Jennifer Roberson

by Lady of the Glen

  But this. This was not war. This was not battle. This was not done for king.

  This was done for clan, but as much for young men too bound by day-to-day, seeking release in risk and activity from mundane concerns. When there was not war, there were raids to be made. It was done all over Scotland, above the Lowland line; to feed the clan, to increase the herds, to tend one’s responsibilities.

  His now was to live, and to make his way home to Glencoe.

  The trembling, the weakness, the gasping had lasted a long time. The Campbells were gone with their cattle. The dust had settled. Such sounds as were normal, bird and wind and vermin, had come back to the hilltop where a length of rope, gently waving, yet depended from the tree. Where MacIain’s second son, with blood in his mouth, at last made shift to rise up onto his knees, so he might view once more the world he had believed taken from him.

  He rolled forward, then gathered legs beneath buttocks. A heave brought him up, lifting shoulders from the ground, raising a torso and balancing it firmly atop bent legs. He spat out blood and grit, aware of the cut he himself had made with teeth in the flesh of his mouth, wanting very badly not to cry out as Walter had and dishonor his clan.

  From there to knees, buttocks brushing heels, sword-severed noose flapping against his chest, and then finally to feet, lurching awkwardly with no arms to balance, no flesh and bone counterweight. But upright at last, standing at last, and viewing at last the remains of Glen Lyon Campbells: a distant glint of steel, the dust raised of reclaimed cattle.

  Dair blinked dry eyes. He was glad Cat had gone.

  When he was certain his legs could be trusted, he walked down from the hill. The muscles of his thighs trembled. He took short steps at first, thinking through each one——one, and one, and one——and when the trembling at last lessened he lengthened his strides.—one—two—three—

  He stopped walking only when he reached the body on the rocks: Hugh MacDonald, a cousin, bled dry of life. It pooled sullenly in a mud-bloodied puddle, giving drink to thirsty grass.

  He could not close the eyes. His hands were bound behind him.

  “Fraoch Eilean, ”he rasped as the wind blew down the moor.

  Then he turned himself westward and began to walk home.

  Emptiness. Empty house, empty heart. Chesthill was, in her father’s absence, more a travesty than when he was present, lost in whisky haze. Cat had often believed it empty even in his presence because there was so little of him save his desire for drink, but he had all of a sudden become another man, and one with more power than to which she had long been accustomed, weighing out her chances of escaping punishment.

  He had struck her rarely; the last time she recalled such punishment had been before Breadalbane, when the earl had come to shout of her father’s folly in selling off Glen Lyon. This time, despite her hatred of it and the furious tears it would bring, she wished he had struck her. Then she could hate him for something identifiable, for his humiliation of her, instead of detesting him for what he had done to Dair MacDonald.

  She had not been permitted to stay. She had not been allowed to explain to a dead man yet alive why she had told the truth of Robbie’s death after so many years, when she had feasted on it so long to give fuel to the hatred.

  There were other reasons. There were always other reasons; she was Campbell, he MacDonald.

  Cat stood in the front room of the house. The door behind was open, admitting sunlight, admitting air, while she admitted it was time she took up responsibility for such things as she owed to others, even as her father had ordered her to do.

  He had said it plainly: ‘ ’Tis time you learned what responsibility means. You canna use it this way and that, according to your whims.’

  But she had taken responsibility. For her brother’s death, and for Dair MacDonald’s life. And Glenlyon punished her for it.

  “Damn you,” she said. “For that, if for naught else; you did it because I embarrassed you; me, a Campbell, pleading for a MacDonald.”

  In that terrifying moment when she believed Dair would die, she too had died the little death that came to every daughter, every child, who was suddenly adult enough to see the child in the parent, to admit her father was no more wise for his age than she was ignorant for her youth. That death of innocence was multiplied one hundredfold by the other more painful deaths: love for her father, pride in her name, unwavering resolution that no matter what the reason, there was always justification in what a Campbell did in retribution for MacDonald crimes.

