Her head tilted to one side, listening. Where the hell were her men? Why had they let these two make their way unaided towards Edinburgh?
James had removed the scarlet surcoat and wore it inside out now, the dark satin of the lining blending into the colour of the trees. The one named Simon hung on to his elbow, more in hindrance than anything else, his limp pronounced.
With care, Isobel skirted into the bush, watching as they came up towards her. James saw her first. Congealed blood lay on the white linen strips she had protected his wound with and he carried the arm high against his chest.
As he smiled she swallowed down a sudden and inexplicable need to touch him and her breathing tightened.
‘Where are the others?’
‘The taller man is tied up in the glade we slept in—’
She broke over his words. ‘Alive?’
When he nodded she felt relief flare in her eyes. ‘And Angus?’
‘Run off … several hours ago.’
His face in the light was harder than she remembered it to be and she saw Ian’s knife tucked beneath his belt.
His glance took in the brace of pigeons she had captured on the incline at the Alamere Creagh before coming back to her face. She saw him frown before he turned away.
Isobel Dalceann was like the space between lightning and thunder when all of the world holds its breath for what was to come. A woman apart from others, incomprehensible and unexpected.
He wished that just for a moment she might be gentle or kind or vulnerable, might smile or shake her head in the way of one who was uncertain, might come forwards and offer solace to Simon.
But she did none of these things as she gestured them to follow, only minions in her wake as the forest closed in about them, holding back the bands of rain. The dead birds hung at her side like an omen.
His arm ached hot and throbbing and the weight of Simon pulled him sidewards. Even a fool could see that if a village did not come soon he was done for and Isobel Dalceann was far from a fool. They came down tall dunes of sand into a sheltered bay, butterflies and flowers bordering a stream.
‘Put him here,’ she said finally as Simon gestured he could go no further. Laying down her own blanket, she knelt at his friend’s side.
Her hand ran across the injured leg and she felt the bruise rise up against her palm, the heat of infection surprising her. Last night this man had shown no sign of any injury save that of the ocean-cold in his bones and she cursed beneath her breath as she recognised her oversight. She should have tended to him hours ago when the fingers of badness might have been expunged more easily and the shaking had not overtaken all sense of ease. With a quick slash of her blade she opened the torn material in his hose from groin to knee. The swollen flesh on his upper thigh had been crushed and she knew instantly that there was nothing more that she could do. Bending to his chest, she listened for the pulse of blood.
‘Can you help him?’ There was a tone in James’s voice she had not heard before.
‘Help comes in many forms.’ Isobel was careful to take the emotion she felt away from her answer as she dribbled water through cracked and shaking lips, waiting for a moment while he swallowed to give him the chance to savour the wetness. Already she could feel the rattle of death in his chest, reverberating against her arm, a soft portent of an ending that was near. ‘My father used to say help was always only fiscal, but my husband insisted it was otherwise. He was a man inclined to the spiritual, you understand, before he died. Your friend here, though, needs another gift entirely and any aid given to another in reaching the afterlife easily has a reward all of its own.’
She saw the quick flicker of rebellion in his leaf-green eyes before he had a chance to hide it, loss entwined amongst anger. Biting down on her own grief, she laid her hand across the dying stranger’s throat, feeling the beat, weaker now and more erratic in the last emptying of blood.
He would still hear, she knew, still make sense of a world fading into quiet and she wanted him to understand the music inherent in a land his dust would be for ever a part of.
‘The smell of the sea is always close in Fife. We’re used to that here, used to living with the wind coming up the Firth funnelled into briskness and calling. The birds call, too, the curlews and the linnets, their song in the birch and the beech and the pine, and further west Benarty guards the heavens and gathers the clouds.’
Her land, its boundaries drawn in blood and fought for in a passion that was endless. The earth here would guard Simon, fold him into her warmth and hold him close. These were the old laws of dying, the rules that had been forgotten in the new kingdom of Scotland because men looked forwards now and never back.
She should be numbed to death, immune to its loss, but she was not and even a stranger who had walked with her for less than a day was mourned.
She had been married once? The thought made him stiffen as he watched her speak of the streams and the mountains and the flowers in springtime. Like a song of the living to the ears of the dying, he was to think later, and a prayer for transport somewhere easier and without pain. Her eyes remained dry.
A gift she had said, and indeed it was that, devoid of angst or panic or alarm. Simon simply slipped off and never moved again as she invoked a pathway to Heaven and talked of a good man that she wanted him to find there named Alisdair.
When death began to cool his flesh she stood, a little off balance. He would have liked to offer her his help, but he was uncertain as to whether she would accept it or not. As they looked at each other, the distance of a few feet felt like the world.
‘What was he to you, this Simon?’
‘A friend.’
‘And the other man, the one you held safe in the sea?’
‘Guy. My cousin.’
‘Then you are blessed with the love of others.’
The love of others! If only she knew. He stayed silent as Isobel turned Simon towards the ocean.
‘Spirits look eastwards for their home.’
‘I have not read that in any Bible.’ He tried to keep his voice even.
‘Some things are not written. They are simply known.’ Clearing a path to the sea, she uprooted bracken and small plants to leave an easy access.
He waited till she had finished before reaching forwards to take one of her hands. When he looked down he saw her fingernails were all bitten to the quick and that there was a wedding band on her marriage finger.
‘Thank you.’
She did not pull away, but stood still, her eyes this close ringed with a pure and clear gold. He tried not to glance down at the scar she wore so indifferently.
‘How long have you been married?’
She broke the contact between them with a single hard jerk. Lord, was nothing ever simple with her? Her hair had escaped the confines of a leather band and the lad’s hose had dropped to the line of her hips, and where the short tunic had hitched upwards the gap showed a good expanse of skin.
‘How old are you?’
‘Twenty-three.’
‘You look younger.’
‘Do I?’ For the first time since meeting Isobel Dalceann, he detected feminine uncertainty and a strange feeling twisted around his heart.
She had rescued him from a raging sea and sewn his arm up without flinching, yet here when he gave her a compliment she blushed like a young girl. The contradictions in her were astonishing.
‘We will wrap your friend in a blanket and leave him undisturbed until help arrives.’
‘Help?’
‘Angus will bring others.’
‘Tonight?’