Chapter 8
Chapter
Eight
T hey'd been preparing for the summer feast for days. Other clansmen had arrived from distant places. Now, it was a time to celebrate the crops and herds of sheep that the clan kept.
The kitchen over-flowed with baked breads, fresh vegetables, and fruit from the orchards. The men hunted stag and wild boar, set to roasting just that morning over camp fires with the warmer weather upon them.
Casks of mead and wine had been brought from the village and added to those brought up from the store rooms below the kitchens. And their kinsmen arrived; from outlying villages and crofts, as far as Abh-More and to the edge of the Cairngorm mountains, south to the edge of Campbell land, north to MacKenzie lands.
It was a time to celebrate the summer with new calves and lambs, new bairns, young men and women newly wed, and the fragile peace of the past winter. Like his father before him, and his before him, James Fraser gave back to the people he protected. He set great value on the loyalty of every man and woman, from the herdsmen to weavers and candle makers.
And like Connor Fraser before him, he said kind words for those who were gone as well as new bairns with a gentle smile for the Lady Brynna who had borne him three children with another now on the way.
"We are grateful for those whose lives have touched ours though they are no longer with us, and for those who are with us now."
Alix listened from the edge of the enormous encampment that seemed to have sprung up out of the ground just outside the walls of Lechlede, and thought perhaps his words were also for Ruari, though when she looked among those gathered, there was no sight of him and she frowned.
The summer feast was a long tradition at Lechlede, a time for the chieftain to set aside the difference in rank or position, and join with his people in celebration of another fine season with food and drink. There were games and competitions among the men. Over the next three days they would hunt grouse and pheasant to also be set over open roasting fires.
There would be singing, dancing to celebrate the solstice much like their ancestors, stories told around campfires while babes and children dozed sleepily in their mother's arms--including the story of the headless rider. There would be endless pranks played on unsuspecting men, women, and children.
And during this time of celebration of the season and the loyalty of the clan, it was not uncommon for a young man and woman to handfast, the old way of pledging themselves to one another as husband and wife that was as true as any marriage words spoken over them by a priest.
Handfast was not found just among the younger men and women. It was not unusual for a woman who had lost her husband or a man his wife, to use the celebration to pledge themselves to the other with much celebration, drinking, and the new husband usually tossed into the loch before seeking out the bed of his new wife.
It was said that her own mother and father had hand-fasted when they pledged themselves to each other. Morna had smiled in the telling of it.
"I told yer mother she couldna marry young David. But of course, she didna listen. They went off by themselves, there wasna a priest to be had. And David, yer da, said their words were no different or better than his own when he told me of it afterward.
"And there was no undoing it once it was done and my own Lea already with a bairn growing inside her ." She had winked at Alix. "Yerself, of course, and the verra image of her with yer red-gold hair. But yer temper... I have no idea where it comes from, quiet man that yer father was but bold as the sun in telling me that he would have her and no other. Tis the way of young people. Headstrong he was."
And then they were both gone, and Morna became both mother and father to her, more often than not exasperated by the willful, headstrong child she was raising.
"Eben McGinley will be offering for you afore I know it," Morna had said not long ago.
"Tis plain the lad is taken with ye."
She had put out her hand then, wanting no more talk of it.
"Eben McGinley is a child."
"Ye could do worse, with no dowry to yer name except the healing skills ye have and be working for your keep as I have these past years, though the chieftain has always treated me well.
It was a frequent conversation.
"Eben will have the shop and stables at the village one day when his father passes on. It puts food on the table and a roof over yer head."
But Alix wanted nothing of it. She had left the kitchen then, Morna's words following her. She could do worse, except that she had no feelings for Eben McGinley other than frustration and limited patience. He meant well, she knew, but she could not envision the years ahead with him. But it was more than that.
The feelings that should be there between a man and woman, that she knew he wanted and felt for her, had never gone beyond friendship. Those other strong feelings belonged to another. They always had. It didn't matter that Ruari Fraser couldn't stand the sight of her now, and chose to spend his nights with the woman Kaia in the village.
"Wake up, girl," Morna admonished her now. "And take this jar of honied fruits to the chieftain's table."
She took the clay jar, that smelled of stewed plums, honey, and spices, a favorite of the Lady Brynna, and left the kitchen.
She heard loud shouts and hoots of encouragement as the men played at field games--hurling a stone, a stuffed pigs belly sent across the playing field with a lethal swipe of a club, and the distinctive sound of arrows hitting a target from the edge of the field followed by loud cheering.
She delivered the jar of spiced plums to the pleasure of Lady Brynna.
