Once a Warrior (16 page)

Instead he found himself deep in the lower recesses of the castle, his fist poised over the scarred wood of Alpin’s chamber door.

“Come in, MacFane,” called Alpin cheerfully.

Startled, Malcolm pushed the door open. The room was dark and cool, lit only by a few yellow candles dripping onto the tables crowding it. He stepped inside and was immediately forced to duck as an enormous owl swooped over his head before perching on a shelf just above him. A small fire burned in the hearth, with three rapidly boiling cauldrons hanging over it. The air was heavy with an odd, dank smell, a mixture of smoke and herbs and things Malcolm did not want to contemplate. Alpin was bent over a table in the far corner. Malcolm approached him slowly, wondering how the old man could possibly have heard him before he knocked.

“I didn’t hear you,” Alpin assured him, chuckling. “At my age I can’t depend on my ears the way I used to.”

Malcolm refrained from questioning him further. He did not want to hear some idiotic tale about how Alpin had “seen” him.

“What are you doing?”

“Preparing a cure for nausea,” Alpin replied, filling a jar with dark lumps.

Malcolm leaned a little closer, intrigued. “What is it?”

Alpin lifted the jar to Malcolm’s nose, offering him better access. “Wild boar droppings.”

Malcolm coughed and stepped back.

“I collect them in the woods and dry them over the fire. When ground and taken with water, they are a splendid purge for an unsettled stomach.”

“I can imagine,” said Malcolm, revolted.

Alpin pressed a lid onto the container and placed it on a shelf, beside a jar filled with leeches. “So, MacFane,” he said, his black eyes suddenly sharp and assessing, “what brings you to me?”

Malcolm hesitated. He did not know why he had come here. He was starting to feel like a fool for allowing what had obviously been a dream to unnerve him. Still, since he was here, perhaps there was no harm in telling the old man about it.

“I had a dream.”

Alpin nodded, as if this information did not surprise him.

“But that in itself is strange,” he qualified, “as I never dream.”

“Because you are afraid.”

The statement was ridiculous. “I am not afraid of anything,” Malcolm assured him harshly.

“Of course you are, MacFane,” Alpin chuckled, not bothered in the least by his anger. He retrieved his staff, then moved to the fire and sprinkled something from his pocket into one of the steaming cauldrons. “We are all afraid of something. You are afraid of dreaming, because you cannot bear to witness what you might see in your dreams. This is what forces you to keep your mind blank night after night.”

He was right, Malcolm realized. Dreaming might bring back a vision of Marrian, lying still upon a cold stone floor, her lovely white throat slashed and leaking blood. Of Abigail crumpled on the stairs, and Fiona huddled in a corner, and little Hester lying sweetly in her bed. All with ashen, bloodless faces, because the blood had flowed from their wounds and soaked their clothes. Over two hundred women and children had been slaughtered that night, he reminded himself savagely.

Because of him.

“We were speaking of your dream,” Alpin reminded him, his voice gentle.

Malcolm inhaled sharply, banishing the memory. “There was a woman,” he began. “And although I had never seen her before, I knew she was Ariella.”

Alpin looked up from stirring his pot. “How did you know?” he asked, curious.

“I knew her face. From the statue in MacKendrick’s chamber.”

The old man nodded and continued stirring.

“She was beautiful,” Malcolm murmured, recalling her image before the fire. “Even though her hair had burned off, and her gown was splattered with blood.”

Alpin frowned. “Why? Had she cut herself?”

“I don’t know. I suppose it has something to do with the terrible nature of her death.”

Alpin considered this a moment, then shrugged and turned his attention to another pot. “Go on.”

“She told me not to torment myself so much over her death—”

“She did?” sputtered Alpin, amazed.

Malcolm’s eyes narrowed. “Does that surprise you?”

“No, of course not,” he said, quick to recover. “At my age very little surprises me. It’s just that I did not foresee Ariella offering you forgiveness.”

“She didn’t forgive me,” clarified Malcolm. “She simply told me not to torment myself over it. It is not the same thing.”

Alpin nodded thoughtfully. “Of course not.” He went over to a table and began to pour a dark liquid carefully into a bottle. “What happened then?”

