Turn of the Tide (45 page)

They slid to a halt on the shingle. Munro slipped to the ground and for a moment laid his cheek against Sweet Briar’s face, running his hand down her neck He had no words. Behind him an
uneven shuffle and another hand matching him stroke for stroke. Munro lifted his head, acknowledging the offered sympathy, and though he knew it was fruitless, turned again to scan the surface of
the water, unbroken save for the marker posts nearest the shore. The pain of failure, his inability to save Archie and Sybilla, gave way to anger, lending a harshness to his voice.

‘You know who did this.’ It came out as an accusation, its effect to make the man step back, rocking on his heels, holding his hands out in front of himself as if to ward Munro
off.

Munro tried again, more quietly, ‘Come with me. To Orchardton.’ He placed a hand on the man’s arm as an encouragement, but he shook his head, his eyes wide.

His whole body was shaking, matted trails of hair slapping against his cheeks, his repeated ‘Na, na,’ increasingly desperate. Munro released his grip – whoever had done this
would make mincemeat of him, and with an effort managed,

‘Thank you; for showing me.’ He gestured towards the clump of gorse, his voice hardening afresh, ‘I’ll find the man responsible.’

He rode Archie’s horse to Orchardton, leading the others, and it was gone six when he entered the courtyard. A lass, crossing from the kitchen to the tower, saw the three
horses and dropped the board she carried, loaves flying.

‘Fetch your master.’

She picked up her skirts and ran, the door banging behind her. Munro dismounted, busied himself with sorting the reins, soothing the horses.

‘Munro?’

It was John Cunninghame.

‘I didn’t expect . . .’

‘I came with them, to see to materials, William also, though,’ there was an odd inflexion in John’s voice, ‘More for the jaunt, I presume, than for any help he has
been.’ He was picking up and dusting down the loaves the girl had dropped. ‘Where are Archie and Sybilla?” The beginnings of a smile curved his lips. ‘Don’t say they
marooned themselves?’

Munro met his eye, killed the smile. He pressed his fingers against his forehead, forced speech. ‘I saw them . . . tried to reach them . . . but the tide . . . it had me beat.’ An
argument hammered in his head, one voice prompting: Go on, say it, tell the whole. Another, more demanding: Wait, wait for proof. He managed, ‘I brought back the horses.’

John uncurled Munro’s fist, released the reins, called for a stable lad. Retaining his hold on Munro’s arm, said, ‘Come inside. You need a drink.’

They climbed to the hall, Munro moving like a mechanical toy. A woman rose from the settle, mouse-haired, the welcome in her green eyes become, in a glance, fear. Automatically he took her hand,
bowed over it, silent. She drew him to the fireside, pressed him down. John was there, holding out a glass. Munro tossed it back, coughed.

‘Steady.’ The voice came from far way.

The glass was removed, refilled, and he drank again. A third drink and his head began to clear, to harden into resolve. He stared at the floor, seeing not wood, but sand. ‘I intended to
reconnoitre. When I came on the cove, they were three-quarters of the way to the island, maybe more.’ He thought how to tell only what he had decided. ‘I went to follow . . . I
didn’t think a tide could come so fast . . . I saw them stop, as if to turn back, then run for the island. The water . . .’ He shut his eyes against the memory. ‘One minute they
were there, the next . . . there was only the tide, engulfing them.’

He felt the light pressure of cool fingers on his forehead.

‘I don’t think I would have made it back but for Sweet Briar. At low tide,’ he looked sideways at the woman, ‘Will we find the bodies?’

She didn’t meet his eye, but he heard her whispered ‘Oh dear God.’

‘No bodies?’ The voice was someone else’s entirely, though it inhabited his own mouth.

Dawn crept on Munro as he lay hunched against the rock, sheltered from the landward breeze by the bushes that surrounded him. He flexed his stiffened muscles as his eyes,
adjusting to the pale light, roamed the shoreline, the rocky promontory, the gorse with the cache of posts. The clutter of dead wood still sealed the gap. He stood up cautiously, his ears straining
for any sound. Nothing. Yet.

Despite that he had shut himself away so soon as a chamber had been prepared for him, it had been gone one o’clock in the morning when he collapsed, fully dressed onto the box bed. He
should by rights have shared a chamber, but Mistress Maxwell, her eyes dark and damp, like fresh moss, had displaced her older boys to give him privacy. He had expressed himself grateful, and
craving her understanding, had declined either to join the company for supper, or to have food brought to him, insisting that he could not eat. John had made one attempt at persuasion, but mindful
of William’s presence among the party, refrained from pressing.

When the tower was quiet, save for the scratchings and scufflings of mice and the occasional groan as the fabric of the building re-adjusted to the cool night air, Munro had eased himself from
the straw mattress, pausing at every creak of the planks beneath. As he set his feet on the floor, the cold from the bare flags seeped up through his woollen hose. He carried his boots down the
stair to the main door, careful not to slip on the polished hollow of the steps, and across the courtyard to the stall where Sweet Briar drowsed. She blew a puff of warm breath into the hand that
he placed over her nose and dipped her head to nudge his chest, lifting her hooves at his touch while he swathed them in sacking. Danger lay in the crossing of the barmkin, but no lights flickered
in the tower above and Munro exhaled softly. He kept Sweet Briar to a walk until they made the foot of the rise, then removed the sacking and bundled it into his saddlebag, before mounting and
making for the woods.

