Castle Macnab, page 5
‘Gentlemen,’ she said without mirth, ‘I thought I told you to bide where you were.’
6
THE JUDGEMENT TREE
________
The guards had spotted us and rushed up the slope with their weapons at the ready. My first impulse was to bolt before they got any closer, dashing and dodging as best we could, but I saw Leithen give the slightest shake of his head.
‘If we cut and run it will force their hand,’ he warned me in a murmur. ‘Wilhelm would be dead before we could raise the alarm anywhere.’
I knew he was right. Besides, not only did Christina Kildennan’s hound look more than capable of chasing us down, I had a shrewd intuition that his mistress would turn out to be a crack shot. The wisest course, now that we had been flushed out, was to give ourselves up and look for an opportunity to turn the tables.
We stood up to face Christina as she descended towards us with the dog padding a few feet ahead. Leithen and I had been rather pleased with ourselves for shadowing our quarry undetected, but this young woman’s tracking skills had put us to shame. Yet rather than showing any sense of pride at having cornered us, she seemed irked at being put to the trouble.
‘If you had done as I told you, we would not be in this situation,’ she informed us sternly. ‘You have only yourselves to blame for whatever comes next.’
Fearghal uttered a displeased growl that served to reinforce his mistress’s rebuke.
‘Did you really expect us to sit and drink tea, knowing what we know?’ I said.
‘I thought you might have that much sense,’ she answered. ‘And the shortbread is worth savouring. Do you imagine that by blundering into this business you are doing anything but making matters worse?’
Worse for whom? I wondered. For her father and herself who now had to deal with witnesses to their kidnapping? For their prisoner? Or for ourselves?
When the guards reached us we were escorted down into the centre of the abandoned village, which was dominated by a huge, gnarled oak, its bark pitted and scarred like the face of a mountain. Beyond the tree was a circle of crumbling stones surrounding a long disused well.
While the tall, pale-faced man kept an eye on us, the father and son conferred in low voices. Christina walked over to one of the restored cottages and called to those inside. The one-eyed Mackinnon came out first, followed by a man who could only be the laird, Duncan Kildennan.
He did indeed bear some resemblance to the long dead chieftain whose portrait I had noted back at the castle. He was a good six feet tall with thick brown hair worn longer than was common. This and his broad beard were flecked with grey and a pair of bushy brows hung over his fiery eyes.
Mackinnon murmured a word in his chief’s ear then fell into step behind him.
‘It’s as well, Kirsty, that I left you on guard at home,’ Kildennan told his daughter in a rich baritone. ‘We can’t have these fine gentlemen wandering about, getting themselves into trouble.’
‘I knew them for what they were the moment they came to the door,’ Christina reported. She gave her father a brief account of our visit to Castle Kildennan and her pursuit of us through the hills.
The laird turned to us and nodded appraisingly.
‘Sir Edward, I had not expected to encounter you in this forsaken place. And you, sir,’ he turned to me, ‘your name is Hannay. Mackinnon has warned me about you.’
‘I’m glad that he remembers me,’ I said with a sidelong glance at the gamekeeper. ‘I have something to repay him for.’
‘There will be no chance of that, not for the present at least. I have some quarters here where you won’t be comfortable, but it will be a lot safer for you than running loose in the hills.’
He indicated one of the renovated cottages and Mackinnon made a move to escort us there.
We held our ground and Leithen rounded on our captor. ‘I demand to see your prisoner, sir.’
‘Demand, is it?’ There was a cold humour about Kildennan now. ‘You must think highly of yourself to be making demands.’
‘I think highly of justice and the standards of civilised behaviour,’ Leithen retorted. ‘I wish to be assured that he is being properly treated.’
‘He has been offered food and drink,’ said Kildennan, ‘though he has refused both. He has got the idea into his head that I mean to poison him.’
‘That might be less cruel than whatever it is you do have in mind,’ I put in.
Kildennan met my effrontery with a darkly raised eyebrow. ‘Let me tell you exactly what I have in mind. Do you see that oak there?’
