Chapter 19
The Clan's Respect
The sun was past its highest point when Graeme finished setting out the options.
Dugald's men held the lodge, and staying there long would still be a risk.
Two of Malcolm's men were tied in the stable, others were still hidden in the wood, and the riders sent after him had not come back.
To the north, the MacLeod shelter was preparing for an attack.
To the east, the property belonging to Malcolm's family made any movement in that direction more dangerous still.
"Diana and Eliza can go there," Dugald said. "Two hours' travel. Four men to escort them."
Diana closed the clean binding over Alistair's side. The stitch that had given was joined again, and the skin around it stayed red.
"Eliza can decide for herself."
"And so can you," Alistair answered. "Provided you decide to go east."
She looked up.
He sat on the edge of the bed with the léine still open over the dressing. The pallor gave away the blood he had lost; the firmness of his voice tried to deny it.
"Iain will need help."
"Iain has helpers."
"None of them learned from my father how to take out a ball or close a deep wound."
"And Malcolm may have found out where the shelter is."
"That is precisely why."
Graeme put a shoulder against the door frame.
"The road east won't stay clear long."
Eliza settled the borrowed coat.
"Then we shouldn't waste it arguing about a journey we won't make."
"You're going," Graeme said.
"I admire the confidence with which you go on being wrong."
Dugald let out a breath and turned to Alistair.
"Laird, we must leave."
Alistair did not take his eyes off Diana.
"The shelter will be the first place attacked."
"It will also be the first place the wounded come to."
"I can send Iain to the east holding."
"And remove the one man who knows every plant, every infusion, and every person in the clan? No."
She closed her father's case.
"When I came to the MacLeods, you let me stay because there were wounded who needed me. They are still there."
His jaw tightened.
"This is not a debt."
"I know."
Diana picked up the cloak.
"It is a choice."
The silence that followed was acceptance, harder for Alistair than agreement would have been, and worth more for that.
He tied the cords of the léine.
"I don't want you near the danger."
"I intend to be."
"You don't leave the shelter."
"As long as there are wounded."
"Diana."
"It is the answer I can give."
Alistair stood carefully. He touched her face, too briefly for the men at the door to need to look away.
"Then come back with me."
The journey took the rest of the afternoon.
Diana and Eliza rode in a covered cart with part of the supplies taken from the lodge. Alistair rode ahead with Graeme and Dugald, holding himself rigid whenever the ground worsened. Twice Diana saw him put a hand to his ribs. The third time he caught her watching and took it away.
She decided to save the argument for a time when they could both enjoy it.
They reached the shelter a little before dark.
The place Diana had left days before was already changed.
Branches covered the fires to hold the smoke down.
Flour sacks and water barrels had been carried into the roofless chapel.
Men were strengthening the passages with stones, logs, and overturned carts.
Children carried strips of cloth; the older people were driving animals into a sheltered hollow between the slopes.
Iain came out of the shed and stopped when he saw Alistair.
"You've opened the wound."
"One stitch only."
"A stitch I didn't authorize."
"The ball didn't ask for authorization either."
Iain looked at Diana.
"How much blood?"
"Enough to make him even more insufferable."
"Then he lost little."
Alistair handed the reins to a boy.
"Examine me afterward. Graeme, council in the chapel. Dugald, I want men on the east and south passages."
They were gone before Iain could object.
Diana touched the healer's arm.
"The stitching is firm now. You need only keep it clean and stop him using the right side."
Iain watched Alistair climb toward the chapel.
"The second part would require a plant that hasn't grown yet."
"Or a well-placed stone."
"Dugald will need every one of them."
The wounded men's shed had four beds occupied. Moira MacNair was still lying down, still pale, and the incision was closing without excess heat. The man with the ball in his shoulder could sit up. Màiri slept beside her mother, breathing without the sound that had frightened everyone days before.
"Is there fever?" Diana asked.
"Two children with a light cough. A man with an old wound in the leg. Nothing that stops the preparation."
Iain opened the door of the back room.
Bundles of plants, bowls, and cloths took up almost the whole bench. There was ground willow bark, dried root, honey, spirits, vinegar, and two bottles of a dark infusion.
"I've set aside what controls pain and fever," he said. "Also the plant we use for bleeding, but there's little left."
"I have thread, needles, and my father's instruments. We will need more boiled water and space for procedures."
"The smaller house next to it is empty."
Diana examined it. A wide table stood in the middle. The roof kept the rain out, and there was a hearth that drew well enough to keep water warm.
"The worst cases stay here. The shed takes the ones already steady."
Iain nodded.
Neither of them needed to argue over the rest.
He would prepare infusions, poultices, food, and relief for fever. Diana would take balls, deep cuts, exposed bone, and bleeding that needed instruments.
Eliza appeared with three women and a boy.
"I've brought hands," she announced. "Some of them agreed voluntarily."
A gray-haired woman behind her raised a pail.
"She said that if we didn't come, the men would use kitchen cloths on the wounds."
