Page 11 of A Promise of Love

" C ome on, man, we've almost got it!" Alisdair MacLeod shouted at his ancient clansman .

The faltering Geddes was no match for the plow that stubbornly skidded along the weed choked ground.

A few moments later, Alisdair dropped the leather straps wound around his shoulders and torso and wearily walked back to where Geddes stood, bent over with age and the shame of being unable to contribute to even this simple task.

Alisdair, well aware of the state of the old man's pride, clapped him encouragingly on the shoulder as he thrust his worn boot at the metal flange, stomping and kicking at it until it found purchase in the stubborn soil.

Grasping the wooden handles of the plow between two large, callused hands, he showed Geddes how to hold them firmly as his laird acted as their draft horse .

Alisdair disliked having his ancient clansman help in the rough work, but Geddes needed to feel useful. That, coupled with the fact that there was no one else to do this chore adequately subdued Alisdair’s conscience .

The English woman was still on his mind, damn her, despite the plowing to be done .

Alisdair could not recall one instance when he had frightened a woman .

When he was young, studying at the University, he’d no complaints. The girls, well, the girls of Edinburgh and Brussels had thought he was a fine enough companion for winter nights and summer dreaming. And Anne, she was the most gentle creature of all; he’d never disquieted poor dear Anne .

Even lately, when care and worry was ever present on his mind, he was gentle with the women of his clan. He’d never frightened them, not even Fiona, who might have benefited from a good scold .

Yet, he’d managed to scare the English woman, hadn’t he?

She’d jumped when he’d seen her this morning, dropping the skirts clutched in her right hand, paling so much that he wondered if she were going to faint.

A pulse at her neck had throbbed so violently he could count the beats and his physician’s mind had discerned it too rapid not to indicate distress .

For a moment this morning, when Ian’s door creaked open, his own heart had stilled. Instead of his golden haired brother, the English woman had stepped out, and then simply stopped, fear so much a part of her that he could almost smell it flooding the pores of her skin .

He looped the leather straps over his back, inserting his arms in holes designed for the haunches of a four legged animal.

He was the MacLeod beast of burden, had been since Malcolm had taken their one horse south to England.

That poor beast had earned a well deserved rest, being fattened up with that other skeleton of an animal the English woman had ridden north.

He was surprised the emaciated creature had made it this far.

Woman or beast? Aye, the woman could use some fattening up , too .

And gentling .

Alisdair bent against the resistance of heather choked soil, pulled until clods of earth flew from Geddes’ feet, unearthing one row, then another and another. The muscles of his back and shoulders flexed with the strain and ached in protest, but he didn't stop .

He couldn't stop .

Habit and strength of will made him ignore the pain in his shoulders and back. The discomfort of his body was a small price to pay next to that of his conscience if he did not work as hard as he could .

He had come too early to the title of laird; he would not compound the tragedy which had elevated him to that status by being a poor leader.

Nor would he abdicate his responsibilities, either by selling his own clansmen into slavery as had been rumored of other chiefs, or by demanding rents from tacksmen who were living from day to day on the meager produce garnered from their hidden root crops .

“I’ve a stable you can muck out when you’re finished, brother." The memory of his brother’s teasing words hung in the air .

It was ironic that after all the hell he had taken from Ian, it was, after all, his fancy education which had saved their lives.

Not the education garnered at Edinburgh and on the continent, as he struggled to learn his profession of physician, but the training received, quite literally, at the feet of one of his professors.

Dominic Starn was not only a famous biologist, but he had a peculiar leaning for root crops and an affinity for Scottish soil.

Alisdair MacLeod often dug in the earth of his don's small yard in Edinburgh while being lectured on muscles, veins, ligaments and bone. He’d done the same here, at Tynan, to the mocking accompaniment of his brother’s amusement.

Yet, it was those same turnips and cabbages and potatoes which had ultimately fed the clan, kept the old from dying too young and the young from dying before learning to live .

He and Anne had returned to Tynan after the calling of the clans to the doomed cause of the Bonnie Prince.

They had left their home in Edinburgh and returned to the Highlands because he was a MacLeod, not because he wished to fight.

After Culloden, he had taken his wife and escaped to the continent, in hopes that his child would be born safe from the blood bath that had been Scotland.

But, such was not to be, and once again, he had returned to the place he called home .

Wholesale genocide was the Duke of Cumberland's aim, but he was not going to succeed if he, Alisdair MacLeod, had anything to say about it.

As long as a breath of air filtered through his lungs, and his arms could raise the long leather straps of a harness, and his back could bend beneath the savage demands of a plow, he would fight for his people.

If once he thought that the drudgery of endless nights of study for exams and tedious days of listening to interminable lectures were hellish, it was little compared to his life of the past two years .

Sometimes, at night, he would nearly sob with fatigue, or genuine pleasure, at the feel of his body lying straight upon his bed.

Tears would sometimes squeeze from beneath clenched lids in those stolen moments in the darkness and silence of the night, but Alisdair wouldn't feel ashamed.

He was too exhausted to feel shame. Or grief.

Or a thousand other emotions that would only hamper his driving ambition to be a leader for the rag-tag, haunted looking group that was his clan .

He did feel regret, however, that he had not taken the time in the past to realize how precious life truly was.

