The Highlander's Virtuous Lady: A Historical Scottish Romance Novel

by Fiona Faris

  Sir Gilbert was dressed in a mauve surcoat and blue cloak edged with white fur, pale yellow stockings, and buckled shoes with impossibly pointed toes. On his head, he sported a blue velvet cap, plumed with a long eagle feather, and a short sword hung in a loop from his belt. His cloak fell regally over the haunches of his horse, the reins of which were adorned with brightly colored ribands.

  Sir Patrick was equally well turned-out in a Lincoln green tabard, which displayed his family crest emblazoned in the breast, over a snowy-white chemise with lace trimming at the neck and cuffs. The cuffs drooped like long swallows’ tails down his horse’s flanks. His stockings were also a pale yellow, over which he wore short soft-leather boots turned down at the tops. His cap, set at a jaunty angle, bore a sprig of purple-blooming heather.

  The knights exchanged amused but not altogether unadmiring smiles as they caught sight of the ladies crossing the meadow, Joan’s shapely legs gleaming in the sunshine.

  “Good morrow!” Sir Gilbert greeted them, doffing his cap in a deep bow, while Sir Patrick silently mimicked his courtly manner with an elaborate flourish of his long lacey cuffs. “You have brought the sunshine with your smiles, I see, which have banished yon black clouds back to the west. Sir Patrick and I were just disputing the likelihood of rain like a pair of auld scholars.”

  Both Margaret and Joan inclined their heads in greeting and in acknowledgment of the compliment. Margaret was pleasantly surprised by the decorum Joan was maintaining; she had half-expected her to greet the two men heartily with a slap to her thigh and a ribald observation.

  “Shall we proceed, then?” Sir Gilbert suggested, reining up his horse’s head and swinging it around to the east, in the direction of the burgh.

  “Please do,” Margaret consented.

  They set off at an easy walk along the curve of the river towards Peebles. The path was broad and level, and the river slid swift but gently alongside them. The air was still and a little clammy as the day ascended through the morning towards what promised to be the sultry heat of noon. Swallows skimmed the surface of the river, twisting acrobatically to snatch the insects that danced on the water. Blue damselflies and yellow-striped dragonflies flitted and darted among the rushes. Crows cawed querulously in the canopy of the South Park Woods on the far side of the Tweed. Margaret relaxed into the still beauty of the morning.

  The company sauntered on at a leisurely pace, Sir Patrick and Joan falling into the lead, with Sir Gilbert dropping back to convoy Margaret. The ride was pleasant, and no one seemed impatient to be at the market. At the edge of the meadow, the path entered the forest that tumbled down from the heights of the Jedderfield Laws and across the river to join the woods of the deer park. Beneath the broadly spreading trees, the path became dappled with sunlight filtering through the foliage and veined by the tracery of tree roots that the passage of feet had exposed over the centuries.

  “We should have arranged a pique un niche for our excursion, instead of a turn to the market,” Margaret remarked. “It is such a pretty day. It is sure to be smelly and noisy in the burgh once the heat rises.”

  Joan swung around in her saddle and grinned at her sister.

  “We could have gone upstream and dipped our toes in the Boat Pool,” she said. “I hear that the water is lovely and cool… if a little wet.”

  Margaret stifled a snigger.

  Both Sir Gilbert and Sir Patrick narrowed their eyes in growing suspicion.

  “And the views can be quite breathtaking,” Joan added, with an almost imperceptible nod of her head towards Sir Patrick, which only Margaret detected.

  Sir Gilbert pushed a low-hanging bow aside to prevent a mishap with his eagle feather. He continued to hold it to allow Margaret to pass.

  “Much as Sir Patrick and I would gladly have built our ladies a bower by yon clear crystal pool and piled upon it all the flowers of the hillside, it was to market we resolved to see the sport, and so, to the market we shall go… In any case, we only have permission from the good Sir Simon to convoy his daughters hence, to the fair burgh of Peebles, and not to dally with them like nymphs and satyrs in a sylvan glade.”

