Chapter 2
Chapter
Two
H e was certain that he was dead. If not for the nightmare dreams that came at him out of the darkness--the screams, fire that swept the hillside, the sounds of battle, then the sounds of the dying, Scots and other brave men, the senseless waste of it, a friend there, then gone, and always the blood...
He came up out of the dream screaming, pain tearing through him as he reached for his sword. But it wasn't there. His hand wasn't there. But he felt it, felt that burning pain all over again as Blackwood's blade had sliced through flesh and bone, could still see the satisfied expression at Blackwood's face.
"If you live... "
Then a cool hand was pressed against his forehead. Through the fevered haze he saw her--slender, red-gold hair bound in a single braid that fell over her shoulder, and clear blue eyes with dark brows drawn together in a frown.
He knew her, from that place between sleeping and waking in the forest at Brocilande, in far away encampments where there was only endless sand and barren hills, at sea with its endless waves that carried him far away--a devilish smile when she thought she had bested him at the game board, the sassiness when she called him a fool--an image of a young girl standing at the gates of Lechlede her hand shielding her eyes as she had watched him leave so long ago.
And a thousand times more in the years since that he'd been away and wondered what she was like as a young woman. Would the sassiness still be there, or would some young man have tamed it?
" If ye canna even win one game at chess, what good are ye?"
What good? Crippled, with only one good arm, like the cripples from other wars he'd seen in a half dozen places, forced to beggar themselves to survive.
What good?
An old woman's voice pulled him back as that slender image moved beside the bed and he caught the faint, sweet smell of lavender before slipping back into the darkness.
"You must make a poultice," old Maisel told her. "Mix the syrup from the boiled mallow with honey. The mallow will draw the poison and the honey will heal."
"He is so thin, and has not taken any food," Alix whispered.
"Aye, the body is using everything to fight the poison of the wound. Clear broth with leaves from roseroot for the infection within," she added, then frowned as she stared down at the wasted body of the young man who had once been a fine, spirited lad.
"Tis what can be done for the body. The soul is another thing."
"He has fearsome dreams."
Maisel nodded. "Aye, I have seen it before. They will destroy him from within if he canna fight them back. Do ye ken, girl?"
Alix nodded. The man who lay on the bed in the chamber at Lechlede was a shadow of the young man she had last seen almost ten years before. She had been a child then, but had watched the handsome young warrior as he rode away, her heart aching for something she did not yet understand. In the years that had passed since she had come to know what it was that day so long ago.
She had loved Ruari Fraser, with a childhood innocence for the brash, brave young warrior who had followed the chieftain when the mistress was taken from them. She had loved him, even as she called him for a fool, loved him when he rode off with that half smile that wrapped around her heart. And loved him now, broken, wounded, a shadow of the young man she had last seen as a child.
She was no longer a child.
There had been young men, and older ones who had spoken to the chieftain about her. And then there was Eben McGinley. But James Fraser, chieftain of Clan Fraser had never approached her grandmother about any of them, and she was given to wonder if her mistress, Lady Brynna, had perhaps shared her secret with the chieftain. A secret that poured out of her that day he had ridden away.
"Whatever has made ye cry ?" the mistress had asked her, then glimpsed that lone figure in the distance as he rode past the village below the keep at Lechlede.
"Ruari canna go !" she had wailed into her apron, and then confessed with childish innocence.
"I love him."
Lady Brynna hadn't scolded or berated her for something so foolish. Instead she had sat with her in the small alcove off the kitchen and explained what it was to love someone... the passion and the stirring of emotions to be certain, but it was also about friendship, compassion, caring about someone more than herself, seeing them for who they truly were, the things that made them who they were, frightening as they might be, and it was about trust, at times being very brave.
"Brave?" she had asked with more than a little confusion. "There is none braver that Ruari Fraser, except for the chieftain."
