Bride for a Knight

by Sue-Ellen Welfonder

“Aye, the Horned One will have had his hand in this!” Morag grabbed Jamie’s arm, her gnarled fingers closing on him like talons. “Make haste! And bring your sword and ax,” she urged, glancing at his discarded sword belt and blade, the Norseman’s ax propped against the far wall. “We’re under attack.”

  Jamie eyes flew wide. “Under attack?”

  Morag nodded. “So everyone thinks,” she said, turning to hasten back down the dimly lit passage, making for the stair tower as fast as her spindly legs would carry her.

  Jamie and Aveline exchanged glances.

  “God’s bones,” Jamie swore again, running back across the room to fetch his brand and the ax.

  “Morag—hold you!” he yelled, grabbing Aveline’s hand and pulling her with him from the room. “Wait!” he called again, amazed the old woman could move so quickly. “You said it was my da? What of him? Has he been hurt?”

  But Morag was already far ahead of them, her tiny form swallowed by the shadows of the turnpike stair, the bobbing, wildly flickering flame of her rush light the only sign they’d even seen her at all.

  Until her voice floated back up to them, her words echoing in the stair tower.

  “I dinna ken how he is. Only that he’s been shot by a crossbow.”

  Chapter Eleven

  O-o-oh, nay!”

  “I dinna care how many wounds you’ve stitched, lassie, you willna be a-sticking that needle in my arm!”

  Munro’s protests echoed off the walls of the great hall, his bellowing rising above the din and catching Jamie’s ear even before he and Aveline reached the bottom of the stair tower and burst into the crowded hall’s chaos and turmoil.

  A quick glance showed that the entirety of the MacKenzie guardsmen and at least half of Jamie’s father’s men appeared to have vanished, though he strongly suspected they’d hastened away to man the wall walks.

  Those remaining dashed about shouting orders and cursing, some stoking the already blazing fires and heating great cauldrons of water, useful on the walls, Jamie knew.

  “Dear saints, Morag spoke true. They’re readying for a siege,” Aveline gasped beside him, her gaze on a group of garrison men who stood nearby strapping on sword belts and other war gear.

  Jamie frowned. “If so, I doubt our attackers hail from the Otherworld,” he observed, certain of it.

  Everywhere men rushed about snatching up more assorted, wicked-looking weapons than he’d realized his da’s men possessed. Some had already taken defensive positions at the windows and doors, and still more were running for the stair towers, their clattering footfalls loud and echoing as they hurried to the battlements.

  Aveline glanced at him. “I know you don’t believe Neill and Kendrick—”

  Jamie snorted. “Ghosts dinna shoot crossbows—or wear wet plaids,” he said, tightening his grip on her hand as they pushed through the chaos, heading for the hall’s crowded dais end.

  Nor did they mix fish bones into harmless porridge he added in silence, not about to frighten her by revealing that particular incident.

  A threat that had come to naught but just the kind of nonsense he was determined not to let happen again.

  As for shooting old men with crossbows …

  Jamie set his jaw, his blood heating as they neared the raised dais.

  “Wench, be gone with you—you, and your devil’s needle!” his da roared again, and Jamie spotted him at once.

  He stood behind the high table, his left arm bright with fresh, streaming red blood, his hands in a white-knuckled grip on the back of his laird’s chair.

  Wild-eyed and furious, he was glowering at anyone who attempted to approach him.

  At present, that seemed to be Lady Juliana.

  “’Tis only a scrape, I tell you!” Munro insisted, glaring at her. “I’ll heal just fine—without you jabbing new holes into me!”

  Ignoring his wrath, Lady Juliana took two steps closer to the dais. “This is only a very thin bone needle,” she said, holding it up for him to see.

  White-faced, Gelis and Arabella trailed after her, both girls in their bed robes, a pile of clean-looking linens clutched in Arabella’s arms, while Gelis carried a bucket of steaming water.

  Munro raked them with an equally black-browed stare. “Go back to your bed, lassies!” he yelled at them. “I’ve no need o’ your nursing.”

  “Or yours.” He rounded on Jamie and Aveline, agitation rolling off him. “I like you fine,” he said, his gaze latching on to Aveline, “so dinna tempt me to change my opinion. Just stay where you are and leave me be.”

