Thistle and Flame - Her Highland Hero

by Anya Karin

  Kenna looked dreamily out the window near where she sat, sipping her morning milk. “Is he a good man?” She said. “Ramsay Macdonald, I mean. I know he did you a good turn, though you’ll not say what, but do you know anything of him still?”

  Though they’d talked of him before, their conversations had always been vague.

  Her father opened his mouth, and then closed it before he said anything. Laird Macdonald was a decent man, at least back in the days when William fought under him. He was older now, and undeniably richer. And then there was the matter that he had fallen into favor with the English through a turn of fortune, but no, William thought, he probably had not changed much.

  “Laird Macdonald saved my life, you know. Before he was a laird. Saved me when I’d been shot. Had a musket ball in my shoulder.” He poked his left shoulder, from where the ball had been removed.

  William still remembered the biting pain of the blast, the agony of that tiny ball driving into his shoulder and splitting it apart. And he also remembered the surge of relief he felt when Ramsay Macdonald appeared, sifting through the dead and wounded, resplendent in his highlander’s kilt, tartans and big, feathered tri-cornered hat, the dress of a nobleman from north of Lock Katrine. But at the time at least, Ramsay Macdonald had not taken on the airs of a nobleman. He drank, fought, lusted and loved just as the rest of the men in the regiment had done. But then, that was almost forty years past, he recalled.

  ”Pa?” Kenna broke his daydream. “Did you leave the Earth for the heavens?”

  “Oh, no, sorry about that. Just thinking of things from a long time ago. What did you ask me?”

  “About Laird Macdonald. I know he saved you, but is he a good man? I’ve come to terms with missing you and missing Ma and the land and Fort Mary, but I don’t know. The most frightening part has to deal with something new, with someone I don’t know.”

  “Aye, he is. He’s got the blood of the highlands in his veins, even if he lives near the Castle. He’ll treat you as you should be treated. Even if he’s taken on the airs of an Englishman, he’s got a right spirit.” But what he didn’t say again, was that had been forty years past.

  And what Kenna didn’t say was that the only reason she’d managed to come around out of her sadness, was the rolled up newspaper she’d snatched from the table when Old Man McCraig brought it to show them the Ghost.

  Gavin, she thought, if nothing else goes the way it should, or if the old Laird is a monster, I’ll just run away and find you.

  Of course, finding a ghost is far more difficult than hearing stories about a ghost, she knew. But, even as her father spoke, she thought about the paper she’s secreted between the folds of a dress that was presently occupying one of the many trunks with which she’d shortly weigh down a carriage.

  Outside, far away and faint, but getting nearer, they both heard pipes and a fife and drums at the same time and both looked out the window.

  “What is that?” Kenna said, already knowing the answer.

  “One thing you’ll have to learn about Lairds is that they rarely do by themselves what can be done with a procession.” Her father couldn’t help but crack a smile and a chuckle as the carriage bearing Ramsay Macdonald popped up on the horizon.

  A few moments of agitated excitement passed with Kenna staring out the front of the house to catch a glimpse of the man she’d be marrying.

  “A fine place you’ve built for yourself, Moore.” Laird Ramsay Macdonald stepped down from his carriage with the help of two servants, and heaved a deep breath as his knees both popped in unison. His tight stockings were wrapped around impossibly thin calves underneath skinny thighs. The only part of him that was big at all was his belly, which was so voluminous that his waistcoat didn’t button.

  Kenna watched from the table, with the window cracked so she could hear the two men chatting. She sipped her milk, afraid that she’d never taste something so rich and sweet again, no matter how much she was stuffed with cakes and lowland finery.

  “Good to see you, Ram – Ah Laird Macdonald, I suppose is proper now. It’s been too long, it has.”

  The big man had a sour, pinched up face that seemed to gather around his button nose. His little buckled shoes bulged out on the sides from the girth they supported, and he was sweating, even in the cool March air.

