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

by Fiona Faris

  The company circled the tower and dismounted before a low, iron-studded oak door. Wat Scott’s men approached the door and thumped on it with their leather-clad fists. After a moment, the door creaked open, and one of the men entered, leaving the other to scowl around the hillside with his hawk-like eyes.

  A few moments later, two figures emerged: a scrawny looking man in a leather tunic and gray woolen hose, and a withered beldame, bare legged in a faded red kirtle and bodice. Margaret took them for lower servants, a porter and his wife perhaps.

  Patrick strode forward and grasped the man’s hand in a fierce grip.

  “Wat,” he greeted him, before nodding to the woman. “Mary.”

  “Come away in, son,” Mary said, then turned to the others. “Are these your ladies? Come away in, all of you,” she cried. “We have some parritch bubbling and twa-three hens roasting for after your journey. Come away in.”

  She waved them towards the door, then entered, leaving them to follow or not as they wished, it made no difference to her.

  Patrick encouraged them forward with a nod and a flick of his head.

  They entered a dark and dank ground floor which was littered with lumber of all sorts. Coils of rope were piled upon casks, sacks of grain slumped against saddles, and staves and pikes leaned in bundles against the walls.

  Margaret gave a little start and yelp as a rat scurried behind some short planks of wood.

  They followed Wat and Mary up a flight of stairs that ran diagonally up one wall and through a hatch into a smoky hall and kitchen combined. Over by the far wall, in the overhang of a massive deep fireplace, a cook with thick and fleshy ham-shank arms stirred a pot on a hook over the fire with a large spurtle, which she hauled around the contents with both hands.

  “Yon’s Bridget, the cook I’ve lent ye,” Mary explained. “Ye’ll enjoy plain fair, but wholesome and plenty o’ it. And yon’s Jean, a maid-o’-a’-work,” she added, indicating a short dumpy lass with ample buttocks and bosoms who appeared to have no waist. “She’s a bit simple,” Mary confided to Joan in a low voice, “but she’s a willing worker. Just gi’e her a skelp now and then to wake her up; she’s a bit deaf. Your apairtments are up the stair.” She pointed to another open staircase that continued at right angles up the wall of the tower adjacent to the hatch.

  “Keep the trapdoors shut at nicht to keep the bogles oot,” Auld Wat advised with a cracked cackle.

  “Bogles my arse!” Mary snorted at him before turning back to Joan. “But keep them shut at night anyway, in case ye have unwanted visitors.”

  Margaret looked around the hall-cum-kitchen. It was very bare and spartan, and the smoke blowing back from the fireplace was making her eyes smart. She glanced across at her mother. Her head was erect, but her eyes were downcast, presenting a picture of utter hopelessness.

  “Come, Mother,” she said. “We shall sort out the upstairs chambers for Joan.”

  Mary nodded approvingly, taking in Maria’s desolation with a look of bleak sympathy.

  “I’m afraid you a Lady Maria will have to share a bedchamber,” she said. “There are just the two.”

  Margaret’s eyes widened as the change in their circumstances dawned on her again. Joan, of course, would share the lord’s bedchamber as lady of the household. She was reminded once again of her and her mother’s new status of dependency.

  “We also have the wedding to plan,” Mary added. “Per Sir Patrick’s wishes, the banns are to read at the next three Sundays at St Mary’s church on the north side of the loch. The marriage itself is to take place the Sunday after that.” Mary laughed. “Providing, of course, that no one raises an objection to it. But, given that the church services are only ever heard by shepherds and cutthroats, there is not much likelihood of that!”

  News of her daughter’s marriage woke Lady Maria from her stupor.

  “Joan?” she said, raising her eyes in surprise. “Joan is to be married?”

  Margaret laid a reassuring hand on her mother’s arm.

  “Yes, Mother. Remember? I told you this afternoon. Joan is to marry Sir Patrick of Boghall. Father gave his blessing before they…”

  At the mention of her husband, Lady Maria let out a heart-rending wail, and her knees gave way.

  Margaret threw her arms around her to prevent her from slumping to the floor.

  Joan hurried to their side and took Lady Maria under one arm, while Margaret supported the other.

  “Poor soul!” Mary Scott murmured. “Take her away up the stair and let her lie awhile. She has just lost her man and her hoose. It maun be mair than a poor body can bear. I’ll send Jean up wi’ some parritch by-and-by.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  The wedding took place four weeks later.

  Margaret wished that it had taken place in the family chapel at Neidpath, but St. Mary’s on the lochside did just as well for Joan.

  St Mary’s was an ancient church, built on the remains of a more ancient one still. It was a small irregular stone building built on the orders of Queen Margaret almost two hundred years earlier. It was a small rectangular structure, only about ten feet across and sixteen long. The entrance door near the back of the nave had a round Romanesque arch, and the outer walls were pieced along their length by five similar round-headed windows. The nave ended at a round chancel arch with chevron moldings, beyond the columns of which lay an apsed sanctuary. Unlike the exterior, the interior walls were finished in white plaster and richly decorated with scenes from Scripture.

