The gray frigid weather dragged on, the wind ceaseless and irritable against the walls. Hamish and Harris kept fighting. Leezie kept weeping. Elinor and Fergus kept not talking about Kinlochy because the time wasn’t right.
I’ve ruined things, Merida thought miserably. I changed one thing and now it’s all gone wrong.
But then the weather broke, quite beautifully, in the way it did sometimes at DunBroch, and just like that, it was spring. It was still frigid overnight, but the daylight sky became blue and deep instead of white and the trees got that warm color to them that meant buds were coming, and birds suddenly became brilliant and enthused in the mornings, which started coming earlier and earlier.
With the good weather came visitors, and DunBroch found itself hosting three in quick succession.
The first visitor was the pigeon Elinor had sent off to Ardbarrach at the beginning of the year. It returned to the dovecote with a letter from Hubert attached to its leg, for which it was given a grand treat of a buttered bun and some new young lettuce. Aileen had just made custards with the very earliest of spring berries, so the entire family gathered in the common room to hear the letter while puckering their lips over the barely ripe fruit, a tantalizing promise of what spring was to bring.
“‘Dear Mother and Father and Merida and Hamish and Hubert and Leezie, I recommend me to you,’” Elinor read from her chair in the common room, blinking through the smoke.
“That doesn’t sound like him,” Hamish protested.
“This is how you open a letter, my love,” Elinor said. “Look, it’s his handwriting.”
She turned the letter around for Hamish and Harris to see it for themselves, but the triplets waved their hands for her to simply go on reading. At Elinor’s insistence, all the family knew how to read and write (except Leezie, who said it was too hard because the “letters moved round” when she wasn’t watching them), but Elinor remained the most proficient. She had come from an educated family and had been taught quite young by good tutors in France; she could read and write in a half dozen languages. She was proficient enough that she could read aloud at normal speaking speed, as she did now, or she could write her Pasch letter to the villagers and hold a conversation at the same time, or play any of the word games they had in the cabinets that no one else was really good at. Fergus was very proud of her ability and sometimes had her read to him in the evenings, although he usually fell asleep during these tales.
She read on: “‘I am doing very well. You would not believe how strong I am or how well I can use the long sword.’”
“Ardbarrach is a place for sheep,” Harris sniffed from his seat on the floor cushion. “Hubert always did like being told what to do.”
“Shhh,” Hamish said.
“Shhh yourself.”
“I said shhh first.”
“And I said it second.”
Merida, annoyed that Elinor had not yelled at her brothers, took the liberty of doing it herself. “Would you two stop being such right scunners!”
“Merida, hush!” Elinor said (which Merida found exceptionally unfair), before shaking out the letter to continue. “‘Hamish would not like it here at all, but I think Harris would do quite well. He is smarter than anyone here and could fool them all quite easily.’”
“You happy now?” Hamish hissed.
Harris preened. “Are you, wet blanket?”
Without taking her eyes from Elinor, and still perched delicately on the arm of one of the chairs, Leezie silently reached out and twisted Harris’s ear right round until he howled.
“Harris!” Elinor said (which Merida found exceptionally fair). Merida and Hamish wordlessly looked to Leezie with appreciation. “‘Please tell Merida we do not only do war things. They are also working on my writing and reading and I am even supposed to be writing this letter for practice—’ There are a lot of mistakes in here, poor thing,” Elinor interrupted herself, but she seemed proud and happy. “‘I hope you will come visit when the weather is good, miss you all, with great regards, yours, Hubert of DunBroch. Oh also I think Gille Peter wanted to send his regards, too, but I could not tell what he was saying. And Angus is doing well, too, though I can’t understand him either.’”
“Aww, there’s his old humor!” Fergus said in his big voice. “We should head down there to see him now that the weather’s broken.”
“Yes,” Elinor said.
So that was the first visitor.
The second visitor came to DunBroch a few days later. This visitor was less welcome, and, unlike the pigeon, received no bread and butter for his arrival: Wolftail.
He arrived during one of those spring rains that arrives on a nice day, makes itself at home, and doesn’t leave for a week. The air drowned. The ground was awash. Everything was turning green and sodden beneath the rain’s exhaustive attention, including Wolftail and his group of men and horses and dogs, who had been intercepted in the courtyard this time.
The Dásachtach’s horses stood with their hooves half submerged in mud. The Dásachtach’s men sat astride with rain dripping from the ends of their beards, looking as if they’d been dredged from the loch. Wolftail’s wolf tails were colorless and bedraggled on his shoulders. Their big dogs huddled miserably in an alcove, looking much less terrifying than before.
King Fergus of DunBroch stood in front of his castle’s big door, arms crossed over his barrel chest. He was just as wet as the rest of them, but he looked no smaller. Water does not shrink a mountain, after all.
Merida and Leezie eavesdropped from a dry but precarious spot; they both balanced on a single stair in the tower above in order to hear out the narrow window.
“To what do we owe the pleasure of your return?” bellowed Fergus.
“I’ll make this short,” Wolftail said in his usual snarl. “We were told DunBroch would send a diplomatic group to three territories.”
“We’ve honored that word,” Fergus replied, “and I’m down one son to prove it, so why darken our door before the year’s up? Is it the weather you and your men are enjoying?”
Wolftail discreetly wiped rainwater from the end of his nose. “We know all about your trip to Ardbarrach and the son you left there; we came to DunBroch by way of Ardbarrach. I was told you’d send word from each territory and we got no satisfaction in that department.”
Embarrassment burned Merida’s cheeks. Of course. She had been so completely scheduled among the bells that it hadn’t even crossed her mind to send word from Ardbarrach. But that didn’t change the fact that it had been her responsibility.
“I didn’t remember either,” Leezie whispered, to make her feel better. She put the back of her hand against Merida’s hot cheek, underlining Merida’s suspicion that she’d gone completely red.
Wolftail growled, “You should be glad we were at Ardbarrach to see that you had begun to keep your word, or else this might have been a different sort of visit.”
It was a threat, but Fergus’s expression remained broad and good-humored. “That’s a funny way of saying you’re glad to see we’re reaching out to neighbors. But I hear your complaint and I agree, we did promise to send word. We won’t forget it next time. Now is that all you’ve got to say, or can I get back to my fire now?”
Wolftail gazed around the courtyard, which winter had left in an untended shambles. The pitted ground. The broken shingles that had come free from the roof. The split rain barrels on their sides. He took long enough looking that Merida realized he was doing it to make a point: to let Fergus feel his judgment. To make Fergus feel like Merida had when Mistress mac Lagan talked about castles in fields.
Merida didn’t know if it worked on Fergus, but it worked on her. Her red cheeks got redder.
Finally, Wolftail just stroked the rainwater from his eyebrows and, without another word, rode from the courtyard, taking his soaking wet companions and his pack of dogs with him.
“Five dogs,” Leezie remarked.