"Men are brave ," Lady Brynna had replied. "They have to be, to protect others. But it is far more difficult for a woman to be brave, aye? Her bravery comes from her trust in the man she loves and the honor he brings her."
Honor.
Lady Brynna had spoken of it with a faraway look in her eyes and a frown at her mouth at something only she seemed to see.
She had been a small child when the chieftain's lady first came to Lechlede as a young girl in an arranged marriage with Hugh Fraser, the old chieftain's eldest son and heir. There were rumors that the marriage was not a happy one, and then the lady lost the child she had carried and left for the abbey at Beauly.
She had only vague memories of the sadness through-out Lechlede then, but with a child's innocence of such things and her grandmother refused to speak of it.
Those were troubled times. The old Chieftain died and Hugh Fraser became chieftain of Clan Fraser. His older brother, James, became his war chief.
It was no secret that James Fraser had been born a bastard when his father, the old chieftain, was but sixteen years. His mother had been a young girl from the old people, in the Highlands beyond Fraser land. She died when James was born and it was said that he never loved another.
A marriage arranged to young Lady Gwyneth Ainsley, to solidify a bond with English crown, had produced two sons, Hugh and Ruari, and a daughter, Linnea. The marriage had ended in disaster when shortly after the birth of her youngest child, Lady Gwyneth took herself off in her shift during the night in the middle of a storm. Her body was found the following day on the shores of the loch where it was rumored she had take her own life. The old chieftain didn't marry again.
His oldest son, James, was sent to distant family in France where he was educated and trained as a warrior. When he returned to Scotland, he fought to make his place in the clan and became war chief of Clan Fraser.
Hugh Fraser, the oldest son, was raised to take his place as the legitimate heir to Clan Fraser, but it was said the mantle of leadership weighed heavily. He was reckless and headstrong, and given to fits of brutal temper. He was not a leader of men, much less a clan as powerful as Clan Fraser. It was said that recklessness led to his own death.
Ruari was younger than James by more than ten years. As the youngest son, he was sent away to be educated at the abbey at Dunnottar, for a religious vocation. But he had left the abbey and returned to Lechlede after a handful of years. He was the finest young warrior she had ever seen, bold and reckless, but with a charming side that made her smile in spite of herself.
She had no memory of their sister, Linnea, who was sent to England after her mother's death to be raised by her mother's family there, and little was known of her.
With Hugh Fraser's death, James had been given the support of the clan as its new chieftain. Shortly thereafter, he had wed the Lady Brynna, an arrangement she had refused at first. But with no other options and unable to return to her own family, she had finally accepted her fate.
It was said their marriage was an uneasy alliance, but as Alix had learned then as a child, James Fraser was not a cruel barbarian but a fair and even kind man who had made herself with no mother or father of her own feel as though she had a family there with just her grandmother.
In time, the Lady Brynna had found some measure of affection for her new husband. They now had three children--a son and two daughters, with another bairn due before Michaelmas.
That affection was seen in a simple gesture--the way he looked for her in the crowded hall, the lines at his face easing once she came into view; her smile that seemed to hold secrets that only they shared, then the way her cheeks colored and she quickly looked away.
The Lady Brynna had a gentle hand and a caring way that disarmed cantankerous old warriors, like Gabhran who was war chief to the old laird, down to the smallest child in that quiet way of listening then disarming both old and young alike with a gentle touch of her hand, or a word that only they shared.
She never raised her voice or her hand to man nor beast as it was rumored that she had suffered such abuses in her first marriage to Hugh Fraser and still carried the scars of it.
Now, as Alix looked at the wasted man who lay on the cot it was difficult to see any trace of the young man who had ridden away with that long backwards glance years before.
She felt a gentle hand at her arm, Maisel smiling. She was a healer and had been at Lechlede far longer than any could remember, at least since the laird was a young.
"I can have one of the women from the village to care for him. I fear the Lady Brynna already has much to deal with."
Alix shook her head, her mouth firmly set as she looked at what remained of Ruari Fraser.
