The Mer- Lion (11 page)

Whether the feeling would last, Seamus didn't know, but he was glad he could return Seaforth's confidence with an honestly felt "Then, my lord, perhaps congratulations are in order for you, too."

Seaforth laughed and admitted the possibility. In this mood of camaraderie, the two men descended the stairs to the great hall below. There they parted, but only temporarily, for Seaforth expressed a desire for the first time in weeks to look over his domain. Seamus, in turn, went searching for the chaplain. But he was not to be found. He had left early before Lauds, on retreat to the monastery of St. Raymond of Penafort, taking only one bundle, presumably of his vestments. Seamus had no choice but to return to the great hall and await Seaforth's pleasure.

Seaforth's inspection, later mat morning, didn't take long, the two men scarcely able to stifle their yawns. As a matter of fact, once Seaforth had seen the job Seamus had done policing the guardroom, the earl would have been content to call it a day. But the two men had picked up a small dark-haired shadow. Jamie, playing the moth to his father's flame, kept his distance but stayed always within earshot. Seaforth, still ridden by guilt, was afraid to push the child for fear of estranging him even more. Instead, leading the way toward the stable, he launched into a long story of the day he graduated from pony to horse. Gradually, his voice became softer, so that Jamie, if he would hear at all, must move closer and closer. Both Seamus and Seaforth affected not to notice.

Softly as he spoke, Dunstan had heard a familiar voice, and he soon drowned out all other sounds with the imrwrtunings of his neighs. When that didn't fetch his master fast enough to suit him, he reared and struck at the stalls with his powerful front legs. An ass or a lesser horse would have kicked with his hind legs, but not this destrier who had been trained since a yearling to do the capriole and caracole—warlike movements that had crushed many a foot soldier's head beneath flailing forehoof. -

Seaforth, with Seamus and Jamie close behind, hurried down the row of stalls until he stood before his favorite mount. A softly spoken "Ho, there" was enough to turn the raging stallion into an overgrown pony. His velvety muzzle pushed against Seaforth's chest until the earl put forth his hand and rubbed between the horse's eyes. Up and down the broad forehead he scratched, the horse closing his eyes like a woman delighting in foreplay. Then down over the broad cheeks, finally searching out that ticklish spot in the V beneath the chin. The horse's skin rippled with shivery pleasure, and he stood transfixed. Never stopping his scratching, Seaforth said, as if to himself, "Poor Dunstan. Poor horse. It shall break my heart to get rid of you."

Seamus and Jamie cried out with one voice, "No!"

Pretending not to have heard, Seaforth continued in the same sorrowful voice, "Better to break my heart than yours."

Jamie, all thoughts of his lost toys driven from his mind by the love of this horse, cried out in tearful protest, "No, father, you can't. I won't let you."

Seaforth pretended surprise. "What? You care for him, too?"

"More than anything in this world." Seaforth chose not to question the exaggeration. The exchange was having the desired result, healing the breach between him and the being
he
loved more than anything in this world.

"Then would you do something to save him?"

"Oh, yes, anything."

Seaforth squatted down to look his son in the eye. As he did, Dunstan, released from his spell, reached over the side of his stall and nuzzled his master's head. Ignoring the horse, Seaforth put his lone hand on his son's shoulder. "Then you must promise me to grow quickly. With only one hand, I cannot hope to handle this horse. But to confine him to a stall for the rest of his life is unfair to him. From the time he was weaned, he has been trained for but one thing—to serve his master. To carry him. To fight for him. Warfare and tourneys are the only things he knows. Without them, he will begin to pine and eventually will lose muscle, and then heart, and then he will die. You must save him from this."

"But I can't. I'm too small." The tears began to flow again.

"Today, yes. But soon you will be big enough. In the meantime, we will let friend Seamus"—Seamus, who thought he'd been forgotten, was startled to hear himself brought into the conversation—"substitute for us. But only until you're ready to take on the responsibility of being Dunstan's master. Agreed?"

