Chapter 3
Chapter
Three
S he was no match for him, crazed with fever. She gasped and choked, trying to pry his fingers loose but it was impossible as she was thrown to the stone floor.
The basin overturned and crashed to the floor. She tried to call out but no words came out. Unable to breathe, the room swam about her and darkened. She thought she heard someone cry out, even as his hand tightened. Tears spilled her cheeks as he bent over her, his face a ghostly image of someone she no longer knew.
Ruari! His name screamed through her thoughts. Let me help you.
"Mother of God!" Brynna Fraser cried out at the chaos in the room and the young woman who knelt at the stone floor desperately trying to free herself from that death grip.
The bowl of broth she carried shattered at her feet as she called to her husband, then ran to the young woman. She grabbed Ruari's arm, screaming at him as she pried at his fingers, trying to get through the fever and wildness at his eyes.
James, Chieftain of Clan Fraser, ran up the steps to the second floor chambers. There he found his wife and Alix in a death struggle with his brother. He gently set Brynna aside, then pried Ruari's grip from about Alix's throat. He seized Ruari by the shoulders, pushing him back down onto the bed, and pinned him as he thrashed and screamed.
Alix coughed, trying to drag air into her lungs as she rubbed her bruised throat.
Brynna wrapped an arm around her shoulders, helping her into the nearest chair.
"Are ye all right?" she asked with a worried frown.
Alix slowly nodded, her voice barely more than a whisper as she stared at the chieftain of Clan Fraser fighting to hold Ruari down.
The two men were of an even height, but the fever and the wound and whatever else he had been through had wasted Ruari Fraser to a mere shadow. Even then, she had been unable to free herself from his grip. Not so, James Fraser, who had once been war chief of the clan.
His hold on Ruari was fierce but gentle, pinning him as the wildness slowly passed and he stared blankly up at him, but without any glimmer of recognition. Then Ruari's eyes closed and he sank back into that dark place where he'd been the past several days.
James slowly released his hold on him, then stepped back from the bed. He went to his wife.
"Are ye hurt?"
His hand was tender at her cheek, in a way that spoke of the unusual bond between them--an arranged marriage after the horror of her first marriage to Hugh Fraser and the child she had lost, that had brought them together. But in the years since, the people of Lechlede had glimpsed the fierce love that grew between them. A love that came from shared loss, trust that grew out of the seeds of betrayal, strength and pride to stand together against their enemies.
Brynna shook her head. "No harm," she assured him, her hand smoothing her rumpled tunic over the child that would come by Michaelmas. She glanced over at Alix who struggled between tears, long deep breaths, and the fear that closed around her heart.
"I fear she has the worst of it." She went to the young woman, brushing her hair aside as she gently examined her neck.
"There will be bruises, aye," she said in that matter-of-fact way of a woman who had borne two sons and a daughter with a constant assortment of bruises among them.
"We must send for one of the men to see to him," she told James. "I fear this will happen again until the fevers are gone."
"No!" Alix replied, her voice hoarse. "I will do it!"
James exchanged a look with his wife.
"I will have more broth sent from the kitchen. If he is to live, he must eat," Brynna finally replied, knowing from experience that any argument with the girl was pointless. Even if they had one of the men tend to Ruari's wounds, Alix would not be satisfied unless she was there to see the matter done. Stubborn she was, like another who lay at the bed.
When she had gone, Alix set about cleaning the spilled broth and shattered bowls. Her hand shook as she set the kettle back over the fire at the hearth, her thoughts already turning to the herbs she would need if she was to clean the wound and change his bandages.
"Sit a while," James commanded. When she looked up at him with tear-filled eyes, he gently took her in his arms.
He had known her since she was a spindle-legged girl chasing after her grandmother. Morna and her family had been at Lechlede since his grandfather's time, with a kinship through marriage to the old laird. Alix's father had died in a raid against the clan years before, her mother shortly after to the fever that spread like fire through the village at the bottom of the hill.
Morna had brought the girl to Lechlede to live with her, to keep her safe from the fevers while old Maisel did what she could to heal the sick and comfort the dying. Together they mourned the loss of both parents, finding a home with clan Fraser.
Morna ruled the kitchens at Lechlede with an iron hand, while the child she was raising ran wild and free about the hall, the orchards, and stables, playing her hiding games in the hallways and among the barrels in the chambers under the main hall, learning healing ways at Maisel's feet even as a child.
She had spirit, and a wildness that had often made her grandmother frantic, boldly approaching James Fraser when he was first made chieftain, a fate he had not chosen. It was chosen for him with the death of his brother, Hugh, their father's legitimate heir.
His own bastard birth set his early course as war chief of the clan. But an attack on the clan and Hugh's death, changed that path. With the support of Clan Fraser he was made chieftain and accepted the enormous responsibilities that went with it in these changing and dangerous times. Along with that, Alix, barely nine years old at the time, became his ward.
The day she had boldly approached him the first time at hall was a vivid memory, her red-gold hair streaming down around her slender shoulders, her eyes like the dark blue waters of the loch, darker still with the question she had boldly asked in that way of children who have no guile, absolutely fearless where men of the clan would have hesitated.
From that day, he had watched over and protected her as if she was one of his own blood, although he often thought it was others who needed protection from her quicksilver temper and that sharp wit. She was not one to be trifled with or falsely played.