  Dair MacDonald still lived. She supposed they would make songs of it, one day: the man Glenlyon hanged. But she and half a hundred others, and Dair, and Glenlyon, knew the truth: her father had cut the rope in punishment, not clemency; he wanted everyone to know at whose behest a MacDonald survived.

  It was a strong man, and a brave one, who permitted his direst enemy to survive so that in that survival the enemy’s final courage was diminished by the greater courage of another. Robert Campbell, Laird of Glen Lyon, at whom others laughed, had restored much of his name, much of his reputation, with the single slice of a sword.

  He has made himself a man again. In his daughter’s name.

  Campbell the laughingstock, Glenlyon the drukken man was no threat but to himself. Campbell the hero, Glenlyon the brave laird was a man others would praise, would follow, and such praise as they would offer would empower her father with the will and ability to commit such acts as he deemed necessary in the ordering of his life.

  In the ordering of mine. She wanted to grieve for the loss of her freedom, but all Cat could do was cry from relief, from the recollection that her father, for whatever reason, had seen fit to sever the rope.

  Punishment, such as it was, was pain she could bear.

  Dair did not at first credit the hand on him. One hand only; the other held the reins to a garron, though the man was afoot. “Dair—oh good Christ—” The hand stopped him with pressure, urging him to halt. He halted. The garron was freed; both hands grasped the noose and loosened it, then lifted it over his head.

  Dair began to shake.

  “Dinna fret, dinna greet—” Robbie Stewart dropped the rope, drew his dirk, cut through the bindings. Dair’s arms were freed at last, flopping to his sides. “Aye, I ken—I ken what you’re feeling . . . Wait. Wait.”

  He turned abruptly and went away. Dair heard low-voiced murmurings as Stewart spoke to another man, then the sound of receding hooves.

  “Better, then,” Robbie said. “Only me to see it; aye, Dair, I ken . . . there’s no shame in it.”

  He knelt down suddenly because he could not stand, could not keep himself from shaking. Shoulders ached as he drew slack arms forward, crossing wrist over wrist as he pressed them against his belly. Stone bit into his knees. A spasm cramped his belly, then spread insidiously into thighs to rob the muscles of strength.

  He bent over rigidly, biting deeply into his lip. He felt the blood rise, tasted it in his mouth; tasted the bitter tang of fear once repressed and now free of it, free in safety to make itself known, to govern the body of even the strongest man, and rob him of self-respect as he gave way to the knowledge that he had been hanged—

  To relief that he had survived, and was found by a friend.

  “I ken,” Robbie said rustily. “Battle is fair, is clean . . . a man faces that death with fear, but he hears the pipes, and the war cries, and he kens he isna alone. He overcomes it in the rising of the blood. But this—this . . .” He let go a noisy breath. “This is not so fair, not so clean—and it doesna shame a man to be glad of it, and to weep . . .” Robbie’s hand was on his shoulder, pressing fingers into flesh as he gripped rigid muscle. “I think no less of you for doing what I’ve done,” Stewart said, “and of what I’ll do again, I dinna doubt; and what I would do, me, were I in your place.”

  It was not the words so much as the tone. He was foal, pup, kitten, answering the voice of a man who understood what it was to be so afraid, to be so relieved, to c
omprehend the uncounted complexities of new life beginning on the death of the old.

  He spat out blood. He pressed his palms against the ground and thrust himself upward, so he stood again as a man and looked upon the world Glenlyon had given him back.

  Not Glenlyon. His daughter.

  Dair looked at the garron. His body seized into stillness, into the abject inability to mount. It was too soon, too sudden, too like; it had been a horse that carried him willingly to death, though a sword had kept him from it.

  “Aye,” Robbie said, and sent his garron westward with a slap on its rump. “I favor a walk myself on a day like this day.”

  Five

  The Earl of Breadalbane never spent time in Kilchurn’s kitchens, but his eldest son did, and frequently, swilling ale with turnspits and trading gossip with the cooks.

