“Moreover, much of this trouble springs from my having come here.”
“Piffle,” she said. “Rory Comyn was making mischief long before you came. Granddad did try to make peace with the Comyns. But peace requires that both sides want it, and although many Comyns may agree that they do, Rory is not one of them. But this is foolish talk,” she added. “What else have they done?”
He told her all that Aodán had discovered. “And Tadhg was with the lads.”
Exclaiming her shock about the Comyns’ perfidy, she added, “God-a-mercy, at first I thought it had just rained hard whilst we slept! Do they want to drown us all?”
“They may hope,” he said. “But to do that, the water will have to rise high enough to submerge most of the castle. Their dam cannot be so high, be—”
“Not yet,” she said grimly. “But we must get rid of it before the water rises higher. How can we do it without a host of men or even a boat?”
“Until I see the dam, I won’t know whether anyone can dismantle it without getting himself killed,” he admitted. “Once I know just what we face, we—”
“You have no intention of trying to dismantle it alone, do you?”
He did not reply.
After waiting impatiently for an answer that did not come, Catriona said tersely, “Just how do you think you could dismantle such a dam by yourself?”
“Lass, go back inside before I lose my patience with you.”
“What will you do then, sir? You can scarcely shout at me or beat me without making enough noise to spoil any chance that we have tonight.”
“I’ll have plenty of time to attend to you later, however.”
“Well, if you have failed to learn that I do not respond well to arbitrary orders, you should have paid more heed. Did Aodán describe this dam to you?”
Fin sighed audibly. “He said it looks as if they used two rows of posts with planks stacked on their sides between them to hold back the water whilst they piled logs, branches, and dirt behind them, like a beaver dam behind a board wall.”
“Then I suspect you mean somehow to bore holes in those planks, because you cannot safely remove them and all that debris alone. But if you don’t bore large enough holes in them, or enough holes, you’ll just make waterspouts to spit through to the other side. And if you bore too many large holes, the force of water pouring through will destroy the dam before you can get away, and the torrent that results will carry you all the way down to the Spey. So, how do you intend to proceed?”
“Lower your voice, sweetheart. Recall how easily it echoes here.”
Obediently, she murmured, “But I am right, am I not? You did listen to me.”
“I did, aye.”
When he did not go on, she knew that despite the endearment, he was still vexed with her. He wanted her to go inside, and he did not want more argument.
“Don’t tell me again to go back to bed,” she said. “I mean to stay here or go with you, and I won’t promise not to follow you. I swim as well as you do.”
“Do you, lass? Mayhap that is true, but you have not pitted your skills against mine yet, so I doubt that it is. You are not as strong as I am.”
She could not deny that, but the knowledge did not dissuade her. “I don’t need to be as strong as you are,” she said. “I can take the raft.”
Fin had forgotten about the raft but considered and dismissed it. “Too noisy,” he said. “Trying to paddle that raft from here to the dam would be tiresome as well. It is small, aye, but with you standing on it, they might see it from shore.”
“Sakes, it is too dark out there to see anything. I can barely see your shape right in front of me. I could hear you breathing as I approached, and I knew that Boreas was out here, too,” she added hastily, not wanting him to think that she would have spoken to just anyone she had met out there.
“Cat, think,” he said. “Even on the darkest night, can you not see the water well enough from your window to tell that it is not the shore?”
“I can, aye,” she admitted. “But any watcher seeing the raft would more likely think that it had just floated away from here when the water rose.”
“You stand whilst you paddle the thing, do