitch black, and raging winds whistled around the castle walls. Every now and then, an inquisitive gust darted in from the sea to sweep right up the precipitous stairway.

Not having quite trusted Giff to wake her, Sidony had awakened twice with a start, fearing to find him gone. But he had shaken her from a deep sleep at midnight and told her to dress if she truly wanted to go.

She was grateful now for the countess’s warm cameline surcoat, although she wore it under Fife’s thick wool cloak. Giff had put that around her himself, insisting not only that she would keep warmer, but also that it would conceal her better than the pink surcoat. It was her own thought that Fife’s cloak could get as dirty as it liked and would thereby protect the soft surcoat. She reflected sadly that the latter would not feel as soft or look as pretty by the end of their journey as it did now, but Giff liked the feather-soft fabric, so perhaps he would buy her more of it.

In the shelter of the castle forecourt and on the stairway down into the narrow goe, one did not feel the brunt of wind or rain because, like the tongue of land on which Girnigoe sat, the goe ran almost parallel to the Caithness landmass. But on the narrow wharf, the wildly churning sea suddenly became a terrifying roar of chaotic, thunderous crashes of waves against the outer wall of Girnigoe’s perch. Without light, tied to both walls of the goe, the Serpent became no more than a denser, noisier piece of the all-encompassing blackness. But its struggle to free itself from its moorings stirred nearby air and made the darkness all the more menacing.

The ties held, and Maxwell’s voice came to her from close by, “I’m right here, me lady, and if ye’ll take me hands, I’ll help ye step aboard.”

Giff steadied her as she gripped both of Maxwell’s hands, but the boat did not want to stand still, and it took the efforts of both to get her aboard. Immediately she slipped on the wet rowers’ bench, and to her annoyance, Giff just stepped over the gunwale onto the same bench, still holding her arm. She landed awkwardly on her feet in the room between benches, but he stepped down beside her without letting go. He slipped an arm around her then and drew her close beside him.

“I’ll take you to the aft cabin, sweetheart, so come onto the gangway with me, but take care there, and hold tight to me. It is rolling a little now, but you’ll grow used to it if you can make yourself relax and try to anticipate its movements.”

Rolling a little!

Easy for one who had lived on boats for years to say, but she had spent many hours on them, too, albeit not in any storm like this one.

“Why have you no lights here?” she asked. “Surely, no one could see us, especially as you and Henry said that Fife’s boats are not even in this bay.”

“He will have watchers on the headland and elsewhere, who need only discern a glow to grow suspicious,” he said, his voice louder than before. “We’d as lief they not see anything to make them wonder about us.”

“Here, me lady, take hold o’ me shoulder,” Jake said, materializing out of the darkness on a bench to her right. “I can help ye.”

Gratefully, she accepted, and with him beside her and Giff on the gangway ahead of her, by the time they reached the cabin, she had found some of her balance.

“The tide is ebbing,” Giff said as he opened the door. “I want to make the other end of the bay well before flood, so we can pass the Boars safely and speedily enough to get beyond the Men before it ebbs again. As it is, it’ll be a near thing.”

He and Henry had explained that the Boars of Duncansby and the Men of Mey were the Scylla and Charybdis of the Pentland Firth, violent agitations that the sea produced at each end of the narrowest part of the firth, where the currents that ran in opposing directions collided, with sometimes cataclysmic results. Huge breakers, they said, would jet up as from a boiling cauldron and tumble over each other in utter frenzy. Men had seen them rage even when the rest of the firth was calm, but they behaved particularly badly, Giff said, during a big storm.

Her eyes were growing accustomed to the blackness outside. She could make out shapes and tell the difference between solid, stationary ones and tossing, wild ones, but she felt as if she were entering a cave when she went into the cabin.

As Henry had warned, she could not see her hand in front of her face.

“I don’t suppose you’ll let me have a lantern in here when the door is shut.”

