by R. L. Syme
Malcolm entered the room with Robert and her satchel in tow. Kensey, seeing her brother immediately shielded him from the wound and pulled her body toward the midsection and the wound.
“Robert, you’re to go directly down to the kitchen and get your supper,” she ordered. Then, with another thought, she turned to Malcolm. “If that is alright?” Before Malcolm could answer, Robert interjected.
“But Kensey,” he protested. “I wanted to see it for myself.”
“No, absolutely not.”
Malcolm took his cue to step in front of the boy as well. “Now why don't you run back down to the kitchen, lad? You’ll see plenty of wounds in your day, trust me. Besides,” he added. “I think our cook is preparing a treat especially for you.”
That perked Robert’s interest and he headed for the door quicker than Malcolm could finish his sentence.
“Thank you.” Kensey turned to Malcolm and offered a smile. “I wasn’t sure I could get him to leave.”
The door suddenly opened and Duncan stepped in, followed by a young man with coloring similar to his own. “Here are the other things you asked for, lass,” Duncan said, placing one bowl on the table next to the door and the other on the nightstand at Kensey’s elbow.
“However did you get hot water boiled so quickly?” Kensey wondered as she began to soak the cloth and mop up the blood around the wound.
“Lydia began preparing for you as soon as she saw Malcolm riding in on your horse.”
“She’s resourceful.” Kensey was careful not to touch the object lodged in the man’s side as she cleaned part of the wound.
“Aye, that she is,” Malcolm nodded. The other red-haired man, who had been silent until this point, grunted audibly.
“Speaking of resourceful,” Kensey began. “Could one of you fetch me a bottle of whiskey if you have it handy?”
“Quinlan will go,” Duncan said, pointing to the silent man who watched her every move. She wondered if Quinlan might be the strange man’s brother, whom Duncan had summoned once he realized who he was. They were of similar size, although Quinlan favored Duncan in his appearance more than her Highlander. Perhaps they were not related. “In my haste, I forgot the whiskey.”
Although, truth be told, they all looked related. The same sharp features, the same gold eyes. The same steady, silent stare.
“Should we build a fire to burn the wound?” Malcolm asked as Quinlan set out for the whiskey.
“Let’s get this dislodged first,” she said. “I should see how bad the damage is.”
“Are you certain sure we should be pulling things out of him, lass?” Duncan eyed the horn. As Kensey worked with the flesh, the dried blood and mud cleared away to reveal a mostly clean entry wound. She stopped to look over her work.
“We’ll need to get this out of him if I’m to stitch him back together. But of course, you never know when you dislodge things from wounds. It may start the bleeding afresh. It might even worsen the bleeding that was there. And, of course, we might damage something on his inside that cannot be repaired. But one thing he cannot do is live his life with a boar’s tusk in his side.”
Even as she said the words, she was amazed at her own calmness. Her heart was racing at the thought of what could potentially happen to her patient in the next few minutes, and she did not have to speak the words aloud to know that there was a chance they could lose him.
“And you can do this?” Duncan wondered. “Stitch him back together?”
“I’ve seen it done, and am quite deft with a needle. Unless you have someone better qualified, I’d like to do it myself. I feel beholden to you for taking him in at my request.”
She opened the satchel that Malcolm brought her from the cart and began to pull her needles from it, laying them each in succession on a strip of clean cloth she had laid out on the bed. Granted, they were sewing needles, but if her days with Ete had been any instruction, they would do just fine. He would have a scar, but he might live.
“You are beholden to us?” Duncan asked, his face out of sight. But a tension filled his voice that worried her.
Kensey turned back to see his face and couldn’t read what she found there. She finally met his eyes and tried to think of how to ask the question.
“So he can be saved?” Duncan’s gaze fogged with questions. Kensey saw a nameless emotion, like a cloud, pass over his face.
“We shall see,” was all she would offer.
“Quinlan and I will hold him down, and you should let Duncan remove the tusk,” Malcolm said as Quinlan walked back through the door and set the whiskey next to the tub of water and pieces of bloodied fabric that lay on the dressing table. “He may be dangerous as the boar itself if he wakes up in the midst of you pulling it out of him.”
“I think you’re right.” Kensey stood to allow Duncan access to the wound. Quinlan sat on the end of the bed and laid his body over the man’s knees while Malcolm sat near his head and held his shoulders firmly.
“We will hold him fast,” Malcolm said.
Duncan put his knee on the man’s shoulder and reached down to touch the tusk. “You had best stand back, lass,” warned Duncan. “God help us if he wakes while we’re doing this. And I would hate to think of you getting in the way of his wrath. Better one of us who can handle him.”
Kensey was alarmed at how concerned they were for her safety. She had trusted this strange man without question since first meeting him months ago, based on her intuition. Yet at the reception he received here and the way they tried to protect her from him, she began to worry that she had been mistaken. Please, God, just let him live.
“We’ll need more than God if he wakes,” Quinlan muttered, holding both the man’s hands in an iron grip.
Duncan tensed, paused, and began to pull. “God help us, all the same.”
***
“We all survived, lass,” Duncan said, wiping his hands on his tunic as Kensey put the last stitch into the strange man’s side. “Our thanks to you.”
