Laird of the Wind (22 page)

He sang the
kyrie
again. The melodic drone thrummed through her body, as soothing as the heat and the gentle pressure of his fingers over hers.

She closed her eyes. When he stopped, she looked up at him in the silence. He leaned back against the wall, and flexed his fingers over hers. Then he lifted his hand away. She missed its comfort as she continued to hold the warm bread compress on the bird's wing.

"You have a beautiful voice," she said. "Like spiced wine, warm and cozy somehow. Your aunt said you sang for a king."

"I did, as a lad. I was in the choir at Dunfermline. I sang hymns when King Alexander came to mass. No terror could quite compare to that," he said wryly. "Knees knocking, hands shaking, a ten-year-old lad standing alone before a king and his court, singing. Later, when I went to the seminary school in Dundee, I sang in the monks' choir there. My singing voice survived the journey into manhood, as it happened." He smiled.

"Seminary? Did you study to be a priest?"

"My father wanted that," he said. "But 'twas at Dundee that I met William Wallace and John Blair, who became a Benedictine, though he still fought at Wallace's side and acted as his confessor. When Wallace left Dundee and became a rebel, I stayed at the school, hearing more and more stories of his deeds. I stole away one night and went to join him. I was sixteen."

"Was your father angry?"

"My father," he said, "was a rebel himself, hiding out from the English because he refused to sign an oath of fealty to the English king. They killed him a few years later." He watched the bird, and murmured to it. Then he glanced at Isobel. "My older brother, who had inherited our father's castle, died at Falkirk. Shortly after that, the English took Wildshaw by treachery and fire."

"And they have kept it ever since?" she asked.

"Ever since."

"You could not win it back?"

"Nay," he said, so quietly she hardly heard him. "I could not." He reached up to adjust the bread on the bird's wing, his fingers dry and warm as they glided over hers. She saw that he meant to take over the task of balancing the bread, and she lifted her hand away to rest it in her lap.

She wanted to hear more about his life as a rebel, and how he had lost Wildshaw, but she sensed that he did not want to talk about it beyond what he had said. "You have spent half your life fighting and hiding," she observed.

He smiled ruefully. "I suppose I have." He began to sing the
kyrie
again, low and mellifluous, sending wonderful shivers through her.

"Why do you sing that phrase, over and over?" she asked. "Does it remind you of the past?"

"I'm teaching Gawain to recognize it as the call I will use for him. Later I'll whistle it, so he will know it in different ways. Then I will add food to the routine, feeding him each time he hears the phrase. When he learns to trust me, he'll come quickly, without fear of threat."

"Ah," Isobel said. "I thought you sang it because you still longed for the peace of the monkish life."

"Sometimes I do think about that peace," he said quietly.

They sat watching the hawk, and James hummed the melody again. Gawain tipped his hooded head as if he listened avidly and tried to work out a puzzle. Isobel felt a bubbling urge to laugh. The goshawk looked comical with the small leather hood over his head, like a hat fallen down over his eyes, the loaf of bread perched absurdly on his wing. She giggled.

"He looks like a king's jester, or a mummer in a Yuletide play," she said.

James smiled. "He does look silly." Then he shook his head slightly. "I never thought to be sitting here again, going without sleep and nursing a hawk."

"You have stayed awake for two days?"

"I have dozed some." He yawned, and jiggled the goshawk, whose head had begun to droop. "But whenever Sir Gawain starts to sleep, I try to wake him up."

Isobel studied James's face in the flickering light of the glowing brazier. His eyes were weary, surrounded by shadows and he was pale with fatigue. She noticed the soft shape of his lower lip, slightly full and moist, the creases beside his mouth, the dark sand of his day-old beard, which softened the edges of his jaw.

"Why do you force yourself to do this?" she asked softly.

"'Tis the quickest way to a tame a hawk."

"But hardest on the falconer and the bird," she said. "When I was small, my father would carry new hawks or falcons throughout the day, and set them in darkness at night, keeping them close to him for a week or two. My mother objected to the birds sitting on his fist at mealtimes, and did not like having them sleep on a perch in their bedchamber. But he insisted that it took time to train each one properly."

"Time," James said, "is what I do not have. I did not plan on taming a hawk."

She scowled. "You only planned to abduct a prophetess."

"True." He looked at her intently. Then he lifted the bread. "'Tis still warm. We will keep it there until it cools." "Can we eat the other half?" she asked plaintively.

James chuckled. "Aye, we'll share." She tore the remainder of the loaf apart and handed James the larger portion, and they ate in silence.

"I'm glad you are here," James murmured when they were done. "Aye?" she asked, feeling shy.

"Aye. You keep me awake, and I'll keep him awake."

"Oh." She had almost hoped to hear something else from him. She glanced up and saw the curve and gentle swell of his lips, and vividly recalled the feel of his lips on hers. Reminding herself to be wary of this man suddenly became a challenge.

"Talk to me, Isobel," he said, leaning his head against the wall with a sigh. "I am as sleepy as this bedecked hawk."

She began to tell him about her father's mews, and he asked interested questions, his voice hoarse with fatigue. The hawk drooped his head, and James wiggled his fist gently to stir him. Then he asked about her childhood and her life at Aberlady.

She spoke quietly while James listened, holding the bread on the bird's wing. He lifted his left foot to the bench so that he could rest his forearm, with the bird, on his knee.