  “Ramsay is fine. I’ve rooted around in your shoulder before.” He slapped William on the back and smiled. “And it’s so good to get out of that damned carriage that if you told me my face looked like a quim, I’d probably be fine with it to stretch my legs.”

  Hands on his knees, Macdonald bent down at the waist, squatted down so that his knees popped again in a rather astonishing report, and stood with his fists in his back and leaned backward for a moment. “Three days. Would have been two, but not for the wheel breaking like it did. I’d forgotten how hard rocks can be up here.”

  I don’t know what I expected, Kenna thought, but I’m sure that this isn’t it. He’s got pencil legs and he’s a vulgar creature. Who talks about quims in front of someone they’ve not seen for forty years? And that belly...

  “Well, what’s to eat? I’m starved,” Ramsay said, turning toward the house. “No, I meant what I said, Moore. This is a beautiful place. I miss the air up here. The quiet. Edinburgh is nice, of course, and to be in the middle of all the politics and moving and all that is good for some people. Men of my age, though? I’m not so sure. Seems like I should be doing what you’re at. A little farm, some animals, a house, and...what’s this, then?” His eyes settled on Kenna, who was watching him through the window.

  “That’s your bride, Laird Macdonald.”

  “Ach, that’s Kenna, then? You’ve done better by me already than most men have after a lifetime of service.”

  William smiled, and Kenna had to as well. She was almost never paid compliments for how she looked. Then again, she almost never saw anyone that was anywhere near her own age. Even though Macdonald was probably just shy of Old Man McCraig’s antiquity the compliment was welcome.

  “Is she as able in other ways as she is in her look?” Ramsay Macdonald examined Kenna, but spoke to her father.

  “She’s quite good with the animals,” he answered. “Milks them of a morning, brushes the horses, she cares for the dogs. And atop that, she’s been trained to nurse men back to health. She’s even nursed a man or two back to health when they returned from the Bonnie Prince’s war.”

  Macdonald cringed.

  “The usurper’s war, Moore. You’d do well to remember it as such.”

  “Yes, of course. I apologize, my lord. It’s just that-”

  “I know what it is. I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t the same feelings for years. But you never know where people are listening. And anyway, I’m a king’s man now. If she’s going to carry that little hot-blooded streak of highland rebellion that you’ve got, she canna come south. But then, she’s a woman. And a fine one at that. I’m sure she knows better than to air her opinions on matters which she canna understand.”

  Listening to him describe her as though she were some sort of thinking turnip, Kenna bristled. She wasn’t used to someone like this man swooping in and telling her who she was and what she’d be doing. She didn’t like it one bit. He had nothing to do with her except a promise from her father that she was fertile and would bear him children. Of course, that too, upset her, but she had to come to terms with her place.

  “I...I’m sorry Laird Macdonald. We’re a rough people up here. Not used to the manners of the city, or of court. Give her a chance and I’m sure she’ll take to figuring on her place.” William looked to Kenna and pursed his lips as he spoke.

  The two of them took another step closer to the front door, but again the fat noble paused. “Does she cook?”

  “She...she can, yes.” William said, still looking at Kenna. “But her mother does the most of it while Kenna normally enjoys her chores. We’re simple people here, my lord.”

  “You keep saying that
,” Macdonald said, “but her life is to be different now. She’s soon the Lady of Kilroyston and our children the heirs to an estate. I don’t expect her to cook or to clean or to nurse any cuts. We’ve got people who do those things for us.”

  Nodding, William stepped around the man and opened the door. “If you please?”

  “Oh of course. Thank you. I’d like not to dally. As much as I would enjoy a few days respite out here in the country, business back at the Castle demands my return. Is she ready?”

  Why won’t he speak to me? Kenna wondered and then shivered as she remembered his yellow teeth and the way he’d talked of her womanly duties. She well knew what that meant, but was less excited about it than was the Laird.

  “Why do you not ask her, my lord?”

  “Speak? Oh of course, I’ve forgotten my manners. It’s the travel, you see, it puts me of a foul mood. Of course I’d like to speak with her, but we’ll have time enough to converse on our ride back. I hope to get to know her opinions on all sorts of things.”

