Legacy of the Highlands Read online

  “All I wanted was to protect my son. Is that a sin? I didn’t want him to know about our family’s involvement and then the two of you had to go to that damn store in Inverness. Why there, why that place? And after, once Will brought back the paper that raving lunatic gave him, that Declaration of Arbroath, there was no stopping it. Even then I didn’t warn him. God forgive me, I didn’t warn him.”

  “I don’t understand. What should you have warned Will about?” Alex leaned toward him and grasped him by the shoulders so he’d have to look at her. “What does the gift shop in Inverness have to do with this?”

  Diego continued to rest his head on his forearms, but Alex saw his body stiffen as he listened to John’s incoherent account. She frowned wondering how much of this he already knew and how long it would be before he exploded again.

  “I’m sorry if I’m not being clear. My brain is a bit addled,” John conceded and his body sagged. “Is there more coffee?”

  Diego silently refilled John’s cup and resumed his head down position.

  “Go on,” Alex urged, “you were talking about that man Mackinnon and the paper he gave Will.” She sensed that a curtain was about to rise in a theater and she had no idea what the play was about.

  John’s eyes had a faraway look and he began his tale as if in a trance.

  “I was playing outside our house — the same one I live in now — when I was a little boy, maybe five or six years old. It was a cold autumn day and I was jumping into piles of leaves that our gardener had raked up. I liked the way they crunched and the pungent smell when he would set the piles on fire. Sometimes he’d even let me strike the match. Anyway, my father called me to come inside. He was quite strict and I thought he was going to punish me for interfering with the man’s work. I can’t remember the gardener’s name. Isn’t that strange?”

  Alex hoped he wasn’t headed off on a tangent, but he brought himself back to the story.

  “Anyway, my father took my hand and brought me into the library. We called it a den in those days. No one was allowed in that room without my father’s invitation. There were logs blazing in the fireplace and I could see two cups of hot chocolate and some cookies on the table near his chair, so I figured he wasn’t mad at me. I always liked that room, still do,” he mused, “except now I wrecked it.”

  He sighed deeply before he continued. “You remember my father, don’t you Alex? His name was John, like me. All of the first-born boys in my family were named John. But I wanted something different for my son, so I named him William, for William Wallace. You know, the Scottish hero from Braveheart — the Mel Gibson character with the blue war paint.”

  When he looked at her expectantly, Alex simply nodded. The John Cameron who was spinning this tale was a stranger. She wondered if he’d allowed Will to see this side of himself.

  “You knew him, my father, didn’t you Navarro?” he said, turning toward Diego.

  “Yes. I met him once or twice when I was very young.” Diego seemed pensive as well, but he was as anxious as Alex to find out what John’s fairy tale had to do with Will’s murder. “You were saying you were in your father’s library…” Diego’s words guided John back to his narrative the way a sleepwalker might be led back to bed.

  “Oh, yes. Right,” John’s eyes glazed as he slipped back into the past.

  “We sipped our cocoa for a while, but my father didn’t say anything to me. Finally, he added a log to the fire and sat facing me. He had a very deep voice, the kind that could rumble like thunder or lull you to sleep. Between the fire’s warmth, the cocoa and his voice, I remember wondering if I was still awake since it was like listening to a bedtime story. Obviously I wasn’t asleep, because I remember every single word he said…I don’t think he ever read stories to me.”

  “Is it all right if I walk around?” John asked Diego, finally relinquishing control to the younger, more powerful man. “Of course,” Diego answered quietly. “What did your father say to you?”

  “I was too young to understand a lot of it, but every couple of years or so, he’d repeat the same story to be sure it was ingrained in my mind. He said it began in 14th century Scotland. One of my ancestors and other clan chiefs gathered at a place called Arbroath to write an appeal to the Pope, asking him to help Scotland gain her freedom from England. They didn’t actually talk to the Pope. They sent a long letter, kind of like a petition, with all of their wax seals affixed to it.”