“Nay, lass,” Giff said. “We’ll have no flame aboard this boat tonight. What with—” He broke off, and even through the noise of the wind, she heard the distant grumbling his quick ears had caught before hers. “Sakes, I must get us onto the bay at once,” he said. “Jake, help her ladyship to the wee table nook and stay with her.”

When the lad began to protest, Giff added sternly, “I shall depend on you to keep her safe tonight, because I cannot stay to do that myself.”

“Aye, then, I’ll look after her,” Jake said. “Ye’ll ha’ nowt to worry ye.”

“Was that thunder?” Sidony asked as Giff turned. “Why do you hurry?”

“It was thunder, aye, but ’tis the lightning it attends that concerns me, for a single bolt over this bay will turn night into day and reveal us to Fife’s watchers.”

He shut the door on the words, and feeling her way, Sidony sat on the aft-most bench in the table alcove so she could face forward. She doubted the rocking motion would make Jake sick if he sat with his back to the prow.

“I’d no’ like being in here on my own,” he muttered a moment later.

“Nor would I,” she admitted. “I’m glad you’re with me, Jake.”

“Aye, well, wi’ two of us, we’re bound t’ scare off any boggarts.”

“Do you worry about boggarts?”

“Och, nay, they’re nobbut a nuisance from time to time.”

Recognizing the truth, she said, “Shall I tell you a tale my sister Adela used to tell me when I was a bairn and afraid that a bad fairy would steal me from my bed?”

“Aye, sure, we might as well do summat to pass the time,” he said.

Sidony told him a tale of water fairies calculated to make him laugh, and as she did, she heard men shout and felt the boat begin to toss more. She could not imagine how they would get it out of the narrow goe onto the teeming waters of the bay, but she soon felt the familiar motion of oars in the water and realized that Henry’s men on the narrow wharves were helping by pushing the Serpent far enough out for the oarsmen, two sets at a time, to plunge their oars into the water and pull.

The Serpent began to feel like a child’s toy tossed into a river in spate, for it rose, settled, twisted, and turned like a mad thing, but the running tide soon caught the boat and pulled them away from the shore. The tide would run for six more hours, she knew, and Giff had told her that in the firth, the tide could run as fast as ten miles an hour. The Boars were dangerous only in a rising tide, he had said, but the Men showed their wrath with the ebb, which was why their timing would be crucial.

They had six miles to go before they would round Duncansby Head and pass the Boars, then another eight to St. John’s Head and the Men of Mey. She reminded herself of her confidence in Giff and focused her efforts on keeping Jake entertained.

The thunder continued rumbling in the distance, growing closer and louder until its deafening cracks seemed directly overhead. Two sent enough light through the space between the nearby shutter and porthole to see Jake’s outline opposite her.

For a time, as the thunder grew distant again, rain pounded down on them and the rocking motion of the boat grew less rhythmic. Experience told her the men had raised their oars and the Serpent was riding the waves. The ship steadied, and a few minutes later, Jake got up and went to the door, opening it carefully.

“What are you doing?” Sidony asked.

“Seeing,” he replied. “They’ve put up yon sail. I thought they had.”

“In this weather?”

“Aye, sure,” he said in a superior, male way. “Me da’ does the same thing to gain speed and the like, but Sir Giff be sailing gey close to this wind, I’m tellin’ ye.”

“Well, shut that door before he sees you’ve got it open,” she said. “Then come back, and I’ll tell you another story, or you can tell me one. It is your turn, after all.”

Perfectly willing, he soon had her laughing at the antics of a pair of Border brownies who lived with a woman who did not treat them properly. Since Sidony would not have known how to treat them, either, she felt for the poor woman.

Time passed swiftly until, without warning, the ship slewed broadside into a wave, nearly dumping both of them from their benches. Only the fact that she had put a hand to steady herself seconds before saved Sidony from a bruising, if not worse.

“Rough water,” Jake said. He attempted his customary, casual tone, but she detected his fear, and her quick concern for him steadied her nerves.

“It will pass,” she said. “They call him the King of Storms, you know.”

