Chapter Two
Cailean MacNeil wrung out the sweat-sodden cloth, dipped it in a basin of cool, clean water, and pressed it against Drew’s damp forehead.
It didn’t seem to be making any difference.
His old retainer and friend was getting worse.
Drew had thrown off the blankets that the healers had placed over him, and sweat streaked his limbs and torso.
Despite the cool September breeze coming in through the open window, he was burning up, the fever chewing through him as it had already done to so many others.
Helpless frustration welled up inside Cailean. He was the laird of this island, damn it! He should be able to do something to help his people. But in this, he was as helpless as a newborn babe.
He clenched his fists, trying to curb the anger that rose inside him like boiling oil.
He’d tried everything. He’d brought healers from all over Barra, tried every remedy they knew, but nothing worked.
The sickness was getting worse, and Cailean’s rage and frustration increased with each new report that came in.
“I’ll give him more willow bark,” Maggie said from Drew’s other side.
Cailean nodded. Maggie’s wrinkled face was drawn and haggard. Like him, she hadn’t been getting much sleep. He knew the castle healer was as frustrated as he was. She held a mortar and pestle in her hands, grinding down more ingredients for remedies.
“Yer heathen concoctions havenae helped in the least,” said Sister Beatrice, the castle’s other healer, who was folding sheets by the door. “Only the Good Lord can save him now. I’ll say more prayers.”
“Oh, because they’ve done the world of good so far, ye mean?” Maggie retorted. “Yer Christian god seems to have forgotten our little corner of the world!”
They fell to arguing, and Cailean sighed.
Maggie and Beatrice were sisters, both healers in their own way, but had taken vastly different paths in life.
Maggie was steeped in the old ways of gods and goddesses of field and furrow, Beatrice in the ways of the Christian god.
Both thought their way was right and other wrong.
Cailean didn’t care one way or the other.
He’d never held much faith in deities who seemed to care little for what happened to the mortals who venerated them.
All he cared about was finding a way to save his people.
Until now he’d always done that with a sword in his hand and a command on his lips.
Norse raiders? He’d drive them off. Disputes among his people?
He’d knock the leaders’ heads together until they saw sense.
But this? Swords and brawn were no use against this enemy, and the bickering of his two healers wasn’t helping any.
“I need some air,” he muttered, heaving himself to his feet.
He left Drew’s sickroom and made his way through the castle until he reached the main doors. Stepping outside, he stopped, sucking in a lungful of the sea air and trying to calm the tempest of emotions raging inside.
It was a cloudy, cold day, and the breeze coming in off the ocean held hints of the winter to come. If they couldn’t find a way to combat this illness, how many of them would make it through that winter?
“Papa!”
He turned just as a small body cannoned into him, wrapping skinny arms around his waist.
He gave an “oomph” and then a laugh, returning the fierce hug. “What’s this for?”
Catriona looked up at him, her freckled face breaking into a grin. “No reason. Just havenae seen ye since breakfast, is all.”
As usual, Catriona’s red ringlets had come free of the plait that he’d tied them in. And, as usual, there was a mischievous glint in her eye. He raised an eyebrow at his daughter.
“Dinna give me that. I know that look when I see it.”
Cat blinked, feigning innocence. “What look?”
“That look. That look that says ye’ve done something ye shouldnae and are being extra nice so I dinna notice. Come on, out with it. What have ye done now?”
At nine years old, Catriona MacNeil was a handful.
Tall for her age, and with her mother’s fiery coloring and temperament, she had seemingly limitless energy and was always getting herself into some scrape or another.
She could usually be found with the other local children swimming in the coves that dotted the shore, fishing in the inland lochs, or climbing the trees that blanketed the hills inland.
She flatly refused to behave like a lady, to the eternal despair of Sister Beatrice, who acted as her tutor.
She shuffled her feet and looked a little sheepish.
Cailean crossed his arms over his broad chest. “I’m waiting.”
“Well…” she began, drawing out the word.
She was interrupted by a sudden high-pitched yapping and a scrabbling against the door of the stable that lay on the other side of the courtyard. A second later, the door burst open and a black-and-white puppy came racing across the yard towards them.
“Ye were supposed to stay there until I’d spoken to him!” Cat cried as the puppy started dancing around her feet.
