Chapter 37
Spiorad dorch-- dark spirit, the old ones called it as the wind howled around the stone tower by night, swirling snow across the top of the wall.
And day after day, Alix watched as James Fraser and his men rode out, searching in spite of the weather, riding far, to Cu Lodain, then to the old place where Ruari had taken her, returning exhausted, the horses covered with frozen mud, their silence weighing heavy on all.
Three days, then four, and still they found nothing.
Was Ruari still alive?
There had been no word, even from the English they encountered, one here, two there, trying to make their way to the borderlands and England.
They had found the one called Mallory and five other men, near frozen, afoot, their bright red tunics gone, a pathetic lot. None had raised their weapons, too weak from hunger and the cold, and James had not the stomach for blood.
He had spoken with Mallory, but there was no word of what brought down the attack at Cu Lodain, only a vague story from one of the men of an English soldier that had ridden up to the gate that last night with a message for Blackwood, that none could find afterward.
A message. James had smiled, but it was bittersweet.
After the bodies DeBrus and his men had found in the forest he had no doubt who that English soldier was, or the message he had brought for Blackwood. It was there in the charred ruins of Cu Lodain, a stark, lonely, ruined place of death.
He had held his men back and let the English go to reach the borderlands if they could. And then they had returned to Lechlede once more.
She was there, a slender lass who had endured much. She kept her watch as all at Lechlede did, then quietly turned away. But the tears were there. Brynna spoke of it--both anger and regret in one so young and beautiful.
He found her often with his daughter and the young pup she was determined to save, the wee thing flopping about the kitchen with a splint at its leg, equally determined with a fat stomach, his wee daughter laughing and chasing it about, as Alix looked on.
He knew of the hand-fast between her and Ruari. He also knew that she had released him from it, but as far as he was concerned she was a Fraser now. Perhaps she always had been from the moment she marched straight up to him as a child, fearless, stubborn, with a courage she hadn't even known she possessed at the time--Fraser courage.
What did she see now when she watched over his daughter and the pup? Was it a reminder of another, wounded, crippled with the loss of his arm, who she had cared for, fought to keep him alive, and then given him back his life? As she had given this scraggly bit of mischief back its life?
She had been at the steps to the hall when they returned. No words had passed between them. None were necessary, she saw the answer in his weary men, passing among them, searching each face, then quietly returning to the hall. But it was there in her slender shoulders, the fear and grief she carried, as they all carried it.
He squatted down beside his daughter and wondered if she would encounter such pain and grief, and prayed he could keep her and his sons from it.
"What have ye here, miss?" he asked, brushing back a dark red tendril of hair that had come loose from her braid.
She turned those dark blue eyes on him, and he felt a tightness in his chest. She had her grandfather's color as did Ruari, but she had her mother's eyes and the curve of her mouth.
Pity it was, from a father's point of view, she would be a beauty. If a handful of one, and as fierce as any of his sons.
"Loie," she replied. "She grows stronger every day. See how she runs.
She dissolved into sweet laughter at the pup's awkward movement, chasing after a wad of yarn that had been rolled into a tiny ball, then sliding to a stop with the thing in its mouth like some creature it had caught, and fiercely shaking the tiny head.
"She will be a fine hunter, da."
"Aye, she will," James agreed. He looked over at Alix, the somber expression she usually wore disappearing behind the smile as she watched his daughter.
"We will go out again at first light."
Alix nodded. They were kind words. Words meant to give hope. How difficult it must be for him to ride out with their kinsmen, hoping to find some trace of a brother he loved, then returning, the saddle of the extra horse they took with them, empty.
"What if... " She took a deep breath, the thought that had come to her again and again painful, the words that she struggled to say and yet didn't want to say, somehow making it seem more real.
"What if he was not able to leave Cu Lodain? The fire... What if... ?"
James shook his head. "There is nothing to make me believe that he died at Cu Lodain. I canna believe it!"
He looked at his daughter again. She stared up at him, and he was reminded there were times his words were too strong, the words he used with his men, when they needed to be gentle.
He was not accustomed to such things. He was responsible for the safety and well being of many, and there were times, many times there was no place for gentleness. This was not one of those, as his wife oft reminded him.
"I wilna believe it, lass. And ye must not, as well. " He rose then and held out a hand to his daughter.
