Wallace and his men when they would come to us for aid. But Da decided to keep our swords sheathed after he met one-on-one with Wallace. The two of them talked for a good long time, and when Wallace left the fireside, he shook hands with my father and then promptly left. When I asked him if we were going to join Wallace’s cause, he looked up at me, his eyes full of sadness.
“No, lass, no we won’t. This is Wallace’s fight and his alone. He knows the English will be coming for him soon, and he asked us to wait and rally behind his death instead.”
At the time, I didn’t quite understand what he meant, all I knew was that I was getting itchy for battle and Da was keeping all of the parties close to home and under his eye. Which to be honest, wasn’t all that bad. True enough, I still spent plenty of nights out under the stars or with the roof of a cave over my head. But a few nights a week, I would stay at the home of my parents and enjoy the warmth and happiness of their hearth. All of my sisters had married and were now having children of their own. Most of them were still nothing more than wee bairns, and every time I held one of them in my arms, something would stir inside, some kind of deeper longing.
Truth be told, I had been feeling it for a long time, well before my sisters bellies were full of their children. These feelings would come to full life any time I was around young Derrick of my war party. We’d known each other for years, as both of us had been trained and hardened by my father, and for many years, I almost thought of him as the brother I never had. We were very competitive with one another and would always try to best each other at every little thing we did. But after a few years of us roving the clans lands and defending it against all who dared to cross our borders, I started looking and thinking of Derrick differently. Instead of admiring his marks and swordsmanship, I began admiring the cut of his face, the blueness of his eyes, and the way his muscles flexed and moved when he was in battle.
I wanted to tell him how I felt, but I was afraid of two things: That he would just laugh at me, or that he would feel the same and would want me to stop roving with the war parties and stay home to raise our family. The prospect of either kept me up at night, staring out into all that blackness, the infiniteness of it all, the possibilities and conflict of the lives I could lead: The lonely life of a warrior born, a true highlander, or as a wife and mother. Being a wife and mother seemed almost impossible to me as I remembered my constant fumbling as my mother tried to teach me how to sew and cook and do all the things a wife was supposed to do, and of how badly I did all of them and how unnatural it felt. But I ached for Derrick, and I could no longer deny my feelings for him.
It was right near the end of Wallace’s war and Derrick and I were out on night patrol. Both of us were very much at ease that night because we knew that the English were far north of us and our land was in no immediate danger, we walked side-by-side, still keeping our voices low and hush out of habit. Derrick was telling me a story of Old Man McAllen the last time his party had been out roving. Derrick’s war party was made up of mostly young men, all except for McAllen, who was close to retiring full time to his village because of the aches in his bones, but he had yet to admit to himself. But one night, the boys of Derrick’s party filled a bowl full of ice cold spring water and placed McAllen’s hand in it. Then they all stood around gapping until the old man wet himself like a wee bairn in the middle of the night and they woke him with their screams of laughter.
I was in near tears as he told it, and Derrick’s face was as bright and red as an apple, his breath hitching with laughter over the memory of the prank. I don’t think I had ever seen him smile so broadly in the entire longtime that
“No, lass, no we won’t. This is Wallace’s fight and his alone. He knows the English will be coming for him soon, and he asked us to wait and rally behind his death instead.”
At the time, I didn’t quite understand what he meant, all I knew was that I was getting itchy for battle and Da was keeping all of the parties close to home and under his eye. Which to be honest, wasn’t all that bad. True enough, I still spent plenty of nights out under the stars or with the roof of a cave over my head. But a few nights a week, I would stay at the home of my parents and enjoy the warmth and happiness of their hearth. All of my sisters had married and were now having children of their own. Most of them were still nothing more than wee bairns, and every time I held one of them in my arms, something would stir inside, some kind of deeper longing.
Truth be told, I had been feeling it for a long time, well before my sisters bellies were full of their children. These feelings would come to full life any time I was around young Derrick of my war party. We’d known each other for years, as both of us had been trained and hardened by my father, and for many years, I almost thought of him as the brother I never had. We were very competitive with one another and would always try to best each other at every little thing we did. But after a few years of us roving the clans lands and defending it against all who dared to cross our borders, I started looking and thinking of Derrick differently. Instead of admiring his marks and swordsmanship, I began admiring the cut of his face, the blueness of his eyes, and the way his muscles flexed and moved when he was in battle.
I wanted to tell him how I felt, but I was afraid of two things: That he would just laugh at me, or that he would feel the same and would want me to stop roving with the war parties and stay home to raise our family. The prospect of either kept me up at night, staring out into all that blackness, the infiniteness of it all, the possibilities and conflict of the lives I could lead: The lonely life of a warrior born, a true highlander, or as a wife and mother. Being a wife and mother seemed almost impossible to me as I remembered my constant fumbling as my mother tried to teach me how to sew and cook and do all the things a wife was supposed to do, and of how badly I did all of them and how unnatural it felt. But I ached for Derrick, and I could no longer deny my feelings for him.
It was right near the end of Wallace’s war and Derrick and I were out on night patrol. Both of us were very much at ease that night because we knew that the English were far north of us and our land was in no immediate danger, we walked side-by-side, still keeping our voices low and hush out of habit. Derrick was telling me a story of Old Man McAllen the last time his party had been out roving. Derrick’s war party was made up of mostly young men, all except for McAllen, who was close to retiring full time to his village because of the aches in his bones, but he had yet to admit to himself. But one night, the boys of Derrick’s party filled a bowl full of ice cold spring water and placed McAllen’s hand in it. Then they all stood around gapping until the old man wet himself like a wee bairn in the middle of the night and they woke him with their screams of laughter.
I was in near tears as he told it, and Derrick’s face was as bright and red as an apple, his breath hitching with laughter over the memory of the prank. I don’t think I had ever seen him smile so broadly in the entire longtime that
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