Sound of the Heart Read Online Free Page B

but they were unfocused.
    “That’s thievery,” the soldier said. He looked at the others. “Cap’n wouldn’t want us to bring in a thief if’n we could help it, is my way of thinking.” Two of the men grabbed the Highlander from behind and the soldier punched him hard in the gut. The prisoner collapsed onto his knees, gasping, then looked up with empty eyes.
    “I was ’ungry, ye bastards,” he said, his breathless voice a sob that twisted Dougal’s heart. His own stomach growled in sympathy.
    The soldiers hauled the fallen man to his feet and grabbed him under the arms. They half marched him, half dragged him into the frozen woods, then disappeared into the early spring foliage. When they emerged again, it was only the two soldiers. Dougal never saw the thief again.
    Two hours later, Inverness loomed, larger and more forbidding with every labouring step. The ragged prisoners were herded into whatever spaces could be found in the city’s gaols, cold rock cells that had already been emptied of English prisoners. Some of the Scots simply dropped where they stood. Dougal and John kept moving, hoping at the end of this there would, at least, be food. But Dougal’s hopes were disappointed. No food or water was given. With nothing else to choose from, they leaned back against the stone walls of the gaol and did little else for two long days.
    On the morning of the third day, they were visited by their captors, who turned away with disgust when they witnessed the suffering spread before them. They returned a few moments later, their noses shielded by cloth, and began by removing the corpses, bodies of starved and injured men whose wounds had never been treated. They proceeded through the masses of men, trying to collect names, but few of the prisoners could even speak, weak as they were. Through clouded eyes, Dougal stared at their backs as they left the cell, leaving the Scots alone again in freezing darkness.
    That night they returned, having decided to give each prisoner half a pound of oatmeal per day along with a small serving of water. Dougal tried very hard to make the meagre portions last.
    “Hardly a feast,” John muttered.
    “Ye’d expected one, did ye, my lord Wallace?” Dougal said, smiling at his new friend. “Wi’ a side o’ mutton perhaps? An’ a dram to wash it down?”
    John closed his eyes and drooped against the wall with a slow, lazy smile. “Aye, that’s the thing,” he said. “That’s just the thing.”

CHAPTER 4
    Sentinel
    Very little happened in the prison over the next couple of weeks. At first the men were too weak to say or do much, which was all right since their accommodations were tight. Some struck up conversations and new friendships, but they were often tentative. Though everyone there was a Jacobite, a supporter of Prince Charles’s cause, they were not all of friendly clans. Forced together, they would have to make do. They were eventually given the bare essentials of medical supplies: water and bandages. Over the next month, some of the prisoners tended wounds that never healed. Those injuries festered and the men developed fevers until their teeth rattled with bone-deep tremors. Dougal watched helplessly, trying not to breathe in the stench as men around him turned inward, sliding away from the others, easing toward death. He wondered if they felt the actual disease take hold. He wondered if they could feel, with some kind of numb fascination, their existence hovering on the edge of death. And he wondered if they cared either way.
    He had been close to death once, but he’d been young and lucky. He’d beaten the pox and been left with only a few tiny scars as evidence it had ever ravaged his body. That time in his life seemed like a dream, a dark night in which blurry shapes of his family hovered around him, disappeared, then returned, looming over his bedside like ghosts. He had thought he saw great beasts, thought his family was scheming to kill him, thought he