Chapter 10 The Dead Are Buried With The Past
The Dead Are Buried With The Past
Senga woke up half cold, half warm. She had fallen asleep curled against Noah, warm and safe, but her back must have been facing the side of her tent as she slept.
Now, the bed was empty, and while she was curled around the warm part, a damp coldness crept through the side of the tent, chilling her back.
She shivered, tightening into a ball.
“Ye are awake, I see. I was about to wake ye. We are preparing to leave soon.”
She glanced up and found Noah crouched in the corner of the tent, washing his face from a bowl of chilly-looking water. He wore no shirt, and the water dripped down his bare chest, getting tangled in the dark curls of his chest hair.
“Leaving?” she echoed, trying to wipe sleep out of her eyes.
She felt moderately less tired than yesterday, but the damp cold seemed to be getting right into her bones.
“Aye. It’s not safe here. We’re going back to the Keep, and we’re taking the surviving villagers with us.
” Noah explained, drying his face on a scrap of fabric.
“We only have so many horses, and they’ll want to take rests, considering the state they are in.
So, we need to leave early to account for that.
Here isn’t safe, as I said, and I want to spend the least amount of time on the road as possible.
They’ve already begun taking down the tents and preparing to leave. We need to go as soon as possible.”
“I understand,” Senga nodded.
She climbed out of bed, biting back an exclamation on the bitter cold, and began to dress hastily. Last night seemed very far away, but of course Noah was right.
She felt moderately better once she was dressed and ready, her almost-silver hair brushed out and rebraided.
Crawling out of the tent, she blinked in the early morning sunlight.
The sun had just come up, and most of the tents were already taken down.
Nobody seemed to have noticed that she emerged from Noah’s tent, but it was difficult not to feel self-conscious.
Abruptly, a thought landed on her like a brick dropped from a height, a memory from her conversation with her father. Sucking in a breath, Senga spun around, grabbing Noah by the shoulders as he came out of the tent.
“My father told me that Keep Kenneth was their next target,” she gasped. “I forgot, I never… I didn’t tell ye! He told me to my face that it was where they were going next.”
Noah’s expression darkened. “Ye are sure?”
“Aye, I’m sure.”
“Right. Well, I will have word sent to them as soon as possible.”
“I should have told ye before.”
He reached out, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear.
“It’s alright, lass. Ye are telling me now. It’s going to be alright, ye know. We’ll be safe.”
She nodded, smiling faintly. As she met his eye, Senga realized that she was just as in love with him as she had always been.
But what lay ahead?
Senga insisted on letting someone else ride Bluebell.
Many of the soldiers and healers offered their horses to the weak, injured villagers.
The villagers accepted gratefully, although their smiles and eyes were still hollow.
The two boys who’d hidden behind the barrels were the ones who got to ride Bluebell.
They seemed the chirpiest of the survivors, arms wrapped around each other, occasionally patting Bluebell’s neck with awe.
There was certainly something to be said for the resilience of childhood.
They had buried the last of the dead early that morning. It had taken all night, with men and healers working in shifts, to collect all the bodies together and bury them in several mass graves.
It felt blasphemous, somehow, to bury them in mass graves, but there was simply no time to bury each person individually, and there was no way they could have been left behind for the birds and beasts to feast on. No, that couldn’t happen. It couldn’t.
The lines of hanged corpses had been cut down carefully, one by one, and added to the rows of dead. Frankly, Senga would have preferred to burn the whole village down to remove the stain of fear and misery from the landscape altogether.
Noah had said no, though. Others had to remember, he’d told her. Others had to see.
It was hard to argue with that, but Senga knew that for a long, long time, she would see the faces of the dead behind her eyes when she slept.
“Lost in thought there, lass,” came Noah’s deep, amused voice. She flinched, glancing around to find him standing right behind her, grinning. “Ye should stay aware of yer surroundings, especially on a road like this.”
“A road like what? It’s like every other road in the Highlands,” Senga quipped.
The road was long and wide, stretching behind them until it whipped around behind a hill and yawning ahead of them until the mists swallowed it up.
It felt as though they were suspended in time.
There was no past, no future, only here and now.
Water dripped down the back of her collar, and her cloak had long since passed its saturation point.
She was wet, but too wet to feel it any longer.
