Chapter Eighteen #2
Anna turned to look at Bram. He was bent toward a young man walking alongside the horse, listening intently.
As the man spoke, the hard lines around Bram’s eyes softened.
He laughed at something the man said—a quick, open sound she’d never heard before.
For a moment, she didn’t recognize him. The guarded fugitive was gone, replaced by someone else entirely.
For days she’d convinced herself he was simply another man either unwilling to bridge the gulf between them or simply uninterested in her.
But despite that, a wistful ache bloomed in her chest now to see him so well received by these people who greeted him with tears and laughter and undeniable relief.
Bram MacCailin had come home. Despite the ache in her chest, she felt an unexpected pang of gladness for him, witnessing the sheer relief that rippled through the crowd.
This was the man they knew—not the battered fugitive who’d dragged her through the forest, but a leader whose absence had left a wound in this place. And now, he was back.
Then, from somewhere high above, a blaring noise sounded—a single, mournful note that rolled over the village and bounced off the surrounding hills. Anna startled, stiffening.
“?Tis only the horn,” Bram said, his voice low. “The sentries have seen us.” He nodded toward the gatehouse looming over them.
Anna followed his direction and watched as men appeared along the ramparts. Others hurried across the courtyard beyond the open gates. Farther off, workers straightened from plows and shovels, then set off at a brisk walk, some quickening into a run.
As the horn's echo faded, she finally saw the sea beyond the castle. Craig na Coille rose from a rocky cliff overlooking the water, its walls following the uneven shape of the land. It wasn’t graceful like a castle in a brochure.
It was a fortress, its sections sitting at different heights where newer stone met old, its walls worn pale in places by centuries of wind and sea salt.
She felt herself stiffen unconsciously in the saddle.
Bram must have noticed, as he tightened his arm around her with more solicitation than he’d shown in days.
“Dinna be anxious, lass,” he said.
“No,” Anna answered absently, her voice thin.
***
By the time Bram and Anastasia finally passed beneath the outer gate of Craig na Coille, the courtyard teemed with people.
He reined in near the stables and dismounted swiftly before reaching for Anastasia, taking her by the waist and lowering her to the ground beside him.
She steadied herself with one hand against his shoulder, and Bram studied her pale facade briefly, aware that the welcome awaiting him must appear more than a little daunting to a woman who understood scarcely a word being shouted around them.
He might have offered some reassurance had his attention not been seized by the sight of his mother and sister bearing down upon him, neither having waited patiently or decorously near the keep.
His mother led the charge. Outfitted in dark blue wool, one hand gathered her skirts as she crossed the yard with the unmistakable force of a woman entirely accustomed to everyone moving aside before her.
Lady Mairead Mac Cailin, it had long been rumored, had once been strikingly beautiful in the sort of way songs exaggerated for generations afterward, and enough of it remained still that strangers occasionally lost good sense under the force of her blue-eyed stare.
Her dark hair now carried broad streaks of silver beneath her veil, though nothing about her presence suggested that either gentleness or age had softened her particularly.
“Sweet Mother of God,” she cried in their native tongue, opening her arms while several yards still separated them.
Bram smiled despite himself. Though he knew he would be away at the first opportunity to seek his vengeance against the man who had betrayed him, there was always comfort in returning home to this.
He gathered his mother into a fierce embrace, and she clung to him while offering thanks to every saint she could name for bringing him safely back.
Behind his mother, his sister Etta approached with considerably less dignity, crying openly, and then apparently decided she could wait no longer before throwing herself against both him and their mother until the three of them became one ungainly embracing entity.
It was entirely overdone, the weeping and joyous wailing, yet Bram reveled in it nonetheless. By sunset one of them would almost certainly have tested his patience beyond endurance, but at that moment he loved them dearly.
“Saints be praised,” crowed his mother, finally pushing away from him just far enough to rake an anxious gaze over him from head to toe, her lean fingers digging into his forearms. “Oh, and what have they done to ye, luv?”
“I said to Mam, I had a feeling,” cried Etta, still clutching Bram’s upper arm and leaning her head briefly against his shoulder. “I just knew ye’d come soon.”
“Ye are pale, luv, and so thin,” said his mother. “Naught a guid meal willna fix.”
