by Aileen Adams
Not much of a farm, he realized when he drew nearer the house and the fields beyond. Overgrown, as the very grass through which he walked the horse. The round barn which ought to have housed the stock was empty, the gate standing open. No cows to eat the grass.
No one working in the fields. No one seeing to the horses. No horses in the stable, just beyond the empty barn.
Cold dismay gripped his heart. His father was dead, that was it, and the place was deserted. Terrible times had befallen the family while he’d sat in relative peace and comfort five days’ ride from his home.
He might have helped, somehow. He might have eased the burden.
But where was Ewan? He ought to be around, taking care of the place. Unless…
Had illness taken them both? It was nearly too much to believe.
He dismounted, his eyes darting around and taking in the weeds, the vines which crept along the walls and tangled underfoot. What would he find when he stepped inside the house?
Did he even wish to?
He was suddenly certain that he would open the door to find his father’s dead body, rotted until it was nothing more than parchment skin over bone. He’d left the scene of one death only to enter the scene of another.
“Halt!”
The rasping bark stopped him in his tracks, his arm extended, his hand nearly touching the door.
“Who do ye think ye are, riding up to a man’s home in such a fashion?” It may as well have been the growl of a dog, one starved and beaten and ill, but fierce of temper just the same.
The sound caused Donnan’s heart to swell. He turned his head slightly, calling back over his shoulder, “I think I am the eldest son of Clyde Ross.”
A wheezing scoff. “To the devil with ye, my son died in battle.”
“He did not.” He still wore the hood over his head, and as such, it concealed his face from his father’s view and his father from him. “He was gravely injured and tended to by an old widow living alone in the woods. When she fell ill, he stayed on to care for her as a way of repaying her kindness. I did this. I am your son.”
“Show me yer face,” Clyde demanded. “But turn slowly, and I must warn ye, I’m carrying a pitchfork, and I’ll happily run ye through with it.”
“I have no doubt,” Donnan murmured as he turned, both hands visible. “But before I show ye my face, I must explain the nature of the injury I suffered.”
“Remove. Your. Hood.”
He’d heard that note in his father’s voice too many times to count, and as a child, his first impulse was to obey quickly and without question.
“It will shock ye,” he warned, raising his hands to touch the woolen hood. “I am sorry for what ye are about to see, Da.”
“Just show me.”
Donnan showed him. He lowered the hood, his eyes fixed on the ground at his father’s feet. Only when he lifted his chin, then his gaze, did he take in the sight of the man who was once his tall, strapping father.
As his father took in what was left of the son he’d thought was dead.
The old man’s sunken eyes went round, filled with tears. “Gods preserve me, tis ye. Donnan.”
With this, his legs buckled, the pitchfork forgotten and dropped to the ground. Donnan knelt beside him, taking him by shoulders which were much too thin. “Da, forgive me, I did not wish to upset ye so.”
“Upset me?” His father’s eyes met his—old, tired eyes—before he threw his arms around him. “My boy. I thought you dead all these years.” He shook with quiet tears which Donnan allowed him to weep without comment. No man wished to have his tears commented upon.
How had he shrunk so? Or was he merely taller, larger in Donnan’s memory than he’d ever been in reality? Nay, that could not be the case. He’d been no child when he left home, too old for hero worship.
What was it, then? The man might not have been the parchment-wrapped bones he’d expected, but what he held there on the ground was not much better.
“Da, what happened to ye?” he asked, still looking about the place for the household servants, the stable boys, anyone.
“That’s not something I can easily answer,” his father replied in a voice still thick with tears. “Come in. Have some tea with me. Cook’s gone out to market and will fix us a feast when she returns.”
At least Cook was still there. “What about Ewan?”
Clyde flinched beneath the arm his eldest son slung over his shoulders. “Inside. I’ll tell all once we’re inside and seated.”
Donnan’s mood darkened at this. While it could be that Ewan had married or met with some accident which left him dead or grievously injured, thus meaning he’d be no help to his father, the odds were far greater that he’d done something to make life more challenging for everyone who loved him.
It had always been his greatest talent.
“Has anyone else stayed on with ye?” he asked as they walked into the house through the side door which opened onto the kitchen. It was a relief to find the inside of the house in better shape than the grounds surrounding it, the hearth recently swept, and the dishwater emptied from the bucket.
“Aye, old Edward is here as well.”
His father’s oldest friend, the pair having grown up together when Edward’s father served as the head of the Ross household workers. while Clyde’s father, Seamus Ross, was alive. Donnan considered him akin to family and would truly have mourned the man’s leaving the house.
“That is all?” he asked, sitting at the table. The same table in the same place as ever, just beneath the spot where he’d fallen through the roof.
Clyde caught the direction of his gaze. “Ye remember that?” he chuckled, shaking his head as he went about the act of boiling water for tea. “Och, I wanted to tear the hide from yer bones that day, lad.”
“Ye didna do a poor job of it, at that,” Donnan snorted, then grew serious again. “Da. What happened? Where did everyone go?”
Rather than answer, Clyde turned to his son once the fire blazed to life and took his chin in one gnarled hand. When Donnan moved to jerk himself away, his father showed him the iron which still existed beneath the withered body. There was no moving away from him.