The man and the boy looked long into each other's eyes. "Agreed," the small voice quavered and then without warning he launched himself at his father, throwing both arms about the man's neck and burying his face in Seaforth's shoulder. Seaforth's long battle training stood him in good stead, for instinctively bracing himself, he held firm through his son's assault and hugged him back lovingly, albeit single-handedly and a trifle awkwardly.

Seamus, looking down on the two of them, renewed his own promise to the Seaforths
...
not only to mother, but father and now son as well. He would serve as faithfully as Dunstan, for he knew that were he deprived of the right to serve this family, something good and noble would wither and die within him. Dunstan too must have sensed something had happened, for he left off mouthing the earl's hair and with a snort, nuzzled the head of the child.

When the two left the stable, Seamus trailed behind, but close on their heels. Seaforth had begun his heir's training and Seamus was committing it to memory. They began with a subject of primary interest: the care of Dunstan.

As Seaforth talked, he discovered he enjoyed his role as savant and teacher. That there was a sense of achievement and even satisfaction in feeding eager minds, regardless of the fact that one was that of a mere child, the other that of a servant.

Soon Seamus discovered his newfound position as pupil was not confined to the stable. That night after supper, he joined the family for vespers, conducted by another Dominican priest nastily summoned to temporarily replace the good father Cariolinus. Afterward, he was told to join the family in the solarium where he found himself cross-questioned on the care of Dunstan, the Lady Islean looking on with interest. Jamie too underwent scrutiny. So eager was Seamus to learn, to understand, to forget nothing, that he forgot that the Lady Islean listened and that his fellow student was so much younger than he.

Afterward, Seaforth, no longer seeking solace in a cup, had the two stand near as he brought out a book—a primer, beautifully illustrated with large initial gold letters on every page. For a quarter of the hour or so, the two boys—one a diminutive person of four, the other an overgrown giant of nineteen—learned their letters, the one reciting away in an eager soprano, the other more selfconsciously in a basso profundo. Instinctively, like a good teacher, Seaforth demanded little this first night, moving soon from primer to lighter works.

So began the routine that would take them through the weeks ahead. First the meat, then the sweet. The works of those Scots,

Douglas, Kennedy, and Dunbar. Seaforth in his new mood would have avoided Dunbar, a man of morbid bent. But Jamie had seized upon one poem with delight and would pester his father to read it so that he might joyously join the chorus:

Seaforth: Our pleasure here is all vain glory

This false world is but transitory,

The flesh is broken, the Field is sly,

Father and son:     
Timor mortis conturbat me.

Seaforth: The state of man does change and vary,

Now sound, now sick, now blithe, now sary,

Now dancing merry, now like to dee

Both:           
Timor mortis conturbat me.

Although neither Seamus nor the Lady Islean joined in, they could not help but share looks with one another, knowing full well that such a poem well described the Seaforth of but a week ago... and the country as it was today.

Soon Seaforth had read aloud all the books in his library and must send in to Edinburgh for more. These few in turn were swiftly devoured, and agents to buy were alerted in France... and Rome... and even, via Brussels and Amsterdam, in England. But nothing would he touch on theology except it be
Bible
or
Apocrypha
or psalter. As for law, he ignored the modern ones, instead seeking out the works of the basic lawmakers, Plato and Socrates.

No man with a book or a manuscript or scroll or even a shard would be refused admission to the house on St. Mary's Wynd, most leaving with full purse and empty hand.

Soon, the ranks of scholars at St. Andrews University were regularly raided to teach the family Seaforth. Jamie thrived on his diet of ink and parchment and illuminated letters. Seamus, who had responsibilities in the stables for most of the day, remained, in comparison, unlettered. But he felt it no great loss. None of his fellows could read as much as their names, while he was able to read and write Scots and could cipher beyond a thousand.

