Chapter 15
“Oh Lord! Edan, ye can hear the villagers screamin’ and shoutin’ from here!” Olivia cried as they finally rode into the outskirts of the village, where the smoke was thicker than out on the moor and immediately irritated their throats.
“Aye, I wonder what’s afire to make so much smoke,” Edan replied, reining in the horses by a field gate some distance from the main street. “This smoke is bad for the horses,” he told Olivia. “We’ll leave them here and go on foot.”
He rapidly slid down from the saddle and lifted her down, then hurriedly tethered the horses to the gate.
“’Tis a scene of chaos,” she observed as she waited for him, squinting through the smoke at the marketplace a few hundred yards away. “There’s folk runnin’ all over the place!”
“Aye,” he replied, tense with worry for her safety and that of his people, as well as suspicious as to the cause of the blaze.
He was already regretting bringing her with him.
Pulling the kerchief from around his neck, he gave it to her. “Put this over yer face. It’ll help keep out the worst of the smoke,” he instructed, then waited while she did as he asked.
Reasonably satisfied that the kerchief would help protect her, he grabbed her by the hand.
“Come on, we must hurry,” he told her, taking off at a fast pace, pulling her along with him as he raced into the thick of the panic.
They passed women with crying, scared children and frightened old folk heading as fast as they could in the opposite direction, all desperate to escape the smoke and the black ashy rain falling all around them.
The closer they got to the center of the panic, the louder the shouts and screams became, and the frenzied barking of roaming dogs only added to the din. Over the top of it all, he could hear a low, constant roaring and the cracking and shrieking of timber shrinking in the heat of flames.
Everything joined in a discordant cacophony that was almost deafening. Shouting was the only way to make oneself heard.
As they reached the edges of the milling crowd, he skidded to a halt and grabbed a passing man by the shoulder. “What’s burnin’?” he shouted to him over the ear-splitting racket.
“’Tis the barn where most of the grain is stored, Me Laird,” the man replied, hacking loudly and pointing towards the end of the main street.
With his worst fears confirmed, Edan took off running again, the panicking people parting like the Red Sea before him when they realized the Laird and his lady had come to help them.
“This is bad,” he shouted to Olivia, who was valiantly running alongside him, hanging onto his hand to keep up with him. “There’s likely a whole year’s worth of grain stored in that barn. There are strict rules about usin’ fire in the grain store, so how the hell could it catch fire?”
“I dinnae ken, but it sounds suspicious to me,” she yelled back, panting behind the kerchief.
Nobody looked twice at his scars as he and Olivia finally pushed their way to the front of the frenzied group of men who were trying to extinguish the fire.
“Ach, it looks bad, Edan,” Olivia choked out as they stood side by side and surveyed the burning building.
Edan’s heart sank to see the fountain of smoke and ash billowing out through the doors and windows of the great timber building and rising to the sky above them.
Orange flames had already consumed part of the thatched roof and were licking across the rest like the tongues of hungry devils bent on consuming everything in their path.
The smoke and ash were starting to affect him too, and he began coughing. “We must act fast. If it goes on like this for much longer, it’ll soon be impossible to get anywhere near the barn because of the amount of smoke and ash.”
“Aye, and a whole year’s worth of grain will be lost!” Olivia exclaimed in dismay.
Edan looked around and noticed that the men trying to put out the fire were disorganized and uncoordinated. It was his duty to remedy that, and fast. But first, he asked some of the men if they knew how the fire had started.
“We’re nae sure, Me Laird. The first any of us kenned of it was when we smelled burnin’ wood and saw the smoke comin’ from the roof,” one soot-blackened fellow answered.
“Aye, and when we came runnin’, we could see it was the thatch that was burnin’,” another man added. “But how it started there, I cannae say. It must have been done deliberately.”
Edan’s suspicions rushed back, and anger gripped him. Just then, a woman holding a boy of about twelve by the arm ran up to them.
“Me Laird!” she cried. “Me Colin here says he saw a man runnin’ away just before the fire started.” She pushed the boy forward, adding, “Tell the Laird, Colin.”
“What did ye see, lad?” Edan asked him, almost certain now that he knew who was responsible for starting the fire.
The nervous boy avoided looking at his face, and his voice shook as he stuttered, “I didnae recognize him, but he had a bow over his shoulder. He ran off into the woods over there.” He pointed into the distance, to the fields and woods behind the barn.
Nurkirk! It has to be him.
Edan reached into his pocket and gave the boy a penny. “Good lad,” he told him and sent him off with his mother.
He and Olivia exchanged a meaningful glance, and he knew she was thinking the same thing.
“Sounds like it was started deliberately by this mystery bowman—probably a burnin’ arrow fired at the roof,” he told the men. “Do any of ye ken why he might have done it?”
“Nay, Me Laird, but it seems too much of a coincidence that this should happen just after our crops were destroyed,” the first man said.
Murmurs of agreement rippled through the group.
