Thistle and Flame - Her Highland Hero

“W
ell boy, if you think she’s got a good look to
her, go tell her so, and don’t be bashful!” Robert Macgregor slapped his boy
Gavin on the back and pushed him, tottering, toward the center of the dance
floor where the newest girl in the village stood, tugging on her braids, and
nervously frittering with her skirts.

He took one step toward her, looked straight at
the floor and blushed redder than his tartan.

The whole town of Fort Mary came alive on
Hogmanay, the eve of the New Year. Flames burned bright outside the pavilion
erected by the townspeople. Gavin’s little feet scuffed across the wooden
platform, his tightly laced dress boots barely left the ground as he walked
toward Kenna Moore.

Red haired, slim, and of a height befitting her
nine years, Kenna Moore was simply the most beautiful creature that Gavin
Macgregor had ever laid eyes upon. He decided this in the four seconds since he
first saw her, and determined, in that blink of an eye, never to forget.

As he walked across the floor, her eyes had settled
on him too, though he wouldn’t know it since he refused to look up.

Unbeknownst to Gavin, Kenna remembered him from
the house warming celebration three years earlier when her family moved to Fort
Mary. He hadn’t paid much attention to her, as he was far too busy fighting
other little boys with sticks during the rare opportunity for play, but as he
whacked away at round little Will Macleod, she couldn’t drag her eyes off his
long brown hair, or his burning eyes that were the color of the ocean. She’d
waited every day – from that day to this – to see him again, but had never got
up the courage to ask her Pa to go around to the Macgregor's farm.

The instant little Gavin looked up and saw Kenna
staring at him with her piercing stare, the same color as the grass of a dewy morning.
He sucked a deep breath, turned an even brighter shade of red, turned away and
fled behind his father’s tree-trunk leg.

––––––––

“O
h my, but hasn’t he grown?” Lora Moore said to
Kenna as Gavin Macgregor lashed his arms and crouched low in front of a caber
so thick it might well have been made from the biggest tree she’d ever seen.

“I shouldn’t be watching this,” she said back,
twirling one of her copper braids between two fingers. “What if his kilt comes
up when he flings it?”

“Ach, what if it does?” Her mother laughed with
red in her cheeks. “I’m sure he’s got it pinned properly. A boy is nothing
without propriety, Kenna. Best you remember that.”

“That’s the Macgregor boy, isn’t it?” William
Moore said. “Last we saw of him was – what – three years ago now? Seems a
lifetime for all the size he’s put on. He looks like he could have cut that
caber himself in two or three axe blows.”

“He’s shorter than me, I think,” said Kenna,
smiling in spite of herself. “And besides, he’s got skinny legs.”

“You’re thinking those legs are skinny? We must be
looking at different boys,” Lora laughed at her daughter. “Your affections
never are hard to see, are they? You’re too sweet a girl to keep them hidden, I
think.”

“Oh, stop then! I’ve no such thoughts about him.”

“When you’re ready, Macgregor!” The announcer,
David McCraig, the oldest man in Fort Mary, shouted at the top of his lungs.
His booming voice had a little bit of a slur at the end, assuredly from the
drams he’d drunk before being called to announce the contest, but no one
minded. Not at the Beltane games anyway, and Old Man McCraig almost never took
to his cups at any other time.

Gavin Macgregor crouched deep, digging his leather
bracelets into the wood. He bent his knees and pushed forward on the balls of
his feet, then settled onto his heels with a deep breath.

“Do you still think his legs are too skinny?” Lora
chided her daughter, who turned bright red and giggled.

“Well no, I suppose not.”

Even at twelve, Gavin’s body was hard. He worked
his father’s fields of a morning, and then like every other boy in the village,
spent part of the afternoon training with claymore and shield, or with an
over-large broadsword meant to build up his strength. Prince Charles – the
rightful king of England, most highlanders thought – was denied the throne that
was his by right, and if things didn’t chance soon, there would likely be war.

