She looked back down at Isla and sighed again. “Why did ye come?”
I said, “First Lady Mairead paid a visit and then Archie’s mother paid a visit. I had to leave in a hurry.”
“I am sorry my mother has been vexing for ye.”
“Such a vexing, so much vexing,” I joked. “Trouble is, I can’t decide if she’s a friend or foe.”
Lizbeth shrugged, “I would say she is truly a woman, ye canna judge her as the one or the other. Ye can only ask, do her plans include ye or nae?”
I sighed. “That’s the whole problem, her plans. Before, she only wanted to be Queen Mother. She wanted Magnus to take the throne. If I helped her she was a wee bit nicer to me, by degrees.” While I spoke, Hayley pulled chocolate from her satchel and passed it to Lizbeth who took it gratefully.
Lizbeth said, “She has been a steward for Magnus in his absence?”
“Yes.”
“Aye, she might be ready tae have more, she has had a taste of power.”
“Or she might just be a steward for him.”
Emma said, “There’s a rare time in history that a kingdom’s steward didn’t want their own power.”
Lizbeth said, “But also, tis rarer for a woman tae wield power alone. There has been Queen Elizabeth, but I believe my mother prefers having a man on the throne. She likes tae lead with her influence. I believe she has not changed her mind in this.”
“So she wants Magnus as king — yeah, so she has that, right? Maybe she is on my side now...”
Lizbeth said, “Aye, perhaps, though ye hae brought forth a daughter, nae an heir tae Magnus’s throne. Ye may need tae worry she sees ye as unimportant. I would suspect she has aligned herself with Archie’s mother, as he will be the heir.”
My eyes went wide. “You think so?”
“I daena ken, Kaitlyn, but I would keep that in mind and judge her motivations with your suspicions.”
“This is good advice, thank you. I will talk to Magnus about it.”
She said, “I already hae, he came tae me for guidance this morn after he spoke tae ye. I told him this about our mother, but I did nae tell him what I am about tae tell ye. I believe he is too verra worried and is nae thinkin’ on this well enough, as men will do. But I will tell ye this, as long as Archie’s mother is living, your life is worth much less. Isla’s life is worth nothing tae the throne. Thrones hae a way of taking the lives of women, upending them, and discarding them. Bear this in mind, Kaitlyn, ye are tae think of this as nae ye against Archie’s mother, but your bloodline against her bloodline. Ye are mothering her son, keeping him in line. Tis her bloodline, it makes her verra powerful.”
“Oh.” I watched Archie pretend to die on one of the rugs. Ben hugged him and then they ran in circles. “And your mother loves power.”
I looked around at Emma and Hayley. “Any thoughts?”
Emma said, “I got nothing to say, I watched The Crown though, that’s... I don’t know what to say.”
Hayley said, “Shit girl. I never thought about it that way. That’s whack — Archie isn’t a little boy, he’s a bloodline?”
“Aye, and the power of the throne daena care that he is a little boy, or that ye hae adopted him as yer own, or that Isla is a bairn, or that ye are Magnus’s wife, the throne just wants power.”
Our eyes followed Archie. As if he could tell we were thinking about him, he ran over. His eyes red-rimmed, on the verge of a tantrum. Poor baby, he couldn’t have a temper tantrum now, that would be terrible timing. Awful timing.
“Come here sweetness.” I opened my arms. “Are you my sweet boy?” He climbed onto my lap, fingers in his mouth.
He nodded, looking up at me with big glazed eyes. I hugged him close with a squeeze. “I love you little man.”
“Wub oo too.”
Beaty bustled in with Mookie on his leash. “Och, tis drudgery down in the kitchens.”
Emma asked, “Is Zachary there?”
“Aye, Chef Zach has sent for ye.”
I said, “We can all go help, will you stay with Archie and Ben, Beaty?”
“I’d be happy tae, I daena like Mookie tae be down there. He is verra sensitive and they are oft speakin’ on him as if he is a meal.”
Archie put out his arms to be lifted onto Beaty’s lap. Ben cuddled on her other side.
