Chapter 26
Chapter
Twenty-Six
T he weather was a harsh enemy, that had come early and hovered over the walls of the keep like a demon.
For six days the storm raged, blanketing the hillside, thick at the walls, and at the road to the village below.
Only the hunting parties that tracked deer, rabbit, or grouse left the keep, with so much food destroyed or taken in the attack, and a long winter looming ahead. But deer and rabbit weren't the only prey they sought. Each foray into the countryside in a handful of directions, they watched, followed trails that all but disappeared beneath the snow, and then brought word back.
"Here, here, and here," Cullen McBride made marks on the parchment map laid out before them at the long table.
"English patrols, seen at each location, but they always return here." He pointed to the mark at the map, the old abandoned village the English taken months before.
"How many?" Ruari asked.
"A score out and about the countryside, and another full score at the fortress."
Ruari's expression hardened. "The English have not withdrawn as Marshal promised."
"Two score men does not make the entire English army," DeBrus pointed out. "But for your kinsmen to attack would be seen as an attack on the Crown and break the agreement at Stirling. And with Marshal still on this side of the borderlands, a rider would reach him in only a matter of days."
His meaning was clear, that Marshal would have no choice but to invade all of Scotland.
James had listened in silence. He could not, would not commit Clan Fraser to an open confrontation with Marshal. With food in short supply, both men and horses hardly recovered from the ride from Stirling, and winter upon them, it would be foolhardy at best, suicide at the worst.
"I do not ask ye to risk the clan," Ruari informed him when they were alone and DeBrus had sought his own bed.
"What are you asking?" James demanded across the decanter of wine they shared.
"That you do not stand in my way."
"What ye are planning, could see ye hanged!"
"You forget, brother, I am already outlawed for murder. A man cannot die twice." He tossed back the last of the wine in his goblet.
"I'll not risk the clan, but do not try to stop me in this."
While the storm raged, Ruari made his plans.
A man afoot would take three days to reach Cu Lodain, one day on horseback. While there was risk for a man astride who might be more easily seen by English patrols, he could carry more of what he needed if he was astride.
He knew the village ruins from childhood, before he was sent away. He had gone there often to play out the games that all children in the clans learned early--battle with an imaginary enemy, using the land as a weapon, moving fast and silent, striking then disappearing.
From what his kinsmen had seen, the stone walls about the village had been reinforced when the English came with wood battlements built atop and encircling the village square and the church. It was a minor obstacle, and as he knew all too well by the destruction at Lechlede... wood burned!
In the days that followed, he no longer sat evenings with James at the long table, knowing well what the conversation would be if he did. It was better that James not know when he left, or the plans he made. If he failed, he would be captured, or killed. If not, he would be forced to leave as before. It was a fate he accepted. There was nothing left for him at Lechlede now.
Alix glimpsed him from afar--on her way to the stables, when crossing the hall, or at the kitchen as she prepared the healing salves and tinctures that were so badly needed for those who had been injured in the attack.
No more words passed between them, but those last words returned again and again--when she was near exhaustion and sleep would not come, slipping through the darkness and the wall she built around her emotions, or when she finally fell asleep and then wakened from dreams, leaving her in tears.
Clouds hung over the distant hills. The snow that had confined his clansmen and families to the keep and the village below now fell in an icy rain, coating the stone walls, turning the yard to frozen mud in the gray pre-dawn.
It was time.
His plans had been made for days. He met with his kinsmen as they returned from long rides about the countryside after they met with James, with word of the English at Cu Lodain--the patrols they sent out, how often, their numbers.
Marshal was as good as his word, for now, as no other English had ridden into the fortified village.
"My father knew his father well, from our holdings in England," DeBrus told him.
"Tis said the son is a man of his word, as his father was. He'll not risk the peace by moving against the clans after the agreement that was made. For now."
The warning had been clear enough if not in words. For now ... if that peace held and was not broken.
