The Saint (11 page)

Helen laughed. “Aye. But I think we’re going to have a little company.”

She pointed to the castle gate, where a small crowd had gathered. It wasn’t just young children, she noticed, but a number of squires as well. Soon it seemed they had half the castle out with them, sliding down the hill in targes.

Helen was standing beside Ellie atop the hill, laughing as two of the children tried to slide down on one targe, when Ellie suddenly stopped. Her laughter turned into a gasp, and her cheeks, red from the cold, paled.

“What is it?” Helen asked.

Ellie shook her head, her gaze locked on the horizon. “Something’s wrong.”

Helen followed the direction of her stare, seeing at once what had caught her attention. A
birlinn
had just made the elbow turn around
Rubha Garbh
, the rocky promontory of land upon which the castle was situated, traveling faster than any ship Helen had ever seen.

“Is it …?”

Ellie turned to her, eyes wide with fear. “Aye, it’s Erik’s ship. He’s going too fast and they’re back too soon.”

They raced down the hill, entering the main gate just as the men rushed into the courtyard from the sea-gate opposite them. A mixture of fear and panic clutched her chest when Helen saw a man being carried into the castle, an arrow protruding from his neck.

Not Magnus!
She sighed with relief.
Thank God
.

Ellie let out a cry that made Helen’s heart clench right before she leapt into her husband’s arms. “You’re all right?” she said, just loud enough for Helen to hear.

The big Norseman didn’t look all right. He looked as though he’d been through hell. All of them did.

Helen didn’t wait to hear his reply. She scanned the crowd of men, heart pounding in her throat. Finally she saw him. He was slowly making his way up the beach from the jetty.

Oh, no!
Her heart knifed. He was hurt.

She pushed through the crowd, reaching Magnus just outside the castle gate. She would have rushed into his arms just as Ellie had done to her husband, but his left arm was bound in a sling of linen at his side. He was covered in dirt, soot, and blood.

He stopped when he saw her, his eyes hard with something dark and forbidding that sent an icy chill through her veins.

“You’re hurt,” she said softly.

“I’m fine.”

“You’re not fine.” Gently, she placed her hand on his arm. “Your arm—”

He jerked away from her, gritting his teeth against what must have been a blast of pain. “Leave it, Helen.”

Tears of concern filled her eyes. What was wrong with him? Why was he acting like this? “Is it broken?” She placed her hands on him again. “Let me see it.”

He flinched as if her touch scalded. “Damn it, Helen. Have you no care?”

Helen blinked up at him, taken aback by the fury in his voice. By the passion. Indeed, she’d never heard such passion from him. “Of course I care. I’ve been so worried. I was so scared when I saw you—”

“Me?” he boomed. “I don’t want or need your concern. But what of your husband, Lady Helen? What of the man you married not four days ago? Have you no care for him?”

Helen stepped back, the lash of vitriol so unexpected. “William?”

An icy drop of trepidation slid down her spine.

His soft golden-brown eyes turned as hard and black as onyx, pinning her to the snow-covered ground. “Aye, William. Remember him? Your husband. My friend. The man you took to your bed a few nights ago.”

“I didn’t—”

“He’s dead.”

She let out a gasp of horror, her eyes widening with the shock of his harsh pronouncement.
Dead?

She murmured a prayer for his soul.

The look he gave her was full of such hatred and pain it seemed to burn her insides. He turned away, but not before she saw the disgust. “He deserved more from you than prayers. But you’ve never been very devoted in your affections, have you?”

Helen felt a stab of guilt and despair that drained the blood from her body, leaving her as cold and empty on the inside as she was on the outside.

He was right.

For nearly eighteen hours—since he’d stumbled out of the collapsed tower from one hell into another—Magnus had existed in a state of barely repressed anger and torment.
Seeing Helen had been the final blow. He’d snapped, giving way to all the emotions lashing inside him.

She’d married Gordon, damn it. It was he who deserved her compassion and concern.

Perhaps it wasn’t fair, but it didn’t matter. Gordon’s death had finally succeeded in severing the connection between them. Magnus would never be able to see her without thinking of his friend. His dead friend. She belonged to Gordon. Not him.