  “I’ve heard of that letter.” The memory transported Alex back to the touristy shop where Will had spent an hour being schooled in Scottish history by the store’s busybody proprietor. “Will was blown away to find out that someone named John Cameron signed it. He thought it was a coincidence, but I remember that he told the shopkeeper that you have the same name.”

  “Coincidence? No, that was no coincidence. There’s been a John Cameron in my family for centuries and the one who signed that old document was my grandfather many times removed. Every firstborn Cameron male since then has taken the same blood oath.” He shrugged and looked directly at Alex. “Now do you understand? When the two of you came back to Boston from Scotland, Will was furious that I’d robbed him of his heritage. Some heritage. I never wanted him to be a part of it,” he said, bitterness hardening his voice. “He told me that Mackinnon gave him something to show me and had even asked for your address. He probably wanted to confirm that he had the right Cameron.”

  “Yeah,” she said, frowning at the memory as she leaned back and closed her eyes. “Will was fascinated by the old guy’s stories. He couldn’t figure out why you’d never told him that he was descended from Highlanders.” She forced herself to stay focused on the present and not get lost in the memory of how that discovery had made Will excited in other ways. But she couldn’t stop a fleeting vision of her hands sliding over her husband’s wet, soapy nakedness. She wanted to go with the daydream, to drift back to the feel of his body on hers after their encounter with Mackinnon. “Will,” she sighed, not realizing she’d spoken his name aloud. Diego shot a puzzled look at her, but John evidently didn’t notice anything and went on with his story.

  “When Will gave me that copy of the Declaration of Arbroath, he repeated Mackinnon’s words verbatim to me as instructed: ‘Your Da will want to see it, too. Promise me you’ll show it to him.’”

  Alex was dumbfounded by John’s ability to mimic a Scottish burr and then instantly switch back to normal speech. “That particular document wasn’t just a reminder of the blood vow I’d taken. It was a clear message, but I didn’t realize it until it was too late. I never told Will about our family history or my connection to Mackinnon and the others so he couldn’t protect himself. Goddamn it, he was a man and I treated him like a child and it cost him his life.” His voice dropped to a whisper, “Anne kept trying to get me to tell him everything, but I was too stubborn or too naive. I should have listened to her.”

  John reached for his now-cold cup of coffee, evidently satisfied that his story was finished.

  Diego ignored him and turned to Alex. “Do you understand what this has to do with Will’s murder?”

  “Only a little. I mean it has something to do with the Camerons and Mackinnon and some oath. But no, not really. Not yet,” she shrugged.

  “I don’t get it either. Cameron. Cameron!” he raised his voice until John looked up. “What does a reproduction of a seven hundred-year-old document have to do with you? And what promise did you make to this Mackinnon character? What’s this blood vow you keep mentioning?” Diego already knew the answers to some of his questions, but he needed John to connect the dots.

  “What? Were you talking to me?” said John stupidly.

  Jeez, had the man suffered brain damage from all the booze he’d consumed, Alex wondered as she studied him in disbelief. He’d always been articulate and intelligent and had been coherent until a moment ago. Why couldn’t he explain this?

  “I’m sorry, I seem to be having trouble making myself clear.”

&
nbsp; “Damn right,” mumbled Diego.

  If Alex’s impulse was to beat John to a bloody pulp, she was sure that it was costing Diego plenty to restrain himself.

  “Do you think a five-minute break might help you gather your thoughts?” Diego asked politely. He would force himself to be patient with this man even if it killed him.

  John raked his hands through his hair. “Good idea. Got any aspirin? My head’s killing me.” Diego nodded and pointed toward the bathroom.

  “I knew it! The bastard is connected to Will’s murder and I bet he can even tell us whose hand held the knife.” Diego’s eyes flashed with the primal thrill of a hunter with easy prey in his sights until his gaze shifted to Alex. Her mascara was smudged, there were stripes on her cheeks where tears had washed makeup away, and she’d chewed off her lipstick.

  “You look like hell,” he said as his tone softened and concern filled his eyes. This gentle, compassionate Diego was as comforting to her as his savage, bloodthirsty side was frightening. Her feelings for him were as inconsistent as his behavior toward her, so when he wrapped her in his arms and pressed his lips to her cheek she surprised herself by returning his embrace. And that’s when John walked out of the bathroom.

