Heaven and the Heather (25 page)

He raised one brow. “Oh, aye?”

A light breeze wafted up the ben, rustling the long curls about her face. She looked to the sunny sky, and breathed deep the scent that came up from the glen. The scent of waulking.

“What is that scent?” she asked.

“The women of the glen are
waulkin
g the wool. ’Tis the time to do it after the dying.”

“Dying? Pigments from plants? You have that here in the Highlands?”

“Aye, I would think so, otherwise our colors would be quite boring. None at all actually, unless sheep is a color.”

Sabine rose to her feet. The breeze grew stronger, rippling her gown about her legs. Niall stole a glance at the way the silk wrapped about her long slender legs. She turned toward him, her expression radiant, like it had been when she first surveyed “the whole of his kingdom”.

He glanced down the slope. The faint sound of the women’s
waulking
songs wafted up the ben on the morning breeze.

“What are they singing?” Sabine asked.

“‘The Shepherd’s Son’,” Niall replied, a wee bit embarrassed. “’Tis a bawdy song. The women like it a lot.”

“Translate, please,” she said a glint to her eyes.

He swallowed. “I dinnae—”

“Tell me,” she whispered.

“Aye….” He listened to the Gaelic words coming up the ben. Slowly he translated them for Sabine:

“
There was a shepherd’s son

Kept sheep upon a hill;

He looked east, he looked west,

Then gave an under-look,

And there he spied a lady fair,

Swimming in a burn.

He raised his head frae his green bed,

And approached the maid;…
”

He stopped. “Are ye sure ye wish me to continue?”

“
Oui.
” Sabine began walking down the ben as if caught in a dream. Niall walked beside her. He reached out and took her right hand in his and gave it a small kiss.

“Tell me more,” she whispered.

“
…And then he approached the maid;

‘Put on yer claiths, my dear,’ he says.

‘And be ye not afraid.’

‘If ye’ll not touch my mantle,

And let my claiths alane,

Then I’ll give ye as much money

As ye can carry hame….
”

Niall stopped.

“The rest of the song is too bawdy to sing to a lass as wellborn as ye.”

“Tell me,”
she said firmly. “And if you call me wellborn again, I’ll slap you.”

“As best as I can remember, the lass in the song offers herself to the shepherd’s son. The shepherd’s son takes advantage of the lass right there on the bank of the burn while the flock concealed them from the lassie’s husband.”

“Delightful!” she exclaimed, startling him.

“Delightful?” he asked.

“
Oui!
” she cried. “Everything about this place. Delightful!”

She suddenly raced to the bottom of the ben. Niall was impressed with her speed and did not try to stop her. He was more impressed with the way her gown flapped up revealing slender ankles and calves concealed in pale blue silk stockings. He was as much a bit o’ a’ lad as the shepherd’s son.

His fetching quarry stopped at the base of the ben, and walked quietly between two cottages into the center of the huddle to where the women, ten in all including his mother, sat round a worn trestle table.

Sabine kept an awed and respectful distance from the women. Niall stayed beside her. In a matter of a few blinks his and Sabine’s presence was more than casually noticed by all of the circle. Their hands stopped moving across the long length of wool draped over the trestle table.

“Och, and look who’s come down from the ben to join his kith and kin,” his mother said. “My lad and his French lassie.”

“Haud yer tongue, Mum,” Niall said keeping his distance from the
waulking
table. Men were not welcome there. As much as women were not welcome at the gathering.

Agnes gave Sabine a hard stare from her place at the table.

Despite this, Sabine slowly broke stride with him and made her way across the mud and grass to the table.

He reached out to pull her back from the den of Highland lionesses, but all he got was a whisper of brocade from her sleeve between his fingertips.

The women stared at Sabine as she walked to their circle as if she were a pestilence in silk and velvet come to join them. They quickly returned to their work as if that would make her leave. She held her chin even, steady gaze cast on the women and their quick-paced hands pounding the wool, tightening it, toughening it. Pausing at the head of the table next to his mother, Sabine knelt slowly to the ground. She placed one hand, her right one upon the boiled wool, tracing over the plaid, over the greens, oranges, yellows and black. Niall’s mother, Agnes, and the rest of the women stared at her as if they expected something to happen but were not sure what exactly.

“
Tres belle
,” Sabine said, mesmerized. “From where did these colors come?”

Niall held his breath, waiting for his mother to lay through her with her blade of a tongue. Why had Sabine stepped into this exclusive circle?

“The horsetail,” his mother replied steadily. “The heather, the onion—”

“Blackberry,” Sabine added. “And the fuschia….
tres belle
.”

“Aye, lass,” his mother said, surprise in her tone. “’Tis. Have ye dyed the wool before?”

“
Non.
I have gathered the plants and soils to make pigment for the paintings…once…I do not do that anymore,” Sabine replied.

Niall leaned against the cottage, eyes wide. What was happening here?

Sabine settled on the bench beside his mother. She glanced at him, at first with confusion in her dark eyes, then gave into the yearnings of her spirit. Her damaged hand glided over the wool. Her strength was in her hand. Dye water oozed from between her twisted fingers, and she tipped her chin up a little higher.

The women, one by one, tore their gaze from their guest and renewed their singing. Niall smiled. For the first time in a long time, his worries were replaced by unencumbered joy. Sabine wore the very same on her face. But for how long?

chapter 14

Freedom, Mon Amor, Freedom

R
ight hand throbbing, chin tipped higher than ever, Sabine sat alone at what the women had called a “
waulking
table”. They had finished their task and had left her for their other mysterious duties. The table was mottled with purple and gray puddles reflecting the increasingly cloudy sky. The color reminded her of rounds of slate from the roof of the Château Montmerency in the Loire Valley.