  It was a habit that displeased Breadalbane, but did not surprise him particularly in view of Duncan’s propensity for questionable companionships; at least the kitchen was his own, and the servants as well. It was better, he decided as he made his way to the kitchens, that Duncan waste time under his father’s roof than waste it in a tavern.

  Breadalbane’s heir, sitting at the massive slab of wood used for preparing feasts, with ale at his elbow and meat pie half-consumed, was not pleased to see his father. The earl was equally displeased by Duncan’s malignant attitude as he overfilled his mouth with food: a certain sullenness in the sallow face and an enmity in the eyes that reminded the earl of his own father—God rest his pawkie soul!—who had rarely understood the needs of the world as his son did; now the grandson showed a remarkable aptitude for his grandfather’s lack of insight.

  The cooks and kitchen staff were nonplussed by the earl’s presence. He sent them away, knowing dinner might suffer, but there were things he considered far more important than the flavor of his meat.

  “She is here,” Breadalbane said without preamble. “She is currently in the chamber assigned to her; I wanted to make certain you would treat her as befits my heir before permitting you to meet.”

  “Why?” Duncan asked around a mouthful of meat and crust. “Do you believe I might belittle her, or express my wish to wed another woman?”

  “I do . . . and you would.”

  Duncan’s swollen smile was neither amused nor friendly. “So I would.” He picked up his ale and drank lustily.

  The earl knew very well his son sought to put him off; well, it would take more than poor manners. “Her father may be a man worth little respect, but she deserves something of the Breadalbane courtesy—”

  Duncan smacked down his mug, slopping its contents over the rim. “Courtesy! From you?”

  “From you.” The earl toured the kitchens, absently marking how much flour was used for bread; how substantial his salt supply; how the cooks hoarded spices. “I dinna ken what you may have promised Marjorie Campbell of Lawers, but you’d best unpromise it; she is not whom you shall wed. I’ve my own reasons for it, good reasons, which you no doubt will decry, but ’tis done. And I believe it might be a good match, Duncan . . . I saw her but two years ago—or was it three?—when I went to Glen Lyon. She’s spirit of her own, so you will thank me for that. She isna a lump of suet.”

  Duncan tore at his bread. “And is she fair? Or d’ye give me a plain woman to settle other debts, when I may have my own?”

  “I’ve never lied to you, Duncan, and I’ll not begin now: no, she isna fair. No man would name her so.”

  “Ah.” Duncan’s sallow face displayed its tendency to splotch as angry color fed flesh. “Why not marry her yourself, aye? You’ve your own reasons, you said; good reasons, you said. You’re not belike to die any day soon, I’ll warrant—why foist her off on me? And I daresay were John not wed already you’d marry him to her . . . or would you no’ give him a woman who isna fair? Does he deserve better?”

  “He does,” the earl declared, continuing his inspection, “for his courtesy if naught else; have I raised you to speak so?”

  “I learned it of necessity; I am your son, aye?—and not entirely witless. I ken when defense is needed.” Duncan tucked bread into his mouth, chewed vigorously, then shrugged. “Well, there’s naught I can say, is there? ’Tis decided. All that is left is for us to meet: Breadalbane’s heir, whom he would change for another, and the drukken man’s plain daughter.” He paused to swallow elaborately. “Have you told her of me, then? Have you warned her of my habits?”

  Breadalbane sniffed at the bubbling contents of a pot hung over the hearth. “I havena seen her yet. I’ve business to attend; I’ll send her to you.”

  “Without warning her first?” Duncan laughed, washing bread down with ale. “Shall we suit, then, the two of us?—both of us unloved?”

  Breadalbane sighed. “She isna unloved, unless you intend to deny it to her.”

  “To her? No.” Duncan’s mouth twisted. “Only to you.”

  It was a craggy, upthrust heap of granite tall as a man, in breadth as wide as ten standing shoulder to shoulder. Uncounted crevices divided it vertically in rough precision, striations eaten into its flanks by time, by wind, by rain. In winter it was gray on gray, leavened only with a crop of sere, sienna-colored grass and ocherous lichen, but in spring it boasted a viridescent wealth of new life where fertile stone pockets caught soil and seed.

