As usual, characters from Highlander:  the Series belong to Davis-Panzer et alia; I only play with them from time to time without any compensation.  No harm; no foul.  Anyone or anything new, however, is mine (left-overs again).  Beta-read by Kathy.  Thank you, merci beaucoup, tapadh leat, gracias, danke, grazie, spazebo, arigato.   Any errors are mine alone.  Excerpted from Nor Even Death Divide .

Glenfinnan, Scotland: Lammas, 1597.

I t was market day in Glenfinnan, and more than that it was the feast of Lammas.  Folk from miles around had come to celebrate the height of the summer and to share the first harvest, the early vegetables and fruits, and to size up the half-grown calves and swine.  Mary, the Lady Macleod, strolled among the bothies set up by the traveling vendors, looking over the fabrics and notions, shiny new cooking pots and decorated crockery.

“Mama,” she heard, and turned to the small boy who held her skirts.  “Mama, that man is looking at me.”

She turned and surveyed the crowd.  Though she knew everyone who lived in the village and the surrounding glens, that day there were many in the square she didn’t know, and the man who stared at her son was a stranger in many ways.

He had a narrow, clean-shaven face with a prominent nose, and his skin was as fair as any Scot’s.  His piercing eyes were a dark gray under a fringe of straight black hair that hung long in back.  He wore neither kilt nor trews, but a long robe like a priest’s, held closed about his waist by a wide girdle from which hung both a dagger and a sword, and a heavy purse hung over his shoulder, its strap crossing his chest like a baldric.  Unfamiliar symbols were stitched with colored threads around the hems of his robe and sleeves.  His feet were shod in stout boots, their wear proving his foreign origins.

“Is there something ye want?” she asked, holding the boy’s hand tightly.  No one was going to take her son from her, and certainly not any foreigner.

“I be only a traveler,” he answered, his Gaelic accented with high-born English.  “The boy caught my eye.”  He stepped towards them, and stopped a pace away. He pressed his palms together in front of his chest and bowed slightly, never taking his eyes from the boy.  “He is your son, milady?”

“Aye,” she said cautiously.  “We call him Duncan.”

“Dark Leader,” he translated.  “A good name for such a boy.”  Dark of hair and eye, the baby was still apparent in the child’s face.

“What do ye know of him?” Mary asked in a whisper, a shiver of fear gripping her spine.  What could he know of Duncan? she wondered.  Not even the villagers knew of the bairn’s true origins.  She finally pulled her eyes away from the stranger and scanned the crowd for her husband.

The foreigner crouched down to look Duncan in the eye.  After a moment he nodded, a smile in his dark eyes.  “He was born at the dark of the year, no?  Lightning heralded his birth.”

Several people had gathered around Mary and Duncan as the stranger spoke.  One man, old and bent, tapped his stick on the packed earth of the village square.  “I remember,” he said, his aged voice quivering with the same palsy that shook his hands.  “I was just a boy when the lightning come from a clear sky.  It was Hogmanay night — the new year.”

“When was this?” the stranger asked, his interest drawn suddenly away from the boy.

“It must be near eighty years ago,” Mary said.  “Auld Donald’s ‘most ninety years old, they say.”

“It was the night Connor Macleod was born,” Donald went on.

“Connor Macleod is a legend, a story to frighten the bairns,” Mary chided him.

“No, milady,” Donald looked the Chieftain’s wife in the eye, his gaze amazingly clear and steady.  “I remember Connor Macleod.”

The stranger listened to Donald carefully.  “Will you tell me the story of Connor Macleod?” he asked the old man, standing to his full height again.

Mary laughed and shook her head.  “Ye wi’ no have to ask auld Donald twice to tell about Connor Macleod.  It’s his favorite tale.”

The people formed a circle around Donald and the newcomer, and in a moment, Mary and Duncan moved back into it.

“No, Mama, I want to stay,” Duncan protested when Mary tried to lead him away from the story-teller and the stranger.  There had always been a quality about his voice, even as a baby, that compelled her to let him do as he wished.  Usually the boy was obedient and tractable, but when he decided to be stubborn, there was no swaying him.

“Connor Macleod grew up in this village, but he was no of this village,” Donald started.

“What do you mean, grandfather?”  The stranger asked, his respectful address of the old man noted by Lady Macleod.

“He had no kin here.  No woman of this village bore him.  But he was here, and he grew up with all of us boys.  It was in the battle with the Frasers that he was cut down, not even twenty year old.”

“What made him a legend?” the stranger wondered aloud.

“He didn’t stay dead,” Donald whispered so loudly everyone could hear.  “He got up from his deathbed and walked away.”

Mary shook her head at the familiar story.  “Donald, ye know that canna be true.”

“I saw it happen, milady.”  He nodded to the crowd, telling them all what he said was true.

“So what happened to him?”

“We cast the witch out. I never saw him again.”   Donald spat between his fingers to protect himself from witchcraft, punctuating his story.

“That’s an interesting story,” the stranger admitted.  “I’ve not heard its like before.” He reached into his purse and took out a coin.  “I’d be honored if you would let me reward you for the telling.”

In the absence of the Chieftain, Donald looked to Mary for advice.  She nodded and the old man took the coin and slipped it into the pouch that hung from his belt.  He tugged on his cap and turned away, heading directly for Glenfinnan’s only public house.

The stranger searched the crowd and soon found Duncan again.  Though not a word passed between them the boy stepped to stand in front of him.  The stranger reached his hand to the boy, crouching again to be on a level with him.

Duncan looked deeply into the man’s eyes, a somber look on his face.  Without a word he put his small hand in the man’s, his fingers barely reaching across the much larger palm, but the stranger shifted their grasp so that each of them held the other’s forearm.

“Remember me, Duncan Macleod of the clan Macleod,” the stranger said quietly so only the boy could hear.  “We will meet again.”

Author’s Notes:
Lammas — 1 August.  Originally a pagan celebration of the first harvest and of the power of the god.
Bothies — temporary huts set up by itinerate vendors at a fair or gathering
Trews — trousers

This page last updated
21 August 2002

© 2000 Emma Keigh