Malcolm thought for a moment. “We talked awhile, but I can’t remember what we spoke of. And then I took her in my arms and kissed her.”

The bottle crashed to the floor, causing the owl to spread its great wings and hoot noisily.

“I’m fine,” Alpin assured him, waving him away as he picked up the shattered pieces. “At my age you get to be a bit clumsy, that’s all. Nothing to worry about. You say you kissed her?”

He nodded.

“And she let you?”

“Of course she let me,” replied Malcolm impatiently. “I’m not in the habit of forcing myself on women—even ones that exist only in my imagination.”

“Was it a long kiss, or just a quick peck?” prodded Alpin.

Malcolm raised a brow. “Why are you so interested?”

“No reason,” he told him, shrugging. “Just an old man’s curiosity. Perhaps I am recalling the long-faded memories of my lost youth. Don’t bother indulging an aged seer with an answer if you don’t want to.”

Malcolm sighed. “It was not a quick peck.”

“Wonderful!”

“I fail to see why,” drawled Malcolm aridly. “I have a dream for the first time in years, in which I kiss a dead woman with burned-off hair who is covered in blood, and this is something wonderful?”

“No, it’s terrible,” amended Alpin, his tone sympathetic. “I mean, it’s terrible that this dream, if that’s what it was, has disturbed you so.”

“What do you mean, ‘if that’s what it was’?” demanded Malcolm. “What the hell else could it be?”

Alpin regarded him a long moment, as if debating whether or not to answer. Finally he sighed. “I know you do not believe in things that cannot easily be explained, like ghosts and seers,” he began. “And I have no reason to try to convince you. All you need to understand, MacFane, is that MacKendrick’s daughter loved her father, her clan, and her home more than life itself. She loved them so she could not bear to see them come to harm. And when we were attacked, she would have done anything to spare the suffering of any clan member. More than any of us, Ariella was a fighter.”

“Why are you telling me this?” asked Malcolm. “Do you think I haven’t agonized enough over what happened?”

“I do not say it to further punish you,” he assured him. “I am telling you because I want you to better understand the woman who was to be your wife.”

“Marrian was to be my wife,” Malcolm countered harshly. “If you truly have the ability to see things, you must know that.”

“But your path changed, MacFane. Marrian was killed that night, but you were alive. Much as you would have liked to, you did not die with her.”

Part of me did,
he thought bitterly.

“Yes,” agreed Alpin, nodding. “But not all.”

He looked at him in surprise.

“Perhaps the same can be said for Ariella,” Alpin continued. “She set the tower afire, and part of her died. But she was too much a part of this clan, this castle, these lands, to let go completely. And so she remains, watching over us, trying to guide us along the next path.”

“If you are trying to convince me that her ghost is haunting this castle, you’re wasting your time,” Malcolm growled. He began to limp toward the door. “It was just a dream, Alpin. Made to seem real by the vast quantity of wine I had consumed.”

“Are you sure, MacFane?”

“I do
not
believe in goddamn ghosts,” he swore, banging the door behind him.

The wind blew cool and clean against him as he raced across the moors. He battled the pain in his back and leg as he urged Cain faster, enjoying the sensation of thundering across the dry grasses toward the sapphire sparkle of loch ahead. His muscles were taut and aching with effort, his breathing heavy and deep, but the exertion brought more pleasure than discomfort. He had not ridden this hard since the day he had set out to find young Rob and his friends before they got themselves killed. Already his body was warning him he would pay dearly for it. Tomorrow he would rest, and then he would ride hard and long again the following day. Perhaps, if he pushed himself enough, he would learn to get past the infuriating feebleness of his body.

He slowed Cain to a walk, not because he was tired, but because he wanted to study his surroundings. The MacKendrick castle sat high in the distance, its creamy stone structure gracefully rising from an emerald slope of hill, spattered with brilliant bouquets of wildflowers. The burned tower was still under construction, an ugly reminder of the attack, but other than that the view was remarkably pleasing. Below the castle lay a tidy arrangement of small white cottages, each puffing a thin stream of smoke. Flocks of geese and chickens squawked as a group of laughing children ran up the hill, scurrying to greet the men returning home for their evening meal. Work and training were finished for the day, and they were gathering with their families to laugh over dinner while sharing stories about what had happened while they’d been apart. Malcolm watched as the men lifted their squealing children high into the air, then ruffled the windblown locks of the older children and took their hands, letting the young ones lead them down the hill to where wives and mothers waited.

