At the far side of the room, a gate of thick iron bars led to darkness. It was unlocked and creaked loudly. Nipper rushed ahead down the stairs, with Spots following more circumspectly, nose busy, tail wagging. Narrow and treacherous, the staircase curved sharply into the ground, so the dungeon must underlie the guardroom. He pulled the gate shut behind him in case the dogs tried to defect. Then he started down. After about a dozen steps, he set a foot into something soft and squashy.
He waited there until his eyes adjusted. He was in a long narrow cellar, cold and creepy, stinking of rot. Most of it seemed to be carved out of the rock of the mountain. The ceiling was masonry — arched and short on headroom even in the center. There were no windows or air vents. What a nightmarish place! His skin crawled at the sight of the rusty chains and the staples set in the walls. The floor was deep in rotted straw, which the dogs were exploring with much interest. This job promised to be much less fun than heaving meal sacks, but the sooner he began, the sooner it would be done, so he hung the lantern on a staple and began.
He began by banging his head on the roof.
Cursing Bryce for not choosing a shorter man, he proceeded to the far end and set to work with the shovel. The dogs squirmed around underfoot, growling with excitement, lunging at the mice that came pouring out in all directions. The place was alive with them. The stench of decay became sickening.
Horrible, horrible place! How many wretches had been chained up here in ages past? He wouldn't keep pigs in such a hutch, let alone people. How long would a man stay sane shackled to the rock in a cell like this? He wondered uneasily about torture. He wondered how many of the victims had been innocent of whatever crimes they had been accused of… He wondered what he was going to do with the litter. Already he had raised two big heaps, and obviously he couldn't bring a wheelbarrow down those stairs. He should go and find some sacks — or a basket, perhaps.
Something flashed on the shovel. He peered at it, poked it… picked it up with finger and thumb. He took it over to the lantern. It was a comb of the sort a woman might wear in her hair, decorated with two or three glass spangles to make it pretty. The metal was corroded black, but the glass had stayed. Not a man's comb, certainly.
They had imprisoned women in this diabolical midden?
Nineteen years ago, six girls from the village?
He dropped the relic with a shudder and cracked his bonnet on the ceiling hard enough to make the darkness blaze with lights. Holding his scalp and moaning, he backed away until he slammed into a cold, damp wall. He had never really wondered where in the castle those women had been kept — in the house itself, he had assumed. He had never been higher than the ground floor, so he did not know what there was upstairs in the main house. The soldiers were not allowed upstairs either, so far as he knew, and if that was true now, it might have been true then.
Had those abused girls been kept here? Could this cesspool have been the castle brothel? No, no! Surely no men ever born would treat women like that?
Had he been conceived in this hellish dungeon? His guts churned. He felt sick. He needed fresh air. Dropping the shovel, he hurried around the heaps of filth he had gathered and began to feel his way up the stairs, to daylight and sanity and air.
"Women! They need women!"
The voice stopped him cold. Someone was speaking English in the guardroom. Another man replied. The gate was closed and they would not know Toby was there.
He dropped to his hands and knees and crept a little higher, just enough to peer around the curve of the stair. The guardroom, which he had thought so dim when he came through it, now seemed bright. The man standing by the window was the laird of Strath Fillan, Ross Campbell himself.
"You know that's impossible!" said the other, and Toby recognized the voice of Captain Tailor. He was addressing the laird in a way no one spoke to a laird. "I have few enough men here to hold the road. I can't be sending them off to Dumbarton to carouse."
Laird Ross waited a moment, then turned from the window. Toby had never been so close to him before. He was a small man, careworn and white-haired, his face lined and weather-beaten. He wore a belted plaid, like any Highlander, but he had a tartan shirt under it, and the pin holding the shoulder flap bore a shiny cairngorm. He had a chief's badge in his bonnet; he had shoes, woollen hose, a fur sporran, a long dirk with a silver handle at his belt. Old or not, he was a fine sight.
"Wet dreams never killed any man yet," he said wryly, as if trying to divert a conversation veering too close to argument.
Tailor ignored the remark totally. "So I can't grant furloughs. But if my men don't get access to women soon, they're going to mutiny, or start deserting. I know it! You can't keep healthy men cooped up like this without women. It isn't natural."
"Dunk them in the horse trough every night. If they desert, they're dead. Not a man of them would reach the Lowlands alive."
"Is that a threat, my lord?"
"Of course not! But make sure they know that."
"We can pay. Just pass the word that there's good money to be made. In a place this size, there's bound to be a few wives desperate enough for easy cash. Demons, by their standards, they'll be rich in a week!"
Campbell let out an exasperated snort. "You don't know the Scots! No woman here would lie with a Sassenach if you offered her a silver mark and her brats were starving. If any one of them did, the whole glen would know by morning. They'd brand the sign on her forehead and drive her out. The glen would rise, just like Queensferry did last month. Don't you know you're sitting on a powder keg, Captain?"
Boots thumped on the flags. Captain Tailor strode into view, garbed in his uniform doublet and breeches, festooned with sword, wheel lock pistol, bandolier, and powder horn. Below the brim of his helmet, his angular face was flushed scarlet. "I am responsible for the road, and I can't hold it with crazy men. You are to provide board for my men, and a woman is a necessary part of a soldier's board. If you can't find them locally, send to Glasgow for a few whores — else I'll loose my lads to courting. There's no shortage of spinsters hereabouts."
The laird raised a clenched fist, then lowered it reluctantly. "I understand your problem, Captain. See you understand mine. When I came here, I told them it would be a Sassenach garrison again, but I swore you'd leave their women alone this time. They swore allegiance — and I gave them my protection! They've kept their side of the bargain so far, but all it needs is one spark. You can't hold the glen against them if they rise. By the time help arrived, you'd be dead, all of you. Me, too, likely, but that's not important. They'll cut off the food. They'll shoot you down from cover. Be quiet and listen! I told the Campbell I would keep the glen quiet, and I—"
"Never mind what Argyll says!" Tailor roared. "This is the road to the northwest, and the rebels' gold and munitions—"
"They're my people, Captain, and I care for them! If one of your men lays a hand on a single woman, I'll hang you both on the same gallows!"
For a moment the two men glared at each other, but even the odd-job boy knew that the threat was wind. The soldiers held the laird's castle. Three major battles in twenty years had decimated his warband. Now it had been disarmed and the young men were drifting away to other lands and other lords.
Then the Englishman spoke — quietly, but biting off every word. "I remind you, my lord, that I take my orders from Edinburgh, my lord, not from you, my lord. This area is under martial law. I am in charge here, not you—my lord."