Chapter Text
Ewen lifted up his head, though the effort cost him. In the dim filthy light of the shieling, he saw a shadow cross the floor to perch beside him; a long neck curved down, and before his face he saw a familiar yellow eye.
“Captain Windham,” he rasped, “Keith–” a fit of coughing cut short his words, but the tremulous joy still rose up within him, seizing at his throat like tears.
The heron billed at his sweat-damp hair, brushing it fitfully from his face. He would groom his mate so, Ewen supposed, in some bank of reeds beside a lake; he tried to envision it, the wide downy nest, but all he could see were the lapping waters of Loch na h-Iolaire.
The heron gave a soft croak.
“Ach, don’t fret,” he whispered. He put out a hand in reassurance; he no sooner felt smooth primaries beneath his fingers than another wave of pain promised to set him retching again. His arm trembled.
They had been about to shoot him– he had stared down the muskets, and felt nothing but fatigue– and then a shadow had fallen on the ground, and he had looked up to see the heron’s broad wings overhead. He was not wholly certain what had passed after that. Yet here he was, breathing at least; he could only think that Windham had saved him.
He heard small trills of distress above him, and wished with all his heart he might do something to relieve them. Keith ought not to be suffering so on his account. But Ewen had only the strength to stay composed. He forced himself to breathe slow and shallow, and for long stretches could think of nothing else.
He must have slept at some point, for he dreamed; dreamed that human hands were binding his wounds, and that they lingered over the scar on his palm, left by Keith’s sword.
They talked of Neil, of Culloden, and, he thought, of Lochiel– the scene drifted in and out, coherent without making sense as dreams often were.
“When I saw you in the valley below me,” said Keith, something queer in his voice, “I near fell out of the sky. The men were readying to fire.”
Ewen coughed. “I think I can never repay you.”
“There is no debt. You must know that.”
A flask was raised to his lips; cool water filled his mouth. He swallowed with difficulty. The wound in his leg throbbed like a pulse.
Ewen felt a sudden urgency– the thought that he should die, without making Keith understand what he had done for him, without telling him how grateful–
“No– you needn’t speak of that now,” Keith said roughly, cutting him off.
“I must. And I must speak of other things, too; I have never told you, you are too–”
He laid two fingers on Ewen’s lips. “Whisht. We’ll meet again, once there is a peace; you can tell me my faults then.”
His fingertips were cold; they warmed as Ewen’s breath touched them.
Morning came, and Keith was gone– and it was not many days before Ewen wished he had died.
Smoke fumed from the damp wood on the campfire, stinging the eyes of the soldiers crowded round it. They had been on quick-march the past three days, and were worn to the bone; the chill Highland wind was harsher than they were accustomed to. The men pulled their red coats tighter and chafed their hands together, muttering to one another.
“Heroes, the major says,” groused a private with a thick Yorkshire burr. “There’s a line we’ve heard afore. Who’ll cheer us, I want to know, for freezing all our toes off hunting Lochiel through the heather?”
“Better than another mopping-up party,” said the man sat next to him on the gnarled log.
There was a general murmur of agreement. The Englishmen– and Welshmen, and Irishmen, and Lowland Scots, as they happened to be– had no particular tenderness for the barbarous Highlanders, and felt less qualm than they might have about dragging likely rebels out of hiding and butchering them, but they none of them liked the work. It was not the sort of duty of which a man could be proud.
The branches of the thicket they huddled beside clattered softly, and the Yorkshire private looked up– but there was only the dark overhang of the trees, and the gleam of May primroses deeper in, pale and yellow as bone.
“Drink’s all gone, I suppose,” said a glum Midlands voice. Upon being informed that his surmise was correct, the Midlander swore and was silent.
The Yorkshire private coughed. “When do we make Loch Arkaig?”
“We,” replied his companion on the log, “don’t know nothing about Loch Arkaig, nor Ben Loy, nor any secret cave neither. We are marching till we stop, and orders on arrival. Are you an army man or not?”
“Don’t be daft. You–” some instinct made the Yorkshire private lower his voice– “you heard about the Scottish lord, back at Fort Augustus, as gave up his chieftain. I saw Captain Greening come running out the gaol to command; and next day we was off.”
“Doesn’t matter what I heard. As far as you and I are concerned, lad, there’s not a Cameron in the fort, nor a Greening neither.”
