The Highland Henchman
Page 31
Merrin puzzled—a bejeweled dirk and an ermine purse? Where on earth had the Highlander come from?
Niall levered his hands under a shoulder. “Latch on to the other one and we’ll lift together.”
After a fair amount of hefting, they got him in with legs dangling so far over the barrow rim, his toes nearly touched ground. The poor blighter would have been bellowing like a castrated bull had he been awake.
Niall picked up the wooden handles. “Run ahead and stoke the fire. We’ll need to remove that musket ball straight away.”
Merrin slapped her hip. “Gar, come.” Along the way, she snatched an arm full of peat from the workshop. She pushed through the cottage door and tossed it on the fire, then swung a kettle of water into place. After setting fire to a twig, she went about lighting every candle in the main room, including a tallow column with three wicks upon the enormous hearth. She pulled aside one of three wooden chairs to access a candelabra on the rectangular table. Next, she crossed the room and lit the oil lamp that rested on the small table beside her mother’s oak rocking chair. Merrin’s favorite, it sat in the corner beside her loom.
When the wheels crunched across the path, she held the door. “Barrow him straight inside.”
Niall pushed the cart beside the table. “We’ll put him on the board where I can work.”
Merrin moved the candles and together they rolled the Highlander from the barrow, which was a mite easier than lifting him into it. Resting on his stomach, the man grunted. Merrin examined his face to see if his eyes had opened—no, he still looked dead, his skin a pale bluish-yellow in the candlelight. Bruises spread beneath his closed lashes.
Niall’s iron knife scraped against the whetstone. “I dunna ken if I can save him, but I’d be no kind of healer if I didn’t try.”
Merrin nodded. “How can I help?”
“Put a poker in the flame. We’ll need it red hot. Fetch a pile of rags—and grab a pot of honey poultice from the cupboard.”
Once Merrin followed her father’s orders, she stood beside him, cloth in hand.
Niall ran his dagger through the candle flame. “Hold the cloth beside the wound to sop up the blood.”
Merrin swallowed and looked down at the peaceful form unconscious on the table. “Do ye think he’ll wake?”
Niall pulled up the shirt, exposing the angry wound, encrusted with dark blood. “Mayhap. It’ll hurt like the devil, nonetheless.”
“Do we have to do it now?”
“The longer the lead ball stays in him, the sicker he’ll become.” Niall nodded toward her hands. “Hold the rag firm.”
The Highlander’s muscles remained flaccid while Niall probed with his knife. “’Tis not too deep.”
An exhale whistled past Merrin’s lips. “’Tis a good sign.”
“I nearly have it.” With a twist of Da’s wrist, the musket ball popped out. Niall grasped it in his pincher fingers. “Nasty piece of lead.”
Blood poured from the cut. Merrin worked quickly to sop it up, but it flowed too fast to stanch it.
“Put pressure on the wound,” Niall snapped. He turned to the fire and reached for the poker. “Stand back.”
Merrin pulled away the blood saturated cloth and tossed it into the fire. Drawing in a ragged breath, she clutched her fists to her chest.
Niall hesitated. “He may thrash a bit. Ye’d best bear down on his shoulders.”
Merrin moved to the end of the table. Her fingers sank into muscle, thick with banded sinew and ever so warm to the touch. Her insides tumbled like a rolling brook. These were the shoulders of a powerful warrior. Merrin leaned her weight into him just as Niall rammed the glowing poker into the wound.
The Highlander bucked so violently, Merrin’s small hands were useless holding him down. The pungent stench of burning flesh wafted from his back. The man bellowed louder than a braying bull. Arching up, his eyes flashed open and focused on her—ice-blue eyes filled with agony stared at Merrin as if she’d murdered him and all his kin.
He thudded back to the table, the wind wheezing through his throat. His body shuddered. Wide-eyed, Merrin stepped away. The Highlander’s eyes closed and his back rose and fell in a steady rhythm. Merrin glanced to the wound. The bleeding had ebbed considerably. “Ye did it.”
Niall jabbed the poker in the flame. It sizzled and stank as he turned it over. “Did ye doubt me, lass?”
“I kent ye could, I just feared he would be too weak to withstand it.”
He hung the poker on its black nail against the hearth. “He’s not healed yet. Rub the honey poultice into the puncture, then bind it. I’ve got to finish mixing the tincture before Friar Pat arrives.”
Merrin pulled the stopper off the pot. “Do ye think he’ll help us move him? The Highlander cannot stay on the table.”
“Aye.” Niall wiped his hands on a rag. “Ye’d best bring in some straw and fashion a pallet for him.”
She glopped the poultice over the Highlander’s angry-red flesh and gently rubbed it in. “Should we put him on me bed?”
“And where would you sleep?”
Her shoulder ticked up. “I could use the pallet.”
“Nay. We’ll put him out here where we can keep an eye on him. God only knows how he ended up with a musket ball in his back.”
“Ye think he might be evil?” Merrin studied the man’s face. She didn’t have a sense of foreboding like she did when marauding pirates from Rona were about. She sensed no wickedness at all.
Niall grasped the door latch. “I dunna ken, but I’ll no’ have him sleeping in your bed, or mine for that matter. We can make him comfortable enough with a bit of straw.”
“I’ll see to it, then.”
Merrin glanced back to the door that led to her room. Once a larder, the small space had a bed, a trunk for her things and pegs on the wall where she hung her two kirtles. Niall’s chamber was much larger, with a bed big enough for two. It even had a chest of drawers with a mirror atop—the nicest piece of furniture they owned.
