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Prologue
November 1542, Solway Moss, Scotland
If anyone was to blame it was the King, James V, the nephew of Henry VIII of England, and his pride and his stubbornness. He was the reason Caelan McLagen, the Laird of Loch Mahrais, was marching over bloody ravaged land, his wrists manacled, shirt torn, and a once-bright plaid now stained with mud.
His sword, a priceless inheritance from his grandfather, had been taken and thrown on the wagon ahead of him with the rest of the other fighters’ weapons. It was doomed to be another ornament in the English King’s house and the King would never understand its worth.
Caelan did not even want to try to number the men who had died by drowning in the dark river behind them.
Trapped between the river and peat bogs of the moss…so many are gone…so many lives lost to one man’s foolish pride.
There were women at home, undoubtedly keeping watch for a husband who would never come home and children who would grow up without a father. Sons who would only have their namesakes as a heritage and daughters who would not have an example for which to choose their husbands by.
For the sake of one man, a thousand losses.
As he trudged over the wet moorland, stomping over thick moss and breathing in the acid smell of peat, he silently mourned. His feet were numb but he still marched; his pride was broken with his and his fellow soldiers’ defeat. Never in his life as a soldier and a doctor would he have imagined suffering such deep humiliation.
/> The sky was iron grey, and low rumbles of thunder held a constant threat of rain as they marched south to England. He spotted the bloody face of Laird Sinclair, the muddied head of Lord Kilmaur of Cassilis, and even the limping form of Laird Maxwell.
How the mighty have fallen.
They had been on the march for almost two days, over rugged terrain and through forest land with little rest, only water to drink and whatever they could forage while passing through the forest.
Caelan shot a sympathetic eye over to a man who was hobbling along, his left thigh wrapped with the torn remains of his shirt and another who had a bandage around his lost right eye. He had treated both men in the aftermath of the battle.
They had marched under the direction of the English, only to come to Arnside. Years ago, a tower had been created there to stem the threat of robbery posed by the border reivers. At the foot of the hill, Caelan gazed upon the towering five-story structure of gritty stone with a ragged sense of relief. They would be prisoners but prisoners with a roof over their head and a place to rest their wearied bones. The tower had an adjacent wing of equal height, built in a style that reminded him of some Scottish castles.
English soldiers went through their ranks, sorting the able-bodied men from those who were wounded. They were placed in groups of fifty. The ill were placed in the lowest tier of the adjacent tower and while those more stalwart were sent to the first tower, filling it from bottom to top.
A soldier came to him and placed him in the last group to fill the first tower when a call rang out. “Is there a doctor among you lot?”
His head darted up, wondering if he had heard right when the call came again. A soldier, no, a knight, known by his embroidered surcoat and glistening chain mail, was seated on top of a massive horse and looking around. “Speak now!”
Caelan lifted his hand, “I am.”
The man’s eyes zeroed in on him and he nodded to another soldier, “Take him.”
He was roughly grabbed and shoved forward; he mutely followed the man on the horse as they went toward the adjacent tower. The soldier led him inside. The knight reached up and tugged off his helmet. There were deep lines around the man’s blue eyes and his mouth was set in a thin, grim line.