Magnus pushed aside his anger, knowing he needed to focus on doing for MacGregor what he’d been unable to do for Gordon: saving his life.

By necessity if not inclination, Magnus had become the de facto physician of the Highland Guard. A rudimentary knowledge of healing coupled with “gentle” hands (laughable, given their size and strength) had earned him the position. But it was one thing to press some moss in a wound and wrap it, boil a few herbs for a tincture, or even press a hot iron on a wound that wouldn’t stop bleeding; it was another to remove an arrow from the neck of a man who’d taken it to save your life.

When Magnus had emerged from the collapsed tower, it was to find that the English had overtaken the bailey. Only MacRuairi, MacSorley, Campbell, and MacGregor remained. Waiting, it seemed, for Gordon and him.

Leave no man behind
. Part of the Highland Guard creed. At least it had been—until Gordon.

Magnus tried to fight his way toward his friends, but the injury to his arm hampered him. Unable to hold a targe or a second weapon, he couldn’t adequately defend himself, and his left side was left vulnerable to multiple attackers. When the English surrounded him, he knew he wouldn’t be able to hold them back for long.

Recognizing that he was in trouble, MacGregor and Campbell had come to his aid. They’d almost made their way back to the safety of the gate when MacGregor had
gone down, ironically felled by an arrow from a longbow. Magnus had seen the arrow protruding from his neck and thought he was dead. He’d let out a roar of pure rage, attacking the English around him with the half-crazed vengeance of a berserker.

He heard the murmurs of “Phantom Guard” rolling through the enemy soldiers, saw the fear in their eyes beneath their helms, and eventually he also saw their backsides as they turned and ran. “Tail” was a slur often directed at the English—and it was well earned.

The English, realizing their prey had already been lost (Edward Bruce had escaped), had decided that taking the slighted castle wasn’t worth dying.

From the moment Campbell realized MacGregor was still alive, Magnus’s only thought was getting him to safety. Riding was out of the question. MacGregor needed to be kept as still as possible. Somehow a small boat had been procured, and with MacSorley at the helm they’d raced back to their own ship, and then on to Dunstaffnage.

Edward Bruce was safe, but at what cost?

Gordon, and now MacGregor? Magnus would be damned if he’d lose another friend this day. It seemed inconceivable that the team could survive intact through two and a half years of war, major battles where hundreds had lost their lives, and even exile, only to lose two of the greatest warriors in Christendom—hell, in Barbariandom as well—in a skirmish.

Every warrior knew that death was part of war. To their Norse forebearers it was the ultimate glory, a philosophy that had lived on in the successive generations. But in his years fighting alongside the other members of the Guard, seeing what they could do, and then hearing the stories of their feats, which had taken on almost mythical proportions, Magnus had started to believe their own legend. Gordon’s death was a brutal reminder that they weren’t invincible.

As soon as they arrived at Dunstaffnage, Campbell sent some men to fetch the healer from a nearby village. But Magnus knew what they needed was a skilled surgeon—something they’d be hard pressed to find even in a major burgh like Berwick, where the guilds would be found. Most surgeons were barbers—as crude at cutting off a limb as they were at trimming a beard. Their training was one of exigency, by trial and error.

The placement of this arrow left no room for error. It had pierced through the mail coif and entered the front left side of MacGregor’s throat at an angle, coming to a stop at the back of his neck. The arrowhead was lodged inside.

Magnus had managed to stop the bleeding, but he knew if he attempted to pull the arrow out, one wrong move would kill MacGregor.

“Can you remove it?”

He lifted his head from his extensive examination of the wound to look over at Arthur Campbell. He stood with the rest of the Highland Guard around the trestle table they’d requisitioned from the Great Hall and set up in the adjoining laird’s solar. The only other people present were the king and Campbell’s new bride, who was coordinating water, fresh linens, and whatever else they might need with the servants.

“I don’t know. I’ve never seen anything like this. It’s in a dangerous location. I fear that if I try to pull it out …”

He didn’t need to finish.

“What other choice do you have?” MacLeod said somberly.

