The Raven's Wish (4 page)

Chuckling, Elspeth glanced up, and then straightened, alert. "Hold," she said. "Look there, across the stream."

They looked northward. The burbling chant of the stream filled the sudden quiet. Crossing the grassy moor on the far side of the stream, three horsemen galloped toward them and halted their mounts by the bank. Bright multi-colored plaids, red over blue, fluttered over their shoulders, and their sturdy, shaggy garron ponies snorted restively as the three riders glared across the sluicing boundary that separated them from the Frasers.

Kenneth bounded to his feet. One by one, the Frasers rose in silence. Elspeth stepped between Magnus and Kenneth, but Magnus put out an arm to hold her back.

"MacDonalds," Kenneth muttered.

"What the devil do they want here?" Ewan said.

"Take no fish from our waters, Frasers!" The cry boomed across the stream. "This land belongs to the MacDonald clan!"

"By hell it does!" Callum called. "This stream is on Fraser land, and well you know it!"

Ruari MacDonald, his hair bright as rust in the sun, snarled and put a hand to the sheathed dirk stuck in his belt. Some of the Fraser cousins stepped back to pick up their own dirks, which lay piled on their dry shirts heaped on the bank.

Elspeth stepped forward. "Leave here, MacDonalds!" she yelled. "Ride on, or I will be the first at your throats!"

"That is not a proper way to treat your betrothed!" Ruari called back.

Elspeth moved toward the water. "Curse you, Ruari MacDonald, for a fool and a—"

"Elspeth," Magnus barked out. "Stop!"

She glanced back. "They would not dare cross the stream to our side," she hissed. "Ruari MacDonald is a bully and a coward. One curse from me would send him home to his
màthair
."

"His
bràithrean
are with him," Kenneth said. "They will not hold back from a fight. And marriage plans will not stop them."

"Elspeth Fraser, hold your temper," Magnus said.

Elspeth paused, the water cooling around her ankles. Magnus was right. She must behave herself. Standing with her cousins, she stared at the three MacDonalds, who glared back in turn.

* * *

"When you sent word of your visit, I knew you might need a comrade to go with you to Castle Glenran," Alasdair said as he and Duncan rode among the birches. "You wear neither plaid nor plant badge. You look like a Lowlander, even a Sasunnach. Though your Gaelic, when you choose to speak it, is pure as any Highlander's."

"I still remember," Duncan said quietly. "So the Fraser chief will meet me at Castle Glenran, where he said in his message he will be fishing for the week on a holiday."

Alasdair chuckled. "Holiday? The MacShimi does little else but fish, hunt and raid."

"MacShimi—so that is what you call your chief."

"Aye, an auld title, after the first Fraser chief, Simon." Alasdair looked sideways at Duncan. "Does the MacShimi ken the why of your visit?"

"Surely he knows that Queen Mary and her Privy Council desire peace throughout Scotland. They wish an end to the feud between the Frasers and the MacDonalds."

"Such a request, even from the queen, may fall on deaf ears among these Highland men."

"The bloodshed and cattle thieving between the Frasers and MacDonalds must cease. I simply act as the royal lieutenant in delivering this ultimatum."

Alasdair let out a loud sigh. "So they sent you in George Gordon's place?"

"The Gordon clan is in disgrace now, their titles and lands forfeit to the crown. Nor can they continue to serve as the royal lieutenants in the northeast."

"The cocks o' the north, the Gordons are called, but they have been brought low."

"Gordon's plan to abduct Queen Mary and marry her to one of his sons was an embarrassment to the whole of Scotland."

"A beastly affair with a gruesome end, that."

Clenching the reins, Duncan recalled the Edinburgh trial months earlier, when a grotesque tradition had been obeyed. George Gordon, earl of Huntly, had died of an apoplectic fit months before the trial. Nevertheless, his corpse, hideously sagged and discolored from salting and embalming, had been propped up in the courtroom for the trial. Sitting as one of the lawyers on the Gordon case, Duncan had watched in sympathy as the beautiful young queen, obliged to be present, had struggled to overcome illness at the horrible sight.

"A cruel thing indeed," he said.

"So you are the queen's lieutenant, sent to talk peace with the Frasers," Alasdair said. "What document did you bring?"

"I am sent to make a bond of caution with the MacShimi and his kinsmen."