Kenna watched his legs flex above the ankles. His
thighs, the little that Kenna could see under the frayed hem of his kilt, were
hard too, and lined with muscle.

“Those arms,” her father said. “Look how he holds
the caber. That boy’s going to be a Hell of a soldier. Well, if it comes to
that, God forbid.”

Lora tapped William on the arm and pointed her
eyes at Kenna. The two of them watched their daughter with her hand on her
chest, and her mouth halfway open, as she stared at Gavin’s deep-knee-bending
preparation.

“Why sir, I think that I am looking at a girl
smitten,” Lora whispered.

“She’s not the only one,” William said as he
pulled his wife into his side and turned to kiss her. “Fine girl we’ve managed
to make. But, Lora, something’s bothering me.”

“What’s that?” Lora didn’t take her eyes off
Kenna, who remained absolutely still, entranced by Gavin’s warm up exercises.

“Well, it’s just that,” he took a breath. “No,
it’s nothing. Never mind. It’s nothing.” He grinned with a devilish glint in
his eye.

Lora elbowed William in the ribs. “What is it, you
great fool?”

“Ow! Well, it’s just that looking at her,
something struck me. How is it that our daughter is so pleasing to look at?”

Lora narrowed her eyes, elbowed him again, and
said: “without me in her, she’d look like the dog,” without missing a beat.

Gavin stood, stretched his back, then his wrists
and crouched again.

Kenna’s lip slipped between her teeth and she took
her hand off her chest, dropped it to her side, and then intertwined her
fingers. As the young Macgregor stood up again, apparently to remedy some
equipment malfunction, she squeezed her hands into fists, rhythmically gripping
and releasing them.

“What are you stalling for, Macgregor? Throw the
log!” Old Man McCraig roared, raised his cup, and the rest of the village
cheered along with him.

Kenna just wrung her hands and chewed her lip.

Come on, Gavin
, she thought,
come on!

He looked about the staring crowd and waved the
crowd to be quiet.

Gavin was searching for something.

Kenna squeezed her hands together so hard her
fingers turned white.

He turned left and then right, his eyes bouncing
over the crowd. Finally, they settled on something.

On Kenna.

Gavin flashed her a smile, radiant white through
the sweat and mud on his face.

How does he remember me? He does remember me.
That’s why he’s staring at me. Maybe his legs aren’t too skinny after all
.

After a long moment, he turned his head away from
Kenna and squatted low in front of the caber, grunted and exploded upward,
flinging his arms into the air. Every muscle in his lean body flexed and
released as the log turned end over end, landed with a heavy thud straight up
and down, then fell away from him to the crowd’s delight.

Red in the face, Gavin brushed his hair backward
out of his eyes, his smile radiant as he watched the caber flop down to where
it rested.

Through the crowd’s wild cheers, Gavin turned back
to Kenna and mouthed something to her that she couldn’t quite understand, but
what looked like ‘come find me.’

––––––––

W
ith the festival’s energy, and exuberant
drunkenness, winding down, the celebration had finally begun to die a gentle
death. Kenna wandered through the small crowd, nibbling on shortbread and
trying to find the young man who won the caber toss. She spotted Gavin just as
Robert Macgregor came to whisk him off, back home.

His eyes lit up when he saw her, and he turned to
his father, said something, and then slipped out from under his huge arm.

“Gotta be quick about it, we’ve got an early start
tomorrow,” Gavin said in a hushed tone. “But I’ve been saving this for you.”

He pressed something round and hard and thorny
into Kenna’s nervously hot palm, bowed to her as he was supposed to do, and
kissed her hand. “Have to run. I’ll see you soon.”

Kenna was so stunned that she forgot to look in
her hand until her Pa asked her what it was she was clenching at so hard.

“Oh, it’s something Gavin handed me,” she said.

William and Lora exchanged a quick glance.

