The Scotsman (43 page)

It was over
.…

Shivering despite the heat, Catherine waited. It was long after the victory, and yet he had not come. So many had died, the cries and moans of the wounded and dying pitiful and relentless. Twilight enveloped the land, and torches were lit as men wandered the battlefield in search of comrades or booty. They were like macabre fireflies bobbing over the darkened land, pinpricks of light among the lost souls.

Did he Uve? She hugged her knees to her chest and put her chin atop them, arms wrapped around her legs as she rocked back and forth in abject misery. A prayer rose to her lips, and she murmured it over and over, a litany of faith and despair, alternating between grief and fierce hope in an unending plea.

Around her were reunions, shrieks of joy as weary men climbed the slopes to kin, and she looked away. No one came for her, nor even glanced at her. Finally she rose from beneath the tree where she had promised Alex she would wait for him, and started down the hill. She could delay no longer. If he was dead, she must know it.
The waiting was intolerable, beset by fears that would not abate.

Before she reached the field, she smelled the blood and death that permeated the air. It rose in the soft currents that drifted over the torn earth, so thick and strong that not even the stench of burning pitch from the torches could obliterate it. She slipped, then gagged when she saw what made the ground slick beneath her feet, but pressed on. Eyes stared up sightlessly from unfamiliar faces. These men had families, loved ones who would wait vainly for their return. Scots or English, in death they were alike.

Someone was sobbing, and she realized the sound came from her own throat as she stumbled over the rutted tracks and dead horses and men, but she could not stop. Nowhere among the fallen did she see Alex, nor Robbie, nor any she recognized from Kinnison. Were they all dead? Gone from the field? Why had none come to tell her if Alex had died?

“Milady….”

It was a faint whisper, but she heard it and stopped. Deep shadows drifted over bush and horse and man, so that in the gloom she could barely tell one still form from another.

“Milady….”

Again it came, a whispered plea and a groan, and she turned toward the source. “Yea, I am here, but I do not see you.”

“Here, milady….” The feeble wave of a hand alerted her, and she moved over the lacerated earth to kneel beside a wounded man. At first she did not recognize him, but then she saw familiar bright eyes beneath the blood and dirt. “Oh, Holy Mary, Tarn … you are wounded.”

“Yea, milady. I die.”

The words came out on a moan, and tears clogged her throat so that she could not answer for a moment. Then she managed to say, “You are sore hurt, but we will heal you, Tam. No, do not move … let me see….”

She lifted the hand he had pressed to his chest, and knew with a sinking heart when she saw the raw, gaping wound that he would not live much longer. His breathing was shallow and swift, and his eyes were glazing. She took his bloodied hand in hers and held it, speaking to him softly. “Do not exert yourself. Here, let me wipe your forehead so the dirt will not sting your eyes.”

His skin was cold and clammy beneath her palm, and she gently stroked her fingers over his brow and pushed back the damp, curling hair. Ah, God, he looked so young, with his pale freckled face and trembling mouth, and she wanted to weep but dared not distress him.

“My letters….” His voice was a low, forced mutter as he strained to look up at her. “Di’ ye read my message, milady?”

“Yea, Tam. You did very well. I am so proud of you.”

He smiled, and took a shuddering breath. “Me mam … wilt be … proud o’ me … too….”

“Your mother will be most proud of you, as are we all, Tam. Rest now, so you can heal and tell her about it when we return.”

He released his breath in a long sigh, and with the smile still curving his lips, died.

Catherine sat in stunned silence, holding his hand in hers, gazing down at him with aching grief. He was so young, with his life before him, as were so many of these men. Gone now. She bowed her head and gripped his lifeless hand, and murmured the prayer for the dead.
“Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccáta mundi: dona eis réquiem … Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccáta mundi: dona eis réquiem sempi térnam
….”

As the words faded into the purple shadows, someone knelt beside her, and a hand moved to close Tarn’s eyes with the edge of his palm. She looked up, and saw Robbie MacLeod. Without thought, she leaned into him and sobbed, and he put his arm around her and murmured comfort in both Gaelic and English until she quieted.

Then he drew back and lifted her to her feet with him as he stood. “We maun go, milady. I hae brought men tae take Tarn home wi’ us.”

“Yea … he needs … to be with his own.” She drew in a shuddering breath, and asked the question that had haunted her for what seemed an eternity. “Robbie, does he live? Is Alex alive?”

“Yea, he wa’ alive when last I saw him, milady.”

She searched his face in the gloaming, and noted that he averted his eyes. Fear gripped her. “Is he wounded? Oh, God, tell me now, Robbie MacLeod, for I fear I will go mad unless I know!”

“He wa’ whole and well, milady, wi’ no’ a mark on him tha’ I couldst see.” Yet still Robbie avoided her gaze, and she feared with sudden, heart-wrenching certainty that she would not want to hear the truth.

But she forced herself to ask: “Was he taken prisoner?”

Robbie laughed. “Nay, milady. ’Tis the Scots wha hae taken hostages this day, wi’ the Sassenach fleeing for their lives like hares before the fox.”

For some reason, James Douglas’s story of the fisherman and the fox came to mind, and she stared up at him. “Is he with Sir James?”

Robbie looked surprised, then grinned. “Yea, milady, for they pursue King Edward and hope tae run him tae ground ere the night is o’er.”