“By the skin of our teeth.” Kensey still remembered him waking as they pulled the tusk from his side and then passing out again, cursing about hell and his father and faeries. What had surprised her most was that he had called each of the men by name. Then, after he’d passed out again, Kensey had been in such a hurry to cleanse and close the wound that she’d put it from her mind altogether to focus on her task.
There had been so much blood. Almost too much blood, she was afraid, after what he had likely lost in the wilderness, and there was certainly no promise that he would survive, even though they did manage to stop the bleeding. The blood-soaked bedding lay at the foot of the large bed, waiting to be carted away.
She’d used two herbs to soothe the swelling and keep him sleeping. One, she mixed with the clean, boiled water and then poured down his throat with Duncan holding his nostrils. The other, she applied to the wound after soaking it liberally with whiskey. Then, they used long strips of clean cloth to bind the wound. Duncan, Malcolm, and Quinlan held him upright in the bed as Kensey wrapped the cloth around his midsection, from just below his waist all the way up to his ribcage. She secured it with a knot that tied opposite his wound to keep the pressure tight, but not too painful.
He would be in for a long, difficult recovery. If he lived.
“Are you finished now, lass?” wondered Duncan as she stood back to survey her work. When she nodded her head, they laid him back into the bed and Kensey tried to re-arrange the remains of his tunic around him. The careful eyes of three men followed her every movement, and she found the electricity of touching him to be magnified by the heat in her cheeks knowing that others looked on. Her fingers on him, his nearly naked body, these things had been moments of intimacy that she could not take the time to experience because of the urgency of his condition, and the constant audience. The awareness of his bare skin and the heat in her body from being near him continued to rise, even with the presence of others. She covere
d him with a blanket both to quell her nerves, and to keep his body warm.
“It looks as though our Alana has found her equal in healing.” Malcolm beamed a smile down at Kensey and she shifted under its intensity.
“Well, many of us made the work easy,” she said, gravely. “And we do not know for certain that he will survive in the end. In fact, it is as likely he will not as that he will.”
“Nonetheless, you have done well,” Quinlan said stoutly. Kensey turned, shocked to hear the burly man speak at long last. They’d been in this little room for nearly two hours since his last utterance and he had finally spoken again.
“I wouldn’t have been able to do this alone.” She surveyed her work. Malcolm pulled the fresh blanket over his body and she heated at the knowledge she’d been staring openly at a naked man.
“Someone needs to stay with him,” Duncan said, looking from Malcolm to Quinlan. “If he wakes up, he may need to be restrained.”
“He’ll need no restraint,” said Kensey. “The herbs I gave him will leave him weak and groggy until the infection has left and he can begin to regain his strength. As long as we continue to administer them, that is.”
“Well, someone should stay here, anyway,” Malcolm said.
“I’ll stay with him,” Kensey offered. All three men protested, but she would have none of it. She shooed them all away, saying, “I’m the one who knows the herbs and medicines. If he wakes, he will be weak as a baby. I will give him a shot of whiskey and that should put him right back to sleep. And I can sleep here if I need to.”
“On the bed?” Malcolm’s horrified expression gave away perhaps more than he intended.
“Good heavens, no.” Kensey shook her head as the men exited the room. “I’ll sleep in that magnificent chair by the fireplace. It looks more comfortable than that bed, anyway.” When Malcolm wouldn’t budge, she smiled brilliantly and assured him, “I’ll be just fine, Malcolm.”
“I’ll bring you something to break your fast, and we’ll be just down the stairs if you need us. You can yell and we’ll hear you,” Duncan promised, taking Malcolm by the arm to wrestle him out of the door’s opening. “You did a fine job, Kensey.”
“You can send my brother up here if he gets lonely.”
“I’ll do that, lass.” With that, Duncan closed the door.
Kensey turned back to the bed where the stranger still rested. She took a cloth, wetted it with clean warm water from the basin and walked over to stand next to the bed. She wiped his forehead tenderly, then placed it on the nightstand. She smoothed a lock of dark hair that had fallen over his forehead. With a timid touch, she finally gave into the urge to touch his full lips, much less dry from all the whiskey they’d forced down his throat.
His lips parted unwittingly as she touched them and she could feel the heat radiating off his body. Unable to break the touch, she stood there for a few more seconds, tracing the lines of his face as he slept. Kensey wasn’t yet sure exactly what this fascination held for her. And she wasn’t sure if she had the strength to endure it.
Before long, the fire Malcolm built started to lose its heat, and rather than build another, Kensey wrapped herself in the cloak that she had discarded when they first came into the room and sat in the chair contemplating sleep.
Before she could drift off, she noticed that his eyes began to flutter open. Her herb concoction was wearing off too quickly. His pain must be immense.
“Don’t try to wake yet.” She kept her voice pliant and leaned over his face. “You’ll heal more quickly if you can sleep.”
He groaned and moved his head from side to side. “Where am I?”
Kensey wasn’t sure if he was really awake. She put her hand on his shoulder, and his eyes still didn’t open.