"Come now. Yer mother will be askin' for ye."
"No," Eleanor replied. "I must stay and take care of Loie." It was not a question but a statement.
James exchanged a look with Alix--a look she thought most fathers must have when dealing with headstrong, willful children.
"I need her help with the wee thing," she joined the conspiracy.
James Fraser's eyes narrowed. He knew well enough when he'd been out-maneuvered, and by two lasses no less. Something the English had not been able to accomplish.
"Aye, I can see that," he replied, running a hand across his mouth to hide the smile as he left.
"I will tell yer mother where ye can be found."
First light. Alix was awake long before that.
There was a break in the storm, the snow replaced by an icy rain. And the wind was no more than a whisper.
It would not last. Dark clouds swept down from the highlands and would find them by nightfall, and there were those in need.
Word had come from the village below the day before of a handful who needed her care, along with one of the women whose time was near with the bairn she carried. The boy who'd been sent stood before the hearth at the kitchen shivering long after his thick mantle had dried.
His face was red in spite of the cold, and a fever had set in. Alix had promptly given him a tonic for the fever and made a pallet for him in the adjacent chamber and given instructions for everyone to stay away until the fever was gone.
She had watched over him through the day. No other maladies appeared, no boils or blisters at his throat, no aches of the ear, and his fever soon broke. By nightfall, he had been well enough to return, but she had spoken against it.
Now that the weather had eased, she sent word to the stables that she would have need of a horse, then packed a large leather pouch with her medicines and the herbs she would need for the assortment of ailments usually found when she made a visit.
It was good to busy herself, she told herself again as she made her way to the stables as the sky first lightened.
A horse waited with others that had been saddled and waited for the chieftain and his men.
"Aye, miss," Malcolm MacKenzie greeted her. "Donal saddled the palfrey for ye. She's gentle and sure-footed enough."
Old Donal nodded a greeting, tying the closure of the thick woolen coat. shoulders.
"He'll see ye safe to the village." Malcolm MacKenzie announced as Donal led a grey mare from the stall.
When she would have protested, he repeated, "He will see ye safe to the village."
The gates were already open as she guided the palfrey through, Donal following silently, his bearded face hidden behind the thick scarf in the drizzling rain.
She looked back when they reached the top of the hill before it dropped down to the village below as the dark shapes of a score of clansmen, led by James Fraser, rode through the gates and turned toward the distant hills.
'Please' , she whispered a silent prayer, then gently squeezed the palfrey's sides as the riders disappeared into the gathering mist.
"Ye must eat, miss," Tobin Emery said, glancing past her to his wife, who laid at the pallet.
The pains had started up only a short while before, after attending an assortment of cuts, burns, and a nasty head wound after an altercation at the tavern the night before. She had arrived at Tobin Emery's lodge to find his wife, Annie, well along with the first pains that came with childbirth.
Younger bairns had crowded near at first, fascinated by the care she took in checking their mother, but they eventually grew bored when the new babe had not yet made an appearance.
She shook her head. "There is no time. This one is in a hurry." She then instructed Tobin's mother, Seasaidh, to help Annie to the place she'd prepared where she could stand as the child started to make its way into the world, and let nature take its course.
They worked together, one on each side of Annie, their arms bracing her, hands at her arms as the next pains came. The mother of three other bairns, Annie had promised her husband a son this time.
Alix checked her as a pain receded and another one came. She felt the babe's head.
"One more, Annie," she told the young woman, then knelt before her with a linen cloth as the babe's head emerged.
A small shoulder appeared next, then a whoosh of fluid and the babe slipped into her arms.
"Ye have fine son, Annie," she announced, wrapping the babe in the warm linen after cutting the cord.
Seasaidh nodded. "I fine loud bairn," she announced with a grin.
Tobin and the other children gathered round as Annie smiled over her son.
"I thank ye, miss. He is a right fine lad."
As if she had anything to do with it.
"Yer Annie did all the work."
She stayed with them a while longer, as Annie cradled her son, asleep for now. She made a tonic from the herbs she brought to ease the cramping that Annie would have for a while. It would also help her milk come in.
"I will see ye in a few days," she told them as Donal returned and waited with the horses.
