Jean looked up into the horrible face of the fiend bending down to search under the table where she cowered. He’d found her. She hoped death would be swift. Her scream was trapped in her throat, just like she was trapped beneath the table.
The man snorted then ripped the curtain completely off the table with a hard yank, rending the velvet with a loud zip. He threw the drape over at the pile of broken benches. The fabric flew through the air and landed spread out flat, covering the heap of splintered wood. Every detail was vividly seared into Jean’s mind, everything moving at an unnaturally slow speed. The fiend’s heavy breathing rasped in and out, wheezing at the end of each exhale. His plaid tartan whirled around his knees as he tromped around the table. Jean could see just his bare feet and the lower half of his hairy legs. Then he stomped back up the steps to the chancel. What’s he going to do to me? His claymore was drawn from the scabbard on his back and held high. Jean kept her hands fisted up and wrapped around her legs, holding onto herself for dear life. His other weapons clanked against his hip as he stormed back down the steps. This is it! She braced for his huge meaty fists to grab her and drag her out from beneath her cover. Instead, he growled and kicked the table backwards. It crashed onto its side, snapping off the carved apron that ran beneath the long edge of the table top. The wood cracked and splintered. With her hiding place gone, Jean was completely uncovered, a balled up girl shaking on the open floor. He stood over her, his claymore stretched over her. Every fiber of her being tightened, preparing for him to strike. Then he stomped away through the debris, kicking a metal bowl on the way, and he stormed right out the door. The bowl reverberated as it spun to a stop. The man was gone.
But he looked right at me!
Jean stayed curled up, unable to move. Except for the shaking. It was out of control. Her body vibrated against the stone floor. She clutched her arms more tightly around her knees, but it only made her teeth rattle more.
She closed her eyes again as tightly as she could. She didn’t want to see anything. But the man’s ugly, angry face kept glaring at her from behind her lids, his eyes penetrating her soul, stabbing her with hatred. His eyes hadn’t looked human. More a purple-black swirling quagmire of evil. The hate in them cut Jean to her core.
A thought broke through her terror: he might come back with more men. Then it would be even worse than she’d feared. I must get up, find a new hiding place! She couldn’t stay there, couldn’t give up and stop trying.
The minister must be unconscious, she thought, because he’d uttered nothing more since his first cheerful greeting was cut off. I should help him. She let go of her knees and tried to straighten her legs. The trembling made movement difficult. Rolling over and getting up onto her hands and knees, she looked out onto the dim ruin of the chapel. The shock of the attack was making her dizzy. The horror, then the relief, it left her confused with overwhelming emotions crashing through her chest. Her heart pounded so loudly it echoed through her head. She tried to get up. Rising to her feet was nearly impossible. Her balance was off and her knees barely held her.
Leaning over to hold on to pieces of the broken furniture, she lurched around and looked for the minister among the shattered benches. The tall wooden candlesticks were shattered into pieces, like the fiend had cracked them repeatedly over the heap of destroyed benches. Two of the candles somehow still burned, lying on the ground broken and bent as though their necks had been broken. Their flames burned straight up from their horizontal wicks. A small fire had caught on the edge of the table drape. Jean stomped it with her shoe. The heat quickly seeped through her leather sole but she smothered the flame. She still heard the crackling of fire. She spun around to face the other side of the chapel. One pile of rubbish had a much larger flame, one she wouldn’t be able to trample.
“Parson Paterson?” she called out. “Are you all right? Where are you?”
She lifted a thick plank off the broken furniture, her arms trembling and barely able to bear the weight, and found his feet extended from beneath, limp and drooping. Working as fast as she could, she flung broken boards and other debris away, hurrying before the flames engulfed the whole chapel. The wound on the minister’s neck was so severe, she knew he would never wake up again. The blood on the stones was enough to fill two buckets. He’d already stopped breathing. She heaved aside the last of the wreckage over him even though he was long past feeling anything.
She looked back at the fire. If she stayed, she would surely be in peril of burning up. But if she went outside, what nightmare would she find? She didn’t want to go out there and lose the protection of the chapel. Instead of leaving, she worked her way through the rubble to the table drape, nearly falling twice, her legs were so wobbly. She snatched up the heavy cloth and careened as fast as she could to the growing fire and beat the flames with the thick velvet.
