The Gift
by Katriena Knights
©2011 by Katriena Knights
Cover art ©2011 by Katriena Knights
Photo by Katriena Knights
Scotland, 1307
Affrick sat on her usual rock by the kale yard, transferring wool from distaff to spindle, practiced hands changing it from fluffy, combed wool to tight-spun thread suitable for weaving. She’d been spinning since she was a little girl; she couldn’t remember a time when she hadn’t known how to do it. Yet sometimes it still seemed like magic as the movement of the twirling spindle drew the fluff of wool into the firm length of thread.
“’Tis today, is it not?”
The voice at her right hand failed to startle her, though she hadn’t seen Joneta approach. The other woman sat on the ground next to Affrick’s perch and launched her own spindle.
“Aye,” said Affrick. “Just after midday.”
“Gilly’s a fool.” Joneta spoke without rancor; Gilly was her brother.
Affrick only smiled. “He’s a man, is he not?”
“Aye, that he is.” Joneta tended her own spinning a moment, building momentum. “You’ll be there?”
“Oh, aye. This I wouldna miss for all the world.”
#
Affrick couldn’t remember a time when she hadn’t known Gille-Críst MacLaren. The son of the MacLaren, he’d always been prouder than he should have been.
Affrick couldn’t remember a time when she hadn’t loved him.
Joneta had never much cared that Affrick was a foundling. Gilly hadn’t been as diplomatic, and on his ninth birthday, Joneta dared Affrick to kiss him, lesson as vengeance for the bug he’d put in Joneta’s bed the night before.
Affrick scrunched up her freckled nose, thinking she’d rather collect cow dung for the fire than admit she actually wanted to kiss Gille-Críst MacLaren. Plus she didn’t like the idea of her kisses being as repulsive as a bug in your bed.
“How long must I be kissing him for?”
“Not long,” Joneta assured her. “Only long enough that I’ll see it. I have to be sure it really happened, ye ken?”
“And what’ll ye be giving me for it?”
“Those fine, wee buttons Da brought me back from Edinburgh.”
It was enough for Affrick. The buttons were lovely, from France. It wouldn’t be hard to convince Joneta she took the bet for the buttons, and not because she’d dreamed of kissing Gilly.
Gilly sat on a rock by the kaleyard, sifting through the stones he carried in a small bag wherever he went. His mother had made him the bag from a scrap of his father’s tartan, only a few weeks before she’d died of fever.
Gilly sat on the rock, and his bare feet were dirty, his long, white shirt tattered at the tails and cuffs. His dark hair, pulled into a tail at his nape, had hay in it. Too young for trews or tartan, he swung his bare legs, unmindful of the scratches on them, the scrape at his ankle, the scabbed knees.
Affrick didn’t notice them, either. She was rarely out of trouble, and her knees looked much the same beneath her own long, white shirt. All she saw was Gilly’s hands, his clever fingers turning the shining stones. She stood still, hidden behind the corner of the MacLaren cottage, watching those fingers turn the stones, one at a time. A round, brown stone, polished by the river. A black stone, sparkly, streaked with red. A lump of white quartz.
She wondered what he thought about while he turned the stones, if they were his way of remembering his mother. Affrick had no such ties to her parents. She didn’t know who they’d been, only that they’d abandoned her and she’d been found wrapped in a blanket on the roadside by the woman who had raised her. She didn’t really need to know more than that, she supposed.
She swallowed hard for courage and went to sit next to Gilly.
“Those rocks are pretty,” she said. “Could I look at them?”
He looked at her with disdain. Affrick, not one to be cowed, smiled back.
“That black one’s very bonny. I’ve nae seen anything like it.”
His black eyes softened, and Affrick’s heart melted. She’d dreamed of the day he’d look at her with something other than contempt. He handed her the black stone.
“Here,” he said. “Dinna be dropping it.”
She turned the stone in her fingers, feeling the warmth Gilly’s hand had left behind. The red streak in the stone split in a few places, like bright lightning. Affrick closed her hand around it, then leaned toward Gilly. He looked up, his eyes wide, like a startled deer’s.
“Here,” she said, pressing the stone back into his hand. At the same time, she pressed her lips against his cheek.
