PART TWO
When she entered the village she was suddenly not so sure. The village was oddly silent, the clansfolk grim and frightened. Branches of rowan, protection against witchcraft, hung over every door. Aileen even spat on the ground as Mary walked past, and others made the sign of the evil eye against her. She found Ian sitting in their cot, his sword on his lap, his fingers running up and down the blade. That sword was the clan sword, passed down from chieftain to chieftain, handed from father to son. Ian had received it from his own father's hand as the old man lay dying.
Mary still remembered that day over thirty years ago; it was the same day she had realized she was with child. She had told Ian, and he had informed his father Andrew. Though the old man had been ill for some time, he seemed cheerful at the news, and demanded to be taken outside. It was a fine spring day, and the village was busy and crowded with travelers come for the May Fair. Andrew had called all the people of the clan together, his voice unusually strong. Then he had proclaimed Ian the new clan chieftain and handed him the sword. Andrew had died as Ian's fingers closed over his on the hilt. People still spoke of that moment.
Mary knew Ian had planned to give Duncan that sword one day. He looked up briefly when she came in to the cot, but did not speak. She stood in front of him. "Ian."
He did not respond.
"Ian," she repeated more firmly. "You cannot banish our son."
He shook his head. "He is not our son."
"He is!"
"NO!" His voice was filled with pain and rage. "That thing is no son of mine." He looked at Mary. "And no son of yours either, and well you know it, wife."
She had no answer for that.
He stood and planted the tip of the sword in the hard-packed earth of the floor, his hands gripping the handle. "I made a mistake thirty years ago; I will correct it now." He forced himself to banish all his anguish for Duncan, to banish all his own love. His eyes were cold and his voice was firm; he spoke as the clan chieftain, not as a father. "He is banished from this clan. I never wish to hear his name spoken again."
Ian pulled his sword out of the ground and walked to the door. He paused and spoke without turning. "Get rid of his things." He walked out with a firm step; he had a raid to plan. Those thieving MacDonalds could not be allowed to keep the bull.
~~~~~
Mary called out as she approached the hut on the far side of the hill. She was relieved to see Duncan come around from behind the hut. A light rain was falling, and he had taken advantage of it to wash as best he could. His plaid lay draped over a bush, and he was clad only in his sark, the tunic that came to his thighs.
Mary ran to him and set down the bundle she was carrying. They held each other tightly.
He pulled back from her embrace and said eagerly, "My father, what does he say? Can I come home tonight?"
Mary shook her head. "Not tonight, Duncan." She flinched as she saw the disappointment and hurt on his face. "He would not listen; he was still upset ..."
Duncan turned away from her.
Mary stepped in front of him and took his hands between her own. She said resolutely, "I will speak to him tomorrow. 'Twill be better then." She hoped it would be better. She said as cheerfully as she could, "I've brought you some things. Let's go in the hut." She picked up the bundle and went in.
It was a rude hut, even as huts go. A simple square, perhaps two paces on a side, built of rocks and thatched with heather. It smelt of dried dung and old wool. Mary watched as Duncan ducked to get in the door. He would have to lie with his head in one corner and his feet in the other if he wished to stretch out. He was so tall, this son of hers. And he was her son. She blinked back tears and unwrapped the bundle.
She had used his other plaid for the wrapping, and she unfolded it now, revealing the contents. Oatcakes, his favorite, and dried meat, and three apples. She handed them to him straightaway, and he ate hungrily, squatting down in the corner. Two clean sarks, his boots and his dagger, a finely carved wooden comb wrapped in a scrap of blue wool. He had had the comb for nearly three years. She was not sure where it came from, but she knew he treasured it. His furs and his sporran, his hunting bow and the arrows he and his father had made. His sword.
Duncan watched in growing dismay as she unpacked. This was everything he owned in the world. He had thought she would bring food and a clean plaid. He reached out a trembling hand to lift the quiver of arrows. He and his father had sat together just three days before and fletched the arrows. "Mother?"
Mary met his eyes quickly and then glanced away. "I do not know, Duncan." She looked at him again, and her tears started to fall. "I do not know."
~~~~~
Duncan stayed in the hut for three more days, waiting. Every morning Mary would come with food and the same message: his father had not changed his mind. Duncan decided to talk to his father himself.
It was a rare warm and sunny day for this late in the year. He watched the road leading from
village and waited. Finally, near mid-day, three riders approached: his father, his uncle
Malcolm, and Angus MacCaig. Duncan was surprised to see his uncle and his father riding
close together; he knew they had not spoken much these last four years. Ian had always
defended Duncan's killing of Robert, and Robert's father Malcolm had never accepted it.