She was more like his sons--bold, fearless, and when she was not at Maisel's cottage mixing some foul smelling potion, she was most likely taking his sons for one of their adventures, her hair flying, dressed in a pair of brecs that had been cut down and boots, astride one of the horses from the stables, whooping and yelling a war cry like one of his warriors.
"You must do something about her," he had told Brynna more than once.
"What would you have me to do with her?"
"She must learn more womanly ways," he argued, and immediately knew the mistake he'd made in the delicate brow that arched in response.
"No man will ever offer for her with her wild ways."
With her usual calm and insightfulness, Brynna was hardly concerned.
"Open your eyes, husband. There is a woman beneath the linen shirt and brecs," she calmly informed him.
"And well your men know it."
"What men?"
"Camden and Fitzroy, and Eben McGinley," she added.
"What has happened?" he demanded, fatherly temper rising.
"Nothing has happened," she had smiled faintly. "But there has been talk that Fitzroy has spoken of offering for her."
"Fitzroy has no family, no home but Lechlede, with only his sword and service to the clan. He cannot offer for her," he argued. His eyes narrowed.
"What of Camden?" he demanded. "What has he done?"
He would have sorely disliked banning the man from the clan if he had done anything, but it would be done in less than a heartbeat.
"He likes looking at her," she said as she braided their daughter's long hair as she tried to squirm away. At four years of age she was the planner and schemer, content to lie in wait until one of her brothers, aged seven and nine, were unsuspecting and then pounce on them or steal away a prized possession after they had mercilessly teased her. She was much like himself and he could only wonder at the woman she would grow to be.
"Looking at her?" he had asked then with growing suspicion.
"Tis harmless enough," Brynna had assured him. "He would lose several fingers or a hand if he ventured too far. She is quite handy with a blade. Gabhran has taken it upon himself to teach her to protect herself."
He had been only slightly comforted with that bit of news.
"What of Eben McGinley?"
Brynna had smiled to herself. "He is harmless, though persistent. His father has spoken on his behalf."
"The boy wishes to wed Alix?" He had been outraged. "The smithy's son? Have you spoken with her? Has something happened that I should know of? What has she said on the matter?"
Brynna sighed then. "Her heart lies elsewhere. It always has."
Elsewhere. It had always been so. Even a blind fool would have known it in the way the girl's expression softened as a child when looking at his younger brother, the way she defended him even with the accusation of murder. The same man who now lay in that bed, and had lashed out at her in a fevered nightmare, and might yet die.
"You should know that he may not live... " he began now, gently trying to comfort Alix as she cleaned up pieces of broken pottery, but also knowing that this fierce, young woman who was like a daughter to him, was capable of hearing it.
"He will not die!" she finished the thought, scrubbing away the tears, the bruises already vivid at her neck, her watery blue gaze fastened on Ruari as she pulled away.
"I will not allow it! Do ye ken?"
She would not--not the laughing, reckless, wild young man she had once known and lost her heart too all those years ago.
But what of the man he was now, wasted by fever and the poison of the wound?
In truth, she did not know him, did not know the fierce, crazed skeleton of a man who had come at her as if she was the enemy, the expression at his eyes wild, dark with rage and some other emotion.
"What has happened to him?" she whispered.
James laid a hand at her shoulder as she pressed a cool cloth at Ruari's forehead.
He could only guess from his own experience, his years as war chief to the clan, of the men who had died beside him defending the clan, others who were just as lost, never the same afterward as if all but dead from the horrors of war.
There were things, he knew, that lived with a man long after the smoke of battle had cleared, things that he lived with, battles he fought again in the stillness of the night.
"I think he has seen much," he said gently. "For those who take up the sword there is always a price to be paid beyond the physical wounds. It stays with a man, in his soul. If he's strong enough and fortunate, it stays there. But there are times..."
Alix looked at the man who was like a father to her, caught by the change in his voice, the way he spoke low and quiet of something she sensed was felt as well as remembered.
"It comes like a beast in the night," he tried to explain. "When you least expect it, when you sleep, in those moments between dark and first light, or at a word or something that brings the memory back. And it's as if you are there again. Ye can hear the sounds of it--the screams of men dying, the smell of it, smoke, blood 'til you feel as if yer drowning in it, fighting it. Because if you don't, you lose yerself to it."
Alix stared at him, the horror of what he was describing like a wound that was always there.
"I didna mean... "
James smiled at her, then looked down at the wasted body of his younger brother, bound by what both had seen and done.
"No harm, lass. Tis but a hard truth that all men must live with who make the hard choices."
He was on fire, the flames from the bonfires surrounding him, burning him. Then through the clouds of fire and smoke he saw the warrior dressed all in black coming at him. His horse was black. His armor was black, along with the dark mantle that swirled around his shoulders, and the sword he raised as he rode him down was black, except for the blood of those who fell under that deadly blade.
He fought the fire, fought the flames and the black devil who rode them, screaming as pain and fire tore through him, facing down the darkness.
" Droch-spiorid !" he cursed, as the black stallion bore down on him, sliding just past at the last moment, the warrior who rode him glaring down at him, an evil expression at the warrior's face below the gleaming black helm, then swung the stallion around at the warning shouts and rode off, disappearing in a cloud of smoke.
He stood once more in the swirling surf, the beach at Normandy littered with the bodies of the dead and dying, the ocean froth red with blood. Then the wind was cool at his face, the smoke carried away over the waves that broke around him and carried him home.
The fever was gone. What was left was barely alive.