His old eyes were still shrewd, but they softened when he took in the fullness of his son’s deformity. He released Donnan’s chin and patted his cheek. “My son. What did they do to ye?”
“What it looks like.” He turned his face away, that his father might see the left side. He’d taken to growing his black hair out long enough that it might cover his temple, where the wound began. With a lock of hair in place, he appeared nearly normal.
“You’re lucky it didna touch yer eye, lad,” his father observed. Instead, the Norwegian’s sword had sliced through the eyebrow, beneath the eye, and across the cheek, where it had stopped at the jawline.
“There have been times when I wished it had,” he muttered. “It would’ve spared me the task of looking at myself.”
“Och, it’s not as bad as that.” Clyde placed a mug before him, steam wafting up and carrying an aroma Donnan would always associate with home.
“Da, ye dinna need to soften the blow,” Donnan assured him. “I know what I look like.”
“Ye always were too fond of yer own looks,” Clyde observed with a wry smile, not entirely unkind. “I suppose there’s no blamin’ ye, taking after yer mother as ye do. With that sort of beauty, I would spend all my days admiring myself.”
Donnan could only chuckle. “I hardly did that.”
“Ye came close once or twice,” Clyde grinned. “But son, in all truth, ‘tis not that horrible.”
“Ye looked as though ye thought differently when ye first saw me.”
“I wasna looking at an injured man, then. I was looking at my son, my son who was dead for two years. My son, come back to life, come back to me.” Clyde’s voice trembled, then broke.
And Donnan cursed himself for his unkindness. He’d led his father to believe he was dead, then had the gall
to use a sharp tongue. “That was unfair of me,” he allowed. It was the closest he’d ever come to an apology.
When Clyde cleared his throat and drained half of his mug, Donnan tried again. “What happened here? Why do you insist on discussing other things when I merely wish to know why it looks as though the place has been deserted?”
“It has been deserted—or, all but.”
“Why, then?” He sputtered, shaking his head. “They loved ye, all of the people here, they would have died for ye. Why would they leave ye like this? What happened to make them do it?”
“I told them to go.” This time, Clyde looked away, avoiding his son’s stare.
“I don’t understand it. Why, man?”
“Because I had nothing to offer them. No wage, certainly. Not enough money to feed all of us.”
Donna’s mind whirled at this. Hearing his father had no money to keep his household and land running as they ought to was akin to hearing the sun would not rise on the morrow.
“Explain this to me. How, when Clan Ross was one of the wealthiest this side of the Highlands, could ye lose everything?” His father and grandfather had worked tirelessly to make it so.
“Aye, but there have been difficult times since the war ended, son. Ye dinna know, and I cannot blame ye for not knowing. Even so, it would be all right here, in the house and on the farm, were it not for…”
Donnan’s stomach dropped, as the hair on his arms stood up at the root. “Ewan. This is about Ewan, is it not?”
“Ye mustn’t think too harshly of him…”
“Damn it all, Da!” His fists slammed against the table, causing the mugs to jump and his father to cringe. Again, guilt prickled him, but he ignored it. Anger felt too good.
“If ye hadna coddled the lad all his life and made excuses for him, such a thing might never have happened. What did he do? Run away with yer gold? Rob ye blind in the night?”
“Enough.”
When he was a child, his father might have shouted the walls down around their heads. He might have mimicked his son’s gesture and slammed his fists against the table—perhaps breaking it in the process.
Now, he merely raised a hand, his head bowed. “Enough,” he repeated. “I canna. I’m an old man, and I am ill. Do not make this worse for me, I beg ye.”
Donnan closed his eyes, wishing he were of better temperament. Or at least that he might have a bit more patience. “What did he do?” he whispered, fists balled up beneath the table.
“Wagered. He wagered quite a bit. I didna know the whole of it until after he was gone.”
“He ran away.” Donnan grimaced. “Because he could not repay his debts.”
“Aye. I canna call it anything else. He ran away. His debtors came calling a few days later and told me how much he owed. I paid back as much of it as I could.”
“Och, Da.”
“What else could I do?” Clyde asked, his eyes burning with a fierce light. “He is my son. They might have killed him for it. He has his faults, I will give ye that much, but whose fault is it that he is the way he is? Who else could it be but myself? I raised ye.”
“I would never have done such an evil to ye.”
“Nay,” Clyde whispered. “Ye merely led me to believe ye were dead for two years.”
“That is not the same. I stayed behind because of this.” He pointed to his ruined face. “And because…”
“Well?”
Shame turned his tongue to stone.
A heartbeat later, Cook entered the kitchen, and dropped the basket she’d carried in, a look of utter horror turning her normally flushed face white as snow. Even after Clyde explained to her how Donnan had come back to them, she kept her eyes away from his face.
He released a silent curse.
This reaction was what he had to look forward to the rest of his life.
Over the course of the following weeks, Donnan kept himself busy and away from Cook and old Edward, whose pointed avoidance of his eyes—and thus, his face—all but made him yell in frustration.
