He heard them muttering behind his back. They were disappointed if they’d expected him to show any shame at his behavior.
“ ’Twasn’t enough to break the wee lassie’s heart last night. He had to entertain an English soldier wi’ the old chieftain’s best brandy this morning.”
“Aye, and he’s made an enemy of the MacFays too, after a hundred years of friendship.”
“Puir Marsali. Moping out there all alone on the moor.”
“He’s scant the wits out of her.”
“Aye, he was born a mean bastard and will carry his meanness to the grave.”
“ ’Tis a damn good thing he’s leaving at summer’s end. Walking away from kith and kin, clan and castle.”
“And what would you expect from a man who abandoned his own child without a backward glance?”
Duncan stiffened in the saddle, aware that he was meant to overhear the complaining gossip. As silence fell, he could sense his clansmen waiting for him to react. He dismounted and strode toward the keep, his face betraying no emotion.
A child. His child. It was the second such reference to be slung at him since his return. Could it be true? Was one of the little bow-and-arrow monsters who terrorized the castle actually his offspring? The possibility inspired a confusing clash of curiosity and dread in his heart.
The unwanted child who had left behind another unwanted child. Pray God if there had been a child, its life had been happier than Duncan’s own. At any rate it was time to find out the truth.
He walked straight to the castle kitchen and confronted Cook with the rumors that had plagued him since his return.
“There has always been truth between us, if nothing else,” he said bluntly. “Did I leave a child behind, Agnes?”
She chased the kitchen maids outside before giving him an answer. A low fire burned in the hearth. Only Cook would dare tell him the truth to his face. In fact, after the previous evening’s debacle, she was the only person in the castle who would willingly speak to the chieftain at all.
And Agnes, at her best, did not exactly exude the essence of motherly compassion toward anyone on earth.
“Aye, my lord, ye sired a wee lassie, and she must have died at birth because the doctor’s wife had her buried before anyone clapped eyes on the bairn,” she quietly explained while rolling out a pie crust on her scarred oak table.
Duncan stared into her sallow unsmiling face, seeing the cruel reality that he’d remained unaware of for fifteen years. “My father never told me that a child resulted from that union.”
“And what would have been the point?” Cook shook her head. “All three of ye paid a price in the end. The doctor, who couldna have his own babies and found his neglected wife pregnant wi’ yer love child. And her, well, he whisked the woman away the verra day the infant died. No one’s heard of them since.”
Duncan was silent, remembering how brash and sexually curious he had been at seventeen. And drunk. Aye, he’d awakened at dawn in the doctor’s bed, uncertain exactly where he was or what he’d been doing when Cecelia had booted him out the window, tossing his trews in his face.
“ ’Tis done now,” Cook said after a long silence, and it was as close to offering forgiveness as she could ever come. “The gossips have no right to be castin’ stones.”
Duncan did not know how to react, or how to feel. “I suppose I was hoping you’d reassure me it was only that. Gossip. Thank you for telling me the truth.”
“I’m an honest woman if nothin’ else.”
He looked away, clearly uncomfortable by what she had revealed. “I am going to ride out to inspect the cottages to see what repairs will be needed before I leave.” He turned to the door, his face careworn in the dim light. “Do you think Marsali will come back to the castle?”
“I canna say, my lord.”
Cook wiped her hands on her apron and stared after him with a worried expression as he left the kitchen without another word.
The past haunted him, as if the present did not hold problems of its own. Should she have told him about the raid the clan was planning tonight on the British fortress? Should she have begged him to intervene? It probably didn’t matter.
One way or another, whether the clan failed or not, Agnes feared there would be hell to pay in the end.
It was midaftemoon when Duncan dismounted and walked slowly through the graveyard of the little hillside kirk. MacFay’s ship, if that’s what Duncan had spotted, had mysteriously disappeared before he could get a closer look.
And now, on top of worrying about Jamie MacFay, he had to face the tragic repercussions of yet another sin.