Duncan's surprise changed to bitter realization; Ian was not defending Duncan anymore.
But perhaps he would again. Duncan stepped out boldly from the bushes by the side of the road and called, "Father!"
"It's the devil!" muttered Malcolm. He needed no more persuasion to be off. Angus went with him.
"Father." Duncan stepped closer, seeing the fear in Angus and Malcolm as they rode off, trying not to see the fear in his father's eyes. At least his father hadn't ridden away from him. "'Tis me. Duncan," he said reassuringly.
He held out his hand to Lughas, his father's stallion, the horse he had ridden many times. Lughas whickered and sniffed at his hand. "You know me, do you not?" Duncan said softly, stroking the velvet nose.
Duncan looked up at his father and said challengingly, "He recognizes me, but my own flesh and blood does not." There was still the look of fear in his father's face, and Duncan turned back to the horse, his voice soft once again. "They let me wander away from all that." Wander, aye, and wonder too, wonder what had happened that they should drive him away so.
Ian shook his head, refusing to listen. "You'll not beguile me thus, be you from Heaven or Hell!"
Duncan turned to him, outraged. "I am your son!"
"NO!" Ian's response was equally furious. "And you never were!"
Duncan's hands dropped from the horse, and he stared at his father in shock.
Ian continued, "On the night my lady wife gave birth to our only son stillborn, there was brought into her chamber by a peasant woman, a boy child to replace that which was lost."
"I do not believe you!" This could not be true!
But Ian's voice was firm. "It's the truth!" He nodded and called upon God as witness. "Or may God strike me dead."
Duncan took in shallow painful breaths as he listened in growing horror.
Ian spoke softly now, but his words carried weight. "And when the midwife looked into your eyes, she cringed back in fear. She said you were a changeling child, left by the forest demons, and that we should cast you out for the dogs."
"But you did not," Duncan said quietly, taking hope from that.
"No," Ian admitted. "I saw the look on my lady's face, and we took you in, and banished the midwife." Ian swallowed hard, remembering that night, remembering the curse the midwife had laid on him: "If ye banish me thus, Ian MacLeod, I tell ye now that the day will come when ye will banish that changeling. It will break your heart to do it, just as ye are breaking my heart now." And it was breaking his heart, to look into the face before him, the face of the son he had raised as his own, the son he had taught to fight and hunt and ride, the son he had taken such pride in.
Ian remembered the clear grief and anguish he had felt during those moments before the demon had risen from the dead, and he wished to God he could feel that way again. Now his grief was twisted and muddied with cold revulsion and sickening fear, fear of this demon thing that he had harbored in his home for all these years. In his home and in his heart.
He did not know what had happened to Ould Margaret, but he prayed she had found a home somewhere, that her last days had been happy ones. "May God forgive me," he whispered.
Ian turned back to the demon, the demon with the face that he had known and loved. "We buried my wee son and put you in his place. And no man ever knew you were not of my blood." No man had known, but Mary and Ould Margaret had known, as well as the nameless peasant woman who had brought the child. Ian could not even remember her face.
"No," Duncan whispered soundlessly. It could not be. But his father had sworn it. The man he had thought was his father had sworn it. Duncan knew that Ian MacLeod did not lie. "Where do I come from?" he demanded.
Ian turned his horse to go.
"Where do I come from?" Duncan repeated, his voice rising in panic. To be banished, to be sent from the clan -- to be cast out from friends, family, land, law, and love -- that was hell enough, but to know that he had no birth right to the clan, that he had no kin, no family, that he was truly alone...
"Where?" He ran after his father, the man who had been his father, stumbling on the sharp stones of the road. "Where do I come from?" Ian did not turn, did not stop.
"WHERE?" Duncan pleaded with him, begged him. There was no answer.
"WHERE DO I COME FROM?" But Duncan was talking to no one. Ian had disappeared over the crest of the hill.
He drew his sword and shouted to the world, "I am Duncan MacLeod, of the Clan MacLeod!"
There was no one to deny or confirm his claim. He was alone.
~~~~~
Mary found Duncan sitting in the hut, staring at the floor, his sword and his dagger on the ground before him.
He did not look up as she entered, did not move when she knelt beside him, did not respond to her touch on his arm.
"Duncan," she said softly.
"Is it true?" His voice was quiet, dead. When she did not answer, he turned his head to look at his mother, the woman he had thought was his mother. "Is what my father said true? I am not your son?"
"It is not true." Her answer was quick and definite. "You are my son. I nursed you at my breast, carried you against my heart, held your hand when you started to walk, watched you as you grew. You are my son."
