Page 68 of The Beast

Fergus shook his head. “It is my heart. I know it.” His unfocused gaze pinned Duncan. “Ye must return to her. Make amends. Work on what ails ye, without abandoning yer wife.”

“It is for her own good. I cannot subject her to being married to someone like me.”

“Would ye wish for her… to leave if she were in yer shoes?”

Duncan swallowed, not wanting to argue with a dying man. “Concentrate on breathing old man.”

“Ye love her. Fight for yer marriage.”

“Ye do not know how I feel.” Duncan couldn’t keep the resentment from his voice. “I am not a young lad that cannot control his feelings.”

Fergus gasped and grimaced. “I hurt. Give me more whiskey.”

Once again Duncan poured the amber liquid into his mouth. “Take yer time.”

The man’s eyes closed, and Duncan waited to see what would happen. When Fergus opened them again, it was as if he could not focus. “Fear made me run away. Fear kept me here. Do not be like me.”

He coughed and clutched his chest and then Fergus died.

Hours passed and Duncan sat with his back against the wall. Fergus’s body remained on the ground where he died. His unseeing eyes staring up to the ceiling.

A humming sound that had echoed in his ears finally ceased and Duncan closed his eyes allowing the silence of the moment to pour over him. It was the first time in many days that his mind was quiet. There was no fear, no sense of impending doom. Only pure silence.

Outside his horse neighed, the sound bringing him to action. Fergus deserved a burial, so Duncan would wrap him and take him to the vicar at the village so he could be laid to rest in the small graveyard.

The mule that pulled the wagon seeming to understand that someone other than his master drove. The animal looked over his shoulder to Duncan, its sullen eyes taking him in.

“I am sure the vicar will be appreciative of ye and will give ye a good home,” Duncan soothed the beast although it didn’t understand a word.

His horse made grunting noises, obviously considering it was beneath him to be tethered to a wagon pulled by a mule.

When they arrived at the small vicarage, the man hurried out. “What happened?” He looked to the shrouded body. “Fergus?”

Duncan nodded. “Aye, he died just this morning.” He gave no other information, there was no need for it. The man had lived a long life. Before that day, Duncan would have added that Fergus lived a good life. However, it seemed that Fergus hid from whatever he feared. Living alone in a small cottage deep in the woods.”

“He was a good man,” the vicar said shaking his head. “Helped many a wayward traveler.” The man’s knowing gaze sized Duncan up. “I am sure ye are aware of that.”

“Did he have family?” Duncan asked as he began digging a grave where the vicar pointed.

The man gave Duncan a confused look. “Ye lived with him for a long time, did ye not learn his story?”

Duncan shook his head. “I was unable to hear much in those days.”

“One day in a storm, Fergus lost control of the horse that pulled a wagon. The animal, along with his wife and two bairns, plunged into a deep ravine. Fergus and a daughter were thrown from it and survived. He left the girl with family and fled, too grieved with self-blame to remain and raise the wee lass.”

It took a long time for Duncan to finish digging the grave. By the time it was done, several villagers gathered to hear the vicar pray over Fergus’s body. He was well liked in the village it seemed. One woman even cried, wiping at her eyes as he was lowered into the ground.

Despite what he’d been through, the man had found ways to help others throughout the rest of his life.

As the people dispersed, the vicar stood for a few moments later. “Come inside, join us for a meal before going back.”

The vicar’s wife was a jolly woman, with rosy cheeks and bright eyes. She wore her hair tucked into a cap that suited her face. “Ye should move here to the village,” the woman insisted. “The woods are no place for a young man to live.”

It didn’t take much to see that she was already plotting to find him a wife.

“I am sure Fergus would like ye to keep the land and continue to help others who travel through,” the vicar said between bites. “Although the cottages are old, they are sturdy. Fergus told me that ye fixed the abandoned one.”

At the thought that he would die alone like Fergus, without a purpose in life other than waiting for wayward travelers, Duncan’s stomach clenched. The entire time the vicar’s wife packed a basket of food for him to take, he couldn’t keep from thinking the future the vicar had described was not his calling.