Chapter 29
Chapter
Twenty-Nine
" T here was no cover to hide us when the storm set in," De Brus explained.
He and his men hadn't slept or eaten in three days, making their way back to Lechlede the long way along the river, guided by a Fraser kinsman, so that no one would be suspicious over what the chieftain of clan Fraser or any of his men were about with the agreement struck with Marshal hanging in the balance.
"Blackwood is no fool," he continued, leaning over the crudely drawn map. "The number of men I took with me would have easily been seen by any English patrol, and considered a direct assault. Blackwood will not take the risk of an open confrontation after the agreement that Marshal made.
"I know the man," he continued. "He will protect his interests at all cost, and that includes his holdings in England as well as what he hopes to claim here. He is known for his greed and cunning. He will try to draw you out, make it seem that you and your clan broke the agreement and attacked the fortress. That is the very reason you cannot go."
James knew he was right, as much as he hated the truth of it.
For now, Blackwood believed the assault he had made on Lechlede was a direct challenge to the chieftain of Clan Fraser. Blackwood hoped for an open confrontation over the insult to the clan and its chieftain, and would then lay claim to Fraser lands as he had been promised him. He had no way of knowing, yet, that the chieftain's family had escaped unharmed, even at the cost to so many.
James looked across the hall, his gaze finding the slender girl there. She had a rare strength and spirit.
Could Brynna have survived such an attack? She had once before. But now with the bairns? What would she have done if Blackwood had found them, as was his purpose?
He knew the answer as well as he knew himself. The children would have been held in trade for himself. And then all would have been put to the blade for Blackwood couldn't allow any to live who would rise against him and dispute his claim.
Could he have borne that loss? The very things that he fought to protect for the future? Connor who was old enough to understand the way of it, that he might have failed him, Alexander, too young to understand, still with the innocence of a wee lad, Eleanor, with that fiery red hair and equally fiery spirit that reminded him of Ruari, and the new bairn, only weeks old, a life ended before it had begun?
He had seen the way of the English in the villages near the borderlands, the dead hung on pikes--men, women, children--like a bloody warning banner the English raised.
It was for that reason he had gone to Stirling, willing if need be, to see every English soldier lying in his own blood for the past suffering of every Scot, and it was for that same reason that he had no trust in the agreement. Only time would tell, if the English would honor it, but the reason now that he could not take up the sword and draw first blood even when he longed to ride on the fortress at Cu Lodain and kill every man inside it, to send his own message to the English king.
The cost at Lechlede had been high--his old war chief who had been as a father to him, other Fraser kinsmen, old Maisel whose prophecy all those years before had played out with brutal consequences.
A thousand years of blood and death... As there had been so much death already.
And now Blackwood within a day's ride of Lechlede. But there was more. The connection of blood in the information DeBrus had shared at what they had learned at Stirling, and that Ruari had no reason to doubt.
Their sister.
He remembered her as a wee bairn barely able to walk when she was taken to England after her mother's death, and now the wife of Sir John Blackwood, through which Blackwood made his claim for Fraser lands.
He knew nothing of this sister who had the same father as himself, whether she was even alive, or if there were children. Only that Blackwood now laid claim to Lechlede and had proven by his actions there that he would do whatever it took to take it.
And he must find a way to stop him.
"I am told not all of your men returned," he commented, needing to know more of what DeBrus had learned.
"There was no shelter to conceal our presence," Robbie explained. "But I left men who can be trusted, here and here," he pointed to locations on the crudely drawn map.
"Two men at each location, one of mine and one of yours to guide the way, and less likely to be seen or draw attention, than a score of Fraser clansmen astride with full battle armor."
James nodded his agreement. He knew little of Robert DeBrus other than his family name from past conversations with his father and Gabhran. But he had shown himself to be a man of his word, and Ruari trusted him.
The simple truth was that he could not take Fraser warriors to Cu Lodain without breaking the fragile agreement the young king had made with Marshal. But that did not mean that another could not go.
The plan was set. It would have been wisest to wait out the storm that had set in, but clear weather meant any who approached the forest where DeBrus was certain Ruari had taken shelter, would be easily seen. That would place any who openly rode against Blackwood in danger, and have the potential to start an all out war that they hoped to avoid. At least most of them hoped to avoid.
