Heaven and the Heather (22 page)

She grasped a great wad of his plaid cinched over his shoulder, and bunched it over the arrow stump. She held it there with her left hand.

Niall looked into her eyes. All she saw in those blue depths was pain on top of pain. He reached up with a trembling hand and took the knife from his mouth.

“Dinnae worry,” he breathed.

“I am not worrying,” she lied.

“They may come after me,” he rasped. “But they’ll never find me. They never have. And now, they willnae find ye….” He lifted his arm and rested the back of his hand against her cheek. “Sometimes hiding is the best course. ’Tis what my clan has done for generations. ’Tis what we do best.” He managed a weak grin.

“This is no time for levity,” she said through the tightness in her throat.

“Oh, aye, ’tis all we have. Now, bear up, do this thing I ask ye. Wrap the wound when ye’re done. I’ll be alright. Ye’ll be safe. ’Tis all that matters for now.” He gasped in another breath. “Now, use both hands, quick and sharp about it.”

“Or you may pass out.”

“That, Sabine, is a forgone conclusion.” He placed the knife handle back in his mouth and gave her a brief, weak nod.

Both hands. Sabine drew in a long breath and placed her right hand over her left, over the wad of wool over the arrow stump. She captured Niall’s stare in her own. Bravery, fortitude, were in abundant supply in these Highlands if Niall was an example.

She gritted her teeth and pressed her hands down. He squeezed his eyes shut, leaving her to do this thing alone. She pushed. A low moan escaped through his teeth gnashed around the knife handle.
Quick and sharp
, he had said. She pushed hard, the end of the arrow pressing against the wad of wool, against her palm, painful but nothing compared to what Niall was facing right now. Sabine squeezed her eyes shut and placed all of her weight onto the arrow.

Her right hand suddenly seized on her, cramping so tightly that she saw stars in the darkness behind her eyelids.
Non!
her mind screamed. Sabine prayed to Saint Giles and forced her gnarled fingers to flex against the knotted muscles beneath her knuckles. She pushed until all she heard were Niall’s muffled moans and the thunderous beating of her own heart.

She dared open her eyes to the sight of Niall slumped against the tree trunk. His eyes closed, coppery bristle-covered jaw slack, the knife resting in his lap. Sabine looked tentatively at the back of his shoulder, at the blood-covered arrow protruding forth. With trembling fingers, she pulled it the rest of the way out.

Tears rolled down her burning cheeks as she wrapped the wool tightly around Niall’s bleeding shoulder. “Don’t you dare die!” she cried.

She wrapped the wounds tightly, forcing the blood flow to slow.

“You’re an idiot for riding in the path of that arrow! The queen showed not one ounce of appreciation! Why would she? You’re an outlaw!”

She tied off the plaid as best she could, her twisted fingers crying out for her to stop using them. But she ignored the pain and smoothed back Niall’s thick, cinnamon hair. The hue was so precious and rare, so like his spirit. He was fading from her, and there was little she could do.

“Niall,” she whispered. “Speak to me. Tell me something to make me laugh. Tell me something
en française
or with your lovely burr.”

“The circle of stones in Glen Fuil,” he whispered so quietly that the pine boughs overhead in the breeze almost drowned him out.

“
Oui
, what about them?” she asked lips brushing his whiskered cheek. All she could smell was blood, no longer Niall’s scent of the earth, of his spirit.

“I’m sure Campbell filled ye with lies about them. Love did prevail,” he rasped.

“You could not have heard us—” she began.

“I know the sense of what he told ye. I saw his face, saw yours. Enemies can and have united with success even with love, like Clans Lamont and Lachlan.” He coughed. “Campbell has never chosen to believe it. My father went to him to seek peace…he got death….”

“Do not speak of such things now. Save your strength.”

Niall managed a small grin. “Aye, I willnae…yet, the proof we seek against Campbell is behind that stone circle…the wielder of the arrow that I took for the queen…is the proof—” He choked out a breath. “
Adieu, mon cheri.
” Niall slowly closed his eyes, blocking out the blue from her.

