Heaven and the Heather (21 page)

He looked back at Sabine. She was doing Campbell’s bidding. She shot her arrow…Niall grinned…into the bastard’s foot.

“Well done,” he mouthed.

He suddenly broke his stare. An arrow, white and gleaming, like hers, soared up from the standing stones behind her, its archer unseen. Niall looked up as the arrow sailed high into the gray sky. His practiced eye followed its intended path, downward, toward the queen.

“Rach air muin,”
he cursed under his breath.

He jerked the reins and raised his claymore high above his head.

There was only one thing for him to do. But at what cost?

chapter 11

Flight

“
N
on!
” Sabine breathed, throwing aside her bow and racing forward, Campbell’s howls behind her.

Niall and his mount soared over the moss-covered wall, waving his great Highland sword over his head. He raced directly toward the queen.

“
Non!
”

Niall, the Highland
sauvage
, was going to murder Mary. Why had Sabine trusted him? Why was she such a fool!

She ran faster, gown bunched in her hands, her throat burning, tears swelling in her eyes. He had lied to her!

Niall slammed his horse to a stop before the queen, sword raised. Lord Darnley screamed and crumpled to the ground.

Sabine raised her left arm. “
Non!
” she gasped.

She stumbled to the heather, bashing her knee against a rock. Despite the pain, she scrambled to her feet, limped a few steps more and fell just short of Niall’s mount. The Highlander looked down at her, winked one blue eye, then looked to the sky just as an arrow, gleaming white like the one Campbell had gifted her, stabbed through his stained tunic into the meaty part of his right shoulder. The hard “thunk” sound reverberated sickly in Sabine’s ears. Instantly she knew her eyes had betrayed her. Niall had ridden to save her queen. He had made good on his vow. And now he was going to die.

Or not.

Niall reared his horse, scattering the queen and all about her out of the way. All except Lord Darnley who remained in the heather. Sabine stood just as Campbell’s angry words rang behind her, just as Niall, arrow in his shoulder rode back in the direction he came, to the forest.

“Get him!” Campbell bellowed to the guards who ran across the valley, pikes in their hands.

They were no match for Niall and his warhorse, well gone. Sabine never felt so alone as she watched him flee.

“Arrest the MacGregor!” Campbell screamed as if that would make the royal guards run any faster into the wood. He limped to a stop beside Sabine and grabbed her roughly by the arm. He looked at Mary, who silently observed the melee about her, and Lord Darnley at her feet. Campbell pointed at Sabine then to a guard who had taken his place just behind the queen. “Arrest the
mademoiselle
too! She tried to shoot the queen with her arrow!”

“
Comment?
What?” Sabine cried. “This, I did not do—”

“Fortunately, the
mademoiselle’s
arrow struck that MacGregor before it could dispatch Your Majesty to an untimely end,” Campbell declared.

Mary stared at Sabine. “If one did not know better,” she said. “One would think that Highlander had taken the arrow for us.”

“He did, Your Majesty!” Sabine cried. “I know this to be true!”

“How do you know this?” Mary asked. “How do know you this
Highlander
?” She had stepped too near Sabine’s heart and made her mute. There was nothing she could say to escape this horrid predicament.

Lady Fleming and the other Marys quickly joined their queen, voices steeped in hushed concern. The old Scot, who had seen the sketch of Niall, gave Sabine the nastiest stare. She glanced away. Her world was splitting apart again. This was a disaster to match the one she had lived through years ago in Chamonix. Only this one, she feared would mean her end.

“I know not the Highlander, Your Majesty,” Sabine protested. She meant she knew him not in the Biblical sense. She would never lie to her queen. “I saw what he did. He saved your life.”

Campbell tightened his grip on her arm. “And you tried to take it! ’Twas your arrow!”

“’Tis a falsehood, m’Lord!” Sabine shouted wrenching from his grasp. “’Tis a truth you should be pointing at yourself!”