There was a sort of relief in that, at least.
Noah chuckled, shaking his head. “Stay close to me, lass. I don’t anticipate trouble—there are scouts ahead of us and behind—but being on guard as if expecting trouble is always a wise thing to do.”
They trudged onwards, saving their breath for the journey ahead. Noah stayed by Senga’s side, and whenever she glanced up at him, a warmth spread through her chest, despite the cold and rain.
“How are ye feeling?” he asked, after about half an hour of walking.
“What do ye mean?”
He shrugged. “We’ve seen horrors over the past day or so. Ye have traveled far. Ye are cold, wet, tired, probably hungry, and somebody else is riding yer horse. How are ye feeling?”
She let out a ragged sigh. “Angry.”
He gave a thoughtful nod. “That’s a good feeling. Sensible.”
“I… I keep thinking of everybody who died in that village. They’re innocent. They did nothing wrong. There’s no reason for them to have died. They are only dead because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time. It’s not fair, Noah.”
“I agree.”
“I want justice for them,” she continued, pushing on. “I want their killers to pay. I want my father to pay.”
A cold feeling trickled down her spine at the mention of her father. It had been a long time since Robert Murray haunted her nightmares. She felt Noah’s eyes on her and looked up at him, meeting his eyes and willing him to understand.
“I used to dream of him barging into my room in the dead of night,” she whispered, her voice cracking.
“I dreamt that he would drag me away, back to Keep Murray, to face a horrible fate. My imagination conjured him up in every dark corner of the convent. Sometimes, I dreamt that he came to get me in broad daylight, when I was surrounded by my friends. I dreamt that he’d drag me off, or order his men to do so, while the Abbess and the people I loved simply stood, blank-faced, and watched. ”
“That would never happen,” Noah insisted. “The Abbess would fight for ye herself. Yer friends would sooner die than let Laird Murray take ye.”
Senga swallowed thickly. “That’s what I’m afraid of.
That they’ll die to save me. I dreamt of that too, ye know.
Of my father executing the people who tried to protect me.
As the years went by, and I began to feel safer, I dreamt it less, but still.
Still, I was frightened. I suppose I always knew that I couldn't hide forever. In a way, I’m glad he came for me here, not when I was at the convent.
I would have spent the rest of my life looking over my shoulder, waiting for him to come for me.
Now I know that he’s coming, and I can… I can make my peace with it,” she added, shrugging.
Noah scowled at that. “Making yer peace sounds too much like surrender.”
Senga gave a short laugh. “I’m not much good at that. Even when I try to give up something, it follows me around like a dog at my heels.”
“Very picturesque.”
They walked on for a while more. Senga stumbled in stepping over a wide puddle, her feet slipping in the mud on the other side of the puddle. Noah was there at once, his hand warm and safe.
“Ye all right?” he asked, voice low and concerned. “I can carry ye on my back for a while, if ye like.”
She gave a snort. “Aye, that would make us both look fine, wouldn’t it? I would look like a wee silly lass who’s bitten off more than she can chew. Ye, I suppose, would look like a fine gentleman.”
“Look like? I am a fine gentleman. And is that a no to a ride on my back?”
She bit the corners of her cheeks, holding back a smile. “Look behind us. See how miserable and tired everybody is. If we start frolicking around, somebody is going to push us into the mud.”
He gave a throaty laugh. “I cannot argue with ye. Come, then, let’s talk of happier things. Ye have spoken of yer bad memories of the convent and yer bad dreams. What of yer good memories or good dreams?”
Senga brightened. “Oh, good memories? I have plenty of those. I have wonderful friends. I felt as though I had a true family in the convent. The Abbess was like a mother, watching over us all. There was just so much to do. I was never bored, I was always busy. I loved it. I never wanted to leave. When I started to believe that ye were either dead or not coming for me, I thought about what I’d do.
When Freya first came, things began to change, and I decided then that I would become a nun. ”
Noah’s step faltered, and he glanced down at her, eyebrows lifted. “A nun? I cannot see ye as a nun, Senga.”
Senga flushed, remembering their bodies tangled together under the blankets just the night before.
“No, nor can I. But at the time it seemed like a good idea.”
There was a little more silence after that, but it was an easy, comfortable sort of silence. After a moment, Senga glanced thoughtfully up at Noah.