  “So that’s how it is,” he crowed, grinning smugly as he took a step toward them. “Already making time with your best friend’s widow, eh, Navarro? Not that I’m surprised — like father, like son,” he taunted, his voice dripping with venom. “Can’t you Latin Don Juans keep it in your pants?”

  Diego flew at him. He’d been waiting for a reason to hit the older man and there was no holding him back. John’s insult, not only to his honor, but also to Alex’s and his parents’, gave him carte blanche to wreak the violence he’d craved. The two men tumbled to the floor with a thud.

  “Stop it! Cut it out!” Alex screamed but they ignored her. She had to stop them before John was badly hurt or they’d never find out why Will was killed and who did it. She scanned the room for a weapon, grabbed the silver ice bucket, and dumped its remaining cubes and freezing water over the two panting men as they wrestled. Stunned, they both looked up at her.

  “Will you behave or do I have to kick both your asses?” Alex glared at both men and knew she had to seize control if she were ever to hear the rest of John’s story. “Mr. Navarro,” she began, her voice cold and filled with contempt as she confronted him. Diego had the grace to look embarrassed. “Please leave us alone. Go for a run or hit the gym or I don’t care what until you work off some adrenalin and can control yourself.” He opened his mouth to protest. “No! Don’t say a word, not even one. Go. I’ll be fine, won’t I John?” The other combatant was still on the floor, breathing heavily, but nodded his agreement. She knew Will would have been amused by this scene and could almost hear his laughter. Alex didn’t believe in ghosts, but — just then — she was sure her husband’s was there.

  Chapter 17

  James Mackinnon placed a “closed” sign in his shop’s front window, locked up and drove out of Inverness, heading east on the A96. He hated to lose a day’s income, but there was no one he trusted to mind the store and today’s meeting in Elgin was important.

  The others would come from Craigellachie, in the heart of the Speyside whiskey region; Aviemore, a ski and hiking destination in the Cairngorm Mountains; and remote Boddam, bordering the North Sea at Scotland’s craggy, easternmost point. Each participant could make the round trip by car in a day. Their absence would arouse no suspicion.

  Mackinnon’s belly was comfortably full from his usual breakfast of porridge, a fried egg, and a thick slice of bread slathered in orange marmalade, washed down by two cups of tea with milk. As a widower for the past ten years, he was used to cooking for himself. It pleased him to eat what he wanted when he wanted, not like other helpless old men who had to pay good coin to some woman to prepare their food based on her tastes and her schedule, not theirs.

  Although it was summer, Mackinnon switched on the car’s heater to remove the overcast day’s damp chill. He tapped the radio’s “on” button, but BBC Scotland held no interest for him so he switched to a Gaelic language station.

  He smiled broadly as he recalled how proud he was of his grandson. Their people in America had provided him with a detailed description of the braw way the lad had carried out the task he’d so diligently trained for. His Jamie had expertly murdered John Cameron’s beloved son and he’d even had the wits about him to leave the sgian dubh beside the body and photograph his work. The contact in…Gloucester was it?...swore there were no witnesses, but to be safe Mackinnon had sent young Jamie to a friend’s sheep farm in the far north, near remote John O’Groats, where he’d work for the next year. It was no sin to take extra precautions to keep your kin from harm, was it?

  It took twenty years for Mackinnon to reach the upper echelon of the Group of One Hundred, the ancient alliance that took its name from a portion of the 1320 Declaration of Arbroath:

  “For as long as but a hundred of us remain alive, never will we on any condition be brought under English rule. It is in truth not for glory, nor riches, nor honours that we are fighting, but for freedom, for that alone, which no honest man gives up but with life itself.”

  The organization’s present-day members were all direct descendents of the document’s original signers. Every one of them, including that traitor John Cameron, had taken a blood oath to fight for Scotland’s nationhood and to never reveal the identity of the other ninety-nine members.

