Gosford's Daughter (5 page)

“
Oh, God’s teeth, if you need help,
I’ll assist you. The poor creature can’t be any more dead than he
is already.”

Napier glanced over his shoulder, a glimmer of
surprise in his dark eyes. “Well. There’s a good lass. You hold the
forelegs and I’ll do the cutting.”

Steeling herself to watch Napier’s every movement,
Sorcha pried the legs as far apart as she could. The dirk plunged,
and a torrent of blood spurted out over the animal’s tawny belly.
Sorcha choked and was afraid she was going to be ill. To distract
herself, she tried to think of Niall and how she’d responded to his
kisses and the touch of his hands on her breasts. Somehow, those
images were almost as jarring as the carnage taking place just
under her nose.

Napier worked swiftly. Not more than five minutes had
elapsed before the heart, organs, and entrails lay on the peaty,
rain-soaked ground. The downpour was washing the blood away,
allowing it to merge back into the earth, as nature claimed
nature.

Napier stood up and caught Sorcha off guard with a
wide, appealing grin. “Well done, lass. I have a rope; I’ll tie him
to my horse.”

She was about to ask where he was taking the stag
when three riders appeared downriver. As Napier called out to them,
Sorcha could see that they were all dressed alike. As they drew
closer, she realized why: They were monks, wearing their white
robes under riding capes, with hoods covering their tonsures to
protect them from the rain. She recognized one of them, an elderly
brother named Joseph from Beauly Priory.

“
The Lord be with you,” Brother
Joseph said in greeting. Sorcha curtsied and replied in kind. “Ah,
we’ll feast well this night,” he exclaimed, his faded blue eyes
fixed on the stag.

“
Aye,” said Napier, unwinding the
rope from his horse’s saddle. “Though I feared Mistress Fraser here
might do me a mischief when she discovered I’d slain her
pet.”

“
Pet?” Brother Joseph’s mouth was
droll. “Ah, I believe I’ve heard of that one. The Master of Ness,
is it not?”

Sorcha nodded. “It is. Was. But I would not begrudge
it to you and the other holy monks. Consider it a reparation for
sin.”

“
Sin?” Brother Joseph’s scanty white
eyebrows lifted. “You would have had to break most of the
commandments to need such a handsome penance, my child. But we
thank you all the same.” He turned in the saddle with some
difficulty. “Do you know Brothers Michale and Dugald?”

She did not and went through an introduction to the
two younger monks while Napier secured the stag and mounted his
gray stallion. The rain was already letting up, driven southward by
a brisk wind that moaned through the pine trees and ruffled the
river’s steady passage.

From his place in the saddle, Gavin Napier seemed to
tower over Sorcha and dwarf even the stiffened corpse of the great
stag. She caught herself staring again and started to turn away.
But Napier had a parting word: “If ever you find a man you care for
as much as you did this handsome stag, he will be a fortunate
lad.”

His voice was light, but Sorcha detected an
undercurrent of irony. Had the monks not been with them, she would
have given Napier a sharp retort. Instead, she found herself
uncharacteristically silent.

The brief, awkward moment was broken by Brother
Joseph. “It is well to love animals, my child. But it is more
pleasing to God to love people. I trust you will take Father
Napier’s words to heart.”

Sorcha’s jaw dropped. Now she could not possibly keep
from staring at Gavin Napier. Sure enough, sitting astride his
horse with the long black cloak blowing in the wind, she could see
that he wore the garb of a priest. He was looking just beyond her,
toward the drooping bracken near the water’s edge. Despite his lack
of expression, was he inwardly laughing at her? Sorcha wasn’t sure,
nor did she remember if she bade them farewell. The only image that
lingered was Gavin Napier, guiding his gray stallion back into the
pine forest with the Master of Ness dragging behind over the rich,
rain-soaked ground.

W
hen Sorcha arrived outside
her parents’ chamber, Iain and Dallas Fraser were arguing. From
beyond the carved door with its detail of wild roses and wood
violets, she could hear her father expounding at length, but his
precise words weren’t audible though the heavy oak. Then suddenly
Dallas’s voice pierced the door.