I eyed the great tree that loomed over the ruins like a grieving giant, its gaunt branches casting crooked shadows on the barren ground.
‘We see it,’ Leithen acknowledged.
‘Well, nigh on two hundred years ago, after the slaughter of Culloden, the Bonnie Prince was hidden away among these hills as he made his flight towards Skye.’ He waved a hand towards the nearest slopes, as though we might still catch a glimpse of the fleeing Jacobites. ‘The redcoats arrived, quite sure that the folk that dwelt here knew his hiding place. They ordered the people to betray their prince but they refused.
‘So one by one the men were hanged from this very tree in expectation that, as the rope settled around his neck, one of them would lose his nerve and confess. None did. When all the men were dead, the women and children were driven into the hills to perish. Their homes were razed to the ground as a warning to all who would rise up against the German king who ruled them from London.
‘Ever since, this place has been called baile nam mairbh, the Village of the Dead, and this oak known as chraobh breitheanis, the Judgement Tree. Many innocent men were hanged from its branches but now, at last, a guilty man shall swing there.’
The awful thought struck me that he was mixing up old wrongs with new to make himself an avenger of the ages. ‘And you believe that ancient crime justifies you in carrying out a lynching?’ I challenged him.
‘There’s to be no lynching,’ Kildennan asserted angrily. ‘He is on trial here as he should have been tried years ago.’
‘A trial, eh?’ said Leithen. ‘Who might I ask is the judge? Where is the jury?’
‘These men of mine are the jury,’ Kildennan answered in a growl. ‘I am his judge, as is my right by ancient custom.’
In spite of our bleak surroundings, Leithen had adopted his best barrister’s manner. He addressed Kildennan as though he were facing the bench at the Old Bailey. ‘And what is being set out by way of defence?’
‘His only defence is whatever comes out of his mouth, and that has been little enough,’ Kildennan replied contemptuously.
‘So, trapped and half starved as he is, you expect him to conduct his own defence?’ I said.
Kildennan’s voice swelled like a rumble of thunder. ‘I expect him to answer the charges, to admit his guilt. It’s the last chance he will have to unburden his soiled conscience.’
‘Then let us talk to him,’ suggested Leithen. ‘We might persuade him to speak up for himself.’
Even through the thickness of his beard I could see Kildennan’s jaw clench as his eyes darted from us to his men to Christina. She met his gaze squarely while at the same time reaching down to scratch the head of her faithful hound.
‘I’ll talk to the prisoner and find out if he’ll see you,’ the laird conceded. ‘It’s possible he has no more interest in listening to you than I have.’ He turned to his daughter with a wolfish smile. ‘Kirsty, you’ll keep a watch on them, eh?’
‘Aye, Father, they’ll not be taking a stroll.’
Kildennan returned to the cottage from which he had just emerged while Mackinnon stood guard at the door.
While the other three men watched us from a distance, we had the opportunity to converse with the formidable Christina. I had some hope that she might be persuaded to defect from her father’s cause.
‘Miss Kildennan, surely you – a woman – will not play along with this defacement of justice,’ I appealed.
Christina bristled and the dog, sensing her mood, uttered a low growl deep in his throat. ‘Just because my father calls me by that little girl’s name, don’t suppose my mettle is any less stern than his.’
‘I never thought that for a moment,’ I assured her. ‘But will you make yourself a party to this wrong?’
A cold anger seized the young woman. ‘Wrong? Why don’t you go over to Belgium, find the bloody graves of my brothers, and tell them their father is wrong to bring their killer to justice.’
‘This is not justice,’ said Leithen, ‘and I believe you know that. What your father intends will blight his life and yours for ever.’
Christina slammed the butt of her rifle down on the stony ground with a crack as hard as a gunshot. ‘My life has been blighted already.’
Leithen and I were so taken aback by her vehemence we hardly knew what to say. In the face of our silence her cheek reddened and her eyes flashed vengefully.