Joneta’s squeal of laughter told her she’d completed her task. Still, she held herself close to Gilly, smelling his nine-year-old boy smell, until he came out of his initial shock and began to shout. Then she turned tail and ran.
#
Two dozen people, most of them women, had gathered in the village square. The sun sat high in the sky and most of the morning’s fog had burned off.
“Look at them,” Joneta said, shaking her head. “So bonny and yet so daft.”
Affrick smothered laughter. The girls were bonny, that was certain—every pretty girl in the village had come for the occasion, and most of the not-so-pretty ones. None had come without a gift—but that was the point.
“You’ve brought something, of course,” Joneta said to Affrick, who answered with a pained smile, “Aye, my bruised and battered heart.”
“I’ve never seen a dafter man than my brother, not to see ye pining all these years.”
Affrick’s cheeks went hot, and she pulled her plaid closer around her shoulders, protectively. “Never in my life have I pined.”
“Aye, and it’s as ye say.”
Wisely, Joneta let it drop.
The crowd of women fell suddenly still. Affrick looked toward the MacLaren cottage. Gille-Críst ducked his head to come through the door.
His height had surprised everyone. He was taller than the MacLaren had been—taller, it was said, than any MacLaren before him. His black hair was pulled back from his face and tied at the nape of his neck. It glistened in the noon sunlight. Black brows drew down severely over black eyes. Handsome, Affrick thought, as she always did, like a black-eyed Faerie King.
Time had been unkind to him, though, putting lines on a face not yet thirty. The loss of his mother as a lad, the loss of his father, then his young wife in childbed with twin boys. There were those who said he’d forgotten how to love. Affrick thought him simply afraid.
Gille-Críst stood tall in his carefully draped plaid, regarding the crowd of women with neutrality approaching disdain. “I’ll see ye one by one,” he said, his voice firm and carrying easily to the edge of the crowd where Affrick waited. “I expect to come to a decision by the end of the day. The lass who presents me with the best gift will become my wife.”
He sat down on a stump with a grand flip of his plaid, and the first girl approached, timidly proffering a package of gorgeous French silk.
At the edge of the crowd, Affrick set her chin on her fist and remembered a time when Gilly had laughed.
#
There had been flowers everywhere, and it was hard not to hate the slip of a girl who was to become Gilly MacLaren’s wife. Affrick had hoped too hard, and too long, and her sixteen-year-old heart had lain in a hundred pieces within her as Gilly lifted his golden-haired bride and kissed her full and long on the mouth. The ceilidh would go on all night, most likely, and Affrick would be hard-put to escape it.
She tried to sneak away, thinking perhaps the sheep would make better company, but Joneta caught up with her from behind and grabbed her arm.
“Where are you going?”
“I’m tired,” Affrick lied.
“Mother said I should be resting after that dunk in the river.”
“That was days ago. Come dance.”
“‘Tisn’t you I’d wish to be dancing with.” It came out in anger, and Affrick clapped both her hands over her mouth.
Joneta studied her, frowning. “I suspected it, but I’d hoped ye had better taste than to pine for my daft, hairy-arsed brother.”
“I dinnae pine!” Affrick protested, but her voice broke. Mortified to the depths of her soul, she turned and ran.
It was even harder to hate Gilly’s wife a year later when her screams had filled the village for most of a day and a night. She was too small to bear the twin boys she carried, and in the end they’d laid mother and sons all beneath the kirkyard.
In the woods a few days later, gathering herbs and losing herself in the sweet smell of heather, Affrick found Gilly sitting alone on a half-rotted log, plaid askew, knees bloody, scratches on his face and his lip split open. Startled, Affrick came to a halt, nearly dumping over her basket.
“Gilly, what’s happened to ye?”
He looked up and the deadness in his eyes frightened her. He put his face in his hands. “Running through the forest willna kill ye,” he said. “Running full into a tree willna do it, either.” His shoulders sagged, and to Affrick’s horror, the next words came out between sobs. “I wanted to jump, but I couldna do it. ‘Twould have been better. I could be with them now…”
Affrick dropped her basket of herbs and ran to him, sat next to him on the log. It disintegrated beneath her as he slumped half into her lap, weeping out his broken heart.