He stopped abruptly as the tiny white stone cross caught his eye. It stood alone on the hillside beneath the shadows of an old yew tree. For a moment he was tempted to turn back. What he didn’t know couldn’t hurt him. Aye, but he did know now. He drew a fierce breath. This was the deepest cut of all.
An emotion stronger than fear or even self-preservation compelled him forward. Part of himself lay forgotten in that sad little grave. Youth and innocence buried beneath the weight of adult transgressions.
The abandoned product of his adulterous affair with a lonely doctor’s wife. The child he had fathered and never known existed till now. And all that marked her birth and death was a crude piece of stone and a sprig of dried heather that someone, perhaps Cook, had left in remembrance.
He knelt, his voice subdued as he smoothed his big hand over the unmarked cross. “How can I show you I’m sorry when you’re not here but in heaven?”
A deep silence was his only answer.
Marsali slid down from her horse, her footsteps silent as she crept from tree to tree. Surely she was seeing things. That couldn't be the chieftain huddled over that wee grave. Dhé, was the big tyrant mourning then?
Intrigued, she edged as close to the circle of yews as she dared. His shoulders lifted in a deep sigh beneath his plaid but he didn’t utter a sound. Truly he was suffering.
Compassion and the urge to console conspired to move her toward him. Then she heard Duncan start to talk, and intuition blocked the impulse. She pressed her face against the yew’s bark, the anguished shame in his voice immobilizing her.
“No wonder they hate me,” he said in a quiet voice to the tiny cross. “And of all the sins I’ve tried to undo, your death, my wee daughter, can never be forgiven.”
Marsali caught a glimpse of his face, the angular planes softened by a remorse too deep for words. Stricken with sympathy, aching to ease his pain, she remembered the offhanded insult she herself had once thrown at him about abandoning his own child.
She hadn’t dreamed at the time it was true. She had heard a rumor, that was all, and she’d used it in a fit of temper to hurt him. Guilt seared her heart as she realized how she had unwillingly added another stone to the burden of his pain.
Still, she didn’t know how to reach him.
It was as if he were the castle under its dark spell of isolation, with its ghost and secrets; and she were the moor, her heart as open as his was locked away, her instincts as spontaneous as his were controlled. Making this observation, she began to back away, sadly wondering if the drawbridge of their differences could ever be crossed.
The bundle of herbs she’d gathered to take to Bride at the cottage scattered around her feet. There was nothing she could do to help the chieftain. All the magic in the world could not stem the flood of emotion that broke from his heart, begging to be healed.
Duncan rode straight for the cottages from the graveyard. If he could not protect the little girl laid to rest behind him, he could at least try to help his own people before he left. Not that he expected anyone to appreciate his efforts.
He stopped cold as he saw Marsali dismounting before a well-kept stone cottage in a hazel coppice. At the sight of her, a breath of sunshine and heather swept through the cobwebs of his sad reflections.
He slid off his horse. “What are you doing here?” he demanded, his gruff tone covering
an unwelcome surge of emotion.
She turned slowly. Although his face did not betray his feelings, she could hear the tension in his voice. She couldn’t tell him she knew he had just learned he’d lost a child.
“I’m going to my sister-in-law’s childbed,” she explained. “Bride is having a terrible time of this one. What a surprise to meet you here.”
“I want to inspect the cottages.” He studied her small animated face. Everything about her, from her bright mop of curls down to her dirty little feet, bespoke life and a freedom he suddenly craved for himself. “I’ll come inside with you.”
She looked taken aback. “But you’re the chieftain, and ever since Gavin hurt his back, he and the rest of the family have been forced to live in the poor cots.”
“I was born in the poor cots, lass,” he reminded her, turning away from the well-trained stallion who would wait at edge of the coppice.
“But my sister has eight children.”
“I was a fisherman’s son before I became chieftain. I commanded the finest cavalry in the world. I imagine I can stand the sight of a few bairns for an hour.”
