The Bard

by Greyson, Maeve

  “I got nothing to say to the likes of ye. Be gone now. I done spread salt across the threshold, and me wife’s got a vial of holy water what came all the way from Inverness.” The bloodshot eye blinked.

  “What happened at Nithdane Keep?” Magnus widened his stance and fixed the eye with his grimmest stare. “What became of Lady Bree Maxwell’s child?”

  The window to his left creaked as the barrel of a gun slid through the crack between the shutters. “Get out a here, ye devil. Ye’ve stirred all the evil ye’re gonna stir. We’ll bear no more from ye! Be gone, or we’ll see if ye bleed like the rest of us.”

  “Dinna shoot him,” screeched a higher-pitched voice, a woman from somewhere inside. “He’ll curse ye like he did Nithdane and the Maxwells.”

  It was times like this that made Magnus wish his mother had never instilled within him the belief that whatsoever you sent out returned to you in thrice—at least when it came to curses. Although, at the moment, he wondered if that also covered life in general.

  “Feckin’ hell with it,” he mumbled under his breath. “Tell me what happened to Nithdane Keep and Lady Bree’s child, or I’ll curse the lot of ye to a slow death from the pox!” He added a booming stream of Latin, wondering if anyone within earshot understood the wicked sounding words. His Latin was a mite rusty. If he remembered rightly, he’d just threatened to awaken a dragon and feed it their ships, but he wasn’t sure.

  Evander’s snicker became a coughing fit as soon as Magnus jerked around and shot him a dark glare. He’d thrash that boy’s arse if he ruined this ruse. He returned his attention to the window with the gun barrel since there was no longer an eye at the knothole. “Well? Speak now or die. Tell me of the keep and Lady Bree.”

  The weapon slid out of view, but the crack between the shutters remained, held open by a thick, stubby finger. “The keep was razed by old Red Caunich when his betrothed—yer precious Lady Bree, cuckolded him,” the voice sneered.

  The sound of spitting made Magnus tighten his jaw. How dare that bastard spit after saying Lady Bree’s name.

  “His lairdship,” the voice continued, “didna take kindly to such disrespect. All in the keep died. Burned within it. Leastways, the ones he didna hang from the cliffs to feed to the birds or impale on the pikes.” The man wheezed, then coughed. “He hunted down most in the clan, too. Swore he wouldna leave a soul alive who knew of his shame. ’Twas only by God’s good grace that this village was spared. Right as he was coming to attack us, a powerful ague came upon him. Left his sword arm paralyzed and made him mute. The Red took it as a sign he’d done enough, so he returned to his keep and left us in peace.”

  Magnus scrubbed the stubble of his jaw as he mulled over the man’s words. The letter that had finally caught up with him at Sutherland MacCoinnich’s keep had said the Lady Bree had died in childbirth. Said he had a son. When had The Red attacked? Grief for a child he had never met soured in his gut. “When?” he growled.

  “When?”

  “Aye. When did all this happen?” Magnus shoved the shutter aside and reached through the opened window, grabbing hold of the wide-eyed man by the throat. “When did The Red destroy the Nithdanes?”

  Trembling, the pub keeper made a futile attempt at shoving Magnus away. “The Red showed up to take his bride and found out she had been banished for her whoring. She and her sister both. The Maxwell thought the banishment might appease the raging laird, but it didna. Old Red Caunich said it was his right to punish Lady Bree—not her father’s. Said he wouldha cut the bairn from her belly and left’m both on the cliffs to feed the terns.”

  Magnus released the man with a shove. Lady Bree had been banished. And her sister, too. He turned and glanced back in the direction of where Nithdane Keep had once stood. The heartless banishment had probably saved their lives. “Where did they go? Lady Bree and her sister?” For the life of him, he couldn’t remember the sister at all. Before the pub keeper could close the shutters, Magnus slammed them both open wide and held them. “Tell me where they went or die.”

  “I dinna ken,” the man said as he stumbled back. He pointed a shaking finger at the floor. “There’s the salt. Ye canna cross it, ye wicked son of Satan.” Then he jabbed the finger at Magnus. “The whore’s maid ran from the keep afore ed came. She told us ye were the one that put that bastard in her mistress’s belly afore ye returned to yer throne beside the Earl o’ Hell. Said we shouldha held her ’neath the waters ’til Satan’s spawn left her soul in peace. But it was too late. The whore and her sister had done left.”

