That same evening, Claire once again joined the house servants in the kitchen at suppertime.
Good-natured ribbing, she discovered, was not exclusive to the twenty-first century. Mairi gave her a sly look as she set down a trencher and took her seat at the foot of the table. “’Tis well ye dinna crack that fair face o’ yours on the stair last eve. Would ha’ been a pity to spoil it wi’ bruises.”
Claire’s eyes widened as her gaze swept from Mairi to the others at the table, catching the poorly hidden smirks and the glances exchanged over their bowls. She decided not to be humiliated, but to pretend she was truly among friends, and owned up to her big blunder.
“Ugh,” she groaned with a grin. “I was really hoping no one saw that.”
“Nae only did we see it, lass,” Mairi said with gleeful relish, “but ’twas all we spoke of this morn—yer tumble. And yer dancing besides.”
Claire smiled with pure joy now, not for being talked about, but for being included. They weren’t hiding the fact that they’d laughed over her flop, and that was the very proof it wasn’t cruel—no sharp whispers behind her back, no mean-spirited gossip, just the easy teasing shared among people who had already decided she was all right.
The kitchen at suppertime was a world apart from anywhere else in Caeravorn. When Claire slipped through the doors in the evening, she was met by heat, laughter, and the thick smell of broth and bread. Pewter plates clattered as serving girls and scullions finally dropped to benches, filling their own plates with what remained after the laird and his soldiers had eaten. She felt that this was a separate family from any other kinships inside Caeravorn.
At the head of the long table sat Mòrag, the matriarch, as Claire saw it, her slim back ramrod straight despite the fact that she must be at least seventy-five, her wiry hair bound in a kerchief. She never raised her voice and yet when she spoke, she was always heard and heeded. She reigned here, Claire realized, as much as Ciaran ruled everywhere else. Mairi had told Claire that Mòrag had served three lairds before Ciaran, was the longest resident of Caeravorn.
When trenchers were filled, the chatter picked up again, unguarded, full of gossip. A laundress teased Evir about catching the eye of a young soldier in the hall last night—Claire had some vague recollection of that. Evir turned pink, swatting Mairi’s arm, which only drew more laughter. One of the boys mimicked the bark of Mungan, the Kerr captain, making the whole table laugh.
Mòrag rapped the table once with her spoon. “Mind yer tongues, bairns. The walls have ears.” But her eyes twinkled as she said it, and the laughter only softened, wasn’t silenced entirely.
“Ye’ll be needin’ new clothes,” Mòrag said, her gaze sweeping Claire’s gown with a sharpness that made Claire flush. “Should nae have gone to Last Plenty garbed in that.”
Claire nodded, properly chastised, but not brave enough to remind Mòrag or anyone else that she had but two outfits, both somehow procured by Ivy.
“Ye’ll nae last the winter in that rag.” Mòrag predicted. “I’ll see what can be done.”
As the meal went on, talk turned to Caeravorn itself—old stories of battles, of lairds long dead, of feasts and funerals in the very hall above. Mòrag told them with relish, her memory sharp, her loyalty shining in every word. Claire listened, rapt, seeing the keep not as cold stone but as something living, layered with lives that had come before.
“I mind the feast of St. Martin, near on twenty winters past,” Mòrag said, “when the beasts were slaughtered and the ale flowed like a river. The laird’s father—God rest him—sat at the head o’ the board, a man broad as two. The hall was fair bursting that night, every crofter and shepherd from here to the sea wedged in to take their share. Aye,” Mòrag went on, “and in the midst of it, when the pipers had all but lost their breath, his lady wife—our laird’s mother—rose to her feet. Pale and bonny she was, but wi’ a will strong as iron. She took the pipes from the lad’s hands and played a tune herself, clear and bold, until the whole hall was stamping and shouting. Nae ever had I seen the laird beam so wide, nae the people so wild. And when the meat was done and the ale near gone, she bade them open the stores again—said nae man, woman, nae bairn would leave Caeravorn hungry on her watch.”
Mairi laughed, setting down her spoon. “I was but a lass, but I mind it well. We near rolled ourselves home that night, and the laird himself—at his wife’s behest—carried two men to their beds afore it was done.”
The table stirred with quiet amusement, the memory warm as firelight.
Claire smiled, struck by the image, trying to picture Ciaran’s parents presiding over such a feast. Yet it was difficult—her mind kept turning them into caricatures, figures of legend rather than flesh-and-blood people. She tried to imagine them as living, breathing Scots, proud and capable, the kind of leaders whose presence filled a hall.
She wondered if they had been loving, as Mòrag’s anecdote hinted—his mother laughing among the people, his father carrying men to their beds at the night’s end. If so, what had Ciaran’s childhood been like in their keeping? It was hard to reconcile that picture with the man she knew now: brooding, guarded, and alone. Did he inherit that solemnity from them, or had it grown in the void their deaths left behind? Was the grim, iron-hard laird the boy their laughter had raised, or the one grief and war had shaped in their absence?
***
The next morning, Claire had nearly reached the door to the sick house when a voice called her name.
“Mistress!”
She turned to find one of the villagers—a broad man with wind-chapped cheeks and anxious eyes—hurrying toward her, cap clutched in his hands. He bowed his head quickly, almost awkwardly, before blurting out, “Ye must come. The midwife—Mistress Ruth—she’s taken ill. Can hardly rouse her.”
Claire froze, her pulse quickening. “Ill?” she repeated.
He nodded rapidly. “Laid low since last night. Near insensible, she is. Please.”
Her feet moved before she could think, following as he led her toward a squat stone cottage nestled against the outer curve of the main path through the village. Moss tufted the thatch, and a thin thread of smoke curled from the crooked chimney. Thedoor creaked as the man shoved it open, and a wave of cold and stale air rolled out.
On a low cot against the wall, Ruth lay slumped, her robust frame swamped by blankets. Her gray-streaked hair clung damp to her brow, her face waxy with sweat. Her chest rose and fell shallowly, lips parted, a faint rasp in her throat.
Claire was at her side in an instant, one hand pressing against the older woman’s forehead. A dangerous heat blazed beneath her palm.
“She’s burning up,” Claire said quietly, more to herself than to the man hovering near the door. She shifted Ruth gently, checking her pulse, then smoothed the blanket back. No rash. No sign of injury. Just fever, which could be perilous at any time, but here in this century, could prove deadly.
Her nurse’s instincts flared, quick calculations rising even as the realities of this century dragged them back down. She had no thermometer, no IV fluids, no Tylenol to break the fever. What she had were plants, water, and whatever rudimentary knowledge she could dredge from the corners of her memory, from what little time she’d spent with Ruth.
