The Journey Begins

By J.P. Bowie

Jamie MacDonald, a young Scot, begins his dangerous and uncertain journey to the New World...

Jamie MacDonald, a young Scot mourning the deaths of his father and brothers in the ill-fated battle of Culloden, decides to take his mother to the New World. But tragedy and unforeseen circumstance dog Jamie's journey and he is pressed into service aboard a pirate ship commanded by a ruthless Spaniard.

Antonio Rodriguez is a man with a dark past, but also with an allure Jamie cannot resist.

The two men embark on a stormy relationship—but can their feelings for each other survive the danger that surrounds them, threatening not only their love, but their very lives?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Pride Publishing
• Release date: Oct 2, 2018
• ISBN: 9781786516893

J.P. Bowie

J.P. Bowie: I was born and raised in Scotland. Moved to London and worked in several West End shows before immigrating to the United States. First port of call was Las Vegas where I worked backstage with the Siegfried and Roy Show at the Mirage Hotel as Head of Wardrobe for the legendary stars. Another move more recently took me and my husband Phil to San Diego where we intend to stay! Love sunny San Diego.

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Publisher

The Journey Begins

ISBN # 978-1-78651-689-3

©Copyright JP Bowie 2018

Cover Art by Cherith Vaughn ©Copyright October 2018

Edited by Rebecca Baker

Pride Publishing

This is a work of fiction. All characters, places and events are from the author’s imagination and should not be confused with fact. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, events or places is purely coincidental.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any material form, whether by printing, photocopying, scanning or otherwise without the written permission of the publisher, Pride Publishing.

Applications should be addressed in the first instance, in writing, to Pride Publishing. Unauthorised or restricted acts in relation to this publication may result in civil proceedings and/or criminal prosecution.

The author and illustrator have asserted their respective rights under the Copyright Designs and Patents Acts 1988 (as amended) to be identified as the author of this book and illustrator of the artwork.

Published in 2018 by Pride Publishing, 535 Kings Road, London SW10 0SZ, UK

Pride Publishing is a subsidiary of Totally Entwined Group Limited.

The Journeyer

THE JOURNEY BEGINS

J.P. Bowie

Book one in the Journeyer series

Jamie MacDonald, a young Scot, begins his dangerous and uncertain journey to the New World…

Jamie MacDonald, a young Scot mourning the deaths of his father and brothers in the ill-fated battle of Culloden, decides to take his mother to the New World. But tragedy and unforeseen circumstance dog Jamie’s journey and he is pressed into service aboard a pirate ship commanded by a ruthless Spaniard.

Antonio Rodriguez is a man with a dark past, but also with an allure Jamie cannot resist.

The two men embark on a stormy relationship—but can their feelings for each other survive the danger that surrounds them, threatening not only their love, but their very lives?

Dedication

My thanks to Claire and everyone at Pride Publishing, and Rebecca, my most patient and supportive editor. Love and thanks also to my hubby, Phil, who gave this story his seal of approval.

Chapter One

Jamie, Jamie MacDonald!

The woman’s voice echoed up through the narrow glen to the top of the crag where the young man stood staring out over the valley below. A gray mist was gathering around him while below a solitary stag turned its head at the sound of the woman’s cry then bounded away to be lost among the tall pine trees. Overhead, the darkening sky was heavy with clouds, blotting out what little sunshine was left in the day. A stiff wind was picking up in the mountains, bringing the first cold drops of rain.

Jamie MacDonald!

His mother sighed as she saw his broad shoulders slump with despair from yet another long and empty vigil atop the rock. He turned and leaped like an agile cat down the cragside, finding sure footing amid the bracken and heather that covered the slope.

Aye, Mathair, I hear ye, he shouted as he ran.

Come away home, Jamie.

