Chapter 7 #3
“Have me touched again, you pathetic piece of pig shit, and I’ll murder you, I swear it!” David promised.
Peg Leg seemed to take the threat to heart. “Shackle him, wrists and ankles!” Peg Leg commanded.
The first man came toward David. David managed to deal him a telling blow to the left jaw. He spun in time to catch the man to his right with an elbow jab to the ribs. He kicked the one before him, slammed the one in the rear with both fists.
But there were four more to fall atop him. He was shackled, and a solid blow with a fisherman’s sinker sent him spinning back into oblivion once again.
He came to stretched out upon dirty, molding straw.
A stench surrounded him. He had been wrapped in the remnants of a blanket.
A small, ragged little man with sharp features and huge eyes was attempting to spoon some kind of tasteless gruel between his lips.
David coughed, sputtered, and managed to lift a hand to stop the man.
“Water,” he croaked.
The little man provided it, watching him anxiously. He drank, forcing himself to be careful. His voice remained a sorry croak as he asked, “What manner of ship is this? Into what pit of hell have I fallen.”
“A sorry pit, indeed,” the little fellow said. “You’re on the convict ship, Revenge, bound for labor in Australia, mate.”
“Sweet Jesus, heads will roll for this! I am the heir to Laird Douglas of Craig Rock!”
The little man was still. In a fury, David knocked the bowl of gruel from the very hands that had tried to help him. “Why will no one believe me, man?”
“The Douglas heir was killed in a fire a good two weeks ago now.”
“What? The fire was two weeks ago—”
“The laird’s son is dead and buried, MacDonald, and most men aboard think it’s blasphemy that you, the murderer of a young woman, dare to use his name.”
“What young woman was murdered? Shawna of Craig Rock?”
The man shook his head in confusion. “Nay, MacDonald! The serving wench you met in Oarmsby Tavern!”
“I met no serving wench, and I haven’t been to Glasgow in years! If we can but turn this ship around, I can prove—”
“Shh! Shh!” the little monkey of a man warned him.
“Some think as how that fever you suffered has you daft now, man, believing you’re a laird and able to put on airs and all.
But the captain, he’s a fierce man, and he says that from now on, every time as how you start claimin’ to be a Douglas, you’re to receive twenty lashes with a cat-o’-nine-tails. ”
“I am David Douglas!” he roared.
There was a bursting sound as the swinging door to the hold was thrown open. Peg Leg maneuvered down the ladder, wrinkling his nose at the stench of the hold. He was followed by a number of his seamen, one of them the nasty-looking fellow David had previously struck in the jaw.
The seaman’s face was still swollen. David had probably cost the fellow a number of teeth.
“MacDonald, I’ll have no more of your mad cries on board my ship!” Peg Leg roared. “See to him, men.”
Again, David fought. In the end, he was too weak to face so many men. He found himself dragged up, still naked, bound to the center post in the hold.
And the threat of the twenty lashes with the cat-o’-nine-tails was carried out. The man with the swollen face was to carry out the punishment, but even he paused, voicing a protest to Peg Leg. “’E’s half-dead, now, Cap’n. Twenty lashes will kill him.”
“He stands tall as an oak, and he’s muscled like a fighter. He used that strength against the innocent. God will judge him. If he dies, so be it, but I’ll watch each strike—he’s a fine one for work in Sydney, and worth more to me alive than dead. Carry on.”
Each lash bit cruelly into David’s flesh. In his weakened state, the pain was unbearable. He blacked out before it was over.
He came to with the little man by his side, staring at him sorrowfully.
“Your name is Collum MacDonald,” the little man warned.
“Ach, sir! Be you the laird’s issue in truth, you’d best forget it for now.
Captain Barnes will kill you like as not if you give him more reason!
Work the sails, scrub the decks as he commands you.
Live to tell your story where someone might care to hear it! ”
“I am David Douglas, eldest son and heir to the laird of Castle Rock, Craig Rock, the Highlands,” David insisted.
“Fine, man, and I’ll believe you. But if you’ve a mind for livin’, answer to the name ‘MacDonald,’ sir. And try to eat this broth. Something’s got to keep you going. They’ll be draggin’ you up to work soon enough.”
David stared at the little man and frowned.
“Who the bloody hell are you, and why do you care, man?”
The jackanapes smiled. “Once upon a time, I was Dr. James McGregor of High Street, Glasgow. But that was before a great man’s mistress chose to abort his child, then come for my help.
She died as I tried to staunch the flow of blood pouring from her womb.
The great man let the courts convict me, but the mercy of a judge sent me aboard this ship rather than straight to the hangman.
Now, sir, they’d not believe my story, and they’ll not believe yours. ”
“Doctor,” he mused.
“They call me murderer now.”
David stared at the little man, and at last saw the wisdom in his words.
“I am MacDonald, eh?”
“Aye, that I beg of you.”
David shrugged. “Not a bad clan as clans go. Even good families must throw out a bad egg now and then, eh?”
“MacDonald. A good enough name to live by if you’d seek to retrieve your own.”
Indeed.
There was but one way for him to find justice and vengeance, and that was to survive. His rage against what had happened, against her and those who had conspired with her, would not help him now.
Had he been supposed to die?
But he had not perished.
Yet it did not seem that he had lived.
He had found hell on earth.
But he was going to survive it. He was going to survive it because he was going to go back. Find out who had sought to kill him, and who was buried in his stead. Discover what evil cunning and conspiracy had brought him to this pit of eternal fire.
And he was going to enter her life again.
And God help him…
She would have all the fury of hell to pay, and he would see to it that they were damned together.
David awoke with a start. He was no longer aboard a ship, nor was he any man’s prisoner. He had found his freedom, and he was back in his room at Castle Rock.
In his own bed.
He looked quickly to the floor. She slept.
All those years…
All those years he had waited to come back, and she had been both the focus of his revenge and the spirit that plagued his sleep, for though he longed for his revenge, he had found himself simply longing for her as well.
Her scent had haunted him in the night. Memories of the satin-smooth feel of her flesh had come to him in the darkness, along with those of the soft brush of her hair against his limbs. And now…
He still longed both to hold her tenderly and to shake her. When she had been younger, he had cared for her as an unruly, headstrong, beautiful child.
When she had grown and matured, he had desired her.
Aye, he had wanted her, therein had lain his weakness, and therein now lay his thirst for revenge.
Yet again, it was Shawna twisting his heart and senses and reason.
He rose from the bed and walked to where she slept now upon the cold stone of the castle floor. He gently picked her up and laid her upon the bed.
And because he could not help himself, he gently placed his lips against her mouth and there tasted her sweetness with the breath of his kiss.
Fool! he charged himself.
And he departed the room in the same manner by which he had come.