The Highlander would be far more comfortable on her bed, though. She’d recently finished making a mattress of downy feathers. She could sink into it and sleep like a bairn. Alas, Niall said no. There was no use arguing—at least not today.
***
Merrin poured some water in the basin and doused a cloth. Wringing it out, she turned to the patient, hair hanging over his face. He couldn’t possibly be comfortable strewn across the table on his stomach, but she’d see him cleaned up before the friar came. She ran the cloth over his brow and dabbed the broken skin on his nose. From the blood encrusted below it, she guessed he’d been hit with considerable force.
“What happened to ye?” she asked aloud. From his spot on the rug in front of the hearth, Gar whined, pricking his ears as if she’d spoken to him. “Not you, ye big hound.”
She cleaned the blood and grime from the man’s face and neck, sliding the cloth under his collar as far as it would go. Though he smelled of sweat, blood and seaweed, propriety got the better of her and she opted not to cleanse anything else. Had she known he was alive when she examined his ballocks, she never would have looked. She bit her lip against a tight fluttering sensation low in her midsection. She could not deny the experience had been interesting.
The cloth slipped from her fingers and dropped to the floor. Reaching for it, she made the mistake of bracing a hand on the Highlander’s thigh. Solid muscle filled her palm. Merrin stood straight and stared. Every inch of him was so hard.
She averted her attention to the leather boots that covered his ankles. Pulling the laces, she removed them with his hose. He doesn’t need footgear if he’ll be abed for days.
Voices came from the workshop. Good. Friar Pat had arrived. Mayhap he’d ken the Highlander. Though she recognized the ancient timbre of his voice, Merrin didn’t need to. Friar Pat was the only person who visited. The clan, who mostly resided within the walls of Brochel Castle on the eastern side of Raasay, gave Eilean Fladda to the west
a wide berth. They all feared her mark—but the friar was different. He said Jesus walked among the lepers and healed them. The friar didn’t fear her, but he was the only one.
Merrin headed to the door just as Niall burst through with Friar Pat close behind, hobbling in with his walking stick. Gar did nothing but open an eye—vicious watchdog he was.
The aging friar opened his arms. “Merrin, my dear lassie. Give an old man a squeeze.” His hug was warm and filled with kindness—he even smelled of sugared dates. Pat held her at arm’s length. “I reckon ye grow bonnier every time I pay a visit.”
Heat spread up Merrin’s cheeks. “It seems like forever since we saw ye last.”
“Aye, I’m not as agile as I once was.”
“And how is your rheumatism?” Niall asked.
“It hurts.” The friar smiled and patted Merrin’s shoulder. “But the good Lord has seen fit to grant me with a long life, and for that I am grateful.” He regarded the Highlander and frowned. “So this is what washed ashore?”
“Aye.” Niall moved beside the patient. “Is he from Brochel?”
Merrin’s heart stuttered with hope as the friar bent down to inspect the Highlander’s face. “Bruised a bit, is he not?” The friar pushed aside the patient’s hair. “Och, I’ll be a monk of Judas.”
That was the closest Merrin had ever heard the holy man come to swearing. “What is it?” She craned her neck around the friar’s stout frame and scanned the Highlander’s face—had she missed a red mark like hers?
“If I didn’t know better, aside from the blond tresses, I’d say he was the likeness of Laird Calum MacLeod.” The friar crossed himself. “God rest his soul.”
Merrin and Niall both made the sign of the cross at the mention of the legendary first Laird of Raasay, who died “seeking the Holy Grail” in Tortuga—at least that was how the friar told it, though the island was a fair distance from the Holy Land.
“But do ye recognize him?” Niall asked.
Friar Pat frowned. “Nay. He doesn’t hail from Raasay. Of that I am certain.”
After Merrin fashioned a pallet of straw at the side of the hearth, they moved the Highlander, which proved no easy feat. Merrin took hold of his ankles while the two men wrestled with his shoulders. If she’d known how heavy his legs were, she’d have opted to switch with Da. Merrin would have sworn the patient was hewn from stone if she hadn’t seen him bleed. But they rested him on the hay gently enough. Merrin draped a newly woven plaid across him, pleased to see her handiwork put to good use.
She insisted upon serving up bowls of potage before the friar made his return journey. Niall washed down a bite with a gulp of ale. He pointed his spoon at the unconscious form across the room. “I thought we’d try to spoon some broth into him on the morrow.”
Pat nodded. “And ale. Give him a thimble of poppy juice if he starts thrashing about. That’ll calm him.”
Merrin studied the man. He looked peaceful with his hands folded over the plaid she’d tucked around his body. “Anything else we can do for Caolman?”
“Who?” Niall asked.
Merrin bit her lip. “We have to call him something—and I found him on the caol.”
“Caolman it is, until he wakes and can tell us his name.” The friar chuckled and patted her shoulder. “Keep applying your honey poultice and cleanse it with St. John’s wort morning and evening.”
“Thank ye, friar, I’ll tend him as if he were me own.”
“Very good.” Pat nodded toward Niall. “Your da’s a better healer than I, lass. If he cannot bring the poor soul to rights, no one can.”
End of Excerpt from Beauty and the Barbarian
Other Books by Amy Jarecki:
Scottish historical romances coming in 2014
Captured by the Pirate Laird
Beauty and the Barbarian
Rescued by the Celtic Warrior
Celtic Maid
Contemporary Romances
Virtue
Chihuahua Momma
Visit Amy’s web site: www.amyjarecki.com
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