Heart of Stone by Rebecca Ruger

Chapter Sixteen

“So, there it is, then.” Finn’s voice was swathed in pleasant surprise, even as the cogs still turned in his head, considering what all this meant.

“We’re really doing it.” Artur said, a smile of wonder creasing his weathered face.

With his hands on his hips, Calum shrugged, but felt his own hope rising as well, mayhap mingled with some joy, at the very idea.

“Aye, but four more persons,” Tomag said, referring to the addition of the girls from Murkle. “Changes everything, I would think.”

“But does it?” Calum had to wonder.

“How can it no’?” Finn asked.

“We were intending to simplify,” Artur reminded him. “And I’m all for it, but four young charges—and bald-headed lasses at that—dinna simplify anything.”

Calum shrugged, focused on convincing them. “So we build a bigger croft, or extra crofts. And Julianna is a mam, no’ just a friend. The intent was peace. And community. Aye, and we’re already growing.”

“Take more coin,” Finn advised.

“Which we can earn here as needed,” Calum supposed. “Or hire out—wouldn’t be the first time we made coin from our swords.”

Artur was more amenable to the possibilities. “Dinna suppose Julianna’d let us steal what we need.”

Finn snorted.

“I’m no’ sure that’s how we’d want to start our new lives,” Calum guessed. With some lightness, he suggested to his captain, “Be nice, and well worth it, if you can finally rest that leg, aye?”

“Aye, I’m no’ pecking at that,” Finn was quick to say. “Just thought it’d be me and the lads, sitting around the cozy croft, sipping ale and telling tales of heads we’ve rolled and battles we’d fought and women we wished we’d bedded.”

“Christ, Finn,” said Artur, a grin detected in his tone, “you’re wanting a barracks then and no’ a home.”

Calum steered them back to the matter at hand. “Gabriel’s putting everything right there in front of us. I’d favor being a vassal to Gabriel with a feu-ferme holding than having any contract with another. Naturally, no hard feelings to any who choose a different path.” He let his gaze wander over the lads, Peadar and Tomag and Booth.

“Nothing to call me back to Caerhayes,” Peadar said, grinning.

Booth lifted his hand in a vague gesture. “Got my family right here.”

Artur smacked Booth on his back, his eyes shining with a paternal pride.

Everyone turned to Tomag, whose attention had been given to the floor of Blackwood’s hall. When he raised his gaze, he blew out a long breath and looked at Calum. “As long as we still fight for Scotland, I’ll go where ye go.”

“Bluidy hell,” Calum said, smiling and clapping his hands once. “There it is, lads.”

“No’ going to happen overnight, though,” Artur cautioned.

“Nothing good ever does,” Calum said. “Soon as Julianna wakes, we’ll talk more with Gabriel, maybe ride out to those acres up north.”

Artur said with some anguish, “We’ve got to do better by her going forward.”

Starkly reminded of how he had failed her thus far, Calum nodded, his throat suddenly tight and flushed with heat.

“And now,” Artur added, “by extension, those lasses.”

“We ought—” Finn began but was interrupted by shrieks from the second floor landing.

“Sir! Sir!” Three of the girls were leaning over the carved wooden railing.

Calum pivoted and was bounding up the steps even as the littlest one continued to holler.

“She’s awake. She’s awake!”

Upon the second floor, the girls were rushing down the corridor toward the chamber where lie Julianna, the black-eyed lass waving him forward with beaming eyes and great excitement.

He slowed his steps at the threshold, his gaze going immediately to the bed as he entered.

She was talking with the oldest lass, that it was moment before she raised her gaze to Calum. She was neither sitting up nor flat upon the mattress, but somewhere in between, propped upon several goose feather pillows.

He walked slowly toward the bed, while Marta squirmed around him and the men gathered behind him. As he heard Finn’s low curse and someone else’s hissed breath, Calum realized he should have warned them about what had been done to her hair.

