Worth Dying For (The Bruce Trilogy) (27 page)

As we rode from Selkirk Forest, I led my men not north to the Highlands, but west. Toward Carrick.

Castle Loch Doon squatted on an islet above dark waters that mirrored a glowering sky. Eleven-sided, it was nearly round and there was barely room on the stony shores at the foot of its walls on which to land a boat. Shortly after our defeat at Methven and subsequent exodus, the castle had fallen into English hands. From between the crests of two hills, we studied the fortress, saw their sentries patrolling its walls and continued on our way. Through the burnished hills and dense forests. Spreading word as we went to gather in Ayr come July. The time to do more had come. England stood on the brink of civil war. King Edward could not defend two fronts at once. And we would need to be ready.

A fortnight after meeting Lamberton and young Atholl in Selkirk Forest, we were camped between the Rivers Ayr and Nith. The first greening of spring tinged the banks of the streams where violets shyly opened their petals. Some of the cattle had already been driven north and east to augment herds depleted by the plundering English army. Most, though, we kept to feed our burgeoning army for the coming months. Food, for awhile, was plentiful and we were grateful for it.

Evening shadows reached through the pines, thinning strands of amber sunlight broken by columns of darkness. Ten paces from my tent, a cow’s carcass hung from a thick rope tied to a stout limb, the last of its blood dripping onto a mat of pine needles below. Beyond it in a small clearing, yesterday’s slaughter was boiling in its own hide. The wood still damp from recent rains, white smoke billowed through the camp. Around smaller fires, bannocks cooked in iron plates while men mended clothes or scoured the rust from weapons.

The smell of stewed meat filled my nose. I drifted toward the cauldron of cowhide. Lumps of meat and organs bubbled to the surface. At the sight of me, the cook dunked a long ladle into the broth and spooned the contents into a wooden bowl. A jostling line quickly formed behind him. After barking at those up front to make way, Boyd snatched the bowl from the cook before anyone else could lay claim to it and approached me.

He made a flourish with his free hand and bowed low. “Fine Northumbrian beef, my lord.”

I took it from him and sank to my haunches, cupping the warm bowl beneath my chin to inhale its aroma. With my knife, I speared a hunk of grizzled meat and popped it into my mouth. Its juices bathed my tongue, the fibers melting away as I ground my teeth together. The first morsel slid warm down my throat. Before I knew it, I had nothing left but broth, its surface pearled with shimmering droplets of fat.

I tipped my head back and drank until it was empty.

“More?” he asked.

“No, let the others eat first.” I spat, my eyes watering as a cloud of smoke rolled across my vision, then dispersed. Beyond it was a small party on foot being escorted amongst the scattered bedrolls and tethered horses. One was a woman. Even from a distance in the waning light, shrouded in smoke, and clad in common rags, I knew her.

A small ray of joy burst free in my heart. The bowl still clutched in my hand, I stood and rushed toward her. I shoved the bowl at a nearby soldier, who clasped it greedily. Three men were with her: an elderly monk and two lightly armed men, protected only by leather jerkins checkered by age.

“Aithne of Carrick, welcome!” As I reached out to embrace her, she stumbled forward and drooped into my waiting arms. Beneath my calloused fingers, I felt the depressions between each rib, even the ridge of her spine against my forearm. “You’ve seen better days, my lady. Have you been ill?”

“No,” she murmured. Brushing chilled lips against my cheek, she steadied herself on wobbly legs. The look in her eyes was so dull, her visage so pale that I was hardly convinced.

“Pray tell then, what brings you to seek out rabble such as this?”

She readjusted the hood of her patched cloak about her shoulders. Her coppery hair – once a glorious mane – hung snarled and dull around her face.

“Food,” she said hollowly.

“Come with me then.” I thought she might protest when I swept her up in my arms, but instead she laid her head against me and closed her eyes. As I carried her to my tent, I ordered Boyd to make sure her companions were fed and to bring us two heaping bowls of stew and whatever else of sustenance he could find. Heads turned as I strode by, this worn but no less beautiful woman cradled against my chest.