There was more than enough to do around the outside of the house, pulling the ivy from the walls and ground, patching the roof. The stable and barn needed a thorough cleaning, as well, and he used the excuse of long, backbreaking days to spend his nights there, rather than returning to the house and the guilty half-glances of the small group inside.
When he was alone, stretched out on his back in the middle of a pile of fresh straw, looking up at the stars through the holes in the roof over the stables, he could breathe easier. There was no one to avoid, no reminder of his hideous face.
It was clear he’d live the rest of his life out on the farm, seeing to the business there, addressing the concerns of neighbors and his kinsman only when necessary, and only in a darkened room, with his face obscured.
And he’d had such high hopes for his life, too. None of them had involved holing himself up like a hermit and living only in the darkness.
Nearly a month after he’d arrived, with the house and fields looking presentable once again and the grass a reasonable height, he could rest. He withdrew to his bedchamber and rarely stepped foot outside unless some chore needed his immediate attention.
Or unless his father needed him, for it came to Donnan’s attention that the man was not merely ill. He was dying. Each day saw him grow thinner, weaker, though neither Cook nor Edward knew exactly the cause.
“I swear to ye, I tried to get him to speak of it, but he would not,” Cook insisted on the one occasion Donnan had forced her into conversation alone with him. “I do everything I can to help, I truly do. I speak to the healer in the village every time I pass through, and she instructs me on the herbs to serve in his stews and soups.”
Donnan had frowned, thinking. “Which herbs does she say?” he eventually asked.
Cook gave him the list, then, “How do ye know of such things?”
“I simply do,” he’d replied, gruff. “And it seems as though the herbs you’re using are meant to brace his appetite and assist him in sleeping.”
“Aye, sir. And to ease any pain he shows, though ye know how rarely that is.”
He did, indeed. It was not in the nature of a Ross to admit weakness, and that was the worst of it all. Clyde Ross would need to admit there was something grievously wrong with him in order for anyone to provide assistance.
And so it was that when a horseman approached the farm, visible from the window of Donnan’s bedchamber, his father drew upon his considerable pride and smoothed down what tufts of white hair remained on his head after washing his face and hands.
“I will see him, whoever he happens to be,” Clyde announced, drying his face on a linen rag beside the basin. “And so will ye.”
“I will not.”
“Ye will so long as yer under this roof.” A coughing fit overtook him for a moment, sending a knife straight to Donnan’s heart. He looked away for the sake of sparing the old man’s pride.
“Ye will,” his father repeated moments later. “For it will be up to ye to settle matters when they come to the threshold of this house, and now is the time for ye to learn how to deal with the lairds.”
“I know how.”
“Ye dinna even know who rides up to the house now, do ye? Ye need to know at a glance, lad, so ye might call the men together to defend ye if need be.”
“What men?”
They faced each other, neither speaking, tension crackling in the air. Not until a knock sounded at the door downstairs did either of them move.
“Yer coming down with me,” Clyde muttered.
“I will not.”
“And I will not see my son, my oldest son, my heir, sit in a dark room for the rest of his life. It’s a waste of who ye are, Donnan. If that woman ye spoke of saved yer life, as ye tell me she did, dinna let it be in vain. At least greet the man with me, see what he wants. Be part of life, damn it.”
It was not easy for Donnan to admit when another man was right, even when that man w
as his father. Thus, he remained silent and merely followed the old man down the stone stairs to the study, where Edward announced their guest had gone to rest from a long ride.
“Who is it?” Clyde muttered, eyeing up the partly-closed door.
“Aleck Gordon.”
Clyde and Donnan exchanged a glance of surprise. “Clan Gordon, visiting ye?” Donnan muttered, raising an eyebrow. “He’s alone, so he hasn’t come to start a fight.”
Clyde snorted. “A rather one-sided fight it would be.” The two of them entered the room, with Donnan staying two paces behind his father, his head slightly bowed.
While the old man made a solid argument, he would never understand what it meant to know his face inspired fear, revulsion, embarrassment from those who looked upon it. How such a reaction could cut the heart from a man.
Aleck Gordon stood at the window, looking out over the newly-turned fields. “A great improvement,” he observed, turning to offer Clyde a smile and a hearty pat on the back. “The last time my men and I rode past, ‘twas a sad sight, indeed. I had often thought of coming to call…”
He let his thought end there. Clyde Ross would never have accepted the offer of assistance from another man, especially not a laird as wealthy as Aleck Gordon. It would be akin to admitting Clan Gordon was superior, no matter that the men had been friends since their youth.
His gaze fell upon Donnan with a thud. “Och. I’d heard of your return…” He looked away, suddenly interested in the wall beyond Donnan’s shoulder.
“Ye had?”
“Aye. Your cook was speakin’ of it in the village. Glad to hear of it, truly.”
Damn Cook and her loose tongue. Everyone would know of his presence, which meant they’d know of his face. Stories had already spread, like as not, each more gruesome than the last. By this time, there were people out there who imagined he had no eyes at all, or that he was without a nose.
The three men sat.
“What brings ye here, Aleck Gordon?” Clyde asked, his voice stronger than Donnan had heard it since his arrival. He sat straighter, too. A shadow of the man he once was, but he did his level best to display an air of authority.
