by Laurin Wittig - Guardians Of The Targe 02 - Highlander Avenged
Scotia started to complain but stopped when Uilliam cleared his throat and put his large hand on her shoulder.
“So I am not to continue her training,” Jeanette said, not bothering to make it a question.
“Not for now,” Nicholas said, but he looked at his wife. “Not for now.”
“And what of Malcolm MacKenzie?” Jeanette asked. “If he goes with the warriors, I will not be able to take care of his wound. I gave him my word I would see to its healing.”
Nicholas pondered her question, then pushed out of his chair with a sigh. “I will go and speak with him, and then I shall decide if he will be of better use to us as one of the warriors, or as one of the men assigned to the caves.”
It was not the answer Jeanette wanted. Regardless of his decision about Malcolm, she would not be allowed to train Rowan.
MALCOLM SAT IN the bailey on a large stone that had clearly once been part of the demolished side of the curtain wall. He’d eaten, had the tea Jeanette had made up for him, then sat, keeping his eyes on the door at the foot of the tower, waiting to see what would happen next. He had not expected the chief to closet himself away when action was called for. It certainly wasn’t what Malcolm would have done.
The tower door opened and Nicholas stepped out into the noonday sun. As soon as he spied Malcolm, he strode across the bailey to him.
“Come with me,” he said, and made his way to the stair that led up to the wall walk.
“Is the wall stable?” Malcolm asked.
Nicholas shrugged. “It was all stable, right up to the moment when it was not,” he said over his shoulder.
When they reached the top, Nicholas stopped and stared over the bailey, toward the loch and the mountains beyond. Malcolm let his eyes roam over the terrain that was easier to see from here. There was a steep drop-off between the castle and the loch and it looked as if much of the fallen wall had tumbled down that way. The forest was kept well back from the rest of the wall. He saw several men stationed around the wall walk, their eyes trained outward, and he saw plenty of industry inside the wall, where some people were still clearing rubble and others were working hard to set up a palisade wall of small tree trunks to close the space where the wall had once stood. It was clear they would not get the work done soon enough to protect them if the English came here in any numbers.
“What would you do?” Nicholas asked suddenly.
Malcolm was surprised by the question. “Me? I would remove everyone from the castle and find a safer place for them until I knew more about my enemies, their numbers, their position, their likely plan of attack.”
Nicholas nodded. “And the wall? What would you do about that?”
“Exactly what you are doing now. Clear it, put up the quickest defense I could until a proper wall could be rebuilt.”
Nicholas was quiet for a while. “You fought with King Robert’s army.” It was not a question.
“Aye.”
“Battles against the English forces?”
“Aye, though at Dalrigh we were caught between the English, who were dogging our heels after Methven, and those traitorous MacDougalls who fight with the English.”
“And that is where you were injured?”
“It is. I fell there and was left for dead. I am told, by the crofter who found me, that it looked as if I had managed to crawl off the field and into a thicket of bushes. He cared for me until I was strong enough to leave, which was not long past now. I owe my life to the man.” He flexed his arm and tried to fist his hand, despite the hot pain that shot from fingers to shoulder. “It is my hope Jeanette can finish what he started and make my arm strong and whole again.”
“If it is possible, Jeanette has the skill for it. What service can you provide in exchange for her skill and our shelter, such as it is?”
“I . . .” He realized it was a question to which he did not honestly know the answer. “I have experience fighting the English and have seen their tactics in battle, though this is not a place those tactics are likely to be used. They prefer to fight on open land, not forest-covered bens. I can train the warriors.” He tried to clench his fist again and shook his head. “Nay, I cannot do that, at least not now.” He held up his right hand for Nicholas to see. “Perhaps I could train the lads with their dirks? And I can certainly act as lookout, or scout if you have need.”
Nicholas was nodding his head. He looked sideways at Malcolm and he appeared to be making a decision. “I appreciate your honesty and I will take the services you offer in exchange for Jeanette’s healing care.”
“It would do no good to lie about my abilities, good or bad. In battle it would be evident I had lied.”
Nicholas laughed quietly. “Aye. I am not used to honest men, though, so it always comes as a surprise to me.”
Malcolm could feel his brows lower and his forehead furl. “Why are you not used to honest men? Surely a chief must trust the men who fight for him.”
“So I am learning.”
Malcolm waited for a better explanation. Nicholas folded his arms over his chest and leaned back against the wall but still he was silent.
“If you are to help us protect the clan from the English,” he finally said, “you should know that my father was English. My mother was Scottish. I had to leave my home with my mother’s clan when I was ten and two. I made my way to my sire’s lands in the borders, and rather painfully discovered myself unwelcome there. Eventually I found my way to London. I have a great talent for mimicry and gathering information, and I eventually came to the attention of one of King Edward’s courtiers who employed me in the king’s household as his spy, and from there I came to be among the king’s spies. I was sent to Scotland to find a relic he desires to obtain, a relic I discovered was in the care of the MacAlpins, so I made my way here and it was not long before I remembered what it meant to be a Highlander and how much I missed this land. It was also not long before I fell in love with Rowan. I forswore my fealty to King Edward, married Rowan, and, according to the customs of this clan, became the chief when we wed.”
