by Sophia James
Mon Dieu, he was turning into a man he did not recognise.
Was it the light-headedness after the doctoring that had him ogling a woman who might still be tossing him back into an outgoing tide come the morrow?
But there was something about her, with her long dark hair and her prickliness, a female set apart from others and fierce. He could not think of even one man of his acquaintance who would have braved such a cold and angry sea.
He also wondered how long she had lived rough like this, lost from society and the discourse of other women.
Her travelling companions lay over the other side of the clearing, their snores mingling with Simon’s, a whisky pouch beside them, and an array of knives and crossbows against a rock at the ready.
Enemies. Everywhere.
The day pressed upon him with all its unexpected turnings. Guy lost, Simon saved and his arm sewn up by a woman who looked like a battered angel. With a sigh he closed his eyes and drifted into sleep.
* * *
She could hear him breathing, evenly, slumber taking over from pain.
He lay with his good arm tucked under his head as a cushion against the hardness of the ground, the drizzle sitting on his hair like small jewels. He was a puzzle, this James, with his careful green eyes and his golden bracelet and his way of making certain that all those about him were safe. She had heard the boatman and the one called Simon talk of the way he had rescued them from the trappings of rope and sail as the boat had foundered, clawing his way back to find whoever was left. The marks of bruises all over him told her that the task had not been easy, either, and his vigilance and guardedness here even in the face of pain was unrelenting.
Swearing beneath her breath, she balled her fists and listened to him take breath, quiet in the night and comforting. It was this comfort that had led her to speak of her mother, a subject she had not shared with one other person in all of her life. All twenty-three years of it. Lord, it seemed like so much more.
James. He didn’t suit the name, she thought. Too proper for a man who looked as he did. Too very orthodox and prim. She wished he might wake up so that they could talk again out here in the night alone with the rain to shelter their words from the others, but the day had exhausted him and she was glad that he lay in the arms of rest.
She couldn’t sleep because there were too many thoughts in her head, too many memories dredged up: her mother’s sadness and her father’s fury when he realised that his wife had escaped through one of the sea caves under Ceann Gronna. He had ranted and raved on the high battlements for all of the hours of the storm and when Isobel had gone to him to try to help he had pushed her away, screaming his
hatred. Such recollections made her melancholy, a small child blamed for all the self-absorption and egotism of her parents.
She needed some space away from this stranger with all his questions inciting unwanted confidences she had never told another soul. Ian would not hurt them unduly for she had made sure he had understood the consequences should he fail to protect them.
Careful not to wake anyone as she packed up her things, she lifted a branch and disappeared like a ghost into the thickness of the forest.
Chapter Three
Isobel Dalceann was gone when he awoke next, the headache he had felt coming in the night now a pounding curse.
Simon looked about as bad as he felt, the shaking the boatman from Le Havre had been consumed by touching him now, and the red in his eyes as bright as blood.
The two Scotsmen sat by the fire, warming their hands across flame.
‘Is there water?’ Marc’s question was directed at the younger man.
‘It depends who’d be a-wanting it,’ the one called Ian answered, his arm coming up to hold the other back from the task of offering succour. Angus, he remembered Isobel Dalceann had called him. The lad looked remarkably like Ian. Perhaps they were kin?
‘My friend is hot...’
‘Then a swim in the cool of the ocean might do him good.’ He rose now and sauntered towards them, malice drawn into the long bones of his body.
‘I noticed a stream on the way here yesterday. That might do even better.’
Scowling, Ian changed the subject altogether. ‘The insignia on the bracelet we took from you—what does it mean?’
‘I picked the piece up in a trading city in the north of France. Perhaps it denotes a family connection or the acknowledgement of some property.’
‘Or perhaps ye are here to spy for the king?’
‘Philip the Sixth of France is too busy with his own problems to be burdened with those of Scotland as well.’
‘I was speaking of David of the Scots.’
‘As a purveyor of fine cloth newly come in from Brittany, I leave politics to the domain of those who understand them.’ Marc made his accent subtly stronger and shrugged his shoulders to underline the point. Indifference held its own defence. It was the intricate little gestures that made a person believe in a ruse rather than the large ones. How long had he known that? With difficulty he stood.
‘Cloth like that of your surcoat?’ Angus’s question implied interest.
‘Indeed.’ The scarlet velvet was rich in the morning light as he looked around.
‘Where is the woman?’ Trying to take any interest from the query, Marc knew he had failed when the other struck him full in the face. Reeling, he regained his footing, a trail of blood dripping across his left eyebrow turning the world red as the soldier’s instinct in him surfaced.
‘Isobel Dalceann is nothing to you, understand, for I saw the way you looked at her with the firelight in your eyes and want in your belly.’
The Scotsman drew a knife as he spat out the words; kicking out, Marc upended him, using the moment’s uncertainty to kick harder. Long years of practice made the task so easy he could have done it in his sleep. When the man lay still, he turned to find the younger one gone, the water pouch abandoned on the track. Laying his bound palms across the smooth earth of the pathway, Marc listened to movements fading into silence. He made for their keep probably. Isobel Dalceann had already told him it was within walking distance of less than two days west.