"A letter o' caution! The feud's not twenty years old yet. And who is named as the cautioner? Yourself? Och, you may regret that obligation, man."

"I anticipate no problem. I will witness the signing and return the document to the Privy Council. The friendship between Frasers and Macraes will make the cautioning period of one year easy enough."

Alasdair cast him a wry look. "Luck go with you. A Highlander cherishes a good feud."

"I know that better than most," Duncan said.

"Come ahead, Cautioner, if you dare. There's some Frasers below, on the bank of the stream." He pointed down the slope.

Squinting in the sunlight, Duncan peered down the grassy slope to see a group of Highland men, wearing plaids of the blue and green favored by Frasers. They stood beside a wide stream. A lad with hair bright as flame stood ankle-deep in the water.

A sudden chill crept up Duncan's spine. He felt uneasy, unsettled. His black cloak floated out on a quick breeze. A disturbance of the wind, he thought; he had forgotten about the nearly constant presence of the Highland winds.

"No surprise to find some of them fishin' here, but the MacShimi is not among them," Alasdair remarked. "Fishing the Fraser way—knock the fishie on the head," he went on proudly. "We are known for it, right enough. But these lads are up to something else, I think. The riders across the stream wear red rowan in their bonnets."

Duncan swore softly. "MacDonalds."

"Your own clan's greatest enemy," Alasdair said. "Did the Privy Council realize that when they sent you north?"

"Aye, and so they sent me to caution Frasers rather than MacDonalds," Duncan replied. "No one would send a Macrae to bring a bond of caution to Clan MacDonald. There would be blood instead of signatures."

Alasdair huffed at that, and guided his horse down the tufted, rocky slope. Duncan followed. They reined in their horses a few yards from the stream.

"Hail and good day to you, cousins," Alasdair called out in fluent, airy Gaelic. "Callum, Magnus! A fine catch, there. Ewan, Kenneth!
Failte
, lads. Greetings!"

Hearing the names reeled off, Duncan could not, at first, sort one lad from another. They all resembled each other, and all were hearty lads wearing blue and green plaids. Only their heads were different, gold and russet, copper and chestnut.

Two stepped forward, one tall and broad with hair like lamb's wool. The other had long dark hair in several plaits.

"Well met, cousin," the burly woolly-haired young man said to Alasdair, then turned to Duncan to introduce himself as Callum Fraser, laird of Glenran.

"What goes on here, lads?" Alasdair asked.

The one with the dark braids pointed to the far bank. "MacDonalds, as you see."

"Aye, Kenneth, but what do they want?"

"Only trouble," the young man answered with a shrug.

A commotion was going on near the water, Duncan noticed. The MacDonalds were shouting across the stream to the Fraser boy who stood in the water. The lad was obscured from Duncan's view by the brawny Frasers who stood on the bank.

While he could not hear all the words being exchanged, the angry tones were clear enough. He watched with interest: here were some of the very trouble-stirrers he had come to reprimand. But he frowned, realizing something.

"Alasdair," he muttered low in English. "These lads, and the laird, too, are rather young."

"They are," Alasdair agreed softly. "Many of the Fraser males are but lads. Because of the losses at
Blar-na-Léine
nineteen years ago, the surviving Fraser men are young, either adolescents or young adults, with few over the age of majority. Do you not recall the legend?"

"Sweet Christ," Duncan murmured with sudden comprehension. "Of course. The legend. All those male babes born to Fraser widows. If so, they would all be eighteen, nineteen by now."

"If it is true? You have been in the south too long! A Highland man friendly to Frasers could never doubt it. Duncan," Alasdair said, watching the stream. "That legend—did you know that only one of the bairns born after the battle was a lass?"

Duncan frowned. "I had not heard that."

"It is so. And there, in the water, stands one of the wildest Frasers. Her name is Elspeth."

Duncan saw then that the lad in the stream was no lad after all. Standing with her back turned toward the bank, Elspeth Fraser shouted again in Gaelic. The words were lost on a breeze, but the reactions of the MacDonalds on the opposite side attested to the insult she delivered.

The thick plait of fair hair, sheened like Celtic red-gold, was untidy. The plaid, worn over a linen shirt, was thick and enveloping, and revealed no clue to age or gender. But her bare legs, long and smooth and tautly muscled, planted firmly in the water, had the gracefulness and strength of a woman grown.

