Lady Of The Glen Part 7

He watched the flame carried nearer, lighting up the darkness. His voice belonged to another man, though it came from his throat, his mouth; he was more than Alasdair Og, MacIain's son, the second son, but a Highlander who knew the task before him. " 'Tis come."

"Robbie said it would."

Dair smiled faintly. "He's no' a liar, your brother. He merely-elaborates."

Her laugh was quiet, then faded, shut up inside her mouth. "You'll go." It was not question, but declaration; she knew him that well, now. She had taken pains.

He did not turn to her; did not reach for her; did not so much as tilt his head. The burning cross transfixed him. Its message fired his blood. "I am a man, Jean."

She moved beside him. He saw in her profile the clean purity of her nose, the arch of brow above it, the sweet sharpness of her chin, and the lushness of bottom lip. A strand of sandy hair fell down beside one eye, curving on her cheekbone. In the only eye he could see, blue as Robbie's own, burned the reflection of the cross calling him to war.

I am a man, Jean. What else does a man do?

"For James," she said; it bordered on contempt.

"He is king."

"In France. "

"But of Scotland, and England."

Jean Stewart laughed bitterly. "He was a fool to leave. 'Tis always harder to get back what one has lost, aye?" She turned to him then, and the blazing cross bloomed in her other eye. "I'll no' lose you, Dair. Come back to me from this. You'll go, and so will Robbie-good Christ, I ken you're men!-but I'll have you both come back!"

Outside, the gillie stopped on the edge of the sh.o.r.e. He raised the cross high. "Robert Stewart, laird of Appin; Robert Stewart, his son; and all the gillies, clansmen, and tacksmen!" he cried "In the name of James, King of Scotland and England: loyal Scots are called to battle!"

Jean's inhalation hissed. "Swear it! I will have you back!"

"In the name of James, King of Scotland and England-"

Her bared teeth glinted briefly in firelight. "Alasdair Og MacDonald-"

"-loyal Scots are called to battle!"

In the waters of Loch Laich, so shallow by the sh.o.r.e, flames reproduced on wavelets. From the threshold of the doorway below Dair's window a voice answered at last: young Robert Stewart of Appin, bellowing at the gillie. "Will you bring your news inside? Will you drink whisky in the name of the king?"

The man bent and doused the flames. His voice carried clearly. "I'll come. Will you?"

Robbie Stewart laughed. "Oh, aye, we'll come to fight for Jamie . . . we've naught else to do the summer!" He strode out of the castle toward the water. "Bide a wee, will you?-I'll have a boat to you."

"Naught else to do?" Jean Stewart laughed. "He's no' got a woman, then . . ." And she turned fiercely to Dair, catching up great handfuls of his s.h.i.+rt. "If you willna swear it in words, I'll have it another way . . . 'tis but pace or two to the bed-" She loosed a wad of cloth and grabbed in its place the hair on the back of his neck-"or will you have me here?"

Outside, the cross of war was extinguished in the waters of Loch Laich. In her bed they rekindled it in a battle of their own making.

"Dead?" Glenlyon cried. "Robbie is dead?"

Cat was aware of her clothing sticking to her. She was wet all over beneath, hot with fear and sickness and shame; she had lied to her father about the death of his son.

What else? The truth? That she had as much as MacDonalds killed the young man who would have been the sixth Laird of Glenlyon?

Coward. And she knew it.

But it was such an easy thing to blame the MacDonalds. Without them, without their interference, Glenlyon's heir would be alive.

Not so much a lie.

The knot lay deep in Cat's belly, as deep and painful as the memory. She ma.s.saged the flesh, hoping to ease the pain, but it did not aid her.

Beyond her flimsy door, behind his own, her father played the pipes.

"Robbie . . ." Glenlyon murmured, and his face collapsed.

Cat curled bare toes into the wooden flooring of the room. Her arms were stiff at her sides, fists pressed against thighs. She gripped captured cloth, digging broken nails into the crude weave.

