Knight in My Bed

Chapter One

DUNMUIR CASTLE
THE ISLE OF DOON, 1330

NIP HIS FLESH with white-hot pinchers, expose him to showers of offal and ceaseless floggings. Pour molten lead down his throat and force him to fetch pebbles from a cauldron of boiling oil.
Make him weary of drawing breath. Hasten his mortal exit.
The hum of angry voices pierced the blessed refuge of Donall MacLean's deep slumber with all the subtleness of a heavy-handed peasant battling moonbeams with a rusted scythe.
Careful not to reveal he'd awakened, Donall the Bold, proud laird of the great Clan MacLean, opened his eyes to mere slits and squinted into what could only be called the antechamber to hell.
Trouble was, Donall the Bold, belted knight and warrior of untold renown, was not yet ready to pass into legend.
Pull him asunder by four stout oxen. Get him to his knees until he pleads the mercy of God's holy blood.
"Pull me asunder? Make me plead God's mercy?" The words burst past Donall's parched lips, riding hard on a floodtide of fury he could no longer suppress.
Now fully awake, and uncaring if his malefactors knew it, he strained against the heavy bands of iron secured around his wrists and ankles. Outraged, he stared in disbelief at the unsmiling graybeards outlined in the open doorway to his dungeon cell.
An unlikely assemblage to be spouting brazen words, but the hatred simmering in their aged eyes brandmarked them as the crazed dominions who'd rained such vile threats upon him.
Behind them, a wall torch sputtered and smoked, its reluctant flames edging their gaunt figures with an eerie reddish glow--an odd effect that underscored the impression he'd awakened in the talons of the horned one and his cloven-footed minions.
Relying on a fast-waning reserve of strength deep inside his battered body, Donall raked them with a defiant glare. "A MacLean gets on his knees before no man." Incredulity warred with his fury over the very idea." 'Tis mad the lot of you are if you think to accomplish such a feat. The only getting I'll be doing is out of here."
"Aye, and leave us you shall," one of the men agreed, "as a corpse to be tossed from the cliffs, your cold flesh good for naught but carrion for the gulls."
Donall narrowed his eyes at his captors. He'd howl with laughter at their effrontery but regrettably, he lacked the vigor to do much more than glower.
Cold and shivering, he'd been left unclothed to wallow on a pallet of fouled straw, his every muscle screamed in agony and his temples throbbed so fiercely he'd almost swear some heavy-armed churl had cleaved his head in twain.
Giving heed to the urge to laugh would only increase his misery. Even scowling cost him.
With a low groan, he leaned his head against the damp wall and drew in a few shallow breaths. He instantly regretted doing so, for a bitingly rank smell assailed his senses with each ragged gasp.
A stench almost as sharp as the white-hot shards of agony shooting through his head.
Where, by the Holy Rood, was he? And who were his stern-faced tormentors? Donall peered hard at the one who'd spoken. Hawk-eyed and boasting an unkempt shock of hair the color of rusted iron, the graybeard returned his stare.
They all stared.
And waves of anger emanated from their ancient bones. Several of them seemed hauntingly familiar, but the throbbing in his temples kept him from thinking clearly.
And who was the lady Isolde?
The woman whose name the jeering old weathercocks had bantered about before they'd let loose their barrage of ludicrous threats.
Or had he imagined the name? His mind's attempt to wrest his thoughts from his ravaged and aching state of being?
Or was Isolde the name of a long-forgotten paramour? A faceless victim of a one-time dalliance, come back to haunt him in his darkest hour?
Either way, the name wove a fine dance along the outer edges of his mind. Elusive as a nimble sidhe maid cavorting in the gloaming, the name taunted him with its familiarity but never came close enough for him to comprehend who she might be.
Snatches of angry words and a half-remembered scuffle joined the chaos of confusion in his mind but the red haze of pain banished each snippet of thought before he could make sense of aught.
"Not so mighty now, are you, Donall the Bold?" another of the graybeards commented, his aged voice laden with sarcasm. "Still, we purpose to grant you the preservation of your dignity by allowing you to repent your sins before our fair chieftain."
A female chieftain.
The lady Isolde.
Fragments of conversations he'd had with his brother's now dead wife, Lileas, joined the swirling morass in his head, adding to his bewilderment.
Hadn't Lileas called her sister Isolde? And hadn't there been some talk about Archibald MacInnes's eldest daughter assuming the role of chieftain upon Archibald's death two years past?
The answers teased him, hovering close but not near enough to grasp.