Chapter 3

CHAPTER THREE

T he Isle of Barra, a few hours earlier

When the castle clocks chimed, one, two, three, Raven was sitting fully dressed and as still as a statue on the bed in her chambers, with only a single candle for light. She was staring at the open window, where the draperies were being tossed about by the wild gusts beyond, her ears straining.

Suddenly, she heard it, the low whistle that could just be distinguished above the wind's whining. Her heart thudding in her chest, she leapt up, grabbed her cloak from the bed and whirled it around her shoulders as she ran to the window and looked down to the cobbled yard twenty feet below.

"'Tis me," a feminine voice called up, just loud enough not to be snatched

away by the billowing gusts. "Come, melady, we must hurry!" Raven squinted into the darkness, barely able to make out the cloaked and hooded figure waving frantically up at her. Her heart began thudding in her chest as fear and uncertainty took hold of her. But she reminded herself what was at stake and found the strength to go forward with her daring plan.

There's nay turnin' back now.

"All right, Ava, I'm comin'," she called down as loudly as she dared, though it was unlikely anyone would hear them amid the lashing wind. "I'll throw me bag down first." She bent and picked up the small bag she had placed by the window and, with a sickening lurch of her stomach, let it drop from the window. The thud of its landing was lost to the wind.

"Got it," came her maid's answering call.

Then, Raven said a silent prayer, took a deep breath, and hoisted herself up onto the stone windowsill. Fighting back her fear of heights, she forced herself not to look down as she leaned out and gripped the ivy snaking up the walls. Fortunately, the thick stems were woven into the fabric of the castle walls and easily took her weight. Her heart in her mouth, she gingerly edged out and found a foothold before starting the perilous climb downwards.

Slowly, carefully groping for each hand and toehold for support, she moved ever lower. The sharp edges of the giant plant cut into her flesh while she battled against the wind, which seemed intent on ripping her from the wall, as if it wanted her to fall.

After what seemed like an eternity to her, she heard Ava's voice much closer. "Ye're almost at the bottom, melady. Ye can jump from there."

"Heaven be praised," Raven muttered under her breath as she finally dared to look down and saw Ava's face shining up at her just a yard or so below. She loosened her grip on the ivy and let herself drop to the ground, landing safely at Ava's side. Ava grabbed her, and they hugged, both giving way to relieved laughter after the tense moments.

"Are ye all right, melady?" the maid asked worriedly as they parted.

"Aye, I'm in one piece, though I can hardly believe I just did that. And in a dress as well," Raven answered shakily. Once she had gotten her breath and composed herself, she glanced around the deserted outcrop. "What did ye dae tae get rid of the guards?" she asked Ava.

Ava chuckled. "After what I put in their suppers, they'll be hoverin' above a chamber pot fer hours," the maid replied.

Raven laughed softly, tickled by her friend's ingenuity, but when she looked in Ava's eyes, she could see naught but worry and pain reflected there.

"Are ye sure ye wantae flee, melady?" Ava asked, her question betraying her true anxiety. "The last time ye ran away, ye almost found yer death comin' back," she added.

Raven was moved by Ava's concern for her, but she replied, "I cannae live like a prisoner in me own home any longer. Besides, there's someone I have tae see."

Thoughts of Thorsten growing up without her had tormented her ceaselessly for the previous three years, since leaving the babe with his father. Every fiber of her being yearned to see him, to hold him, to kiss him, to tell him she was his mother, and that she loved him. She simply could not stand being away from him anymore, no matter the risk to herself.

"This is the first chance I've had since comin' back here tae save mesel', Ava. I have tae take it, fer only the Lord kens if I'll ever have another."

The maid nodded, but then her eyes widened as they heard some loud clanging noises nearby. "Come, we must hide," she whispered urgently, seizing Raven's arm and pulling her into a clump of wind-tossed bushes. They crouched down, afraid to breathe, listening intently.

