Highland Seasons, page 9
Fenella shook her head. “’Twas nay my intent. I meant only to say that couriers may be scarce wherever he has wandered.”
A sudden shriek from above stairs silenced the crowd in the great hall. Another followed.
“Things are progressing,” Groa muttered, wincing in sympathy.
Fenella didn’t respond, her gaze on the stairs, but her heart in her throat. What would the rest of this day bring? The joy of a successful childbirth to add to the well-timed arrival of its father? Or more waiting? She refused to consider anything else.
Intermittent cries continued for the rest of the afternoon and into the evening, becoming fainter and farther apart. The mood in the great hall had gone from jubilant to wary, mirroring Fenella’s own. Most traded worried glances as the sound of their muttered prayers rose and fell. No one could doubt Aimil was exhausted by her labor. How much longer could she continue?
Silence disturbed only by praying went another hour into the night before an infant’s wail sounded, breaking the somber mood that had settled over the hall like a low cloud. A collective gasp filled the hall, then laughter and cheers broke out. The bairn had arrived and lived! Fenella joined in the laughter, relief making her as giddy as the others in the hall. This was a day of joy indeed.
Before long, one of the healer’s apprentices appeared on the upstairs landing and the crowd quieted to hear her announcement.
“A lass is born,” she said, then retreated from view.
Fenella thought it odd that she showed no great enthusiasm, no smile, no excitement over the new bairn. Nor did she present the wee lass. But perhaps she had been with the healer during most of the day and was as tired as everyone in the birthing chamber must be.
“Ah, da will be disappointed ’tis nay a son and heir,” Groa said, still sitting at Fenella’s side after the long hours spent waiting. “But happy, too.”
Had Groa noticed the lass’s solemn tone? “Aye, we lasses have our uses,” Fenella retorted, relief and weariness suddenly making her snappish. Perhaps in her fatigue, she’d imagined the subdued tone.
Groa nodded but didn’t take the bait. “Where is Keenan? I wonder why he didna bring out his daughter.”
“Holding her mother’s hand, or I miss my guess,” Fenella told her, reaching for an explanation that made sense. “I daresay he didna want to leave her side, or to relinquish the bairn, if only long enough to show her to the clan.”
Groa put a hand on Fenella’s arm. “Ah, there go da and mother,” she said, pointing to her parents ascending the stairs. “Time for the family to invade, I suppose,” she added and stood. “Want to come see the wee lass?”
Suddenly reluctant, Fenella shook her head. “Ye go. ’Tis meant to be family time. Keenan will want ye there. I’ll have plenty of chances later.”
Groa took her arm. “Nay, ye are part of the family—or someday will be. Ye dinna want to miss yer future niece’s first breaths. Come with me.”
Fenella nodded, still reluctant but unwilling to make a scene with her friend at such a time as this. She appreciated Groa including her in the family, but she was only being kind. Fenella’s future was very much in doubt as long as Gavan stayed away. She couldn’t be certain of her welcome in the birthing room. Would she be treated as an interloper, even though Groa brought her? She hoped not. Torn, she moved with Groa across the great hall and followed her up the stairs.
The first thing she noticed as Groa opened the door and they entered the room was the heat and the smell. The flames of many candles added to the heat of so many people in the chamber. Keenan’s parents and two of his brothers, Gregor and Donal, the healer’s apprentice, and herself and Groa in addition to the new parents and the infant filled the space. Blood and other things Fenella was in no hurry to name assaulted her nose, sharp and cloying and thick.
No one was moving. They stood around the bed, watching Keenan kneel by his wife, the babe at her pale breast but not suckling. Then Fenella understood what was happening and turned for the door.
Groa’s hand shot out and grabbed her wrist, the expression on her face a silent plea not to leave her. Fenella nodded and put her other hand over her friend’s, offering what little comfort she could.
Aimil lay dying.
Keenan hunched over her, stroking her sweat-soaked hair with one hand, the other on his daughter’s back. Tears dripped unheeded onto his wife’s neck and shoulder, both so pale as to be almost blue.