Her eyes were no longer glassy. Tired yet, and rimmed with gray circles, though somehow still magnificent, he thought. Her color was good, healthy, and her expression displayed none of what he’d encountered yesterday, not the ghostly ambivalence or the worrisome feverishness.

But then she didn’t or couldn’t meet his gaze after the initial meeting, or that of any other person, her attention fixed on some point at the end of the mattress.

“How do you feel?” Calum said when he stood near the bed, next to the lass who sat at her side, Brida, he’d since learned. He left off scolding Marta for climbing onto the mattress as well, as it seemed to disturb Julianna not at all. “Better?” He prodded.

She swallowed and nodded. “Better, yes.”

“I’ve three pence says she’s hungry,” Finn said from the doorway, forcing a cheeriness Calum would never believe he felt.

She grinned at this, though it was lax and brief, didn’t go anywhere near her eyes. This did not concern Calum, as he supposed she was merely sleepy yet and quite discomfited by her shorn locks.

“Aye then,” said Finn haltingly, “come on, all you scruffy-headed wee folk. Let’s go and get her grub before she turns snarly on us.”

The lasses did not move, did not leave her, until she sent her gaze round to each of them and nodded, trying again to smile. “Go on. It’s all right. Save me anything that has fruits or raisins.”

One of them giggled and they did all scramble from the room, following Finn and the rest of the MacKinnons that Calum was left alone with Julianna in the bedchamber.

He did not take the seat where Brida had perched but stood beside the bed. He looped his thumbs into his belt and wondered if she would meet his eye.

“Where are we?” Was the first thing she asked.

She was trying to sit up. Naturally, it was in him to assist her, imagining she must be weak and her back sore. He unfolded his arms but held back his aid. She was yet garbed in only the thin nightrail, mayhap wore nothing beneath it, that any touching of her would be considered rather intimate with so flimsy a fabric between them. At any rate, she managed it herself, and whether or not she held him in contempt for his lack of support, she did not show it. She did, though, clutch the heavy counterpane up and over her chest.

“Blackwood,” he said, recalling her question. “Home to the Jamisons and their laird, Gabriel.”

“Friend then? Not foe?”

“Aye, he’s a friend of mine. You’ll meet him soon.”

She nodded and consulted the bedclothes, picking idly at the pilled wool.

“Julianna—”

“I should—”

They’d spoken at the same time. And now, she lifted her green eyes to him.

At the inclination of his head, she said, “I should express my...my very sincere gratitude for what you have done for us, for me and the girls.”

“’Twas done for you, Julianna.” Only you.

Another nod. “It’s only that...that place, Murkle is not...they’re not good people.”

“Aye, I ken that now.” And thus, it was the reason for the depth of his acute remorse, because of the condition she was in now. “When you’re better, we’ll write everything down, send the complaint off to the bishop. It will be addressed, Julianna.”

“I would appreciate that.” She flexed her fingers, uneasy now.

“Are you...well?” He stammered, unable at all times to keep his tortured gaze from her cropped hair. “For now?”

“I’m fine, Calum.”

Her response did not surprise him, but he still didn’t like it. “You say that,” he said. “You say that after I’ve stolen you from your home and after you’ve been assaulted at Robbie’s and after I abandoned you and after they—Jesu—after they did that to you.” He lifted his hand and flung it out toward the top of her head. “Christ, Julianna, stop trying to make me and everyone else feel better.” All this came in a harsh, raw voice.

Her eyes went glassy as tears pooled. Her slim shoulders moved upward a wee bit while her lip quivered and Calum’s heart broke.

“I will be fine,” she said blandly. “I don’t have it in me anymore to....I was not trying to make you feel better, but myself.”

“I’m sorry, Julianna,” he said, his voice ragged. “I can only say I honestly thought it was for the best, leaving you there as opposed to taking chances with your life at Caerhayes.”

“I know.” She wasn’t looking at him again, gave all her notice to her hands, wringing in her lap.

“I owe you a greater apology though,” he went on, “for all the...trouble I’ve caused you.” He cleared his throat and added, “Since the beginning, for being boorish and not listening to you, for—”

Julianna lifted her hand, forestalling any further inventory of his crimes against her.