After a while, the noises faded, but they remained hidden in the bushes just in case. "Probably just somethin' blown loose by the wind," Ava said, taking both Raven's hands in hers and looked intently into her eyes. "There'll be a ship, a birlinn, under Captain Mulvaney, waiting fer ye at the shoreline. But ye need tae run away from here tae get there in time tae board it."

"I'm sorry I couldnae take a horse from the stables fer ye—it would raise too many suspicions. So, ye'll have tae go on foot, but at least it'll gave ye some extra time tae get clear before they notice ye're gone. The birlinn will take ye tae the Isle of Harris. From there, ye can catch a ferry tae the mainland."

"Thank ye, Ava, I'm so grateful fer everythin' ye've done fer me. I hope ye'll nae get intae trouble because of me," Raven breathed, her heart full of affection and gratitude for the maid, her only trusted friend at the castle. The two women finally stood up, the gusts melding them together for a moment as they hugged each other tightly in a final farewell.

"Dinnae worry about me," the maid assured her, her voice starting to break. "I ken just what tae say tae fool them all. Now, ye take care of yersel', melady. I dinnae want tae see ye back here again, eh? I hope all goes well fer ye."

"Thank ye again, with all me heart. I'll miss ye, Ava," Raven said brokenly, feeling her life was always running from one place to the next. "I hope we meet again in happier times."

"I hope so too, me lady," the maid cried, her voice thick with tears now. "Go on, ye must run, and dinnae stop fer anythin'!"

They tore apart reluctantly, and with a last glance back at her loyal friend, Raven hoisted her bag onto her shoulder, picked up her skirts, and plunged into the darkness, heading for the shore.

She ran as fast as she could towards the sound of the crashing waves, with the bag bumping against her, finally grateful for the wind that was propelling her forwards, along a well-worn path she knew even in the darkness. She had made sure to learn every twist and turn, every rock and depression in her three years on the island. Her whole time there had been spent preparing for any chance to get away, never knowing if it would ever come. But she had never given up hope.

As the sound of the sea grew louder, the wind continued rising, and she wondered for the first time if there was going to be a storm that would prevent them from setting out to sea. Her heart dropped to think it might be so, for who would put to sea in this?

Yet she ran on, telling herself not to fear. She had come this far. If she had to, she would hide in a cave until the weather cleared and wait for another boat. There would be other passengers wishing to leave the island unseen, under cover of darkness, she supposed, and this Captain Mulvaney would surely not want to miss out on the handsome payments he was due for transporting them from the island. Would he?

At last, she came to the beach and stopped, puffing and panting with exertion. Peering through the darkness, which seemed almost alive with the wind's frantic cavorting, she could just make out the outline of the birlinn against the mottled, gunmetal sky. The wooden ship, which looked to be about thirty feet long, was half pulled up on the beach, while the waves hurled themselves at it jealously, seeming to want to reclaim what belonged to them. The single mast stuck up like a pointing finger, its large, square sail lashed rightly against it.

The sight filled Raven with hope. Her heart beating violently, she hoisted the bag higher on her shoulder and ran towards the vessel. Finally, she found herself part of a small group of passengers waiting on the shore, all of whom were shrouded beneath their cloaks and coats. She surmised that their apparent desire to go incognito chimed with her own, and she too pulled her hood down over her face, hiding the features that almost every one of them would otherwise recognize.

Two men in oilskins were taking names and letting the passengers climb aboard, a perilous endeavor in itself due to the windy and slippery conditions. Thinking that, like herself, the other passengers must all be desperate to get off Barra if they were prepared to endure this, she willed the crew to hurry. Her heart in her throat, she waited, expecting an angry shout to come at any moment, for guards to run down and grab her, and drag her back to the castle.

Thankfully, that did not happen before she got to the front of the queue.

"Yer name, Miss?" the crewman asked, his features invisible under his hood in the darkness.

"Maeve Carter," she said above the wind.

"All right, ye can get aboard," he replied gruffly, jerking his head at the boat.

"There's gonnae be a storm, is there nae?" she said anxiously. "Are we still settin' sail?"

"Aye, 'tis still out tae sea, and the Captain thinks we can outrun it," he replied, grudgingly handing her into the vessel.