His mother stood at the foot of the hill, her hands worrying the rough fabric of her skirt. A young woman, not yet five and forty, she felt the marks that the years of hardship and tension the people of the Highlands had endured under English tyranny had left upon her. She knew her fine-boned face was lined and pinched with worry and heartbreak, her once luxuriant red hair run through with gray and her formerly strong and supple body now a shadow, due to the many times she had starved herself to ensure her family did not go unfed. Only her eyes, still a brilliant blue, gave evidence of the resilience she kept within herself.

I dinna’ like you being out there so lang, Jamie. There’s no telling when some traitor might just happen nearby.

Jamie put his arm around her shoulders and they walked back to the croft they now called home. I wish one of those traitors would come by, mo mathair, he said with a quiet vehemence. I’d like as put my dirk to his throat and listen to him squeal with fear as he pissed his way into hell.

Megan looked up sharply at her son but did not utter the rebuke that almost tripped on her tongue. She understood his hatred for the clan that had betrayed them to the English and that had fought with the enemy against their own countrymen. The darkness that had fallen over Scotland after the massacre at Culloden, and the subsequent humiliation of the Scots by their Sassenach conquerors, was due in large part to the treachery of the rogue clan. The few survivors of the Scottish army that had fought for Prince Charles had either been executed or were in hiding. As for their hero, the prince…well, he was long gone. Skulked away in the dead of night, dressed as a woman, so they said, leaving his followers to suffer the consequences of his arrogance and ambition.

Megan shuddered as she thought of her husband and two sons lost in that conflict. Their bodies had never been found, giving Jamie the hope that one day they would come home.

‘Perhaps they’re still in hiding,’ he had told his mother so many times, but she had given up all hope of her seeing her man and her boys again. No, life was never that kind. Jamie sighed. I think I need not go to the crag again. It’s been too long. Were they alive, they would have found their way back ere now.

Sadly, his mother agreed. Aye. So now, will you agree to leave this place with me and find our way to the New World? She held her son’s hands and gazed into his intense blue eyes. You must come with me, Jamie. ’Twill do you no good to bide here alone. There’s a life waiting for us in the Colonies. Your uncle William will give us shelter when we get there. He said as much afore he left.

Uncle William? Jamie’s frown shadowed his handsome face as he uttered the name with distaste. A man whose word couldna’ be trusted when he was here among us? I would not gamble our lives on such a man.

He was afraid for his family, Jamie, that’s all. Y’canna’ blame a man for wanting to protect his own.

My faither wanted to protect his own. Jamie’s voice rose in anger. But he didna’ run away in the dead of night. No, he stood with my brothers like men against the English scum.

And died doing it! Megan cried with a fierceness that quieted her son. And now, look at us, hiding like thieves, afraid of the sound of a horse’s hoof nearby. Afraid that the next stranger to come upon us might be the one to betray us. What kind of life is that?

Hush, Mathair. Jamie took her in his arms and held her against him. A’right, we’ll leave this place that never was ours. I’ll come with you to the Colonies, but I’ll not throw myself upon my uncle’s mercy. God forbid that we should sink that low.

Jamie, Jamie, his mother whispered against his chest. Dinna’ be sae harsh, my boy. He bowed his head to her and she gently pushed back the red-gold curls that fell on his brow. You’re all I have now, Jamie. I want you to live the life you deserve. Away from a’ this death and desolation. I’m weary o’ it, Jamie…dead weary. It’s gone on for so long.

Jamie held his mother’s slight frame in his arms and breathed out a heavy sigh. She was right, of course. There was nothing for them here anymore. The hovel they had lived in for the past few months was a far cry from the comfortable farmhouse he had been brought up in—he and his brothers, Duncan and Angus. Once they had played and roughhoused in the acres of verdure that surrounded their home, chasing the sheep and cows, running with their dogs, riding their horses across the heathered moors, unaware of the machinations of scheming kings and governments.

Long ago, Jamie’s grandfather had come from his home on the Western Isles to trade in the forests of Glen More. There he had met the lass of his dreams and, after wedding her, had laid claim to the land that sustained him and his family for many years, where Jamie’s father, Fergus MacDonald, had been born and raised and where he in turn had raised his own sons. Now Fergus and two of his sons lay dead, in a place where Jamie could not reach them, where the wind and rain had laid bare their bones and where they had been denied a Christian burial, though to Jamie’s mind that was the least of the tragedy. God and Christ were a long way from Scotland these days, it seemed.