“If only,” cracked the scarred old fellow raking the coals, and the men snickered.
A high creaking overhead put an end to the laughter. The soldiers stilled– the sentry leaning at the edge of the clearing bolted upright– the Yorkshire private saw a branch that leaned down over the camp leap and shiver, as though it had been suddenly relieved of a weight. He looked off into the night, but it was wide and bleak and empty as it had ever been. The tree groaned once more and was silent.
A couple of leaves fluttered down into the fire, and were consumed.
Ewen ought not, by now, have been been surprised to see Keith Windham again. Their paths had crossed time and again, against all chance; in all likelihood he would be standing in the crowd when Ewen was hanged. Yet when he heard a scratching at the wall above, and raised his eyes to see a long grey shape slip through the narrow window, he felt his heart freeze within him. Even from a man so devoid of honor as the major, he had not expected this.
Ewen turned his face to the wall, and so heard rather than saw the heron light upon the flagstones. The click of talons was succeeded by the clink of steel buckles, the hollow sound of shoe heels against the flags. Light as anything, he felt a hand upon his shoulder.
“Do not touch me,” Ewen said dully.
At once the pressure was gone. He heard a soft exhalation.
“Ewen– Captain Cameron–” said Keith, “will not you look at me?”
Deliberately, Ewen turned. Keith stood over him in all his officer’s finery; it made him the more aware of his dishevelment. They had been of equal rank not long ago; he supposed one was not an officer anymore, when one’s army was destroyed.
Whatever Keith saw in his face, it set him aback.
“I came as soon as I was able,” said he.
“Just in time,” Ewen agreed. “You have made me a traitor, Major Windham; I expect you will be promoted.”
The ferocity in his eyes was bewildering. “What have they done to you? When I heard– I knew you would never have informed except under torture.”
Ewen almost laughed. He could remember little of the past weeks, except misery and exhaustion, sharp voices and rough hands– but a beating, a ducking, a broken limb, he would have recalled. So much for brave Cameron of Ardroy; in the end it had taken very little.
Keith appeared not to agree. Ewen did not understand why he had come; it could be nothing to him whether his ends had been achieved by less agreeable means than he had intended. Yet here he was, stricken, pleading his case, when Ewen had very obligingly betrayed his own kin for him. Why, the capture of Lochiel might even be the making of his career.
After that assertion Keith was speechless. Then he rallied. “How can you imagine I would do such a thing? Knowing what I know of captivity–”
“Then you know,” said Ewen, “that I have no desire to speak to the man who sent me here.”
“Sent you here? I never–”
“Did you not,” Ewen spat, “suggest to Major Guthrie that I might be useful? He questioned me about Lochiel. How could he have known, if not from you?”
A hit– Keith looked away. “I admit I hinted to him. It was all I could think of, to spare your life. I appeared as if from nowhere, no guide, no horse; I had to give– some explanation for my presence there, and my interest in you.”
“And so you played the spy. Very neatly, no less– delivering me into his hands and disappearing like the wind. No debt, indeed. I ought to have known I could never trust you– a wild flighty creature, and an Englishman besides! With nothing to bind you I suppose hunting down your prey is all that matters.”
Keith drew a sharp breath. Ewen waited almost with relief for an angry retort– anything to drive him off– but when he spoke at last he sounded grieved.
“I deserve that you should think so. But I swear to you, Ardroy, all I intended was that you should live. You did not hold me when you could have; I will not let you live to regret it. I owe you more than obligation.”
“Leave me,” said Ewen, almost pleading now. “The Elector’s men will be at Beinn Bhreac even now; we have both done and said enough.”
“Hold– Beinn Bhreac?” Keith asked, something new in his voice.
“Yes, by Loch Arkaig.” He regretted the words as soon as they left his mouth. “We spoke of the place– before. You heard, of course, that I– that I spoke of it after.”
“Yes,” he said slowly, “I overheard some men of the 64th gossiping, when I was flying my dispatches to Inverness. I rested on a branch nearby; they spoke of Loch Arkaig. But Ardroy– it was Beinn Laoigh they said they were bound for.”
Ewen stared.