"Thank ye. How long is it until we reach Harris?" she asked as she balanced and found her sea legs.

"Five, maybe six hours," the man said. "It depends on this weather. Ye can sit over there," he told her, pointing at two long wooden benches set amidships, between two rows of waiting oarsmen, twenty-four in all. The passengers were all huddling there. She joined them and made herself as comfortable as she could in the circumstances, keeping her hood low and her head down. No one spoke, and that suited her fine.

She noticed a husband and wife and their little boy, who appeared to be about five or six. He had dark hair and reminded her of Thorsten, although she knew her son was only just over three. Nevertheless, the boy stirred her maternal instincts, and her overwhelming desire to see her son burgeoned in her heart.

For so long, Thorsten had been her lodestar, her guiding light, the whole reason for her daring escapade in leaving the island in such a furtive manner. Her life without her son was so intolerable to her, he had become her sole reason for living.

Now she strongly identified with the parents' anguish for the safety of their child, briefly allowing herself to indulge in the comforting fantasy that she and Arne, along with Thorsten, might one day be like them, a happy, loving family. Of course, she ruled out the perilous situation she presently found herself in, rather envisioning carefree times spent enjoying each other's company. Thus, she distracted herself from her fears of the voyage to come.

Eventually, the passengers were all loaded and ready to go. Several crewmen got out and pushed the birlinn into the rolling waves before jumping nimbly aboard and going about their duties.

"Row, lads!" the man she thought might be Captain Mulvaney roared, and the men set to rowing in perfect time with each other, speeding them out to sea on the outgoing tide.

Despite the rough sailing, Raven breathed a sigh of relief. The worst is over , she told herself. I'm off the island and on the way back tae Harris. 'Tis only a matter of time before I'll be holdin' Thorsten in me arms again.

Over the next few hours, Captain Mulvaney's ship sailed on in almost total darkness, save for the occasional crack in the vaulted roof of blackness above them where the moon shone through. Raven concluded that his clandestine nocturnal voyages were best conducted without a single lantern being lit aboard the vessel, which added to the terror of the howling winds and rising waves that soon engulfed them, lashing crew and passengers alike, soaking them to their bones and making their teeth chatter.

Yet the Captain urged his oarsmen to keep up their punishing pace. "I've been sailin' these waters since I was a bairn," he shouted at the increasingly frightened passengers, trying to reassure them. "Ye've naethin' tae fear. I'll get ye tae Harris safely, I swear."

"Ye're takin' us tae the bottom of the ocean, ye mean," one passenger shouted back before retching over the side along with several other unfortunates wracked by seasickness as the boat pitched and tossed with growing violence. Others were huddling on the floor, hanging onto the bench for dear life, moaning and crying. Several began praying.

Raven was deeply moved to see the young couple clutching their son tightly between them as the vessel was tossed up and down on the roiling sea like a paper boat. The boy's white, terrified face and large dark eyes once more inspired her need to protect. Sensing that calamity might not be far away in the dreadful conditions, she moved slightly nearer the little family, silently vowing to be on hand to help them survive if the worst should happen.

As the voyage progressed, it became clear to Raven that the Captain had misjudged the situation badly. Far from outrunning the storm, they were heading into it. People screamed as lightning cracked like doom and lanced across the dark, tumultuous expanse surrounding them. Thunder roared, and the waves grew ever higher, lashed into a fury by the gale, dashing freezing water over the craft.

Raven's stomach heaved as she struggled to quell her growing terror. She hung onto her bag and the bench with white knuckles, getting soaked to the skin as the boat reared and dipped, threatening to capsize at any moment.

The birlinn was supposedly hugging the coastlines of the various islands as she passed, but when thunder filled the air once more, and lightning split the sky, its light illuminated a cruelly rocky shoreline which, to her, seemed dangerously close. When the Captain began frantically shouting orders to the poor rowers to get them away from the rocks, she knew they were truly in deep peril.

