Revenge (Clan Fraser #2)

Chapter 12

Chapter

Twelve

T hey came from across Scotland, word carried by Robert De Brus' men, clans that had aligned with the old chieftain in years past, and now pledged their loyalty to Clan Fraser with the threat that loomed at Stirling..

The yard and the hillside surrounding the keep filled with them, some astride, many afoot. It was no longer a time for talking, but as Gabhran told her, a time for doing.

She looked for Ruari among the men as they gathered, taking his place as war chief of the clan, his dark hair lost in a sea of kinsmen. Then the sun caught the flash of metal and he was gone again.

What if he did not return... ?

The question rose more than once and she forced herself past it, turning her thoughts to the task before her with their clansmen to ride out soon while Morna and the women of the kitchen of Lechlede prepared food they would need for the long ride to Stirling.

"What they don' carry, they will hunt," her grandmother said, her mouth turned in a frown at things she knew far too well and had seen many times before.

"But this will keep the chieftain and our men for a while."

Oat cakes filled cloth sacks and leather pouches. Dozens of eggs were brought from the hen house, cooked, and wrapped in pouches along with cheeses and bread.

"They will return soon enough," she added with a firm nod, "and we must prepare for it while they are gone," she told the women, scolding them when they sat fanning themselves from the heat of the cook fires, refusing to accept that they might not all return.

"There, Fenella," she scolded one. "Wrap those cheeses in linen cloth to keep them fresh. And Sorcha, bring that basket of apples from the storeroom. Last year's crop, but they will have to do."

Hers was the only conversation in the kitchens, as a heavy silence fell over them all as the midday sun slipped below the outer wall and cook fires were set for the evening meal.

The stout oaken door had been left open as baskets of root vegetables were carried in from the gardens, a cooling breeze easing the heat from the kitchen cook fires. A lanky shadow appeared in the doorway.

Young Michael FitzMore stood just inside the doorway. At fourteen years he was at that awkward age--no longer a child, but not yet a man. It was in the lanky height that seemed to never fill up with food, the first sprouts of chin hairs, and the frown at his face confronted with a dozen women who stopped and stared at him as if he'd sprouted feathers.

"What do ye want, boy?" Morna demanded when he looked as if he was about to turn and escape for his life.

When the decision was made for the chieftain and the men of the clan to ride for Stirling, Michael asked to go with them but his father refused to allow it. He argued that as the only son, Michael was needed by the family. In a bold move, Michael then approached the chieftain.

With a wisdom he had shown more than once, James Fraser pointed out that Michael's father had fought alongside Connor Fraser and himself when he was but twelve summers of age. Then he had asked the lad, the reason he wanted to ride with them.

"I wilna wait here in safety and comfort while other men go," he had replied without hesitation his chin lifted with pride.

"I would fight with ye and my father, and the men of the clan, if it comes to that. I'm strong and a good runner."

"Aye," James Fraser said with the sadness of pride of a father who might one day have to make the difficult decision to let his own sons face danger.

He had given his consent for Michael to ride with them, his word final over that of Michael's father. But he made certain he was given a responsibility that might keep him from serious harm.

"I would speak with yer granddaughter," Michael told Morna now with the same self assuredness that he had approached the chieftain.

"Well, there she is," Morna nodded in her direction. "Come along before ye trip over yerself."

Alix caught his attention and motioned him to the corner of the kitchen where she had been working the past two days preparing the salves and powders to send with the chieftain and his men. At their chieftain's suggestion, Michael had agreed to carry them if there should be a need and he needed to know the correct use for each one.

She had prepared several linen pouches with powders to be used for wounds to draw out poison. Salves for healing burns and scrapes that she'd prepared the day before had been rolled in leather to keep them from drying out. Several of each lay at the table where she worked. She explained the use of each to him.

"What of sword wounds?" he asked with that same seriousness that he'd faced James Fraser.