"I see your find hand in this," she said appreciatively as the games were ending and the minstrels who traveled each summer season throughout the countryside set up their instruments--a lyre and mandolin. Others gathered round, sitting on stumps, fallen logs, or on fleece skins spread at the ground.
Alix nodded. "Aye, some of the spices are from the peddler who passed this way in the spring, the others Morna had brought up from Edinburgh."
The children had gathered round, little Eleanor climbing up onto her mother's lap and half crawling out on the top of the table. Lady Brynna scooped a plum from the urn with a wood spoon and held it while Eleanor took small bites, her eyes as large as the plum at the sweetness of it. She was soon covered in honied sauce with sticky fingers.
"Come, little one,"Alix told her. "We must wash your hands or everyone will be sticky from it." She picked the child up.
If possible, Eleanor's eyes grew even wider as she peered over her shoulder. When she turned, she almost stepped headlong into Ruari Fraser. She took a step back. Her own eyes widened at the sight of the lower arm and hand Brian had made for him.
"Would you sit with me while the minstrels play?" he held out his injured arm, the metal hand glowing in the light from the campfires.
Little Eleanor's eyes widened ever further, no doubt images of a headless man from stories she'd heard, popping into her head at the sight of the metal hand wrapped in leather that he extended to Alix.
He was testing her. She could see it in that narrowed blue gaze, a challenge thrown back at her when she had challenged him, called him an idiot-- blithering idiot as she recalled now with more than a little embarrassment now in front of the chieftain's lady.
Brynna glanced from one to the other, saw the storm brewing, and reached for her daughter.
"Come, Eleanor. Morna has brought sweet cakes to the far table."
"Why is Ruari wearing a glove?" Eleanor replied with childish innocence. "Tis not cold out."
Brynna was inclined to disagree with the child. The air had cooled to an outright chill the last few moments.
"Come along." Brynna took the child's hand and they left the table as others gathered around to listen to the minstrels.
With another glance at him, Alix was tempted to go with them, and sweet cakes had nothing to do with it.
Several men and their women looked their way as Ruari continued to hold out his fake hand, his eyes gleaming, his expression challenging her. The men shrugged and continued their conversations as the women bent their heads to gossip amongst themselves.
So, he'd decided to wear the thing in spite of himself. Perhaps he was only half an idiot.
Well, if he thought she was repulsed by the thing, afraid as the other women seemed, or terrified that he might be akin to the headless horsemen as the children no doubt thought, scaring themselves, he did not know her at all. She laid her hand over the one he extended to her, the metal cool beneath her fingers. That narrowed gaze continued to watch her.
"Near the other side of the fire where we can hear them."
She nodded, her fingers closing over the lower part of what was now his left arm, the fingers curved just so in a perfect imitation of his other hand.
"You don't run and hide like the children," he commented as he walked with her to the far side of the fire where a log provided seating as the minstrels began to play.
"No, I don't."
He leaned in close, the way he had countless times when she was but a girl and he had teased her unmercifully about something.
"You're not afraid on my ugliness?"
She stopped and turned to him.
"I have never been afraid of you, and I've seen worse."
Something changed in the expression at his eyes, some small barrier that slowly lowered. He smiled then, one corner of his mouth curving up in that half smile that reminded her of the young man she once knew, before he left for France, before all the years between then and now.
"See Gabhran, there," she pointed out where the old warrior sat across the fire, changing the conversation.
He had grabbed one of the women from the village who had lost her husband this winter past. Though she was at least a dozen summers older than the old warrior, he planted a kiss on her cheek and gave her a hearty squeeze. She laughed and pushed him away, but only a few inches away, grinning like a girl again at the attention.
"Kilda is not so old in spirit," she commented. "He could find himself surprised by that one."
Surprised--as Ruari was surprised by the slender young woman who sat beside him.
She was taller now and had changed in all the ways a woman changes from a young girl. But her hair was still that deep red-gold color, and her eyes were the eyes he remembered, the way she had of angling a look at him without turning her head, the way they darkened just so, until the blue was like the blue of the loch.
He had seen them a hundred times in those moments between waking and sleep, as the last thing he seen of this land, this place--home. Even when it seemed he might never return. But he had seen her as she was that last time, in the cold grey dawn, standing just outside the gates, an image he had held all the years past.
In service to his cousin the Comte de Villiers, in one of the far campaigns he had encountered an old man at a village who was some sort of holy man and whom it was said had visions of the future. He was dark-skinned as many in that far place were, and wore a head wrap, along with long robes. It was whispered that he was over one hundred years of age, and blindness had taken his sight. But he had what the woman he'd been with called the second sight.
