MacKinnons' Hope: A Highland Christmas Carol

by Tanya Anne Crosby

  Chapter 6

  Any sense of chagrin Page may have felt over having been caught in the midst of loving her husband fled at the sight of Iain sprawled on his face on the stable floor. The man hit him hard enough to leave him for dead, and then he dragged her out of the stable, screaming in protest.

  Unlike the night before, all work had ceased. Her husband had declared this a day of celebration so everyone was at the bonfire, half a league away—purposely built to keep the fire as far from surviving structures and new construction as possible.

  “We cannot leave him there!”

  The man—dressed in MacLean red—jerked her arm so hard it made her squeal.

  “He’ll be fine,” the stranger said, “I merely cracked him on the head, but if ye make me go back, I’ll make certain he won’t rise again.”

  Page’s relief was palpable. “You have no idea what you have done. My husband will come searching for me the very instant he wakes. He will find you,” she warned, and then she wished she hadn’t made such a boast. The last thing she wanted was for the man to go back and make sure Iain was dead.

  “He won’t find you ’til ’tis too late.”

  Page had a sinking feeling down in her gut. “Too late?”

  She couldn’t place the man’s accent—not precisely. He wasn’t Scots. His accent sounded strange to her ears—and yet vaguely familiar as well.

  “Because your father is going to kill you,” he explained.

  Page was genuinely confused by his claim. Her father had had very little to do with her for ten years and more. “My father?”

  “Aye. Your father.”

  “Hugh is here?”

  “Aye.”

  “With you?”

  “Not precisely.”

  “He has come to kill me?”

  “Does it matter?”

  Page bristled at the man’s question. “Of course it does!”

  What child ever wanted to believe her father could do such a thing?

  Hugh FitzSimon had never loved her overmuch, but Page could not see him come to murder her in cold blood. And still … he’d been quite willing to discard her—never mind that he’d changed his mind and then wanted her back. To Hugh, Page had never been aught more than chattel, and still, it made her heart wrench that her father might want her dead. But why? What could he hope to gain?

  She was not a son, and therefore she would never inherit her father’s demesne. In terms of politiks, it was far more reasonable to assume he’d pass his legacy to a bastard son. Had not King Henry’s illegitimate son, Robert of Gloucester benefited just that way?

  “Who are you?” Page demanded to know. The years may have mellowed her, but she would not so easily cow.

  “Someone with a vested interest.”

  At Aldergh, they’d had a kitchen maid with that very accent. She remembered her father smacking the woman on the arse quite a lot. In fact, there were quite a few evenings when he’d summoned her to his room—to bring him sweets, he’d always claimed. Only now she wondered, what kind of sweets?

  “A vested interest in what?” Now that they were far enough away and Iain wasn’t in immediate danger, Page dragged her feet, planting her heels.

  The man pulled her along across the field, against her will. The light of the bonfire and ringing of voices diminished behind them as he dragged her in the direction of the woods. A sliver of a moon lit the night sky, but it lay hidden behind a bank of puffy white clouds, giving the landscape a grey, otherworldly light.

  With every step, Page expected to hear Iain calling after her, but the sound of his voice remained absent from the hillside and the merriment fell further and further away.

  The man pinched the back of her arm, jerking her forward when she tried to sit. “What I have to gain is not important for ye to know.”

  “Och! Someone will notice I am gone,” she warned the man, remembering another time she’d made such threats in vain. And yet, this time, Page knew beyond a shadow of doubt that her husband and clan valued her. Someone would come searching the instant they realized she was gone. These were now her people, and they would never sit idly by, allowing this man to take her life. “They’ll come after you, they will find you and they will hang you from the gallows.”

  “Nay,” the man said confidently, once again jerking her arm. There was a smile in his voice. “They will find your father’s camp. They’ll blame Hugh. And when they kill him, I’ll be gone.”

  A spark of hope flared—inconceivably, not because this man meant to murder her, but because her father might not be the one behind this atrocity after all. Still she wanted to know, “Why is my father here?”

