CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
It was the calm after the storm.
Gordon found Scott still sitting on the ground with Jeremy clutched against him. The battle was over and the dead and wounded were being tended to. Gordon had been outside of the northern gatehouse because so many Sadgill me had tried to flee that he had no idea what had happened in the bailey until George had come running for him.
Something about Jeremy, George had sputtered, and Gordon had taken off at a dead run, leaping over dead bodies and stepping on the living to make it into the bailey where he’d last seen his son. Amongst the dead and dying he saw both de Wolfe and du Rennic knights standing in a semi-circle over near the southern gatehouse, staring at something on the ground.
And that was when Gordon saw it.
Jeremy was dead. No one had to tell Gordon that; he could see it for himself. Jeremy’s guts were spilled out all down the front of him in grisly fashion as Scott embraced the man tightly, and Gordon stood there a moment, trembling, before taking the last few unsteady steps towards Scott in disbelief. He pitched onto his knees next to Jeremy, his hands going to his son’s white face as tears fell from his eyes. Like a river, they gushed.
“Nay,” he breathed. “Not my son. Dear God, not my son.”
Scott had been staring off into space, his mind numb, so much so that he hadn’t even seen Gordon approach until the man was upon him. He looked at the old man now, his eyes dull with sorrow yet inherent in his sympathy.
“He died well, Gordon,” he said hoarsely. “He died with honor. You should know that.”
Gordon bent over his son, the painful sobs coming as he kissed the pale face. “My son,” he wept. “I am so sorry, Jeremy. I am sorry for your unhappiness. I tried to be a better father but I could not be good enough to help you. Forgive me, my son. Forgive.”
Scott couldn’t help it; he put a hand on Gordon’s head as the man threw himself on Jeremy to offer what comfort he could. Gordon’s cries were cutting him to the bone.
“You cannot shoulder any blame,” Scott said quietly.
Gordon was distraught. “I tried. I tried so hard.”
Scott patted the man on the head. “Gordon, listen to me,” he said. He would have wept, too, at the terrible scene but he was all out of tears. He’d cried as much as he possibly could. “Jeremy told me to tell you something. Will you listen?”
Somewhere in the implosion of his mind, Gordon understood Scott’s words. He nodded. “My poor son,” he cried. “What did he have to say to me? Words of despair, of hatred? What did he tell you?”
Scott voice was soft. “He apologized for being a disappointment to you,” he said. “He was sorry he had never made you proud and he said it was an honor to have been your son.”
Gordon kissed Jeremy’s face again. “Did he truly say such things?”
“He did.”
“No anger?”
“No anger.”
Gordon stroked Jeremy’s dark hair. “He was not a disappointment,” he finally whispered. “He has secrets and fears that I could not help him with. It is I who have failed him, truly. I did not know how to help him.”
Having sons of his own, Scott could only imagine how he would feel if one of his own adult sons had perished. The son he’d lost, Andrew, had been so young that he’d not yet lived his life. There was sorrow in that, of course, but losing an adult son, a boy having grown into a man… surely that was the worst kind of grief and, in that sense, Scott understood Gordon’s pain as one father to another. He’d faced his own moment like this four years ago when his father had tried to speak to him through his haze of agony. He hadn’t listened to the man. Now, he could only hope that Gordon would listen to him.
“You did not fail him,” he said. “In his final moments, Jeremy was as brave as you had ever taught him to be. He was honorable in his actions as he went to punish the man responsible for all of this chaos, and he was strong and noble in his cause. He died a glorious death, Gordon. Mayhap he was not happy in life but, in the end, he was the man you wanted him to be. I saw it with my own eyes.”
Those words brought Gordon pause. First there was disbelief, but then there was joy. Through the mounds of grief heaped upon him, he heard Scott’s words and he lifted his head to look de Wolfe in the eye.
“He was brave?” he asked, his lips trembling.
Scott nodded. “He was gloriously brave.”
“Who killed him? Who was it?”
“Adam.”
Gordon seemed to stiffen, a tide of rage rising in his chest. He went from a sobbing mess to a man ready to kill, all in the blink of an eye. “Where is he?” he demanded. “Where is this coward who has killed my son?”
Scott didn’t reply, but Stewart did. “There,” he said, pointing a few feet away. “He is there.”
Gordon’s head jerked in the direction Stewart was indicating and he saw upon the ground a body with a neck twisted all the way around. The body was lying on its back but its face was in the mud, and Gordon recognized the armor. It was, indeed, Adam. It was a brutal, nasty way for the man to die and he stared at the body for a moment before looking to Scott.
“What happened to him?” he asked.
Scott looked the old man straight in the eye and spoke without hesitation. “For you, I killed him,” he muttered. “For Nathaniel, I killed him. We shall never speak his name again, for he is not worthy of our remembrance.”
Gordon was still trembling, still weeping, but the gratitude in his eyes was brighter than the sun. Reaching up, he touched Scott on the face.
“Thank you,” he whispered. “You have given an old man more comfort than you know. Now… you will please give me my son. I will take him.”
Gently, Scott handed Jeremy over to Gordon, who wrapped his arms around the body and began to rock him like an infant. He simply hugged him, eyes closed as he rocked. It was one of the saddest things that Scott had ever seen but it also brought him back to the day of Athena’s death when he should have done the same thing to her. He should have held her and bid her a farewell just as Gordon was doing to Jeremy but, alas, he hadn’t been strong enough then.
Now, things had changed.
Slowly, he stood up, his legs cramped from having been bent beneath him for so long. Stewart and Milo were behind him and they helped him to stand, helping him regain his balance. Scott put a hand on Stewart’s shoulder in thanks as he turned away from Gordon and Jeremy.
“Lady du Rennic will need to know the fate of her brother,” he said quietly. “If you have need of me, I shall be with her.”
With that, he trudged across the bailey, heading for the spiral stairs that led to the upper floor. All around him, the ground was littered with the dead and dying, but he didn’t notice. He was singularly focused, needing to feel Avrielle in his arms as he’d never needed anything in his life. Her warmth, her life, would reassure him that all was well in the world and grief, as he’d known it, was a thing of the past. Jeremy’s death had made it so, as if he’d somehow absorbed the man’s strength into his heart as well as into his soul. Somehow, someway, Jeremy’s strength was with him and he would honor the man with every opportunity.
He died a glorious death.
That was how Scott chose to remember him.
After a long embrace and a full cup of wine, gulped down, Scott found the strength to tell Avrielle the story of her brother’s glorious death.
Instead of tears of sorrow, she’d wept tears of joy for a brother finally redeemed.