He abruptly turned his horse and rode away.

He had accepted the fact that he would never know such simple pleasures. His chance of being a husband and a father had been destroyed long before the night Marrian died. It had vanished the moment she had looked at him lying broken in the hall. She had tried her best to hide her aversion to him in the long months that followed. But every time he had drawn near, Malcolm had felt her recoil. When it had become apparent that he would never fully recover, that he was destined to live within this scarred, broken shell for the rest of his life, he had realized he could not sentence pretty, vibrant Marrian to the role of a cripple’s wife. But neither could he bring himself to formally dissolve their betrothal. The humiliation of such an act would have been unbearable. The great Black Wolf, laird of the Clan MacFane, was unable to make his chosen bride desire him. His pride was slashed deep, and he could not aggravate the wound by releasing Marrian to the arms of another.

Instead he merely postponed their wedding, telling her he was not ready.

She had accepted his decision in stoic silence, her face betraying none of the relief he had anticipated, nor the disappointment he had hoped for. Anger had surged through him, anger with her for not throwing her arms around him and telling him it didn’t matter, that she longed to be his wife, no matter the condition of his body. Instead she had sat there, her head serenely bowed, saying nothing. Sweet, dutiful Marrian, who had been raised to accept whatever decision her father or laird or husband made for her. She had patiently waited for over a year for Malcolm to tell her when they would wed. She never pressed him on the matter. After that meeting Malcolm openly ignored her, as if the subject of their betrothal was of no interest to him. But every day he had watched her from a distance, taking bitter pleasure in her loveliness, her grace, torturing himself with the knowledge that at any moment she could be his, if only he were willing to command it. He suspected she had given her heart to another. A young woman as beautiful as she would have caught the eye of every man in the clan, married or not. His conviction that she had betrayed him helped to justify his callous rejection of her.

Only after her death had Harold harshly informed Malcolm how wrong he had been.

He had come to the end of the moor, where it ringed the shimmering blue of a deep loch. Rob’s pretty gray mare was standing at the water’s shallow edge, her ears pricked as she listened for Cain’s approach. A small figure sat perched on a log just beyond her. Rob was idly tossing stones as he cooled his bare feel in the water. Malcolm dismounted and slowly limped toward him. He realized he had been unnecessarily hard on the boy that morning, and he wanted to make amends.

“May I join you?”

Rob cast him a surly look.

Interpreting that as slightly better than a no, Malcolm sat down and gathered a few stones in his hand.

“We missed you at training today,” he said, throwing one of them into the loch.

Rob didn’t spare him a glance. “Who’s ‘we’?”

“I missed you,” he admitted. “Either I was in the foulest of tempers, or the clan was performing unbelievably badly.”

“Given your black mood this morning, I’d say the problem was with you, MacFane.”

“You may be right.” He hesitated, then threw another stone into the water. “I hope we can put the matter behind us.”

The boy turned to him, incredulous. “Are you apologizing to me?”

His face was heavily streaked with dirt, and his hair fell in ratty clumps over his shoulders. But it was his eyes that suddenly captured Malcolm’s attention. They were large and intense, their color the clearest of grays. Malcolm stared at them, bewildered. “I—I guess you could call it that.”

Rob turned to study the loch again. “Fine,” he grumbled. “I accept your apology.”

“Good,” said Malcolm, feeling strangely unsettled.

They contemplated the view in silence. After a moment, Rob demanded “How much longer until the castle is secure?”

Malcolm skipped a stone across the water. “Your clan has been working hard, and they are unusually skilled at building. The new gate will be ready shortly. The wall along the parapet is coming along well, and Duncan assures me it will be completed before the end of summer. Archers’ slits have already been created in two of the towers. Extending the base of the curtain wall will take a long time, but the stone is being cut and the work will begin as soon as everything else has been completed.”