by Syme, R. L.
Anne wiped at her eyes again and looked up at the meadow. Something was moving and she shielded her eyes, expecting to see Elena and Fergus moving in the orchard. Instead, she saw a group of men on the King’s road, not far away. Soldiers in full uniform. They marched in a tight formation around a cart pulled by two oxen.
Anne’s breath stilled and she instinctively reached for Brighde’s hand. Both women watched the cart turn off the road and make its way next to the orchard toward the house. The soldiers moved with such swiftness. This was a death cart.
Her heart broke in that moment. The only reason they would be coming here was to deliver her husband’s dead body. And he truly was her husband, in every manner of speaking. While he had not taken her as a husband would, she had given him her body, soul, and spirit. She belonged to him. Loved him. And he was hers.
With shaking legs, Anne stood from her chair and walked out to meet the death cart.
One of the soldiers saluted and stepped away from the rest. He was a short, barrel-chested man whose blonde curls feathered out the back of his helmet. When he removed the helmet, the abject sadness on his face took Anne’s breath.
“Are you Annabeth Miller?”
Anne didn’t even try to stop the tears as they washed over her cheeks. She nodded.
“Captain Gerald Addicott.” He saluted again. “On behalf of his majesty, King Edward of England, the first of his name, sovereign of the realm and lord commander of all loyal men of England, we wish to thank you for the service of your husband, one John Miller, to the throne and the crown.”
Anne sank to her knees in front of the cart. She remembered the day she’d been told of this nefarious plot. How the king paid for bodies. She had never believed for a moment that Aedan would be one of them. He was too strong, too savvy, too smart. Certainly, he would have survived. It was this John Miller, husband of the simpering Annabeth Miller, who had died. Not her Aedan. Surely.
“Because of his death in the Battle of Stirling Bridge, himself being young and virile and dead before his time, King Edward has promised to pay you, his widow, for the wages of his life. We hope that by his service to England, you will be proud, and by your compensation, you will be able to live your life in peace, as though he be still by your side.”
The words rang hollow, as though the captain knew how little they would help, but was bound to say them, nonetheless.
Two soldiers stepped forward and leaned into the cart to pluck something from its bowels. When they lifted it from the back of the cart, Anne could feel her life crumbling before her.
“Aedan,” she whispered. Then, remembering herself, cried out, “John!” and ran toward the body. The Captain stopped her. “Because of the manner of his death, my lady, we ask that you not look on him.”
“The manner of his death?”
“The enemy set the battlefield afire to divide the troops and those of our men on the fire line were burned quite badly.”
The closer they brought the body, the more she could smell the stench. Charred and rotting flesh. It brought a fresh wave of nausea with it.
She sagged against the captain and fell to her knees again. “How do you identify the body?”
“The men fighting with him, and the contents of his pockets and retinue.”
The two soldiers set him down several feet from her. One of them drew his sword and used the tip to draw the gold chain up and reveal the amulet. The one they had stolen from her mother. At the end of the same gold chain.
The other soldier reached nearly to the ground, then drew Aedan’s sword from the scabbard strapped over his back and Anne nodded. That had, indeed been his sword. This was her Aedan. Charred, rotting, dead.
“Oh, God, no.” She pounded at the Captain’s chest and fell all the way to the ground, sobbing. “Please, why?”
The Captain released her. “We are grateful for his service to the Crown and want to offer you this sad recompense for his life.” He forced a pouch into her hand, heavy with coin.
Anne turned it over and over in her hand. This was it. This was why Aedan had left, had given his life. So she could hold in her hands the means to make the rest of the payment to Reva. He had known their silver would be short. He had arranged with Fergus and Molnar to trade his life for hers.
Tears flooded her eyes, blurring the brown sack of money. She heaved back and threw it toward the orchard.
The Captain backed up and called his men back into formation.
“I don’t want your blasted money,” she screamed as loud as her voice would allow. “Just bring me my husband back. Right now.” A wordless howl escaped her lips and her chest felt like it might collapse in upon itself. “Take your widow’s tax. I want my husband.”
The Captain gave the order for the men to withdraw. But he stepped forward and put his hand on Anne’s shoulder. “I know how much love there was between you and your husband. I knew him.”
Anne looked up into his blue-grey eyes, searching for some sign that he knew Aedan, that he would return him to her. But she met only sadness. “John was a good man. He talked of little else but you. Your beauty, your grace, your goodness. I know if he could have returned to you, he would have.” The Captain smiled. “This is small consolation, I know, in the face of losing him, but he loved you.”
Anne dropped her head into her hands. “But did he know?”
“Pardon me?”
She sobbed into the dark of her memory. “Did he know how much I loved him?”
The Captain squeezed her shoulder. He must have called for someone to come to her, because she soon felt Brighde’s arms around her.
“He knew you loved him.”
“But did he know how much?”
The Captain released her. “He was the most uncomplicated man I’ve ever known. The only things on his mind were his sister and her baby, and his wife. He must have felt love, or else why would he have done what he did?”