It all made a dangerous kind of sense, once explained. The truth in dreams was not always the truth in waking; asleep, he might have told Greening a truth that would be no use to him. He had been too shattered, coming to in his cell with that man smirking down at him, informing him lightly that he had broken after all, to pay much heed to details. Yet even glancing against the thought was like pressing at a new burn– a warning flash of pain to prevent further harm.
“You swear to me that this is the truth?” His throat ached.
“As far as I know. And I hope– I hope for your sake that Lochiel evades capture. I never meant for this to happen; by God, I will balance the scales again.”
He was afraid to believe, but the raw remorse in Keith’s voice sounded all too real. He thought if this too were a lie something in him would crack for good.
“The wrong name…” Ewen said, wondering. A sudden fear took him. “But you will be obligated to inform your superiors. Your duty demands it. If–”
“I’d not tell them if I were ordered,” Keith fired back.
There was that sharp, feral look. Ewen had used to think on it with a strange tenderness, before Major Guthrie; now he felt a flicker of the same emotion.
“God bless you, Major Windham– Keith. Keith. It is more than I can say, to know that you– but your career must not suffer on my account,” he said, no sarcasm now.
Oddly enough, Keith smiled at that: a crooked smile, the humor of which Ewen could not parse. Now that he had no sustaining anger to cling to, exhaustion gripped him once more.
“Oh, but I have already determined it will,” said Keith.
“What… whatever can you mean?”
He paused. “You did me a great favor once, when you had every incentive to do me a worse harm.”
Ewen shook his head wearily. “It was nothing. I would do it again.”
Keith looked abruptly to the door, and then back to him. “Do you ever think of your home? Of Loch na h-Iolaire– of your wife?”
He had been almost convinced that Keith was not a cruel man. “What a question!” he said, eyes burning.
“And if you had the chance–” Keith broke off. “Damn me for a coward,” he muttered. “We have not much time. I can bring you back to Ardroy, if you consent to it– though I fear you won’t like the method.”
Ewen could hear his own breathing, and consciously steadied it. “Please, don’t– don’t say such things, if you are not serious. You would certainly be broken for freeing a prisoner; you might well be hanged.”
“I am well aware,” Keith said dryly– though he looked rather ill. “But if Cumberland wishes me court-martialed he must catch me first. Will you let me take you or nay?”
It was selfish, damnably selfish even to consider such a thing.
“Yes,” he whispered, closing his eyes a moment. “I will go with you.”
Keith clasped his hand.
“But how can it be done?” he said, gazing down at their intertwined fingers. “Do you propose to dress me as a washerwoman?”
Curiously, Major Windham colored a little. “There is a form,” he said, and Ewen knew they would not be leaving by the door. “These old methods– they do not always accord with our notions of– it is a disagreeable thing.”
“You saved my life. Whatever you must do, I allow it.”
“Very well.” The words were clipped, almost cold; as he spoke them he sank to his knees in front of Ewen. Carefully, as though expecting to be shaken off, he took his face in his hands. The look on his face made something twist in Ewen’s gut.
“Forgive me,” Keith said, and kissed him. It was not the kiss of a friend.
Ewen gasped into his mouth. He felt a familiar dizziness, as of the world rocking under him; it threatened to overwhelm him now, grew stronger and stronger. There was a rushing all around him– feathers, he thought from a great distance, like the beating of wings.
Alison had been awake all night. It was not rare for worry to needle at her, when she lay idle in bed, but she had found ways to conquer it; she had work enough most days to exhaust herself before sunset.
Tonight, though she had spent the day helping the tenants hide their belongings (and sometimes their kinsmen) and preparing for the journey to France, and the evening mending till her candlewick drowned itself in wax, sleep did not come. When the hands of her mantelpiece clock touched three, she slipped out of bed. Gathering her quilt round her shoulders, she went down to the parlor– dark, empty– and stood by the window. The loch was an inkspill across the valley.
Something moved against the grey night, quite close by. The flicker resolved itself into two shapes. She pressed closer to the frosty glass. Oh, it was impossible to see– she tied the quilt fast with one hand, and with the other seized the musket leaned behind the door. Ewen had left it with them for insurance, when he went to war.
She stepped out into the dark and aimed the gun ahead of her. It was not loaded, but a thief might reasonably think it was; and besides, she had the bayonet.
“Begone,” she called out, high and harsh. “We’ve nothing worth taking here.”