“
Mademoiselle
Sabine!” Mary cried. “Kindly remember your place!”

“But Your Majesty, I…I…” Sabine could not find the words to defend herself. With all of these disbelieving eyes staring down at her, she may as well have tried to climb Mont Blanc in the middle of winter.

“The arrow is yours, is it not? And do you confess to know this Highland outlaw named MacGregor?” Mary asked.

“Your Majesty, I do not understand—” Sabine began.

“We had hoped for so much more from you. Your late father had hoped the same. You are such a disappointment to us all.” Mary stole a glance at Sabine’s right hand. “You will have to be confined until your innocence or your…guilt is proven.”

Sabine clasped her hands together as best as she could. Would that she held real, undeniable proof against Campbell, her world would not be so bleak!

“Most Gracious Majesty, I would never—” She suddenly unclasped her hands and held her right hand out to her queen. “I could never—”

“How do you explain the wound to my foot?” Campbell shouted. “Your hand with the arrow is fine despite your malady.”

Sabine glanced down. The side of his leather boot was slashed open, exposing the arch of his foot and a thin line of blood. She had simply grazed him. He needed a cobbler more than a healer.

“Take the
mademoiselle
to my castle,” Campbell ordered the guard. “Place her deep within the gaol.”

The guard, pike in hand, stepped over to Sabine.

The thunder of hooves suddenly reverberated in her ears.

“Blowing hot wind across the glen, ye Campbell bastard?” Niall shouted from behind her.

Sabine whirled around, her heart flooding with relief, her mind seeing disaster.

He rode toward them, at full gallop.

She stood very still, in his path. He was putting his own head on the block by returning to the valley. Niall was indeed foolish…or incredibly brave.

“A protector,” she breathed. “
My
protector.”

The guard who approached her leapt back, out of the way of Niall’s horse. Sabine did not move. She closed her eyes.

In seconds she was soaring, her body clasped in one very strong arm. She imagined herself flying from this nasty scene. The man who had saved her queen’s life was saving her from the gaol and certain horrible fate. No one would believe her innocence. She was a cripple, suspect with one glance. As Campbell had said about Rizzio, she was a
freak
. No one believed a freak, no one but a Highland outlaw.

Sabine landed soundly behind Niall. She clasped her arms around his taut waist so she would not bounce off. She glanced at the stunned and angry faces below her.

“Listen to
mademoiselle
Sabine, Yer Royal Highness!” Niall shouted. “She knows who the pestilence is in yer court!”

He reared his horse back around, toward the forest on the impossibly steep hill. She could not go there, to his wilderness. Where else would he take her? To France? That was the only place she belonged. And Niall still held her gold, hidden in his Highland lair, no doubt.

“Bloody bastard!” Campbell hissed. “Guards! Kill him!”

“This is such a nice day,” Niall said. “Why ruin it by dying?”

He reared his horse. Sabine held him tighter, suddenly aware that she was making a horrible mistake. The suppressed anger on her queen’s face told her so. There was no proving her innocence now, no proving Campbell plotted to murder the queen.

“Watch yer back, Your Majesty!” Niall shouted. “Choose yer minions with care!”

“Get him!” Campbell bellowed at the guards. But the order was nothing short of delusion. Niall would not be his prisoner this day. Neither would Sabine.

Was that what she really wanted? To be a hunted outlaw like Niall?

He gave her no time to ponder that dilemma when he spirited her away from the heathered valley, into the dark pine forest, past a group of confused guards. Any defense of her innocence evaporated behind her. And that, she decided, was a very, very bad thing.

Sabine pounded Niall’s back as they climbed the forested hill. “
Arrête!
” she shouted. “
Arrête!
…STOP!”

Ignoring her plea, Niall hunched over the bobbing horse neck. Sabine had no choice but to mirror him. She peered around his linen and plaid at the arrow that protruded from his shoulder. She glanced at his face, in profile, at the expression that betrayed no pain, just stubborn determination to get wherever he was going. Sabine clasped her arms tighter about his waist.

