Aggie went, and Danny’s eyes sank shut again. For a terrible moment Jeannie thought they had lost him, but his shallow pained breaths still came, far too fast.
She asked, “Did the stroke pass all the way through?”
“Nay, but ’tis a fearsome slash.” Finnan’s hands still moved in calm defiance of his anger. “Valiant men, to face a maimed boy.”
Danny clearly possessed years enough to qualify as a young man, but Jeannie understood Finnan’s sentiment and could feel the protectiveness streaming from him.
The blood had begun to well up from the folded pad of cloth. Finnan turned his head, and his eyes, tawny red-brown and with a flame of anger deep inside, met Jeannie’s.
“I will need to stitch him up. Will you bring me needle and thread?”
“Yes.” Jeannie stepped to the door beyond which Aggie danced, hands twisted in her apron, and requested the items. When Aggie brought the sewing kit, Jeannie picked out a needle and a length of thread with trembling hands and carried them back to the bed.
Another glance from Finnan. “Can you thread it?”
Jeannie sincerely doubted it; her hands shook like leaves in a cold wind. But she nodded and turned to the window, seeking both calm and light.
Behind her, she heard Finnan murmuring to Danny, soft words of comfort and reassurance. “’Twill be all right, lad. We have been in far worse places, surely you remember, and survived just as you will now. You hold strong, and I shall see you safe.”
“Aye.” The word was barely a breath from Danny’s laboring lungs. Jeannie could hear the fear, though, as must Finnan, for he went on, “Trust me, lad. Have I ever let you down?”
He turned to Jeannie. “Where’s that thread?”
She thrust the needle, now with a tail, into his reddened, slimy hand.
Tersely, he told her, “You will have to hold him. I need him still.”
Without question, Jeannie moved to the other side of the bed. She placed one hand on the lad’s chest, the other on his upper arm, and held tight.
She caught her breath, as did Danny, when the needle bit torn flesh.
Finnan began to speak, like a father soothing his son. “Do you remember that time the three of us—you, me, and Geordie—were caught in that high pass above Glen Lyon by that band of king’s men? How many swords were against us then?”
“Ten.”
“Ten, and no mistake, but we made short work of them. Would have taken our weapons from us, would they not? But we showed them right and proper. Easy odds.”
Jeannie turned her head away, no longer able to watch the needle plunge through bloodied flesh.
“And,” Finnan went on softly, “that time north of Callander, in that ale house.”
To Jeannie’s surprise, Danny gave a laugh that shook his chest.
“Aye.” Finnan supplied words for him. “They did not expect a one-armed lad to have a dirk nestled in his boot. You served them right well that day.”
“Aye,” Danny echoed softly.
“So what is a wee bit of a fight here in our own glen? We fight on our land, now. No success to them!”
No response. Jeannie stole a look to see the lad appeared to have fallen unconscious.
“At last,” Finnan breathed. “Lass, hold him still.”
She was certainly no lass, but as this scarcely seemed time to argue it, she obeyed and watched while he tied off the thread. The angry blood lessened to mere seepage amid the stitches.
“Will that hold?” she asked.
For answer, he held out his arms, the tattoos on which were liberally interspersed with white scars. “It always has. More water.”