Anne smiled through her tears. “Because he was the best man, Captain. The best there has ever been and the best there ever will be. He loved without thought of having that love returned, and he sacrificed without the promise of being rewarded. There is no love more selfless than the love my husband bore me. And there will never be another like him.”
The Captain offered more condolences, but Anne could barely hear him. The realization of Aedan’s death came slow, and in waves, and after the last one, she couldn’t see or hear or think of anything except the desolation of her life without him.
*****
Aedan Donne rose from the dead that day. Or that’s how he would have described the feeling to someone who could understand what it meant to be utterly hopeless and then find the most wonderful treasure that brought boundless hope back into his world.
As much as it tore at his heart to watch Anne rolling around with Brighde in their sorrow, he knew it was a necessary evil. He had prepared himself for the worst.
The whole march back from Stirling, he’d been ruminating into his helmet about Anne having a new husband, or not being with Fergus at all, having left for France on her own, or being in love with someone new, or even just not caring if he lived or died. Any of them worked as a torment for his weary heart.
They would have proven her mother right. That Anne couldn’t care for a disfigured disappointment like him. That she was only using him to escape her sister’s fate. Or her own. That she would leave him as soon as it became convenient. Or when she tired of looking at his ugly face.
But when he’d heard Anne’s words, seen her weep for him, or for his corpse, he couldn’t explain away her love any longer.
As soon as they passed into the busy King’s road traffic of that sunny harvest afternoon so close to Hull, Aedan found it impossibly easy to duck through the crowd unseen and hide in the bushes until the death cart had continued fully on its way. One of the benefits of being dead was that, even if they did notice his absence before they returned to the barracks, they wouldn’t know where to search him out. O
r at least he hoped they wouldn’t just backtrack their steps until they found him.
The sun fell through the sky as Aedan waited for the traffic on the King’s road to slow. The soldiers never returned and by the time the sun had nearly set, the traffic was so light, he could sneak along the edge of the road and wait for a clearing to cross toward Fergus’ farmhouse without arousing any attention. He walked through the orchard, seeking out the place where Anne had thrown the purse. With barely enough light, he managed to locate the stupid thing before full dark. All would have been for naught if they had lost this purse to an animal or a drunken thief in the night.
No. All would not have been lost. For Aedan now knew, without a doubt in his mind, that Anne not only loved him, but wanted him. He wasn’t just a convenience or a solace.
He would have nearly-died all over again to know that for certain.
With the purse heavy in his hand, Aedan made his way through the rest of the trees to the farmhouse. The body of the unknown soldier lay where the soldiers had dropped him. The man had fallen next to Aedan in battle, burned his face right off while Aedan tried to defend himself from attack. In cases where burning or mutilation prevented identifying a body, they would go to the effects, but this man had none. He had no markers on his body, no weapons. Not even a sword—which could have been dropped when the fire began. But he had no way to be identified, and that made Aedan stop.
Aedan had been wounded, but barely, and when he fell, the corpse had fallen beside him. Seeing his opportunity, he traded his sword and dagger for the corpse’s, strapped the sword as he would have carried it, and put the amulet around his neck. He took the corpse’s helmet, where he hadn’t been wearing one, cleaned it, and wore it non-stop until he could bandage his head to hide the scar.
He’d taken the man’s body off the battlefield, planted the word that it was John Miller of Hull, and the rest had managed itself.
Aedan had been fully prepared to deliver the body, see himself proven right, and walk away.
He had not, however, been prepared for what he’d found. A heart-sick Anne who had waited for him, who loved him. That had been more a shock than the fact that he survived a defeat and lived to tell the tale.
Suddenly, the door opened and Fergus came out into the cool night with a shovel. He stepped toward the body, saw Aedan, and froze.
Aedan pulled off his helmet. “Fergus, it’s me.” He held out his hands. “It’s not a ghost. It’s really me. It’s Aedan.”
Fergus, who had only seen him for a day, may not have recognized him, so Aedan pulled his hair behind his ear to reveal his most identifiable marker.
“God, man.” Fergus broke into a smile and clapped Aedan in a hug. “You put a right fright into us.” He pointed back at the house. “Are you going to tell the women?”
Aedan nodded. “I’m not sure how, but I have to see Anne.”
Fergus whistled. “I’d better dig two graves then.”
“Why?”
“Because she’s going to kill you all over again.”
Chapter Seventeen
Anne had just barely begun to breathe normally again when she heard one of the babies cry in the next room. The soft wail ignited the sadness in her heart anew.
She wondered if it would always be like this. If every cry would send her into breathing fits and fainting.
Surely someday she would be able to hear a baby cry without a gaping, unholy need for Aedan eating at her insides and bringing about a fresh round of sobbing.
Anne tried to count her way through to the control on the other side. The healing on the other side. She just wanted to stop crying. Brighde was fast asleep on the makeshift bed they’d all been sharing since March, so Anne decided to get up with the baby herself. She wouldn’t be able to sleep anyway. Might as well let Brighde sleep.
A low fire still burned in the main room, where the babies slept by the rocking chair during the day, after they pulled it in from outside. Someone sat in the rocking chair when she approached, already soothing the babe.