Calum was sure her gaze only reached his hand, upon his hip, when she spoke.

“Can we just...put it all behind us? We know different truths now. I will not hold against you your behavior...at the beginning. Nor you mine, I should hope.”

He nodded, bitten hard by how flat her voice was, minus even a whisper of affect, as if she had no emotion left at all.

“What now?” She asked then.

“We’ll stay on here for a while.” He was vague, believing now was not the time to propose to her what he had been dreaming on for a bit.

And then Julianna swiped hard at his dream, dashing it all away with words that dropped like stones between them.

“I thought I might beg a boon from you, to make arrangements for me and the girls to get to my sister’s house in Killin.”

With gritted teeth, Calum stared at her that she pressed on, “Or mayhap your friend, Gabriel Jamison, might be able to arrange travel for us.”

Neither option had been presented as a question that Calum understood he had no choice in the matter. If she weren’t to be his prisoner, she obviously wanted nothing to do with him, as he knew he was done keeping her against her will.

“I’ll see what can be done.” As an afterthought, he thought to buy himself some time. “Might take a few days.”

***

SHE WAS FORCED BY THEwoman who managed Blackwood, the stern but kind Fenella, to remain abed all throughout the day. It wasn’t awful, as she was lethargic yet and her back was very tender, and she had plenty of company.

Only the near constant chatter of the girls kept her from dwelling overlong on her stilted conversation with Calum this morning. She was tired of trying to guess what he was thinking, and truthfully, was not of a mind to plague herself with wondering why he’d come back for her. She’d tortured herself from the moment he’d brought her to Murkle until he’d retrieved her yesterday, questioning why he’d—how he could have—left her there. She hadn’t the energy to go through that again and thus determined with a fierce resoluteness that it had been guilt and not one other reason that had seen him returned for her.

She was done with hope.

Brida and Helen brought her a tray after they’d broken their fast. When she’d inquired after Barbara and Marta’s whereabouts, Brida had rolled her eyes.

“Off with the old, squinty man, though he was trying to dodge her, I suspect.”

With Artur then, Julianna understood, a small smile lighting her features for this turn, for Marta’s boldness, that she’d not lost her exuberance so easily as she had her hair. Ah, to be so young and able to regenerate so quickly.

Helen perched next to the bed, on her knees on the floorboards actually, her elbows upon the mattress, while she related everything that had happened from the time Julianna had fainted as they’d escaped Murkle and up until this moment.

“...And then the big one who kissed you—Calum, aye?—he was sore aggrieved all the night because ye were no’ waking. And they put us in our own chamber—and with a feather mattress! Aye, just like this one. Ah, and weren’t we warm and cozy? They presented a feast this morn. Aye, was grander than these wee vittles upon your plate, Julianna. And the really old man keeps calling us crop-tops but I dinna think he says it to be mean. I ken he thinks he’s funny.”

Brida added nothing to all this discourse but that, “Gabriel Jamison is verra handsome.”

Helen made a face. “He’s verra old.”

Brida shrugged, wrinkling her funny nose. “He’s still verra bonny.”

Gracious, Julianna thought, but this was so much better than any conversation they’d ever had at Murkle, which mostly included complaints about that place, or the abbess, or her minions, or the food. Sometimes they’d been silly, but even that usually only included their wistful plans to have vengeance against Sister Agnes.

Marta and Barbara were in and out over the course of the day, excited to share their adventures with Artur and the MacKinnon men. They were not adventures at all, naught but hiking along the ridge that surrounded the castle and then visiting Blackwood’s stables, but to these lasses, who’d known no kindness at all save what they provided each other, surely it seemed as if they’d reached heaven.

Finn came to see her while she dined on roasted pheasant and boiled vegetables that evening and the girls had left her to sup in the hall.

“Aye, and ye’ll hear all about those scamps making friends down there,” he said, taking the chair next to the bed.