  Over the centuries, the One Hundred’s methods had often been brutally violent, but in modern times they employed intellect and money instead of broadswords. Throughout history bloodshed had rarely advanced the goal of a sovereign Scotland and was now forbidden. But the group’s unity had fractured in recent years, mired in conflict over how to achieve their objective peacefully. Some, including Mackinnon, argued that the political process embraced by the group was agonizingly slow and that less civilized tactics must not be ruled out. The vast majority of its members, however, continued to work for independence within a political framework. After all, they argued, Scotland had her own Parliament again. That was progress, wasn’t it? They seemed blind to the fact that real power still rested in London, despite the occasional crumbs the English would toss to the Nationalists. Mackinnon was convinced that Westminster would never willingly remove the yoke from Scotland’s neck and set her free.

  Today’s meeting of the splinter group in Elgin would remain a secret to all but the three who, like Mackinnon, were en route and one other who couldn’t attend. The remaining ninety-five members would never tolerate his thirst for vengeance and would cast him and his out for spilling blood in their name. Easy for them, he reasoned. It was his son, not theirs, who rotted in prison because of John Cameron’s treachery.

  Mackinnon never understood why the majority of Scots kowtowed to a foreign oppressor, which is how he viewed England. Sheep, the lot of them, he thought derisively. He’d cheered when Sinn Féin President Gerry Adams declared that he would never enter the chamber of Parliament in London because “it’s a foreign parliament and I am an Irish person.” And I’m a Scot, by God, yet I’ve got English pounds in my pocket and my passport says I’m British, Mackinnon thought with disgust.

  He rolled the car’s window down a few miles east of Inverness and spat as he passed the turnoff to the Culloden Battlefield — which he still called by its old name, Drommossie Moor. “I curse you, Charles Edward Stuart, and damn you, Butcher Cumberland!” Mackinnon shouted into the wind as strands of his white hair blew into his watery blue eyes. It was a ritual begun as a boy, imitating the actions of his Da who’d told him how the Bonnie Prince’s ego and incompetence as a military leader led to the savage slaughter of the starving and exhausted — but always courageous — Highland clans on that very spot in April 1746. His Mackinnon ancestors fought in the midst of the front lines, and only three escaped with their lives.

  As for the Duke of Cumberland, well, what could a man say
about Cumberland? Mackinnon spat again, more forcefully this time, then rolled up the old car’s window. Cumberland had been the worst kind of sadist, an English General who wasn’t satisfied to just win the doomed battle that ended the Jacobite Rising of ’45. Oh, no. After the victory, he’d ordered the massacre of survivors, even the wounded. His troops brutalized, raped, pillaged and burned, leaving women and children to starve. Tartans were banned along with bagpipes, weapons, the Gaelic language and all things Highlanders held dear, effectively ending the clan system.

  If it had happened today, Mackinnon mused, it would have been condemned by the world as ethnic cleansing or genocide. And if my folk had won, if only they had won, he thought, I’d no be on my way to a meeting to plot murder and plan for the day Scotland finally rids herself of England’s greed and domination. In his dreams, he sometimes visualized his homeland actually breaking away from its geographical tether, to float free, strong and independent once more.

  Ah, my bonnie Scotland, he sighed. More than a thousand years have passed and we still fight the same enemy. So many dead, may their souls rest in peace. He crossed himself then lit a cigarette as he reached the outskirts of Elgin.

  Mackinnon yanked up the hood of his dark green windbreaker as he walked from the car park toward what remained of Elgin’s ancient cathedral. He had no interest in the books and postcards displayed in the ticket office and dug in his pocket for the £3.30 admission charged by Historic Scotland.

  He resented paying good money to visit a ruined church, but reasoned that the coin was needed to help preserve his beloved country’s past. This rationale disappeared in a flash as he shifted blame for the ticket price to the English. If they weren’t stealing the profits from Scotland’s North Sea oil, the country’s museums and historic sights wouldn’t need to sell tickets — at least not to Scots. He didn’t give a damn how much tourists paid here or for the trinkets they bought in his shop. When Scotland was free…the phrase entered his mind unbidden, a welcome obsession.