“
Even after nigh on twenty years,
you’ve never gotten that bubble-brained half sister of yours off
your conscience. Queen or not, she never wanted your
counsel!”

“
That's unfair. For many years, she
did.” Her father’s voice reverberated clearly now, in rejoinder to
his irate wife. “It was only when she fell under Bothwell’s spell
that she lost all sense of proportion. And her heart.”

“
Not to mention her crown,” Dallas
snapped.

Sorcha leaned against the door, relieved to discover
that it was of Queen Mary, and not herself and Niall, that they
spoke. Poor Mary Stuart, that pathetic creature who had been
stripped of her royal powers by her bastard half brother, James of
Moray, and kept captive in England for seventeen years. Moray was
dead now, but Mary’s son, Jamie, had reached his majority and ruled
alone. Separated from his mother before he really knew her, King
Jamie was devoid of filial emotion and had never lifted a finger to
set his mother free. If Iain Fraser felt that his half sister’s
obsession with the Earl of Bothwell had eroded her ability to
govern, he also felt that Jamie had proved himself a callous,
ungrateful son, who had condemned his mother to a life of
suffering.

Dallas had no quarrel with her husband’s assessment
of Jamie, but she’d never been able to forgive Mary Stuart for
proclaiming Iain Fraser an outlaw. To Dallas, ingratitude ran in
the royal family.

“
Mary talks of ruling by
association,” Dallas countered, her own voice now less strident,
forcing Sorcha to press her ear against the door. “Jamie will never
permit it. Nor will that heathen, Elizabeth. And Jamie only does
what his cousin Elizabeth tells him, because he’s hell-bent to be
king of England when the barren crone dies.”

“
It’s only natural that Jamie dances
to Elizabeth’s tune,” Sorcha heard her father say in a reasonable
tone. “Would you prefer that the Queen of England name an heir who
would have no regard for our own poor country? At least we can
trust that Jamie won’t invade his native land.”

“
He doesn’t need to,” Dallas snapped
back. “We can draw enough blood on our own.”

Unfortunately, Sorcha thought, her mother was right.
In Jamie’s youthful innocence, he had inherited the seething
conflicts of an unruly nation. The vicious feuds spawned by the
concept of clan and kin had been altered somewhat by the
Reformation, but not necessarily for the better. While in many
cases, traditional clan loyalties persisted, in others, members of
the same house found themselves in opposition over religion. Those
who remained Catholic generally favored Queen Mary’s return to the
throne; most of new Kirk’s presbyters not only opposed Mary Stuart
but had conspired for her downfall. An infant king had been more
malleable than a grown woman. Little Jamie could be governed by his
mentors, reared in the Protestant faith, and taught who to hate and
who to favor.

But as Jamie grew older, those men who had been
solidly united against Mary fell out with each other in their quest
for influence over the young monarch. A Scot might rarely
relinquish the tartan of his clan, but he’d change his badge of
loyalty almost by whim. There was no simple way to define
opponents. A Protestant house such as the proud Hamiltons might
secretly support Queen Mary out of a personal sense of loyalty; a
Catholic clan such as the Gordons might offer allegiance to the
young king for the sake of ambition. To exacerbate the turmoil, the
country itself was divided into three distinct regions, each with
its own cachet of convictions: the Highlands, with a rigid code of
honor and a fierce sense of independence; the tumultuous Border
lands, where the English enemy was never more than a moonlight ride
away; and the Lowlands, where sovereign and subjects convened to
direct the country’s government and commerce. Over the centuries,
the Scots had fought each other more relentlessly from within than
they had engaged any enemy from without. To Sorcha, it seemed a
tragic waste for a land that was neither rich nor powerful.

It also seemed that in this instance both her mother
and her father were right. But if Lord Fraser had an immediate
reply, Sorcha didn’t hear it. Rob had suddenly materialized in the
corridor, causing Sorcha to jump. He looked at his sister in
surprise and grinned. Sorcha put a finger to her lips and jerked
her head in the direction of the door.

“
Is it about us that they bellow?”
Rob whispered, edging close to Sorcha.