  The small chapel was bedecked with summer flowers and dressed with brightly colored ribbands to make up for the relative drabness of the celebrants’ everyday dress. Bride and bridegroom had only the clothes they had stood in when they left Neidpath four weeks earlier. Margaret had dressed her sister’s hair, brushing it out until it looked like a fine gray-gold cloth draped down her back almost to her waist, through which freshly plucked daisies and buttercups had been woven. She still wore her faded yellow kirtle, but Lady Maria had flourished it with some skillful embroidery using needles and threads the Scotts had purchased for her from the pack of a wandering cadger. Mary Scott had gifted her a black beaded girdle from her own kist, which she had polished with her own spit until the beads caught the light and sparkled as she moved.

  Sir Patrick looked gallant and handsome in his restored tunic and surcoat, and with the tail of freshly caught blackcock shimmering in his cap. His reddish-brown hair and beard had been neatly trimmed by a shepherd’s wool-shears, and his sharply-pointed shoes curled up at the toe by the smith’s warmed tongs.

  Margaret smiled contently as she surveyed the scene. The makeshift nature of the preparations lent a light, festive air to the proceedings. It was more like the marriage of the lord and lady of the May than a lord and lady in exile. In the absence of their father, Auld Wat handed Joan to the altar, looking ridiculously tiny in his tunic and hose beside the tall, lithe figure of her sister. Wat’s son, William, a huge red-faced bull of a man, whose hose bulged obscenely beneath the hem of his green tunic with the enormous weight of his endowment, stood by Patrick as his best and only groomsman. Margaret was, of course, the bride’s best and only maid. Margaret could hardly keep her eyes off of William’s giant ballocks, nor a blush of embarrassment from her face, as the elderly priest led the couple through their vows.

  Lady Maria looked happy, but the strain of recent events still showed in her face and bearing. She wept as the priest pronounced Patrick and Joan man and wife, with a mixture of happiness for her daughter and grief for her great losses. She leaned lightly against Mary Scott who, looking as incongruous as a stick in a red silk gown, sat by her throughout the service with her arm threaded through that of the bride’s fragile mother.

  After the ceremony, the party repaired to Dryhope where Bridget and Jean had prepared a modest wedding feast.

  They assembled around a single table set out in the center of the hall. They were so few that, as Mary Scott said, ‘it would ‘ha’e made a bonn
y ticket’ them sitting like lords and ladies at the far end of an empty hall.

  Bridget had turned a lamb on a spit above the kitchen fire, and Auld Wat and William brought it themselves to the table, where Patrick carved it with a fearsome-looking knife with a keenly-honed blade and yellow-horned handle.

  The men drank ale and whiskey, the latter handed around in a silver quaich that Wat produced with great ceremony from the leather sporran he wore on his hip, while the women sipped goblets of wine.

  Jean, her own flesh quivering like a plate of jelly as she bustled around the table, fetched a succession of plain but tasty dishes from the kitchen range, and snaffled morsels when she thought no one was looking from the bowls and platters that she cleared away. As the wine and whiskey flowed, the wedding party found the lass’ clumsy attempts at stealth increasingly amusing.

  Once they had eaten their fill, Patrick rose unsteadily to his feet.

  “Friends, family,” he announced. “This is a happy day, though it is overshadowed by great sadness. I wish that Joan – my bride,” he added with a grin, lifting his goblet of ale to salute her “– may have had a wedding day more befitting her station. But, still, Lady Maria and the Lady Margaret and our good friends, the Scotts of Harden, have done us proud. Despite the tribulations of late that we will continue to suffer, this is still a happy day.”

  He passed a hand down his face.

  “I wish to God my fere, Gilbert, were here, that we could have had the double wedding that was planned. And that Sir Simon had been spared to witness the marriage of his daughter and the affinity of our respective families, the Flemings and the Frasers. I wish that God may grant us happier times.”

  He sat down. A hollow silence lay over the room.

  Lady Maria sobbed into her handkerchief.

  Margaret’s fingers fretted in her lap, and her eyes were downcast.

  Joan twirled the point of her knife into the surface of the rough oak table, her eyes narrowed as if she were grimly resolved.

  Auld Wat staggered to his spindly shanks and raised his goblet high above his head, slopping some of its contents onto his head.

  “The cry of my clan is ‘I love’.” He gazed around the faces as if defying them to gainsay them. “I love this life, I love this land, I love my people. My love is a bond that can never be sundered. It is stronger by far than any bond of allegiance I may owe to any king or overlord, which is why I ha’e nothing to do with them. Bound together by love, we can never be vanquished. Today, my fere, Sir Patrick Fleming of Boghall, and his lady, Joan, were bound in love. Let us all around this table today – aye, and our absent friends as well – bind ourselves together in love. Allegiances, affinities, come and go, but ‘I love’ for ay abides.”

  “Aye,” his wife cried out.

  Auld Wat turned and embraced Patrick heartily, a rough but tender embrace. Mary wrapped her thin arms around Lady Maria in a warm protective hug, while William threw his hefty arms around Joan and Margaret and crushed them to his sweaty armpits. When he finally released them, his arm lingered awhile across the back of Margaret’s shoulders until she shifted uncomfortably forward, and it fell back to his side.

