Chapter 25
Chapter
Twenty-Five
D eath hung over Lechlede.
Each day there was another who was lost to his wounds at the hands of Blackwood and his soldiers. Fierce, born of Norse ancestors, Gabhran stubbornly clung to one more hour, one more day as he spoke with Ruari Fraser of things he must know.
"Blackwood is a coward," his voice had grown thin. "He fights only with many around him.
"He carries a long blade made of fine steel, a shorter blade in a sheath hidden under his leather breast shield, and one in his boot." He paused then, fighting for each breath, a gnarled fist closing around the front of Ruari's tunic..
"Coward he may be, but no fool! Ye must be smarter, stronger, and give no quarter! Do ye ken?" He lay back at the pallet then, eyes closed, gathering himself.
"The girl... " he whispered. "Alix... " His eyes slowly opened.
"She is proud, and strong. A man has a need of that sort of strength to stand beside him. " The old warrior laid a gnarled hand at Ruari's shoulder.
"What was lost... Tis not who she is! Do ye ken what I'm saying, lad?" There was a long breath then as the old warrior fought to say what he needed to say.
"Ye must abide... the time will come. But there are others who need ye now!"
There were other words, things his brother must know, the number of English at the fortress, things one of their men who had escaped the fortress, had spoken of.
Ruari listened to all of it, until the old warrior's words faded. There was a long sigh, then no more words.
He stayed there, not even certain of the hours, memories strong of the man who had been as a father to him--his gruff way that hid a fierce heart, the way he had taken a lad out with him on one of the long rides his kinsmen made to the far reaches of Fraser land, the stories he told of his own youth in that raw and dangerous land, had ridden with him when he was sent north, then welcomed him back even when he'd been outlawed.
His father was but a shadow memory compared to the old warrior who lay before him, who had pledged his sword and his life to Clan Fraser. The clan was his family and he had served Connor Fraser then James, as war chief.
Abide. Wait. He would wait and take care of those at Lechlede. Then he would go.
"God speed, old friend," Ruari said, straightening the blood-stained tunic.
He glimpsed the faint movement, the slender shadow at the wall that came no closer. But he knew who it was, who had cared for the old warrior these days past.
"I thank you for your gentle care," he told her, then stood, fighting the anger and pain at this loss, and more.
She stepped out of the shadows then, silent as she knelt beside the old warrior and began to bathe his face, his neck, the gnarled hands that had once been so strong, now rested at his chest.
Ruari reached out, drawn to the red-gold hair worn simply in a long braid, the memory of it wrapped around his hand when they last parted sharp and painful. She was so close, he could have touched her . Instead, his hand closed in a tight fist.
"When it is time, I will see him properly clothed and with his sword." As it should be Ruari thought. At least in this last gesture, he could honor the man who had meant so much to him.
She still said nothing, but continued her gentle ministrations, the care he had felt so many times at his own wounds, her slender hands wiping away the blood.
"Alix... "
She stiffened as if she from a blow, holding herself as if against some deep pain, and it was as if he had taken the blow. He would take it for her--a hundred times over if he could spare her what she has suffered, if he could change all of it.
But he could not, and anger was a thing that burned deep inside him as he turned and left the stables. Anger for revenge.
The riders passed through the village of Lechlede, then turned their horses up the hill toward the keep.
In the last light of day, torches at the walls glowed through the gathering storm, as they spread out, caution overriding haste, eyes watchful, hands at their swords. The many days ride weighed heavily but none were fool enough to assume that all was well.
In all that time there had been no messenger, no word sent, and James Fraser had pushed himself and every man, passing villages and farms, until the rumor was heard--of an attack.
Now, caked with sweat, filth from the road, the cold and new snow like an enemy that dogged their return, slowing them, the way sometimes impassable where man and horse were at risk... the upper tower came into view.
When one of his kinsmen would have spurred his horse forward, James signaled for them all to hold as shadows loomed out of the gathering darkness--riders, a handful. But how many more hidden in the shadows?
Then the brief gleam of metal, and swords were drawn and held ready to strike, a low whistle signaling his kinsmen to move apart and make ready to meet the attack.
Then another whistle, slicing through the dark and cold night. And the answer that followed.
"Hold!" James shouted to his kinsmen, as that gleam of metal flashed again--but not from a sword.
Ruari reined in the stallion beside James Fraser. They clasped arms.
"You risk much, brother, this close at nightfall. My men could have cut you down."
"You forget, little brother , the number that ride with me, while you have only this handful."
At another low whistle, several more shadows emerged both astride and afoot. James angled a sharp look.
"MacKenzie and Logan," Ruari explained the others who had joined them at Lechlede these days past, with the unknown that Marshal and the English would leave Stirling and they might yet find themselves in a war.
James nodded. He would have done the same. He gestured to the metal at Ruari's arm.
"We saw it from a distance. If we had been the enemy, we would have had the advantage."
"As I intended," Ruari replied. "My men brought word of your return after you crossed the Dee."