  He looked around the house.

  “Poetry, for one, and her thoughts on music. Politics of course isn’t something like to interest her, but possibly literature does?”

  “I apologize, Laird Macdonald, it only seemed to me you’d like to speak to her instead of to her through me.”

  “Ach, I suppose you’re right at that, Moore. It’s to me to apologize for my crass behavior. It’s been quite a time since I’ve been in the presence of a woman who wasn’t a whore.”

  Both William and Kenna bristled. In the midst of the conversation, Lora emerged from the back, carrying the smallest of Kenna’s wardrobe trunks.

  “Oh, hello there!” She extended her hand. “You must be the Laird Macdonald. William’s told me of your bravery and your honesty. I’m glad that my daughter will be going to a place where she can be safe and secure, and away from temptation and roguish behavior.”

  Her grin quickly faded as Macdonald took her hand, but rather than shaking it, stroked her wrist with two fingers. “I see the mother is as fine as the daughter,” he said, crooking an eyebrow.

  “I, er, thank you, my lord, but I-”

  “News!” Old Man McCraig’s voice broke the oppressive calm between the four of them. “News of the Ghost! Of Gavin!” He ran, shrieking with delight, into the house through the still-opened door.

  “Ah, McCraig,” William said, “this is Lair-”

  “Oh yes very nice to meet you. Say, that’s quite a belly you’ve got. Nice stockings. But the news, it’s fantastic!” The old man was almost exasperated by the time he caught his breath. “Gavin, you know, he’s done something else! In Edinburgh! And oh, this is a fabulous story.”

  “Do tell,” Laird Macdonald sneered. “Tell me of your Gavin – that’s what you said?”

  “Oh yes sir, yes, Gavin Macgregor,” McCraig said before anyone could stop him.

  Kenna and Lora exchanged a glance. William put his face in his palm and squeezed his temples.

  “What has that lovable scamp gone and done now? Do tell.”

  “Well, sir, nice to meet you, by the way, but the paper says that Gavin’s done two things in just one night. Seems two days ago, he broke into the country estate of Ramsay Macdonald – that traitorous bastard what went south – and then in the same night, stole the horse of Sheriff Alan, the man sent by the king to capture him, as Alan was drunkenly shouting at the Laird’s door.”

  “Oh, that is...wonderful,” Laird Macdonald gritted his teeth. “What interesting news. Kenna! Get the servants and have them load your belongings. We leave immediately .”

  Back down the path, Ramsay Macdonald shuffled before heaving himself back into his carriage with a series of profanities that got even McCraig’s attention.

  “Finely cultivated guest you’ve got there. Where’s he taking Kenna? And who is he, anyway?”

  Tears streamed down Kenna’s red-flushed cheeks as she led the servants first into her room, then followed them out. Her mother embraced her and began to cry as well, and her father held her tight, told her that he loved her and to write soon because he would do the same. Before she turned to leave, Lora pressed something hard and round into Kenna’s palm.

  “What’s this?”

  “Something you’ll remember. I had it put into a pendant for you. Now, go, Kenna, before he gets irritated.”

  At Laird Macdonald’s insistent bellow, she trotted down the path, and stepped up into the carriage which was quickly off.

  “What’s happening, William? Why won’t you answer me?”

  “That was Kenna’s betrothed,” he said with a shudder in the back of his voice. “That...was Laird Macdonald.”

  McCraig stared after the carriage as it bounced down the road, and the Laird let out a shout at the jostling. He dropped his newspaper.

  In the carriage, Kenna Moore stared at the man in front of her, who was furiously scribbling a letter. She slipped her hand inside the satchel she had thrown around her shoulder where she’d packed a pair of books of fables. She opened the cover of one, and fondled a folded up sheet of newspaper. One she’d managed to whisk out of her trunk at the last moment.

  Gavin, she thought, I hope it’s true. I hope you’re the ghost.

