The Key to Her Past (Clan MacGregor #4)

Chapter 1

When Natalie MacCallister opened her bedroom curtains, the first thing she saw was her past. It stood forty feet high, slate gray in color, and it towered over the surrounding countryside.

She smiled. It was the same view she’d enjoyed for the last six months and it had yet to grow old. MacCallister Castle, home of her ancestors, up there on top of the mountain, lush fields below, all of it bathed in the golden sunlight of early morning.

Seven hundred years before Natalie opened her curtains for another admiring look at MacCallister Castle, Wallace MacGregor was looking up at the very same battlements. Unlike Natalie, he was not enjoying the view; he was trying to work out how to break in.

Wallace had often looked enviously up at the castle.

Tales abounded of roast suckling pig served on beds of juicy vegetables, bread so readily available the stale loaves were tossed to the dogs rather than eaten.

Barrel after barrel of ale was enjoyed with much accompanying laughter and music while his stomach grumbled, and the village wasted away.

He thought about the last time he’d had fresh bread. The thought made his stomach rumble. They never had fresh bread in Cromarty.

He’d lived in the village since he was found in the marshes as a baby a decade earlier. The village was all he knew. He had never walked the six miles to the castle before. He’d never even left the village boundary. Why would he?

If it wasn’t for the letter, he would have been quite happy to remain in the village for the rest of his life.

The letter had arrived that morning and shaken him to his very core. Not only did he have a father, but his father was alive and being held captive in MacCallister Castle at that very moment.

Wallace was part of the clan most hated by all MacCallisters. He hid the letter in his waistband once he’d read it. No one must know the truth. The village would kill him if they discovered he was a MacGregor.

He made his plans alone, taking counsel from no one. He shivered when he left the village that night, his shivering nothing to do with the October chill.

He hugged the letter tightly to his chest as he walked, hoping that its contents would act as a charm, protect him from the will-o-the-wisps and vicious hobs that wandered the moors at night.

He had a long way to go. His feet were bare, the mud under them thick, dragging his ankles down, tiring him before he’d traveled far. He kept on; his eyes fixed on the twinkling lights in the far distance that lit MacCallister Castle.

Whenever the hills rose before him and cut off the light he had to pause, control his breathing, not let panic rise up too far within him.

He kept moving despite the terror he felt. He was doing this for his father, a man he had no memory of. He thought about the letter. Jock and Daisy MacGregor, his parents, had given him up when he was little more than a baby.

They had lost the clan war against all the odds a decade earlier. The MacCallisters were outmanned and outfought, and yet somehow, they had defeated the mighty MacGregor clan.

Jock was captured. Daisy fled with Wallace, leaving him at the edge of Cromarty for the villagers to find. Then she simply vanished.

With the MacGregor laird captured and the lady gone, their lands had been forfeited, taken by the MacCallisters as the spoils of war.

Wallace was heir to the MacGregor lairdship.

Him, the farmer’s lad with not even a square yard to call his own, the lad who’d always dreamed of finding out who his real parents were, the ones he’d been told abandoned him as a baby.

The village said anyone who abandoned a baby must be a rogue or English.

He squeezed the letter tighter as a twig snapped nearby. Would the spell within protect him? He felt exhausted. Fear was tiring and it had been another long day.

He was always first up, fetching eggs for breakfast from the chicken coop by the water butt. He had walked outside and the first he knew of the package was when he fell over it.

Stumbling into the dirt, he turned to see what had caused his fall. The letter sat there like a living thing, looking back at him as he looked at it.

There was an aura of magic to it, something he could taste in the air that swirled around it, the sensation drifting away when he untied the string and pulled open the waxed parchment. Inside was the letter he held ever tighter as he continued toward MacCallister Castle.

From his left a rustling sound. He froze and glanced that way, praying it wasn’t a hob come to turn his feet to lead and his body to gold.

Another rustle and he bit his lip as there was a crash from the undergrowth and something leaped out onto the grass. He found himself staring at a rabbit that had hopped forth from under a gooseberry bush. He sighed with relief, forcing his heavy legs to start moving again.

