by Julianne Lee
Chapter Nine
Winter was closing in, and activity on both sides of the conflict slowed with the harshness of weather and shortness of days. It seemed the sun never poked its nose above the horizon enough hours even to call them days anymore. While not on patrol, Alex spent his time hanging out in the Great Hall with his fellow knights, hearing news of exploits of other Scottish forces, often playing chess with Hector, but rarely winning.
“How a man can be so skilled in battle, yet so addled before a chessboard, is a mystery to me,” Hector crowed as Alex yet again tipped over his king in defeat.
“It’s good to be a MacNeil, so I’ll never have to face you on the field.”
Hector laughed well and long at that, as Alex began setting up for a new game. “It is good to be a MacNeil. Barra is the most beautiful island in the Hebrides. I’ll be glad to go home soon.”
Alex glanced up, but said nothing and returned his attention to the game. He hadn’t thought about Hector leaving; he’d be sorry to see him go.
The laird continued, “I haven’t seen my children in six months. I hope they’re all still living. Two have been lost already, and some of the others are young yet.” His voice lowered and softened. “It would be a great shame if I were to find any more missing on my return.” But then he grinned again. “Or, perhaps, I’ll even find a new one. Wouldn’t that be something, eh, Ailig? To find I’d left my wife with a new one?”
Alex’s mind slipped away from the game as he contemplated Hector’s attitude. He sat back in his rickety, wooden chair and examined his friend’s face leaning over the game board. To speak so casually of dead children was beyond Alex’s ability to comprehend. “How did the two die?”
Hector shrugged. “The one was frail and sickly, and wasted away before she was two years of age. The other, just last year, died of the pox. He was five.” His voice was soft again, but otherwise his demeanor was unchanged as he spoke of his loss. Alex thought it strange the children’s names weren’t mentioned.
“How many do you have still?”
“Och, I never count my children, bless them.” Hector crossed himself, as if attempting to ward away evil.
Now Alex thought he understood. Too much pain, and too much attention paid to it, and a man was crippled. The only defense against the deaths of others was to not feel the grief too much.
Later that evening at supper Hector and Cullan came to sit at the table opposite Alex. Without preamble, Hector said, “Come with us, little brother.”
Alex paused in chewing a mouthful of beef, and felt a flush of pleasure at the appellate. For the first time in his life, Alex was the younger and he found he liked having a big brother, for Hector was not nearly so intimidating as his father. It felt as good to be a MacNeil in this century as it had in his own time.
“Where?”
“Barra, of course. Come home with us for the winter.”
Deep in thought, Alex shredded a piece from the chunk on the wooden plate before him as he mulled the suggestion that had been presented as a command. He said, “To Barra?” Ostensibly the illegitimate offspring of the previous laird, he couldn’t imagine being welcome there. Suddenly it occurred to him to wonder whether Hector’s mother was still alive.
“Aye. Come to my castle. Leave your men to winter here under the king’s brother, or go home as they will. There will be little to do here until spring, and they’ll be glad for the respite.”
“Disband my company?”
“They’ll follow you again when you return to the fight. If they don’t, they were never truly your men in the first place. But you’re a MacNeil, so there will always be men to follow you.” That made Alex smile. Hector always assumed every MacNeil had special qualities of bravery, intelligence, and loyalty, and apparently Alex hadn’t yet disappointed him on any of those counts.
“James Douglas is still out making raids on the Marches.”
“James Douglas is daft, and fights for vengeance besides,” said Cullan. “Come with us. Come see your home. Every man must find his true home before he dies, and if you’re a MacNeil yours is on Barra. It’s the truth I’m telling you.”
Lindsay threw Alex a look though she wasn’t part of the conversation, and he looked away. Home. His home, if he ever had one, seemed an eternity ago and a million miles away. And as he glanced at Lindsay, and remembered she wasn’t part of that former life, it fell in his estimation. Barra was what there was for him now. “All right. We’ll go.”