Chapter
24
Marsali disappeared with the midwife behind the crude stone wall partition of her brother’s cottage. Her abandonment left Duncan at the mercy of her eight unsupervised nieces and nephews, who ranged in age from two to twelve. They gathered around him in a circle of awestruck silence. He smiled uncertainly and backed toward the door.
The eldest boy pushed to the fore with a belligerent sneer. “My da said if we was bad, he’d send us to the castle for the chieftain to punish.”
His twelve-year-old sister nodded in agreement. “He said ye’d boil us in a broth of blood, eat our wee bodies, and use our bones to pick yer teeth.”
“Did he indeed?” Duncan asked dryly as Gavin of the gruesome stories himself limped through the doorway, his face flushed with embarrassment at what he’d overheard. Apparently the man had overheard enough of the conversation to make frantic hand signals at his offspring to stop.
Gavin set a bucket of freshly caught trout by the hearth and cleared his throat. “Children will exaggerate, my lord.”
“Adults will too in my experience,” Duncan retorted. “Anyway, now that you’re here, Hay, I think I’ll go outside and examine—”
“Oooh. Aaah.” Gavin released a loud groan of agony.
Clutching his back, he sank down onto the oak settle by the fire. The children crowded around him with sympathetic faces, the little ones covering him with a plaid. The older ones brought him a pillow and pulled off his wet boots. The baby toddled over and patted his foot.
It was obviously an established ritual.
“Forgive me for not standing in your presence.” Gavin paused to grimace dramatically. “The pain is that awful, my lord.”
Duncan frowned. “Yes, I can see…”
He was distracted by the sudden moan that rose from behind the partition. Low and inhuman, it raised the fine hairs on his nape.
“Is everything all right in there, Marsali?” he asked, edging closer to the door.
“Everything is fine, my lord,” she replied in an amused voice.
Bride moaned again
Gavin groaned.
Duncan eyed the children. They eyed him back. “If you need me, Marsali, I’ll be inspecting…”
Bride was moaning.
Gavin was groaning.
Duncan would have sworn they were competing in a contest of whose agony was greater. He pushed the door open, trying not to appear desperate to escape.
“Take the children with you, my lord,” Marsali shouted as he sneaked his first step over the threshold.
He froze in midstep like an escaped convict caught by his warden. The children rushed him, with whoops of delight, clinging to his legs with astonishing enthusiasm, in light of his reputation for being a cannibal.
“ ’Tis good of ye, my lord,” Gavin said in a weak voice from his chair. “They wear me out, if the truth be told.”
Claire, the three-year-old, was unraveling a thread in Duncan’s plaid. Her twin brother, Connor, was shooting spoonfuls of porridge into the air from the breakfast bowl he’d taken from the table.
“Wait a minute.” Duncan carefully freed himself from the children and ducked behind the partition.
“Good afternoon, my lord,” Bride said, giving him a brave smile before another contraction caught her off guard, and she groaned, arching her back.
Then Gavin moaned.
Duncan took Marsali by the arm to draw her aside. He couldn’t wait to get out of here. “It looks as if you’ve got everything under control. I’ll ride back to the castle and send Effie here to watch the children.”
Bride wasn’t just groaning now. She was swearing like a fishwife. Duncan paled under his swarthy tan, stumbling over a stool.
“You can’t leave now,” Marsali said calmly. “She’s very close.”
“Close to what?” he whispered in alarm.
Bride squatted down in the corner. Duncan stepped back into the wall in bewilderment. Battles were one thing, delivering babies another. The mere thought of childbirth overwhelmed him. Women looked so fragile.
“What the hell am I supposed to do with eight children?” he wondered aloud.
“Well, don’t swear at them, for one thing, and don’t lose your temper. It scares people when you do—except for me, of course.”
Duncan didn’t move, a look of panic on his face.
