Highlander Betrayed (Guardians of the Targe) (10 page)

“Lady Elspet. It is she who makes the blessings.” Duncan stuffed the last of his dinner in his mouth, snagged the last honey cake and motioned for Nicholas to follow.

Curiosity had him hard on the man’s heels.

CHAPTER FIVE

A
LOW RUMBLE
of mutterings passing from person to person accompanied Rowan out of the hall and into the bailey that was growing more crowded by the moment. People streamed in the gate, adding to those who had clearly been within the castle confines when the horn sounded. What was Elspet doing? She didn’t have the strength to be out of her bed, never mind the strength to perform a blessing.

Rowan tried to find Jeanette or Scotia in the crowd but it was too dark and there were too many people. How had they all arrived so quickly? She skirted the thickest part of the gathering, moving easily through the open space between the large knot of people and the wall toward the tower, but was stopped by a warm hand on her shoulder.

Nicholas stood behind her. He dropped his hand and was about to say something when the sound of the tower door opening sent a complete and sudden hush throughout the gathering.

Kenneth filled the open doorway, his arm wrapped around the waist of the striking, but very frail, Elspet. Rowan noted that despite her aunt’s faded hair and gaunt and deeply lined face, it was as clear as ever that Jeanette was her daughter, for they favored one another strongly.

The couple made their way slowly through the bailey, the crowd parting to ease Elspet’s passing. When Kenneth reached the nearest part of the destroyed wall he tried to stop, but his wife said something to him. He quietly argued for a short moment before capitulating to his lady’s wishes. Rowan’s heart warmed. Most thought of Kenneth as a hard warrior, a strong chief to his clan,
but only those closest to him—and she was glad to count herself amongst them—knew of the soft place he held in his heart for his wife. He had an exceedingly hard time saying nay to anything Elspet truly wanted.

Keeping his arm about Elspet, he helped her not only to the center of where the wall once stood, but up on one of the larger stones that had not yet been moved. She tried to step away from him, but he refused to take his arm from around her waist, and in this she yielded with a gentle smile.

Elspet seemed to gather herself carefully. She pulled a small ermine sack from a fold of her arisaid and held it cupped in her hands. She cast her gaze across the entire gathering, nodded her head as if something satisfied her, raised her hands with the white furred sack in them heart-high, and then she began what felt like a prayer, though it was not in a language anyone understood. It was the strangest combination of musical and guttural sounds, as if they fought each other to escape on Elspet’s voice. Rowan always thought them beautiful. Her aunt swished her hands through the air as she spoke, leaning heavily against her husband while she did so. Kenneth looked grave, but did not stop his wife.

“What is she saying?” Nicholas whispered to Rowan.

“I ken not. No one does,” she said just as quietly, “but it is a blessing of the old ones, the ones who came before. It has been passed from mother to daughter over many, many generations.”

“Does she ken what she is saying?” Nicholas leaned so close she could feel his breath on her ear, sending shivers over her skin that had nothing to do with the temperature of the air.

“I asked her once,” she said, her feet rooted to the spot in spite of her urge to move closer to the compelling Nicholas, “when I was a wean. She told me she repeated what her mother taught her, understanding the intent, but not the meaning.” She shrugged. “She said the meaning had been lost over time, but it was a blessing.”

Elspet’s voice suddenly rose, raspy but stronger than Rowan would have thought possible. She placed the sack at her feet, then raised her hands and began waving them almost violently through the air, the motion at odds with the normally graceful and peaceful
blessings her aunt gave. An unfamiliar sensation began in Rowan’s feet, climbing up her legs in time with her aunt’s frantic hand motions, almost as if water filled her, pressing against her skin from the inside, pushing, pulsing to get out. The pressure built as Elspet’s words became something not benign, soft, reassuring, but powerful, with a force that washed out over the bailey like a punishing wind before a summer storm.

The hairs on Rowan’s arms rose as an unnatural wind whipped around her, calling to the pressure inside her that pounded in her head and pushed almost painfully against her skin. She gripped her head lest it explode. She doubled over as her stomach roiled, the deluge of pressure overwhelming all her senses until she could neither see nor hear nor feel anything of the world around her. She tried to cry out, but could not draw enough breath to so much as whimper. Her knees went weak under the assault but she did not fall.

“Rowan? Rowan! What is it, lass?”

She reached for the voice like a lifeline and slowly began to pull herself out of the maelstrom. She heard her name again and realized it was Nicholas calling to her. His hands gripped her shoulders, steadying and supporting her. The hard plane of his chest was solid against her back. She pulled those sensations about her like armor, shielding herself from the confusion and fear she would not give in to.

“Lass?” Worry laced through the single word and Rowan opened her eyes, only then realizing that the world hadn’t gone black. Torches still beat back the night, flickering in their sconces along the standing part of the wall.

“I am fine.” She tried to pull away from him, but he held her there, gently but firmly. She sank back against him, leaning into his strength, grateful he had not released her, grateful that all eyes remained upon her aunt.

Elspet repeated the last words of the once more soothing blessing, letting them drift over the silent gathering as gently as a morning’s mist. With the last graceful movement of her hands she crumpled into the waiting arms of her beloved husband.

“It is done,” Kenneth’s voice boomed. He held Elspet in his arms, cradling her like a sleeping bairn, her head tucked into the hollow of his shoulder. “The blessing is made, even if it is late, and not in the usual way. I shall hear no more about evil spirits and witches from any of you. The wall fell. We will discover the reason for it, but it is not an omen of ill and your lady has blessed us
and this place
. Nothing can harm us while we rebuild the wall.” He stepped off the high stone with care and took his wife back to the tower. Jeannette and Scotia separated themselves from the crowd and followed in their wake.