  “But, sir, your arm must be treated.” Aveline started forward. “Like Lady Juliana, I, too, can—”

  “You can stop right there and no’ be a-joining up with this devil’s besom and her needle,” Munro exploded, glowering.

  “Come you, Sir Munro,” Lady Juliana tried to soothe him, her voice calm and low. “My stitches are so fine and quick, you’ll ne’er know I’ve even touched you.”

  “So spoke the wolf before he ate the lamb!” Munro pulled his dirk from beneath his belt, brandishing it in her direction. “I’ll poke any one o’ you who sets foot on this dais. Including women!”

  He threw an especial glare at Morag. “And no quarter given for age!”

  Undaunted, she frowned back at him, her hands planted firmly on her scrawny hips. “I’m thinking that scrape will be needing more than stitching,” she said, sliding a glance to the hall’s massive central hearth where a stable youth held a broad-bladed dagger to the flames.

  “Lady Juliana means well, but the wound is too deep and jagged, the blood spilling too swiftly for her dainty stitches to do much good,” she added. “More the pity as sealing the wound with a hot blade will hurt far worse than being sewn up!”

  Munro thrust his dirk back beneath his belt and whipped out his sword. “God’s living eyes, any one of you goons try and bring a fired blade anywhere near me and I’ll skewer you through! Be warned!”

  He frowned darkly but when he made to shake his sword at the small group of friends and kin gathered before the dais steps, he swayed on his feet and the great brand slipped from his bloodied fingers, clattering to the floor.

  Munro grabbed at his chair again, this time leaning heavily against its carved oaken back. “I meant what I said,” he vowed, his eyes snapping defiance. “Dinna any one o’ you dare come near me.”

  And then he ran chalk-white and slumped to his knees.

  “Damnation!” Jamie vaulted over a trestle bench and leapt onto the dais, Aveline running after him.

  “Clear the table,” he called to her as he scooped his father into his arms.

  “Someone bring uisge beatha! We’ll need lots—a good measure for Da to drink and even more to pour o’er his wound. And you”—he looked to the MacKenzie women—“help Morag fetch her salves, bandaging, and whate’er else she’ll need. She knows better than any what must be done.”

  Pausing for breath, Jamie scanned the hall for Hughie Mac. He glanced at Morag when he didn’t see him. “Where’s Hughie? He’ll know what to do, too. He’s nigh as good as you at healing.”

  Morag sniffed. “That one left some hours ago,” she told him, taking the steaming water bucket from Gelis. “He hasn’t spread a pallet here in a while, fussing that his legs pain him of a night and that he only finds comfort in his own wee cottage.”

  “Hughie fussing?” Jamie lifted a brow.

  He’d ne’er heard the erstwhile herd boy complain about anything. Like any true Highlander, Hughie Mac possessed an inborn imperturbability as solid and unshakeable as the hills he called home.

  Jamie looked at his old nurse. “Nay, I canna believe it,” he puzzled. “Hughie would ne’er fash about aught.”

  Morag only shrugged. “Hughie Mac’s turned queer of late if you’re asking me,” she said. “But ne’er you worry. I know well enough what we need to do.”

  “Ye gods! There isn’t aught to do.” Munro’s voice rose to a shout as Jamie held him while Av
eline and Lady Juliana spread a clean linen cloth over the emptied high table.

  He glared at everyone, his scowl darkening even more when Jamie lowered him onto the tabletop.

  “Tell those fools to stop running around like twittering women,” he raged, twisting his head toward the bustle in the hall. “There’s no need. Baldreagan isn’t under siege. ’Twas Neill’s bogle who shot me and no other—as I’ve already told the lackwits!”

  Morag huffed. “I’d sooner believe it was God Almighty. You’ve e’er given Him ample reason to be vexed with you!”

  “’Twas Neill’s bogle so sure as I’m looking at you!” Munro narrowed his eyes on her.

  Jamie and Aveline exchanged glances.

  “Bogles dinna use crossbows,” Jamie said, beginning to ease back the edge his father’s blood-drenched plaid. “And lest you’ve forgotten, so far as I recall, Neill was a master with a blade but he ne’er fired a crossbow in his life.”