  Magnus launched himself through the window, shattering the glass as he bounced the sashes out of his way. In one fell swoop, he dropped to the floor, scooped up a handful of salt, then ground it into the sniveling man’s face. “I’ve a revelation for ye, ye spineless son of a whore, I’m the most powerful demon of them all. Neither salt nor holy water stops me.” He shoved the man back against the wall and bounced his head against it. “What direction did Lady Bree and her sister take?” Tightening his hold on the cur’s throat, he lifted him until his feet were dangling. “And if ye value yer life, ye’ll speak of her with respect, ye ken?”

  “I swear I dinna ken where she went,” he rasped, his round face reddening.

  “Follow the coast!” shouted a heavy woman from behind the bar. “East, I’d say.” She shoved her disheveled mop of graying hair out of her eyes. “If’n it was me that got run out from here, I’d stay to the coast for food. Gull’s eggs. Fish washed up and such. I’d keep movin’ ’til I found folk who didna know ’bout me or what happened. I’d go east ’cause that way might be likelier to have a place with a kind soul who might help a woman breedin’. ’Specially if she lied and told’m she was widowed. I’d bet the finest ale we got that’s what her planned to do when she left here. East along the coast for certain, ye ken?” Her panicked gaze kept flitting to the chubby little man Magnus held aloft. “I swear it.” She crossed herself, then clasped her hands and shook them. “Please dinna kill us or curse us. We did her no harm. Surely, ye know we couldna give her shelter. If The Maxwell had found out, he wouldha run us out, too. We wouldha lost everything. Came close to losing it when Laird Red Caunich came through here.” She crossed herself again. “Only God saved us.”

  Magnus turned loose of the fool and stepped back as the man hit the floor. What the woman said made sense, and Lady Bree would’ve been canny enough to do that. In fact, she had often told him of combing the beaches and cliffsides in search of nature’s treasures, as she had called them. The memory made his heart hurt. Such a sweet lass. What had she been forced to endure because he had chosen to take up another mercenary campaign rather than winter at Nithdane Keep? The thought weighed heavy on him as he strode to the door, tossed aside the ridiculous bar, and exited. He despised those who would stand idly by and watch while an innocent woman was stripped of the protection of both kith and kin. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Evander skittering back to their mounts. The nosy lad had been eavesdropping at the window.

  “I thought I told ye to tend the horses?” Magnus asked as he stepped up into the saddle.

  “I could see them from where I stood,” Evander defended. “I canna believe ye didna kill that man.”

  “I only kill when I must.” He nudged his beast with his knees and headed east.

  “So, we ride the coast ’til we come across someone who knew her?” Evander edged his gray horse up beside Magnus. “Reckon they traveled on foot?”

  “Probably.” The thought rankled him, stirring the rage simmering in his gut. He wondered if they had managed to escape with anything more than the clothes on their backs—if that. Bree’s father had been an arse of a chief, acting as though he ruled over the largest clan in all of Scotland rather than the wee cluster of folk he had claimed were descended from Somerled himself.

  Magnus had no doubt the man had made banishing his daughter into quite the spectacle. The cur had always bemoaned how his wife had failed him by not giving him sons.
He had treated all the women in the keep as though they were worthless chattel.

  Evander nudged his horse to a faster pace, keeping it abreast with Magnus’s. “Would a chief really treat his own daughter so harshly?”

  The worry in the boy’s tone warned Magnus this conversation had more to do with than just Clan Nithdane. “No good chief would treat his daughter so harshly. Most would just send them away. To a nunnery, most likely.”

  “What about a lass who’s da isna so high in the clan?” Evander waved away the words as though they were midges. “Say…like the smithy’s daughter even.”

  “Did ye bed Ellen? Is that why yer mother was fit to be tied and sent ye on this trip?” Gretna’s intense lecturing made sense now. While Evander might have the wants and needs of a man, he didn’t have the ways or the means to take care of any consequences should they arise. “Is she with child?”

