Page 19 of Highlander's Sinless Nymph
It had been a strange and unlooked for stroke of luck that had brought the daughter of his most despised enemy within Edward’s grasp. There was something of the touch of the Almighty about it somehow, as if Fate had conspired to bring them together.
I was tasked with watchin’ and waitin’ to see what I might learn about the man––about this Captain Bolton.
Even as he thought the hated name, Edward turned his head and spat into the night.
And now I have the chance to learn all there is, from the lips of his very own progeny nay less.
The thought of Charlotte made him consider what his next move must be. Clearly, he would need to tear down his camp and relocate. Sweet as honey she seemed, but she was, when all was said and done, a Bolton too. He could not trust her––would not allow himself to trust her.
Yet hehadtrusted that she would make the effort to get free of her father the following morning. Much hinged on that. If she were able to escape the camp, then it would be an all too easy task for Edward to overpower her and take her hostage––a major coup of the MacQuarrie clan in their feud with Captain Bolton.
Edward hurried between the blackthorn hedges and down the slope that led to the little cave at the bottom of the shallow dell. So distracted was he, by his thoughts of what might happen the following morning, he did not become aware of the two intruders before it was too late.
“Well, well, well, what ‘ave we ‘ere, Cookman?” came a sneering voice from out of the shadows to Edward’s left.
“Looks like a fellow after our own hearts, Ewing,” a bandy-legged man squatting by the glowing embers of Edward’s campfire said.
Edward could see at once that these two Englishmen were vagrants.
Poachers, maybe, but nae good ones if their clothes or stink are anythin’ to go by.
“I’ve nothin’ to spare you, gentlemen,” he said, in his fair imitation of an English accent.
The first man––Ewing––emerged out of the shadows. He might have been thickset once, but the deprivations of a life lived rough had taken their toll on him. He had a cruel, curved knife in his dirty fist.
“Nothing to spare, aye?” he drawled. “I think we’ll be the judge of––”
Edward hit him so hard in the stomach that the man simply folded in half with a wheeze and collapsed to the ground. The knife flew from his hand and into the trees.
The man called Cookman bounded to his feet and lunged at Edward with a hatchet he had concealed under his ragged jerkin. Edward sidestepped the first blow, the notched blade whistling past his face.
Cookman snarled and swung at him again, but Edward caught his wrist in a grip of iron. The man gave a little squawk as Edward jerked the hatchet from his grasp and then dropped like a marionette with its strings cut when Edward head-butted him hard in the face.
The whole episode had taken less than ten seconds, but by the end of it the two would be thieves were lying crumpled and moaning on the ground with the Highlander standing over them.
Edward heaved each man to his feet and then half dragged, half carried them by their ragged collars out of the dell. He tossed them out through the blackthorns and down the slight slope on the other side.
“I told you that I had nothing to spare, you sorry fools,” he said, still in his best English accent. Then, unable to quite go against his nature, he pulled a waxed packet of cured meat from the inside of his cloak and tossed it after the two pathetic vagabonds.
“Be off with you,” he growled. “I have business to sort in these parts tonight and don’t want to have to deal with you again. You hear?”
There were a couple of moans of assent from out in the dark.
“Good,” Edward said.
Just poor men, hungry and desperate, but I do not have the time or patience to deal with ‘em gently tonight.
He walked back to hide most of his meager provisions inside the cave so as to save himself having to lug them to his new camp, wherever it was he decided to make that.
I’ll get a few hours sleep and then be up with the birds to get a jump on any Englishmen that might be tryin’ to do the same to me.
Edward began packing up his things, hiding the rocks he had used to make the poultice under a pile of leave and scattering the ashes of his fire. Once he was done, he whistled softly for his horse and the mare came walking sedately out from behind a screen of bushes where he had left her to eat from a bag of oats.
“All right, me lass, let’s go and find some place safe to pass the rest of the night,” he said, rubbing the horse’s velvet muzzle, “and in the mornin’ ye and I shall see what we shall see.”
* * *
It only took Charlotte a few tense and breathless moments to scramble into the interior of the old, dry tunnel that had been formed by the encroachment of the heather and gorse over the years. The floor of the tunnel was made up of soft, dead leaves and it was no trouble for her to scurry through the channel of old vegetation like a field mouse, even with her bandaged arm.