“
Non
, Niall,
non
! You must remain with me. I’m so lost, so terribly lost without you.”

She rested her cheek against his. Tears rolled freely down her face. Her life had taken a sudden, unpredictable turn and he was leaving her to deal with it alone.

“Niall MacGregor, you cannot go,” she sobbed. “You cannot…
mon Dieu
…I need you.”

His chest rose and fell with shallow breaths. Sabine tightened the wool further against his wound.

Then she felt a presence other than Niall’s.

Her mind screamed,
Campbell!
She whirled around. Her hand still pressed to Niall’s shoulder.

Rory sat on his horse. His face was pale, bathed in sweat. He looked down at her as if he were seeing her for the first time. His face did not show relief or concern. He glanced away from her, his dark brows were knotted together. His mouth was tight in concentration. He seemed trying to decide which path to take through the forest. As far as Sabine could tell, there were no paths in this forest, none that she could see.

chapter 12

In Niall’s Wilderness

R
ory took Niall and Sabine on an endless ride to a small valley surrounded by imposing, misty mountains. In the valley lay a huddle of cottages. To Sabine, they looked nothing more than mossy piles of stone topped with thatch. The only evidence that these piles of stone and turf were dwellings was the thin curls of smoke rising from stone chimneys and collecting in the valley like a shroud.

Rory rode right up to the rickety door of one cottage, took Niall from the saddle of his horse, and carried him over his shoulder inside. He did not say a word to Sabine. She chewed her lip, deciding whether to go in or flee. Her need to be with Niall, to see him healed, was far greater than the fear of what could lay beyond that rickety door.

She quickly dismounted onto the loamy ground. She determinedly stepped inside and stood in a shadowy corner of the most humble dwelling she had ever seen. Several women gave her brief, but scouring glances before they hunched over the rough-hewed bed where Rory had placed Niall. Sabine immediately realized she was as welcome here as a leper at a banquet. She tilted her chin up a little and remained and remained in the shadows observing, listening to the strange guttural language these women spoke to each other, to Rory. She could also not help but take in the musty scent of smoke and cooking meat as well as she did the strange language.

The air inside the small abode was thick with musty peat smoke. Sabine strained to see Niall through it and around the grey wool and linen these women wore, all of them long in years. One of them might be Niall’s mother, but Sabine could not tell which. Perhaps none of them were his mother. Niall had never mentioned that she could still be alive.

The sound of fabric ripping combined with stunned gasps, made her jump and step forward a little, to get a better look. Rory stepped back, bumped into her, and gave her a harsh glare, before he walked to the hearth with its large cauldron over a pile of orange, smoky coals. He knelt before the coals, his back to Sabine. She returned her gaze to the women and Niall.

They had removed his clothes or so she assumed from her limited vantage. The wool plaid and stained tunic lay in a heap at the foot of the bed. One of the women had retrieved a wooden bowl with water and a rag. It quickly disappeared into the huddle.

Their strange language rose in the smoky air, but Sabine could not tell if their tones were concern or anguish. She listened harder. They spoke in steady voices as if their task was one common to them. One of them placed the bowl and rag on the earthen floor. The water was now crimson, the rag the same color. Sabine took a step forward. The blood pumped through her body so hard she could hear it rushing with the fierceness of a spring river. Was Niall dead or alive? She had to know.

“Step back,” Rory said suddenly from beside her, his voice gruff.

Sabine did as she was told. The Highlander held an iron poker, its tip brilliant orange.

“What are you going to do with that?” she asked, eyes wide, heart pounding. She feared she knew the answer. She had heard of cauterizing wounds with a hot poker, she just never expected to witness it.

Rory shouted to the women, all of whom bent to Niall and held him down. All Sabine could see of him was his pale profile, his coppery hair darkened by sweat. His eyes were closed, and a grimy rag was between his teeth.

