Chapter 7 #2
"Aye," Seumas said, in the tone of someone making a significant confession. "Quicker than expected."
Anthony nodded. Said nothing further. Seumas went back to his soil.
Good.
He kept moving.
She was working her way through the keep one reluctant person at a time, and she hadn't asked for his help to do it. He found he couldn't decide whether that relieved him or unsettled him, and arrived at the conclusion that it was probably both.
He moved on, completing the circuit of the yard, nodding to men who caught his eye, stopping twice to address small matters that required a decision. A dispute over patrol rotation, a question about the grain store.
He handled both quickly and kept moving.
On his second pass, he stopped near the training ground, where Callum and two of the younger lads were running drills.
Callum was a capable soldier.
Anthony had no complaint about the man's sword arm. His mouth was a different matter, and lately it had developed a particular quality he was watching.
As if sensing the attention, Callum looked up. Straight at Anthony. Then, deliberately, toward the gate.
"She'll be back before dusk, then," Callum said. To the man beside him, not to Anthony. Not quite loud enough to be a direct address. Exactly loud enough to be heard.
The yard went a degree quieter around them.
There it is.
Anthony looked at Callum with the particular quality of attention that had, over ten years, replaced the need for most spoken warnings.
He let it sit for a full five seconds. Long enough for Callum to understand that the comment had landed, had been heard, had been assessed, and had been found wanting.
Callum's sword arm continued its drill. But the man's jaw had tightened.
"When ye've finished those drills," Anthony said, even and unhurried, "ye can run the south ridge patrol. Both ways."
Callum looked at him. Understood. "Aye, me Laird."
Anthony walked on.
The irritation settled under his ribs and stayed there, low and steady, the kind that wasn't about one man's loose mouth but about what it signaled. The shape of something larger forming, slowly, in the keep's undercurrent.
He'd need to stay ahead of it.
He went up to James in the late afternoon.
The boy was awake, sitting propped against his pillows. He looked up when Anthony came in. His color was better than yesterday. Not much, but enough to notice, and enough to loosen something in Anthony's chest that had been knotted since morning.
"Ye're nae coughin'," Anthony said.
"I coughed this mornin'." James tracked Fox around the room. "She did the steam thing again. It helped."
Anthony pulled the chair from the corner, set it beside the bed, and sat. He did this without ceremony.
He'd sat in this chair more times than he could count over six years. Through fevers, through the bad nights, through the mornings when James's breathing had sounded like something tearing slowly apart.
He sat in it the same way each time. As if stillness were something he could offer when he had nothing else.
"Does it hurt? The steam."
"Nay. It's warm." James finally looked at him. "She talks to me while she does it. Even when I'm half asleep."
"What does she say?"
James thought about it.
"She tells me what the herbs are for. What they do." He paused. "She says me body already kens how to breathe, it just needs to be reminded."
Anthony looked at the window.
The shutters cracked two fingers, as they always were now. The air in the room lighter than it had been in years. Cooler, cleaner, the particular quality of air that didn't cost anything to breathe.
Six years.
Six years of that chair and that sound and that window sealed tight, and it took her four days.
He kept his face still. Set the thought somewhere he could examine it later, when he was alone and there was no one watching his expression.
"Do ye like her?" James asked.
Anthony looked back at him.
James was watching him with the unsettling directness he'd had since he was old enough to form questions.
There was no guile in it. There never was with James. Just the simple, devastating honesty of a child who hadn't yet learned that some questions were better left unasked.
He'll be a problem when he's older.
Anthony felt a brief warm flicker of something he didn't name.
"She heals ye well," Anthony said.
"That's nae what I asked."
"Aye. It is."
James considered this with the expression of a six-year-old who had decided not to argue the point out loud and was reserving the right to return to it.
Anthony recognized the expression. He'd been on the receiving end of it before. He'd also been the one making it, thirty years ago, at a man who was no longer here to see where it had ended up.
The boy has his grandfather's patience.
God help us all.
"Fox doesnae like Callum," James offered.
"Fox doesnae like anyone."
"He likes the miss."
"She feeds him."
"He likes ye too," James said. Matter-of-factly. "He comes and sits near yer chair at supper sometimes."
"He tolerated me," Anthony said. "Once. When he'd run out of better options."
James's mouth did the thing it did before he smiled. The small private twitch that Anthony had been watching since the boy was old enough to find things funny.
He knew every version of it. He'd catalogued them the way you catalogued the things you were afraid of losing.
He didn't quite let it out. Neither did Anthony.
They sat in the quiet of the room together, the fire low, the shutters letting in the late afternoon light.
This. This is what it was all for.
Anthony stayed until the boy fell asleep. Then he rose quietly, set the chair back against the wall, and left.