The fire kept spreading to new piles of wood while she worked to smother the initial blaze. The heat toasted her face, making her skin tight and tingly. Many times she nearly threw down the drape and ran out, certain the fire would overtake her, but with just another slap of the wadded, smoking cloth, she would see progress and press on. As she flogged the flames, burning cinders flew up and ash billowed into her face. She tried to hold her breath with each blow. Tears poured down her cheeks, her eyes stinging terribly in the caustic smoke. But she wouldn’t give up.
Exhausted with aching shoulders and tight lungs, somehow she finally extinguished it all, and only in the thickest boards did any orange embers continue glowing. The roiling gray smoke diminished to thin ribbons snaking up from the hot wood.
It wasn’t until she sat hard on the stone floor, coughing the soot from her chest, that she realized the man had never come back. Maybe they’d all gone. After conquering the fire, plus eluding the man, she felt heady, almost invincible. She would go out and fight alongside her father if she must. She’d help save the family!
When she left the church, the yard was eerily quiet. Too still. The fight was over. Across the bailey, she saw someone lying near the keep door. He didn’t move. She was afraid to see who it was but too frightened not to look. His kilt was unwrapped from his torso and the long trail of it fluttered in the wind, blowing over the grass like a streamer. She faltered over, sobs breaking in her throat. She bent down and carefully turned him from his crumpled side. He flopped flaccidly onto his back.
It was John—one of Boyd’s men—who had been so alive earlier, laughing and joking, putting up the tents. He lay deathly still, so quiet now. His face was relaxed, not giving any hint about his last horrendous moments. On his chest soaked into his cream-colored linen shirt were three circles of browning blood. In the center of each umber circle was a thick, black gash where a knife had sunk in.
The ground slanted and Jean stumbled sideways. Her ears roared and her vision had spots. Certain she would pass out, she bent over and waited for the pounding in her head to settle down. When she stood back up, the ground wasn’t quite as tilted and her hearing had come back. Men were talking, a low conversation coming from outside the bailey wall. The voices seemed familiar, and they weren’t crying out with a battle cry. They were nearly to the entrance where the drawbridge was still down across the moat, clearly never returned to its place before the pillagers reached the gateway. Unsteady on her feet, she teetered toward the opening in the wall to see who was speaking, who was coming back. She forgot to worry that they might be the enemy, returned to do more harm.
Coming across the drawbridge, her father was propped between Boyd and Robert, each with their arms around him and his feet dragging more than stepping. He leaned heavily on them and his head was not held high. He was wounded somehow, she knew, but the only blood was a thin red spray across his shirt. It could have been from an opponent. His tartan was filthy. Was that more blood or just dark dirt? They took him as far as the trestle tables where they’d been setting up the pavilion, and they laid him down on a table that Jean hastily put back upright.
“What happened?” J
ean asked, breathy and weak. Her voice wouldn’t project like normal.
Robert and the steward exchanged a look.
“Tell me,” she demanded, her voice growing in strength as she realized she would have to bear much.
“Ah, lassie,” Robert said tenderly, “They took your sister. Janet’s been taken.” His voice broke.
Her hand flew to her mouth.
“Your da fought hard to get her back, but others came out from hiding and hit hard. He’s taken a blow from a mace.”
She hadn’t seen it before, she was so busy looking for stab wounds in his chest like John had suffered. On the side of his head, a crushing wound was matted with blood in his thick dark hair. His eyes were droopy and glazed and he hadn’t yet spoken.
“Da, da, can you hear me?” Jean pleaded, dropping to her knees next to the table to speak closely to his ear. “Robert, quickly, go get Mother. She’ll know what to do.”
Robert didn’t move.
“Why don’t you go? I said, get Mother!”
“Ah, lassie,” he said again.
“What? What aren’t you telling me?”
Robert looked down, shaking his head. A thick glob of tears dropped from his eye into the grass.
“Nay. Nay. Nay, nay, nay, nay,” Jean wailed. She jumped to her feet and ran into the keep, knowing that’s where her mother had been overseeing Janet’s sewing.
The carnage was more than Jean could absorb. Bodies everywhere. They’d fought hard. It was up on the dais that she found her mother. At least it must have been over quickly, Jean thought, trying desperately to remain calm. Her mother looked peaceful in death. One would not know looking at her face that she’d met a violent end.
Jean rested her hand over her mother’s eyes and closed them the rest of the way. Jean’s chin dropped to her chest as the loss tried to overwhelm her. But with determined fortitude, she lifted her head back up. She wouldn’t let it crush her. There was nothing to be done for her mother, but her father still lived. He would need her to be strong. She raced back out, set on not letting her da die too.
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