  He slid another glance at Aveline. “If you didn’t know,” he told her, “most knights frown on crossbows. Neill held them in particular scorn.”

  Munro sniffed. “How would you ken what he can or canna do now, in his afterlife? Him, being a bogle and all?”

  “My brothers may be dead, but I’ve yet to see proof that any of them are returning here as ghosts. Despite all the reports to the contrary.” Jamie bit back his temper and kept working at getting the bloody plaid off his father without causing him more discomfort than necessary.

  The man’s failing wits were suffering enough. If he had them in better order, he’d recall his eldest son’s vaunting pride.

  Truth was, Neill had despised crossbows, calling them a coward’s weapon, good only for the lowliest paid mercenaries and brigands.

  Neill had loved their father, too. Ne’er would he attempt to harm him. Not in a thousand lifetimes—whether Munro had neglected to repair the old footbridge or no.

  Jamie pressed a hand to his brow. His temples were beginning to throb again.

  “You don’t think it was one of my father’s Pabay men?” Aveline stepped close, pitching the question for his ears alone.

  He looked at her. The notion had flashed across his mind, but he dismissed it now.

  “Nay, lass, with surety not,” he said, speaking equally low. “One of your father’s reformed brigands would ne’er have missed their target. My da lives because the shot was clumsy. A true crossbowman would’ve had the skill to send his bolt through my father’s heart and not his arm.”

  She bit her lip, looking unconvinced.

  Jamie shook his head, seeking to reassure her. “I’d wager my last breath that none of Fairmaiden’s Pabay men did this. Dinna you worry. I only meant to say it wasn’t Neill’s ghost, either.”

  Proud as he’d been, he wouldn’t have touched a crossbow, insisting that doing so would’ve been beneath his dignity as a noble and belted knight.

  If Neill, Kendrick, or any Macpherson stood on the wrong foot with a man, they’d challenge their foe outright. It wasn’t their clan’s way to hide in the shadows, using darkness to cloak their blows.

  Truth be told, such wasn’t the way of any Highlander.

  Jamie turned back to his father, that knowledge making his head hurt all the more.

  “Tell me, Da, was Neill wearing his wet plaid again when he shot you?” he prodded, certain that whoe’er was masquerading as his brother’s ghost had also fired the crossbow. “Did you see him?”

  “Of course, I saw him.” Munro’s eyes blazed, but his voice sounded wheezy, hoarse and growing fainter. “Do you think I’d say it was him if I hadn’t seen him?”

  Pushing up on his elbows, he pinned Jamie with a fierce stare. “I’m no’ the only soul hereabouts who’s seen Neill lurking about and Kendrick, too. So dinna go a-telling me I’m daft.”

  Ignoring his da’s outburst, Jamie only cocked a brow. “And the plaid?”

  Munro clamped his lips together, wincing when Jamie eased away another blood-sodden bit of cloth from the wound. “Nay, he wasn’t in his plaid,” he finally admitted, pushing the words past gritted teeth. “He— eeeeeeiioooow!”

  The scream speared Jamie’s heart, hurting him, he was sure, a thousand times more than the old man writhing on the high table.

  “I am sorry,” he said, hating the tears filling the older man’s eyes. “The last bit of plaid and your tunic had to be ripped away.”

  He didn’t mention that still more of the cloth would have to be picked and dug from his flesh. Deep in his flesh, for the iron-headed crossbow quarrel had gone clear through Munro’s arm.

  Morag, Lady Juliana, or even Aveline would perform the task with great care, seeing to it as soon as the wound was washed and rinsed, though Jamie doubted his father would appreciate their gentleness.

  “I willna have the wound seared.” Munro grabbed Jamie’s wrist then, staring up at him with glittering, fear-glazed eyes. “Tell them. No hot blade on my flesh.”

  Looking down at him, something inside Jamie snapped and broke. Hot and jagged, it spun free to whirl ever upward, lodging in his throat, making it thicken and swell, burning his eyes.

  He blinked, needing to clear his vision.

  When he did, he recognized it was the panic in his father’s eyes that twisted his heart. And made him angry. Munro Macpherson had never been afraid of anything.

  Saints, Jamie wouldn’t have been surprised to hear his da challenge the Horned One himself. A fight to the death and with the devil’s own weapons of choosing!