Relief mingled with anxiety, for if Alex was still involved in the fighting, he may yet lose his life. But at least
he had survived the day, and she held hard to that knowledge as she went with Robbie to the camp.

It was in turmoil, with noble English hostages sitting in glum silence among the elated victors. Catherine scanned the faces, half-hoping, half-afraid to see her brother in the group. But Robbie steered her away from them to a small tent that had been erected, and bade her wait there while he found her decent food. She did so gladly, the tension of the day suddenly rendering her weak and weary. Ah, the coming child must be protected, though at moments she felt so worried and uncertain she could barely think. She perched atop a fallen log and rested her hands on her belly as she thought of the babe. A son, perhaps, with Alex’s black hair and gray eyes. Or if a daughter—ah, if a girl, she would be granted more rights than her mother had been given, allowed to have choice instead of rigid stricture guiding her life.

A faint smile curved her mouth as she envisioned their child, for regardless of gender, it would be well loved. She would not be inaccessible as her mother was, nor would Alex be as cruel as her father was, for she had already seen how tender and gentle he had been with poor Christian and Sarah.

With the dreamy smile still on her lips, she looked up into blue, blazing eyes filled with hostility.
Nicholas
.…

Starting, she lurched up from the log and crossed the narrow space to where he was propped against a tree, his leg stretched before him and wrapped with filthy, bloodied strips of linen.

“Nicky … oh, God, you are hurt!” She knelt and put out a hand to examine him, but his leg jerked and he snarled an oath at her.

“Christ Almighty, do not touch me!”

Her hand stilled, and she looked up into his face to see simmering, fierce resentment. Her heart fell. “Let me help you—”

“Aye, if you want to help me, then give me a dagger as you did that bastard Scot. Ah, you do not speak. Is it that you will do for him what you will not do for your own blood?”

“Nicky … ah, God, Nicky, I cannot. You must know I cannot. Were your life in danger, I would do all in my power to free you, but you will be ransomed or exchanged.” She drew in a deep breath at his short bark of laughter, and blurted, “Our father will do for you what he would not for me, and you know it.”

He grew quiet, and his tone was bitter. “ ’Tis the crux of it, I see. I never knew you hated me so….”

“Nicky, you know that is not true. Please listen—”

“Nay, Lady Whore, you have naught I wish to hear said. Do you go back to your Scot and leave me be.”

He turned his head and would not look at her, and yet she did not leave him. She knelt in the dirt beside him and waited for some sign that he did not hate her, that he would forgive her. His jaw was clenched so tightly a muscle leaped beneath the shadowed angle, and his mouth thinned into a taut, unforgiving slash.

Despair swept over her, rendering her powerless to offer any comfort that might matter. Ah, Nicky, Nicky … he looked so miserable, so angry and anguished, with blood and dirt streaking his face and matting his hair, and she wanted to find the right words that would erase all that and ease his pain, but knew she could not. It was up to him now to find his own redemption, and she prayed that he would.

Still, she could not leave him even though he did not
want her there and would not look at her, keeping his face averted. Robbie found her there, and gruffly told her she must return.

That earned Nicholas’s attention, and his head turned at last to stare at the Scot with hard, narrowed eyes and an expression Catherine had never seen on his face before.

“Yea, take her with you now that she is ruined, and a traitor to her own people.”

Robbie returned the hot stare coolly. “Aye, ’twill be my pleasure, for she hae a heart no’ many do, man or woman. Wha’ ere ye may think, ye maun know tha’ she hae the same courage as do the men wha died here today. Men o’ both sides.”

Nicholas did not reply, but clenched his teeth and watched sullenly when Robbie urged Catherine to her feet, taking her back to the small tent only a short distance away. Then his head fell back against the tree and he closed his eyes, heartsick at the losses they had suffered this day.

Both his brothers had died on the field, Geoffrey cut down by the murderous advance of the schiltron, Robert slain after being unhorsed and thrown to the mercy of the Scots. He had seen it, but been unable to prevent it, another sorrow.

So much lost, and for a king who had not stayed to rally his men or marshal his earls. Disbelief had been evident in the faces around him, and the hearts had gone out of the men when their king fought through the disordered ranks to freedom, deserting them.

Until Alex Fraser found him, he had thought the worst was done. And now this. Now his own sister was decamped to the enemy, a part of them, a witness to the destruction of her own blood.

His leg throbbed, but ’twas small misery compared to
what he felt when he saw Catherine in the company of the Scots. Of all that had been lost to him, he mourned her defection most.

Ah, God, when he thought of how he had plotted and done all in his power to retrieve her safely, only for her to undo it all. If it did not pain him so greatly, he would laugh at the irony.

Worse, it had to be Fraser who captured him.

He would rather have been slain than suffer the humiliation of being taken prisoner by him. If he could get word to his father, he would demand that Fraser’s brother and de Brus be slain rather than exchanged, but that was not possible. And it was another humiliation to see his father flee the field without honor, following Hereford and their craven king as if their tails were afire. Shame rose thick and hot in his throat at the memory of it.

Ah, God, he wanted to weep.

Flushed with triumph, the Scots rode back to Bannock-burn at a swift pace to join their king. More weary than he had ever been before, yet filled with hope for the first time in years, Alex Fraser thought of Catherine. It had been four days since the battle, but he knew Robbie would heed his request to see her to safety. Now he longed to see her, to put his arms around her and hold her close.