  “Because that bag of wind believes he can buy his way to heaven by rebuilding a few huts.”

  Page’s heart thumped against her ribs.

  Her father was the one who rebuilt the huts?

  Her brow furrowed, and then suddenly she realized … those odors back in the stable… they were scents from her past—lavender, cinnamon and cloves. The cloves she could still smell over-strongly on the man dragging her along—a tincture exactly like the one the kitchen maid had used to use to mask her body’s scent. She had a son, a bit older than Page, that she liked to claim was a servant of God. Page had often wondered if his father was a fish because his mother smelled so foul. She said the boy had a noble sire, and then one day he was gone...

  Page swallowed, hard. “I know who you are.”

  The man jerked her arm once again and said, “Shut up.”

  Peering over her shoulder, Page searched for moving shadows. She spied nothing. Nothing at all. Judging by the growing silence, her husband never reemerged from the stables, and her heart squeezed with fear.

  And neither did anyone else seem to realize what was happening here, and her father—wherever he might be—was in as much danger as she was: If Iain happened to find him first, and she hadn’t had the chance to explain—or if Malcom or Cameron discovered Hugh before Iain did, they would kill him without question.

  “What makes you think you’ll get away with this?” Page asked furiously.

  “Shut up,” the man said again, and Page grit her teeth.

  They slipped into the woods, and peering over her shoulder once more, gauging the bonfire’s distance, she decided she had far more to lose by keeping silent. Be damned if any man but her husband would ever tell her what to do again. She spun around, screaming her father’s name at the top of her lungs.

  Chapter 7

  Half of Hugh’s men were already gone. The other half remained at camp, packing the last of their things while Hugh took a final piss. There was no use lingering where they might be found. His men had said there was talk about interlopers and that young Malcom was already snooping around. If Malcom should happen to venture into MacLean territory he’d most certainly discover their camp.

  Hugh was quite pleased with himself. It was the bonfire Eleanore had spoken of—the flame that should not die before his work was done…

  Last night, after stashing all their offerings in the MacKinnon’s stable, they’d stolen MacLean cloaks and then snuck in to finish rebuilding whatever homes they could. Most were finished, and now it was time to leave—before the celebration ended and the drunkards all went stumbling home. Hugh remembered very well how stout their uisge was, although it wasn’t stout enough to keep those bastards from drawing their swords; it was time to go.

  Hopefully his daughter Page would discover his gifts to her and then realize what all he’d done. Until then, it was quite enough to know that Eleanore knew he’d made amends—

  “Hugh FitzSimon!” he heard a woman shout.

  Could it be Eleanore?

  Hugh froze, upon hearing his name, dropping his tunic and pulling up his trews.

  The forest was dark, no sign of that strange blue aura. Whoever the woman was, she had yet to shed her mortal coil. Instinctively, although he knew not how or why, he realized it must be Page, and as though to prove his point, she call
ed him yet again. “Papa!” she screamed this time.

  Hugh felt a sudden rush of excitement. Mayhap she’d already discovered his gifts and she’d come to beg him not to leave!

  Bolting through the woods, toward the sound of Page’s voice, Hugh realized as he went that it wasn’t a happy shout.

  Snatching up his bow from the sling on his back, he plucked an arrow from his quiver, and then skidded to a halt once he spied the pair, his bow and arrow poised within his hands. “Afric,” he said, with no small amount of surprise.

  “Hello father.”

  Malcom wasn’t far into the woods when he spotted the figure of a man—slightly luminescent, and strangely manifested.

  There were folks who claimed this was a time between times, when the division between this world and the next was at its thinnest, leaving the way open for faeries and brownies to venture into the realms of men.

  He’d heard stories of banshees wailing on the night, foreshadowing the dead, but this form moved silently through the trees, beckoning Malcom to follow wherever it went...