I pushed through the tent flap and laid her down on a pile of furs. For a long time, I gazed down upon her, strange feelings of compassion and regret warring inside me. And stirrings of something pleasant, comforting, powerful. There was a time when I could have bedded her three times a day and never wearied of her. When I told my father I was in love with her, he hastily gave her away in marriage to Sir Gilbert de Carrick, to whom he had recently granted the stewardship of Castle Loch Doon. I had never quite forgiven him for that, but my love, or rather lust, for her died when my brother Edward took her as a lover. At least I thought it had. But where I had known a brief happiness before losing my first wife Isabella in childbed, Aithne’s union had been an unsuitable one. Sir Gilbert was two decades older than her, taciturn, and a zealot who punished her if she did not pray often enough. Aithne was the wild rose in bloom, a bewitching nymph of hedonism, and he the splintered stump of an old crucifix.

Boyd arrived with two heaping bowls of stew and a half loaf of coarse bread. He set them down, scuttled out and quickly reappeared with two rare cups of ale. His eyes swept over her and he smiled broadly, his tongue working in and out between the gaps in his teeth. I waved him outside before he made some lecherous remark that she might overhear. Crouching down beside her, I ran the backs of my fingers over her cold cheek. She inhaled deeply. Her eyelids fluttered open.

Sighing, she pushed herself up, her back hunched forward, hair hanging in long, wind-tangled strands over her breast. Her fingers fumbled at the clasp of her cloak and I almost reached out to help her, but before I did she had slid the cloak, smelling of musty wool, off and pushed it aside.

“You should have come to me sooner.” I handed her a cup of ale.

“And where would I have found you, my lord? In Strathearn, Badenoch, Galloway, across the border... or maybe in Garmoran?” Aithne raised the cup to her mouth and tipped it up. A sip became a guzzle as she drained the golden liquid. When she lowered the cup again, a smile played across her glistening lips. “Besides, my husband gave Loch Doon over to the English. I did not figure I was much welcome in your circle. I only came to you before, because –”

“You were always welcome. What Sir Gilbert did was not your doing. Besides, he’s long gone. I’d have thought you married again by now.” It was no more than a passing remark, but before she could make anything of it, I added, “Where have you been?”

“Wherever my kinfolk would have me. But as you know, my family has little money. None at all now, actually. Twice my parents’ home has been burned to the ground. After my father died, my brother began to rebuild it, but he gave up the last time your men set fire to his crops. He lost an entire harvest.”

“If we had not, the English would have taken it to feed their army and gone further north.”

“Perhaps,” she said with a shrug.

“And where is he now – your brother?”

She drank some more and drew a fur up around her. “Tending sheep on Arran with my son.”

“Then who is with you?”

“One is a cousin by marriage, the other his uncle.”

“And the monk?”

“He joined us on the road. Gave us a loaf of bread for our company... and protection.” Steam curled up from the bowl of stew. She dipped her fingers carefully into it and plucked out a piece of meat.

“My brother Edward is on his way to Lothian and then north,” I blurted out. “Trying to gather others to convene in Ayr.”

Lowering her cup, she tilted her head at me. “I did not come here to see Edward.”

An uneasy silence settled between us. I dared not breach it. The last time she sought me out, the news had been grave, unbearable. Outside, the rumble of conversation filled the air. The scent of smoke clung to every surface. I sat down next to her, although not too close. It seemed easier not to meet her eyes. At last, she picked up the meat and put it in her mouth, chewing slowly, as if to delay our conversation.

“Then why did you – aside from needing something to eat?”

Her teeth worked at the tough meat, until finally, she swallowed. “To see you,” she said without looking up. Aithne dunked her fingers into the bowl again and stuffed her mouth greedily. Then she tore off a big hunk of bread and dipped it into the broth to suck up the meaty juices. “Times have been... hard, since my husband’s death. For awhile, my family was able to survive off our lands. But too much rain one year, not enough the next, one too many raids and we have nothing left. No home, no byre. Nothing. So my brother left with Niall, while I traded work for food and shelter. Born low, I have returned there, it seems.”

In all this time I had not given her welfare much thought. Not even after she delivered the news of my family’s capture and my brothers’ deaths. She had taken it upon herself to bring me word and I had not even thanked her. Worse, I had sent her away, because I did not want Edward fawning over her. I slid an arm beneath the fur. She shifted onto her left hip, her thigh pressed to mine.