The two shadows winged down toward the house. Only birds, after all– she lowered the musket and strode over to scare them off, only to feel a sudden lurch, as though she had tripped over a stone that was not there. She steadied herself in time to see two human shapes fall in a tangle into the herb garden.
For a moment she stood frozen; her eyes had seen it, but she could not understand. The night was too thick to make out anything beyond silhouettes– but one of the men let out a cry of pain as he struck the ground. She had heard that cry many nights, moments before she awoke in a sweat.
She ran forward and knelt in the dirt beside them. They had crushed the rosemary; the sharp smell of it filled the air.
“Ewen,” she said, “Ewen,” and laid a hand on his back. He stirred, but did not answer.
Beside him, the other man levered himself up to his knees. She recognized his sharp features.
They shared a brief look. Keith Windham struggled to his feet; without a word he slid an arm beneath Ewen, and Alison took his other side. Between the two of them they managed to raise him up, limp as he was, and half-carry him into the house.
“The two of you must leave,” Windham said to her, when they had laid him down upon his bed. ”The garrison will have noticed his absence by now– they’ll not look to Ardroy yet, but ‘tis only a matter of time.”
She nodded. “He’ll come to France with me. We are almost ready; we can be ‘cross the Channel within the week.”
“Good– that is good.” He was frowning at Ewen’s unconscious form. His face was rough and unshaven, and wore a pained expression even in sleep; he was thinner than Alison had ever seen him. Windham’s eyes creased.
“Where will you go?” she asked him, for she had some idea what he must have done, and what it meant.
He hesitated. “I will not be found,” he said at last.
To ask any more might be to put him at risk. “And Ewen– you changed him, I think. Will he be, now–?”
He shook his head.
“No; he is human as ever. But come morning, if you find any feathers in the garden– if you love him, you will destroy them.”
He put his hand over Ewen’s, where it lay on the bed. His thumb traced across Ewen’s knuckles; he must have done it without noticing, for he glanced at Alison with some alarm. The look told her more than the action had done.
“If you would be so good,” he said quietly, “tell him–” he cut himself off. “No. Tell him nothing; there would be no use. I know he is in good hands with you; and so I take my leave.”
Men’s voices took on a peculiar, fragile rasp when they were on the verge of tears. She had heard it often enough these past few years, seen enough brave men driven to the limits of endurance, to recognize that brittle timbre. Windham quit the room almost silently. She nearly caught his arm, asked him to stay– but for his own safety it was better he went.
Alone with Ewen, in the house where they had never, and might never, live together as man and wife, she sat beside him and watched the cracks in the ceiling.
She woke to Ewen stroking her hair. Watery morning light fell across the counterpane. She struggled upright, and saw his weary smile; for some time there was no need to speak.
When she drew back and wiped at her eyes, he caught her hands up in his own and gently dried her face himself.
“I dreamed of doing that,” he said, his voice not so strong as she remembered. “Of course, I thought I would catch you up in my arms first. That I suppose I had better not try.”
“Not yet,” she said, laughing in spite of herself– a little catch of breath.
Between their clasped hands she felt his wedding-ring, skin-warm; beside it something unfamiliar curved beneath her fingers. She held up his hand. On the middle finger, lodging comfortably against the golden band, was another ring: a smooth braided circle of dense, soft fibers, the color of a stormcloud.
“What a curious ring,” she said, mind working. “I cannot tell what it is woven of.”
Ewen’s eyes widened when he saw it. Watching his face, Alison recalled Major Windham’s words– when he murmured,
“Why, it is heron feathers,” she was expecting the answer.
Then he colored and looked away, and spoke no more on the matter.
They had come back to Ardroy, and still Ewen was quiet.
Word had come at last that the English had ceased searching for him; he had never been found, and was assumed to have perished while in hiding. Winter in the Highlands was not forgiving. Ownership of Ardroy had passed to Alison; they had agreed as much, in the hastily drawn-up marriage articles. It had seemed important, at the time, to prepare for the possibility that they would have no children. Aunt Margaret had written to say the property seemed secure– Alison, unlike some women, had not been an active participant in the Rising. A harmless widow could be disregarded, if not trusted. It was sweet relief to be home again; yet high spirits would not come.
