The Raven's Wish (11 page)

Sighing, Duncan shoved back his hair, which blew across his brow in the stiff breeze, and moved a few feet away to lean the polished head of his club against the ground. He practiced his swing while waiting for Magnus to strike his current shot. Curling his hands around the cloth-wrapped whippen, shifting his fingers, he tested the slight, supple give of the shaft; swinging, he felt the resistant wind.

All the frustrations of this morning's game, he thought suddenly, reminded him sharply of his failure, so far, to gain signatures for the letter of caution. He was disappointed on all fronts in games played with Frasers. Since Alasdair's departure, he had continued to try to earn the Frasers' trust. And he would not hesitate to advise them on raiding techniques—join them at it, too. If the Frasers were determined to raid before the bond was signed, he would do his best to ensure they did it carefully, without incurring a full-scale battle with the MacDonalds.

Although he was a representative of the crown and the law here, he was prepared to turn a blind eye until the bond was signed. He had no choice. Knowing how unimportant legalities were in the Highlands, he knew that the young chief and his equally young bodyguard would need coaxing in order to sign the document. If that coaxing took the form of raiding, hunting, golfing and fishing with them, then so be it.

As yet, he had heard no mention of raids being planned, nor would he as the queen's lieutenant. And there had been no retaliation for the Fraser raid last week; with luck, the MacDonalds were unaware of that embarrassing venture onto their land.

A day earlier Duncan had gone fishing with Hugh and Ewan, learning to club trout. He had enjoyed the day and the meal that followed, though no progress had been made with regard to the bond of caution. Duncan knew, now, he need only wait. His customary patience was gaining ascendance once more.

He had been glad, this morning, of Magnus's invitation to play at the golf. The day was too fine to spend it explaining and cajoling. Hugh Fraser was a clever chief, but young and incredibly stubborn. He continued to insist that there was no need for the bond of caution.

The MacShimi's quiet refusals were as resistant and constant as the wind that Duncan now fought against with his slim wooden golf stick. He set down his stick and as Magnus balanced a featherie ball on top of a small rock.

Magnus swung hard and fast, sending the ball very near the mark. The chief's cousins were skilled, bold golf players, who swung fine clubs made by an Inverness bow-maker and had a barrel full of expensive Flemish-made featheries. A sheep-nibbled moor served as their course, dug with a crazed pattern of holes. The long course, they called it.

Duncan almost laughed as he looked around. The long course? They had walked so far that he could no longer see Castle Glenran in the misted distance. They would be knocking featheries into the eastern sea by nightfall, he thought, unless they turned soon.

Raw, wind-swept hills and rocky moorland ran toward distant mountains dusted purple with heather. Just underfoot, the grasses were turning a late-summer gold, grazed flat by sheep. Duncan breathed deeply of the sweet, moist air. The spitting mist of the past few days had cleared, today, to warm sunlight.

Suddenly he was glad to be back in the Highlands, even if he was only here temporarily to negotiate the bond with these genial but uncooperative Frasers. Standing here now, he could not regret the journey north. He had not seen these blue-purple hills, or inhaled air as sweet and clear as this for far too long. Looking to the west, he saw the faded contours of the mountains that led to Kintail and Dulsie.

A pang of longing, keen and deep, twisted in his gut. Alasdair would have traversed those hills by now, and must surely be at Dulsie Castle. Duncan abruptly turned away.

He looked toward Castle Glenran in the distance. The stark tower-house, a gray-walled fortress, rose solid and square on a grassy knoll, overlooking a small loch, or lochan, which lay just south of the great loch called Ness.

Squinting, Duncan noticed several tiny moving shapes moving along a hill behind the castle. A rider with a group of several running gillies, the Highland equivalent to men-at-arms, descended the far-off slope. While the runners' bright plaids were like red splotches against the dun and green hills, the single rider wore somber dark colors.

Wondering who the travelers might be, he shrugged and walked on to meet Magnus. At this distance, he could not be sure that the little party was even headed toward Glenran.

"Kenneth has an eye like a hawk," Magnus said as Duncan joined him. He pointed toward his cousins, who were celebrating another of Kenneth's lucky shots. "And his aim is as good as his eye. He cannot be bested out here on the long course."