We all sat for a moment enjoying the camaraderie of women, then Hayley said, “Well, we better go help Zach, he’s probably in way over his head.”
Four - Kaitlyn
Zach was in a kilt standing the middle of the kitchen, a full foot taller than everyone else. He had some kind of doughy, battery stuff up to his elbows. He rubbed his forehead leaving a streak of flour there.
The scents of cooking wafted through the air, wood fire, smoke, cooked onion, fish, and herbs like rosemary and sage. These smells were a relief after the putrid smells in the rest of the castle.
The women and men of the kitchen, mostly women, seemed miffed and amused by Zach being there. The tattoo on his chest peeked out of the neck of his shirt and he looked frazzled. “Do you know how many people they’re going to try to feed with this thin soup? Seriously?”
I asked, “But that’s just the first course, right?”
He laughed and assigned us jobs: manning the ladle over a big pot of boiling soup, or passing a hunk of bread and butter to each man as they rushed the kitchen for their meal.
Hayley had done this before so I watched her for cues, because Zach’s instructions had been hurried and vague. I wasn’t prepared for the press of the men when they entered, Sean at the head of the line, Liam behind him, Magnus, then Fraoch and Quentin and James, and then many more. Lizbeth rushed around making sure the serving went smoothly.
Sean held forth his bowl, and Hayley ladled soup into the middle. I placed a hunk of bread on the edge. He joked, with a chuckle, “Young Magnus, yer wife is holdin’ yer bairn and servin’ yer meal, she has become quite accustomed tae her wifely duties.”
He looked so much older than when I first met him, rough-hewn, imposing. With Uncle Baldie gone and the Earl and his son often away in Edinburgh, he had grown into the man of the castle, a position fraught with dangers and responsibilities. “Madame Kaitlyn, Young Magnus tells me ye hae born him a daughter?”
“I have, her name is Isla.”
“I am glad tae hear of it.” He clapped Magnus on the back.
Magnus met my eyes, his own filled with pride, a nod of his head. “How is she?” He held out his bowl. I placed a hunk of bread on his soup. I pulled the edge of the tartan away so he could see Isla sleeping against my front.
He grinned. “She is where I would like tae be.”
“I ken,” I joked. Then added, “She is good, sleeping. She forgives us for time-jumping. Archie too. Beaty is watching over him in the nursery.”
“Good, we have spent the day searchin’ the forest for the last of the army. We will discuss it in the Great Hall after the meal.”
He glanced down the line of men waiting to be fed. “Twill be a long time feedin’ this lot, ye tell them if they speak trouble tae ye Young Magnus will hae them strung up for—”
“I will, no worries, plus I have Hayley here.”
She gestured widely with her ladle. “No one gives me lip at all, because I’ll give them the scary eye.” She contorted her face into a monstrous look and Fraoch laughed.
“Och, m’wife is terrifying.” His expression was gleeful. He thrust his bowl forward for the bread. She gave him an extra ladle of soup and he grinned.
To me he said, “Madame Kaitlyn, ye are well, your bairn?”
“Very well, thank you for asking, Fraoch.” I gave him an extra hunk of bread to match Magnus’s portion.
But then after Quentin and James the whole rest of the line passed us, and it wasn’t fun to talk to them. Some were wretched and some boorish. I reminded myself to not make eye contact, and was greatly relieved knowing Isla was hidden in the sling and I had a gun in my bag.
; And then we were done. Zach was long gone, off to the Great Hall. He had helped with the meal because he wanted to, but he was also allowed to eat with the men. The rest of us, apparently on ‘castle siege rules’, had to wait and eat after the men. Because of our stature though, we got served first of the women. As Emma and Hayley and I walked to the Great Hall, Hayley said, “Don’t worry, I have food stored away. It’s supposed to last me, but then again, we’re under siege, siege rules.”
“Are we still?”
“Well, we were, you missed that part, thankfully. Now I guess we’re waiting to make sure there’s nothing more, but yeah, Fraoch said we were safe now. He said they will probably send the villagers home.”
