Chapter 28
Chapter
Twenty-Eight
T he pottery bowl shattered as it hit the stone floor of the kitchen, shards of broken clay amid cooked oats and barley exploding across the stones.
Morna waved back the two women who were nearest, as she went to her granddaughter who knelt amidst a sea of cooked oats and shattered pottery.
"There's more than enough in the pot for the chieftain and his family," Morna told the women as they stood about.
"Use the pot warming at the hearth, and be on yer way about it," she told them, then knelt beside Alix.
"No harm. I'll clean it afore someone cuts themselves or slips on the stones."
"No!" Alix replied. "I made the mess. I'll clean it."
"Tis no bother, lass." Morna gently replied.
For days, since the attack, she'd watched from a distance as Alix moved about the great hall like a wraith, seen but not seen, with barely a word except for anyone except their mistress, and then speaking only when spoken too.
It was there in her eyes, all the misery of her encounter with the Englishman, in the way she looked away, refusing to meet another's gaze, in the way she avoided their kinsmen... and at the bruises that covered her cheek and throat.
Morna wanted desperately to comfort her as she had as a child, but even then this one was not one to accept fawning over or pity. Strong, she was. Perhaps too strong, holding it all in with no place for the brutality of what she'd suffered to go except turned inward where it festered like an open wound.
"No!" Alix said again, the agony she felt had little to do with a pottery bowl shattered at the floor and the loss of boiled oats.
She gathered the pieces she could find, threw them into a basket, then fled the kitchen and ran headlong into the chieftain's oldest son.
At nine years Connor Fraser already reached her shoulder. He would be tall as his father. And he had the look of his father with his dark hair and the expression at his face even at play, that seriousness in the way his dark brows came together at some prank the younger bairns played on him, and the set of his mouth. But there were moments as now, when surprised as she was, that she saw something that reminded her of another in the flash of a smile that she had not seen those last days before Ruari left Lechlede.
Then it was gone as Connor looked up at her, the boy once more peeking out from the man he would one day be.
"I didna want to bother ye... " he said hesitantly. "Mother said I was to keep to meself, and Alexander and Ellie as well," he added using the name his younger sister hated. The chieftain's daughter preferred Eleanor , and thank ye kindly, and made no bones about it.
"If ye just show me the way with some of yer healing salve... " he clutched his hand, wrapped in a filthy linen cloth, against his chest.
"I'll do it meself."
The sight of the cloth, well bloodied, along with the somber expression at his face, the little boy disappearing once more behind a brave expression broke through the wall she'd built around her emotions ever since the attack on Lechlede, the loss of so many--kinsmen, friends, those who were as family--and the brutality of it, this young boy with glimpses of the man he would one day be, his solemn expression with just that brief flash of a smile.
"No need," she gently told him, fighting back tears and not even certain who they were for--the child, herself, or another.
Then with a small smile, "Come along then, ye wee heathen, and let's see what ye've done to yerself this time."
Morna said nothing as she returned to the kitchen with Connor in tow, then watched as she ladled hot water from the large pot that that hung over the cook fire into a shallow bowl and then reached for the jar of medicinal herbs that she kept.
Connor sat on a stool beside the hearth, watching her with an uneasy expression in that way children have of knowing what must be done. That was certainly true in Connor Fraser's case and he had the bumps, bruises, and a few scars to prove it.
When the water had cooled enough and taken on the greenish tinge of the herbs Alix carefully bathed the wound, washing away the blood and grime.
The lad watched her with a practiced eye from other times when she had patched and treated the usual childhood wounds found in a household with weapons about not to mention the young hound that had taken to following him everywhere, even sleeping with him in spite of the wee beasties the animal carried. A good rub down with leaves from rosemary plants that she kept had stopped the itching on both boy and hound, and prevented the keep from being invaded by bugs.
The hiss of the cook fire and the quiet conversations of the women in the kitchen filled the silence as she worked.
"Me mother says ye were sorely wounded when the English came," Connor said in that innocent way of children, glancing at her, then frowning at the bruises at her cheek and neck.
"She said the wounds are the sort ye canna see, but are deep inside." He was thoughtful again, his mouth turning down slightly.
"It must be like the wounds Ruari has, aye? Ye canna see them, but they are there, from things that were done?"
Her head came up, her gaze meeting his--out of the mouths of babes.
"But he is still strong and once in a while I see a smile," the lad continued. "Mother says he use to laugh all the time, like me sister. She says that Ellie has his laughter and his temper, aye? Me sister has a fearsome temper for one so small."
A stone at the invisible wall she'd built around her emotions had been pried loose by a young lad without even knowing it, and laughter bubbled into her throat.
It was almost painful as simple joy washed over the sadness, like the waves at the loch, taking with it the sharp edges of painful memories.
This was real, this place, the lad who sat before her with his honesty and simple truth, forcing her to confront the truth of what had happened, then like the wound she cleaned and bandaged, let it heal and in time it would be no more than a faint scar that would eventually fade away, like other wounds--the losses of those she had loved, forever a part of her, but a part that made her stronger for having known them? Like the boy, more man already than he would ever know?
Alix kissed his forehead, startling him. He pulled back with a horrified expression, not yet of any age where he appreciated such show of affection. And she laughed again, the feel if it like a healing balm.
"Ye'll live, ye wee heathen," she told him. "But I ask that ye give it a few days before ye injure yerself again, aye? Or I'll not have enough healing potions to help ye."