Fenella’s gaze swept the room and she understood the reason for the strong scent of blood. In bringing her daughter into the world, Aimil had bled, heavily. The healer had been unable to stop it.
The healer! Where was she? Irritation pierced Fenella’s dismay and she turned to glance out the door behind her, but the woman was not there, either. The healer should still be here, trying to save her dying patient.
After a few more agonized moments, Aimil gave a shuddering exhale, then breathed no more. No one moved, but at Fenella’s side, Groa gave a small cry of protest.
Keenan dropped his forehead to his wife’s, then kissed her lightly on the lips.
“My poor son,” his mother murmured, her gaze on Keenan and the dead woman.
The infant started crying, soon escalating to hacking wails.
“Groa, where is the healer? Yer niece needs a wet nurse,” Fenella said softly. “Now,” she said, adding urgency to her tone, “or ye’ll lose the wee one, too.”
Groa seemed in shock, as did her parents and Keenan’s brothers. Fenella couldn’t stand it. Someone had to do something to quiet the bairn. To help her. She moved forward and picked up the wee lass from her mother’s body, cradling her against her chest.
“Where did the healer go?” Fenella may as well have said nothing. No one answered, so she grabbed a plaid from a chair near the door, laid it over the infant and left the room. At the top of the stairs, she showed the lass. “Is there a wet nurse in the clan? Any woman willing to suckle the heir’s babe along with her own? Her mother canna do it.”
“I will,” one lass said. “I still have milk enough.”
Fenella went down the stairs to her, careful to keep one hand on the railing. She dared not fall with the newborn in her arms.
“Ah, good, ye have kept her warm,” the lass said as she reached for the babe and pulled aside her shift. In moments, the bairn had latched on and was feeding, if slowly. “She’ll take more as she gets stronger,” the lass said.
Fenella nodded. “Thank ye. I dinna ken yer name.”
“I’m from another village, visiting a friend. I’m Mara.”
“Fenella. I must find someone in the village who can become the nurse for this lass.”
Another woman came up to them. “My daughter Kyla can serve,” she said. “My other daughter can care for her young son for now. He’s old enough to cease nursing.”
Relief filled Fenella. With the help of the village, she hoped the new bairn might live, and Keenan would not have to bury her, too, with her mother.
“Has anyone seen the healer?”
“Aye, she went to her herbal some time ago,” one of the men sitting nearby said.
“Come with me,” Fenella said to Mara. “If ye can? The healer should see this wee one.”
Later, fed and sound asleep, the bairn stayed in Fenella’s arms as she, Mara and the local lass, Kyla, proceeded to the nursery. The healer, who had still looked shaken and sad, had pronounced the wee one well and strong, “Settle in here for tonight, please,” Fenella told the lasses. “I’m certain the family will be grateful for yer help. Ye will see them on the morrow.”
Mara settled in a chair. Fenella gave the wee bairn into her arms, and a sweet smile lit Mara’s face as she gazed down at her.
Despite the tragedy that had brought them here, Fenella couldn’t help the small flare of jealousy as she gazed at the bairn’s sweet face in Mara’s arms. When would her turn come to marry and have bairns of her own? Or would she wind up like Aimil? She looked away from the bairn, fighting to keep her last memory of the wee one’s poor mother out of her mind. As a chill slithered down her spine, she left the nursery, went down the stair and through the great hall, needing to be away from the sadness that overlay the miracle of this new life. She pushed open the keep’s heavy door and left the crowded hall for some air in the bailey. The night was clear and cold. Stars seemed to be bright shards of crystal so thick, they appeared like clouds against the black sky. They should name the lass Astra, Fenella thought. For a night with so many stars they nearly hid the dark. Nearly, but not quite. And the full moon would rise late and hang in the morning sky like a wraith.
Fenella shivered and turned to reenter the keep, leaving that image outside. It had no place in the hall this night.
She went back to the birthing chamber in time for Keenan to step out of the door, his wife’s body wrapped in a blood-soaked sheet in his arms. His mother noticed her and stopped him.
“Ye took the wee lass. Where is she?”