“Aye, sure,” he said. “Will I tell ye another—” His words ended in a shriek as the boat tossed again and a crash of thunder shook everything around them.

“Hang on, Jake,” Sidony cried. “Grab my hand!”

He gripped her hand, and before she knew what he was doing, he was beside her, pushed in hard against her, clinging to the table and to her. She wrapped an arm around him and said, “Thank you, I was terrified that I’d be pitched onto the floor.”

He did not speak, but when the boat settled and the rhythmic motion of oars began again, he said, “Ye’ll be safe now, I reckon, so I’ll go back to me seat.”

Moments later, the door to the cabin opened, with enough light outside to see Giff as he put his head in. “I don’t know if Fife saw us in all that lightning,” he said. “But I’m guessing he did, so get ready for a rough ride. We’ve come the whole way much faster than I’d meant to, so the Men may cause us a wee spot of bother.”

“How wee?” she asked, hoping she sounded calmer than she felt.

“The tide is still running hard,” he said. “Don’t worry; just hang on.”

“Do you want to come over here again?” she asked when Giff had gone.

“Nay, I’ll do,” the boy said. “He said it were nowt. D’ye think the waves fly up as high as he said? I’m thinking that when he opened yon door it looked light enough for a man to see what they look like when we pass by ’em.”

“You are to stay right where you are,” she said, trying to sound as stern as Giff would. “It is too dangerous to be up walking around. Recall what it was like before, and that was just the storm tossing us about. We’d passed the Boars with no trouble.”

“Aye, sure, that’s right,” Jake said. “Will ye tell the first one, or shall I?”

She agreed to go first and told him another Highland tale, but as it reached its climax, she heard shouts from outside and heard Jake jump to his feet.

“Jake, don’t—!”

But he flung open the cabin door, and she saw him outlined briefly in the opening before he looked landward and vanished.

Crying out, Sidony leaped to her feet and plunged across the heaving floor to the open doorway, grabbing the jamb and the door itself when it threatened to slam into her. Hanging on to them both, she looked out and saw that Jake had crashed against the stepped gunwale and was clinging to it, half on the upper step and half on the lower. Her sweeping gaze found Maxwell at the helm, gripping the tiller, his face contorted with anxiety, and Giff at the mast, looking forward as he manned one set of braces and shouted orders to Hob Grant on the other. The oarsmen on the sternmost benches saw Jake’s predicament, but each larboard bench held three oarsmen, penned in by their oar, and although the gangway-end man on the nearest bench started to move, the man nearest the gunwale shouted at him to stay put or they’d lose the oar.

Giff’s attention was on the sea ahead, and he bellowed for the larboard men to pull harder just as the boat yawed hard to larboard, nearly onto its side.

Waves hurled themselves at them from all directions, and Sidony realized the boat was spinning, as if a whirlpool had caught it. Just as that fact registered, the bow plunged down the back of a huge wave, and she saw Jake begin to slide forward off the higher step of the gunwale toward the oarsmen, or overboard into the sea.

The men, pinned behind their oars, could do nothing to help him.

Maxwell shouted, but the wind swept his words away before they reached her. He looked feverishly about, doubtless for someone to take over the tiller.

Afraid he might let go of it and doom them all, she flung herself toward Jake. If her feet touched the deck, she did not feel it. Her eyes were on him, and she thought of nothing and no one else. From a vast distance, she heard Giff shout, but she dared not look, lest the boy vanish over the side to the sea. She could not let Giff lose him, too.

Water sluiced over her, but its only effect was to make her dive toward Jake, arms outstretched. Her left hand missed, but her right caught an ankle as her left shoulder hit the side. Feeling herself skidding, she managed to wrap her left hand around the same ankle. But the boy was heavy and going over, pulling her with him.