“
Nay, ’tis Queen Mary.” Sister and
brother stood facing each other, each with an ear to the
door.

Apparently, they’d missed something. Dallas’s voice
was raised again, shouting that nothing could be proved by letting
Rob join the Queen. Sorcha stared at her brother, who looked
faintly sheepish. Obviously, he had been keeping a secret from
her.

“
It serves two purposes,” Fraser
declared in a louder voice. “He will be exposed to priestly ways
and will show the Queen that we have not completely forsaken
her.”

“
That
you
have not,” Dallas
retorted. “Have you no regard for your son’s safety?”

“
He’s in no danger as long as he
avoids those damnable intrigues.”

Sorcha and Rob started as Cummings materialized in
the corridor. For almost thirty years, Cummings had served as the
Fraser steward. In that time, he had grown portly, and what little
hair remained ringed his head like lambswool, yet his unmistakable
authority stayed intact. Sorcha and Rob both flushed under his
reproachful gaze.

“
We were trying to see if our
parents were … taking a nap,” Sorcha said lamely before
grabbing Rob to slink away without a backward glance.

They sought sanctuary in the library with Magnus, who
was working on charts for his father’s next voyage. Upon prodding,
Rob admitted that for some weeks now he had been pressuring his
parents to let him join Abbot John Fraser at Compiègne in France. A
Recollect friar and writer, the abbot was descended from another
branch of the Frasers at Philorth.

“
Our Lady Mother thought it
feasible,” Rob told his sister and brother as they lounged by the
cozy fireside.

“
Didn’t Father agree?” Sorcha asked,
tucking her feet under her teal skirts.

Rob nodded, a lock of red hair dipping down onto his
smooth forehead. “He’s always had some prejudice about living in
France. I think it’s because he almost had to exile himself there
before the Queen lost her throne.”

“
That’s no reason to prevent you
from going there,” Sorcha said, lifting the lid of a crystal comfit
dish and making a face when she discovered it was empty.

“
Have you ever noticed that parents
don’t need reasons when they want their own way?” Magnus asked in a
dry tone very like his father’s. He had inherited Fraser’s coloring
and height, but was heavier of build and possessed his mother’s
brown eyes.

“
Then what does Father want?” Sorcha
asked. “I gathered it had something to do with serving Queen Mary
in her English captivity.”

“
So it does.” Rob pushed at the
stray lock of hair that always seemed to have a life of its own.
“Where I go isn’t as important as what I do. The point is, I want
to live in the company of the clergy in order to learn if I have a
vocation. But I don’t want to go somewhere close by, such as Beauly
Priory. I feel I must put distance between myself and the life I’ve
always known with my family. That way, I can better hear God’s
voice.”

Sorcha averted her eyes, staring into the struggling
orange flames on the library hearth. Somehow, it always embarrassed
her to hear Rob speak in such pious tones. While she had grown up
in a world where the Catholic clergy was sometimes prohibited from
practicing the sacraments, and in the best of times, was watched
closely by the authorities, the priests and monks she had known
seemed to possess a spiritual aura that removed them from the realm
of ordinary people. To imagine any of them having once been
rollicking, mischievous, disobedient boys such as Rob, was
unthinkable. He had even seduced a maid or two, though he insisted
that temptations of the flesh could be avoided if he became a
priest. Once he took religious instruction and made his holy vows,
he’d be transformed into one of those exalted, holy beings and
cease to be Rob. Perhaps it wasn’t embarrassment that distressed
Sorcha, but a sense of loss: He would no longer be her brother; he
would stop being a man.

The flames suddenly spurted into life and crackled
sharply. Sorcha jumped in her chair, not so much from the sound as
from the image she’d suddenly seen in the fire: Father Gavin
Napier, tall, broad shouldered, arrestingly masculine—and assuredly
worldly. Obviously, all priests were not the same.

“
And how does our sire think you’ll
hear God’s voice in the company of a captive Queen and her mawkish
minions?” Magnus inquired with a slight sneer. “It seems that petty
plotting surrounds our former Queen like weeds overrunning a flower
bed. Or do you fancy yourself her youthful savior?”