by R. L. Syme
“But if we could slip out during the night, quietly.” Kensey leaned forward hopefully, trying to bait them.
“No.” Reyf released her but stayed in her pathway. “I will hide you.”
“Until what?” Kensey’s voice drew into a louder tone than she would have liked and everyone at the table perked up, including her brother. She lowered her voice. “My father may never return. My mother is ill. What would you have me do?”
Both men considered this. The chatter in the hall picked back up when no more loud voices came from their group. Kensey turned on Malcolm.
“You can lead us to Castle St. Claire. There, we will surely be safe until my father returns.” Kensey touched his shoulder, hoping the act would solidify her seriousness.
“It would be very dangerous, in the night. But if we move slowly, I think we can make it. We’ll have to stick to the easy road, which will likely lead us within sight of their camp, at least for a short way to cross the river.”
Reyf took Kensey’s arm and hauled her toward the stairs. She had every intention of shoving him off and crying foul, but she needed his assent, or their plan would never work. He reached the stairs and continued to pull her along. They reached the laird’s solar and he knocked on the door.
Gabrielle’s weak voice called out to admit them and Kensey shook her head as Reyf put his hand on the door. He paid her no heed and shoved her inside her mother’s room. Malcolm followed and Reyf closed the door with a loud thud.
“Your daughter has news, my lady.” Reyf bowed deeply, his voice low and sweet. He eyed Kensey and gestured for her to speak to her mother.
She had hoped to make the decision without worrying Gabrielle, but it looked as though there was no other option. In dulcet tones, she explained the situation, leaving out as much information as she dared.
Then, she dropped her voice even lower as she explained her plan. Gabrielle sunk deeper into her bedcoverings as Kensey continued and by the time she’d presented the plan, Gabrielle could barely be seen. Tears streaked her face.
“There must be another course of action we could take,” Gabrielle insisted. Kensey crossed the room and lifted her mother’s light frame out of the hole she’d sunk into, propped her up against several pillows, and re-covered her in blankets.
“If we stay, we endanger not only Father’s legacy, but our own lives. Who’s to say he won’t slaughter the three of us on sight?”
“He would have to answer to the King if he did. And the King of France.” Gabrielle poked out her proud chin and dismissed the very thought. But Kensey knew better. This was war, and anything was possible.
“Papa has been accused of treason.”
“But to leave Assynt…” Gabrielle stopped, wheezing. She took in a deep, painful breath, and Kensey could hear the difficulty with which she gathered herself. Her lungs were somehow impeded, which meant the medicines still weren’t working.
Unbidden, Kensey thought, you may not last the week, Mother, but did not say as such. Still, the thought clouded her attention. She stamped a frustrated foot. “If you stay, what good will it do?”
“I know you do worry for me, and perhaps you should.” Another labored breath gave Kensey the pause she needed. “But I cannot leave Assynt.”
Gabrielle straightened in her bed and gestured to Reyf. “As my husband’s steward, I want you to give some orders, on behalf of your laird.”
Reyf strode forward and sunk to one knee in front of his mistress. Kensey crossed her arms with a frustrated sigh. Her mother refused to listen. They couldn’t stay.
“You are to order my children, accompanied by Malcolm Sinclair, to ride at once for Castle St. Claire. There, they will throw themselves on the mercy of the laird and beg his forgiveness for the inconvenience of our request.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Gabrielle met Kensey’s eyes. “And you are to order the gates to open to Buckingham when he arrives. No protest. We will receive his letters if he is indeed from the King, and I will remain here as Lady of MacLeod until I am removed by the King or my lord husband returns to me.”
Kensey’s heart twisted. Her mother couldn’t do this. It meant certain death for her, and perhaps even for her father.
“If my children must mourn this decision, they may do so, but my word is final and I will brook no refusal.” Gabrielle slumped back against the bed and a fit of coughing took her. Reyf merely nodded and left the room with his orders.
At the word mourn, Kensey felt the threat of tears burn the back of her throat. “I never thought I would lose both my parents like this.” Her dark hair fell from behind her ears as she bowed her head and sobbed into her mother’s bedding. Gabrielle appeared not even to have the strength to pull her daughter into her arms. She instead kept her hand on Kensey’s head and hushed her.
“There, there, now. As of right now, you have lost neither.”
“But if we leave…”
“Yes, if you leave, you may not return to find me here,” Gabrielle wheezed, pausing again to take a deep breath. Kensey noticed that the shallow breaths she took at intervals sounded less awful than this one, long breath she paused for. She knew this meant something, but she could not remember what. “But if you stay, you may very well wake one morning and find me gone, as well. And then we risk Buckingham taking you to wife, or giving you to one of his henchmen like a common whore.”
Kensey expected the tears to come, but they did not. It was as though her sadness was so deep that there was no way to express it. “But if we leave for the Sinclairs…”
Gabrielle nodded for Kensey to come closer and she sat on the bed, leaning into her mother’s whispering hug.
“We may yet save the entire clan, and perhaps your father as well.” Gabrielle turned Kensey’s face to look into her eyes. “This means that you must make an alliance for yourself among the Sinclair brothers.”