  “More is the pity,” Joan lamented.

  “Joan!” Margaret warned in a low ominous voice.

  “I meant – more is the pity that we should spoil such a glorious day in the dust and clamor of the marketplace,” she protested.

  “The day shall be what we make of it,” Sir Patrick declared. “We shall enjoy the Peebles market, I am sure. We shall treat you to some dainties from the victuallers and buy ribbands for your pretty hair.”

  “With the money we win in wagers at the cockpit…” Sir Gilbert cheered. “There shall be a cockpit at Peebles market?” he suddenly enquired of Margaret in mock alarm. “Your father isn’t one of those Sheriffs who prohibits them?”

  Margaret laughed, and to Sir Gilbert, her laughter trilled as sweet and as cool as the river running over the shingle bank they were just passing.

  “My father is a sportsman too, Sir Gilbert,” she replied. “So never fear. He too likes a wager on the outcome of a match. He would not deprive even the basest villein of such simple pleasure, even though it means the villein’s bairns will starve.”

  It was not long until the motte of the King’s Castle, which housed the Sheriff’s office and the quarters of the Sheriff’s officers, rose through the trees. Its square tower glowered imposingly over the burgh from its height and commanded the ford that carried the road south across the King’s Muir and around the hills to the Meggetlands, St. Mary’s Loch, and over the high Talla Pass to Sir Simon’s other estate of Oliver, the ‘Holy Ford’, in Tweedsmuir. They entered the burgh by the Bridgegate above the ford, climbed the Port Brae and turned into the High Street.

  The High Street was already a cacophony of noise and hive of activity. Margaret pinned across her veil to save her face from the gawping of the villeins, wrights, and cadgers. Joan, on the other hand, threw her long blonde hair back and held her face proudly for all to see. People, as the company passed, hung their heads together in little knots of awe, nodding wide-eyed at the fine ladies, and whispering excitedly at the sight of the proud, disdainful knights that accompanied them.

  On either side of their progress, the rickety three-story wattle-and-daub buildings loomed over their heads, threatening (or so it seemed to Margaret) to topple at every moment on their heads. The ground floor workshops of the guildsmen had their shutters thrown wide to the street, to display their crafted wares, while the peasant folk had set out their stalls of vegetables along the middle of the street. The itinerant cadgers had their threads and trinkets laid out from their packs on colorful squares of cloth they had spread on the filthy road itself. Jugglers, tumblers, and monster-births attracted knots of sightseers, while dogs and urchins wove quickly, like minnows, among the legs of the buyers, sellers, and onlookers, darting for any scraps that fell to them.

  From the Northgate, at the far end of the street, rose the bloodlust roar of the sportsmen from around a makeshift cockpit that had been set up in front of the Cross Keys Inn. Sir Gilbert recognized the signal, slapped his thigh, and grinned.

  They passed a brazier. The heat from its charcoals shimmered the air. Across it lay a griddle on which sizzled a variety of tidbits.

  “Sheep’s trotters,” Sir Patrick cried in delight. “I have not had sheep’s trotters since I was a young squire.” He hesitated but a moment before sliding from his saddle. “I will have some now. May I tempt you, dear ladies?”

  “I shall share your sheep’s feet, Sir Patrick,” Joan declared.

  Sir Gilbert dismounted.

  “I’m for a mutton pie from the pieman further down,” he said. “What can I fetch you, Lady Margaret? There are skewered sweetbreads over there, roasted sparrows, blanche escrepes, crispels…”

  Margaret clapped her hands with delight.

  “Oh, some crispels, please,” she cried. “I so adore their sweetness.”

  Sir Gilbert and S
ir Patrick went off to make their purchases. Joan sidled her mare over to her sister’s palfrey.

  “Well, dear sister, is my manner becoming enough for you?”

  Margaret looked her up and down.

