Page 75

Lady Mairead did not make a sound. Her lips parted on the name. Then her face crumpled, and the tears ran down into the lines of it, and she did not lift a hand to stop them. Agnes put an arm around her. Behind Agnes stood Hamish Gunn, come up the hill to the keep at last, with his white beard combed and his stiff arm in a clean sleeve. He looked hard at the floor and blinked.

The priest poured the water. The baby woke and roared his outrage at the roof.

Iona laughed. The laugh and the tears came up together and caught in her throat, and she bent her cheek to the hot, wet little head.

Lady Mairead came around the font and held out her thin hands. Iona laid the baby in them, furious and dripping, and watched the lady hold her husband’s name against her heart.

“Ye kept it from me,” Lady Mairead said. Her voice had gone thick. “The pair of ye.”

“That was yer son’s doing, my lady,” Iona said. “I’d have told ye over the porridge.”

“She would,” Alasdair said. “She tells everybody everything over porridge.”

“Hush, the both of ye.” Lady Mairead looked down, and the baby stopped roaring and frowned up at her with his father’s frown. “Gregor,” she said to him, very softly, as if she were trying the word after a long time without it. “There ye are, then.”

Iona’s throat closed. Alasdair’s hand came to the small of her back and stayed there.

At the chapel door Sir Robert Lindsay was waiting, in a velvet coat a little shinier at the cuffs than it had been at her wedding. He had ridden up from Edinburgh for the christening, and he bowed over her hand with his tired face nearly smiling.

“My lady. His Majesty sends his blessing on the child.” He glanced at Alasdair. “And he bids me tell you that Archibald Leith has been outlawed. His lands are forfeit. Any man may take him, and no man may give him a roof.”

For a heartbeat the sun on the steps went cold, and she felt Leith’s rings at her throat again. Then Alasdair’s arm came around her waist, solid and warm, and the cold went out of her as fast as it had come.

“Let him run, then,” she said. “He’s good at it.”

“He’ll run slower with my mark across his ribs,” Alasdair said.

Sir Robert looked from one of them to the other. “I shall report that the King’s peace has produced an heir,” he said. “His Majesty likes his orders to bear fruit. He seldom asks how they ripen.”

• • •

The hall had never been so loud.

Every bench was full from the dais to the door. Neil MacKay sat among the crofters in a new coat, with his own roof over his head again.

When Iona came up onto the dais, the whole hall got to its feet.

Angus Bain lurched up with his cup held high and roared, “To Lady MacVey, and God help the man who crosses her!” The hall roared it back at him. Iona lifted her cup to him, and the big man beamed like a boy and sat down so hard the bench groaned.

She sat down beside her husband. Lady Mairead sat beyond him with the baby asleep in a basket at her feet.

Iona watched her husband carve, his sleeves pushed to the elbow. She watched his hands on the knife and thought of those same hands on her laces tonight, and then lower. It had been weeks. The midwife had been strict, and Agnes stricter, and tonight neither of them would be anywhere near his door. The heat came up her throat so fast that she had to drink.

He caught her at it. One black brow went up.

“Ye’ve gone pink, wife,” Alasdair said.

“It’s the wine,” Iona said.

“Ye’re drinking ale,” Alasdair said.

“Then it’s the ale,” Iona said, and he laughed low in his throat and pressed his knee hard against hers under the table. He left it there, and she lost the thread of everything Lady Mairead said to her after.

Down the table Gavin climbed up onto his bench with his cup raised.

“A word, my laird!” he shouted. “Before ye’re too drunk to pay me!”

The hall hushed. Alasdair leaned back in his chair. “Pay ye for what?”