The sky had grown dark with the coming story, nightfall not far behind.
"The chieftain said ye were to be back long afore now, miss."
She said her farewells to Tobin and his family. They had struggled after earlier hardships, including the loss of a first babe, but now with four healthy children and Tobin's strong hand and keen ways with the cattle he herded for the clan.
The air was sharp, with a bite to it of the coming storm as she stepped from their lodge at the edge of the village.
Donal helped her astride the palfrey then handed her the leather bag that contained her herbs and powders.
They were not the only ones about even as the weather closed in once more and lights glowed from window openings at the village.
The column of riders crested the hill just ahead of them, silhouetted against the sky as the last light of day slowly disappeared beneath the bank of clouds as their clansmen returned from their long ride before the storm broke, a riderless horse led beside one.
"Best get back to the hall, miss."
She turned the palfrey up the hill, the return ride somehow much longer than the one that morning.
She saw it at the faces of her kinsmen and their chieftain as they entered the yard behind them; the weariness, disappointment, even anger in a fierce frown, a look that angled away from hers that they had failed once more. And with each failed search, a possible truth that none wanted to give speak of.
She knew it, had spoken that same fear to James Fraser. What if... ?
As Donal led their horses to the stables, she stood at the open gate, staring out across the snow covered expanse to the east, toward Cu Lodain, as the growing darkness seemed to swallow the light. She felt as if the darkness was swallowing her, where there was only a cold empty void.
She wrapped her arms around herself as the tears came, hot against her frozen cheeks. She cursed Blackwood, cursed herself for a fool, then cursed another.
Damn ye, Ruari Fraser! Ye promised me... ! Ye promised me!
The tears stung. She blinked them back. And cursed again.
"Ruari... " She blinked back new tears and wiped her eyes again.
Had she seen it, or only imagined it? Wished for it as the light faded into darkness, as she'd wished it every passing hour the past days?
A rider. Too far away...
She continued out the gates even as a Fraser kinsman called out, a few steps, then a half dozen more, staring into the distance.
Alix ignored her kinsman, ignored the cold at her feet that soaked through her boots as she squinted through the gathering darkness.
It might be her imagination or a trick of the fading light. Then moving slowly closer--a single rider.
A warrior from one of the other clans? A kinsman returned, or a messenger?
There had been a handful the past days, braving the weather, with messages for the chieftain.
But a single rider, alone? Without other kinsman, or guards?
Alone, outlined by the dying light... the angle of the shoulders just so as if one arm was held against him, the same as another rider, another day, the memory sharp and crystal clear, one that the child she had been had held onto, with the sun bright at his dark hair as he had stopped and turned in the saddle, the look in his eyes--laughter, teasing her then for the child she was...
Then she was running. She stumbled the snow dragging at her. She pushed back to her feet, her throat and lungs aching from the cold, unable to believe, yet needing to believe.
Please, let it be!
He was off his horse, and caught her, pulling her against him with a fierceness as if he could pull her inside him. Then his mouth came down on hers, breathing her in, tasting her, smothering anything she would have said.
Only this, her body against his, her arms around his neck. No words, no anger, just this, the one thing that had kept him going, kept him fighting his way back... to her.
The growth of beard at his face scraped her skin. She took it all.
"Ruari... I... " she tried to say what she had wanted to tell him since he'd last ridden out but the words caught in her throat.
His hand right closed gently over her mouth, silencing whatever it was she had been about to say.
"It does not matter," he whispered. "Nothing else matters. Only you."
Then he cradled her face in both hands, one calloused, the other made of metal, a bone-aching weariness in the expression at his face and in his eyes. Everything he would have told her, his throat raw from the cold, everything he'd said to himself over and over the past days.
It didn't matter.
Blackwood was dead, and everything he'd done had died with him.
She was his. She had always been his and nothing would ever change that. He pressed his forehead against hers. She was warm, real, not some ghostly image that came to him in the deep cold of the night...
She was his heart and his soul, his safe place.
"You are mine," his voice was very nearly gone from the cold. Nothing else mattered.
Alix laid a hand against the beard at his cheek. Tears streamed her cheeks.
" Bheir mi dhuibh a h-uile rud a th ’annam," she whispered .
" I give ye all that I am."
an deireadh
(not really the end—read on)