She waited as her father sat hunched at his writing table, hands cupping his skull so fiercely she feared he might burst it.

"Go, " he said.

Cat writhed in her bed. Robbie dead four years . . . and she was a woman now, according to Una, who had served Lady Glenlyon. By Una's lights, then, Cat had been a woman for two years, though she did not feel it herself; her courses were, Cat thought, naught but an inconvenience, setting greater distance yet again between her remaining brothers and herself. Men need not worry about such things as linen at the ready, nor the cramping deep in a belly.

Robbie need not worry about anything again.

Her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, too, were sore. Cat cupped one through the fabric of her nightclothes, gently squeezing the contours of flesh that had been, but a year before, as tight against her body as a kneecap.

Cat detested sewing. But she and Una had had to remake the bodices of her dresses so she could continue to wear them. They had no silver to spare for such things as cloth; they would make do with what Cat had until she matured enough to wear her mother's clothing.

She thought again of her brothers, those who survived: Jamie, Dougal, Colin. They did not know. They viewed her still as Cat, not as a woman; if they knew, they would tease. And that she could not bear.

Cat chewed her bottom lip. She supposed some la.s.ses might be glad of womanhood, of the proof of their fertility, so they might marry or handfast and begin their own families. But she wanted none of it, yet. She preferred life the way it was, unenc.u.mbered by the responsibilities such as her father knew. Let all the other girls-become-women bear the children and tend the men; Cat wanted better. Cat wanted more.

She grimaced against renewed cramping. I wish I were a lad.

For more reasons than courses, or cramping, or b.r.e.a.s.t.s rearranging her chest. Perhaps, had she been a lad, she might have kept Robbie from dying.

Yet there was more to it than that. Cat knew she was meant for something far different than the tedium of a woman's life. I would sooner steal a cow than tend a man's meal.

A woman now. The world within her changed, as much as the world without. And she a hostage to both.

Bagpipes squawked into silence. In the blessed cessation of noise, Cat relaxed. The cramping had pa.s.sed, as had the noise. She could sleep at last.

Her eyes flew open as she heard the sound of garrons outside in the dooryard. "Father-?" But she dismissed that at once; likely he slept in his chair. "-oh CHRIST-" She flung herself out of bed and went at once to the window, heaving back the shutters.

She saw what she feared to see: three bonneted, plaid-swathed brothers, already mounted, and a handful of gillies with them. The moon was full, flooding rumpled, summer-clad hills, but nothing metallic glinted, no badges, no buckles, no bared dirks, nothing to give them away.

"I willna let them-" Cat s.n.a.t.c.hed up her shawl, yanked it on over her bedclothes, jerked the door open and ran down the stairs two at a time. "-willna let them-"

She was utterly heedless of bare feet. She had to stop her brothers before they left Chesthill, left Glen Lyon, went out on Rannoch Moor; before they went to Glencoe, to MacDonalds, to death.

The dogs commenced barking as Cat ran out of the house. She saw horses abruptly reined in and the pallor of Campbell faces turned sharply in her direction as the door, flung open in violence, smacked the wall behind it; she left it so, and ran.

"Jamie!" It was his horse she caught, clutching leather reins tautly. She jerked the garron to a decisive halt, ignoring its gaped-mouth protest. "You willna, Jamie! None of you!"

"Let be!" Jamie shouted. "Christ, Cat-"

"Dinna GO!" she cried.

It was Dougal's turn. "Cat, 'tis none of it your concern."

"None of my concern? Mine?" She clung to the reins, only vaguely aware of the garron's damp, noisy snort, its pinned ears and white-edged eyes. "Have you forgotten it, then? Forgotten Robbie?"

Colin pressed his own garron close to her. She felt the warmth of its shoulder, the pressure of Colin's brogue against her hip. "Cat-we've no' forgotten Robbie. But 'twas four years ago. We're men now, not lads! "

"Men die too!"

Jamie swore, yanking ineffectually at his captive reins. "Go be a woman elsewhere! We've no time for greeting!"