He looked at Malcolm as if he expected some sort of reaction but Malcolm was too busy taking in what the man had said.
“You never fought in battle for Edward Longshanks?” Malcolm asked.
“Nay, before he attacked a place, I was often sent in to gather information about how many armed men were gathering there, or whether the sentiment of the people was to fight or make peace, but I was always pulled out before the fighting began and I was sent ahead, often as a refugee from the war. I learned to protect myself on the streets of London when I first arrived there, and killed a few men in service to the king, but the little training I received in warfare I learned here in the Highlands, when I was a wean.” He looked away. “I have been training with a sword, but it does not come naturally to me. I am far more comfortable and adept with a dirk.”
“That explains much,” Malcolm said. “And the relic? Did you find it?”
“Aye. I cannot be sure if King Edward knows that or not, but he knows where I am and he’s sure to know by now that I have left his employ. I know his temper well, and he will not take such a traitorous act lightly, which is why I was sure English soldiers would turn up here sooner or later.”
“If they are after you, then why do you not just leave the clan and draw the English away?”
“I have considered that, but circumstances dictated that I stay and we fight the English together as a clan.”
For a man who revealed so much of his past to Malcolm, Nicholas talked his way around things he did not wish to speak of with all the slipperiness of the spy he had been.
“Why do you tell me all of this?” Malcolm asked.
“Because you were honest with me about your weakness and I thought it only right that you know what everyone else does about my weakness before you decide if you are really willing to join our
cause.”
Malcolm found he liked Nicholas, in spite of Nicholas’s time spent in service to King Edward. The man was forthright, yet cautious. He was willing to fight for a clan that had not even been his for long. And though Malcolm knew anyone trained as a spy was adept at gaining the trust of people, he did not get a sense that Nicholas was being anything but himself.
“I will join your cause in whatever way I can serve, but only until my arm is healed enough to return to King Robert’s army. My first duty is there.”
Nicholas pushed off the wall and faced him, a smile on his face. “Good. We are all leaving the castle tonight. The women and weans are heading into the bens with a few of our younger warriors. You will go with them so Jeanette can continue to tend your arm. Train the lads as best you can and help to keep watch over everyone.”
“I thought you would want my advice on strategy and tactics,” Malcolm said, both glad Jeanette could fulfill her promise to him, and irritated that he was being sent away from where any fighting would be.
“When the time comes, I will. For now we do not even know how many English have made their way to Glen Lairig, nor if more are on their way. For now we need trackers and scouts to discover what they can, and you need to get your arm back to fighting strength, then the time will come for making plans.”
CHAPTER FOUR
JEANETTE PUT THE last plaid bound for the caves in a large basket fitted with straps, so it could be carried on a back, and rolled her aching shoulders. All around her the bailey was filled with women packing baskets. A few men were readying anything that could be used as a weapon. Weans, lads, and lasses carried the full baskets into the bolt-hole, a hidden tunnel that ran from beneath the tower out into the forest, where its exit was well concealed. They were staging the supplies in the tunnel and each person would take what he or she could carry as they left their home behind them. Whatever they couldn’t shift to the caves tonight could be fetched when possible, without their ever being seen entering or leaving Dunlairig Castle. She arched her back, trying to loosen the kinks that had taken hold there. She gazed up at the sky and realized it was later than she’d thought. It would not be much longer before the sun set, an hour at most. As soon as full dark descended, they would begin to leave the castle and the glen.
She closed her eyes and pushed away the new layer of grief that threatened to take hold. They would all be leaving their homes this night, whether they lived in the castle or in cottages up and down the glen. It was not right that the very thing that should be protecting the MacAlpin clan from the English was the reason all these troubles were descending upon them. She was still disappointed that Rowan would not let Jeanette continue training her, but she could not stay mad at her cousin. Jeanette knew that Rowan would do anything within her power to protect her family; it was only that she did not know how to manage her very real power yet.
But she would. Jeanette was sure of it. The obstacle was how?
There were the chronicles of the Guardians, scrolls written by many of the Guardians that had come before. They might offer a clue.
Jeanette looked up at the top of the tower, at the window that opened onto the chamber where her mother had died. She would have to enter that room to collect the chronicles before she left here this night, but not yet. She could not face that room just yet.
Malcolm’s deep laugh pulled her attention across the bailey where he’d been working with the men for hours. He had not stopped since he descended the stair from the curtain wall with Nicholas, though she knew he must be tired and his arm must pain him. To look at him, though, one would never know he was injured at all.
She watched as he lifted a small ax with his left hand. He nodded, as if in answer to a question, then took a fighting stance and, with a loud shout that startled the young lads watching him, he moved as if dancing, if the dance was meant to be in battle, lunging at an invisible foe, slicing with the ax, whirling away again. She couldn’t take her eyes off him as he lunged and swung and whirled again and again. His strength was clear, and she couldn’t help but wonder how much stronger he would be once his arm was well. The thought of his arms, strong and whole, also made her wonder what it would be like to be held by him. Would he be as gentle as he was strong?