‘There’s a reason I bind up my hair in this black ribbon. My dear Donnie and I had been married scarcely five weeks when he led a charge at the Somme. Straight into the hellish hail of machine guns he went and he was one of the first to fall. I doubt he even got so far as to see the faces of the Germans who were killing him. He was the bonniest laddie you ever could meet, with a ready smile and eyes as blue as the summer sky. And mild? Birds landed on his shoulder and the deer would come and eat from his hand. Much good any of that did him in the end.’
It was clear to me now that the stern aspect she presented to the world contained within it a raging blaze of injured spirit.
‘We’ve all lost people.’ Leithen spread his hands in an appeal for mercy. ‘There’s nobody left untouched by it all.’
‘Yes, but some of us won’t just swallow the loss like those cowards down in London,’ Christina threw back at him. ‘Some of us still burn with the wrong of it and no passage of time will quench that fire.’
‘Believe me, we’ve both of us suffered our losses and witnessed terrible things we’ll never forget,’ I said. ‘Ned here was gassed to the point of death on the very eve of the Armistice and it’s little short of a miracle that he’s not buried over there with so many others.’
Christina took pause and regarded Leithen closely.
‘Yes, you have that look about you, Sir Edward.’ Her voice almost caught in her throat. ‘There’s a shadow upon you that follows you still. You need to take care of yourself.’
Her sudden solicitude had softened her features, allowing me a momentary glimpse of the carefree girl she must once have been in the first flush of her love. Then in an instant it was gone. Her face hardened like a steel door slamming shut.
‘Before the attack,’ she said, ‘Donnie wrote me a letter that only reached me after news had come of his death. When I opened it it was like hearing the voice of a ghost coming to me from a far-off land. He spoke of the bravery of his men, of their comradeship, and of the better world he was sure would come of all this. Where is that better world now, Mr Hannay?’
Before I could answer Kildennan reappeared and addressed us gruffly. ‘Aye, he’ll see you, for all the good it will do. I’ve no parson to offer him solace before the end, so I grant that privilege to you.’
7
THE KING IN CHECK
________
Leithen addressed our captor defiantly. ‘I’m not looking to give him solace – I intend to mount a defence. He has a right to that much, doesn’t he?’
Kildennan clenched his fists so tightly I could almost hear his knuckles crack. ‘A defence, is it? Of him?’
I spoke up in support of Leithen’s intent. ‘If you’re so certain of his guilt, then you surely can’t be afraid of that.’
‘Where he’s concerned I have no fear at all, not of him, not of our own mealy-mouthed politicians, nor of anything you can find to say, Sir Edward. Go ahead and soak up his lies if you will. You’ll not like the taste of them.’
He stood aside and waved us into the cottage where the prisoner was held. When we entered and our eyes adjusted to the dim light, we beheld a bare, unfurnished interior. There was some straw heaped up against the far wall and a bucket in the corner. The bars cemented into the window were clearly a recent addition. On the floor a plate of cold ham and a tin cup of water lay untouched.
Seated on the straw, with his legs stretched out before him and his head hung low, was the former Kaiser Wilhelm II, King of Prussia and Emperor of Germany. When he looked up, the hope that kindled in his eyes was almost pathetic.
‘Ah, my friend, you live!’ he exclaimed, struggling to his feet.
In his weakened state he lost his balance and would have fallen if I had not grasped his outstretched arm.
He patted me on the chest and smiled weakly. ‘I feared you were dead, you my one friend in this savage country.’
‘You have another friend, sir,’ said Leithen quietly.
‘This is Sir Edward Leithen,’ I said. ‘He is an eminent lawyer and between us we will do all that we can to get you out of here.’
‘A lawyer?’ Wilhelm appeared momentarily confused. ‘My friend, that man out there is quite mad. He has confused me with some other person. I am, as I told you, an innocent Swiss tourist on whom fate has played a dastardly trick.’
‘No, sir, I know who you are.’ I spoke as kindly as I could. ‘You are Wilhelm von Hohenzollern, the former Kaiser. I met you once when I was operating in your country under an assumed name. I recognised you yesterday when we met.’
