Chapter 5 #2
Ailsa put a hand on her shoulder in gratitude. “It should. Have someone fetch me if ye need help before I return.”
“I will. Now, go on and get some rest.”
Ailsa took Maighread’s advice and headed to the great hall for a meal.
Expecting several people to approach her while she waited for food to be brought to her, she was dismayed that the first to do so were the two women most likely to spread rumors.
“Who is the man the guards carried in two days ago?” The older of the two, Lorna, asked first.
“Why have we no’ seen him since? Did he die?” Her friend Fingalina demanded and crossed her arms over her skinny frame.
Ailsa knew the less she told these two, the better. “Maighread is caring for him. He’s been unconscious most of the time,” she added with her fingers crossed under the table for the lie. Well, it was mostly true. He’d been sleeping a lot with the fever.
“Is he going to die? ’Twould be a shame,” Lorna said. “I got a glimpse of him. He was quite handsome for a man in his condition.”
“’Twould be nice to have a braw, new man in the keep,” Fingalina added. “And a handsome one.” She huffed out a sigh. “I hope Maighread is taking very good care of him.”
“I’m sure she is,” Ailsa said.
“Ye dinna ken who he is? Where he’s from? I heard he could be a raider from Orkney. Ach, nay, what if the Norse king means to attack while the laird is away—”
Ailsa would have laughed—a lone Norse raider sent by their clan’s main ally? But derision changed to relief when her friend Maesie, who worked in the kitchen and gardens, brought her food and shooed away the two busybodies.
“I ken ye are tired. I’ll keep an eye out in this direction in case ye need me to chase anyone else away,” Maesie promised. “Just give me a wave.”
“Thank ye,” Ailsa told her, “but those two were probably the worst.”
“Wave if ye need me,” Maesie repeated and went back toward the hallway leading to the kitchen and the herbal. And their mysterious guest.
Ailsa spent the rest of her meal enjoying her food, interrupted only by friends who stopped long enough to greet her.
She went up to her chamber intending to get a few hours’ sleep, but woke close to sunset.
She dressed and went back to the herbal.
“Maighread, I’m so sorry, I meant to come back before now, but I overslept. ”
“Ye needed the rest,” Maighread said, turning away from the cabinet door she’d been behind while she looked for something within it.
“How is he?” Ailsa studied his sleeping form, still huddled under a pile of plaids and furs.
“Well enough. His fever is gone. He’s still sleeping off the last potion I gave him to keep him quiet.”
As she finished speaking, the man groaned and Maighread hurried to his side.
“So, ye are back among us,” Maighread told him when his eyes opened and cleared. She put a hand on his forehead and nodded. “Ye’ll soon be better. Yer leg is doing well and so are the rest of yer scrapes and cuts.”
“Thank ye,” he said on a deep exhale. “The fever is gone?”
Maighread nodded.
“Ye saved my life.”
“Nay so much as that, I think,” Maighread told him, “but ye’ll enjoy it more now that ye are on the mend. Ailsa,” she said and looked up, “would ye go to the hall and have one of the lasses bring a good meat broth and watered ale for our lad?”
“I’ll fetch it myself from the kitchen,” Ailsa offered, suspecting that he might need some privacy. She left the healer to help him. The ever-present guard stood outside the door and she could call for help from him if she needed it.
Cook had what the healer requested, and Ailsa added a request of her own. “Have ye enough water heated for a bath for our visitor tonight?”
“Nay, I dinna think so. I’ll send the lads with a tub while more water heats.”
“Please do. Maighread hasna said she’ll allow it, so she doesna need it yet, but soon.”
Cook nodded as she put a bowl of broth and several cups of ale and water on a tray. “Can ye carry so much, lass?”
Ailsa hefted the tray. “Aye. ’Tisna far, and the guard can get the door for me. Thank ye.”
“Send word when ye want the bath.”
Ailsa smiled and took the tray back to the herbal, pausing at the door to let the guard make certain she would be welcome.
Maighread waved her in, so she entered and set the tray on the table where the man sat upright on a stool clad in the sheets and plaids he’d taken from the cot.
He’d wrapped one around his waist and the other covered his back and shoulders like a shawl.
“I’ve asked Cook to ready a bath for him. If ye approve, of course.”
“I approve.” He spoke up with enthusiasm, louder and with more energy than he’d demonstrated up to now.
“As do I,” Maighread added. “Clean, ye will feel better, and yer wounds are healed over well enough.”
“I’ll go tell Cook,” Ailsa said and turned to go.