Anne blinked and put her hand on the rough wood wall, not wanting to disturb Fergus as he held the baby. But as she approached, she realized it wasn’t Fergus. This man was much larger and darker than Fergus. And rather than the brown tunic that Fergus had been wearing, this man was dressed mostly in white. His dark hair hung down past his shoulders.
But it was his voice that undid her. That deep, thrumming, vibrating tone that set her insides on fire like a lightning strike. She sucked in a breath and he turned toward her.
Aedan.
God in heaven, it was Aedan.
Her breathing quickened and the tears fell on her cheeks anew as she reached for him. Was this really her Aedan?
He put the baby back into its swaddling chair and reached back for her. The feel of his skin on hers, of his hands clutching at her. She had been waiting for that moment for seven months and it was every bit as glorious as she had hoped, and a million times over.
Aedan covered her mouth with his before she could speak and continued kissing her until she was completely breathless. She put her hand on his chest and gazed up into his face.
“Aedan?” She ran both hands up the side of his neck and onto both sides of his face and just held him. “Please, God, tell me this isn’t a dream.”
“You’re not dreaming.” Aedan kissed her again until she couldn’t breathe and drug himself back, panting. But his hands remained on her body, holding her hip or her cheek or her shoulder, dragging her toward him and then away. And then into him, and back while they recovered. She felt like they were drinking each other in and had to stop before they drowned.
The sensation of having him in her arms overwhelmed her. From the rough touch of whiskers on his cheeks to the smooth skin of his scar to the wetness of his tears and his kisses to the smell of the road and travel to the taste of apples on his breath.
She couldn’t have dreamed such a moment.
Anne held him tight against her, reveling in his scent and the strength of him. The tears wouldn’t stop, even in her elation.
His big hands held her cheeks and wiped the tears away with the rough pads of his thumbs. Then he kissed her again. He pressed her up against the wall and she could feel every inch of his body crying out for her touch.
She wanted the same thing.
“How, Aedan?” Anne sucked in a breath, reviving herself from the headiness of his kisses.
“I found a man with no identifiable markers who had been—”
“Never you mind.” Her mouth sought his again and she drank more of him until drunk, she pulled away and rested her head on his chest. “I don’t need to know how. I just need to know that you’re staying.”
He ran a hand down the back of her head, smoothing out her hair as he cooed to her.
“Why would I ever leave?”
“You left me once before.” Her somber tone struck something in him because he pulled her to him with a ferocity she’d never seen.
“I was a fool. I thought I could leave you before you left me and somehow give you a better life than you would have had with me here to hang on.”
She relaxed into the heat of his embrace. “You are a fool, Aedan Donne.”
He pulled her chin toward him and looked down into her eyes. “I thought I was the best man there ever was and ever would be.”
Anne felt the laughter wash over her as she replayed that moment in her head. So certain Aedan was gone forever, she had bared her soul, and it turned out Aedan had heard her after all. Miracle of miracles.
With a coy smile, she replied, “That wasn’t you, actually. That was my other husband. His name is John Miller.”
“Oh, it is, is it?” He captured her lips and kissed her with a surprising tenderness. “Well, it so happens that I’ve met this John Miller.”
“You have?” Anne took in the lovely, whole, solidness of him and traced a finger down his nose, stopping at his lips.
“Yes, he has this lovely young
wife named Annabeth.”
“Oh, he does?” She kissed those lips, then kissed his scarred cheek and his unscarred cheek, then his lips again.
“Yes, and I hear they’re going to elope to France one of these days.” He pulled the widow tax purse from around his neck and jangled it in front of her. The bittersweet reminder that this idyllic life with Rosie and Fergus couldn’t last put a twinge of sadness in Anne’s heart.
“I will miss it here, Aedan.”
“I’m sure you will. You seem like you’ve been at peace here.”
“We have been, as much as we could be.”
Aedan sat in the rocking chair and hauled her down into his lap. “Have you ever asked Fergus how he and Rosie came to be here?”
She shook her head. They had the Northern accent, they knew the area, they had trees that might have been generations old. She assumed they’d been here forever.
“Fergus killed a man in Berwick. He and his wife and his mother escaped here with Molnar’s help more than twenty years ago.”
Anne leaned against Aedan’s shoulder. “That’s why he helps people like us.”
“That’s exactly why.” He smoothed the hair from her face and pulled her up to face him. “Have you ever noticed the way Fergus and Rosie look around soldiers? Or strangers?”
Anne nodded. “The same way we feel. I assumed everyone reacted like that in England, given that the army can be so… present.” She’d seen the wariness, the fear in Rosie’s face when a group of soldiers stopped to requisition supplies one day, on their way to Stirling.
And even when the death cart had come, both Fergus and Rosie had been conveniently elsewhere.
“They’re suspicious. Afraid.”
Aedan held her face to his so their noses almost touch. “They’ve had twenty years of that fear, Anne.” He kissed her, letting his tongue explore her. Helpless to refuse him, she reveled in the fluttery feeling that took over her body when Aedan kissed her.