“So that’s it!” Cailean thundered. “Ye’ve been and gotten one of Old Malcolm’s pups after I expressly told ye no!”
Cat scooped up the tiny dog and backed away, holding him protectively. “Malcolm said I could have him! He’s the runt of the litter and willnae be any good for shepherding anyway!”
“That isnae the point. The point is that ye disobeyed me.”
To her credit, Cat looked suitably abashed. But a moment later, her defiance returned. “He willnae be any trouble, and I’ll train him myself. The kennel master says he’ll help me, and he can sleep in my room. I’ll clean up after him, I promise. Look, he already knows some commands.”
She put the little dog down. “Patch, sit.”
To Cailean’s surprise, the pup did exactly that. He raised an eyebrow. “Patch?”
“That’s his name. Because he’s got a black patch over his eye. See? Can I keep him, Pa? Please?”
Cailean had been laird long enough to know when to pick his battles, and this was clearly a battle he was not going to win. He sighed. “Fine. But ye will train him. And ye will feed him. And ye will clean up after him. Clear?”
Cat cannoned into him again, throwing her arms around his waist. “Oh, thank ye, thank ye, thank ye!”
Cailean’s annoyance melted away to be replaced by a warm, fierce love for this strong-willed girl of his.
He wrapped his arms around her and kissed the top of her head.
He would do anything, anything to protect her.
But what if he couldn’t protect her from this sickness? What if it came for her too?
A cold, visceral terror clutched at his insides, so strong that for a moment it took his breath. What if he lost her the way he’d lost her mother?
No, he thought. I won’t let that happen. I will never let that happen. I will die first.
Cat looked up at him, seeming to notice his pained expression. “Are ye all right, Papa?”
He forced a smile. “I’m fine. Why dinna ye take Patch to the kitchen? I’m sure there were some sausages left over from breakfast. But after that, ye get straight to yer lessons, ye hear?”
Cat gave a little cry of delight and turned to scamper off across the courtyard, Patch running at her heels. Cailean watched them go, that terror clenching his gut again. He could not lose her. He just couldn’t.
Taking a deep breath, he turned and strode away, out of Dun Mallach’s gates and onto the road that zigzagged downhill to the coast.
The village that hugged the slopes of the hill on which Dun Mallach was built was quiet at this time of day, with most folks either out fishing or else working the fields inland, so only a few oldsters were around, mending nets or sitting on the front step of their houses, watching the world go by.
These few raised hands and called greetings as he strode past, which Cailean returned in kind.
But in truth, his mind was on other things.
His thoughts churned, as turbulent as the winter seas.
He strode down to the beach, sand and shingle crunching under his boots.
The tide was out, and so the shore had become a long stretch of rock pools and sandbars, glimmering in the random shafts of light that occasionally broke through the overcast.
Cailean stared out to sea. The breeze streamed his hair and plaid out behind him and helped to clear his thoughts a little.
This was where he always came when he wanted to be alone or needed to think.
The smell of the sea, the bite of the wind, the endless horizon, they all helped to soothe his turbulent emotions.
But not today. Today his thoughts wouldn’t settle, going round and round and round, with no solution presenting itself. In his mind’s eye he saw Drew’s fever-ravaged face. He saw the countless others who had already succumbed to the sickness. What was he to do? What could he do?
If he had been a religious man, he might have fallen to his knees and prayed.
He might have given offerings to the old gods as Maggie did, or prayed to the Christian one as Beatrice wanted him to.
But Cailean had long since lost all faith in gods.
His loss of faith had started when they took his wife from him, leaving his daughter without a mother, and it had only increased when the sickness began taking his people and the gods stood by and let it happen.
It was once said that the Kingdom of the Isles—Barra, Skye, and Islay—was protected by an ancient magic and that it would keep harm from coming to the people of the Isles.
If that were so, Cailean had never seen any evidence of it.
Barra had been beset by raiders, savage storms, and now the sickness.
Oh aye, he no longer had any faith in gods.
He felt his hands curling into fists and the old, familiar anger forming in his gut. Anger at the gods. Anger at the hand fate had dealt him. But mostly, anger at himself.
These were his people. It was his duty to save them.
But he didn’t even know where to begin.
*