Chapter Four
All day long, Quarrie could not shed his feeling of disquiet. As if trouble hung off on the horizon, waiting for him.
Half a score times he climbed up on the walls to look out over the blameless sea. He questioned the guard until they began eyeing him doubtfully.
The days had been growing longer, and that was an advantage for them.
Just as the Norse could get their boats to sea come spring, so also did the gloaming give defenders hope of spotting the longboats.
Yet as evening drew down, Quarrie’s uneasiness merely increased.
He could not claim to have the Sight. And he was not sure what he’d seen—thought he saw—that morning, but…
Something was out there.
He remained worried enough to bring it up in the meeting of council, the one Ma had requested to discuss Da’s condition. They met just at nightfall, there in the hall.
Not a council as such, naught so formal as that. These were but men who over the years had become Da’s advisors, and his friends. A few aging warriors. The smith, Ronold. The persistent wee priest who insisted on saving them all.
They exchanged glances with one another before turning their eyes on Quarrie.
“Master Quarrie,” said Fergus, who looked after the armory, “wha’ is this all about? ’Tis no’ the Norse already?”
It was, though Quarrie did not want to bring that up yet.
Before he could speak, the wee priest spoke up. “The blessed father who passed by yesterday—he is an itinerant fro’ Ireland, ye understand—said the Norse have sacked the church at Oban. No’ much to steal, but they left many dead.”
“Abominable,” old Morchan said. One of Da’s longstanding cronies, he would remain pagan to his grave, though that did not keep him from great indignation over any slight to a Scottish church. Any excuse to fight.
For the most part, the fledgling Celtic churches here in Scotland were not rich. Not like the ones farther south. But they were easy targets, and some of the brothers were taken as slaves.
Most men in Scotland would be hard pressed to say which was worse, slavery or death. As for the women…
“If and when the Norse show their sails,” Quarrie said, “we will be ready to fight. Wha’ I brought ye here to discuss is the chief’s condition.”
A moment of complete silence ensued. Quarrie found himself faced by almost identically dismayed expressions.
“He is getting better, surely?” said Fergus then. “I ken fine that wound he took was a dire one. I was fighting near him when he got it, and saw him take that Norse bastard’s head in spite o’ it.”
Another man, Connor, said, “The healer assured us all then, wi’ time and rest the chief would be right as rain.”
Aye, the healer had said that. But the blow, from not a sword but a Norse axe, swung hard, had cut nearly to the bone.
Quarrie looked the men in the eye. “Aye, so the healer did hope. So we all hoped. But ye ken poisoning set in. The wound did no’ heal clean. In truth, it refuses to heal at all.”
“Still?” The word came in a hush.
“Still.”
“The chief is a gey strong man,” declared one of the advisors. “A bull.”
He had been.
“I will no’ lie to ye,” Quarrie said steadily. “’Tis why I ha’ called ye here, to speak out the truth. My father’s great strength wanes. He canna stand on the leg, and the pain”—he did not want to speak out the rest of it, though it must be said—“the pain is driving him mad.”
Appalled faces turned to him.
Before any of them could speak, the door of the hall rumbled open and Ma slipped in. Her footsteps made no sound as she walked down the length of the chamber to the gathered men.
She did not strictly belong here in the midst of a meeting. Yet every man there knew Airlee MacMurtray adored her. They themselves honored her. They stood and waited for her to join them.
As if she’d been listening outside the door, she began, “I pray ye will listen to and heed my son. I believe ’tis time he should step into the place he has been holding these many months wi’out the title.”
“But, mistress, Airlee is our chief. We each and every one o’ us swore fealty to him.”
Ma looked around at them with her calm gray eyes. Eyes that had become unaccountably fierce. “As has Quarrie sworn fealty to him.”
“Aye, so. No one would question Master Quarrie’s loyalty or his heart. But ’tis Airlee we follow.”
“Ha’ ye followed him to his bed?” Ma asked. “When is the last time any o’ ye went there to see him? D’ye ken the state he is in?”
Not a man there, and they the leaders of the clan, said a word back to her. They must have heard the commotion coming, at night, from the chief’s quarters. Had they denied what that meant?