“None,” Magnus admitted. “It has to come out.” He just didn’t know if he had the skill to do it. “Perhaps the healer will have another idea,” the king added.

But the old woman who arrived a few hours later had no more expertise than he. Nor did the priest, who advocated bleeding the opposite side of MacGregor’s neck to restore
his humours, praying for his soul, and then leaving it to God’s will.

To hell with God’s will! Magnus wasn’t going to let him die.

“Is there anyone else?” MacRuairi asked Lady Anna. Campbell’s wife was a MacDougall and had been raised at Dunstaffnage. “Perhaps you know of someone in the area?”

Magnus stood. “I know someone.”

Helen
. She wasn’t a surgeon, but she seemed to have an unusual gift for healing. He’d seen her perform a miracle once. God knew, MacGregor was in need of another one.

So Magnus swallowed his anger and asked Lady Anna to send for her.

After the way he’d lashed out at her, he knew he had no right to ask for her help. But he would, just as he knew she would give it.

Only a few minutes passed before he heard the door open. He felt a stab of guilt, seeing her red-rimmed eyes and blotchy, tear-stained face. If his harsh relating of Gordon’s death had been intended to make her conscience suffer, it appeared to have worked.

He felt a second stab, this one more of a cinching in the region of his heart, when he saw the caution in her eyes as she approached.

He clenched his jaw and met her gaze. “My lady, I’m sorry to disturb you in your grief, but I thought … I hoped you might be able to help.”

She looked so tiny and young in the room crowded with the big warriors. For a moment, the fierce urge rose inside him to protect her. To tuck her under his arm and tell her everything was going to be all right the way he’d used to do. But it wasn’t. And it never would be again.

Though her chin trembled, she lifted it determinedly and nodded her head. For the next few minutes the room was deathly silent as she examined the fallen warrior.

“I’ve never seen anything like this,” she said, when she’d finished. “It’s a miracle he survived.”

“Can you take it out?”

Without killing him
. Their eyes held; the unspoken words passed between them in silent understanding. “I don’t know, but I can try.”

The quiet note of determination in her voice did much to soothe the frayed edges of his tightly wound nerves.

She straightened, shedding the pale, uncertain, griefstricken girl as easily as she would shrug a cloak from her shoulders. And just as she’d done the first time they’d met, when she’d boldly stopped him from ending his dog’s life, she snapped into action. Claiming the room was too stuffy, she ordered everyone from the small solar—even the king—except for Lady Anna, whom she sent about procuring her the items she would need.

When Magnus started to follow the rest of the guardsmen out, she stopped him. “Not you. I may need your help.” She looked at his arm. “But if I do this, you must promise to let me see to your arm as well.”

He bit back the automatic refusal, knowing he was in no position to argue, and nodded. Curtly. He didn’t like being coerced.

She murmured something under her breath that sounded suspiciously like “stubborn ox” and resumed her tending of MacGregor.

“I need you to lift his mail coif, while I look at the entry wound.”

Magnus came up to stand beside her, ignoring the soft scent of lavender that rose from her hair. It had dried, he noticed. He’d seen the group of children sliding down the hill from the water, and somehow had known she was involved. It was something she would do. His suspicions had been confirmed when she’d appeared in the bailey, drenched with snow. Her unrelenting joy in the face of his own misery didn’t seem so wrong now. She hadn’t known.
Every
day is May Day
, he recalled her brother saying. Sometimes he envied her that.

“The entry wound is small and round, so I think it must be a needle bodkin.”

He nodded, returning to the moment. “Aye. That’s what I thought as well.” To pierce mail at such a close distance, the long, thin, pointed arrowhead was more effective. The flat, broadhead arrowhead would have done much more damage, particularly had it been barbed.

“Do you have an arrow spoon?”

He shook his head. He’d seen them used before, but had never had need of one himself. It was a thinned piece of shaft with a wooden spoonlike end to cup around the arrowhead and help ease it out in one piece.

“Then we shall hope the English soldier glued this arrowhead on with something stronger than beeswax. But if not, I shall need something to pull it out.”

“I have a few instruments.” He unfolded the items he carried with him in a piece of leather that he’d fashioned with pockets and held them out for her inspection.