Duncan had heard what she had not said. He drew in a painful breath. "You did not give me birth."
That was true, but not the real truth. Mary took his cold hands in her own. "I gave you life, Duncan. And love." She smoothed his hair away from his face, as she had often done. "And I am your mother, and you will always be my son."
Duncan shook his head. It was not enough for him now. "Where do I come from?"
She could not answer that.
"It is true then, what my father said." Duncan went back to staring at the floor. "All of it was true. I am not his son. I am a changeling. And a demon."
Mary did not believe that, no matter what Ian said now, no matter what the midwife had said all those years ago. He was her son. "You are no demon!"
"No?" Duncan's voice was cold, and he stared at her with angry eyes. "Could a human do this?" He lifted his dagger and sliced it across his left forearm, cutting deep. Blood spurted from the wound.
Mary gasped and reached out for the dagger, wanting to wrest it from his hand, but he held up his bleeding arm in front of her. She looked at in horror, then confusion, as she saw small blue flames dance along his skin. There was blood on the floor and the dagger and on his arm, but his arm was not bleeding now, not any more.
He picked up an already bloody rag and wiped his arm clean, then held his arm out for her to look at again. There was no wound. He wiped the dagger clean, then tossed the bloody rag on the floor. She winced as she realized there was a pile of such rags, all soaked with blood.
"I am a demon." He challenged her to deny it, his brown eyes hard and cold.
Mary swallowed painfully as Ould Margaret's words came back to her: "'Tis no human babe. 'Tis a changeling, left by the forest demons!"
No. She did not believe that. Not Duncan, not her son. She had wiped his backside clean when he was a babe, and held him as he sicked up his food. She had washed his skinned knees and hands, and seen him gap-toothed and smiling as he rode on his first pony. She had watched him when he first started to shave, and seen him fall in love. He had been a child the same as any other child, and he was a man now, the same as any other man. "You are no demon," she said definitely. "You are different, I cannot deny that, but there is no evil in you, Duncan. You are no demon."
Duncan's hand trembled suddenly, and he dropped the dagger. He had not realized how much he needed to hear her say that. "Mother ..."
She said no more, but held him close again, rocking her little boy in her arms.
After a long while, he pulled back. "I must go, Mother."
She nodded, fiercely blinking back tears. She was relieved to see no more of that awful black despair in his eyes, but saddened to see the sorrow and pain, and the beginnings of a deep loneliness. She looked about the hut and tried to say lightly, "Aye, you must. 'Tis not much of a place."
"No. It is not." He could not make a joke of it.
Mary said calmly, "You will come back, Duncan." He shook his head and started to speak, but she said again, "You will come back home, Duncan. At least one more time. I will see you again." She brushed his hair away from his face. "You will come home again."
~~~~~
Duncan rode away from Glenfinnan the next morning; his mother had tethered his horse at the low end of the spring pasture. There was food and money in the saddlebags. It was raining slightly, and the air was chill. Fair weather for an early autumn day. Duncan clicked to his horse and rode off to the Donan Woods.
Cassandra lived there, the Witch of the Donan Woods. When he and Robert were lads, they had ventured into the Donan Woods in search of a sheep-killing wolf. Their trap had not worked as they had hoped; the wolf had found them. But Cassandra had come, and Duncan had spent the night at her cottage, playing chess and listening to stories. Most of the stories were new to him, save one.
She had asked him, "Do they not, tell a tale in your village, of a man in your grandfather's time, that died and yet came back to life?"
Duncan had nodded. All the children knew the tale of Connor MacLeod. "But that's just a clan legend. It's just a story."
Cassandra had smiled. "Some stories are true."
He had not understood then, and he did not understand now, but maybe she would. After all, if he was a demon, what better place to go than to a witch?
~~~~~
It took him four days to find her house, hidden deep within the Woods. He had searched for it many times after that night long ago, and he had never found it. Now he was there, and there was no one home.
There were no chickens in the yard, no smoke from the chimney. The windows were shuttered, and the garden forlorn. He stayed, hoping she would return. He slept in the small shed with his horse, not wanting to go in her house. He swam in the warm waters of the pool and hunted for food.
On the tenth day he left. He did not want to spend the winter there alone, and he did not know how long it would take him to find a place to stay. The air was already cold.
He traveled south through the forests, letting his horse choose the way. Five days later he was surprised and yet not surprised to see a familiar glen, a glen he had not seen in three years. Ellen lived here.
