Storms. The Highlanders knew storms, gales that blew unchecked from the top of the world, bending, breaking all that grew, trees animals and people. They knew the storm-tossed water and screaming wind as they knew family. Such weather made them cautious but triggered bursts of violence. It made them humble before nature's God and contemptuous of puny men who would put themselves before others. Yet, the voice of the man who spoke conveyed such a squeal of dread that the small group of clansmen listened with growing apprehension. The chief of the great clan Bell leaned forward and spoke, letting the quality of his voice shift as he sought the most convincing tone.

"I say time is running out. A great storm is gathering. We must prepare. Can we no end our little quarrel? Me, I'm sore weary of strife." He looked at the face of the man seated across from him. "That's why I asked you to come to the mainland, to talk of peace between us."

"Hout awa," muttered a wiry man in the group opposite the speaker. Alasdair Bell's narrow eyes sought the man who dared to interrupt. He paused to control himself and turned to the man seated across from him, "Damn all. T'is time and ye know it." He got no reply. "What! Ye don't believe me?" His thin lips quivered and he let his voice become a whine, "Let's speak of softer things." He clenched his fists and raised his voice. "Don't laugh at me," he said to somber faces. "Can we no speak of pleasant things. Damnation, let's talk of love." He raised his head, labored to smile, wiped his nose with the back of his hand, dried dirty fingers in his small beard and slowly looked up. Under tangled, gray eyebrows, pure hatred glistened in his watery eyes.

No one replied, but the wind, stung by such cant, roared off the waters of the Minch and slammed into the Red Lion. The venerable inn swayed, groaned and creaked. Slate rattled, shutters pounded and the angry gale whirled down chimneys and blew thick sweet peat smoke around the heads of the two men who sat at table facing each other. A terrified publican bent and filled their glasses and silently prayed that the law of Highland hospitality applied to the meeting of the feuding lairds. Custom decreed that though a man had blood on his hands, even the blood of family or clan, he would be safe from harm as a guest. There were blooded hands present and many an unsettled score.

"Aye, aye, the innkeeper repeated. "Ye be all guests today," he said nervously, but no one listened to him.

Kilted men representing two related clans, Bell and MacBell, stood in opposing rows behind their seated chiefs. They watched apprehensively and glared through the gloom at their counterparts. Nervous fingers clutched sword hilts and caressed pistol butts. They bore weapons enough for an orgy of destruction, cutlasses shoved in leather belts or worn over their shoulders, pistols under their arms or in their kilts and dirks, sgian dubh, tucked in thick woolen stockings. Some leaned on long-swords, claidheam-mor, and their polished blades reflected orange from glowing peat bricks in the fireplaces.

The larger of the two men, receiving no answer to his appeal, pulled his bonnet from his head and used it to wipe sweat from his face. He pushed back a well-worn wig and revealed furrows of sweat on his bald pate and he dabbed at them repeatedly with his bonnet.

He began again, "To every thing there is a season." He smiled pleased that he could recall such words. "A time of war and a time of peace." He showed yellow teeth, "The gude book says that." He raised his head and shook his unkempt beard like a bear, old but still powerful. He was powerful. Alasdair, The Bell, showed it in the tilt of his head and the movements of his hands. He came from a long line of titled ancestors, Aird Righ, Celtic High Kings, and Norse sealords. He, Alasdair the Bell, took second to no man, king or prince, Scot or Sassenach; yet the man who sat across the table showed no deference. Indeed, if he cropped his sandy hair, gained two stone and grew an inch or two, he would appear like a younger version of the other. He laughed and spoke.

"When the Bell speaks of love, it's time to watch your back."

Alasdair Bell responded to his cousin, "Och, Angus, let bygones be. Man, you never forget a thing."

Red Angus, chief of MacBell, growled his answer, "Nor do you, Alasdair--or is it Alexander? They say you use the English now. Call yourself what you will, there's one thing you love in troth, and that's every pebble, every blade of grass, ilka bit of land in Scotland. Here and now you're scheming to get your hands on my island."

His gruff tone stirred the onlookers who shuffled their feet and squeezed their weapons.

"Nay, nay, no such thing." Bell's face had grown redder and matched the embers in the hearth. "Vera weel, we stood on other sides a wee while back, but that's yesterday's business."

"More like twenty-five years ago," whispered a slight figure in the shadows behind Red Angus. He had been out with his chief in '19 for the Stuart.

"Aye, Dougie," answered the gillie beside him, "and do you recollect that Bell would steal a man's betrothed? Red Angus should have cut his throat."

"Och no," grunted the slender kiltie, "Angus got the woman. That was vengeance enough."

"Fill the glasses, innkeeper," roared the bear of a man. He peered sideways across the table. "We have no quarrel today, Angus."

"Darlin, it makes a man weep," sighed the man called Dougie.

The bear coughed, "Tell your old man to shut his mouth, Angus, or I'll fix his scrawny throat so he'll no more blow on his pipes."

"Talk to me of love, Alasdair," snickered the laird of MacBell and men reached for their swords, but Alasdair Bell had not said what he had to say. He had not arranged this meeting to have it end in a brawl.

"Aye, Angus, love is better than politics." The words seemed to stick in his mouth, but he got them out. "Deil a fear, Angus, we're of the same blood and we know that neither of them, not the Stuart, not German George, is worth a drop of Highland blood. Pissholes in the sand, both of them."

