The Kadin - Bertrice Small [1]
Her fingers gently caressed his face. “My poor Patrick,” she whispered. “Never able to face that which displeases him.”
He turned back to her. “Love,” he pleaded, “you must not talk this way. You’ll get well. You must!”
“Patrick,” her voice was urgent now. “You’ll keep your promise to me?”
He looked at her blankly.
“When I told you I should give you a child, I asked that when it was born, you bring Janet to Glenkirk. You promised to legitimize her and let me raise her with our own child. She is your true daughter, Patrick. She is a Leslie.”
“How can I manage without you?” he pleaded.
“Swear to me, Patrick. Swear on the Holy Virgin’s name!”
“I cannot”
“Patrick!” Her voice sank low. “This is my dying wish. Swear!”
“I swear it! I swear it on the Holy Virgin’s name. I’ll bring my daughter, Janet, to Glenkirk, legitimize her, and raise her with our son, Adam.”
“Thank you, Patrick. God will bless you for it,” said Agnes Leslie, and then she died.
The lord of Glenkirk was brought back to reality as his horse, out of habit slowed his gait and turned off the high road into a tree-lined lane. At the end of the lane stood a neat thatched cottage. At the sound of the horse’s hooves, a small apple-cheeked woman appeared in the doorway and called out.
“Patrick, ye dinna tell me ye were coming. How is Agnes?”
“Agnes is dead,” he said bitterly.
“The bairn?”
“A lad. Healthy and strong.” Dismounting, he followed her into the cottage.
“Do ye want to tell me about it, Patrick?”
“I don’t understand it Mary. Everything was fine. Then the midwife told me she was bleeding and they could not stop it It was over so quickly.”
“Och, my poor boy! I am so sorry.”
“Before she died, she asked two things of me. One was that you return to Glenkirk and look after the bairn. Will you, Mary?”
“Yes, Patrick. I was your nurse, and I’ll be nurse to your son. What was her other dying wish?”
“That I legitimize Janet and raise her with our son at Glenkirk. She asked it when she first knew she was with child. It was her last request of me, and I swore on the Virgin’s name I would.”
“God bless her and rest her sweet soul,” whispered Mary MacKay. “Many a wife would have held my lass against you, even though it happened before ye were wed. Agnes Cummings was a good woman.”
He nodded.
“But if ye wed again, Patrick, how would another wife feel about Janet?”
“I have killed two women with the bearing of my bairns, Mary. First your own daughter, Meg, who was just sixteen. Now Agnes, and she but seventeen. I’ll never wed again.”
“Bad luck, my lad. Plain bad luck, but the porridge is burned now. If one day ye decide to make another pot, I suppose we can cope then. Tell me, what will ye call the babe?”
“Adam.”
“ ‘Tis a good name.”
For a moment they sat in silence before the hearth fire, and then he asked, “Where is Janet? I want to take her back to Glenkirk tonight”
“In the shed looking at the new lambs.” She went to the door and called, “Janet your father is here.”
A little girl of four, her unruly, reddish-gold hair flying, ran to the cottage.
“Father, you never said you were coming! What have you brought me?”
“She is surely your daughter, Patrick Leslie,” sighed Mary.
“A pocketful of kisses and a bag of hugs, you greedy minx,” he laughed, snatching her up. She giggled and snuggled into his arms. “Janet how would you like to go back to Glenkirk with me tonight?”
“To live, father?”
“Yes.”
“For always?”
“As long as you want, my little sweetheart”
“Can grandmother come, too?”
“Yes, Janet Your grandmother is going to come and take care of your new brother, Adam.”
“And may I call the lady Agnes mother?”
Mary MacKay turned white.
“Lady Agnes is dead, Janet,” said Patrick Leslie. “She has gone to Heaven like your own sweet mother.”
Janet sighed. “Then you have only grandmother, Adam, and me, father?”
“Yes, Janet.”
The child shifted in her father’s arms and thought for a moment Finally she looked up at him with her strangely adult green-gold eyes and said, “Then I’ll go to Glenkirk with you, father.”
Patrick turned