Page 53 of Highlanders for the Holidays
“Dinna worry, Page. The winter will be gone afore ye know it, and then come spring we’ll fill the stores. We’ll find a way. We always do.”
Hugh turned to Eleanore and whispered, “What happened here?”
Eleanore placed a finger to her lips, bidding him listen awhile longer.
Hugh glanced about the field, realizing suddenly that he was standing, not in the middle of a celebration as he’d originally imagined, but in the midst of men and women hard at work, rebuilding barns and clearing fields—and yet their smiles and laughter were scarcely dimmed by this fact. The summer blue bonnets were all dead now. The ground was brown and charred. And yet men and women joked and laughed and traded barbs.
Fire?
“Good day to ye, my lady,” said a woman passing by.
“And to ye,” Page greeted the woman with a wave.
“Bless ye mistress for givin’ my girl a sweet tart.”
“’Tis my pleasure,” Page assured the woman, and then she said beneath her breath, so that only her laird husband might possibly hear, “If only everyone were so easily pleased.” Nibbling pensively at her bottom lip, she turned her gaze across the meadow. After a moment, she asked her husband, “What shall we do about him?”
Hugh followed his daughter’s gaze and found her watching a young man, hard at work, lifting up beams for a peasant’s roof. “It pains me to see him at odds.”
“For that, we may thank your Da,” the MacKinnon suggested.
Hugh’s cheeks burned hot.
What had he done now? Of course, he would be their demon, their ogre. He was the monster who stole in at night to steal little children from their beds—
Except that he had.
Not Hugh precisely, though of course, he was the one who’d detained young Malcom for the king. FitzSimon studied the youth a bit closer, realizing with a start that he recognized the face. It belonged to none other than the child he’d once harbored within his home.
Malcom MacKinnon worked side by side with his kinfolk, his shoulders shaped by the weight of too many heavy loads. He was a strapping young lad, Hugh thought—just the sort of man he’d always envisioned to take his place. Too bad he was not of Hugh’s blood.
How much time had passed? He counted upon his fingers. Eleven years since the day he’d cast his daughter away. Ten since he’d last beheld her face. And Malcom, he must now be about seventeen.
His gaze sought and found the children across the field. They were all seated together, shoving sweet tarts into their faces. His gaze returned to his daughter—the child he’d denied for far too long. He longed to hold her in his arms. Had she ever in her miserable childhood enjoyed a single sweet tart? He didn’t know, couldn’t recall.
His throat felt too thick to speak, and yet he tried. “Do they haveenough—”clothes, food, what else—“to last the winter long?”
Eleanore slowly shook her head.
“What will they do? What happens now?”
Without a word Eleanore swept her hand along the landscape, and suddenly they were standing in the same field at twilight. The hillside fell silent; no laughter echoed through the meadow. He had the sense that many years had passed. The landscape was much changed. Like Aldergh, the castle on the hill stood no more. Stone by stone it had been dismantled, until all that remained was a stone footprint upon the hill, guarded by half turned stones. The land was barren, overgrown with thistle. The barns were gone. No more peasant homes remained.
Were their fates somehow tied to his?
Hugh reconsidered the gravestone upon Chapel Hill—and then, as though he’d conjured it, he was standing over the tombstone once again, with Eleanore flickering like a candle by his side. He shivered beneath a gentle snowfall. A single flake fell upon his beard. Beside him, his pale dead wife wept a crystal tear. It fell to the ground, melting into the snow. Hugh peered down at the tombstone lying disfigured at his feet, one corner lopped off as though someone had taken a hammer to the stone. The words it bore finally brought him to his knees…
Etched in soft stone—not even deep enough to endure the years—was carved: Here lies Hugh FitzSimon, last heir of Aldergh Castle. The year engraved upon the stone was 1135, the month, December.
Eleanore spoke softly beside him. “Knowingis my gift, Hugh. While there is breath there is yet hope…”
Panic seized him. “What must I do? Tell me!” He lifted his hands in supplication. “Anything, Eleanore, please tell me what to do!”
Much diminished now, Eleanore’s light appeared weaker. She touched his shoulder gently, so delicately that Hugh might have mistaken her touch for a snowflake.
“Before the fire burns low in the last hour of the last day before the winter solstice, you must change your heart, Hugh FitzSimon.”
“’Tis already changed, Eleanore! Iamchanged. Which fire? Please! Tell me, please?”