  Chapter Five

  Gavin Macgregor’s boots cracked the dry dirt and the crispy grass under his feet as he drove himself faster and faster up the hill towering above ground north of Edinburgh, far from his life, from his worries, from his friends and his single enemy which had, with the events of three days past, become two enemies. Three if he counted King George, although he was fairly sure some minor theft in Scotland didn’t much trouble the Hanoverian prince.

  Blowing in wind so strong even his big, fat kilt-pin didn’t keep the cloth down, the gusts against his legs bristling Gavin’s spirit. Up, up, up he went, past a small family with three boys throwing a ball and a man and woman embraced against a rock.

  Up, up, he went, pounding the earth so hard that each time he stepped, shocks crawled up the tight muscles of his calves. He sucked a deep lungful of clean air, the sort that it was hard to find in a city, even in Edinburgh.

  The rocky hill disappearing around him was said to be the place where Camelot once stood, back when the Britons weren’t British. Back when his people were free and the only lords who demanded tribute of their peasants were decent, because if they weren’t, some noble knight came around and lopped off their heads. At least that’s how it was in the legends. Maybe how it should be, no matter how savage that might be.

  Up further, he looked down to see the family already disappeared into the misty fog that hung heavy, a cloud settled down around the ancient mound. As he looked all around, he noticed there was only a little ways to go until he reached the summit of his brief climb.

  The air, cool and thick, seemed to pulse against Gavin’s flesh and permeate him when he breathed. Somewhere off in the distance, he heard pipes. The sound of a funeral procession, perhaps, or the sound of a celebration, he wasn’t quite sure. In either case, he thought about the past two years and then thought about Fort Mary.

  Back there, far away from London, far away from kings and their squabbles, those had been happier times. The few encounters he had with little Kenna Moore and her warm smile, and the way she’d opened her eyes wide when he pressed the thistle into her palm warmed his heart.

  Gavin’s boots scraped over a little pile of bones, the remains of some small bird. Below him, the pipes were joined by a pair of drums playing slightly different rhythms. He thought he recognized it, but couldn’t be sure.

  He imagined the great hump he climbed actually being Camelot. Over here, a wall and back there, the entrance to the keep, where Arthur sat, resplendent and decent, surrounded by knights tall and short, fair and foul. Lancelot of the lake to his left, Guinevere to his right, when she chose to come, was stealing glances behind his back at her lover. He knew all the stories. Loved them as a boy, and he kept right on loving them as a man grown, G
avin did.

  “Loyalty,” his father told him as he closed the dusty pages of a book so old the cover was gone. He knew it used to say Mallory though. “Loyalty and honor, boy, that’s what makes a man. Lancelot had both, then he lost them to his lust and then he got them back. What you lose, is only lost forever if you let it be. Do you understand?”

  He remembered his father’s huge beard, braided down either side of his mouth. His da’s mustache was dark brown but the hair on his chin was the color of rust, so the braids looked like a frame about either side of his chin.

  In Gavin’s mind, he sat on big Robert Macgregor’s knee and thought about what words like honor and loyalty meant.

  Without realizing it, Gavin had hopped up to the rock jutting from the top of the hill, and was staring down over the city below him. If he turned to his right, he knew Macdonald’s mansion was somewhere off in the trees, though he couldn’t see where exactly. And he knew that somewhere along the road snaking off behind that great, greedy house was a carriage trundling along, filled up with fat Laird Macdonald.

  And then, he thought about the girl who was in the carriage with him. Taken by some half-forgotten oath spoken before she was born, and given up, taken away from the only place she’d ever really known.

  Gavin turned south, toward the city. He stared at Edinburgh castle, and thought about Robert the Bruce, who led an army that was raised as a simple act of revenge. The Bruce led an army and made his people free, he remembered his da telling him as he read poem after poem about the Bruce, and about William Wallace, the fallen martyr who died to make Scotland free.

  Far below, the pipes swelled. Gavin finally recognized the slow lilt of a funeral dirge. He wondered if the person who died had lived a good life, a long life. Something, blown on the gusting wind, thumped against his foot and he bent to pick it up.