It was only the second time Affrick had ever seen him cry. The first time had been when he was twelve and he’d lost the bag of stones his mother had given him. He wept and wept, smearing tears and blood on Affrick’s plaid, and after a time he fell asleep.
Affrick combed her fingers into his long black hair, her own tears falling on his face. “I love you, Gille-Críst MacLaren, ye sorry, blubbering fool. I’ll love ye till the day I die.”
She bent close and kissed his face.
#
Affrick moved closer to Gilly’s self-appointed throne as one by one the village girls simpered and curtsied before him, presenting the gifts they hoped would win his heart. A bag of gold buttons, a yard of silk, beautifully dyed and carded wool ready for the spindle. A pig. An absolutely glorious sheep. One by one the gifts were gathered and taken away, to be judged later.
Affrick had called it a daft idea, but in truth it was perfect. The perfect way to silence the critics in the village who’d been after Gilly to produce an heir. The perfect way to do it without ever having to involve his heart.
The village girls, of course, thought there was a chance of softening that heart with the single, perfect gift. A pretty lass with doe-brown eyes tried to find a chink in that armor now, singing a lovely Gaelic love song, pouring her heart out into it. When she had finished, Gille-Críst smiled gently and thanked her. But Affrick could see he hadn’t been moved.
Finally the last girl took her turn, so shy her mother had to shove her forward so she nearly tripped and fell at Gilly’s feet. She presented buttons of wood, likely carved by her own hand. Blushing, her tongue tripping over itself as she tried to speak, she finally turned and ran. Gille-Críst watched her go, fingering the small buttons.
At Affrick’s elbow, Joneta said, “Go, lass, else he’ll be leaving.”
Gilly was, indeed, standing, adjusting his plaid as he prepared to make another, most likely arrogant announcement.
Affrick hesitated a breath, then said, “Wait.”
Gille-Críst looked at her in surprise, as if only then noticing her. He probably hadn’t noticed her—she’d stood in his shadow so many times, for so long, she probably seemed part of his everyday scenery, like a tree, or a rock.
“Affrick?” he said.
“Aye.” Affrick stepped toward him, hands covered by a fold of her plaid. She’d carried her gift all day, tied to her belt and hidden by her clothes.
“Have ye a gift?” Scorn edged his voice. But not for her, she realized. For himself. Because he didn’t care for what he’d done this day, because he’d done it out of fear.
“Aye, Gilly, I’ve a gift.”
“Bring it. I’ll consider it with the others.”
Most of the other women still lingered, undoubtedly to assess the competition. They drew closer again, all eyes on Affrick.
She stepped close to Gille-Críst, lifting her chin. “Hold out your hand.”
He hesitated before extending one hand in front of him. Affrick looked at it a moment, at the long, clever fingers. Then she laid a small bag in his palm.
He stared at it, as if memorizing the pattern of his father’s plaid.
“What is this?” he said, his voice strangely thin.
“Open it.”
He did, pulling open the drawstring to tip the contents out. A round, brown stone, polished by the river. A black stone, sparkly, streaked with red. A lump of white quartz.
Someone behind Affrick laughed. “A bag of stones! She’s given him a bag of stones.”
But when Gille-Críst looked up, his eyes were full of tears.
Affrick laid her hand against his cheek. “Gille-Críst MacLaren, I canna give ye your mother back, or your lost love and her wee bairns. I canna even give you the same stones ye lost all those years ago. But I can give ye this—I love ye, Gilly. I’ve loved ye all my life, and I dinna see that changing.”
She started to lower her hand, but he caught it with his, pressing it back against his cheek, then against his lips. “The stones,” he whispered’. “How did ye remember?”
“’Tis an easy thing to remember.” She looked into his eyes, marveling at his tears. “’Tis not such an easy thing to forget. I wouldna ask that of ye.”
“What would you ask of me?”
“Only that ye smile, and try your best to love me.”
He did smile, the first smile she’d seen from him in a long time that was without bitterness. “It sounds a good bargain,” he said, “but I think a wiser man would have kept the sheep.”
Grinning, Affrick touched his face. “That’s my Gilly.” And she leaned forward and kissed him. This time, even Joneta’s squeal wasn’t enough to stop her.
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