Kenneth spoke to her and she glanced around, the turn of her head a motion of simple grace. Sunlight danced over her head and her finely shaped face. Light reflected from the stream touched her eyes. Duncan thought their color was very like the water, or like a cloudy sky.

Hardly an aging Diana, he thought, thinking of his earlier jest, but perhaps a Boudicca after all—young and lovely, and copper-haired as the ancient Celtic warrior woman was said to have been. Fascinated, he stared, admiring her face and form even as he was surprised to see a female here, half-clad and obviously reckless.

He knew women in Edinburgh who would faint to see what this girl did; he knew others, however, who would applaud. The queen herself might approve, he mused; Mary of Scotland and her ladies sometimes dressed in men's clothing for an evening's supper and entertainment. He smiled, thinking how women, particularly in England, were beginning to argue for intellectual rights with men. Here in the Highlands, regarded as backward by southerners, this girl assumed her equality as easily as she assumed male clothing.

But she was inviting danger here, confronting the three angry MacDonalds mounted on the opposite bank. She was shouting, leaning forward, furious about something. When the wind shifted, Duncan heard her more clearly, and understood her Gaelic easily.

"Do not think to come over here, MacDonalds!" she yelled. "Reivers and thieves!" One of her cousins, the tall blond called Magnus, called to her from the bank. She waved him away.

"A chick among pups," Duncan remarked wryly in English.

"A what?" Alasdair looked at him, puzzled.

"My sisters once had a wee fluffy chick that they raised with the pups. Grew into a fine hen, but she ran with the dogs, ate under the table, and slept on the hearth. She was totally wild, and no great egg-layer. But the dogs accepted her, and she thought herself one of them. That one over there," he gestured toward Elspeth, "is a chick among pups."

"Ah. What happened to yer wee hen?"

Duncan shrugged. "She was bested by a neighbor's hound and eaten."

Alasdair blinked, eyes wide.

"Do you dare to cross the stream, Ruari MacDonald?" she yelled. "If you reived the cattle that went missing from Angus Simsons' land, if you laid a hand on that old man and a kinsman of the MacShimi, come and get your due payment here and now!"

"Enough, girl!" Magnus stepped down into the water.

"Angus was beaten that night," she said. "Would you have him go unavenged?"

"We will cross the water when we please!" one of the MacDonalds shouted. "Such is not possible for you, witch!"

"Hah, witches cannot cross a running stream!" yelled another MacDonald. He shielded his eyes. "Watch out for her
Droch Shùil
, her Evil Eye!"

"Hold your wicked tongues!" Kenneth hollered. He and the other Frasers splashed down into the water, ready to defend their cousin.

"Fools!" Callum shouted. "Elspeth is a
taibhsear
, and you will treat her with respect!"

"We MacDonalds wear rowan in our bonnets as protection from witches!" said a rusty-haired MacDonald. His companions laughed.

Elspeth surged forward. "I will cross this water, and you will need protection from my dirk!" She charged through the water with a phalanx of cousins at her heels.

Unsure if the boys meant to stop her or support her, Duncan dismounted and ran to the bank. Alasdair was close behind. Such disputes easily drew blood in the Highlands, and Duncan knew that all too well.

Reaching the water's edge, he stepped down, the chill striking his legs even through his woolen trews and high boots. When he was within arm's distance of the virago, he lurched forward between her brawny cousins, ready to lay a hand on her and haul her unchivalrously back to the bank.

Abruptly, as if they had all struck a stone wall, the young men in front of him stopped, and Duncan knocked into one of them. Tall enough to measure with the tallest of the lot, he looked over Magnus's shoulder.

Elspeth had halted, and now stood still, water swirling around her legs. She neither spoke nor moved as she looked up at the sky.

Duncan looked up at the sky, too, expecting to see some awful sight. Only a few fat clouds drifted over the sun. What the devil was going on here?

"What—" he began.

"Quiet," Alasdair murmured, having followed to join them in the stream.

The girl stared upward, her eyes crystalline gray, as if filled with light. Duncan thought of a painting he had once seen of an angel with the same limpid, beautiful eyes as this girl, wide and innocent and holy. But this brawling wench was hardly an angel.

He glanced around. All the men, including the MacDonalds on the far bank, were as still as if they were at Mass. The jaws of the MacDonalds, he noted then, hung open stupidly.