“I hope they aren’t getting into any trouble,” Julianna said, tired once more, despite the long day being idle. She forced another bite into her mouth, knowing she needed the sustenance, and caught Finn staring at the top of her head while she chewed.

When he noticed her watching him, he said gently, “It dinna make ye any less bonny, lass. They canna take that from ye.”

“What they stole will not be gone forever. But Finn, honestly, I’m tired of people taking my liberties, without so much as a by-your-leave, and making decisions that should be my own, forcing their will upon me. It isn’t right.” She left off mentioning to Finn that somewhere inside her, she might have joined Calum with that same heartless group where she’d placed Sister Agnes and her minions.

“Aye, I ken you would be.” And then, with some brightness, “But now, that’s all done. We’ve a good thing getting going here, naught but freedom and peace from here on out.”

Julianna wasn’t sure of what he spoke. Blackwood, as welcoming as these people had been, was but a jumping off point for her and the girls. “I’ve asked for arrangements to be made for the girls and me to get on to Killin, where my sister lives.”

The old man sat back in the chair, his mouth dropping open a bit. “What’d ye go and do that for?”

With a little snort of a laugh, Julianna advised, “That’s my plan for myself and the girls. We can live in a secure and friendly environment, and mayhap plan our futures from there.” She hadn’t thought any further than that and hoped Finn didn’t press her for more. Truth be told, while she was sure her sister would welcome her and even the four girls, she hadn’t really any idea about Alice’s husband, or his character or his level of generosity.

Finn stared at her for a long moment while his face was brushed with a mournful expression.

“Dinna ye ken your future is with him?”

She needn’t ask to whom he referred. Him was Calum, she knew.

Mayhap her face showed a matching sorrowfulness as she gave him the heartbreaking truth. “I think not, Finn.” Uneasily, while he pinned her with a contemplative stare, Julianna lifted her hand and gave an unnecessary scratch to her scalp. Finn’s gaze followed her hand and his scowl expanded once more at the reminder of the loss of her hair.

“Aye, I guess ye canna see it now.”

***

MARTA AND HELEN CAMEbursting into Julianna’s borrowed chamber the next morning just as the sun poked through the window high on the outer wall.

“Look what they’ve given us!” Helen cried with excitement. Both she and Marta spun around, glancing down at themselves and their new outfits. The long tunics, which must belong to some other female child inside Blackwood as the fit was fairly close, were naught any different from the habits, being shapeless and made of a coarse linen. However, they were not gray, but a gentle brown instead, and each was outfitted with a thick cord tied around their tiny waists which did give the ensemble a softer silhouette.

Marta stopped her twirling first to announce, “And Artur said we can go wherever we want inside the yard of Blackwood.” Her eyes widened then as she leaned closer toward Julianna. “Or even outside the gate, if we’re well-attended.”

“Well-attended?”

Helen clarified, “I ken he meant if we had one or some of Blackwood’s soldiers with us.”

“Artur will take us, I’m sure,” Marta declared.

Fenella entered then, carrying an ewer of steaming water, followed by Barbara and Brida, the latter carrying strips of linen. Barbara’s hands were stacked with garments, Julianna saw, noting the presence of a fresh cotton shift and a gown of dark blue.

“You’re wanting to be out of these chambers, I’m sure,” said Fenella, “but Teasag said we’re to change the bandages each morning for three days.”

Julianna nodded, thankful for the woman’s attendance and lifted the bed covers away. She sat on the edge of the mattress, with the wood frame just under her thighs, and lowered the borrowed shift away from her shoulders. She unwound the long and winding linen from under her arms, which had been wrapped from the top of her chest, around and around, until the lower part of her stomach to accommodate the length of the flogged skin of her back. She left the end of the long bandage still attached to the salve and the wound on her back, thinking Fenella should remove that so that no healing skin was torn away. With all the linen now separated from the front of her, she leaned over her knees, keeping her front covered, so that Fenella had easy access to her back.