  It moved swiftly, darting behind pinewood and lichen-painted oaks. Finally, they crossed a burn, onto MacLean land.

  Strangely familiar though the man appeared to be, Malcom couldn’t tell exactly who it was until they stood at the fork of a wooded path.

  If you went one way, the road led to Brodie land. The other way ventured toward his grandfather’s house. It was a place Malcom rarely went, for Old Man MacLean was not the most affable of men. He considered going there now, fearful of what the apparition meant, and then he spied the man’s face.

  It was Dougal MacLean, though not on his deathbed.

  The old man stood, staring back at Malcom, his bright blue eyes seemingly filled with words his mouth could no longer move to say. I’m sorry, he whispered into Malcom’s head. He was sorry they’d not known each other better. Sorry he’d poisoned his mother against his Da. He wished Mairi did not leave them so young. But most of all, he wanted Malcom to know he would never be far—that he would keep watch over him in death the way he never had in life—and to his point, there was something he wanted Malcom to see…

  Malcom’s skin prickled, though not with fear. For the first time in his life, he felt a calm deep in his soul… until he heard the scream…

  Old man Maclean pointed in the direction of his home and then dissolved into mist and Malcom automatically withdrew his sword from its scabbard, the sound a hiss in the night. Without thinking or hesitating, his feet began to move. He went stealthily through the woods, knowing his greatest vantage was the element of surprise.

  Now came another scream, and it wasn’t a scream of pleasure—not by far. Malcom followed the sound, but he didn’t have to go far. He saw the outline of a man standing in the shadows and he slid behind a pine tree for cover.

  His eyes were well enough adjusted to the darkness, for he’d been traipsing through the forest ever since slipping away from the celebration.

  The stranger was wearing mail—English, he surmised—holding a bow and arrow, taking aim, now drawing back the string…

  Malcom located his target.

  It took him a full moment to realize what was happening, and then he couldn’t believe his eyes. He’d known something was amiss, and now there was proof…

  Hugh FitzSimon held an arrow aimed at his daughter’s head, rearing back, ready to let it fly. The fact that she was struggling against another man didn’t immediately strike Malcom as it should. There wasn’t time to consider. All he knew was that Page was in her father’s sights, and if he didn’t intervene, right now, the odious man would finally kill her after all these years.

  Without fear, he lunged after FitzSimon, his sword finding purchase in the man’s back, straight through his heart. But FitzSimon had already loosed his arrow. It happened so swiftly. Page screamed yet again, and Malcom saw only in that instant that the arrow must not have been intended for her at all. It went straight through a man’s head, felling him at his stepmother’s feet. Page gave a cry, and ran straight into her father’s arms just as he crumpled to the ground.

  Malcom stood, confused, watching the scene unfold.

  * * *

  “Papa,” Page cried.

  Hugh was more than aware that his blood was spilling into the cold, wet earth, but he rested easily, knowing his arrow had found its mark. That was one thing the years could never wrest from him; even as his legs had slowed and his belly fattened, he could still wield that bow.

  “Papa,” she cried, her lips quivering with emotion.

  Hugh always loved that about her—the fact that she loved so freely, even when it wasn’t returned. Eleanore had been that way as well—up until the end.

  His sight dimming, Hugh squinted up at his only daughter—the beautiful woman she had become—confused by the turn of these events. It wasn’t supposed to happen this way. He’d only meant to help. Hadn’t Eleanore said he would have another chance?

  In that instant, the forest light took on that strange blue hue and suddenly everything seemed so very clear.

  The chance wasn’t for him. It was for his heirs. As for Hugh, this would be his end. Strangely, he wasn’t afraid. He was merely cold, intensely cold…

  Another pair of wide-blue eyes peered down at him, this pair over his daughter’s shoulder. “Malcom?” he said, recognizing the face no matter how old the boy was grown. “Ye’re a fine lad,” he said. These were his very last words.

  “Hang on, papa. Hurry, Mal! Go get your Da,” Page commanded the lad. “You’ll find him in the stables. Hurry, now go!”