  Yet now the old man’s every indrawn breath was tinged with fear.

  A grievous state he’d lived with e’er since a certain faceless coward began using the tragic deaths of his sons to haunt and break him. A miserable gutter-sweep Jamie strongly suspected might even have caused those deaths.

  And whoe’er he was, Jamie would find him. Even if doing so meant overturning every stone and clump of heather in all broad Scotland.

  “Mother o’ the living God!” Munro bellowed then, flailing with his good arm. “You’re both right pests,” he added, trying in vain to knock Morag and Lady Juliana away from him.

  But with the fortitude born of women, they ignored his curses and thrashings, only nodding calmly when four braw clansmen appeared to help Jamie hold his father in place as they washed and tended the wound.

  “Come, sir, one sip—for me.”

  Jamie heard his bride’s voice in the midst of the chaos, soft, sweet, and soothing as a gentle spring rain. Glancing at her, he looked on as she tried to coax Munro to drink the uisge beatha.

  A cure he needed as surely as having his wound cleaned because the moment the women finished, the dread sealing would follow.

  Whether it pleased Munro or nay.

  He’d die otherwise for nothing else would staunch the bleeding.

  Jamie shuddered. Having once had a sword cut on his thigh sealed by such hot branding, it was a pain he’d prefer to spare his da, so he nodded to the four kinsmen holding Munro and went to the head of the table, taking the flask of fiery Highland spirits from Aveline’s hand.

  “Drink,” he said, clamping his fingers on to his father’s jaw and tipping back his head. He held the flask to the old man’s tight-pressed lips, nudging. “As much as you can.”

  Munro glared at him, tightening his lips even more.

  Jamie glared right back at him. “You know I will pry open your lips and pour the whole flask down your throat if you dinna take a swallow—or two.”

  Apparently believing him, Munro shut his eyes and opened his mouth. Not much, but enough to allow Jamie to send a healthy measure of the healing water of life flowing down his father’s throat.

  Before he could get him to accept a second gulp, a commotion in the hall drew all eyes.

  Beardie came pounding up onto the dais, red-faced and panting, but resplendent in his great-great-grandsire’s rusted Viking helmet and his huge and shining Viking battle-ax clutched tight in his hand.

  “The siege is en
ded!” he announced, coming to a skidding, graceless halt. “And without a single scaling ladder being thrown against our walls. No’ one enemy fire arrow sent whistling through the air!”

  Beaming, he swiped a hand across his glistening brow. “My Viking helmet must’ve scared them! One glimpse of a true-blooded Norseman hanging o’er the parapet and waving a battle-ax, and the spineless bastards tucked their tails between their legs and ran.”

  Jamie stared at his cousin. He couldn’t believe there really had been attackers.

  “You saw them?” he asked, his mind whirling with the consequences if Beardie spoke true.

  “Well …” Beardie looked down, taking a moment to hitch and adjust his belt. “We had to have frightened them off because there was nary a sign o’ them anywhere,” he admitted, removing his Viking helmet and scratching his head. “Nary a glint o’ steel, no whinnying horses or clink o’ armor. Not one insult hurled at us as we looked for ’em.”

  He jammed his rusty helmet back on, looking puzzled. “Truth is, the castle dogs didn’t even bark.”

  “I told you it was the bogles,” Munro said from the table, his eyes popping open. “Neill’s bogle. I saw him take aim. He was wearing his burial shroud and he was in the bailey. Only a ghost could’ve slipped past the gatehouse.”

  A ghost or someone who comes and goes as he pleases.

  And has a right to do so.

  Jamie’s blood chilled.

  He should’ve asked where the attack had occurred.

  Now he knew.

  And the answer was more disturbing than if a whole band of hostile clans had arrived to storm Baldreagan’s walls; such foes can be fought. Unseen enemies in one’s own midst were far more difficult to besiege.

  “But I don’t understand …” Aveline touched Jamie’s arm.

  He turned to her. “Dinna understand what?”

  She edged closer, her brow knitting. “The bailey,” she said, sliding a glance at Munro. “He swore he’d not set foot outside the keep, yet he was attacked in the bailey.”

  Munro tried to push up on his good arm. “Of course, I was in the bailey,” he wheezed. “Neill told me to go there.”