At first, understandably enough, Seaforth emphasized mind over body. One day, however, Seaforth happened upon Seamus, down on his knees, attempting to teach the rudiments of swordsmanship to the child who was not much taller than his own sword. Seaforth said nothing, standing there and watching two totally inept swordsmen hack away at each other. But something must have been said between the two parents, for preparations commenced the next day for their departure to Rangely on Rannock Moor, although Seaforth let it be known that they would soon go from there to the castle on Dun Dearduil. Downstairs in the kitchen, the servants were pleased with the news. The Seaforths had stayed long in their town house, and their lackeys would gleefully see them go. As for the child, the solution, according to those below stairs, was fosterage, the usual answer to the training of young lordlings in arms as well as household manners. But, Seamus countered, what noble house worthy of the fourth in line to the throne, would accept a son whose father was crippled and thus unable to properly train another's son as fosterling in return? The servants had no answer to this, but the earl did.

Their stay at Rangely was not long, but long enough for Seamus to go to the clan Cameron to bring back the youngest of four orphan brothers, George by name. Tall and thin, with legs like a spider. He was self-contained, excelling in what he liked, and managing to ignore or avoid what he didn't. He was destined to be the bane of the schoolmaster's existence, since his hand was so poor none could decipher it. But among the serving wenches, he did much better— and at the age of twelve, George Cameron could boast of being first to add an offshoot of his clan to the inbred population of the Mackenzies of Seaforth.

Soon after George arrived, Seamus returned to Rangely with another boy orphaned as a result of Flodden—Kenneth Menzies, trim, soldierly and looking as athletic as his prowess over the next nine years would prove him to be. Grumbler, grouser, complainer—no job assigned did he like, yet each was done perfectly, to the last detail.

Seamus brought back two boys from another trip, an Ogilvy and an Angus, who instantly, apparently, hated each other. Nothing one did pleased the other, yet each of these black-haired look-alikes was lost if his fellow were sick abed or put to a different task.

Among the last to join the group was the bastard son of a local girl, Henry Gilliver—a quiet, shy boy whom his fellows quickly learned to shelter. He was a natural candidate for the church
as
Father Cariolinus's Dominican replacement soon discovered. But though Gilliver was agreeable to his joining a religious order, his mother was not. He was to be her support, her mainstay in life.

The last arrival soon- ranked close to Seamus in the affections of the earl and countess, which would have surprised the red-haired John Drummond who considered himself in a typically deprecating manner as the "not as" boy. He was, he once said, not as strong as Angus, not as shrewd as Ogilvy. He was responsible, yes, but not as detail-minded as Menzies. He was growing mature, but if he lived to be a hundred, he'd ne'er be as sophisticated as Cameron. He never realized that although he had less of the good points of the others, he lacked altogether the bad points of each. Jamie's natural preference for this boy was encouraged by the adults about him. They appreciated mat such a friendship could be good for both the leader and the led, the rich boy and the poor, the privileged and the responsible.

The addition of Drummond made the group complete: six plus Jamie, all with some degree of breeding and wits, too. It took time and a fight or two to establish the pecking order with Jamie on top by virtue of his mind and muscle as well as his position. Soon after, with the household belongings loaded onto twenty carts, they were off to Seaforth on Dun Dearduil over the bleakness of Rannock Moor.

For most of the boys this was the first extended trip in saddle
...
and the first saddle sores. Seaforth was not sympathetic. Seamus unguented the boys that night
...
and put them back up into saddle the next mom. Fortunately, a six-day trip rarely did permanent damage.

Within a month, a stranger—the first of many—disembarked at the Loch Linnhe and made his way to Ben Nevis and the Castle Seaforth. With his arrival, the children's vacation ended and their education began. He was an expert with the falchion, a short sword, about one and one half inches wide at the handle and four inches wide at the bottom—a handy thing and easy for a youth to wield as compared to the bigger two-handed sword. After the falchion, they must learn the ways of the flamberge, a sword with a wavy edge, requiring a different two-handed stroke. Once these two weapons were mastered, the swordsman left, soon to be replaced by another weapon master.