"I know yer thoughts," Robbie went on. "For God's sake, I was with you at Calais. Blackwood's reputation is well known. He's a butcher, but yer life is not worth the loss of an arm."
Ruari listened, many things his friend said had been his own thoughts the past days since his decision was made.
"You are right," he finally replied. "Many here, my kinsmen have lost as much, and the English as well. I would not go because of it."
Relief shown on Robbie's face. "Ye see the way of it then."
Ruari nodded again. "Aye. " As he had seen it all those years before in another when he was no more than a lad. There was no mistaking it. He confronted it at Calais. Now here, in his home and toward someone who meant more to him than his life. Marshal was pure evil.
"There are those who will only take, and keep taking from those who cannot defend themselves," he said in a quiet voice as he wrapped the claymore in thick fleece against the dampness.
He tied the sword down across the back of the saddle. The bow, that he'd practiced with for hours was a fine weapon and easily grasped with the metal hand then drawn with his good hand, with two dozen arrows secured in the leather quiver.
"Is it worth your life, when you know James has need of you here?" DeBrus argued.
"For the safety of yer clan... for the safety of all the clans."
Ruari knew his meaning, that with Gabhran's death, James had need of an experienced war chief, someone he could trust, someone of his own blood.
"There is no safety, no place, no one safe so long as Blackwood draws breath," he replied jerking tight the ties across the weapons. He pushed past DeBrus, crossed the yard, and entered the hall by way of the narrow door beside the main doors. A guard nodded in recognition.
The main hall was silent this time of the morning, except for the guards. The last embers of the fire glowed at the hearth.
A shaggy silhouette rose from before the fire where James' hunting hound--the lone survivor from the attack--had spent the night, tail wagging in greeting. Ruari squatted down and stroked the shaggy head, his gaze sweeping the hall, the scarred long table and chairs where his father, then James, sat and met with their kinsmen, as his grandfather had before them, and his grandfather before him when he built Lechlede, and now James' and Brynna's children.
In the beginning he had asked himself what James would do, but that question had been answered years before, before Calais, when James had risked everything to ride alone into the highlands after one who had betrayed them all to save Brynna and the child she carried--young Connor. And though James had argued against his leaving the days past, there had been that silent understanding between them when Ruari's decision was made.
"Guard them well, ye shaggy beast," he told the long-legged, shaggy hound with a stroke of the animal's ears.
A stirring at the edge of the fire brought his head up.
"I will protect them," James' oldest said solemnly, sleep still at his face as he gathered the fleece about him from the chair beside the hearth where it appeared he'd spent the night. He held out a slender blade, that size-for-size served as a sword.
"I heard father speaking with me mother," Connor said. "Ye go then?"
He was solemn, with the look of James in the expression at his face, but it was his mother's eyes--large and dark with shadows of things he'd seen in his few years, the sort of things that made a man of a child in a heartbeat.
Ruari nodded. "Aye, before first light."
"My father doesna agree. He says tis dangerous, that ye may be kilt. That ye should wait for the weather."
"Aye."
"Why do ye go, then?"
It was so simple, the thinking of a child, before he learned the ways of men.
"There are things that must be set right."
Connor thought on that. "My father said the same. Ye will take our kinsmen with ye?"
Ruari heard the worry in his voice. He shook his head. "Tis my decision and mine alone. I'll not ask others to go with me. Tis too dangerous."
"I would go with ye," Connor declared. "I can fight!"
Ruari gently squeezed his nephew's shoulder.
"I know ye can, but this is something I must do. You must stay here and help protect the others."
"As I will one day have my own battles to fight?" Connor replied.
"I pray not." But he knew it was not the way of things.
"Now, go back to sleep before you wake the entire household. I'd not want to have to explain my leaving to yer mother."
Connor nodded. "She might take ye by the ear and thrash ye."
Ruari smiled at the thought, though the boy was not far from the truth. He rose and crossed the hall to the kitchen.