"Me and mine stood for the rightful king--for the House of Stuart."

Alasdair Bell, who could call to arms more men than any chief in Scotland, fought to keep his temper. He whirled and flung his glass into peat embers. They hissed and flared blue. "Tell me, Angus," he demanded, "what has the house of Stuart done for us?" He waved his bonnet, crossed his arms and snorted.

"We need no stranger who calls himself king. Na, na, not in the Highlands where it's ilka ane for himself. No king's law here. Here I," he paused and grinned, "we are the law and our loyalties are to ourselves and our kin."

Red Angus MacBell hesitated before he spoke, "You speak well, Alasdair, but every Highlander knows you take German George's silver."

"Politics and business, damn them both, Angus; damn the soft-handed plotters of Stuart and Hanover." He called for another glass. "Raise your glass, Angus, and we'll drink to the sea and mountains. Long may they be between them and us. We're together on that. Slainte Math. Slainte Math."

"Together," scoffed MacBell. "You lie in your cold bed at night plotting my end, dreaming of getting your paws on MacBell's island."

"Och, Angus, do you think it bothers me at all? Such a wee island in such a big world. Na, na," he muttered while his veins throbbed and his fist strangled his glass.

"There's a wee bit of dirt saved for you there, Alasdair."

Both men thought of the crumbling chapel in the high swarth where bones of Bell chiefs lay above the gray sea. Alasdair Bell's eyes squinted at the line of men facing him. Thoughts of adding a few bodies to the island graveyard played in his head. He scowled at his antagonist, who peered back with the insight and contempt of a cousin. They had spawned from the same source, a reservoir undiluted since Viking dragonships brought sword and seed to indigenous Celts. They were close, too close and some men saw Red Angus as rightful chief of all the Bells.

"Please, gentlemen," whined the innkeeper whose wide eyes darted from one to the other. He watched the Bell's face harden into a taut mask from which red eyes shone. But it was the younger man who concerned him the most. He looked at Red Angus for the innkeeper knew the MacBell chief had temper to match his hair. Aye, he thought, Bell's cunning made an open assault unlikely, but as for Red Angus, if his temper broke, the inn could not contain it. The publican's lips quivered. Why, he thought, did they have to choose his inn. Let them settle their business elsewhere. Red Angus smiled and the innkeeper wrung his hands and thought the MacBell fought for pleasure, the kind of pleasure that could demolish the Red Lion. Nervously he leaned over the table only to be flicked aside by Alasdair Bell.

"Ye be guests," the publican pleaded.

"Will you hush man?" snarled the Bell who owned the land the inn sat on. For that matter, he claimed the land round about--save for one island, and he would have that too.

"We could settle things here and now, man to man," grunted Angus MacBell as his large right hand moved to his belt. Instantly both men were circled by their clansmen.

Across the room, Murdo Bell slid from the shadows, sword raised.

"It's a good day to set things right," the red haired man spoke softly.

"With you, Angus, any day is a good day for a fight," sneered the Bell. He jerked his thumb at his son and Murdo retreated.

"Please, gentlemen," the innkeeper pleaded, "Ye be guests."

The Bell shoved his bonnet on his head, removed it, straightened his wig and then carefully patted his headgear into place. His efforts to wear the symbols of both a nobleman and a chief turned his head into a caricature of both ranks. "Aye, Angus," he said, "you'd like to wet your swords with Bell blood. When will you get another chance to have as many swords as Bell? You're a bull, Angus, a red bull from a small island. There will be no bloodshed today. None of that today. Hear me," he shouted and shoved his men away.

"Today, Angus, I will make you a proposition, an offer such as even you will like. Aye, muckle oblidged ye'll say to me." He leaned forward, rubbed his hands together and spoke in a most lairdly manner, "The hand of my daughter, Margaret, my lovely Margaret, and our quarrel--man, we put our quarrel behind us. A dowry, gold will bury our dispute." He sighed, nodded and rubbed his tongue over his yellow teeth.

"My daughter for your son. Aye, and we will be united against the thing that's coming. These are times to stand thegither, Angus, you know that right weel." He lifted his glass, "A daughter for a son."

"And he doesna mean Crooked Neck," snarled one of the Bell gillies.

Alasdair Bell twisted his face into what he assumed was a grin, exposing more of his ursine teeth. A gust of wind shook the inn and he clenched his glass. His smile grew genuine as he entertained a pleasant thought, and a wee island for me, you bastard, he thought while he continued to show his teeth. "Drink to us both," he called and contemplated it would be easier to remove the thorn in his side once it had been cut. He would clean up this business before the storm broke. In his mind he pictured ways of plucking this family of thorns.

"Father, I will--" but Neil MacBell's words were cut off by his father who slammed his fist on the table. "Man, do you think I'm daft?"

"Deil take us, Angus, I've set ye a fair proposition. Speak, man."

But Red Angus said no words. He snorted and began to laugh loudly until he shook. He turned to his men, raised his hands and they added their cackle until the rafters resounded. The wind began to howl into the discord and the Red Lion Inn seemed to groan in protest. Suddenly the Bell began banging his fists on the table, beating time furiously. "Deil take you, Angus, you and both your brats," and while the two Highland chiefs faced each other, another man in another country, one born to be king, prepared to embark on a journey to the land of mists and mountains.