As his heart slowed to normal, his mind returned to the letter. He had no reason to doubt what it told him. All he had to do was travel to the castle, and then read the incantation it had provided.

That would free his father from the curse that had held him bound in chains all these years, chains that no mortal man could break.

Wallace knew all about curses. Old Lady Gertrude had cursed the tinker that passed through last year and he was found dead the next morning down by the brook.

And then there was Derek the blacksmith’s boy who’d mocked the witch when she wouldn’t cure his boils.

Burned to death at his own forge a week later.

Curses abounded in village life. If the letter said his father was cursed, Wallace saw no reason to doubt it. Cursed to remain bound in chains for all eternity.

Unless Wallace could break in and then break the spell.

He had no idea who’d sent him the letter, but he didn’t care. What he cared about was his father. Perhaps together they could hunt for his mother, find her alive, reunite the family. Retake MacGregor Castle even? Wouldn’t that be something? Bring the clan back from oblivion.

To do all that he had to be brave. He had to ignore the sounds coming from the darkness, concentrate on putting one foot in front of the other.

His father was in the dungeon. All he had to do was get into the castle. It was impregnable to attackers, but he wasn’t an attacker, he was an eleven-year-old skinny boy.

Would they even notice him? Few people wanted to invade MacCallister land. It was infertile after years of neglect. There was nothing worth fighting over.

The MacCallisters had little to defend anymore. They had taken over the MacGregor territory after the clan war, but they’d been unable to hold onto it. The gossip in the village was always about how much had been lost in any given month.

Other clans continually encroached and soon the MacCallister border would be back where it had been for centuries. The MacGregor land became no man’s land, many clans fighting over it, none able to emerge victorious.

All the MacCallisters had to show for their effort was the laird of the MacGregors captured at their hand.

It took longer than he expected to get to MacCallister Castle.

When he did, he almost lost hope. The castle definitely looked impregnable, a taller building than he had ever seen, towering over the surrounding landscape.

The village church was a hay stack in comparison.

How could he ever have hoped to get inside?

His legs ached from the effort of walking so far through the thick mud of late fall. He tried to be brave. He couldn’t turn back. He could do this. If only he could work out how.

The castle was lit by torches. There was one above the gatehouse. It provided enough light to show him the gap where the drawbridge had been raised for the night.

There were more torches higher up on the outside of the keep, those had been the ones that had guided him through the darkness.

He kept to the shadows, working his way around the edge of the moat. Then he smiled. It was no moat. It was only an earthwork, the slopes steep and covered in undergrowth but not too difficult for a boy used to clambering through bramble bushes to fetch berries.

Two guards manned the near side of the drawbridge. They looked mean and he was glad they were too far away to see him as he moved silently down the slope of the earthwork. He took care to protect the letter from clawing thorns.

At the bottom he paused, catching his breath before beginning the tough ascent on the far side. At the top he paused again, listening hard, peering around the corner. He relaxed when he saw the guards had not moved from their post.

Looking up, he smiled again. The wall that had seemed so solid from the far side of the earthwork was not nearly as neat as it had appeared. Stones jutted out in many places. In others the mortar had crumbled, leaving gaps the perfect size for handholds.

Tucking the letter into his waistband, Wallace began to climb, telling himself this was nothing more than the wall of the farmhouse which he regularly climbed to tend to the thatch. Just a wall like any other. Only ten times higher.

Halfway up, he had to stop. Voices could be heard above, gruff men’s voices talking together quietly.

He craned his neck upward. On the battlement two men were crossing each other on patrol, pausing to share a joke before moving on. He held his breath, hoping neither man would look down. One spat over the side then moved off.

He was alone once again.

He resumed the climb, reaching the top a minute later. Hopping over the top of the wall, he ducked low and then ran for the safety of the corner tower.

The door was locked. That meant no guard would be coming out from there any time soon.

By the door he found more evidence of MacCallister complacency.

A coil of rope sat abandoned, one end still tied to an iron ring in the wall.

The cord was rotten, but it was still solid enough to take the weight of a half-starved boy and his letter.