  “Well, apart from your haughty demeanor and the yard of leg that you are revealing to any lecherous villein that cares to slaver over you, you are passably presented,” she replied with a sniff.

  As she turned her head away, her eyes alighted in a small urchin who was standing motionless in the middle of the street a few yards off and staring at her in careful contemplation with her head cocked to one side. She was dressed in a shapeless gray chemise and what looked like an old stocking on her head. Her ruddy cheeks were stained with tear-streaked dirt, and her legs and feet were filthy with what looked like cow dung. Her hair had been raggedly shorn, presumably in an attempt to rid her head of lice.

  Margaret tried to look away, but it was too late. She had caught the infant’s eye with her own.

  “Leddy! Leddy!” the girl inquired, her voice hollow with awe. “Are you the Mother of God?”

  Margaret did not deign to reply. She gazed over the infant’s head, though her eyes were focused on nothing.

  “Are you, Leddy? Are you the Mother of God?” the little girl persisted.

  Still, Margaret ignored her.

  The little girl tottered forward and tugged on the hem of Margaret’s gown. With a little shriek of fright, Margaret shoved the urchin away with her foot. The little girl staggered back, then fell on her backside.

  “Oh, for Christ’s sake!” Joan swore, jumping down from her mare and striding over to the girl. “She’s just a baby. And it was a perfectly civil question.”

  She crouched down and set the girl back on her feet again.

  “No, she’s not the Mother of God,” she told her, casting a sidelong glance at her sister, “though she sometimes acts like she is. Nor is she the Queen of Scots, nor a countess, nor the mistress of the Cross Keys. She is no more than the daughter of a middling laird in the back of beyond; that’s what gives her her airs and graces.”

  The filthy infant took in this information with open-mouthed astonishment. The lady did look awfully like the pictures of the Mother of God in St. Andrew’s Church.

  “Here,” Joan said, pulling a small copper coin from the girdle that cinched her kirtle and pressing it into the wee girl’s hand. “Take this and away and buy yourself something nice to eat. It’s for yourself, mind! Don’t be going giving it to your maister.”

  The girl looked at the miracle in her grubby palm, then back at Margaret, who must surely, after all, be the Mother of God, before turning on her heel and scampering off towards the food vendors.

  Joan watched her go, then straightened up and took the few steps to where Margaret sat on her palfrey. She grasped her sister’s ankle and made as if to pull her into the filth on the roadway.

  “You’re a hard-faced, conceited bitch,” Joan said in a low, threatening voice. “If that is a virtuous lady, then I would rather be a common harlot. I am ashamed of you, I am! Ashamed!”

  Margaret colored and shifted nervously on her saddle, but Joan just released her sister’s ankle and returned to her horse.

  Sir Gilbert and Sir Patrick arrived, holding the food in their handkerchiefs, and handed it up to the ladies before remounting their ponies.

  “What is afoot?” Sir Gilbert asked uncertainly, sensing the tension between the two sisters. “Has something occurred?”

  “Nothing of note,” Joan responded coldly. “We were just dispensing some simple Christian charity.”

  She pointed with her food to where the urchin girl was negotiating with a vendor for a small stack of crispels drizzled with honey.

  “Ah, the poor wee mite!” Sir Gilbert cooed. “Look at her. Just a ruckle of bones covered o’er with skin. Still…” He considered the bright side. “She has not died a winter yet. Tuck in.” He indicated to the victuals in the napkins. “Before they grow cold.”

  Joan tore apart the toes of a sheep’s foot to get at the succulent jelly within. Sir Gilbert took a huge bite from his steaming mutton pie, slurping the juices before they could stain his fine clothes. Margaret looked down at her own stack of crispels, then glanced at the little girl, who had since sat herself down in the muck beside the braziers and was steadily working her way through the crispy fried pastry discs. Her stomach turned. She found that she had suddenly lost her appetite.

  She cast the crispels, along with Gilbert’s handkerchief, from her. They landed in the street and were immediately pounced upon by a pack of dogs and mucky children.