The slip-slap of the waves as they washed the cove had drifted him into an uneasy sleep, in which a swirling tide flowed, sucking and surging around his ankles, his waist, his neck. He woke,
gagging on saliva, the tang of salt sharp in his mouth and nose, but when he looked towards Rough, the sea was a broken line of white receding beyond the outline of the island. The flats stretched
undisturbed, so that he could have thought he imagined the events of the previous day, were it not for the knowledge of the two rider-less horses in the stable at Orchardton and the anger that
hardened in a lump below his breastbone.

There was a jingle of harness and a muffled oath. Munro slid back into the shadow of the rock. For this he had crouched, uncomfortable, in the cold hours before dawn, sure of who he would see,
less clear what he would do. He fingered the pistols, ready-loaded at his side. A shot to the belly was too easy. He wanted William to crawl on his hands and knees at his feet, to taste the wet
sand in his mouth, as perhaps Archie and Sybilla had as they were overturned by the tide. He wanted William to beg for his life before he killed him. For it would be William who came to replace the
posts – of that he had no doubt.

He could hear the soft sound of the horse’s hooves brushing the marram grass, and traced the movement towards him so that he gauged almost to the second the moment when the horse halted on
the other side of the gorse. There was a thump and a fissling and the scrape of thorn on leather, followed by the light footfall of someone who walked with a spring in his step. A low whistling as
Munro waited deep in the shadows. Waited until the man parted the gorse, bent down to retrieve the posts, re-emerged still whistling, cradling the bundle in his arms.

‘So it was you.’ Munro severed the silence.

William swung around, fear flickering in his eyes as he stared at the pistols Munro held in each hand.

‘You wouldn’t be so foolish.’

‘No?’ Munro held both guns steady.

William’s left hand strayed.

Munro shifted his aim downwards and fired, the ball raising a puff of sand no more than an inch from William’s boot. ‘No?’ he said again, the second gun once more trained on
William’s face.

‘What do you want?’

‘Apart from killing you? – The truth.’

The fear in William’s eyes was joined by calculation.

‘To know what it is you gain by the death of my brother, of Sybilla.’

‘She slighted me.’ William was dismissive. ‘And Archie had more of you in him than I cared for. They were of little importance.’ Then, as if seeking the advantage,
‘What would you gain by killing me? My father . . .’

‘Has another son, and he, though young yet, will grow. If . . .’ Munro’s voice was deceptively calm, ‘. . . When I kill you, it will be no great loss.’

William allowed the posts to drop, ‘Would you risk your own life for that trollop of your brother’s?’

Munro cast aside the pistols and drew sword and dirk both, advancing on William, driving him towards the gorse. Then he too had drawn and they circled, feinting and parrying, clashing the
blades, each taking the measure of the other, watching for the fractional flinch that would indicate a weakness. Munro thought of nothing save cut and thrust, movement and balance, distance and
speed. Seizing the initiative he swung his sword in a full arm upward cut. William parried with the flat of his sword and Munro allowed his own blade to slide downwards, then back and left, in a
wide, horizontal slice. William raised his dirk as guard, and Munro stepped back, then attacked with a series of rapid slashes, the momentum carrying him forwards; his breathing short, in time with
his swordplay. Attack . . . attack . . . redouble . . . redoublement . . . closing in.

He stumbled on an exposed root, dropping to one knee and William, pressing the advantage, jabbed at his neck, puncturing the skin below the jaw. Recovering, Munro sidestepped and twisted behind
William, who spun, his sword raised. He drove downward in a high backhand strike, but Munro intercepted the cut with the flat of his own sword, knocking away the blade. One moment Munro’s
back was to the shore, the next he faced it, each glimpse of the marker posts renewing his energy. Sweat trickled into the corner of his eye, soaked his shirt, threatened his grip. William too was
glistening, his hair plastered to his forehead, his breathing shallow. Munro shook his head, blinked, moisture flying from him. Over William’s shoulder he could see a tunnel of gorse, leading
to an outcrop of rock that jutted knee-high over the rim of the cove.

He pressed forward again with three sharp thrusts, forcing William back into the narrow gap between the gorse. The bushes pressed in on them, reducing their swing, giving Munro, shorter than
William and therefore with the shorter sword, an edge. Tired though his muscles were, he increased the pace, changing from deep slicing swings to sharp diagonal strikes, gaining ground with every
step. He gauged the distance to the rock: five, perhaps six steps. He took advantage of a gap in the gorse on his right, the extra space enabling him to increase his swing, slashing downwards,
catching William on the side of the knee, but leaving his own left exposed. William lunged at him, his blade slicing down Munro’s arm, peeling back his doublet and shirt, opening a gash from
elbow to wrist. Munro felt the hot sting of blood and flung himself forward, his sword arm straight and taut, the blade slightly elevated, so that the tip caught William’s face, raking across
his cheekbone.

Forced backwards, William was funneled towards the outcrop of rock, and as Munro continued to press, he stumbled against it, his legs buckling. Off-balance their blades met and held, but Munro,
with the advantage of solid footing, used his body weight to topple William over the rock. As he sprawled on the ground, his dirk spinning away, Munro leapt the rock and stamped on his wrist,
releasing the sword, which catapulted over the lip of the cove onto the sands below. Beyond William the bay stretched to the horizon, the dark outline of the island and the tower that crested it
rising from the sand. Munro had a vision of he tide sweeping in, enclosing the island, engulfing the sand . . . the posts . . . Archie and Sybilla. He raised his sword, the point poised above
William’s throat – an eye for an eye. As he thrust, enjoying the terror in William’s face, at the last second he flicked his wrist, to plunge the sword deep into the soft ground
inches from William’s ear.