As usual under such conditions, Giff had taken a stand where he could concentrate on the water and command the boat. Hob Grant having proved nimble with the braces, Giff told him to man the steerboard ones, while he himself manned the landward set. The first time he had navigated the Pentland Firth, he had hired a pilot at Cape Wrath to teach him its quirks, and he knew that the trick with the Men of Mey was to hold a straight course, because less than a mile separated St. John’s Head from the Island of Stroma. With two oceans colliding in such narrows, the tide on its ebb seemed to want to run in all directions. These waters had claimed many a ship, and he did not intend the Serpent to become one of them.

The Men were leaping high, the ebbing tide trying one moment to drive the ship backward, the next to push it toward the Caithness shore, with the result that he saw the disastrous eddy barely in time to avoid plunging straight into it. As it was, the Serpent caught the whirling edge and wanted to ride it around. He shouted for the lads to pull harder, counting particularly on the larboard side, where he’d placed his twelve extra men to fight the unpredictable current’s determination to push them shoreward. The wind blew from the north again, too, but he could still harness it as his best ally.

He heard shouts from behind but knowing he had to get the Serpent free of the whirlpool, he bellowed again at them all to “Pull!” before he dared take his eye off the water ahead and glance back.

To his shock, he saw Sidony leaping, skidding, and diving toward the larboard gunwale. Only then did he catch sight of Maxwell’s anguished face and see Jake.

“Hold that tiller!” Giff roared at Maxwell, then to the men, he bellowed, “Pull, lads, pull for our lives! Hob, tie off your braces!”

The men were shouting now, all of them, and when he saw that Hob Grant had tied his braces, Giff took a quick wrap around his own cleat to fix the luff. Then, sending up a prayer that the wind would hold, he leaped to the gangway, running, praying he would not slip on its puddled surface. His men could not leave their posts without further endangering the ship, and he was terrified that he would be too late.

She was holding tight to the boy, but Jake was struggling, and the waves were doing their best to rip them both from the boat. In Giff’s haste to reach them, he nearly plunged overboard himself, but he caught the rail and grabbed Sidony, then Jake.

Her eyes widened as she looked into his, and no wonder. He was furious and wanted nothing more right then than to throttle her for frightening him so.

Gesturing to the nearest outside oarsman to ease off his bench and let the two others with him shift to keep proper leverage on their oar, Giff handed the lad to him.

“Get him wrapped in a blanket; he’s soaked through. Then relieve Maxwell.”

“Aye, sir.”

In that moment, the boat lurched free of the whirlpool and steadied. They were by no means out of danger, but they were beyond the worst.

Giff looked at his wife, still feeling the shock of near disaster and still wanting to punish her for terrifying him so. He scooped her into his arms and strode to the aft cabin, noting as he passed that Wat Maxwell was holding his son close.

“He wants skelping,” Giff growled at him. “Both of them do.”

He did not wait for a response but carried Sidony into the cabin and kicked the door shut behind him, only to realize that he had just shut out all the light, and to recall that it was twice as hard to keep one’s balance if one could not see one’s surroundings.

“Faith, don’t drop me,” she said when he stumbled.

“Can you stand?”

“I think so,” she said, her tone wary. “What are you going to do?”

“What were you thinking to leave this cabin after I told you to stay in here?”

“Jake wanted to see the Men of Mey,” she said. “I told him to stay inside, but I didn’t see that he was heading for the door as I said it. He opened it and just vanished. I ran and looked out just as the boat yawed. I couldn’t let him be swept away.” Her words ended in a squeak when he put his arms around her and pulled her close.

“If you ever scare me like that again, lass, I swear I’ll take leather to you.”

She did not speak, but her arms went around him and held him tight, and he was glad the cabin was too dark for her to see the tears that spilled down his cheeks at the knowledge of how near he had come to losing her.

Although she was as wet as Jake was, Sidony felt warmed all through, and why she should when her husband had just threatened to beat her if she ever did such a thing again and, indeed, seemed still within a hair of doing it now, she could not imagine. But the threat that ought to have stirred fear had sent the strange, warm feeling all through her instead, and she held him as tight as she could.