Rory jabbed the poker down onto the hole in front of Niall’s shoulder. Sabine could not see it touch Niall’s wound, but she could hear the sizzle and the deep, wounded animal moan that escaped Niall’s mouth. Every tendon on his strong neck stood out, his ginger brows knitted together in anguish, his teeth clamped down hard on the rag. She flexed her fingers remembering a time when her own pain had been so hard. The most difficult part was the living after….

Rory shouted to the women. They sat Niall up. One of the women, with all the worries of the world etched across her sullen face, held Niall tight to her bosom. The side of his face, eyes closed, rested against her generous breasts. His arms dangled limply, like a poppet’s. Rory pressed him firmly against this woman whose eyes, a dusty shade of blue, held back stalwart tears. She hugged Niall’s bared back, knobby fingers pressing into his well-muscled flesh. Sabine looked at the woman’s cowl, at the wisps of cinnamon and silver hair escaping the grayed linen. This careworn woman, with tears in her dusty eyes, had to be Niall’s mother.

Rory jabbed the orange end of the poker into the wound on back of Niall’s shoulder. Sabine jumped. The acrid smell of Niall’s burned flesh dragged Sabine into darkness. The last thing she remembered was the disapproving stare in those dusty blue eyes of the woman she knew was Niall’s mother.

“
C
ó ris a bhuineas ise?
” his mother asked from her place at the hearth.

“She belongs to no clan,” he replied adjusting himself in the chair by the fire. “She’s French, a
femme
of the queen’s court.”

He leaned back in his chair by the worktable. His wound pulled painfully at his shoulder. He fought to ignore it. What was done was done. He was on the way to mending, the pain was just an annoying part of it. He settled his mind on more comforting things. First, he looked at his mother.

For as long as Niall could remember, she was always at the hearth, stirring something in that great cauldron. The sight comforted him as much as the aroma of meat that came from the great iron vessel. And knowing Sabine was safe in this cottage, in his glen.

His mother stopped, stick in both knobby fists. She did not look at him. Her gaze fixed on the supper. Niall knew she was puzzling over her new guest as night fell on the longest day he could remember.

He stole a glance over his shoulder, bandaged in layers of linen, at Sabine who slept on his mother’s bed, the only one in the cottage. His place was in another cottage, across the small glen, one he shared with Rory, one they had built themselves, to be nearer the sheep they tended. They mattered nothing to Niall now. Sabine was the only thing worth his attention at the moment.

He lifted a horn cup to his lips and took a long sip of whisky. It helped dull the pain better than trying to ignore it. Sabine’s fainting had done little to ingratiate her to his mother. Her sleeping now had done even less.

“
Ar chreach-s’ a thàinig,
” his mother mumbled from the hearth.

“Sabine hasnae brought ruin to our clan,” Niall said, turning back to the hearth. The fire warmed his face, and helped to dry his freshly clean tunic that he wore unlaced to the center of his chest. The ragged hem rested across his knees. His mother had sent it and his plaid with one of the clanswomen to have the blood and other nasties boiled from it. The plaid now hung on several pegs near the hearth, all nine yards of it. It would not be near dry until morning. His tunic was enough covering this summer night.

His mother stood upright. Her stout little body was not much taller than a child’s, but her eyes contained wisdom far beyond her age, which she kept a guarded secret.

“Since ye’re intent on speaking the tongue of the Lowlander, m’lad,” she snapped, “I will abide, however, I willnae abide that royal servant in my house. The queen’s men will be looking for her, and if they find her, they’ll find ye—her abductor.”

“She came willingly,” Niall said. He drained the cup of spirit, then reached across the plank table for the bottle. “We need her.”

His mother snatched the bottle from his grasp. She unstoppered it and poured a dram or two into her own cup. “The wound has drained the blood from yer heid. Ye speak daft.” She upended the cup and took a long drink.

Before Niall could tell her more of his mind, a futile prospect at best, the cottage door opened. The scent of heather and some strange concoction of herb blew in, curling inside Niall’s nostrils.

He grabbed the bottle and poured himself another dram. There was not a man alive who could out drink his mother. Not even himself. However, there was one woman who could match her dram for dram. And he did not have to turn around to know she had just walked into the cottage.