"He must be a good tracker, then," Duncan commented. "A useful man to have on a raid, I would think."

"He is." Magnus glanced at Duncan from the corner of his eye. "And he and Callum are both fine men to have at your back, with a lance or an arrow. Elspeth is the better tracker, though, in the black of night or in the day."

"Oh?" Duncan placed his featherie and tested his stroke.

"She seems to know just where the cattle are. Or where the deer are when we go hunting. The Sight has its uses," Magnus said. Seeing that Duncan was ready to make his stroke, he paused and stood back.

"
Dhia
!" Duncan swore as the wind swooped up the featherie, which careened left, rolled down a hill, and landed in a small burn. Duncan swore again. Magnus shook his head in sympathy as both men descended the slope.

Grimacing in disgust, Duncan stepped into the cold burn and angled his club, his high boots protecting his legs from the chill. He swung, splashing widely, to launch the water-laden ball into the air. Halfway up the slope, it fell and began to roll down. Before it could land back in the burn, Duncan ran to swing at it again.

"You use Elspeth as a tracker?" he asked, after stubbornly beating the ball back up the steep slope.

"We do. She has a fine sense of where to find the animals."

Duncan blinked at him in disbelief. He had never heard of such a thing. A tracker should know the lay of the land like the hairs of his own hand, not guess at it, or even worse, divine the knowledge. "Well, then. I should have asked your cousin Elspeth how my game would fare today," he grumbled. "Perhaps then I need not have come out here."

"If she foresaw this game, she would have kept silent out of her soft heart," Magnus said. Duncan slid him a glance. "But I would not have asked any favors of her this morning. She was in no mood for pleasant speech. Since she visited with Bethoc MacGruer a few days past, she has been snappish as a cat." Magnus scratched thoughtfully at the brown and gold sand of his beard. "None of us have had a kind word from her."

Magnus took the next shot as Duncan watched. Then they walked over the moor toward another small hole, and Duncan spoke.

"Do you really believe the girl can find hidden cattle, or foretell the future?" he asked.

"If the Sight comes to her, she can indeed. She has done it all her life, and told truly each time." He glanced at Duncan. "She saw some vision when you arrived at the stream, though I do not know what it was. But should the girl say a word of warning to you, listen well to her."

"She told me some warning, leave or suffer," Duncan said. "I thought it nonsense. She would like to see me leave here, I know." He looked up, hoping for a reaction, but Magnus was silent, his dark blue eyes unreadable.

Magnus stood back, and Duncan swung wide to send the featherie sailing cleanly, at last, toward a hole marked by a stick and a scrap of heather. As it bounced once and dropped in, Duncan laughed out loud in amazement.

"I could not have wished a better shot," Magnus said, smiling. He gestured ahead. "There are two other holes at this end of the moor, and then we go back."

Duncan nodded. "When we get back to Glenran, I will go over the document again. Meet with me in the hall, and tell your cousins to do the same."

"You will not give up until the paper is signed, I think."

"Indeed, I will not."

Magnus narrowed his eyes as he looked up at the sky. "We will not sign until the MacShimi does. We are his bodyguard," he said simply. "There is not much good in a feud, I know that, even one with the MacDonalds. But our clans have been fighting since before we were born. We cannot stop so quick, just for a bit of paper, even one sent by the queen. Wait a bit."

"I will wait as long as it takes. But tell Hugh Fraser the sense in making the bond as you see it."

Magnus laughed, short and mirthless. A breeze gently swayed his golden braids, and he shaded his eyes with a flat hand, peering into the distance. "Elspeth's half-brother may wish to comment on where her signature goes."

"Half-brother?" Duncan frowned, puzzled. "Are you not all cousins? Which of you is her brother?"

"We are cousins here at Glenran, fostered together. Elspeth has a half-brother, though no Fraser is he. Now and again he comes for a visit. Look." He gestured toward the slopes that lay beyond Glenran. "Just there he rides, see, with his gillies running alongside. They will reach the castle sooner than we would, even if we left now."

Looking across the moor, Duncan noticed the group that he had seen earlier, the single rider with several running boys, so tiny against the rough, rocky contours of the hills that they looked like fleas crawling over the gloved knuckles of a giant.