The old man was often seen just at the edge of their encampment most often at end of day, staring out across the field of knights and warriors as they rested their horses and prepared for the next campaign. The young guide who was paid in silver and accompanied them had explained the old man saw visions and had foreseen their coming to this last settlement before reaching the sea.
As he had groomed his horse in the last light of day, he felt a presence in that way of knowing when someone was watching. When he turned, he found the old man standing just at the edge of his fire, the young guide with him.
He invited them to share the fire with him and one of his fellow warriors, a man by the name of Gasconne, as cold set in with the last light of day. The old man slowly approached, accompanied by the guide. He had extended his hands over the open fire to warm them.
When he had finished grooming his horse, he joined him, offering some of his food, a bird that he'd brought down earlier with his bow. The old man had refused, shaking his head, but encouraged him to eat with a smile and a nod.
In that strange way of sharing small moments in strange places, he discovered again that there was a common bond between men of different places and different blood, of food, an odd looking pipe the man smoked, and the blessing he gave the food.
"He thanks you for your generosity," the guide translated. " But you will have need of the food on your long journey home."
Home.
What had the old man seen that day two years before? That he would return home? But to what?
He hoped it was true, for he had grown weary of foreign shores, the wide plains of Spain and farther, to vast desert expanses, and ancient cities where they were considered intruders and danger lurked behind every stone. In those lonely places he longed for the sweet damp earth and gray spires of snow-capped mountains. Home.
There were other things the old man had spoken of, the young guide translating as the fire grew low and the cold desert night crept at their backs. A warning of great pain and loss, that he realized later might have been that last campaign at Calais, the old man's words coming back to him in dark dreams at the abbey when he had hoped for death.
And then another prophecy that had brought his head up as the old man continued to mumble in that foreign tongue, the lad nodding.
"Like the heart of a flame... it awaits. It is there ," the young man had gestured across the dying embers of the fire into the darkness beyond, as the old man nodded once again.
"The flame awaits at the end of your journey ," the young man had continued, the old man nodding beside him as though he saw with sightless eyes.
A final battle? The end of his journey? Death?
" What words do you have for me ?" Gasconne had asked as the old man slowly rose to leave.
" What about my future ?" he added with a smirk.
As if he needed no translation the old man had replied, the guide leaning in so that only Ruari heard as he translated once more. The guide's expression was grim.
" That one will die a slow death ." The guide nodded in the direction of the waiting sea they would soon reach and cross.
" Across the water. He will not return to the land where he was born."
He nodded at the prophetic warning as the old man reached out and took his hand between his two hands, his pale sightless eyes staring down at his hand.
"He says, that the blue flame is your strength. The flame will burn away the past ."
"Eh?" Gasconne had asked, rising to stir the fire. "What does the old man say? Is there a woman waiting for me?"
A woman. The specter of death?
Ruari didn't share what the old man had said. There was no need to burden a man with such things, even one as filthy and despicable as his companion.
"A woman, oui ," Ruari told him, because it was what he wanted to hear.
Gasconne had grinned. " Give the man a piece of silver. And ask him how soon. And not one of those old crones in their veils and robes. I want a young one." He had made a gesture then, with only one meaning.
The expression at the old man's face told that he more than understood as Ruari placed a piece of silver in the palm of his hand.
Did he believe the old man's prophecy? He did not disbelieve it.
In the far places he'd been in service to his cousin, he'd learned there were far more things in this world than anyone understood. And if a coin meant that the old man might find a comfortable bed and a warm meal in the days that followed, then so be it.
They had parted then, the old man eventually forgotten until that moment. But not his words--words that had prophetic meaning in the years that followed and his long journey home. And the first thing he had seen when he finally reached Lechlede was the heart of the flame.
In the days that had followed she refused to let him die with stubbornness, force of will, and fierce courage.
God in heaven, he'd missed that, missed her, and the young woman she had become... still the same Alix, but with a softness about her once one got past the sassiness, a softness of the past years since he left, and with a wisdom she'd not had before. It was that softness that reached out to him now in the brush of her hand at his arm.
As it had others? Like young McGinley?
Something tightened low inside, like a blow at the thought of another sharing moments like this with her, another who would come to know the woman she had become, another who was whole and not a cripple, who could offer her a cottage and a warm fire, another who would lay with her...
She deserved that, he knew, and hated the nameless man whoever he might eventually be, and realized with that sudden painful tightening of the gut that he would have cut him down if he suddenly appeared before them to claim her.
"What is it?" Alix asked, at the dark expression at his face. "Is it yer arm? Did ye injure yourself at the games?"
Injure himself? As if what he felt was a wound that she could heal with her salves and potions.
He shook his head, forcing himself past unwanted thoughts, but that hollow ache remained, like a wound that festered deep inside.