“Magnus said that too. I still have my doubts, but perhaps that’s because I’ve never gotten through dangerous times quite this easily.”
“Easy?” Hayley scoffed, “I fought my arse off.”
Five - Kaitlyn
The Great Hall was crowded, men at every table, talking at the top of their voices. The noise was deafening. I scanned for Magnus finding him seated with Fraoch, Quentin, James, and Zach at a side table near the hearth, one with plenty of extra seats for us.
Magnus kissed my temple. Mugs of ale were passed around. The food was awful, cold and unsatisfying. After the meal, Hayley broke out a tube of salami and sliced hunks from it, placing them in the middle of the table. The salami was like a beacon — Sean beelined over for some, but no one blamed him. They called Liam over too, because that meal had sucked. Sean and Liam carried the salami away to eat it in the corner, discussing whatever it was that those men discussed.
I called across the table to James, “How’s the eighteenth century treating you so far?”
He leaned back in his chair, eating a hunk of salami, a cocky gleam to his eye, “I fucking love it.”
“Really?”
“Like camping, but with swords, honestly I can’t believe you don’t live here full time.”
I laughed. “How long have you been here?”
“Like four days. Already been in a battle, a kidnapping, and come close to starvation.”
Everyone laughed.
“How about you Zach? What do you think?”
“On the one hand I think how the fuck is anyone supposed to cook anything good with one spoon and one pot? But then I realized, they’re not aiming for good, they just want enough.”
He leaned forward, “But you know what they need?”
Magnus asked, “What?”
“Seeds. Fertilizer. If we went back and got bags of seeds, some good tools, hosing and pumps for water systems, we’d transform their diet.”
Quentin said, “We could bring back a couple of big ass dairy cows, could you imagine if they saw the amount of milk one of those could produce?”
James said, “I could bring a herd of ten and be the richest man in Scotland.”
Fraoch said, “Ye would be rich, Master James, but ye wouldna be able tae sleep, ye would be watchin’ all night for the reivers as they would be comin’ for yer coos.”
James waved it away and joked, “I could hire Rob Roy for protection.”
Magnus said, “Then he would be reivin’ as well as protectin’ ye from the reivin’, tis a game he loves tae play.”
James said, “Yep, he’s the OM — original mobster.” He and Quentin and Zach held up their ales in salute.
Hayley rolled her eyes.
Emma said, “What you really need to bring here is waste management. It smells like sewage and with all these people in one place someone is going to get sick. Composting toilets, or sewer pipes, something.”
Six- Kaitlyn
Sean called Magnus, Fraoch, and Quentin to the front of the room and along with a few other men they gathered in a circle and conferred for a long time. We weren’t required to be quiet, but we quieted anyway, as if we could hear them or understand what they were saying — we couldn’t on either count.
So we finished eating and got more to drink.
Isla woke so I pulled her up from the wrap to hold her because I could tell she was gearing up for a cry. I stood and rocked her, then she got really fussy so I jiggled her back and forth. Don’t cry, don’t cry. I really, really, really wanted to hear what the men were going to say.
But their meeting continued. And continued. Isla began to cry. I carried her down to the far end where Lizbeth met me. “Och, the bairn has a righteous wail.”
“I don’t want to miss the meeting.” I kind of felt like crying along with her.
“Go tae the nursery, Kaitlyn, I will accompany ye. Magnus will come tae ye as soon as he kens the plans.”
I pushed open the heavy oak doors. What I really needed to do was to take Isla out in the fresh air. It was pretty stifling gross in here, bodies and odor and excrement, toil and dismay. But instead we climbed the confined stairwell with the baby screaming her head off, passing the place on the wall where I once had sex with old Magnus, to the nursery.
Within moments of entering two other babies began crying. “Yikes, we’ve got a howl going.” I danced her around and around the room. Archie, who had been in this nursery without fresh air for far too long, wanted up-up. When I didn’t respond fast enough he burst into tears so I had Archie crying on one hip and Isla in the crook of my arm wailing her eyes out.
Beaty was holding Ben, she said, “Och, they are goin’!”