"Are ye all right then?" he asked, with a doubtful expression.
No one but his mother ever kissed him, and then not in front of others. Alix had kissed him in front of the women in the kitchen. By midday word of it would spread throughout the hall and the stables beyond. And the teasing would be merciless.
The wound required several washings, she then covered it with a thick paste made from mallow root and bound it with strips of clean linen.
"Aye, well enough," Alix replied, mentally kicking the rest of the stones in that invisible wall out of her way. She did not want anyone's pity, not even this lad. She would not let what had happened define the rest of her life, living off the pity of others, living without...
"Get on with ye, now," she added, the thought like a sharp blade. "And stay away from yer sister. She'd likely take advantage of yer weakened condition."
" Caoch !" he exclaimed, having no doubt learned the word from the older men. He turned toward the hall.
"Women!"
Alix watched as he stalked off, very much like his uncle Ruari she thought.
How many times had she seen just that same stride, the way he held himself, then that last moment when he looked back over his shoulder with a grin and the devil in his eyes?
"What is it?" Morna asked, her brows drawn together over a frown. It was impossible not to hear or see most of what went on in her kitchen.
Alix nodded, and slipped into the alcove where the last of the dried leaves she had gathered before the fall frost hung from the thick beam overhead.
She spent the rest of the morning among her herbs and healing things. The attack at Lechlede had scattered everything among broken crockery. She had painstakingly gathered what she could, sifting among broken shards, then seeking out the ruins of Maisel's cottage. There she found some herbs and potions that had survived, tucked back in a stone niche where the fire hadn't found them. The rest she had dug and scraped from beneath a blanket of leaves at the edge of the orchard.
The warmth, the smells, the chatter of the women were a healing balm--the mundane chores of cleaning, chopping, cooking had a healing power all their own in the way that life went on, there were hungry stomachs to fill, while listening to the jokes and tales the women told while punching the dough that was then placed on a board and pushed into the iron oven, the cook pot that bubbled, and the fruit baked into tarts for the evening meal.
For hours she pounded the stone mortar, grinding leaves into powder. Others she left as they were, carefully sorting and putting the herbal concoctions into clay jars. When she ran out of jars, she wrapped others in a square of linen and tied it off with a strip of cloth. Those would be steeped into a tincture, the thickened gel skimmed off when it was done, then placed in a jar for wounds such as young Connor had come to her with.
It was settling work. It settled her emotions, the thoughts that still haunted her, and gave her time to think.
" I give you all that I am." Vows as true as any spoken before a priest.
But it was more than words. What she felt for him had been there since she was a child, since she had first laid eyes on him and all the years since. Even when he left for France and she might never have seen him again. Then through the dark days after he returned and she thought she would lose him again. And now, with words spoken between them, the look in his eyes, the gentle touch of his hand.
I give you all that I am .
What had happened with the English could never take away what was in her heart, what had always been there... Was still there.
She rose and brushed the powders and leaves from her hands. Purposefully, she put away the mortar and pestle, wrapped the last of the herbs, and then untied the apron and carefully folded it even as the sounds from the hall pulled her back to the present, here, now, the long hours past spent with her own thoughts.
It was late. She was alone, and hadn't noticed the passing of hours, not the sound of supper as those gathered for the evening meal, nor the quiet that settled over the great hall with conversations over the hiss of the fire at the great hearth.
The chess board where the chieftain and Gabhran often sat across from one another of a wintry evening... where she had challenged Ruari all those years before... sat idle and abandoned, the pieces lined up as if but waiting for the hand that would move them and send them once more on a path of conquest or... defeat.
She chose the knight and moved it, her hand steady, purposeful. Then she crossed the hall where the chieftain sat at the long table with his clansmen and the one called DeBrus.
To a man, a half dozen gazes turned to her. There was a time for caution. The chieftain was a proven warrior with the care and protection of many depending on him. The attack at Lechlede had been foremost in his mind as he set about the repairs that were necessary to carry all of them through the winter.
She had heard things, of the agreement made at Stirling. But in his expression, the lines about his mouth, the long hours he spent apart from the hall, and things that were whispered in the kitchen, she knew he trusted that agreement only as far as the English reaching the borderlands.
"What is it, lass?" the chieftain asked, looking up from the parchment where lines and figures had been drawn with a piece of charcoal. She recognized one of the images and a name--Cu Lodain.
James Fraser considered her one of his own, but a child no more. The past days she had been a shadow among shadows, a constant reminder of what had been lost with her silence, in what she had suffered, in the look at her eyes.
It was still there, along with something else, something that waited, strength and a familiar stubbornness peeking out in the set of her chin, in the way she squared her slender shoulders.
"What of Ruari?" she demanded.
It was as simple, and direct as that, with a boldness that might have seen a man flogged for approaching James Fraser in that way.
Across from the chieftain, Robert DeBrus leaned across the long table, his boots and tunic mud-caked. He sat back with a thoughtful expression , his eyebrows disappearing into his hairline in surprise. He exchanged a look with the chieftain of Clan Fraser.
She'd done it now, Alix thought. But there was no other opportunity to speak with him, and she must know.
"I meant no disrespect... " she added.
For the first time in days, James Fraser smiled, one corner of his mouth curving up at the spirit he glimpsed in her when he had thought they might never see it again.
"There are times tis the only way to find an answer, lass"
And a gentle rebuke.
"I'd not leave a man, woman, or child to fend for themselves. And well ye know it."