“Aye, it does. I’ll get to the bottom of it, and whoever’s responsible will be stopped and punished,” Edan promised them. “But now we have to work hard to put out the fire if we’re goin’ to save all that grain.”
He stripped off his coat and threw it over a nearby sawhorse, then began rolling up his sleeves. “Stay here and keep back from the fire,” he ordered Olivia, not giving her time to argue before he plunged into the thick of the men and started shouting commands.
“Ye lot there, gather all the buckets and form chains to bring water from the pond to here. Now!” he yelled at one group, sending them running.
“All of ye with ladders, come over here and team up with those with rakes. Ye can work as teams, one holdin’ the ladders and the other usin’ the rakes to pull down as much of the burning thatch as ye can,” he yelled above the roar of the flames, pointing to the burning section of the roof. The men hastened to obey.
Within a few minutes, a constant supply of water was being efficiently ferried from the pond to the barn.
By then, Edan had stationed a team of men to deploy it at the base of the ladders, where the buckets were hauled up to the rake men, who doused the roof with water to try to prevent any further spread of the flames.
Luckily, there was not much wind, so the danger presented by flying sparks was not as great as Edan feared it would be. The last thing he needed was for the neighboring buildings to catch fire as well. The whole village could end up being burnt to the ground if that happened.
Once he had organized everything, he took a moment to look around for Olivia. Even though he had been occupied, she had never been far from his thoughts, and knowing how headstrong she could be, he was terrified she might get herself into danger.
And I’ll nae be able to save her!
Though outwardly calm, inside he was in turmoil, knowing he would not be able to live with himself if anything bad happened to her.
He had failed to protect his father, and it had made him feel like a monster, cursed almost, placing anyone he loved in danger through his inability to protect them. Better than not to love at all.
Inwardly, he berated himself for letting Olivia persuade him to bring her with him against his better judgment. Giving in to her like that had been reckless—it put her in the path of danger. His growing inability to refuse her anything scared him.
When he scanned the watching crowd and could not see her, a hard knot of fear tightened in his belly.
But however much he wanted to go and find her, his duty as Laird meant he had to stay and help the villagers fight the fire that threatened their sustenance. So, he tried to put his worries about Olivia aside for the moment and threw himself into fighting the fire.
After some time, their efforts started to pay off. Gradually, the fire began to die down as the barn was gradually soaked. With everything under control, he decided he could wait no longer. He went to find Olivia.
He found her with a group of women and children, their faces streaked with soot, and sometimes tears as well, all looking scared stiff as they huddled in a cottage doorway a little way down the main street.
She was hunkering down among them, holding a child on her lap as though trying to distract it from its fear.
I told her to stay put.
Edan’s fear for her safety manifested as anger as he strode towards the group.
Olivia saw him coming and stood up, the child perched on her hip. His kerchief had slipped from her face, so he could see her expression clearly as she came to meet him.
“Edan!” she exclaimed, smiling and sounding so relieved to see him that his heart clenched painfully. “Thank goodness, ye’re safe. I was worried about ye. Have ye managed to put out the fire?”
Dumbfounded by the sight of her, he stood mutely, looking her up and down. She was filthy, covered in smudges of soot from head to toe, and there were streaks of what looked like blood on her clothes, arms, and face. That immediately set off alarm bells in his head.
Is that her blood? Is she hurt? ’Tis me fault if she’s hurt. I should have been with her. I should never have let her out of me sight.
The knot in his belly tightened excruciatingly, and pain flared in his chest. Suddenly, the same nightmarish images of war that plagued his sleep every night flashed through his mind.
“Edan, are ye all right?” she asked, her blackened forehead creasing in concern as she came closer to him, bouncing the child—a small girl, he vaguely realized—on her hip as if it were her own.
“Whose blood is that?” he asked finally, staring fixedly at the dark brown streaks.
“Och, it’s from wee Laurie here,” she said, smiling at the child as she bounced her on her hip.
“She got separated from her ma in all the chaos and got scared of the fire and all the people. She fell over when she was runnin’ away and hurt her knee.
I found her cryin’ and took her to her family.
That’s her ma over there.” She smiled at one of the women in the doorway.
Edan did not even bother to look. His focus was solely on Olivia. He was relieved that the blood was not hers, but not much because he knew it so easily could have been. Self-recrimination flooded through him as he angrily berated himself once more.
I’m a monster. I should never have brought her here. This is nay place for an innocent like her. By givin’ in to her, I’ve exposed her to danger.
On top of that, the guilty knowledge and feelings of failure that had been tearing him in two crystallized in his mind.
By rights, I should be out huntin’ down Nurkirk. I need to kill him for what he’s doin’ to me people. But I’m failin’ in me duty as Laird to protect them because I’ve promised nae to leave her. And because I cannae say nay to her, I’m puttin’ them in danger too!
Realization dawned on him then, though he felt even more of a monster for thinking it. Despite all he had done to keep her at arm’s length, his wife was turning out to be his greatest weakness. And he did not know what to do about it.