Page 13 of Highlander’s Ancient Vengeance

Father John frowned. “Indeed he does, Malle. He is a fine young man.”

“You are a man of God, Father, so I will take your word for it.” Her tone was bitter.

He stared at her for a moment and said nothing, although he was wondering what had made her so cynical.

“We buried him yesterday,” he sighed. “His wife was so sad and so angry.”

He went into the church and returned with a big wooden box filled with papers and leather-bound books.

“These are the parish records for the Dunbars, but if you need the MacEwan ones you will have to ask Father Charles in St Antony’s on your side of the Cut. He has all those records in his keeping.”

Malle nodded. “I see. Thank you, Father.”

They began to go through the documents, starting at the earliest, two hundred years before, when the first Dunbars had moved into the area that the MacEwans had already more or less claimed as their own, even though they had no legal rights to it. The feud, they could see, had started almost as soon as the families had met.

The first argument was border dispute, when the MacEwans demanded the rights to that first piece of land. It legally belonged to the Dunbars, however, since they had bought it outright. After that there were skirmishes over grazing rights, and even arguments about who was working on which estate. There was also a fight for supremacy between them over who had more status and wealth, but nobody really cared but the families themselves.

Occasionally there were squabbles with other families too, but these were usually small in scale, short-lived, and easily settled; however, the animosity between the MacEwans and the Dunbars went on unabated, until Isobell appeared.

“Here is their wedding certificate.” Father John took out a fragile piece of parchment that was carefully pressed in the leaves of a book. Donnan McLeod Dunbar of the Parish of Saint Antony, Invergill, Scotland, married Isobell Maria MacEwan, Parish of Saint Laurence, Invergill, Scotland, on the 10th Day of February, Year of Our Lord 1223.

He handed it to Malle and she gazed at it, wondering if she was holding in her hand the answer to a two-hundred-year-old mystery.

The answer to the feud cannot be as simple as this, she thought.

As if he were reading her mind, Father John spoke up. “I think,” he said, frowning, “that the secret of what is keeping this feud going—not what started it—lies in the reason for Isobell’s death. I think that the original dispute started over the land claim. That is the most likely explanation, but now it seems that someone is fanning the flames for some reason of his own.” He shook his head slowly. “And whoever is doing it needs to be stopped, and quickly, before there are more killings.”

Father John looked at the beautiful young woman before him. He had seen the argument between Craig and Malle beside the grave, and in his long years of studying human nature he had always observed that people who disliked each other most at first were the ones who fell most deeply in love later. He had the strongest feeling that Craig and Malle would do just that.

9

Nightmare

Malle was thoughtful on the way home. The wedding between the two young people had been like something out of a fairy tale. It had moved her immensely, and she was determined to go and see Father Charles to find out what her side of the family’s story was. She had never really believed in love at first sight, but Donnan and Isobell were living proof that it existed. When the love of his life died, something in Donnan died too. He lived for only a few years afterwards and died from “a short illness.” She had heard of people dying simply because they wanted to, and that might have been what had happened to Donnan. When Isobell left him, he had nothing to live for.

She sighed. She had a slightly clearer picture now of what was going on but she decided that she simply could not think about it anymore. She was glad she had met Father John. He was the sweetest person she had encountered for a long time, and she would have loved to talk to him for longer, but his church was out of bounds to her, on the Dunbar side of the Cut.

That reminded her of Craig, and that kiss. Despite its brutal beginnings, it had ended up being a thrilling experience. But how could that be when she was still so angry with him? That was the question she had been asking herself at intervals all through the day, and now, as she put it out of her mind, another worry came to replace it. She had broken her word to her mother and ventured onto Dunbar land, and her sense of honor would not let her keep quiet about it.

She groaned. Her mother never screamed or shouted when Malle did wrong, but there was always a look of quiet pain on her face that hurt Malle more than if she had yelled at her.

She walked Arthur into the castle courtyard just as one of the kitchen maids, Tessie, came out with a flagon of ale and an earthenware cup.

“I saw ye comin’ in Mistress,” she said, smiling. “Ye looked as if ye needed ane o’these!”

Malle sighed with relief. “You saved my life, Tessie! Thank you!” She gulped the entire cup down in a most unladylike fashion, then smiled at Tessie, who topped her by at least three inches. “Thank you again.”

Tessie curtsied. All the staff loved and respected their young mistress and her mother, because they both listened to them and treated them like people and not beasts of burden. The Laird was a little more distant but then he worked hard, unlike many others of his kind. She watched Malle as she skipped off into the castle.

“Aboot time that lassie wis merrit,” she remarked to her friend Janice, who was even shorter than Malle.

“Weel, that’s her ain business,” she said in a philosophical tone. “But I tell ye this, Tessie, there’s nane o’ thae young cockerels oot there that’s fit tae kiss her feet!”

“Ye’re no’ wrang there, hen,” Tessie agreed.

Her mother was in the library when Malle went in, still poring over some of the journals and letters. Her face lit up when she saw Malle. “You look tired, darling,” she said, patting a chair beside her. “How was your day? Interesting?” She looked eagerly at her daughter.

Malle had been agonizing over whether to tell her mother about the kiss, but in the end she decided not to. After all, it would never happen again, and she decided to put it to the back of her mind and let it rest there until it faded away entirely.