James smiled at this younger brother who was a formidable warrior. But there was no smile in return. He angled his head in the direction of those distant torches that gleamed through the gathering night.
"What of Lechlede?"
Ruari turned his horse so that they rode side by side, his men falling in with those who rode with James.
"There is much to tell you."
When they entered the yard, James expression was a cold mask that slipped as he stepped down from his horse and glimpsed the devastation inside the walls of Lechlede. Then slipped further as Brynna Fraser stood at the entrance to the great hall.
Mindful of his men who had ridden as far and with the same fears, he laid a hand against her cheek. Brynna pressed her hand over his, holding on to him, his strength, the warmth of his calloused hand.
"Ye are well?"
Hers was a sad smile. "Well enough."
"The bairn?" This Ruari had not spoken of.
She nodded. "We have a son. He is fine and strong, thanks be to Alix."
James nodded. "I thank ye as well for my son. I would see him, but there are things that must be attended first... Our kinsmen have ridden these many days with little rest and no food."
Brynna nodded. "I have had prepared what we have... much was lost." Her voice broke for the first time as Ruari appeared at the entrance. They exchanged a look... So much, she thought.
"Aye," James replied, his fingers gently tracing her cheek. "But the most important is here. All the rest can be replaced. You, the children... canna ye ken?"
emotion showed at the expression at his face at the loss Ruari had told him of.
"We must honor those that were lost."
Fraser warriors entered the hall. Other than the stables there were no shelters against the storm. They were silent as word passed from one to the other of the losses at Lechlede that touched all of them.
Wordlessly, the women brought food to the long tables that had survived the attack, braced with remnants of heavy timbers, the burnt portions cut away. Among them, James glimpsed one who silently kept to the shadows. She helped the women, then just as silently moved among his men, checking for wounds that would need her care. But no look passed between her and his brother.
Brynna laid a hand at James' shoulder. "There are other things we must speak of--things you should know."
Hours later, James finally sought his bed in the old chieftain's chamber that Brynna had taken after the damage to the other chambers from the fire at the tower. As had become their nightly ritual since they wed, she had set out wine and made certain a fire burned at the stone fireplace, a ewer of water set over the flames to warm. But all of that as James went to the bed that sat atop a stone and wood platform that had once held such painful memories for her. Now, his new son slept peacefully atop warm fleece a linen blanket wrapped around him.
"He is a braw lad," he said, emotion thick at his throat at what might have been lost with the attack, that he would not have been there as he should have been... that their children and this new wee one might have been lost, except for the brave lass who had helped them escape.
"I might have lost ye... " he looked up then, his gaze meeting Brynna's. She moved into his arms as they looked down at their son with so many things uncertain except this shared moment.
"But ye did not," she told him.
He nodded. "Ye must tell me what happened. All of it."
And so she told him.
"The poor lass," James said. It was a hard thing to think of for any girl or woman, the brutality of it."
'There is more," Brynna whispered. "She and Ruari were hand fast before... " There was a new sadness in her voice.
"What of Ruari?" James asked.
"He knows, but has not spoken of it."
"And the girl?"
Brynna shook her head. "She keeps to the kitchen or the stables, seeing to the wounded. Oh, James, she is like a shadow of herself, and she has not said a word. I'm told that she has released Ruari from honoring the promises that were made."
He nodded, remembering the first months between them, the abuse she had suffered from his brother, Hugh, in her first marriage, the loss of a babe, the shame and humiliation, the fear he had seen in her eyes.
But they had found their way through it with truth and care, and in that he had discovered a respect for a strength and courage to equal that of any man. And he knew there was only one who could speak with Alix about such things.
Later as they lay together, the bairn between them, he gently stroked her hair. "I know it will not be easy, but I would have no other speak with her whether or no she will have Ruari."
Brynna nodded, her head at his shoulder.
How was it, he thought, not for the first time in the past years together, that the greatest strength, courage, was in a slender hand that he held in his?
In the days that followed as weather closed around the ruins of Lechlede, they mourned their dead.
Ruari was seldom in the great hall, more often with his clansmen, and DeBrus, seeing to the safety of the keep, their kinsman who rode as far as the weather allowed about the countryside.
True to his word, Marshal and the English army, had departed Stirling. When they were four days gone, James had finally turned the clans back, but ever cautious, mindful of previous encounters with the English, he had sent men to accompany them back to the borderlands. But always hidden, shadowing the English at a distance, stopping when they stopped to rest men and horses, then moving on, like ghosts.
No ghosts now, as Fraser clansmen entered the great hall and stamped the snow from their boots, their expressions hidden behind thick fleece scarves that steamed at the warmth in the hall.
Then, for hours afterward, they met with James and Ruari, bringing word of what they had learned about the location of Blackwood and his guard. They had seen soldiers with their distinctive tunics that they made no attempt to disguise at the edge of the great loch, then returning to the fortified ruins at Cu Lodain where King Henry had sent soldiers the past year, as he had built other fortifications in Scotland.
"I know you're thoughts, the same as mine," James said when the others had gone including Cullen MacBride who had served Gabhran and James in the past, a capable warrior who knew their kinsmen, and their ways.