"I say kill them all and be done with it!" Malcolm exclaimed taking the long knife and burying the tip into the surface of the long table.
"For what they did here, no mon, woman, nor child is safe. The English king is a murderin' bastard. Not a mon here hasna lost friend or kin to the English, and I don't trust him to keep his word."
"Nor I," James replied. "But I will not be the one to break the agreement." He gave him a long look that said far more.
"Do ye hear me?"
It was not a question, Alix realized, as she listened from the shadows at the edge of the hall.
Malcolm eventually nodded. "DeBrus has spoken of wanting to see more of Fraser lands," he said with a narrow-eyed expression, and a glance across the long table at Robert DeBrus.
"When the storm lifts, it might be a hospitable gesture to show yer guest a bit more of the countryside, just a wee stretch of the legs or so," Malcolm suggested.
James nodded with a look across at DeBrus. "Aye, just take care not to be seen."
Malcolm nodded again. "Thick woolies and mantles, so it would be almost impossible to know a mon or his clan, Scot or English, aye?"
They were in agreement, but James was still uneasy. It was one thing to entrust Gabhran or Ruari to lead their kinsmen, but difficult for one who had once been war chief now chieftain of Clan Fraser to entrust that to another.
"Take yer weapons," James added. "If ye should encounter a deer or wild boar for the supper table." Another look passed between the three men, the message clear.
"Wild boar can be verra dangerous," he said with a greater meaning they all understood.
After they had gone, James rolled the map they had been studying. Malcolm knew the countryside as well as himself or Ruari, and the ruins at Cu Lodain and the forest between. He could only hope that they would be able to intervene in time.
Not the first time, he cursed Ruari for his foolishness in going off alone. He could fault him for it even as he understood his reasons. He had once done the same years before when Brynna was taken prisoner by her own brother and he had followed them into the highlands. The man was still there, where he and Ruari had left him and his murderin' companions beneath the snow and ice.
He cursed again. He had lost this younger brother once before, to now lose him again?
He looked up and saw Alix still there in the shadows.
She had changed from the child he had once known who had boldly marched up to him in the great hall when he became chieftain, unafraid in that way of children who know no better, to the horror of her grandmother and much to his amusement.
Since then he had watched her grow into a beautiful young woman, with a caring heart and a healing hand, part of their clan... part of his family now.
He was aware that she and Ruari had hand fast before he left for Stirling. There was no surprise in it for the girl had a rare spirit that was perhaps only matched by his younger brother's fierce spirit and temper. He also knew that before Ruari had left for Cu Lodain, she had released him from ancient promise.
She had spoken little since their return, always about some chore, at the stables tending the wounded, or those who had not survived, with an uncommon strength that few had. It took just such strength and courage to do what she had done to protect others, and survive it.
For that he owed her a debt that could never be repaid. Men like Blackwood took what they wanted and often left no survivors , with that same cruelty as Ruari's encounter with him at Calais.
She had survived only because of the message Blackwood wanted her to send him, a message that would burn in his heart until he drew his last breath.
"Tell James Fraser that I will destroy him and his clan, and claim what is mine."
And then, so there would be no mistaking his meaning or the threat, he had hurt her in a way that Blackwood thought would deliver the true meaning of his message in brutally taking the young woman he thought to be the chieftain's wife, a message that had no other meaning.
And now Ruari had gone, alone, to claim his right as a husband, and as a Fraser. He would not risk the clan, but he would risk himself, and James was certain had no hope of returning. He knew it as sure as he knew himself for it was what he would do--a fight to the death.
What could James say to Alix now? What would he say to his own wife? Or daughter? No honied words would do for what she had been through, or pity. But there was a need to tell her, for her to know that the clan was her family no matter what Blackwood had done.
"Ye heard our words, aye?" he asked as she slowly came closer.
She nodded, her chin lifting slightly in that way he remembered when she had first approached him as a child and he was the new chieftain of Clan Fraser--unafraid, with a rare courage that he saw now. She nodded.
"Aye."
"Did ye think I would let him to go alone?"
"I hoped ye would not," she replied, with her usual blunt honesty.