As a physician, he had been prepared for death, but Alisdair realized he had never lived so fully as during the last two years.

He had never appreciated the heather blooming on the moors as he did now, stooped to the plow.

Nor had he smelled the sea with quite the sense of wonder, when each wave washed up the briny scent and carried with it the hope of a fresh catch in the morning.

He had never before appreciated a clean, soft linen shirt with the same, singular joy as now .

Simple things measured the clicking of each day on some celestial clock, like rising in the morning and striding barefoot on a cool, wet patch of dew, the plucking of a rosy turnip from the ground, a filling meal of potato pancakes, the tangy sweetness of heather ale .

He appreciated too, no matter how paradoxical it seemed, his struggles.

The hardships proved he still drew breath, that he still lived.

Therefore, he was unperturbed by small events which would have left him irritated in the past. He repaired fallen roofs without cursing God for bringing the rain, played the part of plow horse without complaint.

When his belly growled with hunger, he anticipated their meager rations and was grateful.

He no longer questioned the unjustness of life, simply experienced it, with all its glories and disappointments, accepting the bad along with the good .

Hope was an emotion of choice, one of the few liberties still left him.

Hope had made him agree to the terms of his conditional pardon.

Hope had made him discount the feeling that he’d betrayed his country, his heritage, his ancestry, as he signed his name to the document which lashed him to English terms of justice.

If he were lucky enough, did not die of starvation, or incur the wrath of the English, perhaps he would one day become a bitter old man feasting on the alum taste of memories grown vivid with age.

But for now, he clung to the feeble ray of hope, shielding it like a candle in a gale, cupping it protectively in his hands and his heart, choosing not to remember as much to dream .

Only now had his memories achieved a distance in which he could view them without anguish.

His poor, dear Anne whom he had been unable, with all of his skill, to save.

His father, the debonair laird, laughing at the thought of death and championing lost causes with riotous disregard for reality.

And Ian, his older brother, who stood just an arm's length away as nine thousand well trained, well equipped, and well fed troops of Cumberland's army swarmed across the glen.

The fierceness of the Highlanders had counted as nothing that day .

Perhaps that was why he worked so hard to feed his people, to make a way for the crofters to subsist, to prepare them for an uncertain future, to hope in a land where hope had been burned and starved out of its people .

He had not believed .

He had never believed .

He had always despised lost causes .

His voice had been joined with the pitifully small minority who urged caution, who pleaded with Lochiel and the other influential clan chiefs to wait, to negotiate, to investigate the promises of the Bonnie Prince .

Even Ian had not cared that the man who would be king was a twenty-three year old weakling with a penchant for whining .

“He sees nothing wrong with the sacrifice of five thousand ill equipped troops who left home and hearth behind to follow a doomed dream, Ian, yet your prince has not once provided the aid he promised.

" Even today, he could recall that conversation.

Ian had only smiled at him, patient in the way a man is who does not listen to dissension .

“It will come, Alisdair. You must have faith in the cause." How like Ian to have believed so readily, to have embraced so avidly something so dangerous, so potentially disastrous .

“He wants silk and satin in his tent instead of coarse linen. He complains of the rough food of the Scots. This is the man you would have as king ."

“His name alone will unite the clans, Alisdair ."

“He whines when no one will plan strategy with him, as if it were a game with toy soldiers. Then, he refuses to listen to his own generals .”

“Then why are you here, brother, if you find him so lacking?

" Ian had looked him up and down, as if he had been smaller than his older brother.

In truth, Alisdair towered over him, had done so since they were boys.

How could he tell Ian of the dread he felt, not only for battle, for killing, but for the future .

“Because you’re my brother. Because I’m a MacLeod." They had looked at each other then, knowing that a chasm of thought and reason lay between them, but their love for each other would remain a bridge, a greater bond .

So, in the end, Alisdair stood beside Ian and together the sons of the MacLeod marched with their father.

Alisdair had stood and faced the charging men and felt terror break out on his skin, heard the pipes which echoed his own trembling wish to scream and run.

He had glimpsed the grinning, bone white face of death, but instead of fleeing the scene of carnage, Alisdair had killed in the name of freedom .

The life he lived now was a singular paradise of simple pleasures in comparison to that moment .

Alisdair had begun to find peace .

Until the woman arrived .

What on earth had come over his grandmother?

Why did she think that he and that English woman would ever make a match of it?

Why had he not shouted her down? Because he respected her.

Because, other than his absent mother, she was his only surviving relative.

Because, her way was the only chink of light showing in this idiotic situation. Because, honor still mattered .

The same reason Alisdair was not living a life of courtly luxury in Paris, instead of coaxing a living from scrubby soil and persuading his clan to turn their backs on the past, was the same reason he could not pretend this farce of a marriage had not occurred.

Honor. A conscience. A heritage which demanded more of him, more from him.

The old rules were easy to break, but what would that make of him, if he did?

His clan would be as loath as he to take an English woman into their midst, but a man who broke his word, who would lie once would lie twice.

Even if he did choose to ignore his country's traditions, he could not ignore his honor.

Hope and honor were all he had to call his .

Still, he remembered her start of fright, the paleness of her face, the expression frozen in those deep blue eyes .

He had never frightened a woman in his life .