_________________________________________________________
Martinmas, 1619
The MacTavish Croft
_________________________________________________________
He had not seen Ellen since the Lammas fair in Oban, but he was out hunting and found himself near her croft. He could not stop himself from visiting. She was carrying water when he rode up, as he had ridden up to her cottage many times before. Duncan stood by his horse, suddenly uncertain of his welcome. He knew she would marry David MacTavish in December; perhaps he was already here.
Ellen set the buckets down near the door and walked over to meet him, a brave smile on her face. "Duncan," she said when she came near, and she held out her hands to him.
He clasped them tightly, wishing to draw her closer to him, wishing to hold her against him again, knowing he could not. "Ellen." He let go of her hands. "I was hunting, and I thought," his voice grew softer, "I thought to see you again."
"I am glad of it." Her smile faded as she looked into his eyes, seeing the loneliness and the hunger there, knowing they were in her eyes as well. She blinked and hugged her arms about her. "I have something for you," she said brightly. She had been going to try to send it to him through a traveling peddlar. "Wait here." She knew she should not invite him into her house. She turned swiftly and walked to the cottage.
As she walked away from him, Duncan could see she was wearing the hair clasp he had given to her in Oban, on that day when they had said good-bye. The silver gleamed softly against the rich tones of her auburn hair. He was pleased that she still wore it.
She returned carrying a small parcel, wrapped in a scrap of blue wool. "I had no gift for you in Oban, Duncan, but I would like you to have this now." She held it out to him.
Duncan took it from her, careful not to touch her fingers, and unwrapped the cloth. It was a comb, finely carved from beech wood. "'Tis a handsome gift, Ellen," he said sincerely, rubbing his thumb along the polished grain of the wood. "Did you buy it at a fair?"
"Nay. A great storm knocked over one of the beeches up the glen. I carved it." Her voice became soft. "For you."
Duncan looked at her quickly and started to speak, then carefully re-wrapped the comb and placed it in his sporran. He cleared his throat. "My thanks, Ellen." Her dark-blue eyes looked at him with calm seriousness under long lashes. His fingers ached to touch her hair. "For this comb, and for the memories, carried next to my heart."
"Aye, the memories." Ellen smiled faintly. Her hand started to go up of its own volition, reaching to touch him, to feel his heartbeat under her palm, as she had often times before. She stopped it in mid-air.
Duncan caught her hand in his and held it against his chest. Then he slowly leaned forward to kiss her.
It was the briefest of touches, the warmth of their lips together, then Ellen pulled back. "I cannot."
"A year and a day, Ellen," he said, his voice rough with desire and loneliness. "We still have the day."
She stepped back from him, her arms crossed in front of her. "I am pledged to you, Duncan, for this last day of the year and the day, but I am promised to him." She shook her head, her eyes sad. "I cannot."
He respected and understood her decision, even as he hated it. He nodded slowly and agreed, "We cannot."
_________________________________________________________
St. Crispin's Day, 1622
MacTavish Homestead, Scotland
_________________________________________________________
He had left her there, on the land she had wanted, the land she would not leave. He had thought it for the best, for she needed a home of her own, and he would not leave his clan. Not willingly anyway, Duncan thought bitterly as he made his way slowly through the woods in the glen. That had been when he had thought he knew who he was, who his parents were, who he was going to be. Now he was no one.
He could smell the smoke from the fire, and as he came to the clearing he could see that there were two cottages now. Her husband's cousins must have joined them. There were children too; he saw three running about. Two had dark hair, and the youngest, about the same age as wee Jenny, had hair tinted with fire.
Duncan waited until he saw her. She came from her cottage, walking with the same graceful stride he remembered, and swept the youngest child into her arms for a hug, then held the toddler's hand as they walked to the stream. She was smiling. Duncan's fingers traced the outline of the wooden comb through the leather of his sporran.
He knew she would give him shelter if he asked, a place to sleep, food and fire. For a few days, or even throughout the winter. But he could not stay here forever; he needed to find a place of his own. She had a husband, a child, a home. He could not stay and watch her with another man; he could not stay here at all.
Duncan watched for a long time from the shelter of the trees before he turned and rode away.
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End
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NOTES
Lammas is August 1st.
Martinmas is November 11th.
St. Crispin's Day is October 25th.
To find out what happened to Ould Margaret, read "Hope Forgotten." It will probably be posted in the early fall of 1998.
-----
Other Highlander stories I have written are:
"Faery Child" - Duncan meets a 16 month old immortal
http://www.seventh-dimension.simplenet.com/
"Quickenings" - Special Watcher Report on the Physics of Quickenings http://www.sevenpillarsarabians.com/March/quickenings/html
"All the Birds of the Forest" - Duncan meets Ellen MacTavish
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