James leaned back against the edge of the table, often reminded by his wife that his height, his bearing was intimidating--to the children, others in the clan--his expression fierce with the weight of responsibilities as clan chieftain.
"I know why ye do it," Brynna had accused him. "If a look will do, why waste yer words. But there is a time when ye must use yer words, and be gentle about it."
As war chief then clan chieftain, he never had to think how his words were taken. An order was given once and expected to be obeyed. But it was his wife's gentle hand that guided him through matters of the families and children of Clan Fraser.
And now, with this one? A way to ease the pain he saw at her eyes. She had been sorely used. The bruises were still there. But was there more that might show itself in the weeks and months to come? A bastard child that would be a constant reminder?
"Ye must know that I am grateful to ye. And proud of ye as well," he told her with the words that had been there from the beginning when he was told what had happened, how she had protected his family, the price that had been paid.
Proud? Grateful? The words caught her off guard. How as it possible to be proud of something so brutal and ugly?
He took her hand in his scarred one, hers slender but with a surprising strength when it came to tending a wound, setting a bone, or easing a fever while his much larger one was more comfortable wielding a sword.
Courage and strength.
"What ye did for my family... for Brynna and the bairns, the others, and for me, takes a rare courage that few have, lass. Ye ken?"
When she didn't respond, he smiled gently.
"Tis one thing for a man to face another with the sword or war axe, but to face an enemy as you have takes a courage few men possess. I hope that my sons and daughter have that sort of courage. " He turned her slender hand over in his.
"Ye have been in the fire of battle, lass, the same as any kinsman."
He thought of something his father once said to him after his first encounter with thieves who raided their cattle, a bloody exchange where he'd received his first battle wounds. He had been only fourteen years, but already rode with his father's warriors and Gabhran. It was something Ruari had also learned at a young age.
"What doesna kill ye, makes ye stronger. Ye are strong, like my Brynna. No one can take that from ye. Do ye ken, lass?"
Her throat tightened. She nodded.
"If ye had it to do over, knowing the price to be paid, would ye do it?"
After much thought, she whispered fiercely, "Aye! I'd never let that murderin' bastard have the bairns, nor any kin."
James pulled her to him, his large hand gentle as he pressed her head against his shoulder as he would comfort one of his children.
" Bi furasta ," he told her in the Gaelic. "Be at ease then, lass. All will be well."
She watched the next morning as Malcolm MacKenzie and Robert DeBrus rode out through the gates of Lechlede, mist swirling around them, like ghosts astride ghost horses.
It had snowed again during the night, their hooves muffled, riders wrapped in thick fleece and heavy mantles. They might have been any hunting party setting out to replenish the food stores at Lechlede. But they didn't hunt deer or boar.
They hunted a more dangerous animal.
"You want to go with them," Brynna Fraser said as her husband, hands braced at either side of the stone sill at the window opening in the tower chamber.
Debris had been cleared away, broken shutters replaced against winter storms that had set in. Now one of those shutters was open, the chieftain of Clan Fraser staring out at the gray morning light and the riders that slowly disappeared in the mist.
"Aye." He would not lie to her.
It was his duty, his responsibility since he was hardly more than a lad. To protect, to guide his clan, and now he stood at that window opening and was forced to wait. As others would wait out the coming days.
"You would have gone if not for us," she whispered coming to stand beside him.
He slipped an arm about her shoulders and gathered her to his side, needing that quiet strength that was so much a part of her, that had helped her survive so much, something he had not known that he needed once. And now found he needed in ways he could not explain; in a soft smile, in the way she held back what she would rather have said and waited for him to speak, to shout, to let go the anger, then come to him with understanding and gentleness.
Peace is what she brought him, in the midst of uncertainty, pain, and loss, and the unspoken that she would always be there for him no matter the enemies or old demons that he faced.
"This, Ruari must do," he said with a quiet understanding of such things, or he would never be free of Blackwood. It went beyond Calais. It was an evil that must end.
"This," he made a gesture at the scorched stone walls of the chamber where fire had destroyed most of the furnishings, and where Blackwood believed he had sent a message to him with no idea what he had set in motion--his own destruction.
"You, the bairns, our kinsmen, all of those here, are for me to protect, to keep safe, for their children, and the future."
With the words of Maisel's prophecy ever present, he prayed it would be so.