He urged his mother on toward the croft that lay before them, a poor, ramshackle pile of stone and timber, but shelter at least from the chill rain that had begun to fall on them. Inside, a smoky peat fire gave a little warmth and the smell of the mutton his mother had cooked in a pot over the fire made Jamie’s mouth water with anticipation. Yes, he was hungry and the few scraps of meat would do little to satisfy that hunger, but it was all they had and would have to suffice. Once, their table had been laden with fish, chicken and venison, but that had been in the days when Scotsmen were free. Before their loyalty to a pretender prince had caused them to leave their homes and fight a bloody war that had left the country in ruins and many a family slaughtered.

Jamie held a bitter resentment for the events that had led his country to this intolerable state. He had listened to the tales of the dashing and handsome Prince Charles who was to come over the seas to become the rightful king of Britain and who would send the Hanoverian King George back to Germany where he belonged. To most Scots, the Stuart dynasty was the stuff of legends and many had fought by the side of Prince Charles’s father—the ‘Old Pretender’.

Jamie and his brothers had listened to the tales of how, one day, the rightful king would once again rule Britain. Both at school and at home, they’d been told of the miserable lengths the English parliament had gone to replace the Stuarts with foreign kings and queens, some who could not even speak English. Jamie had listened to these tales with wide eyes and longed for the day when he could fight for the ‘Bonny Prince’, but the reality of it had been a sad awakening for the Scots.

Too late, they’d realized that the man they had held in such high esteem was nothing more than an arrogant, self-infatuated fop who knew nothing of commanding an army and even less of ingratiating himself to his people. His foreign manners soon alienated him from his officers, and his troops, hoping for a king they could love and admire, had been shocked and dismayed at the Prince’s total lack of leadership. Jamie remembered his brother Duncan telling him how deeply disappointed he was in the Prince.

‘I expected no less than William Wallace from all we’d been told of him,’ he’d said with disgust the last time they had all been together. ‘But here was this mincing dandy…a spailpean I would have kicked on the backside for his airs, had I not been told, to my amazement, that he was the Prince.’

Nevertheless, those loyal to his cause had followed Charles to the end, and now they were scattered to the winds, the young and the brave who would fight no more, their widows and fatherless children left to mourn them and fend for themselves the best they could.

Thinking of this, Jamie stabbed viciously at his meat as though it was an Englishman’s hide. Damn them, he thought. What right have the Sassenachs to lay waste to this proud and wild land? One day, he vowed, one day I will avenge my father and brothers. Be it with the head of a Campbell traitor or an English soldier—either will suffice.

I thought it best we make our way to Greenock, his mother said, interrupting his wild thoughts. There, we can await a sailing to the Colonies.

Jamie nodded. Greenock was the nearest port that had regular sailings to the New World. It would be a difficult journey, and he worried that it would tax his mother’s frailty even more. But she was determined to take this chance at a better life for them, and he knew better than to try to dissuade her now. She rose stiffly and went to the wooden chest that stood by the peat fire. Opening it, she withdrew a small bag that she placed on the table in front of Jamie.

What’s this? he asked.

All that we have in the world. Enough to secure us both a passage to the Americas.

Jamie stared at the bag in amazement. But where did this come from?

Your father left it with me afore he and your brothers went to fight for the Prince. ‘For any unforeseen occurrence’, he said. Her lips trembled with grief. I never thought I would have to use it. Only perhaps to celebrate their return… She broke off and bowed her head to hide her tears.

Oh, my mother, dinna’ greet so. He took her hand in his. It breaks my heart to see you so stricken.

Can we leave on the morrow then, Jamie?

Aye, Mathair. Jamie sighed with resignation. The morrow it is. There’s little or nothing to keep us here now.

That night, the prospect of the journey