“Well what is it, dear? Is the boy proposing to
you?” Lora laughed when Kenna pursed her lips, though she thought she noticed a
little look of hope behind the feigned irritation.

Opening her hand, slowly, to extend her
anticipation, Kenna stared in wonder at the half-opened thistle flower with a
delicate, purple fringe barely creeping out of the hard, green covering. A tear
rolled down her cheek, though she wasn’t quite sure why.

Her mother, though, understood perfectly.

“Keep it safe,” she said. “Put it away and dry it.
I can show you how.”

“Oh – okay Ma,” Kenna said. “But why? It’s just a
flower. How do you know about drying them?”

“I have some experience,” Lora said with a glance
at William. “Your father gave me one of those once.”

––––––––

T
he pipes played early, halfway through the fifth
year of the 1740s. As expected by some, but feared by others, the Bonnie
Prince’s petition for the throne was denied by the English, but worse than
that, he was ignored and treated like a petulant child. The highland clans had
already begun to move, but this morning, one of the main regiments assembled to
go south and fight for Prince Charles was to come through Fort Mary and carry
with it to Edinburgh, and to battle, all able men willing to fight for their
prince.

Some men older than Kenna's father joined the
march, but he had a leg that rendered him less able than others. Still, he rose
with the pipes to see them who left off.

Kenna woke slowly, eyes still full of sleep when
her father pulled her out of bed to stand by the roadside and say goodbye to
those who left, many of them not likely to return, if reports of how serious
the English were proved true.

“Is everyone going? This looks like half the
town,” she said.

“Aye,” her father’s face was stone. “Anyone able
and anyone willing, they’ll take. The clans are so desperate for fighters
they’re taking the old and the young alike – just so long as they’re able to
fight. There will be a meeting in two weeks’ time in Edinburgh, at the castle,
and if the situation isn’t remedied, there’ll be a war as sure as I stand here
with my hand on your shoulder, lass.”

Kenna, sixteen years old and full of a flush she
couldn’t explain, reached with one hand for her father and with the other for
her mother. Both of them grabbed her hands and held them tight.

“Is Gavin...?”

“Aye, I expect he’s going. He’s the strongest lad
in the town, and as brave as the night is long this time of year. If anyone
will be fine through a battle, it’s him. But there’s still a chance it won’t
come to that. There’s always hope, Kenna, that the politics can be taken care
of and left to those who have naught to do but play at such games.”

But nothing prepared Kenna for the wave of emotion
that pounded against her when she saw Gavin, with his thick shoulders and long
hair, walking sleepily down the road, in his dress kilt, with full arms. The
dubh
in his sock with the Macgregor crest she couldn’t see but knew was there,
bouncing in time with the flat of his sword slapping his leg. She screamed his
name, but the noise around them drowned her out.

Pipes, drums and fifes playing their outlawed
tunes as outlawed clans marched under outlawed banners.

She hadn’t seen Gavin in a year, probably more,
but the sight of him was still just too much. Instinctively, she slid her hand
down inside the sleeve of her sleeping gown, and held the dried thistle. Her
mother told her never to lose it, and she never had.

As the group marched past, all of them with
different armaments, different tartans, looks, there was a certain power to the
image of all those men, and the few barely-disguised women among them, who had
nothing at all in common, moving as one.

“Gavin!” She screamed one last time when he passed
directly in front of the window from which she watched. “Gavin, over here! I’ve
still got the thistle!”

If he heard, he made no motion. But, Robert
Macgregor, massive and terrifying beside his son, patted his shoulder and
pointed.

The last thing Kenna remembered before tears took
her full in the chest was Gavin, looking back, and his smile.

That shining, radiant smile that he flashed her
again, for what might be the last time.

Please,
Kenna thought or maybe it was a
silent prayer,
please don’t be brave, Gavin. Run if you have to, fight if
you have to, but don’t get hurt. Please.