Keenan dropped his forehead to his wife’s, then kissed her lightly on the lips.
“My poor son,” his mother murmured, her gaze on Keenan and the dead woman.
The infant started crying, soon escalating to hacking wails.
“Groa, where is the healer? Yer niece needs a wet nurse,” Fenella said softly. “Now,” she said, adding urgency to her tone, “or ye’ll lose the wee one, too.”
Groa seemed in shock, as did her parents and Keenan’s brothers. Fenella couldn’t stand it. Someone had to do something to quiet the bairn. To help her. She moved forward and picked up the wee lass from her mother’s body, cradling her against her chest.
“Where did the healer go?” Fenella may as well have said nothing. No one answered, so she grabbed a plaid from a chair near the door, laid it over the infant and left the room. At the top of the stairs, she showed the lass. “Is there a wet nurse in the clan? Any woman willing to suckle the heir’s babe along with her own? Her mother canna do it.”
“I will,” one lass said. “I still have milk enough.”
Fenella went down the stairs to her, careful to keep one hand on the railing. She dared not fall with the newborn in her arms.
“Ah, good, ye have kept her warm,” the lass said as she reached for the babe and pulled aside her shift. In moments, the bairn had latched on and was feeding, if slowly. “She’ll take more as she gets stronger,” the lass said.
Fenella nodded. “Thank ye. I dinna ken yer name.”
“I’m from another village, visiting a friend. I’m Mara.”
“Fenella. I must find someone in the village who can become the nurse for this lass.”
Another woman came up to them. “My daughter Kyla can serve,” she said. “My other daughter can care for her young son for now. He’s old enough to cease nursing.”
Relief filled Fenella. With the help of the village, she hoped the new bairn might live, and Keenan would not have to bury her, too, with her mother.
“Has anyone seen the healer?”
“Aye, she went to her herbal some time ago,” one of the men sitting nearby said.
“Come with me,” Fenella said to Mara. “If ye can? The healer should see this wee one.”
Later, fed and sound asleep, the bairn stayed in Fenella’s arms as she, Mara and the local lass, Kyla, proceeded to the nursery. The healer, who had still looked shaken and sad, had pronounced the wee one well and strong, “Settle in here for tonight, please,” Fenella told the lasses. “I’m certain the family will be grateful for yer help. Ye will see them on the morrow.”
Mara settled in a chair. Fenella gave the wee bairn into her arms, and a sweet smile lit Mara’s face as she gazed down at her.
Despite the tragedy that had brought them here, Fenella couldn’t help the small flare of jealousy as she gazed at the bairn’s sweet face in Mara’s arms. When would her turn come to marry and have bairns of her own? Or would she wind up like Aimil? She looked away from the bairn, fighting to keep her last memory of the wee one’s poor mother out of her mind. As a chill slithered down her spine, she left the nursery, went down the stair and through the great hall, needing to be away from the sadness that overlay the miracle of this new life. She pushed open the keep’s heavy door and left the crowded hall for some air in the bailey. The night was clear and cold. Stars seemed to be bright shards of crystal so thick, they appeared like clouds against the black sky. They should name the lass Astra, Fenella thought. For a night with so many stars they nearly hid the dark. Nearly, but not quite. And the full moon would rise late and hang in the morning sky like a wraith.
Fenella shivered and turned to reenter the keep, leaving that image outside. It had no place in the hall this night.
She went back to the birthing chamber in time for Keenan to step out of the door, his wife’s body wrapped in a blood-soaked sheet in his arms. His mother noticed her and stopped him.
“Ye took the wee lass. Where is she?”
“In the nursery with two wet nurses for tonight. Tomorrow, ye may wish to make yer own arrangements for her.”
That got her a wan smile. “Thank ye for doing what we should have. The shock…”
Fenella looked from her to the woman in Keenan’s arms and finally to him. His face showed no expression, but his eyes gave away the agony that must be clawing at his insides. How did he bear it? “I understand. The healer waits for ye. I’m so sorry.”
She stepped out of the way and they continued to the top of the stairs. All conversation in the great hall died the moment they appeared. She was certain Keenan didn’t notice the sudden hush as he took his wife to be prepared for burial.
Fenella had no doubt servants were already in the birthing chamber, cleaning it. Tomorrow, it would be as if tonight had never happened, except for the missing woman and the new bairn. The thought gave her a strange hollow sense in the pit of her stomach. Nothing was the same, and would never be the same again.
The day after the next,the morning was dark, the waning moon invisible above low clouds and heavy rain. Cold wind whistled across the rushing burn that bordered the rise in the glen where Keenan MacNabb’s family had long buried their dead. Fenella’s gaze strayed from the simple wooden boxholding the remains of Keenan’s late wife to the babe in Kyla’s arms, the village lass who’d become her wet nurse, and to Keenan, stone-faced, gaze downcast as four strong men of the clan lowered his dead wife’s body into the muddy ground. She would find it a boggy place to rest. Fenella had no doubt that rainwater had started to fill the hole. She hoped Aimil’s soul ascended quickly on the words of the priest commending her to God, if it hadn’t already, and spared her that knowledge.
The infant she’d died to bring into the world started to cry, as if she knew her mother was gone and she would never see her again. Never feel her touch. Never get to know the love between her parents that had brought her into being. Fenella’s heart broke for the wee bairn and for its father, who faced the loss of all the dreams they’d shared, and instead, now faced raising a daughter without her mother.
