“Aye, there was that. And I was fair guilty, too. ” He inhaled deeply, shutting his eyes against the pain of it.
“Don't forget the guilt. ”
“Guilt?” she asked quietly.
“That it'd been Aidan, and not me, who was taken. The fates had ignored me, and so I dared death to take me. I courted it. I accepted every fool's errand. Any danger I could embrace, I did. I ran off to spy when others were too scared. Part of me thought, if I were good enough, I'd someday find Aidan. But I never found him, and death never found me. ” He shrugged. “And so I was just fourteen when they made me a scout. ”
“Your courage made you successful. ”
He gave a bitter laugh. “'Twas folly, not courage. A lad's bravado and a goodly dose of luck are what brought me success. ”
He seemed to run out of words then, and she let him have the silence. What lifetimes he'd lived, all by the time he'd become a man grown.
She turned onto her side to face him. Reaching a hand out, she outlined the fine tracery of scars along his forearm. Though he stiffened, she persisted, running her fingertip along the uneven surface, over unnaturally smooth knots of flesh, across small discs of satiny-thin skin. “You were telling me about these. ”
“These,” he said simply. They both studied his scars until he brought his hand over hers to conceal them. “You wish to know about these, Ree?”
“Aye, Cormac. And be serious this time. ” She smiled, trying to break the tension. “I assume Bridget can't claim these wounds in addition to that crooked nose of yours. ”
“It's not as crooked as all that. ” Though there was humor in his words, he seemed to be having trouble summoning it to his features. “No, my sister can't claim these. Though mayhap if she'd been on the battlefield, the Royalists would've fared better. ”
She edged closer to Cormac, reassured by his attempts to lighten the mood. She'd not let him feel alone in the telling of his tale. “Which battle was it?”
“Do you remember Worcester? 'Twas in 1651. ”
She groaned inwardly. Of course she remembered the Battle of Worcester. It marked the end of the wars. “Aye, I recall it. The Royal
ists lost. ”
“No, Ree, the Royalists were decimated. Thousands of Scotsmen killed to Cromwell's two hundred. ” Cormac grimaced. “The bastard called it his 'Crowning Mercy. '“
She registered the reality of what he'd told her. “But Worcester is so far away. You were only fourteen. ”
“Aye, we'd covered nigh on forty-five leagues in a week, marching deep into England. I told you I was a scout, traveling with Rothiemay's Foot, out of Aberdeenshire. And march we did, straight into a rout… “ He grew silent, and she waited. She wouldn't push him; rather she'd let his story rise to the surface as slowly as he needed it to.
She brought her fingers to his brow. Their candle had long since guttered out, and she studied his face by
moonlight. Gently, she combed her fingers through his hair, drawing it back from his forehead. A strand had tangled in his lashes, just as it used to do when he was a boy. Feelings of unutterable tenderness swelled within her, clutching hard at her throat.
She waited and stroked his hair, and finally his story came.
“As a scout, I didn't see much of the battle. I had other duties. ” Something dark flashed in his eyes, and the notion of what some of those duties might've entailed made her flesh crawl.
“I knew, when the officers sent me off, that we were destined for a crushing defeat. And yet, it had lit something in me. I suppose I thought there was something more I could do for the cause. I snuck farther afield than any of the other scouts had before. I was deep in Cromwell's camp when I discovered something. ”
“What?” she asked, her voice barely a whisper.
“The Parliamentary soldiers… Cromwell's 'New Model Army,'“ he amended sarcastically. “They were gathering up innocents. Later, I found out that, by the end of the battle, they'd taken ten thousand prisoners. All men and boys, every last one shipped off to Barbados or to the colonies. ” She couldn't help her gasp, knowing at once what that would mean for him. “So you were afraid they'd take you, too?”
“No, I was not afraid. ” His body stiffened, a burst of savage energy vibrating through the room. “I longed for them to take me. But I had a job to do. ” Sighing, he came back to himself, his fury spent as quickly as it'd come.
“No, Ree, I wasn't afraid they'd take me. I was afraid for the others. They'd hundreds of lads in the camp by then, all well guarded. ”
His eyes went distant, lost to some horrific reverie.
She was hesitant to speak for fear he might stop talking altogether, but even more so, she feared letting him sink too deeply into the pain of his memories. Finally, she asked, “What happened?”
“What happened,” he repeated, his tone flat. “Well, there was no help for it, of course. They were as good as slaves already. And so I went back to report. ”