The cook fire had been banked at the kitchen hearth the night before. It smelled of pine wood, and other familiar things that Alix prepared at her work table, pungent, sweet things that tightened his gut at the memories it brought.
He moved silently, filling a leather pouch with strips of dried deer meat and oak cakes, then another skin for water. He paused at the arched doorway that led to the adjacent chambers where Alix and the other women made their beds.
"She's no' here."
A figure emerged from the shadows, a thick fleece wrapped around Morna's shoulders against the cold. She crossed the kitchen, the hem of her gown brushing the stones at the floor as she went to the hearth and stirred the embers there. As she reached for a piece of wood, Ruari took it along with several others, and built the fire back up. She poured water into the large kettle as he rebuilt the fire. As it caught, he swung the kettle that hung from the iron cross bar, over the flames.
"Ye'll need more than that to take with ye," Morna said, wrapping more meat in a piece of cloth, then added hard cooked eggs and thick slices of cheese and bread.
How many times had she done this, he wondered? For his father, then James, others, and now him?
Nothing more was said, no comment, no questions, just that simple acceptance. But it was there in the expression at her face, the smile that wouldn't come but instead turned into a frown as she handed him the food rolled in a thick linen.
Morna laid a hand against his cheek, her eyes filled with tears. She wiped them away, then turned back to the cook fire.
The kitchen was filled with the smells of food and the fresh things Alix used for her healing potions, sweet and pungent things that always clung to her in a way that brought other memories. But she was not there, keeping herself from the main hall. From him, from words that had become angry between them.
He ran his fingers along the wood of the table where she usually worked and a dozen memories swept back over him--an expression, a turn of her head, the firelight at her hair, the feel of her skin beneath his hand, the open challenge at her eyes that was always there, and the smile that followed.
She was a rare spirit that had bedeviled him since he first returned to Lechlede, a memory that he carried with him of an impudent child that watched as he rode away, a memory that he had carried with him that was part of his memory of this place.
A child no more when he returned with only a thought of dying, and she had refused to let him die with that stubbornness and impudence, and her healing ways that healed far more than she could ever know, and had somehow slipped deep inside him. And Blackwood had taken that from him, from both of them.
He knew where she undoubtedly was--where she had been these past days since his return, at the burned out cottage, caring for their kinsmen. She had taken to sleeping there, returning to the hall only when she needed more of the healing salves and powders for the wounded..
He glanced across the yard. A light glowed there at the edges of the window opening where a skin had been hung against the cold. He imagined her there, the light in her dark blue eyes, thick red-gold hair about her shoulders, and her face...
What would he see there if she didn't know he watched? Pain? Sadness? Regret? As he felt all of those emotions, along with the rage for what was now lost.
He seized the reins and led the stallion from the shelter where he'd tethered him. He swung into the saddle, then rode toward the charred gates.
There was no surprise in the expression at his kinsman's face as guards slowly rolled back the massive cart that had been rolled into place as a barricade until the gates were repaired. A shadow separated from the others at the entrance to the yard and slowly rode toward him.
His hand relaxed at the long blade at the scabbard at his saddle.
"No, Robbie," he told DeBrus.
"I've told you--whether I fail or succeed, this fight is mine, not yours. Whatever happens, your family and kinsmen will need you."
"I could follow ye," De Brus replied.
Ruari nodded. "You could, but you don't know the land here as I know it, and might well find yerself surrounded by an English patrol."
"Is there nothing I can say to stop you?"
The look he gave him was his answer. DeBrus swore, his breath clouding in the frigid cold.
"What am I to tell yer chieftain?"
Ruari stared off into the distance, into the unknown that waited, very possibly his death. He'd thought about it these past days when his conversations with James had given more to argument, James determined to dissuade him against this.
Wait , he had said. But waiting would not change what must be done.
"Ask my brother to care for her, as he would his own."
There was no need to tell DeBrus whom he meant. Then he swung his horse about and rode out into the cold pre-dawn darkness.