“Castle St. Claire.” She was relatively certain he was still asleep, but indulged him anyway, in case she was wrong. She got a mug of the clean warm water, scooped in another palmful of the herbal concoction, and let them sit until the water turned brown. “You’ve been through quite an ordeal, and should try to rest.”
“I can’t stay here.” He shuddered, and she put her hand on him again. He stilled.
“Please don’t move.” Kensey slid her hand up and down over the rippled flesh of his arm. “You can stay, and you must. You must sleep so you can heal.” She took the mug of warmed liquid and slipped one hand behind his head, pulling his lips toward the cup. His mouth opened, and she poured the mixture into his mouth as he swallowed, either accepting or trying to clear his mouth so he could breathe. She couldn’t tell which. “This will help you to sleep again.”
When she released his head, he tried to shake it again. “Please, do not keep me here.”
“You are too weak to move, Sinclair.” The act of saying his name brought a stillness to his body that surprised her. “Please, just rest.”
She held onto his arm to ground him, and then moved her hand to his forearm, and eventually to his hand. Her physical touch seemed to calm him, as was common with the infirm. They liked to know that someone was there with them, and Kensey believed they could tell, even in their stupor or their sleep, that someone was there, caring for them. She hoped that this strange man could feel her care, even with his eyes closed and his awareness dulled in sleep. Just to hold his hand, she thought, brought her the same sense of safety that she seemed to feel whenever he touched her. Even in sleep, somehow, he could awaken feelings in her that she didn’t understand. While she wanted him to sleep and rest, she also wanted him to wake, and to be alone with him, so she could finally have some of her questions answered.
Chapter Ten
“Is he awake now?” Robert asked as Kensey moved her knight. The two siblings sat at a table in the solar, playing a new game that Kensey had brought with her from France. It was a strategic game that Kensey liked to play with the boy, to develop his approach and thought. The tiny, carved pieces were a gift from a Persian noble that her grandfather had met in his youth, in the Holy Land. When he taught Kensey to play, she fell in love with the game, and its little round carved pieces. So when she left France, her grandfather gifted her the shatranj set, contained in an ornate box made of exotic wood. Robert had taken to it as easily as she herself had, and it seemed to pass the time as they continued to wait for the strange man to wake.
“I have you,” she said.
“Is he awake?”
“I’ve just ended the game, Robert.” Kensey narrowed her eyes on her brother. Robert sat at the table with her, but his attention was on the injured man, who lay in the bed on the other side of the room. He had been this way for days, now. Waiting for the man to wake. It seemed that everyone was waiting for him to wake. Kensey had met Brigid and Alana again, the day before, when the baby they’d been caring for had come out of the worst. Brigid seemed almost frightened in his presence, which made Kensey wonder if he truly was a brigand as her father had warned. And even Alana, who was a practiced healer, stayed clear of them. Like everyone else, she had approached him lying in the bed, and her face went pale. She muttered something Kensey could not understand, and made her apologies. Except for mealtimes, where Alana was perfectly cordial, Kensey had not seen her again. Only Broccin, the eldest brother, never came to visit, and was never spoken of. Kensey was almost afraid to ask after him, given the family’s extreme silence.
Malcolm, of them all, seemed to be concerned with Kensey being alone, and often joined her in Duncan’s room to read to her, or play a game of chance or attempt to learn shatranj, or relieve her so that she could sleep in the room next door. But the rest of the family did not visit again after the initial commotion.
For the last three days, while the man slept, Duncan had left her largely alone with him. He stopped in, many times, asking if he was awake. She would ask after news of her mother, of which there had been none, and they reached an impasse. Neither would bring up Fiona in the presence of others, and Kensey hadn’t been alone with Duncan since she arrived.
She and Robert took their meals with the family in the great hall, but spent most of their time in the solar, caring for her ward. When Robert grew restless, a young lad named Peter who worked in the castle would take him outside and show him around. They played in the hills, but stayed close. Everyone was on edge, waiting for news of the English at Assynt. But since they sent no messenger and no messenger came from Kensey’s home, there was no news.
“No wonder I’ve won two games in a row; your attention is divided. You concern yourself too much with whether or not he is awake.”
“I just want to know,” Robert admitted, moving all his pieces back into their places for the beginning of another game.
“When he wakes, you’ll know it.” She moved a sarbaz along the square tiles toward Robert’s waiting line of defense.
“It’s my turn to go first,” wailed Robert. “You went first last time.”
“I won, therefore it’s my turn to begin by default.”
“That’s not fair.”
“If you’d win, my darling, you would get to go first.”
“If he would wake up, we could stop playing.”
“If you do not wish to play, you may read to me.”
“No, I want to win.”
“That’s what I thought.” After Robert took his turn, she moved her ruakh.
“Now you’ll beat me just out of spite.” Robert squealed as she took one of his brown sarbaz from the table, having killed it in a lateral move.
“Perhaps you should pay attention this time. It is supposed to teach you to think in strategies, after all. Not to react to my movements. Grandfather said, when he taught me to play, that you should always be thinking many plays ahead, rather than thinking of the play you make.”
There was a sputtering noise followed by heavy breathing from the bed, and Robert jumped up from his chair. “He’s awake!”