Alison, deep down within herself, had always harbored some doubts about their connection. Not about her feelings for Ewen– those had only grown, over the cold hard years– but their lives together had been dominated by absence and by suffering. She had known him as a charming young student– a soldier kissing her farewell– an exile, wounded and withdrawn– she was not sure she knew him as a man. When they married there had been no time for such scruples; yet she had still felt that space between them, and after their one night together the distance had widened still further. Now they had been husband and wife for over a year, and he talked of his distress only in his sleep. The work of running Ardroy occupied them both; as Alison had found when she had been resolving herself to the thought that she would never see him again, it was not enough to banish unhappiness.
He still wore the other ring. She saw him sometimes, staring out at the mountains, an odd inward look upon his face that made him seem older than his few years, turning it upon his finger.
In France he had eventually stopped waking in the middle of the night; his sleep was not easy, but he had been able to rest. Now, more often than not, she would wake in the small hours to find his side of the bed cold. The one time she had risen to follow him, she had found him in the parlor, regarding the cold ashes in the hearth; a breeze from the window, open beside him, stirred his hair. Alison had returned to bed before he spied her. Neither of them spoke of the war, or of Keith Windham; it felt wrong, somehow, to broach the subject without cause.
The war had ended, and the Highlands ostensibly been pacified– yet the aftershocks of the fighting still shivered through all of Scotland, spitting up tragedy and farce long after the declaration of peace. A son or brother gone with the fighting might turn up dead after many long months; the dead might walk again.
The light in the stillroom was flat and grey, the color of an afternoon that promised rain, when the heavy knock came. Alison raised her head– she exchanged a look of alarm with Aunt Margaret. Before she could go to issue a greeting, or draw the bolt, a ragged man stumbled through the door. His face was horribly scarred; Alison did not recognize him until Aunt Margaret, at her side, cried out,
“Lachlan! Lachlan MacMartin, can it be you?”
He looked between them, lips white. “Miss Cameron– Lady Ardroy,” he said in Gaelic, “I am come to beg your forgiveness. I heard that Mac ‘ic Alein had–”
There were tears in his eyes.
“It is my fault he is dead,” he got out. “I had word that he was taken from the fort, but I followed too late. I could not find him, and– and he was killed.”
“Killed?” Alison repeated. She had heard all manner of rumors about Ewen’s fate; Lachlan’s words, though, seemed to hold hard certainty.
“I failed him as I always have,” he said, plain as a dagger. “I could not kill the heron, though I knew I must– I could not find him after Culloden, before the Englishman betrayed him– and I lost him again when the same man took him from the prison, lost him for good.”
“Oh, Lachlan, no,” said Aunt Margaret, but he carried on without hearing.
“It was the false information, I am sure. The English major hoped to make his name on the capture of Lochiel, or the Prince, and he could not bear to be thwarted. Mac ‘ic Ailein treated that man with honor, uncanny though he was– and he had so little of his own that he abandoned his post to seize an imprisoned man and take him out to the hills to murder him!”
Alison put a hand on his shoulder; he was thin, and so tense that his arm felt more stone than flesh.
“Whatever rumor has reached you– it is not so.”
He shook his head. “I heard the soldiers at the garrison talking of it. Even the English say the major has disgraced himself.”
The door groaned behind them. Alison saw Lachlan’s face slacken with astonishment.
“Major Windham, disgraced himself?” came Ewen’s quiet, disbelieving voice. “Lachlan MacMartin, he saved my life.”
After the initial shock had subsided, and Ewen had crushed Lachlan in his arms and kissed him while he shook, they argued.
Lachlan was astonished that Major Windham could have done so selfless a thing, after selling Ewen for his own gain; Ewen defended him hotly.
“He was nothing but good to me,” he said, eyes still wet, face pale. “And all his service, after I did him great harm.”
“You? You honored his parole– let him sleep by your side, on campaign.”
“And thought myself kind for it. If I had not–” His mouth twisted, unusually bitter. “I came very close to making the greatest mistake of my life, and he forgave me it– came back for me, more than once. You are my brother, Lachlan– I thought I should never see you again in this life– but you’ll not speak ill of him.”
That night, when Alison felt the mattress shift and crackle beside her, she followed.
She found Ewen on the settee in the parlor, his nightshirt glowing pale in the dark. He looked up at her approach, and pushed his hair out of his eyes.
