Alan never remembered moving. Mother was screaming from the bed, “Evan. Evan!” In the hallway, the men exclaimed. Alan took his wife in his arms. A thin line of red marked her throat, and blood trickled down the pale skin there.
He stared at his brother, who had crumpled to the floor, arms outflung, the knife still protruding from his chest.
Dead? Was he dead?
The physician came rushing into the chamber, nudged Alan aside, and crouched down. Mother had ceased her wailing and everyone else there had gone dead silent. Waiting.
The physician tore open the front of Evan’s filthy shirt and performed a swift examination. When he rose, his face looked tight and still.
“He is dead. The blade went clean between two ribs and, no doubt, found his heart.”
Mother did not wail. No one else spoke. Annista had begun to tremble violently in Alan’s arms.
“All right,” Alan said. Whether to her or the physician, or the rest of them he did not know. “’Tis all over now.”
Annista turned in his arms. Her gaze found his, wide and shocked and—still angry? “He killed my sister. Ye heard him.”
“We all did, Mistress,” said Billy from the doorway. “And he would ha’ killed ye, that I do believe.”
Alan believed it also. Very carefully, he laid the sword aside. Annista had spared him the pain and guilt of killing his own brother.
“Master Robertson,” Mother gasped. “My husband—”
They all watched as the physician examined Father.
“He yet lives. Verra low does his heart beat.”
Alan puffed out a breath of relief. Had Father been conscious and able to speak, would he have given Evan the promise he sought, despite his wayward heedlessness? Aye, Alan believed so. Evan always had been his favorite.
“Come,” he murmured to Annista. “Sit down.”
“No’ here.”
“Nay.”
He more than half carried her from the chamber. Not till they reached the hallway did he see Bonnie was there, huddled down next to Seumas who lay still on the floor.
“Does he live?” he asked the little maid, with a nod at the footman.
And she nodded also, tears streaming down her face.
****
The dawn came inevitably, as it tended always to do. Everyone in the house had been scarred by the night just passed. But there came relief also, with the passing of the dark. A sense of reaching for normalcy where none existed.
They met all in the great hall, master, mistresses, and servants alike. Someone built a great, roaring fire in the hearth. The maids from the kitchen dispensed hot drinks, speaking in whispers.
For lack of a better place, Seumas had been carried to Annista’s chamber, just down the corridor from where he’d fallen. Bonnie sat with him there, and the physician had been in, tending the wound in the brave footman’s chest.
Evan had missed the heart, just as with Alan, but Annista had not missed her aim.
She contemplated that as she sat beside Alan at the big table, the others moving around them. Her blade had found its mark and true.
Now she must live with it.
Evan’s body had—again for lack of a better place—been wrapped in linen and carried to the chapel. A good enough spot to lie, perhaps better than he deserved—with Robena’s grave right outside.
Did Robena find any peace now that her tormentor was dead? Annista hoped so, for she herself felt little.