Edinburgh lay in the very same direction, on a fortified inner bay of the Forth, at least four days’ hard walk and Simon in no fit state to do any of it.
Grabbing Ian’s knife, he held the blade against the rope at his wrist, sliding back and forth in order to break the bonds. When he was free he cut the ropes binding Simon. His arm hurt like hell at the movement and bright red spread across the bandage, dripping off his fingers in a slimy viscosity. Wiping them against velvet, he looked around. A crossbow had been left and a blanket. Beckoning Simon to collect them while he knotted the discarded ropes into a longer length, he bound Ian to a hefty trunk of tree.
Not dead.
Part of him knew he should pull back his neck and slit his throat here in the quiet of the glade and out of the sight of others, but Isobel Dalceann had smiled at this Scotsman in the way of a friend and there was some hesitation in him that was disturbing, some unfamiliar notion to please.
Simon was coughing in an alarming manner, the breath he took shallow and fast.
‘I a-am f-freezing.’
Marc knew the opposite was the truth for he had felt the hot flush of skin as he had untied him. He stripped his tunic and the blanket away, then they made for the stream crossed yesterday back at the headland off the beach. His friend’s shaking had worsened, the slight tremors giving way to an uncontrolled jerkiness which lessened a bit as Marc dumped him into the water and held him there. Resistance faded as cold ran across heat.
‘God,’ he muttered as the red in his own arm spread into the stream and Simon began to cry.
* * *
Biting down on her bottom lip, Isobel thought of the moment her life had changed, from one thing to the other and no chance of turning it different. Her hand lifted to her face and traced the edge of scar into the hairline just below her left ear as consequences settled across her l
ike a stone. If she could go back two years she would have and if she could have gone back another five then all the better again.
So many damn years of war! They were etched into her face as hard lines of age. Alisdair dying by her father’s hands, yet even as he had left this world her husband had incited mercy and pardon until blood dribbled down the side of his mouth, taking away words. Her father had always been unstable and she had spent much of her youth avoiding his heavy right arm. He hated her because James had gone and she was left, a daughter who looked too much like his ‘treacherous wife’.
The anger that congealed inside her sometimes stymied breath and, stopping beside a tree, she hung her head across her knees, fighting terror.
It always happened like this, unexpectedly vicious, the regrets of a lifetime channelled to that one horrific moment with never any solace.
Fingering the silver ring on her finger, she was glad for it. Inside the band Alisdair had engraved the word BELIEF. She had wondered if he meant belief in God or in him at the time he had given it to her. Now she used the word to mark her life. Belief in what she was doing was just. Belief in protecting those still left at Ceann Gronna. Belief in the old rights of land law and clan.
She looked to the west. Clouds darkened the horizon and the rain was falling harder than it had in the night. The pathways home would be muddy and difficult and the time it took to get back to the keep would double in such conditions.
She had been gone for four hours already and the sun was up. She needed to get back to make certain that the strangers were shepherded out of the Dalceann lands. With grim determination she turned to walk against the wind.
She saw the green-eyed one and his friend from a distance on the slopes a good two miles from where they had camped, but Angus and Ian were not with them. Her head tilted to one side, listening. Where the hell were her men? Why had they let these
two make their way unaided towards Edinburgh?
James had removed the scarlet surcoat and wore it inside out now, the dark satin of the lining blending into the colour of the trees. The one named Simon hung on to his elbow, more in hindrance than anything else, his limp pronounced.
With care, Isobel skirted into the bush, watching as they came up towards her. James saw her first. Congealed blood lay on the white linen strips she had protected his wound with and he carried the arm high against his chest.
As he smiled she swallowed down a sudden and inexplicable need to touch him and her breathing tightened.
‘Where are the others?’
‘The taller man is tied up in the glade we slept in—’
She broke over his words. ‘Alive?’
When he nodded she felt relief flare in her eyes. ‘And Angus?’
‘Run off...several hours ago.’
His face in the light was harder than she remembered it to be and she saw Ian’s knife tucked beneath his belt.
His glance took in the brace of pigeons she had captured on the incline at the Alamere Creagh before coming back to her face. She saw him frown before he turned away.
* * *
Isobel Dalceann was like the space between lightning and thunder when all of the world holds its breath for what was to come. A woman apart from others, incomprehensible and unexpected.
He wished that just for a moment she might be gentle or kind or vulnerable, might smile or shake her head in the way of one who was uncertain, might come forwards and offer solace to Simon.
But she did none of these things as she gestured them to follow, only minions in her wake as the forest closed in about them, holding back the bands of rain. The dead birds hung at her side like an omen.
His arm ached hot and throbbing and the weight of Simon pulled him sidewards. Even a fool could see that if a village did not come soon he was done for and Isobel Dalceann was far from a fool. They came down tall dunes of sand into a sheltered bay, butterflies and flowers bordering a stream.
‘Put him here,’ she said finally as Simon gestured he could go no further. Laying down her own blanket, she knelt at his friend’s side.