“I am sorry I woke you,” said he, voice low.
Alison came to sit by him. She took his hand in both her own, observing the two rings side by side: the glint of one, and the subtle sheen of the other.
“Where do you suppose he is?” she asked.
He looked at her with some surprise. “I wish I knew. Home with his family in England, I sometimes hope; yet he would not be so foolish. He must be sought for, after what he did.” She could hear the effort he made to keep the sorrow from his voice, but it bled through nevertheless. “Hunted, for my sake– and I can never know what became of him!”
“Major Windham seemed a hardy creature. I am sure he is–” unharmed felt perilously close to a lie.
“I was pronounced dead. He may be in truth.”
The house was still around them.
“Do you know what he meant,” she asked, “by putting that ring upon your hand?”
“I think it was an offering– of an obligation, a debt.” Then he shook his head. “That, and more than that. Alison, I–”
She heard the dry click of his throat as he swallowed. “He kissed me, the night he broke me from Fort Augustus. I never told you that. It was part of the magic, but the way he– I felt– I knew then what it meant.”
Alison felt a distant conviction that she would be jealous later; now, sitting together on the fleeting border of sleep and waking, she felt only curiosity.
“Do you love him?” she asked. “As you love me, I mean.”
He looked at her with gratitude; then the warmth dimmed.
“I hardly know,” said he. “I had no time to find out.”
Alison held up their joined hands, vow-like.
“Well– God willing, you shall.”
It was not, perhaps, an appropriate prayer– surely it was against orthodoxy, to wish a husband’s infidelity after he had sworn the opposite, and moreover she was not sure how much the Lord or the Devil had to do with such folk as Major Windham– but when Ewen pulled her to him and kissed her as though he were really there, as he had done when they were a boy and girl who had never seen war, she felt sure in the words.
Ewen had been sure somehow that he should never speak of Keith again. He had memories, dreamlike, and a ring– these would have to suffice.
It was odd that it should feel so natural, then, when Alison said to him the next day as they looked over the books,
“What did you mean, when you told Lachlan you had made a mistake toward Major Windham?”
Ewen’s quill stilled in its scratching; he set it aside, so as not to blot the page.
“I– mistook the nature of our parole agreement. When I brought him to Ardroy there was another contract formed which I did not know of. He feared I intended–” To be overly direct felt like betraying a secret.
Alison’s expression cleared. “I knew an Irishwoman in France, a Fitzgerald; she told me once of Áine and the Earl.”
He nodded.
“I never liked that tale,” she said, returning to her column of expenditures. “I am glad you are no Lord Desmond.”
He woke with a start– there was the canopy of his bed, there the door to the hall, all around the familiar dark of Ardroy house. Alison, by her breathing, was awake beside him. Ewen turned toward her, and her hand settled over his ribs, a small, reassuring weight like a ship’s anchor.
“Does it trouble you,” he asked, “that Keith is a man?” Or near enough; in the eyes of the judges who tried sodomy cases he must certainly qualify.
She made a noise of consideration. “In some respects.” Her voice was low, roughened by sleep. “A man may fight– may meet another man as an equal– weather with him what women are shielded from. Oh, Ewen,” said she, hearing his intake of breath, “I don’t envy you the war; I had enough of it from where I stood. But– I think I do fear that your major has parts of you I never can.”
“Oh,” said Ewen, and pressed his face the curve where her neck met her shoulder. “If that is all–” he stifled a yawn– “you can have all you like of me. I tried before to protect you, as a husband ought; it did not answer. You and Keith may share me, sorrow and all, and no need to fight over the pieces.”
Her hand moved, sliding down his flank, and he felt a shiver of interest. It drifted down to his wrist, lying between them and brushed across the back of his hand.
“I wish,” he murmured, “there were some way to find him.”
“There might be,” said Alison carefully, and closed her hand over his, where he wore the rings.
He grew at once more alert. “No– I couldn’t.”
“He gave it you of his own free will. If a single feather forges so powerful a chain–” her words halted. “No, I see,” she said after a moment. “A chain, indeed. You are right, Ewen; I am sorry to have suggested it.”
He kissed her temple. “I’ll not drag him by his lead, no matter if he gave it from his own hand. He’ll come or no, that’s all.”
