Chapter Thirty-Eight
Katrin never remembered much of what followed, at least not in any detail. They ran. Somehow, over that broken ground and in the dark, they did, her two bearers giving valiant service. After a time, they reached a stand of trees, one alive with others who also fled. The hunted.
Katrin hunkered down beside her father and said, “I maun go back.”
“Nay,” Da said. He’d remained awake, distressed and cursing, insisting he did not need to be carried even though he did.
“Finlay,” she said.
That moment, that one terrible moment, now superseded all the others in her mind. Whenever she closed her eyes, she saw it again. Finlay, throwing himself forward.
So she and hers could get away.
He must have succeeded in delaying their pursuers, for the English soldiers did not come after them. Even though, aye, the wood rustled with life, they were left alone.
He could not possibly have survived. He was a harper, not a warrior, and even the best of warriors—Reagan—had gone down. Exhausted and with no shield, Finlay fought armed only with love.
His love for her.
Nay, he could not possibly have survived. But he must have hung on long enough to allow for their escape.
The pain of it stunned her, made it hard to breathe and harder to think. She realized but one thing: she could not waste what had been given at such a price. At all cost, she must get her da away to safety.
How, she could not imagine. They were stranded in hostile country miles and miles from home with nothing. No food. No supplies. No clothing.
Would others of their clan come behind them? Had any survived?
It grew cold that night, and they had no shelter. Wet to the skin, the four of them huddled together for warmth and Katrin slept not at all. By morning, when dawn bled in from the east, she felt sick to the very death.
She once again robbed from her own clothing to rebandage Da’s leg. When they moved off, he insisted on walking, supported between his two young clansmen. Katrin did not think he would get far.
They needed food and warmth. Da needed a proper physician. Katrin could still hardly think on these things. She saw only Finlay.
Finlay.
They filled their bellies with water from a stream and hid when they could.
Katrin had no doubt the English still hunted them, and after the atrocities at the ransacked priory, any landsman they met would be sure to point them out.
Nowhere to ask for help. Da grew steadily weaker, but refused to let his men carry him.
Again and again that day, she peered over her shoulder. Searching, aye, for pursuers. But also hoping, hoping. Hearing words echo in her mind.
I will find ye. Always.
Like a tribe of wounded rabbits, they moved on through that day, keeping to the gorse and heather, finding their direction by the sun that broke through from time to time. It shifted far to the south at this time of year, and Katrin—now leading the way—kept it behind her right shoulder.
Many other rabbits traversed the country around them. She could hear as well as sometimes glimpse them, and sometimes mounted knights still moved through. Not their own.
By hiding in the wet gorse, they escaped notice.
That miracle may have been due to prayer. She heard Rabbie praying often. She prayed also, in a blind sort of way, desperate prayers that went out to who knew where, especially when the riders moved past. Do no’ let them see us. Please, please.
She once heard Davey mutter, “I want my ma,” and it wrung her heart because she did not think he would see his ma, or his home, again.
Da was in too much pain for prayer. He sweated and tried not to groan, but he kept moving. For another night they crouched in the heather, freezing. Starving. Davey wept, and the rest of them pretended they could not hear him.
A deep and terrible sort of despair took up residence in Katrin’s heart.
Not long into the next morning, they came to a ruined structure. Those fleeing the battle had by now spread out and the pursuers came less frequently, yet Katrin felt anything but safe.
Though the place stood tumbled stone from stone and overgrown with bracken, Katrin thought there might be some remnants of food there—a foolish thought, as it proved, since something else entirely awaited inside.
“Ye wait here,” she told Da and his two young helpers, one supporting him on either side. They had become, so, like one being.
“Nay—” Da began. She ignored him.
As she stepped to the door of the dwelling she drew her sword. And was met, when she stepped in, by what was very nearly her own reflection—a man, as dirty and tattered as she, standing in a like attitude with a sword in his hand. Five other men sat in dirty straw behind him. Eating.
Her heart leaped sickeningly. She stared into the man’s dark eyes and he into hers. After a startled moment, he lowered his sword and she did the same.