“Nay, lass,” Maighread said, stopping her. “I’ll go. Stay here and make certain he drinks all of that broth. The ale he can drink as he wants it. Water, too. I’ll send the lads in with the tub. I’ll be back in a wee,” she added and left them.
“Alone at last,” the man quipped.
Surprised at his display of good humor, Ailsa grinned. “And ye with naught to do but eat,” she said, pointing to the bowl in front of him. “Ye heard the healer.”
“I did. I’m also certain I didna dream it, but heard ye say ye felt bad for turning me away. That ye feared what yer da would do. I’m grateful for yer care. Yers and the healer’s. I dinna want yer da to be cross with ye for helping me. I will leave as soon as I am able.”
“To go where? Do ye yet ken yer name?” Despite her earlier suspicions, the haunted look in his eyes told her he still didn’t remember who he was or where he belonged. “Nay, ye canna leave until Maighread says ye may, and nay until ye recall enough to be able to go home.”
“If I have a home.” His mouth flattened into a thin line.
“I recalled a name, or dreamt it. Anders. I dinna ken if ’tis mine, but ye may as well use it,” he said and shrugged, causing his shawl to slip from one muscular shoulder.
He pulled it back up, his gaze somewhere off in a distance only he could see. If he could.
“Anders. I like it. And dinna say that. Ye must have a home. A family. Ye came from somewhere.” She gestured toward his clothes, neatly folded on a bench by the door, his boots underneath it.
“My friend Siobhan is a seamstress. She repaired yer clothes and said they are plain but of good quality. I’d judge ye are nay a poor crofter from the boots alone. ”
“Well, that’s a relief,” he said and summoned a grin.
“Eat,” she commanded, frowning at the tray before him. “Ye might be a boot maker, a fisherman or some other trade from a nearby village, or a warrior in service to a nearby clan. Someone must be searching for ye—or will be soon,” she continued while Anders took a few sips of broth.
“Nearby clans? Who? Mayhap I’ll recognize one of them.”
“Gunn, Keith, MacKay, and Oliphant are the closest. We’re tied most closely to the Norse king Erik and to Orkney."
He shook his head. “I dinna recognize any of them. No’ as mine, nor as friends—or enemies.”
“Is the broth too much for ye?” She changed the subject. She could see he had hoped one she named would elicit something … anything … from the void in his mind. Belly hollow with disappointment, she watched him set his bowl aside, frowning.
“Nay, ’tisna that. I dinna understand why I canna remember. The harder I try, the more empty my mind seems.”
“Ye will remember,” she said and put a hand on his bare arm. “Yer skin is warm, but not fever-hot. Ye must eat and get stronger. As yer body heals, so will yer mind.”
He laid a hand over hers. “Ye ken this?”
“I pray ’tis so.”
“Ye are a kind lass.” He lifted his hand and stroked her cheek. “And a lovely one, too. In other circumstances, I would—”
A noise in the hallway stopped him. He dropped his hand.
Before she could blink, he stood and shifted around her as if to get between her and whatever was coming toward them in the hall.
“Dinna fash,” Ailsa told him. “’Tis the lads with yer tub. The guard will let them in. Once ye finish eating, ye will be able to bathe.”
Barely out of a fever, weak from days without food and enough to drink, and with nay weapons to hand, he’d surged to his feet and put himself between her and the door.
To protect her. He moved like a warrior, quickly and decisively.
She hoped he could remember something about himself before her father returned.
Her father would want answers, and at the moment, Anders had none—not even certainty about his name.
If Maighread was right that he was a warrior, Ailsa’s father wouldn’t quit until he had the answers he sought.
No wonder Maighread was determined to keep Anders here.
As he slowly settled back down on the stool he’d vacated with such speed, she let her gaze rake over his chest and abdomen where the plaid around his shoulders gaped.
She enjoyed the view, but had to shift her attention to the doorway as the door swung open and six of the older lads appeared with a large wooden tub.
Two entered in front, two along each side, and two more carried it from behind.
Maighread had sent the largest tub the clan owned.
Ailsa wondered how many buckets of water it would take to fill it.
Around a man as large as Anders, probably not that many.
Cook might have had enough hot water ready when Ailsa asked her for the bath.
The lads took their time letting the tub down and positioning it, while staring at Anders. The bravest one of them spoke up. “He’s the stranger?”
Ailsa nodded, embarrassed that they would speak about him as if he wasn’t there.
“I am,” Anders answered, surprising her. “Thank ye for bringing in the tub.”
“Ye are a big one,” another lad said, gaining confidence after the first lad spoke.
“Aye, but I think I’ll fit in there,” Anders told him and nodded toward the tub.
The lads laughed and went out the door.