  “Nay!” Evander stared at him as though he had just said they would eat their horses for dinner. “At least…I dinna think she is.” He squirmed in the saddle. “I didna even get my willy all the way inside her. When she pulled on it while I sucked on her bubbies, I couldna keep from squirting everywhere.” His horrified look plainly said how he felt about that. “It felt so good, I thought I’d died.” He shook his head. “But then her da walked in on us, and I thought I was dead for sure. That man’s big as an ox.”

  Magnus bit the inside of his cheek to keep from laughing.

  “I went to chapel twice to thank God that all he did was drag my arse to Mama.” The boy made a face. “’Course, then I thought I was dead, too. She might not be big as the smithy, but God help ye if ye give her a case of the red arse.” He gave Magnus an earnest look. “Ye think I’m gonna be a da? Will the chieftain make me wed Ellen?”

  “Do ye love Ellen?” Magnus decided to attack this delicate issue from that angle.

  “Nay—leastways not enough to wed her.” Evander frowned. “Did ye love yer Lady Bree?”

  “That was a different situation.”

  “Different how?” The lad’s eyes narrowed as though he thought him a liar.

  “I was fond of her,” Magnus lamely replied, wondering how the hell their talk had turned this way. “When she asked for my help, I couldna refuse.”

  “Yer help with what?”

  “The ridding of her maidenhead.”

  “Her what?” Evander stared at him in disbelief.

  “Has neither Gretna nor Ian talked to ye about these things?” Magnus wasn’t about to explain the joining of a man and a woman to the boy. It wasn’t his place.

  Evander grinned. “I was just funning with ye. I know about the getting of bairns. Mama’s just afeared I’ll be making her a grandmam sometime soon. I do my best to be sure and pull my willy out before my seed spills. What do ye do?”

  “What I do is none of yer damned concern.” If it wasn’t for the fact he’d sworn to take care of the boy, he’d snap the little arse wipe’s neck. “And ye’d do well to remember ’tis a long walk back to Tor Ruadh.”

  “Ye think her sister’s the one raising yer bairn?” Apparently, Evander preferred a horse to travel on foot and had decided to focus on the matter at hand from a safer angle. “Ye think she’s the one who sent that letter? Why ye reckon she waited so long? More than five years? Wonder what happened to make her decide ye needed to know now?”

  “The date of the letter was five years ago, and from the look of the parchment, that’s when it was written.” Magnus had asked himself the same questions. “Although, I canna imagine it being handed about to me for that long. How could it have survived? Maybe Lady Bree’s sister helped her write it to give her peace before she died, then it got set aside or lost. I dinna ken what couldha happened. All I know for certain is I must find the boy—if he still lives.”

  “Her sister couldha got too busy to send it. What with taking care of a babe and finding shelter for them both, she probably didna have a minute to call her own.” Evander looked thoughtful. “I know when it was just Mama and us bairns—it was hard for her to keep us all fed and safe. Many a night, her head didna touch her pillow.”

  When the lad talked like that, he sounded a great deal older than his fifteen years. Magnus knew life hadn’t been easy for Evander and his brothers before their mother married Ian. “That’s why we must find them,” he said. “Lady Bree’s sister and the boy.”

  “What’s her name?”

  Magnus frowned. What was the sister’s name? For that matter, would he even know her if he saw her? No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t bring her to mind. Had he not met her during the time he had been at their keep? He finally shook his head. “If I ever knew it, I have forgotten.”

  “I wouldna tell her that,” Evander advised in the tone of one who knew from experience. He squinted up at the sky. “At least this time of year, the days are longer. Gives us more light to search.”

  Magnus agreed. “Aye, we’ll only stop when the beasts need a rest. Ye’ve done well so far on little sleep, have ye not?”

  The lad thumped his chest. “I can ride as long as it takes.”

  And so they did. Hours along the coastline, stopping at every sign of habitation, from the smallest croft to clusters of dwellings large enough to warrant the title of village. Many remembered Nithdane Keep’s fall, but none knew what had become of the infamous woman blamed for it.

  “Reckon we should change the way we ask about the boy and his auntie?” Evander suggested as they neared the last settlement they would reach before nightfall. “Maybe stop mentioning Nithdane and say ye’re trying to find yer dead brother’s bairn after his wife died, and her sister wrote ye for help.”