“Take them outside. Let them play in the burn.” Marsali hurried off to Bride’s side, grasping her sister-in-law’s shoulder in support. “Tell them a story, my lord,” she said impatiently. “Do whatever you did to amuse yourself as a lad.”
“Fine,” he retorted. “I’ll round them up and we’ll go dropping mud pies down smoking chimneys for a start. If that gets boring, I’ll take them down to the cove to drill holes in the fishing boats. Then we’ll watch the boats sink from the caves while the men bail frantically and curse. After that, we’ll steal a few goats and dress them in the tenant farmers’ clothes hanging behind the cots to dry.”
“That sounds lovely,” she said without glancing up. “Just be sure that Amelia doesn’t get too wet. She’s had a nasty cough.”
As he left, he heard them laughing behind his back, whispering about him in amused exasperation.
“And did ye see the look on his face when Bride squatted?” That was the midwife speaking. “I dinna care how strong and powerful a man is, they’re all the same when it comes to practical matters.”
“Hopeless,” Bride agreed in a gasping voice.
Marsali giggled softly. “Well, I know he can handle a troop of horsemen. But eight bairns… I have grave doubts.”
“This is awfully kind of you, my lord,” Gavin murmured as Duncan stomped to the door, a gaggle of chattering children at his heels.
Duncan glanced down at the grinning faces. “How long will I have to watch them?”
“Bride usually doesn’t take long.” Gavin sat up, moaning faintly. “Probably another hour. Would you mind passing me that jug on the table, my lord? Yes, that’s it, thanks. Oh, and the cheese beside it. The knife too, if it’s not a bother. And a wee bit of honey—no, that’s the wrong jar. Aye, there ye go.”
Duncan put his hands on his hips. “Anything else?”
“Well, the Bible over there, since you were kind enough to ask. And if you could just open the shutters for a wee bittie more light.”
Someone tugged on Duncan’s trousers. “Gordie’s gone, my lord.”
It was the twelve-year-old girl named Dara. As Duncan stared down into her bright blue eyes, he realized with an unexpectedly sharp pang of regret that his own unknown daughter, had she lived, would have been even older. Had that unwanted baby experienced any love at all in her too-brief time on earth? Or had she, like Duncan, been despised from the moment of conception by the father who could not claim her?
He swallowed over the knot of
repressed grief in his throat. “Gordie can't have gone far. I saw him not two seconds ago.”
“Aye, my lord. That was before he fed yer horse an oatcake and rode it like hellfire over the hill.”
Chapter
25
Duncan was exhausted. The battle of Brihuega hadn’t taken this much out of him. Childbirth, children. He didn’t have the stamina for it. A summer with Marsali had worn him down. War was beginning to look like fun in comparison.
He had chased down both horse and horse thief, herded up the remaining flock of children, and assembled them with military precision on the sunlight-dappled banks of the bubbling burn. They stared back at him, their faces openly challenging, promising more mischief.
“Well,” he said, rubbing his hands. “Now the chieftain is going to show you how he really plays nursemaid. Military style.”
Gemma gave a squeal of delight and pointed excitedly through the trees. “Look at that!”
Duncan glanced around in amazement at the tiny-heather-thatched cottage. Sparks of colored light exploded from the chimney in a plume of grayish smoke. He half expected the roof to fly off. Then the water in the burn reversed direction. The children shrieked in delight, staring down at the current of churning wavelets.
“Oooh,” Dara whispered in admiration. “Auntie Marsali must be working a spell.”
Before Duncan could agree or disagree, the lusty cry of a newborn baby broke the silence, magic unto itself.
Leith snorted in disgust, kicking a stone. “Another baby. We’ll never get to Virginia at this rate.”
“Perhaps we could leave you behind,” his older brother Keith suggested, giving him a punch in the shoulder.
Duncan grabbed both boys by the scruff of the neck. “There’s to be no talking among the prisoners. The next one to break the rules knows the punishment.”
Fairy Tale Page 25
