Chapter 21 #2
“Aye. King David would see peace come to all of Scotia,” Lael defended. “He wills it with this union. He could have hung our brother; and yet he did not. Instead, he sought an alliance with our people, even despite that it will bring him grief once William Fitz Duncan learns the truth.”
Aidan swore softly, his anger returning. “What else should I know, brother?”
Keane peered back at Aidan with hard, glittering eyes, unwilling to speak ill of his bride, whether or not Lianae deserved it.
She might not be standing here at his side, and he didn’t entirely trust her himself, but he dared to hope that someday he might…
and if she carried another man’s babe, no man but Jaime and the king would ever hear of it whilst Keane lived.
“I love her,” he said, and realized only in that instant that it was true.
Aidan lifted a brow. So too did Lael. Keane met each of their gazes and willed them to understand. But he thought he saw Lael smile, though she hid it with a hand.
“But this is joyous news!” Lìli exclaimed, jumping up from the bench and coming forward. “Isn’t it Aidan?”
Aidan jaw remained taut, his eyes glittering as hard as diamonds.
“Aidan please,” Lael begged.
The hall remained silent as they awaited the laird of Dubhtolargg’s response. Finally, he conceded. “Aye,” he said. “’Tis good news… we welcome your Moray bride.”
Having remained quiet long enough, Lachlann cleared his throat. “Much as I loathe to interrupt so much talk of love, shall we go and light the bier before the king arrives?”
“Light the bier! Light the bier!”
Responding to the panicked voices of her kinsmen, Cailin dún Scoti abandoned Lianae upon the beach to light the funeral bier.
Her red hair burning as brightly as the flames she meant to burn, she climbed atop the dais, commanding the torches all be lit, and then she accepted them one by one, tossing them unceremoniously atop the pyre.
As five hundred mounted soldiers marched down the mountain, flames tore across the wood, like a bone-dry field of grain.
Pushing back her cloak over her shoulders, Lianae succumbed to the heat as she watched the flames consume the cadaver, burning through it as though it were made of nothing more than straw.
But why would they burn an effigy?
Remembering the smell of burnt flesh as they’d burned her father’s body, she knew beyond a shadow of doubt that the old woman they’d spoken of was not there on the bier.
And still there was no belying the sense of grief Lianae noted amongst these folk, for there was not a dry eye amidst the lot.
Some wept openly, disconsolately. Others were more stoic, but with bloodstained eyes that gave lie to their quiet sorrow.
And yet surrounded by heart-rent people, she had never felt more alone.
Who would weep for her once she was gone?
Ewen and Graeme were very likely already dead, and at the moment, she felt the loss of hope most acutely.
She had no proof either of her brothers had survived the battle at Stracathro in Forfarshire.
Elspeth was gone. Her mother, gone. Her father, gone.
Her brother Lulach, for all intents and purposes, he was gone as well.
Lianae stood alone, watching the fire burn, mesmerized by the leaping flames, as inch by inch, the hillside gave birth to dozens of campfires.
From the instant they’d arrived in the vale, there had been an air of apprehension amidst the people of this sleepy village, and now that David had marched into the vale with five hundred armed men, a hush fell over the kindred.
They were hiding something, but Lianae didn’t know what—and, still, even if she’d known, she would never tell David aught, for she had more in common with her husband’s kinfolk than she did with the Scots.
Like the Moraymen, these dún Scoti people were now in danger of being extinguished like a candle swallowed by a dark night.
David mac Maíl Chaluim was on the verge of uniting all the clans, but in the process, their legacies would all be lost. Rather than be bolstered by the sight of them, the king’s army felt more like an infestation upon the land—a plague of Scots, with drunken, overloud voices that disrespected the dún Scoti dead.
And in the midst of them all stood the king’s tent, an elaborate silken edifice striped in gold and red.
For all that Lianae felt like an outsider, she knew instinctively that whatever it was that these people were holding close to their vests, it was not something they cared to share with the King of Scotia.