  “Ye mean lie.”

  “Aye. When it serves a good enough purpose, a lie can be better than the truth sometimes.”

  The lad had a point. Although, Magnus doubted his mother would agree with her son’s reasoning. “That shall be our story then. My dead brother’s bairn. But will folk not think it strange and grow leery that I waited so long to find them? After all, it wouldha been two women traveling alone over five years ago.”

  “Tell’m ye’ve been at sea and just got word.” Evander gave a decisive nod. “Ye could pass for a smuggler and might could even mention one of Master Duncan’s ships if need be.”

  This boy was a damned good liar. Duncan MacCoinnich, brother to the chieftain at Tor Ruadh, was also known as the smuggling lord, Devil Fraser Sullivan. After a run-in with the British whilst protecting his wife, Duncan and Tilda had settled on an island in the Archipelago of El Perdido where they ran goods for Tilda’s father, the chieftain of Clan Mackenzie.

  “Perhaps, I should let ye do all the talking.” Magnus winked at the boy.

  Evander beamed with pride, reminding Magnus that he hadn’t been as kind as he should’ve been. “Forgive me, Evander. None of this is yer fault, and I shouldna have treated ye as if it was.”

  The boy shrugged. “I kent well enough ye didna mean it. Sometimes kin act that way when things go awry.”

  “Ye’re wise beyond yer years, lad,” Magnus said. “And I am proud ye consider me kin.” He nodded at the upcoming settlement. “Inbhir Ùige up ahead. Alexander told me of it. Fair sized place for this far north.”

  “Reckon they’ll have an inn where we might get some supper?”

  Magnus laughed. Evander was always hungry. He hadn’t complained about anything during their travels but had been on the constant lookout for something to eat other than oatcakes. “As big as it is, I’m sure of it. We’ll go there first. Maybe they’ll even know something that will help us.”

  They came upon an inn situated on the main thoroughfare. A decent-sized place busy with weary folk seeking a bit of food and drink to end the day. There was even a stable beside it, so Magnus decided both they and the horses deserved a night’s rest with more comforts than a fireside camp offered.

  As soon as they had seated themselves, a tall woman, thin as a shadow, appeared at their table. With a weary sm
ile, she tucked a wispy curl of gray back under her kertch. “And what can I fetch for such fine gentlemen as yerselves?”

  “Be that meat pie I smell?” Evander asked before Magnus could respond.

  “Aye, sir. That it is.” After a polite nod, she aimed her smile at Magnus, obviously knowing he was the one with the coin. “Shall I bring ye both a hearty serving along with bread and ale?”

  “That would do us both well,” Magnus said. “We’ll also be needing a room for the night. Can ye tell the innkeeper?” He tossed a pair of coins to the table. “This should cover the room and the meal, aye?”

  The woman’s weariness melted away as she plucked up the coinage. “Two pounds sterling? It most certainly shall, sir. More than enough. I’ll bring ye the key to our finest room.” She turned and snapped her fingers at the barmaid on the other side of the room. “Pies, bread, and ale, Maggie, as much as they want, ye ken?”

  The young woman dipped an obedient curtsy, then hurried off in the direction from which the mouth-watering aromas were wafting.

  Before she rushed off to see to another customer, Magnus tossed down another coin. “And this one is for yer time.”

  The matron’s smile disappeared, replaced with a thunderous scowl. “This isna that type of establishment any longer.”

  “What does she mean?” Evander asked. “We still get to eat, aye?”

  “Forgive me, madam, ye misunderstand.” Yet another reason Magnus preferred solitude. Neither the land nor the creatures of the woods had any trouble understanding him. “I merely wish ye to sit here with us and answer some questions.” He motioned toward the bustling room. “I can see ye’re verra busy, and I wouldna presume to take up yer time without compensating ye for it.”

  The bristling woman immediately calmed and lowered herself to a chair. “Then I must ask yer forgiveness, sir. I meant no insult to ye. Since I became innkeeper after my husband’s death, there are those who are confused about the services we still offer here at Wickhaven.” Her sharp chin thrust upward. Defiance and disgust flashed in her eyes. “Master Wicklow had no issue with asking our maids to serve our customers in any way they required. I thank the Lord Almighty every day for striking him down.”