Fenella set up her supplies on the lone bedside table and gently adjusted the chemise yet more, wedging it downward that Julianna’s entire back was bared. Facing the wall and the window, Julianna said to the girls, “We might discuss our intentions going forward.” She felt Fenella gingerly peel away the last end of the linen bandage and thought to occupy the lasses, lest they be overcome with the sight of her scourged back. “I thought we might find refuge at my sister’s home in Killin. You would love Alice. She’s sweet and quite funny, and sometimes—”

“We’re no’ staying here?” Barbara cut in.

Julianna detected a frown in the tone of her words.

“We cannot stay at Blackwood. Gabriel Jamison has been kind to allow us this welcome, but this is not our home.” That forced her to wonder if the lasses had the same idea as she’d so recently had, about staying together. She knew that Brida had no family, that being made an orphan was what had sent her to Murkle in the first place. Marta, likewise, had mentioned sometime in the last few weeks that she’d lived the first seven years of her life at a grand castle as her mother was a serving girl, but when she’d died—of what dear Marta did not know—she’d been passed on to Murkle. But Helen and Barbara, by Julianna’s understanding, had families. True, they had been the ones to give their daughters to the convent, but Julianna wanted to make sure they hadn’t any desire to return to their parents.

Fenella spoke while she continued to peel away the old linen strip. “Ye can stay on here, long as ye need. We dinna get too many visitors this far north, so we’ve plenty of room. Ye dinna want to travel for at least a week, anyhow, lass, until yer back is mended proper.”

“That is very kind, Fenella, and likely until some travel can be arranged for us, we will remain,” Julianna said. “But girls, are we of the same mind? That we will stay together. I’m not exactly sure what trouble we might find ourselves in. I don’t even know if leaving Murkle constitutes any type of crime, but...well, Helen? Barbara? Did you have hopes to return to your families?”

With that, Julianna tilted her head upward, as Helen at least stood before her.

Helen shrugged. “’Twas my brother—he’s all that’s left—that sent me off. I dinna think he’ll want me back.”

From the foot of the bed came Barbara’s small voice. “I think they’d only send me back to Murkle. I want to stay with you.”

“Even if what we’ve done is,” Julianna furthered, “what’s the phrase? A punishable offense?”

Brida added her opinion. “I dinna think they’ll be out searching to reclaim us. Aye, our hair gives us away, but we can cover that easy enough.”

Julianna was startled by the wet cloth that was laid on her back then. But it was soothing and warm that she relaxed soon enough.

“Are we no’ going to stay with the MacKinnons?” Brida asked.

“I believe they are moving on to their home at Caerhayes,” Julianna said as the cloth was lifted away and Fenella began to apply fresh salve. “There would be no welcome for us there, hence my decision to seek my sister’s home in Killin.”

Fenella’s fingers abandoned Julianna’s back at the same time she cried out, “Ye canna be in here now! Out, please, and close that door.”

A shuffling took place. Julianna turned her face over her shoulder while Brida and Barbara dashed toward the portal. Julianna caught a fleeting glimpse of Calum standing in the opening, his fiery gaze upon her exposed back, before Brida pushed closed the door, shutting him out.

Julianna stared at the door while Fenella again attended her wound.

“Och, he’s madder now,” Helen noted.

“Madder than...what?” asked Julianna.

Fenella answered, with a bit of a chuckle. “Well, lass, he weren’t too pleased to ken you’d been whipped. But he hadn’t seen how bad it was though he’d barely left your side while you’d slept at first. Expect less freedom now.”

Julianna said nothing, not quite understanding what Fenella was aiming at.

This was clarified when the housekeeper added, “I dinna expect he stole ye from the convent as naught but a dare or a prank, lass. So I’d no’ be making too many plans to be moving in a different direction than that one. He dinna seem the sort to let go easily.”

While Julianna had no response to give to this, Marta knew no similar hesitation.

“Aye, and then we’ll all be together—Julianna and that big one, Calum; and Artur and us and all the others.”

The delight of her tone gave Julianna pause so that she only closed her eyes now and let the woman finish dressing the torn skin of her back.