Hector grinned and laughed, and it warmed Alex’s heart to matter so much to this man who had been a stranger less than six months ago.
Hector’s army of clansmen were mostly infantry, and traveled on foot. The march to the western coast was slowed by snows that marked the beginning of winter, and it took them through mountains higher than any Alex and Lindsay had experienced since coming to Scotland. Mountains that closed in and towered over their column like neat stone walls.
After two weeks of travel they reached the rocky shore of a sea loch and boarded large boats that took Sir Hector, his men, and their horses across the gray, choppy sea from the rocky Highland shore. It made Alex smile to feel the swell of ocean beneath him again, though this was far more violent bobbing than he’d experienced since leaving the Academy. For days they sailed, in such damp and cold that it made Alex think he’d never suffered until now. He hated to think what it might have been like in stormy weather.
Then, just when it began to seem to Alex they would never reach Barra, he spotted something on the horizon to starboard. He went to the gunwale to see if they were about to pass by the land they were seeking, but the thing he’d seen was gone.
Then it was there. Then gone. He frowned and shaded his eyes from the overcast sky, and suddenly there were two low, dark mounds in the water. Then one.
Tingling covered his skin. As he watched, the single object became three. Then two. “Hector...” Now there were three again. “Hector.”
The laird came to see. Alex pointed. Hector gazed, then he jumped, startled, and uttered something guttural that sounded like a curse. Others came to look, and as they all watched the distant object undulate on the surface there arose much excited Gaelic chatter.
“Hector, what is it?”
“Can you not see?”
“Looks like...floating debris.” Great, huge, wobbling piles of it.
“‘Tis a sea monster.” By his voice, Hector wasn’t kidding.
“A herd of whales?” But the mounds were rising awfully high from the surface for that.
“No. As I said, a sea monster. A single creature, and if we dally we’ll be its supper.” He looked up at the sails, then back at the island from which they were taking their position, and snapped an order to his men. Immediately the ship heeled onto a different tack, away from the thing to the north.
Alex didn’t think it was a sea monster, though he refrained from saying so to Hector. But he stared. The more he stared, watching the rising and falling of the mounds, the more it looked like a single, huge, swimming thing.
Eventually it sank beneath the waves and didn’t rise again, but the MacNeil ships continued their course away and took the long way around to Barra.
It was with deep relief Alex finally saw the dark line of land on the overcast horizon. There the MacNeils debarked below a castle perched on a rocky cliff and surrounded by more rocks. It was not huge, but squat and solid like its master, and was the first castle Alex had seen that appeared whole and never razed and repaired.
“You built this?” Alex stared upward as they climbed to the portcullis.
“Nae. My great-grandfather built it. And at great cost to his people, but the only way to keep his land from invaders was to keep a ready garrison. The village is not far, tucked in that glen there you see.” Hector pointed to what looked to Alex like more rocks, and he took the man’s word for it there was a village down there.
“Where are your livestock? I see pasture but no animals.”
“I
n byres tor the winter. The cold being too bitter for animals to stand in these parts.”
“Ah.” Alex nodded as if he understood all about island cattle and sheep. They reached the castle portcullis, and entered, their horses’ hooves thudding on the ground inside the bailey. People came to greet the returning soldiers. Wives in ragged plaid clothing rushed to their husbands, parents to their sons, and Alex followed Hector through a maze of animal pens, hay wagons, and more clusters of people. Barefoot women and children crowded the horses, and Alex kept an eye out, concerned they might be stepped on. Before a large, heavy door, Hector pulled up his horse and dismounted.
“Fiona!” he called out, then continued shouting in what Alex could only assume was Gaelic. A woman came and curtsied to him. He spoke to her some more, and she looked to Alex slantways then asked Hector a question. The laird laughed and replied, then shouted to Alex, “Ailig! My wife says you’re too tall to be my brother!”