* * *
Her hand ran across the injured leg and she felt the bruise rise up against her palm, the heat of infection surprising her. Last night this man had shown no sign of any injury save that of the ocean-cold in his bones and she cursed beneath her breath as she recognised her oversight. She should have tended to him hours ago when the fingers of badness might have been expunged more easily and the shaking had not overtaken all sense of ease. With a quick slash of her blade she opened the torn material in his hose from groin to knee. The swollen flesh on his upper thigh had been crushed and she knew instantly that there was nothing more that she could do. Bending to his chest, she listened for the pulse of blood.
‘Can you help him?’ There was a tone in James’s voice she had not heard before.
‘Help comes in many forms.’ Isobel was careful to take the emotion she felt away from her answer as she dribbled water through cracked and shaking lips, waiting for a moment while he swallowed to give him the chance to savour the wetness. Already she could feel the rattle of death in his chest, reverberating against her arm, a soft portent of an ending that was near. ‘My father used to say help was always only fiscal, but my husband insisted it was otherwise. He was a man inclined to the spiritual, you understand, before he died. Your friend here, though, needs another gift entirely and any aid given to another in reaching the afterlife easily has a reward all of its own.’
She saw the quick flicker of rebellion in his leaf-green eyes before he had a chance to hide it, loss entwined amongst anger. Biting down on her own grief, she laid her hand across the dying stranger’s throat, feeling the beat, weaker now and more erratic in the last emptying of blood.
He would still hear, she knew, still make sense of a world fading into quiet and she wanted him to understand the music inherent in a land his dust would be for ever a part of.
‘The smell of the sea is always close in Fife. We’re used to that here, used to living with the wind coming up the Firth funnelled into briskness and calling. The birds call, too, the curlews and the linnets, their song in the birch and the beech and the pine, and further west Benarty guards the heavens and gathers the clouds.’
Her land, its boundaries drawn in blood and fought for in a passion that was endless. The earth here would guard Simon, fold him into her warmth and hold him close. These were the old laws of dying, the rules that had been forgotten in the new kingdom of Scotland because men looked forwards now and never back.
She should be numbed to death, immune to its loss, but she was not and even a stranger who had walked with her for less than a day was mourned.
* * *
She had been married once? The thought made him stiffen as he watched her speak of the streams and the mountains and the flowers in springtime. Like a song of the living to the ears of the dying, he was to think later, and a prayer for transport somewhere easier and without pain. Her eyes remained dry.
A gift she had said, and indeed it was that, devoid of angst or panic or alarm. Simon simply slipped off and never moved again as she invoked a pathway to Heaven and talked of a good man that she wanted him to find there named Alisdair.
When death began to cool his flesh she stood, a little off balance. He would have liked to offer her his help, but he was uncertain as to whether she would accept it or not. As they looked at each other, the distance of a few feet felt like the world.
‘What was he to you, this Simon?’
‘A friend.’
‘And the other man, the one you held safe in the sea?’
‘Guy. My cousin.’
‘Then you are blessed with the love of others.’
The love of others! If only she knew. He stayed silent as Isobel turned Simon towards the ocean.
‘Spirits look eastwards for their home.’
‘I have not read that in any Bible.’ He tried to keep his voice even.
‘Some things are not written. Th
ey are simply known.’ Clearing a path to the sea, she uprooted bracken and small plants to leave an easy access.
He waited till she had finished before reaching forwards to take one of her hands. When he looked down he saw her fingernails were all bitten to the quick and that there was a wedding band on her marriage finger.
‘Thank you.’
She did not pull away, but stood still, her eyes this close ringed with a pure and clear gold. He tried not to glance down at the scar she wore so indifferently.
‘How long have you been married?’
She broke the contact between them with a single hard jerk. Lord, was nothing ever simple with her? Her hair had escaped the confines of a leather band and the lad’s hose had dropped to the line of her hips, and where the short tunic had hitched upwards the gap showed a good expanse of skin.
‘How old are you?’
‘Twenty-three.’
‘You look younger.’
‘Do I?’ For the first time since meeting Isobel Dalceann, he detected feminine uncertainty and a strange feeling twisted around his heart.
She had rescued him from a raging sea and sewn his arm up without flinching, yet here when he gave her a compliment she blushed like a young girl. The contradictions in her were astonishing.
‘We will wrap your friend in a blanket and leave him undisturbed until help arrives.’
‘Help?’
‘Angus will bring others.’
‘Tonight?’
‘Perhaps.’ Gathering a handful of sticks from the beach, she placed them in a pile. The scar on her hand in the fall of the eve was easily seen and he wondered again who had hurt her so very badly.
‘The keep you mention, is it your family’s?’
‘Aye, it is that and by virtue of long possession. The Dalceann have ruled the land around Ceann Gronna for centuries.’
‘So you hold tenure direct from the Crown?’
Suspicion sparked across her face, changing eyes to deep brown. ‘Where exactly did you say you were from?’
‘I didn’t.’
‘But not from Edinburgh?’ The brittle anger in her words was palpable.