Dougal was less abrupt. "Cat, by G.o.d's eyes . . . 'tis over. 'Tis done. Robbie's dead four years."

"We've cattle enough." She clung to Jamie's reins, undaunted by human or horse. "Have you been out to the s.h.i.+elings? Have you counted? We've cattle enough!"

Jamie laughed. "We've never cattle enough! Christ, Cat, let be-" Then, angrily, "-have ye spilled your Highland blood and replaced it with Sa.s.senach?"

"Then go to Appin!" she shouted. "Go there, and not to Glencoe."

"Jamie, hold." Colin put up a silencing hand. He was less impatient, less harsh; at eighteen no longer a boy, but not quite a man, either. "Cat-we canna hide ourselves forever. The MacDonalds are lifting our cows with no protest from Campbells . . . dinna you think 'tis time we got them back?"

She did not release the reins to Jamie's garron. He could cut himself free with his dirk, but she'd not let go. "I willna lose another brother."

"Then stay here!" Jamie snapped. " 'Twas you who got him killed. Had you no' come, Robbie'd be alive."

It was burnwater over her flesh. Cat shuddered violently.-told them naught . . . told them NAUGHT of the dirk- "Let be," Dougal said. "Cat-they're gone, the MacDonalds. Dundee sent the burning cross around the lochs. They've answered. They've gone to Dalcomera, to fight the Sa.s.senachs."

"Jacobite fools," Jamie muttered. "They'd do best to support William. If I'm to die in battle, it were better to die for a king in power than one beating his breast in France!"

"I'd go to fight against the Jacobites," Dougal said seriously, "but Breadalbane keeps us home."

"He's a woman," Jamie declared in disgust, "and so is our father. A letter from Breadalbane, and we're all of us unmanned!"

Cat did not care about who was king, who was not, and who kept whom from war. All she wanted was to keep them from raiding Glencoe. "The MacDonalds were gone before, aye?-and Robbie still died! "

Colin slid off his garron and gave his reins to Dougal. His hands on hers were gentle but firm as he peeled her fingers loose one by one from leather. She was not a small woman nor a weak one, but he was, at long last, taller and stronger than she. "Go to bed, Cat." He jerked his head at Jamie in a mute order to back away. "When you wake up in the morning we'll have more cows on the braes."

"Colin-" But protest died. Sickness rose up in her belly, tickling the back of her throat. She wanted to spew it out, to purge herself of the guilt.-none of them ken it was MY dirk-"Colin, dinna go," she gulped. "Promise me."

"I willna promise such a thing." He guided her back from the horses, turning her toward the house. "Go to bed."

Protest was futile; helplessness enraged. She thought her skull might split with the virulence of her frustration, the pain of powerlessness. "Then kill them all!" she shrieked. "Kill every MacDonald there and be done with it, and then they willna kill you!"

"Go inside," Jamie commanded. "Colin-mount your garron. We're away." He looked back at his sister. The moon leached his face of expression, but she heard the disgust in his tone. "Christ, Cat, go inside-you're no' fit for a man to look at!"

Her belly knotted again. Cat clutched awkwardly at her straggling shawl before it fell entirely from her body; one corner of the wool was soaked through. She was not fit, she realized: Jamie's horse had left a wide swath of turf slime across her nightclothes; her braid had come half-undone and tangled hair defied her attempts to push it from her face; the hem of her nightclothes had torn free of her ill-made st.i.tches and dragged damp ground. Bare toes were muddy, peeping through the tatters.

But there was more, far more, to think of than her appearance; and they knew her anyway, the gillies who served her father. They none of them held illusions as to what the laird's daughter was.

Cat put up her chin, disdaining futile attempts to bring order to dishabille. "Dinna go, Jamie. You're the heir, now. Robbie's dead, and you're to be laird in his place."

But none of them listened, none of them. They were men, and she a woman. And as the shadows swallowed them she realized it was for naught, all of it, every bit of it: her protests, her fears, her anger; she was at best their sister, and worth very little in their reckoning of the world.