Bram knew it was not required that he speak, but thought to confirm what his ready smile might not have entirely. “And pleased I am to be home, Mam.”
“Oh, my heart,” she said, laying her palm against his cheek.
“Were ye near Inverness?” Etta wanted to know. “We heard of a terrible rout down there. How long were ye—”
“We’ve time aplenty for all your questions, Etta,” Bram said, though the words had scarcely left his mouth when another voice reached him through the clamor of the courtyard.
“Mac Cailin.”
Bram turned sharply.
For the briefest moment, Harsain stood several yards away and made no move toward him.
Bram had known the man most of his life and fought beside him for nearly half of it, and he had never before seen his captain look quite so stricken.
Harsain was a broad, powerfully built man nearing forty, his dark beard now threaded with more gray than Bram remembered, a narrow white scar cutting from the corner of his left eye toward his temple.
He looked leaner, harder, and the leather coat he wore bore a ragged repair across one shoulder that Bram did not remember seeing before the ambush.
Behind him stood several men Bram recognized at once.
The sight of them struck harder than he’d expected.
They were not enough.
Harsain had marched south with nearly six score men, and the handful gathered behind his captain seemed a pitiful remnant.
There was Niall, favoring his left leg badly; Gilleasbuig with a fresh scar across one cheek; young Tòmas, who seemed to have aged years; and two others whose familiar faces brought with them immediate memories of men who were conspicuously absent.
For several heartbeats Bram and Harsain simply regarded one another.
“I saw ye fall,” Harsain said finally, his voice roughened. “Jesu, lad. I saw them take ye down.”
“Aye.” Bram swallowed. “They did.”
Harsain closed the distance between them, catching Bram by the forearm before hauling him into a hard embrace that lasted only a heartbeat but conveyed more than either man was likely to say before so many witnesses. Bram gripped him just as fiercely.
When they parted, Harsain kept hold of his arm. “We searched. What men I could gather, we searched until there was nae sense in it. Found bodies enough, but never yours.”
“Because I wasnae among them.”
Harsain’s gaze dropped to Bram’s wrist, to the ugly abrasion where the English iron had ridden his skin, and something dangerous entered his expression. “Nae. I see that now.”
There would be time for the rest—the names of the dead, the accounting of those who had escaped, everything that had happened in the three months since the ambush.
Bram could not bear to ask for it yet. He clasped forearms with each of the surviving men instead, speaking their names, accepting their grins and rough words of welcome.
Tòmas appeared on the verge of tears and plainly hated himself for it, so Bram clapped him hard upon the shoulder and said nothing of the shine in his eyes.
Niall muttered that it had taken him long enough to find his way home, earning a bark of laughter from Harsain and, to Bram’s surprise, from himself as well.
Fearchar stepped forward next—the steward spare and graying, keys at his belt, his habitually composed face holding for perhaps two seconds before he seized Bram’s forearm with both hands. “God be thanked.”
“Aye, Fearchar. All is well here?”
The steward gave him a look that was almost reproachful. “Ye’ve been home scarcely five minutes. Such as that will keep a bit longer.”
“Aye.”
Bram might have answered, but Etta chose that moment to lean around him.
“And who is this... that ye’ve brought with ye?”
Bram turned.
Anastasia remained only a short distance from where he’d left her, though the swelling crowd had edged closer around her.
She stood beside the gelding with one hand resting lightly upon the saddle, her expression composed enough that anyone who didn’t know her might have believed her perfectly at ease.
Anastasia stood rigid, her eyes locked on Mairead.
Bram approached and stepped into her view. “They’re curious,” he said, his voice low. “They’ll question ye. Whatever tale ye tell, keep it simple. Dinnae speak of... where ye came from.”
She gave a short, tight nod, unable or unwilling to meet his gaze.
He set his hand at her back and urged her forward. He could feel the resistance in her frame as they neared his family.
Etta stared openly, her eyes snagging on the unaccountable shortness of the skirt. His mother was quieter, her gaze fixed on Anastasia’s face like a scribe reading script.
“Ye’ve brought us yer war bride,” Etta spoke first, switching to English, her tone warm and teasing, which she effectively ruined by adding, “or a thief. I have nae certainty yet.”