They rode deeper into the forest and higher up the hill. She closed her eyes and felt the horse ride down and up and down again. She prayed her belly would not betray her and wished desperately to wipe away this horrid, topsy turvy day.

S
abine had no idea how long or far they had ridden when Niall stopped the horse in a thick glade of pine and bracken.

“This is a good place,” he said.

Sabine glanced at the trees, undergrowth, more trees and more undergrowth. The clouds and thick boughs overhead blotted out the sun, giving the forest a gloomy, foreboding air.

“
Non
,” she said. “We cannot stop here. You must take me back to my queen.”

“Ye can walk back,” he said under his breath.

“
Comment?
What did you say?”

Niall reached up and took the arrow protruding from his shoulder in both fists.

“What are you—?” Sabine began.

“Wheesht!” he hissed, then snapped the end of the arrow off.

Sabine gasped. Slowly, Niall shifted to the right and fell from the horse carrying Sabine with him. They thumped to a carpet of moss and pine needles. Sabine immediately rose to her knees beside him. He lay face up on the ground, staring, his eyes a dull gray-blue. His breaths came out in hard gasps. She touched his forehead. The flesh beneath her fingertips was cool and clammy. She looked down at his tunic, at the stump of the arrow protruding from a ragged bloody hole in the cloth.

“Sabine,” he whispered, startling her.

“
Oui
, Niall?” she said. She smoothed back his hair, when all she wanted to do was shout at him for being so stupid for placing himself in the arrow’s path, for being so blindly brave to protect her queen. And she wished to kiss him for that as well.

“I need yer help,” he said, as if it pained him to admit it.

He propped himself up on his elbows. Sabine reached out to help him, them withdrew her hands.

“You should lie down,” she said.

He shook his head and scooted back a little until he rested his back against the trunk of a pine tree. “No time for that,” he said. “I’ll rest after….”

“After what?” she asked, fearing his reply.

“After ye push the arrow the rest of the way.”

She shuddered. “Rest of the way?”

“Through my shoulder. Letting the arrow continued its journey is the only way to get it out. I cannae do it on my own.” He tipped his head back against the tree. His chest rose and fell with his heavy breathing. He relaxed his arms at his sides, his legs were splayed on the pine needle carpet.

“
Non!
” she exclaimed. “I cannot do that!”

“Get my dirk,” he rasped.

“Your—?

“Dirk. Knife. It’s tucked in my leg wrapping…my right leg.”

Sabine looked down at the powerful, muddy legs protruding from the woolen skirt he wore, his kilt. A ragged combination of leather, wool, and fur covered his calves. The leather-wrapped handle of a knife stuck out of the covering about his right calf, just like he said. Sabine reached down and took the handle in her left hand and slid it carefully out. Her knuckles brushed the auburn hair on his leg. What did he need this knife for? She was not going to do his bidding with it,
certainment!

She held the knife out to him.

He stared at her and did not raise a hand to take it. Instead, he opened his mouth.

“
Comment?
” she asked.

“Put it in my mouth,” he gasped.

Confused, she held the leather handle and placed the blade close to his lips.

“No,” he said, looking at her as if she were completely mad. “The handle.”

“Oh,” she laid the handle between his teeth.

He clamped down, and shifted his eyes to the arrow stump.

Every part of Sabine’s body, inside and out, froze in horror. “
Non.
I cannot.”

He nodded furiously. That seemed to sap him of all his energy. He slumped a little, then strained to right himself, pushing air out of his nose.

Sabine took a deep breath. Niall needed her help. She had to put her squeamish fears aside, or else he could die and leave her alone in this Scottish wilderness. That was the very least she could do for the man who had taken her away from certain imprisonment, perhaps execution. She could help him, and then he could help her get back to France…or find proof that it was Campbell, and not her, who plotted to murder the queen.