Chapter 14
Logan Galbraith had obviously decided to hang around for a few days longer, and Will did not blame him.
The banquet guests had inadvertently fallen into a mystery.
With feelings of confusion wracking his mind, Will went looking for companionship.
It was then he realized how much he had come to rely on Ailsa for friendship and understanding.
He wandered the empty bailey streets until the smell of freshly tanned hides permeated his senses. Taking it as a sign, Will followed his nose to Tam and Oona’s cottage. He found Tam Tanner busy next to the vats, scraping and smearing something onto the hides.
“Good morrow, Tam Tanner.” Will was on his best behavior, not wanting the kind village folk to think the worst of him since his confrontation with Callum up at the castle. “What have ye goin’ on there?”
Tam grunted but gave a brief smile to his visitor. “I’ll have ye guess, young master.”
Will moved closer to the wooden bench on which the hide was draped. He watched and sniffed. Tam, meanwhile, continued to smear the thick white paste onto the hide after he had scraped the animal skin thin with his knife.
“Hmm, I think I have seen this done before,” Will remarked. “Up in one of the northern ports, they sell the softest hides made from the skins of the Norse deer. The people rake the skins out thin with sharp knives an’ then spread offal guts on the hide to soften it.”
Tam’s smile grew wider. “Aye! It is altogether a less smelly way of tanning. The only thing ye have wrong is the offal. The Norsemen use the animal’s brains, not its guts.”
He jerked his head over to where several hides were stretched out on pegs, and Will went to feel the texture.
“It feels creamy, soft, an’ very pliable. I congratulate ye. The women will be clamoring to cut up one o’ these to make their husband a bonny jacket for winter. But I think I’ll stick to wolf pelt for me sporrans.”
“As ye should, Master,” Tam agreed. “One dirk prick and this leather will fall apart.”
Will was canny enough to know that Tam would never be able to leave the tanning at such a crucial juncture in the process, so he did not waste his breath asking Tam why he was not up at the feast. The sun was westering in the sky; it had been a long and very strange day.
Tam intruded on his thoughts. “Oona came down to bring me a plate o’ food from the hall, Master Blacksmith. She tells me that Gudrun is none too happy to have found ye wooing her daughter down by the river.”
Will shifted as if he was uncomfortable. “Ailsa—that is to say, Mistress Gudrun—”
“Aye, Gudrun, the spinster who took ye into her home, gave ye a roof over yer head an’ food in yer belly.”
Tam was relentless. Will remembered that most of the women in the castle and village had been the former laird’s slaves and considered themselves to all be sisters.
“I beg yer forgiveness, Master Tanner.” Will was contrite, and besides that, Tam was carrying an extremely large knife in his hands. “I would never importune Mistress Ailsa or hurt her mither, no’ for the world. I—”
Tam held up one hand to acknowledge the apology before it was said. “Aye, well an’ good, Master Blacksmith, but I ken when a man has many miles to go afore he reaches fate’s ending, an’ ye, William Fearguson, still have many miles to go. That’s not the sort of swain our Ailsa needs in her life.”
The words made Will feel very tired. He wished he had reached the end of this fateful journey with all his heart and soul, but the fight at the feast was sure to prolong it indefinitely.
He looked around the stone walls and wooden fences surrounding the tannery, thinking about how Callum must have felt when he went there, seeking out his justice and maybe never even realizing that he had reached his final destination—his home, his love, and his people.
He stood up. “I will think on yer words, Tam, an’ I thank ye for passing along Gudrun’s concerns to me.” Then he went back to the spinner’s little cottage and fell into a deep, exhausted sleep.
Logan woke Will early.
“Hie, Will. Ye’re summoned to the castle. Folks are abustle. Shake yer legs.”
Will groaned and sat up, rubbing his face. It had been another hot night and was set to be an even hotter day.
“Why are ye still here? Why cannae I just forget about yesterday’s foolishness?”
Logan opened his mouth to pepper Will with questions, but Will was too quick for him. He ran out of the cottage, wanting to take advantage of the relative cool of the fresh morning air, only stopping when he reached the gates to pull on his shirt and tuck it inside his belted plaid.
“Angry faither chasing ye out his daughter’s bedchamber, Blacksmith?” one of the guards asked him, lifting his pike so Will could duck under the poleaxe.
“Nay, me heart’s fair fixed its interest on yer housekeeper, lad,” Will said with a cheeky grin. “Belike she will prefer the weather over on the West Coast.” It was said in jest, but once the words were out, Will did not regret having said them.
“Ye’ll have yer work cut out for ye there, lad!” the guard shouted after him. “Ye’re no’ the only blacksmith after our Ailsa!”
As unsettling as Will found those words, they were not enough to make him turn around. He wanted to see how Wee Willie had spent the evening after his deep noon nap; he also wanted to face his half brother.
A few castle dwellers and guests were breaking their fast in the dining hall, and a host of servants were sweeping the fat- and wine-stained thresh out from under the boards. Will thought he recognized the besom with which Ailsa had struck his sword arm in one of the servant’s hands.
Breaking into a jog, he ran toward the tower. Two guards stopped him.
“The laird asks for ye to join him in the stateroom, Master Blacksmith,” one of them said.
When Will found his way to the estate room, where all the castle business was handled, Callum was waiting for him inside—but he was not alone.