Wilhelm’s eyes drifted back and forth between us as he asked himself if we could be trusted.
‘Denying your identity will gain you nothing,’ said Leithen, ‘not even time. Lord Kildennan knows very well who you are.’
‘But how?’ Wilhelm wondered haltingly. ‘Who could have . . . ?’
His voice trailed away and I was afraid I would have to catch him again to keep him from swooning right in front of us. He recovered, however, and drew himself up in a show of injured dignity.
‘Look, sir,’ I appealed to him, ‘it would be of some help if you could tell us how you come to be here in the first place.’
Wilhelm thrust the hand of his withered left arm into his pocket while with the other he rubbed his beard in a display of mental conflict.
‘There was to be a meeting of persons sympathetic to my cause held in this obscure spot far from prying eyes,’ he began at last. ‘My adjutant, Captain von Ilsemann, and myself sailed here with my countryman Baron von Hilderling. When we landed, the baron’s manservant Kurbin was waiting with a car. He drove us to a cottage here in the hills, where we were to be contacted by our other friends. When the captain and I awoke yesterday morning the baron and his man had vanished, taking their luggage with them.’
He hesitated and it was obvious that even now he was struggling to make sense of what had befallen him. ‘I can only suppose the baron received warning of some threat against my person and made haste to head it off. Von Ilsemann and I separated and set out to search for them. That is when I ran into you, Mr Hannay.’
I met Leithen’s eyes and knew he was thinking the same as I: that the Kaiser’s own people had delivered him into the hands of his enemies for some dark purpose of their own.
‘If you still have friends out there,’ Leithen told his client, ‘then so do we. We must do whatever we can to stall Kildennan’s intent and hope that help is on the way.’
Wilhelm’s lip curled contemptuously at the mention of his captor. ‘He is obsessed, that one. Yes, he thinks we are still at war and that gives him some authority over me. He has none. All of this is a complete outrage!’
‘Be that as it may, sir,’ said Leithen, ‘it is incumbent upon us to prepare some sort of defence.’
‘Defence? You mean this is supposed to be some kind of trial?’ Wilhelm scoffed. ‘By what law does that brutish Scot think he can judge me?’
‘I will do my best to dissuade him from this mad course,’ said Leithen, ‘I promise you that.’
The ex-Kaiser nodded grimly. ‘He has shown me his ugly tree and made it clear that I have an appointment there. He has not even the decency simply to shoot me and call it murder.’
‘Sir Edward has the most brilliant legal mind in the country,’ I told Wilhelm, glad that he was showing some spirit. ‘He will make a proper trial out of this and there’s every chance he will win the case.’
‘Yes, yes, a defence,’ murmured the Kaiser absently.
‘You must keep up your strength,’ Leithen advised him. He took a sip from the cup of water and a nibble of the cold meat to prove that it was safe. The Kaiser smiled weakly and accepted the food and drink.
Leithen drew me aside and spoke confidentially.
‘It’s only for the sake of form that Kildennan has agreed to hear a defence. It’s so he looks reasonable in the eyes of his men and keeps their respect, and so he can look his own face in the mirror after the deed is done. The sentence has already been decided, you see, and nothing I say is going to change that.’
‘Then what are you going to do?’ I asked.
His brow furrowed and he squeezed my arm. ‘I’m going to play for time while we work out a plan of escape.’
At that moment Kildennan’s large frame filled the doorway and we fell silent. ‘So what’s it to be?’ he demanded gruffly. ‘Does the prisoner wish you to speak on his behalf?’
Wilhelm faced his captor with a stiff show of dignity. ‘If we must endure this nonsense, then I do. But I warn you again—’
‘Wheesht with your warning,’ Kildennan cut him off. ‘Sir Edward, I grant you one hour with your client. After that, the trial will begin. We will not make it a long one, so your statement had best be brief. Mr Hannay, you will come with me.’
‘I’d rather stay here with my friend,’ I objected.