He said it, and meant it; but now when he traced the braided ring on his finger he imagined it on Keith Windham’s hand. The supernatural had, so far, been uncomplicated, almost common-sense in its logic. It would take little more than reaching out. He was ashamed at the thought, but it would not be banished.
The months ran on in their course, autumn sharpening into winter, and winter sinking its teeth deep. The harvest had been lean, with not so many people to bring it in as there might have been; they were hard put to see that everyone at Ardroy went fed. Now more often it was Alison who could not sleep; on those nights they went down to the parlor and talked, sometimes until the sky lightened.
December passed, and January– the drifts of snow began to give way to freezing, fitful storms. One morning after heavy sleet he stepped outside to find the branches of the trees limned with ice. One early flower by the toe of his shoe was bowed down by the weight.
Overhead a sharp crack resounded, as of frozen twigs breaking, and wingbeats– he raised his head. Only a hawk– it caught the edge of an updraft and winged away, dark against the glowering grey clouds. ‘Twas no time to be a hunting bird, with all the prey fled to their dens or the bottom of frozen lochs. He stood a while longer– but the sky remained empty.
The thaw continued; the hills turned to mud, and leaf by leaf breathed green again. When his leg permitted, he spent long hours walking over the grazing slopes, marking to himself the place where a wall had tumbled down, or the bank of a burn been undercut by the rapid water. His stride was yet stiff, and a little clumsy; still, to look down over the valley with his muscles burning and see smoke rising from chimneys, the tops of the trees bronze with new growth, was to him worth the climb.
Leaning upon his stick, he was seized by a memory: another view of Ardroy, very like, its habitations and mountain slopes as small and precise as inked features on a map. The vision, though, paled in comparison with the sensation that echoed through him in its wake– sweeping weightlessness, burning wind and the gut-wrench of great speed. The land rushing by beneath him, moonlit and silent– he had never seen the like.
When he heard thunder break, almost overhead, his hand tightened in surprise around the stick. He had not smelled the rain on the wind, though it was blowing strong. Rousing himself, he began the long scramble down towards Ardroy house.
The rain had swept over the ridge in a long grey curtain; Ewen had only just managed to reach the house before the storm did. Now water ran in streams down the hill into the loch, and the high lonely keening of the wind could be heard faint outside the windows. He could almost fancy it spoke. A good sign; the spring storms had come every year he could remember, and heralded better weather to follow. He grasped the edge of his cloak, drawing it closer round him– the two rings on his hand caught the light. Ewen determinedly raised his eyes. Out on the edge of sight, the hills were dissolving into the sky.
He stilled. Yes– a cry, almost inaudible over the rain. Standing in the doorway, he could see little but the mist rising over the heather. There, again– not human, but he knew the voice.
Ewen took the steps at one bound– his leg scolded him for it– and strode out into the storm. The sound had died off; he turned his head to and fro as he went. The ground rose under him, climbing toward the ridge; near the peak there was a pale grey smudge against the heather. He quickened his pace. Rain beat down upon his head, and dripping strands of hair slid into his face.
The heron looked up at him. It was huddled close to the ground, feathers ruffled; one wing trailed awkwardly against the heather. Carefully, carefully, Ewen gathered it up, held the creature against his chest. Water dripped off the end of his nose onto grey feathers, and the heron shivered.
His leg throbbed, but his burden weighed almost nothing. Alison met him at the door; her eyes widened when she saw what he held.
“He must go by the fire,” she said.
She took the creature into her arms while Ewen unbelted his plaid– outlawed now, but Ardroy was some ways from the nearest fort– and spread it on the flagstones before the hearth. The heron looked small wrapped in its folds. Still its wing was off-kilter; half-concealed by the primaries was a long livid gash.
Ewen turned to search for water, rags, something that might be torn up for bandages. His neckcloth might suffice; he had just begun to work at the wet linen when he heard Alison gasp.
He spun round, cravat in hand, to see Keith Windham stretched on the floor, scratched and mudstained, in only his shirt and Ewen’s plaid.
Ewen hurried back to the fireside. “Keith–”
He looked up; the heron yellow was already fading from his irises. There was a rent in his sleeve, stained with blood; his hair fell into his face, longer than Ewen had ever seen it. His hand twitched. Ewen took it between his own, and held it fast until Keith’s eyes closed and his shaky breathing evened into sleep.