“Curse me,” he told his fellows, “’tis a woman.”
Who were they? Dressed in Highland garb, they were so smeared with mud and wet she could scarce recognize the tartan. Not English, that was the important thing.
“Fleeing the battle, are ye?” the man asked. He was perhaps thirty and had a gap in his front teeth. A foolish question, but then, he no doubt needed to establish she was not English either.
“Aye. I ha’ my father, sore wounded, and two o’ our clansmen.” She jerked her head. “He is Chief MacMurtray.”
“Is he, then?”
She directed her gaze at the other four men, only one of whom had got to his feet and at the food they shared. By God, she was hungry.
“Did ye find that food here?”
“Nay, this place is long empty. We stole that, we did. Fro’ a house. Wee Jacky stole it.” He indicated the man on his feet who, indeed, was very small.
The man to whom she’d been speaking thrust out his hand. “Ranald MacLeod,” he introduced himself.
“Katrin MacMurtray.”
“Bring yer men awa’ in. We will share wha’ we have.”
It turned out that Ranald, Jack, and their companions had also been recruited under Earl John Randolph’s banner, and had become separated from the rest of their clan during the battle.
“A rout, that,” as Ranald put it. “How so many could be brought low by so few is beyond me.”
“’Twas the archers,” Katrin answered, “so I am certain.”
The other three MacLeods were Jamie, Gus, and Tam. Jamie was wounded but not badly. They were making for home.
“Ye can travel along wi’ us if ye’ve a mind,” Ranald offered. “We can help ye wi’ yer chief, then.”
To say that Katrin felt grateful would fall far short. These were not their own men, nay—God alone knew what had happened to their own men—but they were fellow Highlanders banding together.
They shared their food, which was not much, a fact that made the gesture mean even more. Katrin wanted to wolf down what she was offered. Instead she consumed it slowly and made sure Da ate all his.
They sat in a circle on the rough stone floor and spoke of the battle, or spoke around it, for there were things none of them wanted to mention. The hideous sights seen. The savagery on both sides.
As said Tam MacLeod with a shake of his head, “’Twas cruel to put they horses through that. I saw a gey many go down.” He was a young man with a slash to one arm and horror in his eyes.
So had Katrin, and it had bothered her also.
“Aye, so we will travel together,” said Ranald, and Katrin felt touched by the fact that even if Robert Stewart had forsaken them, they’d found hearts far more loyal.
She and Ranald spoke of it as they moved out, leaving the ruined hut.
“We saw Laird Stewart come through after the battle,” she told him. “I asked for help for my da. Da was sworn to Earl Randolph, ye ken, who was in turn sworn to him, and answered when he called us up.”
“And what did the fine Laird Stewart do?” Ranald asked, not without a touch of irony.
“He rode off.” The words felt sour in Katrin’s mouth. “Abandoned us. Saved himself.” She had a flash of Finlay throwing himself to the wolves, in sharp contrast.
Nay, do not think of that.
“I am no’ surprised,” replied Ranald. “He is an important man, aye? Wi’ an important skin to cherish.”
Katrin trusted Ranald MacLeod instinctively—or Rannie, as his fellows called him. He led his poor little band as she led hers, and in the days that followed, they often walked together. She found him easy to talk to.
When Da grew worse and could no longer walk even with his clansmen’s help, Rannie offered his own men to spell them. He did so with a grave courtesy that would put to shame the highest in the land.
They spoke less and less frequently of the battle. Did ye see that the king got struck wi’ an arrow? In the face, nay less—
Did he live?
For a wee while, at least. Now, who knows?
Rannie was obviously curious about Katrin. How did a lass like yoursel’ end up in battle?
I took my brother’s place at Da’s side wi’ my brother perished.
They spoke more of home. Rannie headed for the Isle of Skye and wanted nothing more than to reach there.
Katrin wanted one thing more. As the days crawled by and the distance grew, she became more and more certain she would not have it.
Getting Da home—alive—would have to be enough, if she could manage a deed so impossible. Only then would she be able to try to imagine how to live without the man she loved.