Cat turned abruptly and walked back to the bench beside the door. She shut the abused door, then sat down upon the bench with her feet tucked under shawl. She had no intention of going back to bed; she would wait for as long as she must to see the men come home.

Futility was painful. It was a boulder in her belly that swelled to fill her throat. "Kill them all-" she choked, angry that she cried. Except Alasdair Og- Who once had been kind to her.

Dair had taken up residence on an outcropping of granite in the shadow of Craigh Eallaich. He perched there lost in thought with knees doubled up beneath his kilt; he would not wear breeks to battle. One hand absently and wholly ineffectively groomed dark hair now more thickly speckled with gray; the other dangled limp fingers from an arm hooked but lightly over a knee. He stared blindly into the distance, fixing his eyes on other clansmen who tended weapons and wit, laughing loudly at weak jests and friendly insults built up as a wall, brick by brick, to ward away apprehension, to spend a time quickly that would otherwise last forever.

His dusty blue bonnet lay across one thigh, silver clan badge garnished with a sprig of purple heather and the red feather of James Graham, Viscount Dundee. He wore sgian dhu strapped to one calf, a dirk in his belt; the round wooden targe, covered with bra.s.s-studded leather and boasting a central spike, was tilted against the pewter-green, k.n.o.bbed granite beside his knee. Next to it, at his feet, lay steel claymore, the dreaded Scottish sword, supremely elegant in its unadorned, deadly simplicity.

In his mind he saw Jean's face, Jean's eyes, the avidity of her need; felt again the supple body as it writhed beneath his own-and the instant response of flesh that now prepared for war.

He grinned mirthlessly. 'Turill be a different sort of battle, aye? But a battle nonetheless, waged warrior to warrior instead of warrior to woman; and the battlefield significantly less comfortable than Jean Stewart's bed.

Dair squinted. It was but an hour or two before sunset. The summer day cooled into evening, raising a breath of a breeze carrying with it the scent of gra.s.s and heather, soil, stone, water, and the tang of whisky. Mountains surrounded them. At his back was Craigh Eallaich, its rumpled face lurching upward from high soft braes and lower, lesser slopes. It neared the end of July, and the cattle were on the braes in Glencoe, fattening for winter near the summer s.h.i.+elings; here Dundee fattened men on the Jacobite cause.

Dair heard a step behind him. He knew his brother's shadow even without benefit of the voice. "Thinking of Jean Stewart?"

He smiled crookedly. "You are thinking of Eiblin, aye?"

With a sigh MacIain's heir dropped down onto his haunches beside his younger brother. Targe and claymore clattered as he set both aside. " 'Tis what most men do before battle: think of women, and bairns." His glance was speculative as he plucked a stalk of gra.s.s from the ground and pruned it free of soil before placing it in his mouth. "Will you handfast with her? Formally?"

Dair squinted again into the lowering sun. "Dinna ken, John."

John was grayer than ever, though the arching brows remained dark. "Dinna ken? After-how many years? Four?"

"Not altogether." Dair's wave gestured dismissive elaboration. "A week here, a month there . . ." He sighed and scratched at stubble; they had none of them shaved with battle in the offing.

John grinned. "Enough time to ken a woman!"

Annoyed as much by himself as his brother's persistence, Dair took up his bonnet and began to rearrange the fit of heather beneath the badge, and the scarlet feather. It consumed his concentration, as he intended it to. If he made no answer- "Alasdair-"

Patience evaporated. "I dinna ken, John! Christ, I'm but twenty-six-there is time!"

Around the stalk John said mildly, "By twenty-six I had a wife and a bairn."

"It doesna matter," Dair declared. "I willna be chief, you will."

" 'Twould be a good match, Alasdair. The Appin Stewarts and Glencoe MacDonalds are near to blood kin . . . and according to the old ways, the Appin laird is our superior. Once we paid him life-rent."

"Dinna remind Robbie of that."

John laughed softly. "Is it because of that, then? That she's Robbie's sister?"