  Sir Gilbert looked at her with puzzled concern.

  “Were they not to your liking, my lady?” he asked solicitously.

  “No, I am sure they were very fine,” she replied, looking distractedly along the street towards the Northgate. “It is just… The noise and the stench, they have taken away my appetite.”

  She looked across to where Joan and Sir Patrick were gnawing the meat and sucking the marrow from their seared sheep’s trotters. Joan met her eye and smiled maliciously.

  Once they had finished their snacks, they carried on along the High Street towards the Eastgate.

  The Eastgate marked the boundary of the burgh. It also marked the south-eastern limit of the realm, beyond which the king’s law did not extend. The vast Ettrick Forest, which smothered the district’s hills and glens, was populated by cutthroats and outlaws who owed fealty to no lord or king and lived by raiding each other’s cattle and extorting spurious ‘tolls’ from travelers. There, feuding between families was the way of life, with many bloody quarrels having continued for so many generations that their original cause had been long forgotten. No king, either Scottish or English, had ever been able to impose order and government on the Marchlands between the two realms, and the country’s ‘reivers’ were left very much to their own devices.

  Not far from the gate stood the raised market cross, surrounded by a parapet that could be reached by a short flight of stone steps, from where public pronouncements were made by the burgh crier. The whole squat edifice was elaborately carved with manticores and unicorns, angels and devils, serpents and dolphins, and other fantastical beasts. A room beneath the Cross housed the burgh jail, a low, windowless chamber with a stout square door braced with iron straps and a padlocked wooden beam. Beside the Cross rose the gallows, on which currently hung in chains the rotting crow-picked corpse of some late thief or murderer, and beside the gallows stood the pillory.

  To the evident disappointment of a small group of prentices and servant lasses, the stocks were currently empty of any recalcitrant they could torment. Instead, they had made of the pillory a plaything.

  In it, they had placed one of their number – a willing outdoor servant girl – loosely clamping her by the neck and wrists in its stocks. Her companions were dancing and capering around her, shrieking with laughter and enumerating her many supposed crimes, which related mostly to fornication, involving a variety of lads in a series of increasingly bizarre situations.

  One of the prentices had taken up position behind her, his hands clutching her hips of her skirts, and was grinding his groin hard against her buttocks in what they cried a ‘dry’ ride. The girl blushed and giggled shamelessly, as the prentice’s companions urged him on with glee.

  Margaret turned her head away in disgust, but Sir Gilbert and Sir Patrick smiled and laughed at their ribaldry. Joan rocked forward and back in her saddle with undisguised mirth.

  Then, all of a sudden, one of the prentices, the worse of drink and his tunic stained with dried vomit, caught sight of the company and called out:

  “Wad aither o’ you ladies care to tak’ a turn in the stocks?” He leered toothlessly. “My dowp is primed an’ my balls are burstin’ to be tightened. In truth, I hae enough glit in ‘em to service the baith o’ ye.”

  Their faces black with rage, both Sir Gilbert and Sir Patrick swung their legs from their mounts and unbelt
ed their swords. But Joan was too quick from them. Like a Furie, she leaped from her mare, dirk drawn, fell upon the prentice, and dragged him by the hair to his knees.

  “You scrabbling louse,” she bawled. “I’ll have the tongue out of your filthy head for your impudence.”

  One of his companions stepped forward to lay hands on her, but he found himself sprawling on the ground from a sharp blow from her elbow, blood gushing from his nose.

  Margaret buried her face in her hands.

  Clamping his lower jaw in a viselike grip, his head clamped beneath her arm, Joan wrenched the lad’s mouth open. But Sir Patrick had by then reached her and stayed her dagger hand, while Sir Gilbert held the rest of the prentices back by showing them the flat of his blade.

  “Come, my lady. Joan,” he murmured. “The wretch is not worth the bloody spoiling of your kirtle.” He looked around them slowly. “None of them are,” he added. “In truth, a kick up the arse would be too good for them.”