She had seen such wounds and the sad truth was there was little to be done except bind the wound to stop the bleeding, and hope a healer with sufficient skill might be found in time to offer more care.

"The salve will do no good. Tis best to use the crushed leaves for a poultice against festering, then bind the wound to stanch the bleeding. Tis the loss of blood that is the worst of it." She tied off the bundle and added it to the leather pouch.

"What if the wound is worse? Like the chieftain's brother?"

She set aside the last rolled bundle that she had prepared. She heard the doubt in his voice, had overheard it when one of their kinsmen had quietly questioned Gabhran about the wisdom of sending Ruari into what was very likely to be a battle to protect the Scottish king.

" Keep to yer own matters," Gabhran had gruffly replied. "The chieftain has spoken and I'll no' challenge him on it. Ye might be careful with yer words, aye? Ruari Fraser has proven himself more than once, and against the English, which you have not. Were I a score years younger, I would have him fight beside me any day."

That had ended the discussion. Now, Michael with the same question. Did Ruari also have those doubts?

He slept little, she knew, often prowling the keep long after everyone had retired for the evening, taking himself off to the stables where he spent long hours with that black beast of a horse he'd ridden from France, or riding out alone to the disapproval of the chieftain. More than once she had come upon their heated conversation over it.

"Ye canna ride out alone," James Fraser had shouted at him when Ruari simply turned a deaf ear.

"The clan has enemies... ! Take two of the men, or get yerself off to the village if need be, but donna play this dangerous game!"

"What is the worst that could happen? " Ruari had shouted back. "That I might be killed? That already happened at Calais! I'd say the devil take you, James. But he doesna want you!"

It was the first she had heard him speak of his time there and the attack by the English that had left him near dead, the first she realized the demon he carried inside from that day that haunted his dreams and drove him to prove himself.

"There are some wounds ye canna help a man for," she answered softly, thinking of the days ahead and the looming confrontation at Stirling. For Ruari Fraser to prove himself? Or die?

It was a confrontation that was long in the making as the reach of the English king swept across the borderlands and outposts were built--outposts to house the English armies as they began a stranglehold on the land and the people.

"The clansmen know what can be done for such wounds," she told Michael now, remembering the smell of burnt flesh and the stench of it when she was just a child.

The lad nodded. They both knew that a hot blade might stop more serious bleeding, but there was nothing to be done for a severed limb if one of their kinsman or someone from one of the other clans was far from any care.

"Thank ye," he told her with a shy smile. "The men will be grateful for yer care."

Her care, she thought. Little good it would do, so far away.

She had seen the wounds their clansmen had returned with four winters past, including the chieftain. He still carried the mark of it in the stiffness at his leg and the pain that was almost constant but worse in winter though he never complained of it. She knew of it only when Lady Brynna had asked for some of her soothing salve made from crushed myrtle that gave him respite for a time.

She had prepared a soothing salve for the chieftain that could be carried with him in the days that lay ahead and used against the painful stiffness that still bothered him. It was in a leather pouch that she'd given Lady Brynna.

"For the chieftain," she told her earlier that afternoon.

Lady Brynna had nodded and thanked her. But there was a sadness she couldn't disguise.

"Stay for a while," she told Alix. "The children are off at their lessons. And so they should be, there is no need for them to be burdened with my fears. I should be helping prepare what the men will need... " she said, struggling to keep that emotion out of her voice. Then a too-quick smile.

"But I'm afraid if I take too many steps this one shall decide to make its entrance into the world." She had placed a hand gently over her rounded belly.

" Girl or boy?" she had then asked, surprising Alix. " Tis said that a girl is carried high, while a boy is carried straight out," Brynna went on to say.

"This one is both high and straight out, and I feel as if I have swallowed a selkie."

"Perhaps there are two?" Alix had suggested, and they both burst out laughing.