  Legend claimed the huge rock in the center of the glen had been sacred to druids. Dair did not know. He knew only that it was a place of silence, of solitude, where a man might think without interruption as he perched upon rocky rib.

  The flat-crowned, uppermost surface of the stone was heavily pitted, carved into large, jagged depressions which caught and held rain puddles and blown soil; other areas more dominant jutted sharply above the depressions, so that a man walking the spine of the rock must watch where he put his feet lest he be brought down. While the formation was not nearly so high as the Pap of Glencoe, overlooking the glen, nor so treacherous as the Devil’s Staircase between the glen and Rannoch Moor, its hard shoulders were nonetheless equally unforgiving.

  He stood for a long time atop the rock, letting the wind blow in his face. He tasted the dampness of Loch Linnhe from the western end, and the nearby River Coe flowing the length of the fertile valley cradled amidst the mountains, smelled the earthy richness of spring, the thicker fug of peat-smoke, a drift of roasting venison. He welcomed the touch of the wind, glorying in its buffet until his memory likened its caress to Jean Stewart’s, and then he sat down all at once on the edge of the massy granite and let the pines surrounding it screen him from the wind.

  When John came up from his house, Dair was unsurprised; his brother understood him better than most. He watched John stride up the glen by the drove-road, kilt hem swinging, Young Sandy in one arm; then he cut across to the rock itself. John did not climb up its back side but stood at its foot on the pebble-strewn verge below. The rock’s crown was not so high that John had to tip his skull back very far, nor to shout. “Jean is at the house.”

  Silent, Dair watched the nephew named for him as he plucked at his father’s plaid brooch. Young Sandy would be MacIain himself one day, the fourteenth of the name; between him and the present laird lay John MacDonald.

  “She said she’d come to speak wi’ Eiblin,” John explained, rescuing his brooch and the wool beneath the massive tang. “Eiblin elbowed and eyebrowed me to the door. Since ’tis not so often I’m thrown out of my own house, I thought I would ask you why.”

  Dair sighed, using a twig to draw idle designs in the damp earth caught in a stony pocket. “Eiblin will tell you later. She tells you everything.”

  “She is my wife; ’tis required. You would ken it if you were married.” John set down his son into the verdant grass and handed him a stick. “But why should I wait for my wife to tell me tonight, when my brother can do it now?”

  “ ’Tis your house, John. You dinna need to let the woman direct you in it.”

  “There speaks a man who isna wed!”

  Dair g
rimaced. Then he looked at his brother. One end of his mouth hooked wryly. “You’re nearly as white-headed as MacIain.”

  “And like to be whiter before you tell me the truth.” John paused. “Is it Jean?”

  “Christ.” Dair sighed. “You’d best come up, John. No sense in a man standing when he can sit.”

  “Aye, well—I wouldna ask it of him if he wasna ready for company.”

  “I said for you to come up.”

  John bent over his son. “I’ll be up there”—he gestured at the crown—“so dinna set a course for the river, or I’ll fly down and scoop you up again.”

  Young Sandy was at present much taken with his stick and the resultant excavations in grass and dark soil. He seemed disinclined to wander, so John walked around to the hindmost end of the rock and climbed up the series of sloping steps God had seen fit to shape. He picked his way across the uneven surface and stood beside Dair, looking across the verdant vista. “ ’Tis the best place in the glen for a signal fire. Every house can see it.”

  “Could you see me?”

  “I kent you’d be here. Didna need to see you.” John found a benevolent perch beside his brother and sat down, arranging the folds of his kilt. “ ’Tis woman’s talk, that. I’m better here.” He reached into his scrip and pulled out a flat, leather-wrapped flask. He pulled the stopper, raised it briefly: “Slàinte. ”He drank, then held it out.

  Dair accepted it. “Slàinte. ”Whisky burned down his throat.

  For a long time they shared a companionable silence, asking nothing of one another; theirs was a close relationship built on trust as well as affection, and neither saw sense in rushing the other before his time.