“So beautiful,” she whispered a smile tugging at the corners of her mouth.

Niall had departed on some task while the women had let her sit with them. Although she did not know their Gaelic songs, she had hummed as her hands skidded and pulled the freshly dyed wool, the colors running out between her fingers and toes, like rivulets from evening tide. Her right hand sang with a glorious ache, one of her own making.

Sabine glanced at her hands stained with the hues of the Highlands. She closed her eyes and breathed deep.

“
Dé’n t-ainm a th’oirbh?
”

Sabine popped her eyes open. Wide-eyed children stared at her.

“
Bon jour,
” she said.

The girls curtsied to her, and the boys made exaggerated bows, as if she were royalty.

Sabine smiled and bowed her head to them. “That is not necessary,
mes petits
. But I thank you very much.”

The children were giving her curious stares, their heads tilted, grimy faces grinning at her.

“I wish I had something for you, but I confess I have come here with very little, however—” Sabine reached down to the top of her gown, between the layers of fabric. “—I would very much like to draw your beautiful faces.”

She took out the large scrap of paper, repaired by her own hand from some flour paste she had hastily the made the morning of the hunt. She unfolded it a little, hiding the sketch she had begun of Niall, and found a small blank space. She placed it on a dry place on the waulking table. Grateful the repair held and just grateful to be here, she removed a charcoal stick from her gown. The children gathered round her, curious faces cast down to the paper. Sabine tipped up their chins. “Up, up,
mes enfants
. Let me see your pretty, pretty faces.”

One of the girls swiped a smudge of soot from her face with a sleeve. She gave Sabine the sweetest smile she had ever seen. “
Trés joli
…
mon Dieu
….”

She sketched the unique qualities of each child. They continued to smile at her, not one regarding her right hand with more than a passing glance. Lost in her drawing, she added details, fleshed out the sketch, to make it complete.

“’Tis sure ye will steal the weans’ souls with such marks upon yon paper…French demon.”

The children shrieked and ran away, disappearing as quickly as they came. Sabine did not have to look to know Agnes had returned to the table.

“I was sketching those beautiful children. ’Twas no witchery except the way you made them disappear.” Sabine slid the sketch and charcoal stick into her gown feeling Agnes observe her every move. A chill, like the claws of something long dead, walked up her spine.

Wisps of straw-colored hair floated about the woman’s face as she regarded Sabine.

“Ye wear such fine silk. It can keep one warm, but no’ as warm as the body of a goodly Highland man.”

Sabine rose from the table and stepped into a puddle of dye water.

“Her Majesty is no doubt missing you terribly, hmm?” Agnes brushed her fingertips against the sleeve of Sabine’s gown. “Did Her Majesty gift this to ye?”

“She did not.” Sabine remembered that Lord Campbell had given her the fabric shortly before she left France. She had made the gown herself, the stitches not perfect.

“’Tis a fine fabric,” Agnes said. “No’ a typical gift from a Highland warrior as is Niall. ’Tis typical of a Highland noble as is Lord Campbell.”

Sabine wrenched her arm away from this woman. A flame ignited deep in her gut. What was wrong with this woman? Sabine had done nothing to her.

“Listen to my words outsider…
outeral
,” Agnes said. “There is enough trouble within this glen. For these MacGregors, curses arrive unwanted on dragon’s wings with nasty talons of fire. However, ye arrived in fine slippers with silk on yer person, a curse none-the-less.”

Sabine stared hard at Agnes. “
Sorcière!
”

“My words are true,
outeral
. Best ye leave before Niall dies.”

Sabine stopped. “
Comment?
”

“I said,” Agnes replied, “if ye stay, Niall will die.”

“Why say you this horrible thing?”

“He has ye here to protect ye. Campbell and all of Her Majesty’s soldiers will surely pound his clan to dust to find ye.”

Sabine blinked. “They will not,” she said weakly, but Agnes spoke the truth. “Niall gave me his word.” It sounded ridiculous the moment she said it. How could his word save her or anyone?

“He plied ye with ‘his word’, did he?” Agnes laughed. “’Tis sure ye’re no’ getting the best part of him.”

“Meaning?” she asked hands on hips. Of course she knew the answer.

“Nothing that should vex ye,
outeral
,” Agnes replied. “This clan is cursed, as cursed as yerself. I see the mark the Devil has placed upon yer hand.”

“I see the Devil before me in dour dress,” Sabine snapped. “Enough!”

“Then haste ye away, and save Niall and his from certain doom.”

“You are the doom in his life,” she said. But Agnes was so horribly right. Sabine would never tell her that.

She had to think, but where? Slowly her gaze stole up the mountain Niall cherished so much.

Leaving her stockings and the witch behind, she ran toward the base of that beautiful mountain Niall had showed her this morning. She dared not look behind her to see if Agnes made chase. Witches could fly. At that moment, Sabine wished she could too. Could fly away, back to France, away from Niall, possibly saving his life. She was a curse on him, a distraction from his duties to his clan. Yet, he wanted her here.

She ran as fast as her bare legs would allow her. The rush of air up her gown, across her flesh, only served to propel her further up the mountain right into a downpour.

Her bare feet skidded across the wet earth between the heather plants. She regained her balance and ran.

Where else was there for her to go? Niall said this mountain with its view of the whole of his kingdom helped him to sort things out. There were two things Sabine had to sort out: to stay or to go.

And the decision was as hard as the rock she suddenly slid upon. Her knees struck the granite shelf first, then her chest, then her head. As she fell to the soggy ground, she wondered how anyone could survive in a place where it seemed all the four seasons could happen on the same day.