Alex smiled, but didn’t know what reply to make other than to wonder why Fiona would greet her husband with only a curtsey. So he said nothing.
Hector continued, “I told her you’re Hungarian on the outside, but Scottish on the inside!” He tapped his forehead to indicate what he meant by “inside.” Then he said to Alex as he gestured toward a wooden building that stood back the way they’d come, “Have your squires take your horses to the stable, and they can sleep there in a stall.”
Alex said. “Lindsay stays with...Lindsay attends me, and I’ll need him close by. Colin,” he gestured to the boy, “Colin, you take the horses, see to them, and stay with them.” As he dismounted he looked to Lindsay for an objection that she should go with the boy in order to be one of the guys, but she was remarkably silent now. A tiny smile crept to the corners of his mouth...maybe she was coming around on things finally. She dismounted and fell in behind him as Alex followed Hector into the castle structure, his spur chains and rowels jingling as he walked across the stone paving.
The rooms were small and close, but a little less messy than some of the castles Alex had seen lately. Perhaps because it probably housed fewer military people than the English garrisons in the Lowlands. The residents here were a family, not soldiers far from home.
The corridors were a maze to Alex. One thing he’d learned about these stone fortresses since he’d been here was that it was nearly impossible to keep a sense of direction while inside one. Arrow loops were not a light source worth mentioning, particularly in winter, and many rooms didn’t even have those. So Alex and Lindsay were guided from one cavelike space in stone to another, up some stairs, and down another corridor until they came to a heavy wooden door strengthened with diamond-shaped studs. Hector shoved it open. Alex and Lindsay followed him in.
“Here’s where you will sleep.” The hearth was huge and the fire high, so the room was warm in spite of the stone all around and the frosty temperatures outside the castle. Tapestries hung on the walls, and thick animal skins covered the floor: bear and wolf and deer. It was a level of comfort Alex hadn’t experienced since he’d joined the Navy.
“A cauldron,” said Alex to Hector. “Would it be possible to have a cauldron of water to put over the fire?”
“Och. If it’s soup you’re wanting—”
“Just water. Plain, clean water.”
The laird gave a puzzled pause, then said, “Very well. I’ll have it brought. And fresh clothing, for the two of you don’t seem so well equipped for living where there are no English to fight.”
Alex nodded. “Thank you.”
Hector eyed Lindsay, then Alex, and said with a slight edge to his voice, “I’ll also have Fiona send up your supper. No need for you to search out the Great Hall this evening.”
Alex wondered what that was about, but said nothing and nodded his thanks. Hector then left them alone.
Lindsay, looking around, let the bundle of their personal belongings slip to the floor while Alex went to the middle of the room to survey their new digs. The bed was as large and roomy as the fireplace, and had a tall frame hung with heavy curtains and great expanses of sheer silk in shades of wine and gold. The feather mattress seemed deep enough to smother in, and an enormous expanse of light brown fur covered it. He couldn’t tell what animal, but it was matched skins that might have been a wild cat of some sort.
The tapestry behind the bed was nearly too dark to see, but it appeared to be a hunting scene. Another hunting scene that was a bit more visible graced the next wall. Trunks, and a washstand bearing a plain ceramic bowl and a stack of linen cloths, lined the wall by the door. Through a door beside the far tapestry, Alex found a one-hole garderobe that smelled of dank stone, ammonia, and methane, overlaid with wintergreen. “Oh, look. En suite latrine.”
Lindsay snorted. “Far better that than squatting in the woods every day, I say.”
Alex looked for a screen of some kind, something to provide some privacy from each other, but there was nothing other than the tiny garderobe. A couple of chairs stood against the wall near the fireplace and a straw mattress lay in a wooden bed frame on the other side where Lindsay would sleep, but that was all.
“Looks like we’ll be taking turns getting dressed again.”
She nodded, but didn’t reply and neither did she move.