“Ye, Morchan,” Ma challenged the oldest of Da’s friends. “When is the last time ye called upon yer chief?”
“To tell ye the truth, Mistress Einid, it has been a while. The last time I did go, he seemed discomfited to see me. As if—” The man ran out of words.
“He is embarrassed and shamed that he canna get out o’ his bed. That he can no longer stand for his clan as he has for so long. The pain is unbearable. Nay draught nor drink can stem it. ’Tis I and Quarrie who ha’ been there day and night as he’s struggled beneath the weight o’ his injury.”
The men stared at her in dismay. Still, no one else spoke.
“We begin a season,” Ma went on, “that may hold much of fighting and strife. I am here to tell ye, since the chief will no’, out o’ shame and distress tell ye so, he will no’ be able to lead ye through it.
He has a fine son.” She indicated Quarrie.
“One I mysel’ bore him. I call upon ye to let the torc pass to Quarrie. ”
The men began to murmur, a groundswell of muttering at first and then everyone speaking at once. Protest. Acknowledgment—aye, Quarrie was a fine lad, but Airlee remained their chief.
By the time the full of them had their say, Quarrie knew the truth. They were not likely to accept him as chief. Not while Da was still alive.
They would follow him, aye. They might take orders from him if they believed those orders fell within the lines of what Da would do.
But Airlee—muddled or not—would remain Chief Murtray till death.
He stood with an impassive face and heard it out. Ma stood silent also, her expression stricken and her eyes full of tears.
“Go to see him,” she urged when they quieted down. “See him, all o’ ye, and mak’ yer own judgment. If ye wait for your chief to hand off leadership o’ this clan to Quarrie, ’tis a thing he will never do.”
Too stubborn by half, was Da. And no more ready to believe he would never go to battle again than were these men.
But he would not. And the incipient madness, the same Quarrie had witnessed last night, told the truth.
Da would not want these men to see that. By the same token, they could no longer hang back from accepting Quarrie as leader. Not if the worst happened.
“Mistress,” said Fergus heavily, “if the chief will no’ hand off leadership o’ the clan to his son, how can we tak’ it fro’ him?”
The other men mumbled again, in agreement.
One of the tears welling in Ma’s eyes spilled over and trickled down her cheek.
They looked away then. They no more wanted to see her weep than they wanted to see their chief on his back, weakened.
That was the true reason they had not gone to see Da for so long. They would rather lie to themselves.
Quarrie stepped forward. Ignoring the disappointment in his heart, that after nearly a year leading the clan in truth, these men still refused to acknowledge him, he said, “If an attack comes from the sea, we maun be ready. I urge ye spread the word. Talk to yer women. Have them pack up wha’ they may need if we see sails out there upon the water.
They may be better off awa’ in the hills than here.
” He added deliberately, “Should we fall.”
Unthinkable that women like Norah, for whom, despite himself, he still cared, might be stolen away. That children might be slaughtered. That the huts huddled around the keep might be burned to the ground.
“We will no’ fall,” Ronold declared roundly. “How many generations ha’ we been fending off those bastards? Ha’ we ever fallen?”
“Nay.” Quarrie stared the man full in the eye. “And how many times over the years ha’ our women and children taken shelter out upon the breast o’ the land while we fought for them here? ’Tis best to be prepared, wha’ever ye think. For when attack comes, it comes swift and hard.”
He looked from face to face before he added, “I do no’ fear the Norse any more than my father. Gi’ me a chance. I will lead ye against them. But I will first seek to spare every life under my care.”
They nodded. This, they would accept.
They began to file out. Quarrie stood like stone beside his mother and waited. Not till they were alone in the big, echoing hall did Ma slump and say into her raised hands, “They did no’ listen. They did no’ believe me.”
“They do no’ want to believe.” Neither did he. He did not want to accept that his big, bluff father, who could roar with laughter and work hard every morning at training before tending the cattle, had become a man who roared instead with pain and threw things at the wall in madness.
He and Ma had been there. They had seen.
He took his mother in his arms and let her weep, a storm of tears kept in far too long. It needed out, the way a storm needed to break.
“Hush now,” he bade when the worst of it ebbed. “We will carry on as we ha’ been.”
His position in life did not matter. So long as he stood strong.