And Raven was right, because shortly after that, there was a violent impact, a tremendous crash, and the vessel juddered alarmingly as a huge crack appeared in the bottom of the boat. Water began gushing in from below as well as from above. The boat seemed to rise up and tilted violently, tipping most of the panicked, screaming passengers from the benches to the listing side of the boat, which was already half submerged. The rowers, so vulnerable and exposed to the furious elements, were vanishing over the side with frightening frequency, their desperate shouts lost to the gale as their bodies were sacrificed to the raging sea.

Raven was more terrified than she had ever been in her life. She gasped for breath as freezing water was hurled unceasingly into her face, one of the few who had managed to hang grimly on to the bench.

She watched as her bag was snatched away and disappeared into the murk. But the loss of her few possessions was the last of her concerns, as she glimpsed the young couple among those who had been hurled to the side of the boat. The boy was not with them! She cast around and saw him clinging to a stanchion, his cries for his parents swallowed by the encompassing furor.

Slowly, she edged her way towards him and finally reached him, taking his hand and pulling him close, sheltering him as best she could with her arms and body against the wooden wall behind them. Comforting him allowed her to control her panic somewhat.

"It's gonnae be all right," she told him, her lips close to his ear, "I'll get ye back tae yer parents, dinnae worry." He stared up at her in mute fear, his tears indistinguishable from the rain and sea. His lips moved, but she could not make out his words amid the tumult.

She hugged him closer. "I ken, pet, me too, but 'tis just a storm, it'll pass, ye'll see," she whispered the reassuring lies. "Me name's Raven, what's yer name?" At least that was the truth.

"Sandy," she heard, her ear pressed to his lips.

"Sandy, is it? Is that for Alexander?"

He nodded, so she extemporized in an attempt to distract him, and herself, from their perilous situation. "Och, that's a fine name tae have at a time like this, for ye ken, there was a famous pirate captain called Alexander who sailed these very seas, and he encountered many a savage storm just like this. But he was very brave, ye see, just like his band of loyal sailor's, and?—"

"We've run aground on the rocks, Cap'n," one of the crew shouted amid the lashing rain and wind, clinging to the mast for dear life. "'Tis every man fer himself!"

A huge wave crashed over them then, and the man vanished overboard with a cry that was abruptly cut off. To her horror, Sandy's hand was wrenched from Raven's, and he was suddenly sucked away from her, vanishing into darkness as if by yanked by some mighty rope.

"Sandy!" she screamed, frantically searching amid the chaos surrounding her, but the broken ship was wallowing now, steeped in water coming from all sides, and they were dashed repeatedly against the rocks by the shore. Still determined to save him, she searched the darkness for him, but in vain.

The already terrible conditions were rapidly growing worse, for as the boat was driven onto the rocks again and again, it started to fragment, its shrieks and groans of agony competing with the surrounding din. As Raven struggled to see what had become of Sandy, lightning once again cracked overhead. In its light, she glimpsed a beach a little distance from the craggy outcrop they were being pounded against. There were shouts and cries as others spied it too.

She was a strong swimmer, and the thought of seeing her own boy again fueled her determination to survive. She told herself that if she could get in the water, there was a slim chance she could find Sandy and get them both safely to shore. If fate decreed that she must meet her maker, then she would not go out without a fight, and she refused to say goodbye to Thorsten and Arne.

Working quickly, she tore off as much of her drenched outer clothing as she could with her numb fingers. Her cloak, her dress, her boots, anything that would weigh her down once she was in the water was discarded. She figured that in her shift and petticoats, she would be able to swim better. If I dinnae die of the cold first, that is.

She was about to plunge overboard when she was jolted violently as the boat smashed against the rocks once more. The mast collapsed, and the keel was torn away with a horrible, wrenching groan, ripping the boat almost in two. A huge swell of water engulfed them then, and amid the screaming, Raven flailed desperately for a handhold.

But her feet were swept from under her, and the broken craft lurched, sending her skidding sideways. She heard her own skull crack as the side of her head impacted with something hard. The last thing she remembered before slipping into total darkness was her body being engulfed by the freezing waters.