Brynna Fraser slowly climbed the stone steps to the top of the wall. The fires had not reached this part of the wall where guards now stood, keeping watch while others kept watch from beyond the walls, it the village, in the distant rocky crags, and the forest beyond.
Safe, for now that James and their kinsmen had returned.
Timbers, wood, even stone could be replaced, built stronger, but other things could not be replaced--the lives of their kinsmen, those who were as family to them, those who had sacrificed...
A guard silently nodded as she reached the walkway at the top of the wall.
The wind was like a knife, the cold freezing everything it touched, including the lass who stood staring out from the wall as Brynna joined her.
"I've never spoken of Hugh Fraser, though I'm certain ye know of the man I was first wed with, the way others gossip." She pulled the thick fleece shawl more tightly about her shoulders as she stood beside her.
"He was a cruel man, filled with anger. Many times that anger was toward James." She had thought long about what she would share, things that she'd locked away deep inside as Alix had now locked things away inside.
"I think it was because the chieftain favored James and he knew it. There was a bond between James and his father, perhaps because of James' mother. Tis said the old chieftain never got over her death."
Alix had heard the story, that James was born to a young girl the chieftain had loved and then lost when James was born.
"And then when the chieftain passed, Hugh needed James, and it was a hard thing to accept. He couldn't take his anger out on him, so he took it out on me. I had no say in what he did, taking what he wanted. To my way of thinking, no different than what ye suffered at the hands of the Englishman."
Alix looked at her then, the memory like a knife that cut deep. But there was no malice in them, only hard truth even as there were tears in Brynna Fraser's eyes.
"Such cruelty is a hard thing to bear, made worse when I lost my first child because of it. I locked myself away, everything I felt, so that I felt nothing. It was as if I had died with my child. Do ye ken?"
Alix's throat was tight as if a fist closed around it. She wanted her to stop, go away, leave her be. But she would not.
"After Hugh's death, James and I were wed to protect the clan when all I wanted was to return to my own family."
Alix had not known this part of their story. What she told her now seemed impossible with the bond she knew they shared, more than the children she had borne, more than the vows spoken, a bond that was seen in the looks they shared, in the way his voice softened when he spoke with her, in the simple touch of a hand that no one else seemed to notice. But she had noticed.
"It was some time after we wed that we shared a bed. I'm certain everyone knows that."
Brynna saw the surprise at her face. "Aye, he knew well enough what I had suffered with his brother, and he waited... until it was my choice." The words came then, so easily from that place deep inside her, a place Brynna shared only with her husband.
"With kindness and care, knowing my fears and pain, taking it all away and giving me back... meself, my choice to be with him in that way between a man and woman, with respect and caring.
"Even now, these years later and with four bairns that are like a gift from God that I never hoped to have, his hand and his way are ever gentle because that is the man he is no matter where he has gone or what he has done. And he accepts me with all the painful memories and scars, for me. Not out of duty or pity, but for me."
When she first climbed the steps to the top of the wall, Brynna wasn't certain what she would stay to her, what comfort she might be able to offer, or if Alix would even listen. But more than most, Brynna understood what she had been through, the humiliation, the pain, and the loss.
"Ye can let the English bastard win with what was done, but ye are stronger than that. I have seen it--the way ye never give quarter when ye know yer right no matter who gets in yer face, in the care ye give our kinsmen refusing to let them die, when ye turned back that day after seeing us to safety because ye wouldna leave another behind, even at the risk of yer own life."
She spoke with a firmness and certainty of someone who had suffered the same cruelty.
"Ye are wounded, but not broken. What doesna kill ye, makes ye stronger. Do ye ken?"
She brushed a tendril of hair back at Alix's cheek much as she would have her own daughter.
"Strength and courage," she told her, the words fierce.
"That is who ye are, lass, and no one can take that from ye. No one!"
Strength and courage.
When she had gone, the tears came.