Chapter 21 Bun Ilidh #2
A cry roared as we clambered out of the skiff and joined the mass.
Mr. MacLeod all but danced ahead, shouting, “ She has come! Banrigh nan Dràgon!” Fording the flood of greetings, we followed him to the largest house.
That proved to be a community building, laid out like the turf-and-stone longhouses I remembered but built with thin, chilly plank walls.
There were three long tables with bench seats, enough for the entire village if they packed in, which they proceeded to do.
Darcy and I were ushered to seats across from each other at the center table. The villagers eagerly settled, some sitting backwards on the benches to watch us.
“What do they expect?” Darcy asked me, his words buried in the din.
“A great wyfe,” I said, not sure how else to articulate the history—and the responsibility—that title carried in the Highlands.
The man’s wyfe, Mistress MacLeod, took a seat beside me and waved hushing gestures at the room. When it quieted, she said, “We read stories sayin’ a dragon burned London. ’Course the newspapers are filled with nonsense, aren’t they? But here ye are, a dragon and a great wyfe.”
Exclamations swept the room, and boots pounded in a rough, regular stomp. Her husband cried out, “ ’Tis the legend reborn!”
“Where did ye fly from?” Mistress MacLeod asked, quieting the room.
She was not the eldest wyfe in the village—I would have placed her in her mid-twenties—but her title “Mistress” signaled authority.
Perhaps that reflected her binding. We had passed their lindworm in the street, a rare breed, this one a ruddy oak-brown.
“Derbyshire,” I answered. “We flew all night.”
“All night! Have ye broken yer fast?” When I shook my head, she fell back in her chair with comic dismay and cried, “Shall we feed the poor lass?”
“Ayes” resounded.
Women ran out and returned with several round, crusty oat bannocks, three battered tin plates of smoked herring, a stone jar of sheep butter, and another of soft cheese.
The food was divided between the tables.
A small dish of dried berries and apples was placed for Darcy and me, likely a treat at this time of year.
I had expected a raft of questions, but absolute quiet fell other than reverent murmurs of “Pass the butter” or “The fish, please.” Darcy and I exchanged a look but joined the meal; it would have been insulting to refuse.
We had landed mid-flight and eaten bread with cheese, but I was starved and wolfed down a chunk of the griddled oat bread slathered with butter.
I avoided the herring—I had developed a petty distrust for fish that stared back at me ever since I was startled by a splashing draca in a river.
That seemed silly now, a childhood fancy, but it had been less than two years ago.
Darcy had steadied me that day—held me, really, as much as propriety allowed. We had known each other a month.
I watched him compliment the bread, and my dishonesty prickled my conscience.
The food, not much for so many, vanished in two minutes.
A peculiar disquiet climbed my shoulders.
I pulled back my hair, tying it—any trace of style had been blasted away by the gale of Yuánchi’s flight—then recognized what made me uneasy.
The villagers’ cheeks were sunken, their necks thin…
every face was gaunt. This village had survived a hungry, hard winter.
A young girl near me was picking crumbs from where the bannocks were sectioned, and I regretted taking a slice.
I turned back and met Darcy’s gaze. He inclined his head infinitesimally to the emptied serving plates. He had noticed also.
Mistress MacLeod introduced herself formally and nodded to Mr. MacLeod, seated beside Darcy. “That firebrand’s m’husband.”
Her husband grinned. “Fire is good for the soul, wyfe, whether it be ’tween a man and a woman or for roasting mutton.
” His eyes glittered in his weather-creased, freckled face.
“A dragon, though. That’s a fire that’ll put me in my place!
” The other men chuckled agreement, and Mr. MacLeod capped it by shouting, “And put others in their place, too!”
“Haud yer wheesht,” his wyfe snapped. Her husband grinned.
“What’re those?” the girl who had been picking up crumbs asked me, pointing at the goggles dangling from my neck. She was about nine.
“They are like spectacles,” I said, “but to block the wind when we fly.”
“By golly.” Her lips blew an inexpert whistle. “Ye ride in the sky? Like a flying kelpie?”
“What is a kelpie?” I asked, resisting an urge to attempt her Scottish lilt. It was terribly infectious.
“A water horse,” Mistress MacLeod answered for her.
“This girl loves those bonny stories. In the old times, they talked of all manner of creatures rising from the lochs. Folk dinnae ken it was draca sleeping in the water, so they dreamed up nymphs and kelpies. But it’s all nonsense. ” She ruffled the girl’s hair.
The girl, evidently her daughter, squawked “Ma!” then asked me, “Is yer dragon hungry, too?”