Closing my eyes, I pulled her closer. “But you were warm and fed? And your son is safe?”

“Aye, I suppose. I was on my way to Arran when I heard you were nearby. So I came. It has been so long since I had seen you. It made me think of long ago. Of better, sweeter times.” Setting the bowl aside, she nestled her head against my shoulder.

When I was sixteen, Aithne had been my first lover. For weeks she had tantalized me, teased me to madness. Returned my hungry kisses as her hand slipped beneath my shirt to stroke my then-bare chest. When once I led her to the cellar, desperate for privacy, she had explored beneath my breeches, touched me – there. Neither of us spoke as our bodies guided us in a primitive dance of desire. Her hands moved wider, rolling down my breeches to expose my swollen cock. I lifted her onto a stack of grain sacks and hitched her skirt up past her knees. And then... footsteps pounded on the stairs. Hastily, I yanked my breeches back up over my hips and pulled her forward so that her feet landed on the floor. The cloth of her skirt caught on the sacks. Just as she turned to grab the hem and pull it down, the cook’s helper appeared at the bottom of the stairs in time to glimpse her bare buttocks. The spell of youthful lust had been shattered. But the desire had not been quenched. Each time we passed one another it burned brighter, our appetites whetted. Less than a week later, I met her in the stables at midnight and there, on a bed of fresh hay, we made love – wild, exhilarating love. I hardly cared about the prospect of burning in hell for fornication. The moment I discovered heaven within her, I had not cared what might happen to me after that.

As if she shared my memories, Aithne turned her face toward mine. Even in the growing darkness of night, I saw in her eyes the young woman, carefree and uninhibited. I wound a strand of her hair around my finger, grazed her neck with my fingertips as I did so. My hand trailed downward over her collarbone, to her breastbone. When I found the top button of her gown, a shiver rippled through her. She reached up and released the button, then the second and the third. I expected another garment beneath, but instead, her breasts were bare: two plump orbs, soft and inviting.

Slowly, I lowered her, turning so that I faced her. She gazed up at me and stretched her left arm above her head, inviting me to lie beside her. And I did.

Her fingers wandered over my face to brush the rough whiskers beneath my chin, my ear, my temple. My knee slid over her thigh and between her legs. I moved over her, admiring her. Fingers wound in my hair, she pulled my head to her breast. I bent toward her, explored her with kisses. The firm protrusion of a nipple met my lips and I closed my mouth around it, suckling gently as I cupped a hand around the fleshy cushion of her breast. Her legs strained outward, hands now grasping for her skirts. She nudged me to the side and, as I rolled reluctantly from her, she flipped her skirts up across her waist in one smooth motion.

“Aithne,” I whispered, “you are so very beautiful.”

“Still?” she murmured dreamily.

I pulled my shirt off to toss it aside and positioned myself over her again. As if time had never passed since we were flung apart, as if we had never stopped knowing one another, she tugged at the cord on my breeches and slipped her thumbs beneath the top, sliding them downward. Her hips bridged upward, ready.

 “More than ever,” I said, running a hand from her milky thigh to the full curve of her hips.

“Be my love, Robert. Let me give to you.”

I eased into her, pleasure surging from my loins to envelope me.

 
Ahhh, Sweet Mother of God. How long has it been since –

She grasped my buttocks, pulling me deeper inside. A moan rose in her throat and I covered her mouth with mine to quiet her.
If anyone hears us...

My rhythm quickened. Her folds, warm and slippery. My blood, rushing. Her body an eddy beneath mine. I probed my tongue deeper into her mouth, faster, in echo. Sweat poured down my chest, dripped from my lowest rib.

Outside, footsteps. The soft clop of hooves over drying mud.

My hips slammed her hard, yearning for ecstasy. I thrust in mounting excitement, searching for that plateau of rapture that was always in the next moment. Quicker. Deeper. Her legs went around me, her ankles twining together. Her fingernails dug into my back. Aye. Again and again. Almost there. I grunted as I drove toward release.

Voices. Closer... Randolph?

‘I would never dishonor my own wife so.’

I stopped in mid-thrust, straining to listen above Aithne’s rapid panting and my own. Her mouth wide in mounting rapture, she continued to rock beneath me.
Oh God, dear God, how I wanted to
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