Laird MacNair, Callum’s uncle, was also there, as was Laird Gray and three counselors.
There were no soldiers, and Will did not know whether he should see this as his brother trusting him or that Laird Callum did not fear his swordsmanship.
He bowed. “May I bid ye a good morning, gentlemen, and beg yer forgiveness for—”
“Aye, aye,” Laird Gray interrupted. “Ye say ye’re sorry, blah, blah, but that would nae have been much comfort for Callum’s clan if yer attack had been successful!”
Callum said calmly, “We are too well matched. Me brither an’ I would never have been able to best one another. If it had nae been for Ailsa’s besom, Will and I would have probably both still been fightin’ in the hall. Come, Will, sit. We have much to discuss.”
Trying not to feel like a cat walking past a pack of growling hounds, Will took the chair opposite the men. “I was three or four when we last met, Callum,” he said. “Perhaps we can kick things off by talking about the day we separated?”
It was a sad story to listen to when the two men began to recollect what had happened.
Their mother was slain by a MacTavish soldier after biting his hand when he tried to tear her sons out of her arms. The two boys were driven along the road like cattle toward MacTavish Castle.
Willie had been too small to keep up, so he had been put on the back of the cart with the toddling bairns.
Callum had lifted a knife out of one of the soldier’s boots and cut the rope that bound him, waiting until nightfall to run away.
One brother had been able to escape. The other brother was taken to the castle, where no one wanted him, then returned to the tavern where no one wanted him either, and he was eventually dumped at the orphanage to be fostered.
“Can ye remember that our mither knew all along that we would be taken from her?” Callum wanted to know. “D’ye remember she told us to try an’ escape, no matter what the cost, even if it meant one got away an’ t’other did nae?”
Will shook his head. “I don’ think she did. All we had was one another. Why would she say such a thing?”
The men on the other side of the table all gave side glances to each other before Callum answered, “Because it was important that at least one o’ us had the chance of a decent life, Will. Did ye never think to run away from the orphanage an’ try to find me when ye got aulder?”
That was a shock for Will to hear. Callum was the elder brother. Callum should have been the one looking for him. How could poor orphaned Wee Willie have done it? He had been a small boy.
“I was only around six years old when I was fostered to the Feargusons.”
Laird Gray filled the silence. “Cal was only six years old when he came to Castle Gray, Will. An’ yet ye hold it against him that he made no inquiry after ye? When ye turned six, why did ye no’ make inquiries on how to find yer brither yerself?”
Will felt pressured. “Because I had to work! We didnae just sit around at that orphanage, ye ken! We worked from sunup to sundown every day! Picking rope, peeling vegetables for pickling, scrubbing the floors… We were nae even given time to say our prayers, and even if we had been, we were too exhausted to say ’em. ”
Laird Gray said, “As was Callum forced to work the same hours. When the meats were finished roasting, he was made to help the scullions wash and scrub the pots clean. Whenever I saw him over the next six years, his knees were scabbed over from scrubbing the flagstones, and his fingers were bleeding from the lye. But he never complained once.”
Callum must have felt he needed to speak the truth. “I never complained, Laird, because I was fueled by hatred. My goal was only to grow old enough and train hard enough to bring home my vengeance on MacTavish.”
Everyone looked at Will. The only hatred that had ever fueled him since hearing about the possibility of Callum being alive and laird of a castle was the hatred for his elder brother.
He was not strutting around his estates without caring about what had happened to his lost brother; Callum had been sending out search parties whenever he had the chance.
“But they were searching for a slave child called Wee Willie MacNair, Will,” Callum said. “I could nae even remember the color of yer eyes.”
Laird Callum walked around the table and came to stand by Will’s chair. He stared at his face. “Green. Yer eyes are green, Will. An’ yer hair is red as flame, an’ yet I could swear it was shot through with much fairness, like our mither’s. It was so long ago…”
The men on the other side of the table all looked at one another.
Finally, Laird MacNair spoke. “The likeness between the two o’ ye is remarkable. This is why we must give some credence to Lady Meria’s story.”
Will raised an eyebrow. “Aye? What story?”
“Lady Meria believes there is some mystery surroundin’ yer faither, Master Blacksmith.
Here are her concerns, if all ye gentlemen will forgive me crass language…
There is no doubt over who was Callum’s faither.
I have been the MacNair laird for many years and can remember me brither’s obsession with the young girl he met on a trading expedition in the north.
They married over the anvil, which is good enough for us Highlanders to recognize as marriage, and Callum was born from that union.
But by then, she had already been rejected by MacTavish and sent to work at the tavern… where she had ye, Will.”
Will shrugged. “So? Why fuss yer budget over that? Me faither is Fingal Fearguson at the end o’ the day.”
Laird MacNair shook his head. “Hear me out. I’ve had some o’ me men seek out survivors from the time the tavern burnt down.
They are to report back to me here with what they find out because there have been rumors about who yer faither was, Will, ever since yer mither’s first days workin’ as a tavern wench.
Me question to ye is this: Will ye stick around long enough to listen to the news me men bring back?
If ye do agree, then we’ll have nay more o’ yer fightin’ an’ backward thinkin’, lad. ”
Will was outraged. “Show me a man who does nae look back in anger sometimes!”
The laird shook his head. “That’s as may be, Will, but whilst ye use our clan’s hospitality, ye will keep yer sword sheathed, d’ye hear me?”