The answer was yes, but I did not want to say it. I had seen a few goats in the village, but after a long flight, Yuánchi could have downed them all as a soup course. We could not strip these people of their livestock.
Mr. MacLeod, firebrand or not, had been listening to his daughter with a fond smile. He gave a wry snort. “Does yer dragon like sheep?” He pitched that to carry across the tables, and laughs rose.
In truth, sheep were not Yuánchi’s favorite—the wool caught in his teeth—but he would eat them. “He does. But you have been generous already. We cannot eat your flock.”
Mr. MacLeod rubbed his hands together with glee. “Och, but we’re arse deep in sheep! The more he eats, the merrier.” There were scattered “Ayes” again, but Mistress MacLeod frowned.
“Why are ye come here?” she asked.
The meal had been quiet, but now there was true silence. Every breath seemed to stop.
“We seek something from the past,” Darcy answered, choosing his words carefully.
The expectant quiet soured into shuffling feet and disappointed expressions.
“The past?” Mr. MacLeod blurted in disbelief. “What about the present? Yer astride a bleedin’ dragon!”
“Hush,” his wyfe scolded. “What from the past?”
Darcy hesitated, looking at me for guidance.
“They’re seeking the flute,” Mr. MacLeod broke in flatly. “Said so by the castle. It’s the legends come true! Banrigh nan Dràgon heard our call. She’ll bring justice.” Boots pounded throughout the room.
Mistress MacLeod rose, and the noise stopped. “Justice is cool headed. We’ve a right to anger, but a fist swung by anger is revenge, not justice.” She flapped her hand at the audience. “Look at ye gawking. Naught more’ll happen today. Time’s wasting. Get on with ye.”
The crowd filed out with curious glances and whispers, leaving the MacLeods with us.
Mistress MacLeod sank to the bench and rubbed her temples. Her thinned face was shadowed by the morning sun pouring through the open door. “Never seen a dragon afore today, and the sun is bare risen, but I’d be hard pressed to say if that creature you ride is scarlet or black.”
“He is the scarlet dragon, Yuánchi,” I said. “He is… ill.”
“Scarlet. But ye carry the dagger, lass.”
“I am the wyfe of war,” I admitted.
Mr. MacLeod slapped his palm triumphantly on the table.
His wyfe waited until the clap had faded. “Hard to imagine a wyfe of war satisfied by stories, but stories is all we have of the flute.”
“We would have your stories, if you will share them,” Darcy said.
“The story is told by the stones. I’ll hae to think on it.”
The MacLeods insisted on hosting us as their guests, scoffing good-naturedly when Darcy offered to pay for lodging. There was no space for Yuánchi to land in the village, so Mr. MacLeod hiked up Helmsdale hill with us to retrieve the saddlebags.
At the top, he stared slack-jawed at Yuánchi’s bulk.
“The size o’ him.” He shook his head as if rattling his brains, then barked a laugh.
“Feeding him’s nae problem. There’s big flocks inland a few miles.
” With a grin, he pointed. I imagined the distant sheep, and Yuánchi was in pursuit the next moment.
We braced against the hammering gusts as he powered off the hill’s edge, led by the pair of firedrakes and following the river upstream.
Back in the village, the MacLeods’ bound lindworm waited by their threshold.
I rested my palm on his scaly head in greeting, and he returned a muscular, steaming yawn.
The home itself was a long, narrow rectangle, the rooms placed one after another.
There was a parents’ bedroom with an alcove for a baby, then a combined kitchen and eating room heated by an open and smoky peat fire, then another tiny bedroom used by their daughter.
She cheerfully presented it to us, rescuing her cloth doll off the pillow before moving to her parents’ room.
That left us a single, narrow bed buried in homespun wool throws and a strip of empty wooden floor about a pace wide.
There was a window the size of a book with blurry, cheap glass polished scrupulously clean.
Mistress MacLeod bid us to settle in, adding, “Rest ye after yer travel. It’ll be a long day tomorrow,” before departing.
That left Darcy and me alone. Darcy’s posture was over-exact, a tall man in a small room.
My own hands clasped awkwardly. Since the lake, we had barely touched each other.
When we first met in that forest clearing, dodging his blade had been a delightful game, a contest that left me amused and excited.
That memory felt foreign now, but the thrill heated my thoughts, like the private glee I had felt sparring words with proud Mr. Darcy when he first arrived in Hertfordshire.
I had an unpleasant suspicion that some poorly repressed part of me thought assaulting men, verbally or otherwise, was flirtation.