"Well then," Magnus pronounced with a sigh, shouldering his golf club, "Hugh will be wanting a rescue from Robert Gordon."

"Her half-brother is a Gordon?" Duncan asked quickly.

"He is. And the Gordons are not in favor with the crown just now, we have heard."

Duncan huffed. "They are in deep disgrace. Their chief's heir has been stripped of his title. I am guessing you will have heard the story of George Gordon's trial for treason."

Magnus nodded. "Grim indeed. The Council sent you as the royal lieutenant in place of the Gordons, then."

"They did." Duncan glanced again at the party of men approaching in the distance. "How is it that Elspeth has a Gordon for a brother?"

"Elspeth's father, Simon, married a Gordon's widow, who had a young son. Simon Fraser died at
Blar-na-Léine
, that tragic battle—and his wife passed months later, after Elspeth's birth. Robert was but five or six years old then."

"He was not raised by Frasers?"

Magnus shook his head. "Robert went with his Gordon kin. But Lachlann Fraser, who fostered us all, was Elspeth's uncle, and raised her as if she were his own daughter." He fixed his serious blue gaze on Duncan. "Many of us young ones were taken in at Glenran. Fostering is a common thing—kin often raises kin in the Highlands—but Lachlann and his wife took as many as they could, mostly babes whose parents had died. They had but one son of their own, Callum."

"How many children fostered at Glenran?"

"Fifteen and more. I was four when I was brought here. Elspeth and Kenneth came later, orphaned newborns. Then Lachlann took in Ewan and some others you have not met—David and Andrew, Tomas and James and Iain, Diarmid, Domhnall—all babes and young children."

Duncan blinked in amazement. Lachlann Fraser's generosity toward tiny children, years ago, was admirable, and demonstrated the love and pride of this clan. "So many orphans, then, after the battle?"

"Too many. And there were many Fraser widows, too, mothers struggling to care for their children without a man in the household to hunt and herd. Other families took in fosterlings too, throughout Fraser lands."

"More than fifteen babes," Duncan said. "I had four brothers and two sisters—and our home was loud enough."

"Loud hardly describes Glenran when we were small," Magnus said, chuckling. "Lachlann's wife needed help, so Flora MacKimmie came to live with us—Lachlann's sister. She brought her daughters, a determined pack of nursemaids for us all. And so we all grew together."

Magnus placed his featherie ball on a little stone. Then he aimed and swung his club. Watching the ball's flight, he turned to Duncan when it landed.

"Lachlann was one of only five Frasers who survived Blar-na-Léine. He did what he could for us, and taught us to read and write. But he taught us, above all, to have loyalty and pride in our clan. Our fathers died on the shores of Loch Lochy at the hands of the MacDonalds. Remember that, Macrae, when you ask for our promise to stop this feud."

"I understand more than you think, Magnus. My father and two of my brothers died at the hands of the MacDonalds."

Magnus lifted a brow. "Why would you, of all men, want us to end our feud with them?"

"The crown sent me to do this task, regardless of my own feelings," he said flatly. They walked on. Looking again toward the rider and runners in distance, Duncan gestured toward them. "I know this Robert Gordon, I think."

"He is laird of Blackrigg, well south of here."

"Ah. Robert Gordon of Blackrigg was at the inns of court in Edinburgh when I studied law there. We interned together. The fellow kept much to himself. He lacked a sense of humor, too, as I recall."

"That would be Robert."

"Even with the Gordons in disfavor," Duncan said, "I am surprised that the Council did not send Robert with this bond of caution. He is Elspeth's brother and a lawyer, after all."

Magnus laughed. "Robert, deliver a letter of caution to the Frasers? The man would not pledge himself for us, or for anyone." He balanced his club to swing. Duncan stood back again as Magnus tapped the featherie into a turf-hole, then scooped it up and waved to Kenneth and Callum.

"Robert Gordon rides to Glenran," Magnus called, walking toward them.

Duncan did not miss the grim glance that was shared between the Fraser cousins. He looked toward the party in the distance, now skirting the little lochan. Soon they would enter the gates of Glenran, its walls rising smooth and solid beside the water.

"A few shots more, then," Kenneth said.

"Robert will be annoyed if we do not greet him there," Magnus said affably.