"I know the men," Diana said. "The threat is real."
The boy tried to hide a smile.
Diana gave out the work: water to boil, cloths sorted by cleanliness, fresh straw on the beds, bowls by both doors. Eliza wrote simple signs on pieces of wood to keep dirty material off the benches.
"This pile is clean," she explained to a boy. "That one is dirty."
"And if I mix them?"
"Diana will make an expression that has grown men confessing sins."
"I do not make that expression."
Eliza handed her a cloth.
"You're making it now."
The work went on while the sky darkened.
Diana checked every bed, left instructions with the helpers, and sorted the instruments by size. Iain showed her where he kept the plants and repeated the safe amounts. She did not pretend to know what she did not know. He did not question procedures beyond his own experience.
A crash came from the south passage.
Diana came out of the smaller house.
Two men were carrying a beam to strengthen the entrance when one of the lashings gave. The timber caught Dugald from the side and threw him against the wall. He was on his feet again before anyone reached him.
Blood was running from a cut above his eyebrow.
"I am well."
"Naturally," Diana said. "That is why you are attempting to look in two directions at once."
Dugald put a hand to the wound.
"I must go back to the passage."
"After I close the cut."
"I have no time."
"If the blood gets into your eye during the fighting, you will have less still."
He faced her. The same man who had demanded that she and Eliza be kept away from the clan now had to choose between his first distrust and his eyesight.
"The smaller house," Diana ordered.
Dugald went in grumbling.
He sat by the table while she cleaned the cut. It was not deep, and the edges needed three stitches. Iain handed her a cloth soaked in an infusion to hold against the skin afterward.
"This will burn," Diana said.
"I have met worse."
She put on the spirits.
Dugald shut one eye.
"Apparently not recently."
Eliza, folding bindings near the door, said:
"He didn't shout either. We can record that for the clan."
"Get out," Dugald answered.
"He's recovering quickly."
Diana made the first stitch.
He stayed still.
"When you came," Dugald said, "I told the men you might be spying for Penelope."
The needle went through the skin again.
"I knew."
"You came back all the same."
"You went back to a passage that nearly opened your head."
"They are my people."
Diana tied the last knot.
"Now it is my work as well."
Dugald looked at her with the eye that was not beginning to swell.
"Work?"
Diana cut the thread.
"Do not expect a moving declaration while I have a needle in my hand."
His mouth tightened.
"I would not expect it of a Fraser."
It was the first time the surname came out of him without suspicion.
Diana covered the cut with a narrow cloth.
"Keep it clean."
Dugald stood.
"What else do you need, Fraser?"
She looked at the shelves.
"More light in the smaller house. A low table beside the beds, and two men able to carry the wounded without arguing with me."
"The light and the table are possible."
He was gone before she answered.
Eliza waited until the steps were gone.
"That was affection."
"Among the MacLeods it takes worrying forms."
The change did not come all at once.
A woman asked Fraser to look at her husband's leg. The boy with the pails asked where Fraser wanted the water. A man left a box of candles at the door and said Dugald had ordered them delivered to the healer Fraser.
The name went through the shelter without announcement.
Diana went on working.
Iain checked the bottles, prepared an infusion for those waiting in the chapel, and left bowls of thinned honey for the children. Eliza sorted cloths and stopped two men carrying the low table to the wrong place.
"They said the smaller house," one of them protested.
"This is the door of the shed."
"They're close together."
"So are your head and the wall. I'd still rather they didn't meet."
By the time night covered the slopes, everything was ready.
Diana washed her hands and looked at the empty spaces that might soon stop being empty. The procedure table stood under the strongest light in the room. Clean instruments lay in the open case. Boiled water cooled in covered vessels, and Iain kept the infusions near the hearth.
Outside, the voices dropped.
Alistair appeared at the door. He had the plaid pinned at his shoulder and the sword at his waist. His face still carried tiredness, and the way he stood belonged to the laird again.
"You should rest," Diana said.
"I've heard that recently."
"And ignored it with consistency."
He looked at the room she had prepared.
"You can go east up to the last moment."
"I will not."
Alistair nodded.
He did not try to order her again.
"Dugald called you Fraser."
"He hit his head."
"It may have improved something."
Diana came closer and touched the binding under his léine.
"If you open that stitch again, you will be on this table while the clan fights without its laird."
"Is that a threat?"
"Planning."
A call went across the shelter.
Graeme appeared on the rise above the chapel.
"Movement on the east track!"
The men took positions. Mothers gathered children and the old into the most sheltered part of the hollow. Iain closed the bottles; Diana opened her father's case.
Eliza picked up the shovel leaning by the door and took it out to the yard.
Graeme looked at it.
"Do you mean to use that again?"
"Only if someone makes it necessary."
A second call came from the passage.
"Torches among the trees!"
Alistair held her eyes for a moment and turned to the men.
On the slope, the first agreed signal sounded twice.
Malcolm's men were coming.