"Heaven forbid two wee bairns!" her mistress had replied, then took her hand. "I am grateful to have yer care. Boy or girl, I know ye will see the bairn or selkie, safely arrived when the time comes."

And her time was near. It was one of the worries the chieftain carried with him. He had spoken of it in a private moment earlier that day when she had spoken of the curatives and salves she was sending with Michael.

"There is a matter I would speak with you about ... " He had hesitated then.

"I value yer healing ways, as does my lady... " Still he hesitated."I do not know when we may return. It may be several weeks."

He had taken her hand and looked at her then with a gentleness that she had seen when he looked at the Lady Brynna.

"My lady is verra strong. She has had to be, for me, for the children, and for herself." He had looked away then, as if the words were not words he was comfortable telling another.

"She is important to me, ye ken?"

She had seen it often enough, in a gesture, a look between them. A rare, fine thing when there had been so much pain and anger between them in the beginning that she had glimpsed as a child.

He had looked at her then, holding her hand between his two larger ones. "I see her strength in you. But this leaving will be hard with the bairn so near, and I will be far away. If something should go wrong... "

"It will not!" she had replied fiercely, for she could not imagine that he would not return, nor could she imagine what that would be for the lady of Clan Fraser.

He had smiled then. "I would ask that ye care well for her and the bairn. See the child safely born and my lady safe as well, ye ken?"

She understood far more than he realized. More than once she had comforted a dying man when there was nothing more that could be done, and the chieftain had sat with them, providing his own comfort to a fellow warrior in those last moments, speaking of things they had shared, assuring him that he would be remembered by his kinsmen, those of his blood, and all who came after.

And she had helped bring several new lives into the clan, including the chieftain's two youngest children. But from the lowest born to the chieftain's own, those first moments when a wee bairn first drew breath was an experience she could never explain--the wonder of it, the helplessness of it, and at the same time the fierce strength that a newborn babe brought with it as if announcing to the world--"Here I am"!

She could not imagine the loss of a bairn.

"Your lady will be well cared for," she assured him. "Even if the bairn resembles a selkie."

"A selkie?"

Even now, she smiled as she remembered his surprise and then laughter.

"Aye, she has mentioned she thinks it could be. " Then the smile had faded and he had thanked her.

"I know they will be safe with ye."

The hall was crowded for the evening meal as Alix descended the stone steps from the tower, Lady Brynna leaning heavily on her arm. At once all conversations ceased as the chieftain of Clan Fraser suddenly rose from his chair. Dozens of gazes turned toward them as he made his way around the end of the long table and across the hall.

"You shouldna have risked the steps," he told Lady Brynna.

"You should not have assumed that I would not, these last nights before you leave," she smiled as she took her husband's arm.

They gathered as they had over many meals in the hall. Lady Brynna sat on one side of the chieftain. Ruari sat at the other as befit the brother of the chieftain and war chief of Clan Fraser.

The chieftains of other clans--Munro, Grant, MacKenzie, and others who had pledged their loyalty to the Scottish crown, filled the long tables. But the usual banter, the telling of stories, and bursts of good-hearted laughter or challenges between old rivals, were replaced by muted conversations and thoughts of the days to come.

There would be a time for celebration when the English were pushed back out of Scotland, she overheard one clan leader say, as another added his agreement while the chieftain of Clan Fraser sat quietly with his lady, their conversation in slow glances and her brave smiles, his hand brushing hers as they shared this last meal together. Beside them, Ruari sat in stony silence, his food and drink untouched.

All about him, Ruari saw his kinsmen, young and old. Several had fought alongside his father against the invaders from the north decades past. Others had fought beside his brother against clan enemies. No less an enemy, the King of England, whose army now approached Stirling, with but one purpose--to seize the Scottish throne, and crush the clans.

He downed his wine as he stared about the hall. He had fought the English on the beach at Normandy. He knew their temper, their strengths, and their weaknesses. But this conflict was different. This was no brief incursion into Scotland. By everything De Brus had told them, it was a well-planned, heavily armed campaign. And the English king had sent William Marshal to lead his army.