  “But, Christ, you’ve landed yourself a bonny bride, Patrick,” Wat exclaimed as he sat down.

  Joan blushed, and Margaret felt a small pang of envy. Joan was, indeed, bonny in her makeshift bridal clothes, her long silvery blonde hair like a cloth falling on either side of her high cheekbones, crowned with a circlet of flowers, her lips reddened with the wine. She was, quite rightly, the center of attention. But Margaret could not help but feel that it should be she who was sitting there, in the bridal chair, in the place of honor. As the elder daughter, it was she who should have been wed first, as befitted her station. But there she sat, like an old maid beside her widowed mother, a dependent now on her younger sister’s household. It was her sister who now had everything that she, Margaret, had ever wanted: a husband, lord, and a house to keep. She chastened herself for her jealousy, swallowing down its bitter dregs. She should be happy for her sister, not sorry for herself. In due course, her Gilbert would return, and she would come into her own.

  But what if Gilbert did not return? What if he were taken by the English? Or killed in battle? Who would have her then, with her inheritance forfeit? She could not bear to contemplate the irony of her new situation, the complete reversal of their respective fortune: that Joan might make the better marriage and she might have to suffer a bonnet laird.

  The room suddenly felt stuffy and oppressive to her. The smoke and heat from the kitchen range were robbing the air, the chatter around the table loud and shrill in her head. She began to feel faint and nauseous.

  “My lord,” she announced to Patrick. “If I may be excused, I would take some air.”

  Joan shot her a look of astonishment.

  Patrick’s eyebrows rose.

  “But of course, my lady… Sister,” he said with an indulgent smile. “But, please, none of this ‘my lord’ nonsense; we are all family around this table.”

  Margaret returned the smile uncertainly, then rose, pushing back her chair.

  “Do you want an escort?” Auld Wat enquired.

  Margaret shook her head.

  “Well, don’t stray far from the tower,” Wat warned. “This is wild country. Wolves and cutthroats, as well as brownies and bogles.” He laughed, wiggling his fingers and screwing his toothless face up into a grotesque mask. “Seriously, lass, stay out of the woods. They have swallowed up many a body afore ye.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Margaret heaved open the heavy oak door and slipped outside. The afternoon was pleasantly warm, and she felt the oppressiveness of the hall slide from her like the skin shed off an adder. The air was fresh and pure. Through it, swallows dipped and soared, feeding on the midges that hovered just above the grassy slope that curved down towards the trees below the keep. Above the trees, in the middle distance to the west, she could see the Loch of the Lowes and that of St Mary’s beyond lying flat and glittering in the sunshine.

  She leaned her back against the rough stone wall, closing her eyes and raising her face to bathe it in the sun’s gentle warmth. Her overwrought mind began to settle, and she breathed deeply to relax the muscles in her neck and shoulders. She opened her eyes and spotted the broad wings of an osprey spiraling high above the lochs. She watched it wheel slowly in the clear blue sky and wished that she too could rise above the hills and forests and see the world entire.

  There was so much she no longer knew. Her closely ordered predictable world had been disrupted, and all the previous certainties had gone. Her fate had been plunged into the chaos of war. She did not know how long she would have to stay in this strange place, this strange country that lay only a few miles from her own, but which might as well have been over the seas or on the moon. She had been plucked from the shame and dishonor of becoming the new sheriff’s whore, but she could not tell how long she would be safe, if she were safe at all, in this forest populated by wild beasts and even wilder bandits. She did not know the fate of her Gilbert, whether he was alive and free or imprisoned or dead. All she knew was that her heart ached unbearably each time she thought of him. It also ached whenever she thought of Neidpath and her home.

  Suddenly, she heard the door creak open. She turned her head on the warm stone and saw the solid bulk of William Scott pass through it. Her heart gave a nervous stutter.

  He was a giant of a man, and he seemed self-conscious of the fact. He held himself hunched into himself, his broad muscular shoulders rounded, his head ducked down towards his chest. His brown hair stuck up in stooks on the top of his head and was close-cropped around the sides and back, revealing a thick red fold of skin that wrapped around the base of his skull. His eyes were brown and round as if he were perpetually bewildered by the world, but there was a gentleness to them, as to his demeanor in general, that belied his impressive size and undoubtedly great strength.

  “M’lady.” He du
cked his head even lower when he espied her. “I came to see that you were a’right.”

  His lower lip sagged heavily in concentration, and his words were ponderous. Margaret wondered if he too, like Jean, the maid-of-all-work, were perhaps ‘a wee bit simple’, as Mary Scott had called her. He reminded her of a small child trapped in the body of an ogre.

  “I am well,” she said. “It was just too warm in the hall. I needed a breath of air.”

  He grinned at her inanely. The sag of his lower lip made it look like a leer. Margaret noticed again the weighty bulge in the front of his hose. William reminded her more of a big docile bull each time she set eyes on him.