  Hugh’s breath came more labored. The sound of his own breathing became amplified to his ears while Page’s voice drifted away. She was sobbing—poor, poor girl. The sound of her grief hurt his heart, which seemed to beating all the more slowly now. He heard crispy leaves rustle as Malcom dashed away.

  Realizing he was nearly out of time, Hugh struggled to remove the ring from his swollen finger. This was all he could give Page now, his legacy, for she was Aldergh’s rightful heir… He managed to remove the sigil ring, pushing it wordlessly into her hand. He tried to speak, but tinny blood gushed up through his lips.

  “Oh, no, no, no, no….” Page shook her head. “Papa,” she pleaded brokenly. “Oh, papa… I love you, Papa.” He heard her say this, over and over, like a litany in his head. “I love you, Papa.” He recognized the truth in her eyes—she loved him still—even after all these years—even after all he’d done. Words refused to form upon his lips and still, he opened his mouth in an attempt to speak.

  I love you, he longed to say, and closed his eyes, recalling Eleanore’s words.

  You will know love when ’tis returned.

  With Hugh’s dying breath, his heart burst with joy.

  And then he spied her—his wife—seated beside the hearth fire, dressed resplendently in velvet red, and wearing his cloak. The room was brightly lit and Hugh was no longer cold.

  Hugh stepped tentatively into the solar.

  Eleanore smiled at him, a radiant smile that put to shame the fire raging in the hearth. There was nothing frightening about her now. “You did not die alone,” she said, her voice like music to his ears.

  “And yet I did everything you said,” he told her, still confused.

  Eleanore rose from the chair and came to take Hugh by the hand, her gaze full of love as she enveloped him in her arms. Warmth and forgiveness filled him, from his head to the tips of his toes.

  “My dearest love,” she said, “I never promised you longer life. I merely gave you the gift of knowing and a chance to make amends and change the hand of fate.”

  “What happens now?”

  Somewhere, in the place Hugh left, his daughter wept for him still. The sound lingered faintly in the back of his head. He peered back at the doorway from whence it seemed he must have come. Beyond the solar where he now stood, in what should have been the hall, remained a forest that was growing darker by the second.

&nbs
p; Eleanore turned her hand, begging him once more to take it. “I hear tell Henry has already arrived. Shall we go?”

  Henry too? The old bugger!

  All trace of jealousy had fled, no longer doubting Eleanore’s love.

  In another life, Hugh might have moved his mouth to ask where they would go, but he had no need of his voice. He already knew. He took Eleanore by the hand, and together they flew…

  Epilogue

  A single horn blast trumpeted across the landscape.

  From this distance they could spy men rushing to the ramparts, tiny black forms scurrying between machicolations.

  Built solely for defense, Aldergh was a sprawling fortress that Page had once viewed a scabrous creation, sullying the beauty of the English meadow upon which it was seated.

  The cavalcade stood well outside of missile range, yet close enough to make out standards. Flying against a vivid red sea, her father’s two-headed falcon whipped along the breeze. News would have preceded them by now, but until they faced the men who held the garrison they could not know how this would go.

  Page reined in her mount, sidling up to her laird husband, and sat for a moment, simply taking in the sight—the familiar donjon keep, the soaring corner towers, the massive twenty-foot thick walls, built with old Roman ingenuity and stone.

  Aldergh Castle appeared much the same as it had the day she’d left, save for a small footbridge her father must have installed after widening the moat.

  And yet, despite its nearly impenetrable defenses, those walls had not been able to hold her. The last time she’d set eyes upon her childhood home, she’d been naught more than a lass and far too willful to remain locked up behind those castle walls—much to her own good fortune. The stars must have been aligned with her that day, for that was how she’d met Iain—after sneaking out to take an evening swim.

  If she but closed her eyes, she could spy him now standing before her as he had that day, the silver at his temples, rivaling the glint of the setting sun.