Kensey nodded. This was the flaw in her plan, she thought. While her brother and father and mother may all get what they wanted from this plan, there was no way in which she would also be as happy with the outcome. Either she would have to marry Duncan, and separate him from Fiona forever. Or she would have to marry Malcolm, and be forever the object of an affection she could not return.
But it was the only way. She continued to tell herself this was their only option, and the more she said it, the more she thought she could accept it. Even if it meant a loveless marriage, she could at least bear it. Neither Duncan nor Malcolm would make bad husbands. Neither would treat her poorly. Neither would be truly happy with her, but at least they would find some measure of happiness. And perhaps in time, she thought, they could learn to love one another.
“It would be the most a mother could ever ask of her daughter,” Gabrielle said after another excruciating breath. They seemed to be coming harder, and Kensey was so afraid that the next would not come, she almost wanted to take her frail mother in her arms and run for the moors.
“Is there no other way can you see, Mother?” Kensey finally asked, after thinking down other paths and coming up with no option. “I can see none. All ways I think to shift the situation end with consequences I simply will not visit upon our family.”
Gabrielle’s eyes misted, and she watched Kensey with an affectionate sadness. “In many ways,” Gabrielle said, “you are the leader the clan needs.” Kensey laughed at that, the tears creating an odd sense of resignation.
“I promise, my lady, I will take care of your daughter as though you and your husband were always with us.” Malcolm repeated Reyf’s one-knee gesture as he made his profession and Kensey felt a tugging of gratitude for his presence.
At least they wouldn’t have to be on the moors alone.
***
After passing Loch Shin, they rode west instead of north, on Robert’s insistence, and passed through territory completely unfamiliar to Kensey. Then again, she thought, her track record for navigating up here had not been reliable. But Ma
lcolm let Robert lead the way, and Kensey was glad that Robert could feel in control of something this day.
His red face had been taunting Kensey since they left. The tearful goodbye had been heartbreaking enough, but the boy simply didn’t understand why he had to go.
When they stopped to eat some of the food that Ete sent with them, they did not speak for the duration of the sparse meal, other than to ask for food to be passed or put away. Robert was still on the verge of tears, and Kensey was numb to it all.
They finished their meal and remounted their horses, still in silence. Kensey watched Robert guide them through the wilderness of his homeland. He was growing up so quickly, she thought. He already favored their father in his build, and was growing into it as each day passed. But his face favored Gabrielle with its smooth lines and bright eyes. The thought of her mother brought a pain to her heart again, and she pushed it away, trying to enjoy what she could of the moment—even if there was nearly no joy in the whole of it.
They hadn’t passed another human being. Not even the outcast Highlander, to Kensey’s disappointment. She’d seen his form once or twice in the distance around Assynt House. But perhaps he’d gone for good, or sought out permanent shelter for the oncoming winter months.
Once they passed alongside the southern face of Uthir Mountains, and into Sinclair land, there were no more shepherding farms, and no more villages—they would all have been curling around to the North, in the more habitable land. Of course, the MacLeod land didn’t hold much either—nothing held much up here. But the farther north they traveled, the more desolate it felt. They had been riding for another two or three hours before Robert finally broke the silence.
“You came up here once before,” he noted, slowing his horse to relax his gait.
“When we went for Fiona,” she reminded him and he looked knowingly at her.
“Did you come this way?”
“No. Why? Are you lost?”
“I only wondered.” He turned back to Malcolm, stopping his horse alongside Brid. “Have you been this way?”
Malcolm looked around and nodded. “It is the faster way than going north around the mountains, but fewer people.”
“Will we see any of the runaways up here, do you think?” asked Robert. Kensey’s heart sped its beat for a moment. She hadn’t spoken to Robert of her encounters with the strange man, so she immediately wondered what his motive was for asking.
“Why do you ask, lad?” said Malcolm.
“Only because this is the only place I’ve ever seen them.”
“When were you up here to see them?” Kensey wondered, trying to keep as relaxed a tone as she could. But at the mention of the runaways, her breath came too quickly.
“Perhaps two years ago,” the boy replied. He pointed to a hill off to their right. “They were living in one of the bothans up here. Father and I and Reyf and Kendrick came to shore up one of the riverbanks where the snow melt had taxed it.”
“What were you doing here?” Kensey asked, sharply. “Was Father not thinking?”
Robert looked hurt at her question, as though she had struck him. “I am not a boy, Kensey, that I need to be protected.”
“You are a boy still,” she insisted. “You are only nine.”
“Some boys in England are betrothed at ten or eleven. And boys are crowned king at any age.”
“But they have men to do the work for them,” Kensey said, unthinking. This made the lad visibly angry.
“I can work, just the same as any man! I am just the same as any man!”
“I didn’t mean…”
But before she could explain herself, Robert had kicked his horse and taken off toward the hill he’d pointed at. No doubt headed straight for the bothan. Kensey exchanged a quick glance with Malcolm, who followed, but always with one eye behind them.
“Stay here.” Malcolm yelled over his shoulder as he galloped after the boy. “I’ll bring him back and we’ll continue along this ridge.”