"No!" James added.
"It is me he thinks to confront. By what little we know, he believes that he has insulted the chieftain of Clan Fraser, and well the insult is mine as well for the girl is like one of my own and I would defend her as one of my own. But tis too dangerous. The weather is as much an enemy, and I will not have you taking up the sword against him when I need ye."
Ruari shoved back from the long table, rattling metal goblets and trenchers from the evening meal.
Abide . Gabhran's last words. And he had, until James' return, knowing that he could not endanger those within by leaving sooner.
He downed the last of his wine and slammed the goblet down onto the table.
"And what of her?" James demanded. "You are hand fast, as true as any vow before a priest. Would ye make her a widow with the possibility of a bairn already inside her?"
Ruari's gaze was a fierce blue. He had thought of it. He knew it was possible from their one time together. It was also possible that even now Blackwood's seed was firmly planted. He answered the only thing he knew for certain.
"I will have Blackwood's blood," he vowed. "And you'll not stop me."
Alix heard them from the edge of the great hall as she crossed the stones toward the entrance on her way to the stables--the hard words between the brothers, Ruari's anger that sent him from the table and directly into her path.
"Alix... "
For days he had struggled with his own thoughts about what she had suffered, seen her at the edge of the hall like a ghost that silently moved past and out of the hall, needed to speak with her but with no clear idea what the words might be. There had been only that brief encounter at the stables, the sadness of it and other things at her eyes. It was there now, but with the wariness of a creature trapped with no means of escape.
"I must go," she whispered and tried to move past him.
"Don't go." Ruari reached out as he would have in the past, his hand at her arm.
Her head came up and her expression was like that of a wounded animal.
"There are things we must speak of... "
She wore only a simple linen gown with a woolen tunic over, her hair woven in a braid that fell to her waist, but he remembered the feel of in his hands, the weight and satin softness of it as she had given herself to him in the old place, and he would have given his other arm to have those hours back, before...
"We spoke vows. You are my wife... "
"No!" she cried out, trying to push him away when all she wanted was to hold onto him, the way it had been before... His smile, his laughter, the stubbornness and honor that gave her strength when she had been terrified that he might die, and when he had returned from Stirling.
"Ye do not know... !" she wept. "Ye do not understand... !" It was another loss, another life that Blackwood had taken.
"I do understand!"
When she shook her head, refused to listen, and tried to pull away, he held her with both hands--flesh and blood, and the one she had given him--trying to break through the raw emotion he saw at her eyes, in the agonized expression at her face.
"I know what it is to have a part of you torn away!" He had to make her understand, something he only now understood these past weeks when it seemed he'd lost her.
"To be left in yer own blood and wanting to die!" He wrapped both arms around her, his cheek against the thick satin of her hair.
"I know!" he said, his own anger fierce. "And I know that wounds heal, and you can be stronger because of it. You healed me, you made me stronger." He lowered his head and rested it against hers.
"When I wanted to die, when there was of nothing of me left, you gave me back myself and a reason to live. And young Iain--ye gave him peace in his leaving so that he wasn't afraid.
"You're strong. I've seen it, with Eleanor, with our kinsmen a thousand times when ye take away their pain, when you hold their hand when they're dying, ye give them yer strength and yer courage." He cupped her face in his hands.
"That is what no one can take from you, no one. Do you hear me?"
"Courage?" she whispered hoarsely. "If I had courage I would have taken the blade to meself rather than let Blackwood... "
He shook his head. "Nothing you could have done would have stopped him. If you had, then he would have taken his vengeance out on others--Connor, Alexander, and Brynna when she had tried to defend them. There is an evil in that man that would not be stopped.
She shook her head as the anger seeped out of her. "But surely ye see? I wilna shame ye because of... " Her breath caught in her throat, " because of what happened. It would always be there--the shame of it... "
"No," he whispered. "The shame is mine. I should have been here to protect you."
"It will always be there... "
"Only if ye let it." He held onto her. "Give me your anger and yer tears. I'll take them.. Unless ye truly do not want me."
He saw the answer in her eyes, the way she squeezed them shut against the words that would not come.
"If you truly do not want me, then you must say it."
She could not say it, she would not hurt him in that way.
"I'll not hold ye to the words we spoke, Ruari Fraser. I canna! Don't ye see?" She looked at him then, all the misery of what had happened at her, the humiliation and pain there in her eyes.
"I'll not dishonor ye, so I release ye from yer promise. Do ye hear me? I release ye! Now, let me pass! Our kinsmen have need of my care."
He reached out and brushed her cheek with the only answer there was.
"You are my honor."
"Oh, Ruari, don't ye see. I have no honor," she whispered, a broken sound, then pushed past him, gathered the thick fleece wool about her shoulders and nodded to the guard at the main entrance who followed her out into the storm filled night, tears burning at her cheeks.
She'd said everything that must be said. She would not hold him to his promise that was nothing more than ancient words.
What they had shared was gone. It felt as if her heart had died inside her.