A knock came on the door, and Alex went to let in Fiona and a serving girl, who delivered a cauldron filled with steaming water. The girl scurried across the floor with the heavy pot, and hung it on the hook over the fire. Then Fiona turned to Alex and said something in Gaelic, eyeing him with a look that struck him as odd.
“I’m sorry, I don’t speak Gaelic.”
Then she spoke again, and in the midst of it he picked out the word Sasunnach, meaning “Englishman,” so he realized he did know at least one word of Gaelic. But he held up his palms and apologized again.
She smiled, curtsied, and the two left the room.
He watched them go, and when he was certain they were gone he murmured, “I wonder what that was about.” Then he returned his attention to the hearth and said, “The water looks like it’s already hot.” A thin cloud of steam rose slowly from it.
“They probably have a big cauldron of heated water they keep in the kitchen. A bit like having a full hot water heater in the plumbing at home.”
Made sense. He turned to Lindsay and gestured to it. “Go ahead. You first.”
She eyed him, and humor colored her voice. “Trust me, Alex, you need it more than I do.”
“I know. That’s exactly why you should go first. That water is going to be a biohazard once I’m done with it.”
For a moment she looked as if she would say something, then changed her mind. “Very well, then, turn around.”
He pulled one of the chairs away from the wall and turned it toward a tapestry so he’d have something to look at while he waited. It was awfully big, and the intricate design appeared capable of holding his eye for a while. Flat-looking dogs leapt upon a stag. Big-nosed hunters with staring eyes let fly their arrows in perfectly even flights. In the corner one distraught hunter held a thinly bleeding wound, apparently inflicted by the stag in flight. Another part of the scene showed a man with a long knife who appeared ready to butcher the animal for meat. Stylized trees and branches with leaves wove in and out between the figures, and though the drawing seemed flat and childish to Alex’s photography-spoiled eye, he could still see the workmanship in the cloth was finely detailed in ways he’d never seen even in manufactured things.
Another knock came on the door, and he rose to receive a platter filled with steaming meat and small, flat loaves of bread. There was also an earthenware jug filled with mead, but no cups. He set the food atop one of the trunks, took a piece of bread and stuffed it with meat, then carried his sandwich and the jug to the chair where he sat, ate, and watched the tapestry. His eye traveled over the scene, caught here and there by small details and the flow of the story. It was remarkable how much action could be crammed onto a single piece of fabric.
>
Lindsay bathed quickly, and her voice came from near the bed when she told him it was his turn at the water.
Hot water. Alex marveled at the luxury, then found himself shocked he could consider it a luxury. He rose from the chair and stripped to the skin, dropping all his clothes and armor in one smelly, threadbare, metallic pile, and picked up the towel Lindsay had brought from the washstand. The heat from the fire and the water seeped into him and warmed parts of him he’d thought would he cold forever. Muscles relaxed, joints loosened. He scrubbed crud from places he’d forgotten he had, and rubbed dirt from skin that turned red because the filth had become so embedded. Then he took his knife and cleaned his fingernails thoroughly for the first time in six months. Gradually he began to feel human again.
Once clean, he looked at his filthy gear on the floor and knew he didn’t want to put any of it back on. But the clothes promised by Hector hadn’t yet arrived, so he went to the washstand for a dry towel to wrap around his waist.
When he turned around, figuring by now Lindsay had also wrapped herself in a towel, his heart nearly stopped. She stood by the bed with one of the sheer silk drapes drawn around her like a toga. Paying no attention to him, she was adjusting a length thrown over her shoulder and apparently unaware—or uncaring—that the very thin fabric was entirely translucent. It hid nothing, but instead gave her lean, athletic body a blush of red. Orange light from the hearth flickered across her skin and gave her the appearance of a magnificent human flame. Her dark, shoulder-length hair was drying in a mass of waves and wispy curls around her face. The high cheekbones and aquiline nose of her aristocratic face was set gracefully on her most elegant neck.
The smooth muscles of her broad shoulders belied the strength he knew she owned, and her arms were long and straight.