He knew something of the father, but little of the son. The father had served five English kings as counselor and trusted advisor, including Richard I and his brother, King John. He had guided the policies and campaigns of England over several decades with a wisdom and at times a cunning that was respected and envied across the whole of Europe.

But the father, who had served five kings and gained much wealth in England, Ireland, and Normandy was dead, and his son, also called William, was young, without the experience of years, but with a fierceness to prove himself that was seen at Calais in that bitterly failed campaign that had been led by Blackwood. Now, young Marshal led the English army against Stirling with but one intended outcome--to seize the throne of Scotland.

Like the sun emerging through a sea of dark forbidding clouds over the highlands, he glimpsed a ray of yellow as Alix moved through the long tables on her way to the kitchens, no doubt on some errand for her grandmother, her slender figure stark contrast to the brown and gray tunics and vests worn by the Scots. She nimbly evaded an outstretched hand, slapping it away as one of the men would have grabbed her.

Twin emotions moved through him at her beautiful but fierce expression, a warning in itself--amusement at her spirit, half expecting her to draw the dirk he knew she carried, and another emotion he'd discovered these past weeks.

More than once he caught himself looking for her among the women at the kitchen or about the keep, then cursing himself for it. His first thought--she was just a child. But the truth was, she was no longer a child.

Just as the past ten years had changed him, they had also changed her. The sassy, bold child he had known all those years before who liked nothing better than to best him at chess or mock his skills with a sword, was a child no more. She was still bold and sassy. Aye, and brave , he thought.

Where others he had encountered on his journey had shied away from the bloodied, miserable self that had ridden from the Port of Leith, she had not shied away at the sight of his severed arm, or been repelled by the stench of the wound barely healed, nor his darkest moments not caring if he lived or died.

Instead, she had stubbornly refused to let him die. She had silently bound the wound, challenged him at every turn, then given him the means to reclaim some small part of his life. His glanced down at the metal fingers of what was now his left hand, capable of holding a wine goblet as easily as the handle of a sword. Metal fingers, a metal hand, and lower arm--both salvation and a curse?

Who was he now? he thought, with that darkness that haunted his nights surfacing like a creature that mocked him.

James needed him, relied on him, and he was determined to ride with him to Stirling. He prayed he wouldn't let him down. And if he fell in the conflict? So be it.

"There is more... " Robert De Brus hesitated, leaning forward so that only they heard what he had to say.

"The young king is surrounded by those who have divided loyalties."

James and Ruari exchanged a look. This was nothing new and had long been a fear when the old king had died leaving his son--barely a child in the care of advisors and guardians, some with their own purposes and ambitions.

"Go on," James said.

"His father's death has left its mark. He was hardly more than a boy, young Alexander's age. And while there are those who pledged to guide him true and well, tis said there are those who have convinced him that his father's death was by God's will, and that God has made him king. Therefore, he owes his allegiance and his throne to God."

Ruari felt a prickling sensation at the back of his neck, every muscle taut with instinctive warning like that before a battle.

"He is easily swayed by those around him," Robert went on.

"By those, you mean those who would use him for their own purposes," James concluded, remembering years earlier and those faces that had surrounded the boy-king, pledging their loyalty for as long as it took for them to ride out the gates of the royal fortress at Edinburgh. And those--not all-- but enough of them who played their game with the English as well.

Their own father, Connor Fraser, had spoken of it--the willingness of many to bend the knee to the Scottish king years before, at the same time they enjoyed a certain ' favor' with the English King. But William had known it and governed wisely, keep those loyal only to Scotland around him, even at great cost. Apparently not so the son and now King of Scotland.

"There is one who carries great influence with the king," Robert glanced first at James, then Ruari.

"Bishop Lejeune."