"So after your mother died, your father and the priest have been the only ones to witness your prophecies?" he asked.

"And lately Sir Ralph," she said. "My father invited him to watch the sessions when 'twas agreed we would wed. He wanted Ralph to know what to do."

"What to do when the blindness comes?"

"What to do during the visions. My father and the priest talk to me and ask me questions. And Father Hugh writes down whatever I say. I do not recall it, usually."

He slid her a penetrating glance. "You recall naught?"

"Very little," she answered, "as you have seen yourself."

His straight brows pulled together. "Who was with you when you prophesied about Wallace?"

"Those three."

"And the priest recorded everything that you said?"

"Aye," she said. "He presented some of it to his parish after that, and sent a copy to the Guardians of the Realm. But he did not reveal all that I had said about Wallace right away. He and my father knew 'twould cause distress. So they kept it to themselves for a while, and let it out, finally, a week before it happened." She shook her head and sighed. "How were they to know 'twould happen so soon after that?"

"How, indeed." She frowned at his cynical tone and looked up. James fixed her with a glance from the corner of his eye. "Do you know what you said about Wallace?" he asked. "Do you know what you said about me, Isobel?"

She looked away, feeling distinctly uncomfortable. "I know some of what I said that day. That bread must be cool now," she said, a little sharply. "What else should we do for the hawk?"

She did not want to talk about the prophecies. She liked the peacefulness of the warm, dark cave, and she liked his soothing voice and his gentle mood. To speak of the predictions only created tension between them; she felt that strain already.

James removed the compress and brushed the crumbs from the goshawk's feathers. "I thought you forgot all of what you saw."

He was a stubborn, intelligent man, and Isobel knew that he was not going to be distracted. She got to her feet and went to stand before the brazier, holding out her hands to its warmth.

"That one time," she said, "I did my best to remember. I made Father Hugh read me every word of it, though he tells me 'tis best if I do not know what I foretell. He and my father, and Sir Ralph, too, were upset with me for asking about that vision."

"Why?" James asked. He spoke harshly, and the hawk ruffled his feathers in response. "Why do they want to keep you from knowing?" he asked, more softly.

She shrugged. "My father says 'tis too much responsibility for me. And Father Hugh says the visions are too erudite for one of my small education and feeble female mind."

James huffed a skeptical sound. "You have a distinctly female way of looking at the world, aye. But 'tis hardly a feeble mind. Just the opposite, I would say."

She nodded, flustered by his compliment. She looked into the bright heart of the brazier. "Father Hugh interprets the visions carefully to understand the symbolism. He says there is much deep meaning in them. He believes that the prophecies come from God, in the language of the patriarchs, and must be studied with care." She shrugged. "He is preparing a book of the prophecies, though I have asked him not to do that. But he says he will gain much respect through them."

"Let us hope he will share the honors with the prophetess," James muttered. "Tell me the rest."

"After that day, I tried to recall the visions myself, but only parts came to me. I begged my father to tell me what I had said. But I did not trust—" She stopped.

James sat forward. "Did not trust whom?"

She lowered her head. "I did not trust any of them to tell me the truth about my words," she murmured. "And I wanted to know."

"Why would they lie to you?" His voice was a sea of gentleness. She wanted to sink into its rhythm and warmth.

"My father and the priest have always protected me, and so they kept secrets from me. When I was younger, my father felt that he should guard me from the outside world. But even when I grew older, he did not relax his protection."

"Have you always seen visions?" he asked.

"They began when I was thirteen," she said. "I suffered a serious fever for several days, and nearly died. Afterward, I lost my sight for a month. During the worst of the fever, in a kind of delirium, I described a battle between English and Scots that had not yet taken place. My parents and the priest were with me, for Father Hugh had come to give me the last rites."

James watched her steadily. "Dear God," he murmured. "Did the battle come about?"

"A few weeks after the vision, it happened just as I had said. Father Hugh told my parents that my prophesy was a gift from heaven, bestowed by the angels when I lay on the brink of death. He told my father that such a gift must be used. He said the angels could speak through me to benefit all of Scotland."

James sighed. "And then the priest and your father discovered that they had a way of predicting the war."

She shrugged. "I do not know what they thought. They told me little. I did as they asked."

"Of course. You were but a lass," James said.

"My father and the priest, and my mother too, seemed to cherish me once I became a prophetess. I was suddenly more than just a tall, awkward, timid lass to be wed off to some Scottish knight. So I did what I could to please them. The visions came easily enough, but the blindness and the forgetfulness were horrible to endure." She looked away, bit her lip. "Father Hugh says 'tis the price I must pay for the gift."

James sat silently, watching her. "Ah, lass," he said, sounding sad, as if he felt her pain himself. "You are a rebel, and a warrior, and do not even know it."

She tipped her head. "What do you mean?"

"You endure much," he said softly. "And you fight, too."

"How so?"

"Through blindness and forgetfulness, you protest being forced to prophesy. But you are the only one being hurt."

Isobel felt a weight turn inside her gut, as if the truth of his words took on substance and force, and struggled within her. She stared at him. "My God," she whispered, shocked.

James sighed. "Isobel," he murmured. "Come here." He patted the bench. She did not move. "I would come to you, lass—but I am so tired I doubt my limbs will hold me upright."

Still she watched him, entranced by his gaze, and caught by the stunning truth he had revealed.

"Come here," he whispered again, and held out a hand.

Chapter 15