More death.
Pale and shaking, she headed back to the twins at last. The sun was beginning to rise now, bringing dawn light over the grisly scene of the farm’s massacre. And as she approached the cowering children, the lantern now extinct, she saw something she hadn’t noticed before. On the fence, scrawled in the blood of poor Bacon, were four words.
‘Consider this a warning.’
And that was when she began to scream.
Alexander woke before the sunrise to the sound of a woman’s screams. His eyes shot open, and he jumped out of bed, shoving on shoes and rushing outside immediately. For the first time in his life, he did not bother to dress beyond his nightclothes or even make sure he was less disheveled.
Cicilia! What has happened?
Horrible images of her, or God forbid, one of the twins, ran through Alexander’s head. Injured, amputated, or worse. He didn’t know what he could do to stop it, but he knew he must.
As he tumbled out of the front door, the air was thick with the cloying smell of blood, and for just a moment, panic threatened to overwhelm him.
As he hurried toward the screaming, it mixed with other awful sounds. He heard distressed braying in the distance as the horses woke to the coppery tang and panicked, heard panicked clucking from the henhouses, distressed mooing from the cows—but no bleating from the sheep, no grunting from the pigs.
When he passed the first slaughtered ram, he knew why. Horrified, but unable to stop, he sped up his pace until he finally saw Cicilia staring frozen at the fence while the twins wailed behind her.
What in the blazes?!
He ran to her side, glancing in horror at the bloody message written on the fence.
A warnin’? From who?
Alexander put one hand on each of Cicilia’s shoulders, trying to bring her out of the panic, trying to focus her. “Cicilia. Cicilia!” he said, over and over.
At last, her eyes focused, though they were still wide and wild. They darted up to meet his, and the scream tapered into a weak, broken sound. “They’re deid, Alexander,” she said. “They’re all deid. Who’d do such a thing?”
Alexander didn’t know how to respond. Despite the direness of the situation, a warmth filled him at her using his first name. That in itself was strange. Usually, if anyone except Catherine and her family, Thomeas, or Nathair spoke to him so informally, it made him furious. But when Cicilia said his name so…well, it felt nice.
“Cicilia,” he said awkwardly, trying to find the words of comfort to encapsulate the shocking loss that had just occurred. He couldn’t find the words and was more surprised when she burst into fresh sobs and leaned her head against his chest. Slowly, hesitantly, he put his arms around her.
It was a gentle embrace at first, but as she clung to him, he relaxed a little, releasing her arms and wrapping his own around her. One rubbed the small of her back, slowly soothing, while the other stroked her hair.
Then he looked to the crying twins. “Are ye hurt?” he asked them softly.
“Bacon!” Annys sobbed and ran towards the embracing pair, Jamie following a second later.
Typically, such uninvited contact would have set Alexander on edge, making his skin crawl and his teeth grind. Today, though, he held the sobbing farmer and cuddled the crying children and gave them what little comfort he possibly could.
Words are nothin’ here. All I can offer is me embrace.
And so he offered it as the sun finished rising and more and more of the farm’s residents discovered the carnage. Human yells and shouts joined the upset animals, and this just made Cicilia and the twins cry harder. For the first time since he’d met her, Cicilia had no words. She seemed to have no fight left in her at all.
After learning that Old Ewan was staying with his daughter on the farm rather than at home the previous night, Nathair spent the night with Jeanie in the village instead. “To keep her company, is all,” he’d said virtuously, unperturbed by Alexander’s disapproving look.
When he arrived back with her to nothing but disaster, he was more than a little shocked. The two of them walked into the parlor, arm in arm, to see Alexander was placing a blanket around Cicilia’s shoulders. At the same time, the twins were asleep and huddled together on the couch.
“What in the name o’ God happened here?” he asked, eyes wide as he took in how pale their host seemed to be. “Why are the farmhands millin’ about like there’s been a murder?”
“Because there has,” Cicilia sobbed in a muted voice from under her blanket. To Nathair’s utmost surprise, Alexander soothingly ran a hand over her hair, as if it was an automatic response.
Actually, the whole scene was strange and not in a good way. Jeanie gasped and ran to Cicilia’s side, but Nathair simply narrowed his eyes at Alexander, trying to work out what was going on.
He’s a mess. I’ve nae seen him so disheveled in public since we were bairns.
Jeanie was clucking soothingly over the clearly devastated Cicilia. “What happened? Who died? Are me mammy an’ daddy all right? Me grandda?”