Ruari's gut tightened. His right hand clenched in a fist at the name.

Bishop? Was it possible?

James nodded. "The man was made Bishop of Dunkeld some years after you left," he said in a quiet voice.

"You said nothing," Ruari replied.

"The first reports we had were that you had fallen at Calais. Afterward, when you returned near death, I saw no need to speak of it."

He frowned, remembering the day word came of the battle at Calais, the pain he had felt at the loss of this younger brother. But it was Morna's granddaughter who had refused to believe it.

"No!" Alix had stubbornly replied when she learned of it. "It is not true! I'll not believe it! No!"

But her surprise had been as great as their own when Ruari rode in that day, more dead than alive so that it seemed the message they had received might come to pass after all in the weak half dead man who returned. Again, she had refused to believe that he would die and with her medicinal cures and remedies, handed down from old Maisel and care day after day, had brought him back from that dark place.

Against his will? James thought, not for the first time. For he had seen it in Ruari's eyes more than once--that cold void of death that he himself had felt more than once in service to their father, then to protect Brynna and their children, and his kinsman. Now this new threat against the young king that would take them both far from Lechlede, and whispered of old Maisel's prophecy of along ago when he was no more than a child himself.

'A thousand years of blood and death for the clan...'

"Bishop Lejeune," Ruari commented, his voice cold as death. "It matters not the brutality, the innocent lives that were destroyed... "

But he remembered it, in the deep shadows of the night when the sounds of battle slipped through the wall he had built around the memories; the clash of swords, the smell of fire and blood, and the screams of the dying that became the screams of a young boy, brutalized, beaten, his body dropped down a hole while the one responsible wrapped himself in his pious robes... Until the day it became his death shroud.

There were things he'd done that would haunt him until he took his last breath. The death of the monk at Dunkeld all those years before, would not.

"Perhaps you should remain at Lechlede," James suggested with a look across the table.

"It is not that I do not have faith in ye," he went on to say.

Ruari slammed his fist down at the table. Everything that needed to be said had been said, with hours fast slipping away. "I will not be set aside in this."

The hall was quiet, the evening meal and conversations afterward long over. A few clansmen remained but most had sought their own clans among those encamped beyond the walls.

Lady Brynna had long since bid those present good eventide and retired for the night. The chieftain had escorted her up the stone steps to the tower chamber, then returned to the long table, there in deep conversation with Ruari and Robert De Brus.

There were those who said that De Brus had the mark of a leader about him. Well educated, he had fought in France with Ruari, and had brought word of the English plan to take Stirling and the Scottish king. It was said that his ancestors had come over with William of Normandy along with Fraser kinsmen two hundred years before. His mother was French, but his father had been steadfastly loyal to Scotland as had his father before him. It was also said that a fierce argument between father and son sent Robert De Brus off to France where he offered his sword to the Comte de Villiers as Ruari had--a bond between them forged in blood through several campaigns in the Middle Empires, and then that fateful battle at Calais. It was a bond of friendship that ran deep.

The women in the kitchens had long finished their work. Food had been prepared to be sent with those who rode with the chieftain to Stirling, kettles set for the morning meal.

Alix had prepared the medicinals, salves, and powders that Michael was to carry on the long ride to Stirling, along with instructions for the use of each. He had confidently nodded with each instruction she had given.

"What about discomfort of the bowel?" he had asked, a common complaint among such a large group of warriors.

She had scooped powder crushed from leaves into her hand and held it out for him to smell. He had winced and pulled back in surprise.

"It smells worse than a dead goat!"

"A mon wilna object if it relieves the griping of the gut," she informed him. "Water will do, but wine would be better to mix it. It eases the taste."

"Och, I dinna think anything can ease the smell or taste of it."

" If yer afflicted," she said with the confidence of past experience, "ye'll drink it."

He had nodded. "I just hope one of our kinsmen doesna take a blade to me over it." She had sent him off with a small prayer that he remember the use for each remedy.