“In the nursery with two wet nurses for tonight. Tomorrow, ye may wish to make yer own arrangements for her.”
That got her a wan smile. “Thank ye for doing what we should have. The shock…”
Fenella looked from her to the woman in Keenan’s arms and finally to him. His face showed no expression, but his eyes gave away the agony that must be clawing at his insides. How did he bear it? “I understand. The healer waits for ye. I’m so sorry.”
She stepped out of the way and they continued to the top of the stairs. All conversation in the great hall died the moment they appeared. She was certain Keenan didn’t notice the sudden hush as he took his wife to be prepared for burial.
Fenella had no doubt servants were already in the birthing chamber, cleaning it. Tomorrow, it would be as if tonight had never happened, except for the missing woman and the new bairn. The thought gave her a strange hollow sense in the pit of her stomach. Nothing was the same, and would never be the same again.
The day after the next, the morning was dark, the waning moon invisible above low clouds and heavy rain. Cold wind whistled across the rushing burn that bordered the rise in the glen where Keenan MacNabb’s family had long buried their dead. Fenella’s gaze strayed from the simple wooden box holding the remains of Keenan’s late wife to the babe in Kyla’s arms, the village lass who’d become her wet nurse, and to Keenan, stone-faced, gaze downcast as four strong men of the clan lowered his dead wife’s body into the muddy ground. She would find it a boggy place to rest. Fenella had no doubt that rainwater had started to fill the hole. She hoped Aimil’s soul ascended quickly on the words of the priest commending her to God, if it hadn’t already, and spared her that knowledge.
The infant she’d died to bring into the world started to cry, as if she knew her mother was gone and she would never see her again. Never feel her touch. Never get to know the love between her parents that had brought her into being. Fenella’s heart broke for the wee bairn and for its father, who faced the loss of all the dreams they’d shared, and instead, now faced raising a daughter without her mother.
But he had his clan and this village. Judging from some of the glances traded among the unattached lasses, he’d have more help, and more consoling, than any one man could possibly need.
Those lasses glanced her way with speculation in their eyes. Did they think if one brother failed to claim her, the other would do? The elder? The future laird? She pursed her lips, hating how the notion raised a flare of hope in her chest. Hope and something more—ambition? With time, could Keenan come to see her as something other than Gavan’s intended?
The idea saddened Fenella even further. She didn’t know if the man she’d promised to wait for, Keenan’s younger brother, was still alive, or how he would come to know of his brother’s loss. Or if he would ever return to claim her.
Nay. She couldn’t dwell on such an idea. She’d be no better than these grasping lasses, eyeing Keenan before his dead wife was covered up in the cold, muddy ground.
But her daughter—
As the infant wailed in protest of the cold and wet, Fenella saw an honorable way to support Keenan and keep herself allied with his family until Gavan returned—which he would do. She could not let herself imagine anything else. Gavan would come home. Eventually. Hopefully before he forgot her, and before she wasted her youth, or her life, waiting for him. She would ensure a place for herself with his family, so that when he did return, she would have their support while the promise Gavan and she had made to each other sustained them until they became reacquainted.
Keenan dropped a handful of earth onto the casket, then turned away. His shoulders rounded as though he fought the need to bend double with grief and pain. Then he straightened and trudged toward the wee bridge over the burn and the path that led to the gates of the MacNabb keep, his sister Groa keeping pace silently at his side, his brothers following and their parents walking slowly a few steps behind their children. He never looked back.
His daughter’s cries didn’t stop him or change the path he walked. The nameless lass. Keenan was too grief stricken to name her and others would not do so until she reached several months of age. Any child might die all too easily, but a motherless child was more at risk. Better to let her go, if that was to be her fate, without a name to keep in the hearts of those who wanted to love her. Or hate her for the death of her mother. Would Keenan hate his daughter? The thought soured in her belly. How could he? The bairn was all that was left of his wife.
Fenella did not hold with the superstition that denied this bairn a name. Yet it was not her place to name Keenan’s daughter, or even to encourage him to do so. Perhaps if she could care for her well enough, if he saw her thrive, he would claim her and bestow whatever name he or her mother had decided to give her. Fenella swore to do what little she could to ensure that happened.