“It is hard not to watch such a braw man, is it not, lassie?”
Heat rushed through Jeanette as she turned to find Peigi, one of the oldest women in the clan. Remarkably, she was still strong, if a bit more bent, and slower, than she used to be. It was Peigi and her two sisters who had been setting up the caves and they would leave tonight with the first group from the castle.
“Aye,” Jeanette said.
“Who is he?” the auld woman asked as they watched him hand the ax to a small towheaded lad that Jeanette knew to be the imp, wee Ian, showing him how to set his feet and grip the weapon. “He must be someone special to draw your attention away from the task at hand.” Her familiar cackling laugh was hard to resist.
“Malcolm MacKenzie.” She watched as he talked Ian through a few moves with the ax. Ian’s carefree, childish laugh floated on the air and she realized even the weans had not been spared from the clan’s troubles of late. She had not heard such a happy sound in far too long. “His arm is injured and I agreed to tend it until ’tis well. He will be coming with us to the caves.”
Peigi grinned and danced her version of a jig, though she stopped as quickly as she began. “These old bones do not move as easily as they used to,” she said with a momentary frown. “ ’Twill be nice to have someone new about to admire.”
Jeanette laughed quietly and hugged the auld woman, pleased at the reprieve from her unhappy thoughts.
“Now he’s watching you, lassie,” Peigi said, waggling her eyebrows. “Och, this might be just the distraction we need!”
“Do not get the man in trouble, Peigi,” Jeanette said, shoving one more plaid into the overstuffed basket before a lad took it away to the tunnel.
“Oh, ’tis not I who will trouble the man, I think.” The auld woman actually waved at Malcolm. He grinned back and returned the wave just as Peigi’s sisters came through the gate, a line of weans trailing behind them, carrying cookpots and baskets.
“Ah,” Peigi said, “the evening repast has arrived.” She clapped her hands together so hard that Jeanette was afraid she would crack every bone in them, but Peigi was as tough as any other Highlander, as she was so fond of saying. “Move all the baskets near the tower!” she shouted. “You”—she pointed at a group of lasses chattering together—“get the tables set up!”
A MUSICAL LAUGH drew Malcolm’s eyes to the woman he had been watching all afternoon. Jeanette stood next to a stooped, auld auntie, smiling down at her. Even from across the bailey he could see a glint of mischief in the old woman’s eyes as she waved a gnarled hand at him. He grinned at her and returned her wave, certain that she was responsible for Jeanette’s pink cheeks and that brief lovely laughter.
The next thing he knew, there was a parade of auld women and weans carrying dinner into the bailey and a flurry of activity to clear the remaining baskets away to the foot of the tower. Two long tables went up quickly—simple planks on top of anything that would serve to hold them up—and the pots and baskets of food were spread along them. There was a scramble for seating so Malcolm grabbed a bench near him and crossed the bailey.
“I’ve a seat for you, Jeanette,” he said as he drew near, indicating the bench he easily carried despite his injury. “But you shall have to share it with me.” He heard that same cackling laugh he’d heard earlier and looked behind him to find the old woman.
“Och, looks like Jeanette has found herself a braw warrior at last.”
Malcolm got a glimpse of Jeanette’s flaming cheeks and couldn’t help but be amused, even if it was at Jeanette’s expense.
“Peigi, he is a friend, ’tis all.”
Peigi patted he
r on the cheek as if she were a wee bairn.
“ ’Tis the best way to start,” she said, winking at Malcolm.
Charmed, Malcolm grinned back at the old woman. “Malcolm MacKenzie, mistress,” he said, giving her a brief nod of his head in greeting.
Peigi stepped forward and ran her hand down his upper arm. Malcolm tried to hide a wince as she ran her hand over his injury, but the canny woman noticed.
“She is healing this, aye?” she said, nodding toward his arm.
“Aye, she is.”
“Good. She shall need a strong man, that one.”
Jeanette rolled her eyes and shook her head.
“Do not mock me, child,” Peigi said without even looking at Jeanette. “You are a strong lass, and that needs a strong lad if you are to have any respect for each other. You are a strong lad, are you not, Malcolm MacKenzie?”
“I will be, as soon as this arm is healed,” he said.
Peigi stared into his eyes so long, he became uncomfortable, but he could not seem to look away from the woman.
“I think you are stronger than you ken, even now, laddy,” she said, bobbing her head as if she was pleased with what she saw. Without another word, she left them, calling orders as she went for everyone to begin the meal.
Malcolm made sure to guide Jeanette to a spot where the bench would fit at the end of one table, then he slid in beside her, sitting close enough that their hips touched.
“You need not sit quite so close, you ken?” Jeanette said to him, but she did not move away.
“Aye, normally that would be true, but seats are scarce and we must make room for as many as possible to enjoy this hot meal.”
“Um hm,” she said, ladling a savory stew that made his stomach growl into the wooden bowl that had appeared before them. “It looks like we shall have to share this bowl, as well as the bench,” she said, a small smile lifting the corners of her mouth.