Traitor or Temptress. Helen Dickson

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      Contents

      Prologue

      Chapter One

      Chapter Two

      Chapter Three

      Chapter Four

      Chapter Five

      Chapter Six

      Chapter Seven

      Chapter Eight

      Chapter Nine

      Chapter Ten

      Chapter Eleven

      Chapter Twelve

      Prologue

      Far up in a green glen to the north-west of Loch Lomond the mighty solid limestone rocks rise perpendicular and saw toothed on either side of the burn that tumbles with great velocity to the loch below, throwing foam and spray high into the air. Hidden by a rocky shelf is a low and narrow opening giving access to a small cave, a cave the natives of the area call the giant’s cave. Many centuries ago, so legend has it, a voracious giant had dwelt in the dark chamber, where he could guard the entrance to the glen through which marauding bands of Fingalians would come from the north to rob and burn the villages of Kinlochalen and Drumgow, along the north and south banks of Loch Alen.

      It is said that an old woman who lived in Kinlochalen long ago and had the reputation of a witch, under constant threat of raids from the wild northern highlanders, had used all her powers of sorcery to install the giant in the cave. The creature would roar and breathe forth wrath at thieves who came to enrich themselves at the expense of the people of the villages, and, too afraid to confront and defy this dreadful giant, they would tremble and go home again.

      The giant was never seen, but the fear of him lay on all the country round about. It was said that on the night the old witch died, a mighty wind had risen and blown the giant off the rock, toppling him into the burn below, and the rushing water had carried him off to the deeper waters of the loch. But his spirit still resided in the glen.

      It was no more than was expected for highland clans to fight among themselves and steal each other’s cattle and sheep, and there was no giant to deter the hundred or so raiders who came with stealth under cover of darkness on a night in the autumn of 1691, to plunder the sweet fertile lands around the loch. But the people of Kinlochalen and Drumgow had been warned and took the initiative, and were prepared to hit the hostile raiders before they themselves were set upon.

      Looking mighty fearsome and swinging their claymore swords and yelling their battle slogans, they chased the raiders back up the glen to the bleak, flat moor above, a no man’s land, where unfriendly desolation had been successfully fashioned by Mother Nature. The encounter, fought between men gigantic of mould and mighty of strength amidst labyrinths of peat bogs and stagnant pools and squelching morasses, was brief yet bloody, and when the men of Kinlochalen and Drumgow had slain those who had stayed to fight, they took off over the moor in pursuit of those who ran.