He kissed her forehead and her lips, and then he said, “I can’t stay, sweetheart. I must see how Jake is and be sure we’re safely past the last of the Men. We’ve days yet to go before we reach our destination, but this storm is more wind than rain now. Mayhap we can make camp tonight and dry out a bit.”

But, an hour later, two sails came into view behind them, forcing them to press on. The weather began to clear, and except for long hours of calm the second day, the winds remained reasonably favorable. Even the calm helped, because with judicious use of his oarsmen, knowing the longboats were unlikely to have loaded enough provisions for so many men at Wick Bay and would have to stop to hunt or fish, Giff was able to keep going while being certain his pursuers could not keep up.

Dusk had turned to darkness on the third day when they entered a rocky inlet. Shouting greetings and commands to men ashore, Giff ordered his rowers to turn the Serpent and back her into a gated noust at the inlet’s head.

“Where are we?” Sidony asked as he handed her from the boat.

“Duncraig,” he said. “Fife will need luck to find us now, and as we had to pass by my home in order to reach Ranald on the Isle of Eigg, I decided that filial duty required me to stop long enough to present you to my parents.”

Narrowing her eyes, she said, “Mercy, do you mean to leave me here?”

“I had thought I might, because keeping you with me could confuse matters later,” he admitted. “But, as Fife and company have fallen behind, I’ll take you to Glenelg tomorrow and leave you safely with your father whilst I carry on to Eigg.”

Sidony grimaced. Not only did she not want to face her father if Giff had to leave again right away, but knowing now where he was going, she wanted to see their voyage through to the end.

Fife was miserable. He had realized he was as good as a prisoner to de Gredin from the moment the twice-damned traitor had told him the men in his tail were dead. Nonetheless, Fife had stood firm when he learned MacLennan had taken the Serpent into the teeth of the raging storm and that de Gredin meant to follow him.

“You’re daft,” Fife had snapped when the chevalier ordered everyone to the ships. “Just leave me here then, and I’ll seek shelter from Prince Henry.”

“No, my lord, you will not. You can be of no use to me at Girnigoe.”

When Fife had begun to argue, demanding to know what use de Gredin thought he could be to him anywhere else, the chevalier had gestured to one of his men, who brought him a flask. “Drink some of this, my lord. It will calm you.”

“I don’t want your drink, and I refuse to board any ship in this weather.”

“Choose, my lord. You may drink from the flask, or I will have one of these men render you unconscious. We have no time to lose.”

Understanding why he had slept so well the previous night, Fife had drunk the wine and awakened hours later with an aching head, drenched to the skin, and more frightened than ever. The bow of the longship was tossing wildly in the storm, and the canvas that had sheltered him before had vanished altogether in the wind.

When a wave struck him full on, he screamed, grabbing at the nearest of two bow storage lockers that formed benches near the stempost, trying to find a handhold.

De Gredin shouted from surprisingly nearby, “Bind him. He’s a nuisance as he is, and if he goes overboard, so be it.” He stood against the stempost, straddling the lockers, but Fife had been too frightened of the raging sea to look up and see him.

As oarsmen grabbed him and began to bind his hands, he yelled, “Why are you doing this? Why not just kill me and be done with it?”

“In troth, your royal banner is of more use to me, but I may yet need you, as well. If I do, God will keep you alive for me.”

“But why should He? And where are we? Are we nearing Orkney?”

“We do not go to Orkney,” de Gredin said. “We go to the Isles. MacLennan would not have set out in this storm if he were just going to Orkney. He is taking his cargo to the only other man besides Henry powerful enough to set himself against you, the King, and his holiness like this. MacLennan is going to MacDonald.”

“But—” Fife stopped, realizing that to a man like de Gredin, Donald’s power was all that mattered. The chevalier might not even know of their close kinship. In any event, Fife knew that it would be foolhardy to say anything that might lessen his own value. And, too, it was certainly possible that MacLennan had made the same judgment of the Lord of the Isles.

In any event, he could be sure that Donald would not let anything happen to him, and believed Donald would also be willing to help him secure the Stone.