The crowd stood still and silent for the longest time and when Rowan tried to push away from Nicholas again, he still tethered her in place with his hands. Finally, as if there had been some signal that she did not hear, everyone began to disperse at the same moment.

Tentatively, Rowan pushed away yet again and this time Nicholas released her. She tensed, wondering if it was his touch that had chased away the panic or if Elspet’s completion of the odd blessing had released her from its grip.

When the barrage of debilitating pressure and fear didn’t return, she swallowed hard and only then realized that her face was wet, the cool breeze tracing the tear tracks on her cheeks. She wiped them away, then headed toward the tower where her family had disappeared.

Nicholas grabbed her arm and gently pulled her around to face him, stopping her from retreating, which should have panicked her more but oddly calmed her.

“What happened?” Worry made him look older than she’d thought him to be. Concern and curiosity swarmed in the dark depths of his eyes and the urge to lean into him again, to let him support her with his strength and comforting touch, to confide in him exactly what she had experienced, was strong.

But she didn’t know what had happened to her. Never before had she felt such a thing during a blessing, or any other time for that matter, but then Rowan had never seen a blessing like the one tonight. Nay, Nicholas was a stranger here and she had no reason to
trust him, especially where her aunt was concerned, even if she could find the words to explain it.

Rowan looked around for Jeanette before she remembered that her cousin had returned to the tower with her parents. Had she felt anything during the blessing?

“What happened?” Nicholas repeated his question.

She looked at his hand upon her arm, his grip strong and gentle at the same time. She could feel his concern, his curiosity, but she dared not tell him. She shook her head, the only answer she could give, then quickly turned away before she changed her mind.

N
ICHOLAS FISTED HIS
hands to keep himself from reaching out to Rowan again. She didn’t want to tell him what had happened and he couldn’t force her to. All he could do was watch her walk away from him, her shoulders set in a rigid line. Stoic.

But something had come over her during the blessing. Hell, he’d felt something wash over him, as if Lady Elspet had sent a warm river of energy coursing through the bailey, swirling around everyone gathered there.

But where he had felt only the passing of the sensation, Rowan had reacted as if she’d been punched in the gut. She’d staggered, gripped her head and he could not stop himself from reaching out and steadying her. He’d been surprised when she leaned back against him and he had fought the urge to wrap his arms around her, compromising by keeping his hands on her shoulders, holding her upright when her knees threatened to buckle.

He turned his attention to the crowd still lingering around him, scanning the faces for any hint that someone else had felt what Rowan had. But none appeared particularly disturbed by the proceedings.

He thought back to his impressions during the blessing. It was nothing like a blessing from a priest—words, a cross drawn in the air, with no physical impression that anything had changed. But
Elspet’s blessing was made of words no one understood and undecipherable symbols drawn upon the air…

It was palpable. Powerful.

Rowan would have been knocked from her feet had he not steadied her. And he had sensed something, like an unseen river flowing through the crowd, filling the bailey, silent, untouchable, yet carrying something in its current, something…

His mind went back and forth between a priest’s blessing and Elspet’s. Elspet’s and a priest’s. They served the same purpose: to protect the clan and the castle.

Like a shield.

Impossible. It could not be. And yet he could not deny the witness of his own senses, of Rowan’s reaction, or of Kenneth’s words. The chief had assured the clan that they were protected and everyone here gathered had accepted his proclamation without question.

All of this pointed to the stories Nicholas had collected of the Highland Targe, an ancient shield that protected this route into the Highlands from invaders. Had he truly just witnessed the shield being set in place? And if so, was Elspet the shield, or could it be something so small it would fit in the sack she had raised to the sky?

Nicholas shook his head. Logic told him none of this could be true, but his instincts screamed otherwise. The Scots were a superstitious lot. Highlanders believed in second sight, in healing with a touch, in selkies, brownies, and the sidhe, the fairy folk who stole human children and left their own changelings in their place. They believed in sacred healing wells, and that they were the makers of their own destiny.

His own upbringing, those precious years amongst his mother’s kin, had taught him that sometimes superstition was less than truth, but sometimes it was more. He had seen enough of these things as a lad to know there was more to this land and these people than the English would ever believe.

He watched the people about him in the bailey, gathered in small knots, chattering away, but there was a calmness to them that
hadn’t been there before, as if they believed deep in their bones that they were protected from whatever evil had toppled the wall and threatened their security.

A calmness that wasn’t shared by Rowan. She had been shaken by the blessing, as confused as he had been, but also physically affected. Was she a part of the Targe or was there something else happening that he did not understand?

He whipped back to where he’d last seen Rowan and after a moment spied her on the stair that led to the rampart. Checking the groups still lingering in the bailey, he saw Uilliam-the-bear and Duncan deep in conversation with several other men, their attention elsewhere finally. Not wishing to draw anyone’s notice, especially his keepers’, he moved slowly toward the rampart stair.

When he reached the top he stepped into a shadow, letting his eyes adjust to the darkness. After a moment he spied her not far down the wall walk, leaning out over the wall as if she was trying to escape… or fly.

“Rowan?” he called as quietly as possible, not wishing to startle her. She pulled herself back fully inside the wall and turned to him.

“You followed me.” She closed the distance between them, stopping just out of reach. “Why?”

“I was worried about you.” He stepped closer, wanting her to reach out to him.