"I will do it," she said adamantly. "Just as ye taught me."
Maisel nodded. "You have the dried leaves for the fevers. Honey for the tea so that it is not bitter. The bandages must be changed often for such a wound."
Alix nodded. "I remember."
Maisel gave her a last look before she turned to leave.
"You must be prepared, child, that he may not live. I have known many who do not recover from such wounds."
"He will live," Alix replied, for she could not bear the thought that he would not, even if he was not the laughing, teasing young man she had once known.
The honied mixture had simmered at the fire at the stone hearth. The chamber smelled of it, the sweetness overlaying the crushed leaves--mallow, juniper, and rose root.
She spooned several ladles full into a clay bowl and set it aside, then cut several strips of thick linen for fresh bandages. While the honied herbs cooled she went to the narrow window opening and pushed open the shutters against the smell of sickness in the chamber.
This had once been the Hugh Fraser's chamber before his death. It was here that the mistress once slept during her first marriage, and here where the babe she had carried was born too soon and had not lived.
When Lady Brynna's husband was killed in an attack and she returned to Lechlede and was wed with James Fraser, she had refused to ever set foot in the chamber again.
Painful memories some said, bad spirit said others. It had remained closed until two days earlier when Ruari Fraser had returned, more dead than alive, and Maisel had sent some of her finely ground powders to sprinkle at the threshold and about the chamber with a fine, aromatic smell to ward off any remaining bad spirits.
"For the bugs," the old woman had told her, for it looked as if they might inhabit his tunic and brecs, covered with filth and other things she didn't even want to think about. But Alix also knew that it was also used by those who believed in the old ways as a protection against bad spirits.
" Aye, " the old woman had nodded with satisfaction. "That will keep him until he can bathe again." Maisel had winked at Her. "Or else the tower will be crawling with vermin and everyone will be scratching."
Alix turned back to the task at hand.
When he first arrived at Lechlede, Maisel had carefully cut away the bloodied bandages and applied the salve made from the honied herbs. He had not moved, had not so much as stirred when it was done, so that she would not have even believed he was alive, except for the faint rise and fall of his chest, and the telltale rattle of his breathing.
Misery of the lungs, Maisel called it, and not uncommon for those who are badly injured and forced to lie abed for an extended time. By the old woman's frown, she knew it was serious.
The only other wounds were superficial--cuts and scrapes that had begun to heal and with what was remained of his left arm told their own story of what he had been through.
Gabhran, who had known him since he was born, had seen to stripping away his tunic and brecs, leaving him clad only in woolen leggings beneath the linen coverings. She had wanted to weep at the sight of his wasted body.
He was taller than she remembered, with long limbs, but a shadow of the strong, brash young man she had first known. The wounds had done that, and whatever else and wherever he had been the past years. His was now a warrior's body and the scars of old wounds told their own story.
But it was the most serious wound that now worried her as she gathered the clean linens and the bowl of honied herbs.
Wounds were not new to her. With Maisel's advanced years, and three young children to care for and with a bairn on the way for the young mistress, more and more of the old woman's healing ways fell to her and she had readily learned the purpose of each plant, root, and molds, necessary for so many at Lechlede:
Hart's Tongue for burns and scalds, Crowberry for the misery of coughs, Braonan fruich for misery of the bowel and sore throats, a remedy for both ends, aye; Vetch, the root roasted and steeped in a drink to satisfy appetites when the men of clan Fraser were on long journeys, and raw honey gathered in the warm months, that had a way of healing the worst wounds.
She set the bowl at the table beside the bed, then leaned over him to remove the linen bandages where the wound seeped.
Since he had not so much as stirred the past two days, not even when the bandage was first changed when he arrived, she wasn't prepared for his sudden movement now.
It was as if a mad man came at her with a fierceness and a strength she wouldn't have thought him capable of . Wild-eyed, with a snarl, he came up off the bed, his right hand closing around her throat.