Robert had quite a head start, but Malcolm’s horse was faster. Kensey watched the man chase her brother, trying to keep her eyes on them in the dark. But after several minutes, no matter how close Malcolm could get, Robert had too big a head start. They soon disappeared into the trees near the hill.
“Malcolm knows the terrain, and has a quick horse,” she reassured herself. “He will return with Robert shortly.” It wasn’t as comforting as she’d hoped and she soon pulled her horse in the direction they’d disappeared.
She’d progressed nearly all the way to the bothan before she spotted Malcolm and Robert’s horses. The two had both dismounted and left their animals about one hundred paces shy of the house. She could not see them and her heartbeat increased significantly, wondering what could have happened.
“Kensey!” came Robert’s voice, but she could not place where he was. It wasn’t as far as the house, but they were nowhere in sight. Kensey scanned the landscape, looking for any sign of them.
Finally, she found Robert’s head sticking up over the crest of some bushes and rode toward him. She noticed, as she reached the bushes, that there was a blood trail from nearly where Malcolm’s horse was stopped to where she’d seen Robert. Just in front of Malcolm and Robert’s horses was a larger pool of blood.
“It’s dried already,” Malcolm was saying when he came into earshot. “So it can’t have been a recent thing.”
Kensey rounded the bushes where Robert was standing and Malcolm was crouched over something. She smelled the putrid stench of rotting flesh right away, and fought back a retch as she bent over Robert to see what they were staring at.
Malcolm had his sword out and was lifting a giant, dead boar, turning it over by putting his blade under its huge body and pressing it up. Its head, which was missing a horn, had been hacked apart, from snout to brain, and the open wound gave off a fetid odor. There was some evidence, as well, of scavengers already having feasted on part of the carcass. But what really caught Kensey’s eye as Malcolm lifted the giant animal, was that in its mouth and on the ground beneath it were scattered shreds of the same cloth Duncan had given Kensey to signify that it was made by Sinclair hands.
Chapter Eight
“Beard of heaven, what happened here?” Kensey asked, wanting to look but being so repulsed she prepared to lose the contents of Ete’s well-packed dinner.
“We found a pool of blood.” Malcolm grunted, laying the huge animal back as it had been and stepping well away from it, covering his dark face with the edge of his cloak to stave off the smell, which had intensified when he lifted the thing.
“I was riding to see if there were any of them left,” Robert breathed, stepping back into Kensey. She put her arm around his neck and shoulders, trying to comfort him. “Because we saw them two years ago. But Father told me there was none left. And I wanted to see for myself.”
“Whatever are you talking about, dear boy?” said Kensey, pushing her gaze back to the familiar shreds of plaid that were caught in the boar’s teeth.
“The Runaway Sinclairs,” Robert insisted.
“All those men are dead,” said Malcolm, his voice as deadpan as Kensey’s stare. “Killed by the winter. Not by wild boars. Perhaps one of their plaids was left in the house when they… moved on… or… well, maybe the boar got into the bothan and tore it up.”
“Then why would it be hacked to pieces like this?” Robert maintained.
“It could have been another animal. Or the scavengers. We don’t know what did this.”
Kensey nodded at Malcolm’s words, and pulled at Robert even as she held him by his neck. “Let’s get back on the road. There is nothing to be done here.”
The three of them backed away from the scene, something about its macabre violence keeping their attention longer than any of them desired.
“There was more blood,” Malcolm said as they walked back to their horses. Kensey grabbed Brid’s reins and pulled her along to where the other hors
es waited.
“And what was it doing behind the bushes?” Robert wondered.
Kensey hadn’t thought to ask that question, and they exchanged glances. “It looks as though it was killed here and dragged there,” continued Robert when no one answered him.
“That would seem to be what happened,” Malcolm agreed.
“A boar will always attack into the open,” Robert kept going. “They don’t wait for prey like a stalking cat.”
“Or a man,” added Kensey.
“Right,” Robert said, buoyed by the agreement. “They just charge at anything. Especially the big ones who fear nothing. It must have been killed by a man and dragged into the bushes.”
Malcolm knelt and looked at the ground around them. “Or it skewered an animal, fought with it, pushed it up the hill, and the animal bested it near the bushes.”
“What sort of animal could best a giant wild boar?” Robert asked, innocently.
“A man,” both Kensey and Malcolm answered at the same time, then met one another’s eyes. “You said there was more blood,” said Kensey.
“It would take a miracle to survive being gored by an animal that size,” Malcolm said. “Chances are, if it was a man, and he somehow managed to kill the beast, he walked off to his own death.”
“Or rode off?”
“Or rode off,” agreed Malcolm. “I would have to follow it to be sure.”
“Perhaps we should,” Kensey said, looking between the two boys with her: one true boy, and one boy in a man’s body. Although only two years Malcolm’s senior, that gave her just the edge she needed. Thankfully, it seemed that at least the danger from the boar was gone. So they did not have that to contend with.
“We should what?” Malcolm asked.
She gestured in the direction that the blood ran. “Perhaps we should follow the trail. There could be someone out here, injured, needing care.”