I joked, “I can’t hear you!”
There was literally nothing to do but rock back and forth, dancing around in circles. Distract! Distract! Freaking calm down already! Nothing, literally nothing was working. Time stood still, but it felt like fucking hours.
A couple of women at the end of the room kept shooting me irritated looks. And they were right, I was incapable of calming my children.
The door opened and Magnus entered the nursery. He came to me, a spectacular oddity lumbering across the room, big and manly, and out-of-place in the nursery, a room reserved for babies and mothers and nurses and children. But also he was so freaking desperately necessary. “Och, the wee’uns are wailin’, who should I hold?”
I passed him Isla because Archie was tucked against my shoulder, grasping, tight, not wanting to let go. Magnus tucked her into the crook of his arm, belly down, and patted her back with his other hand.
I moved Archie from my hip to my front, sat in a chair, and let him spider monkey on my chest. “So sorry sweet boy, it’s okay — the baby scared you, she was crying so hard, poor baby.”
He was doing that hiccup-choking thing of a ‘toddler who had cried past remembering what the heck he was crying about’. So I tucked my forehead to the top of his head and held on until he was done. Watching Magnus as he softly rocked Isla, patting her back. One moment she was screaming and then she was like, ‘daddy is holding me’ and grew calm.
Magnus sank into the chair beside me and shifted Isla to his chest. She chilled out. We all chilled out. And breathed. “Thank God you showed up.”
“Aye, the wee’uns were wagin’ a battle and ye were on the losin’ side.”
“This is so true.” I leaned my head against the tapestry covered wall. I shifted to look down on Archie’s face. He looked up at me. “Kay-be cry.”
“Kay-be totally cried, everyone cried.”
Archie asked, all seriousness, “Da cry?”
Magnus said, “I dinna cry, wee’un, nae this time.”
Archie slid down from my lap and ran off to the other side of the room completely over the drama.
I slid my chair closer to Magnus and dropped my head to his shoulder. "So tell me what happened today?”
“The scouts hae returned. They traveled all the distance tae Talsworth and found nae sign of an army. A message has been delivered tae Lord Philip Delapointe, he is expected tae meet with Sean so we can uncover the reason for the siege.” He rested his cheek on the top of my head. “Their meetin’ will take place in a week.”
“That’s a long time to wait.”
“These th
ings go verra slowly here. In the meantime we will send the villagers home, the army is gone, Sean is orderin’ it now.”
“That will be good — the crowds, the noise, it will be nice to go outside the walls with the kids.”
“We will take them tae the river and shew them the banks, the trees. Twill be good tae shew Archie where I hae lived m’life.”
“What about the people who chased me from Florida?”
“We should send Chef Zach, Madame Emma, and Ben somewhere safe. Even with the army dispersed there is a risk tae bein’ here. I daena think they should take the risk.”
“There’s a risk for us too.”
“Aye, but we are taegether. Apart we canna ken whether we are a’right. I can protect ye if we remain together.”
“You sound like me.”
“Ye are wise.” He glanced at me from the corner of his eye. “Sometimes.”
“I’m sorry we argued this morning.”
“We dinna see eye tae eye,” he shrugged. “It happens. Even ye can be wrong sometimes.”
“Of course, I can totally be wrong, not in this case, probably, but I can.”
He chuckled. “James wants tae stay. He wants tae help. He is surprisin’ me with his tenacity.”
“Me too, who would have thought James would want to live in a world of eighteenth century men and — you know, actually, it makes perfect sense now I think about it. In some ways he’s completely suited to this time. Will Quentin and Beaty stay?”
“They will. She would prefer tae return tae Florida, but it inna safe until Quentin can accompany her. She winna ken how tae live on her own. I need him tae remain here because I am considerin’ sendin’ him tae m’kingdom for troops and weapons.”
“You are?”
“Aye, we need a force. When we meet with Lord Philip we want tae be well armed, we want him tae ken it.”
“We want him to know we can kick his arse.”
Son and Throne (Kaitlyn and the Highlander Book 11) Page 3