She fought back the tears that had mixed with raindrops on her face, and resolved, strode to the wet nurse, who was frantically trying to soothe her charge and silence her. Fenella took the infant from Kyla’s arms, and rocked her. Her cries calmed and her eyes closed, leaving tears to dry on her tiny face.
Fenella walked through the keep’s gates with the bairn on her shoulder, the wet nurse trudging behind her through the muddy ground. She nodded to the bairn’s grandmother, the clan’s lady, who gave her a sad smile and permitted her to continue without questioning why she had the bairn and not the woman following her. Her approval gave Fenella hope that when Gavan returned, they could start where they left off, and not as the strangers they might have become. His family, accustomed to her presence with the wee lass, would accept her as his.
She stayed in the nursery and warmed herself at its hearth fire while the wet nurse fed the wee lass. The midday meal would be a solemn affair at best. She’d rather remain with the infant than endure the gloom that would inhabit the great hall. Here, at least, was new life, and hope for a future, even if it was different than the future anyone in the clan, especially Keenan, had envisioned.
But she couldn’t hide, any more than he could. His family would see him through the meal, and so must she, if she was to retain the ground she’d gained with his mother. She nodded to Kyla, then stood and left her suckling the bairn.
The great hall was as silent and still as Fenella had expected. She took a seat within view of the upper table, but not so close as to appear presumptuous or, like some of the other lasses, determined to be noticed by Keenan. Rather, she found a place below the side where his mother sat, solemn and picking at the food on her trencher.
It hurt Fenella to watch her. As soon as Keenan left, his parents stood to go. Fenella took that as permission for everyone else to do the same. Groa stood at the same time and raised a hand to halt her, then came down from the dais to meet her.
“Thank ye for taking care of the wee bairn,” Groa told her. “I saw how she responded to ye. Ye are good for her and I hope ye will find it within ye to spend more time with her.”
“Of course,” Fenella promised, shocked at the notice Groa gave her during such a grievous time.
“My brother is too wounded right now to give his daughter the care she needs, and frankly, a woman’s touch is better for her, I think.”
“But Keenan needs his daughter, too.”
“He will, but not today. Perhaps not this sennight. He must come to terms with what has happened and what is left to him. An infant daughter isna something he ever thought to be responsible for on his own.”
“He willna be alone in this.”
“Ye?” The look Groa gave her was speculative rather than censoring.
Fenella shook her head. “Nay, ’tis no’ what I meant. He has ye. His family. People who love him and care for him.”
Groa nodded. “Ye are right. ’Tis too soon by far for another lass to enter his heart. It still bleeds. I ken ye and Gavan cared for each other—and may still do so despite his long absence. But I thank ye for anything ye are willing to do to help us ease Keenan’s burden, and to keep his daughter well until he can accept her.”
Fenella nodded, throat so tight, she found herself unable to speak.
Groa took her hand and squeezed it, then left her standing in the middle of the hall fighting for calm, overwhelmed by the responsibility Keenan’s sister had laid upon her, despite her earlier resolve to do just what Groa had suggested.
As the months went by, the wee lass, still nameless, grew strong and thrived. Her father did not fare as well. The grief that consumed him at his wife’s sudden death had not eased its grip. He continued with his responsibilities as his father’s heir, and in the company of other men seemed to come back to himself, though he remained mostly silent and closed off, avoiding many of the women of the clan, especially if they resembled his dead wife.
With regret and no small measure of reluctance, Fenella had given up on Gavan ever returning. She spent as much time with Keenan’s daughter as she could, and even brought the wee lass to her father. He would hold her, but seemed lost in thought, not really present with her, even when she cried. Fenella would take her from him when that happened, fearing her cries would upset him, but in asking silent permission to do so, would touch Keenan’s shoulder and place a sympathetic hand there. Only then did he seem to come back to the present, look up and actually see her. Lately, he placed his hand over hers on his shoulder, making Fenella’s heart race with surprise and pleasure that he’d acknowledged her touch.