Now she gazed about the empty hall.

Ruari had left earlier, and not returned, the expression at his face a stone mask.

" Aye," Gabhran said afterward. "Took himself off to the stables, one of the men said-- hard words between brothers."

She stepped over more than one sleeping Fraser warrior among the snoring, farting bodies as she left great hall.

The night air was welcome as she stepped out onto the stone steps, then made her way across the practice yard to the stables.

She knew Ruari's horse, the heavily muscled black stallion he had ridden to Lechlede so many weeks before. A glossy head thrust over the wood rail, the stallion making a wuffling sound in greeting as it caught her scent. Saddle, bridle and saddle bags, lay across the top rail of the stall.

Alix reached for one of the bags, then suddenly stopped, something gleaming in the half light from a nearby lantern. A hand closed around her wrist in a bone-crushing grip.

"What are you about, lass?"

Her eyes slowly adjusted to the meager light in the stables as Ruari moved past her and entered the stall. He seized the saddle from the top rail and flung it onto the stallion's back.

"What are you about?" she replied.

Ruari smiled. Anyone else would have been irritated at her boldness. It slipped beneath the anger, reminding him of the chit who had soundly beaten him at chess... Too many times to keep count!

"Are ye leaving then?" she asked, standing there with one hand on her hip, watching as he tightened leather, then reached for the bridle.

"Leaving, aye," he replied. "For a bit of a run."

He fastened the leather bridle as the black took the bit, chomping on it in anticipation, restless as he was, needing to escape for a while. He gave her a sideways look--stubborn, bold, sassy--then led the stallion from the stall. There was the smell of rain in the air, and the sky overhead was filled with clouds. It matched his mood.

He eyed the shapes of those who slept along the walls, in the doorways of the cottages, and about the practice yard--kinsmen, fellow clansmen, and those who had come to join them. Good men all. Still... not a place for a lass to be out and about by herself, not even one with the protection of the chieftain.

"Best get back to the hall," he told her, swinging up into the saddle, light from the moon that appeared at the edge of the clouds gleaming off the metal hand that clasped the reins.

She followed him from the stables. She held out the rolled leather that contained the salve she'd prepared.

"If yer arm should bother you," she explained.

It wasn't fully healed yet, but healed enough that he was going with them, she thought, with a mixture of anger and that other emotion that had risen from deep inside at first sight of him when he returned, wounded, a rack of bones, fevered with what was left of his arm festered. But alive.

Ruari took the rolled leather and tucked it into the leather bag at his saddle.

"Thank you for the thought."

"Ye've seen the way it's to be applied, and keep yer arm wrapped," she said softly. "With linen. It will help protect it."

"You should go back now," Ruari told her. "There's a storm coming. It's not a night to be out. "

"No, it's not," she agreed, but didn't move to return to the hall.

The anger was still there. She saw it in the set of his jaw beneath the shadow of beard, and heard it at his voice, like an order he gave their men. He certainly had his red up.

She took a deep breath. "I don't want to go back."

She saw the flash of anger, the way his eyes narrowed, then closed on the softly muttered curse.

"Go back to the hall."

"No. I want to go with ye. If you won't take me with you, then I'll get me own horse."

Ruari cursed. Stubborn she was, and sassy! Far too sassy for her own good. No French girl or woman that he'd known, or the dark-eyed girl he'd spent time with in Cadiz, would have dared so much. They knew their place.

Several more words came to mind as the stallion snorted and pawed at the ground. Nearby, a clansman roused and stirred beneath his blanket. Between her stubborn protests and his horse, they would have the whole yard awake and drawing swords.

"You must go back now."

She still did not move.

"I say where I go, Ruari Fraser."

If this kept up, it would bring the Fraser guard down on them, not to mention every other kinsman in the hall, and his brother. He cursed again, then reached down, and pulled her up behind him atop the stallion.