Torn (The Handfasting)

by Becca St. John

  "What?" Fiona looked about as if she couldn't find the problem that was right under her nose.

  Even her brothers looked innocently surprised by her reaction, but they were good at pulling the innocent when set on pranks. She would put this down to them, although how it got past her mother, was beyond her ken.

  "Did you do this?" She grabbed the plate and shoved it at her siblings, mindful to keep one hand across her nose, away from the foul smell of it. "Which of you would insult my handfasted by bringing out putrid meat?"

  "It's fine," Talorc reached over her arm for a drumstick, kept Maggie from pulling it away as he took a bite, all the while, his eyes intent on her.

  Horrified Maggie yanked his arm, to keep the meat from his mouth, and gagged. As the meat juices ran down his hand, bile rose in her throat. She tore away, searched for an exit, made it as far as a bowl left for the dogs and retched, despite a too empty stomach. The foul scent wafted around her, stirred another bout of gagging.

  Talorc curled around her back, his arm across her stomach, one hand holding her hair from falling forward. She heaved a deep breath, slumped away from him, against the wall. Talorc took a mug of ale from her mother.

  "Are you alright, now lass? Would you like a bite of this bread?" She moaned, shoved his arm away as he tried to give her a piece. The whole of her family hovered.

  "She's been sleeping more than you think she needs?" Talorc asked her ma instead of herself. Maggie was sick enough not to care.

  "Aye," Fiona admitted, "we told you she was ill." But he didn't pay attention to Fiona's worries. Instead he knelt down next to Maggie and urged her to eat the bread.

  "Trust me lass, it will make you feel that much better." She kept trying to move away, as he tried to force it past her lips.

  "Leave her be." Feargus stormed but Fiona waylaid him.

  "No Feargus, let him feed her. I think he has the right of it."

  Maggie could hear her brothers and her da grouse, but, as usual, Fiona had the last say.

  Maggie ate the bread, just so he would leave her alone. But he didn't leave her alone. He picked her up and carried her back over by the fire, and that horrible smell. She must have flinched for her ordered, "Someone take the chicken away."

  "There's naught wrong with your chicken." Fiona argued but she took the plate and passed it to one of the clanswoman who had come out to watch the commotion.

  "There's naught wrong with Maggie, either." Talorc had the nerve to smile, an indulgent lift of lips.

  "You have no heart," Maggie moaned and pushed out of his arms, surprised that she didn't wobble with sick.

  "Feeling a bit better with the bread?" He asked.

  "A body always feels better once the sick is out. Besides, that foul meat is gone."

  She couldn't read his pleasure, but it was there, in his eyes, in the slant of his mouth. She was sick and he was thrilled. Stupid oaf.

  "Maggie," he cajoled, "if you're feeling a mite better, we need to have words."

  "You talk to her here." Fiona placed an arm around her daughter.

  "Is that how you want it Maggie?"

  Confused over his delight in her illness, Maggie couldn't think, didn't want to. If he was to tell her the Handfasting was over, she did not want to be alone. She nodded.

  "Alright then," He stood, surrounded by the men in her family, confronting Maggie and her ma. "Have you told your family we're no longer handfasted?"

  Her roiling stomach contracted. She should have asked to be alone. Had not truly anticipated his words or the kick they held. But no, she asked her family to stay. A vocal lot, now stunned to silence as he ended their time together.

  Pride squashed the urge to turn in to her mother's hold. She broke free, stood tall, and fought for words as the silence was broken by outraged gasps of her family.

  His voice rose above it. "Acknowledge it or no, after what went on in that barn, you’re my wife and you know that."

  "In a barn?" She didn't know whose bellow it was, or how many were yelling and threatening but this was her fight.

  The blasted man had no discretion. No thought to protect her modesty. Who did he think he was?

  She shoved at his chest. "How dare you?" As if to push back his words. "You great big loud troll. You have the mouth of a harpy." He caught her wrists, she kicked him. "I'm so bloody sick of you confronting me with an audience."

  "I tried to talk to you in private."

  "Well, you could have tried harder."

  "Crisdean," Maggie yanked her hands free. "Punch him for me, will you?"

  Her da stopped him. Maggie scowled. Her father looked like he wanted to cry and didn't know if he was happy or sad about it.

  "Da?" Maggie asked.

  Fiona murmured. "She's not sick, then."

  "Of course I'm sick. Didn't you just see . . ." her words were dwarfed by Talorc's snort.

  Oh Lord, she groaned, batted at Talorc's arms, as he swept her up in his hold.

  "She insults me by clinging to a bare head and the MacBede colors." But Talorc didn't look insulted. He looked boastful, the great big loud mouthed brute.

  "Oh . . . my . . . Good Lord!" Fiona's hands flew to her cheeks, "Did you hear that Feargus? Did you hear what the Bold is saying?"

  "Should you be wearing a kerchief, Maggie?" her da asked.

  Maggie blushed, a hot, burning, face reddening blush. "He's sayin' nothin'" Maggie tried to distract them, but no one listened to her.

  Maggie was dizzy from looking from one to the other. Her ma, her da, had the strangest looks. Her brothers were not much better. Crisdean blushed, embarrassed, which was impossible to believe, even with seeing. Sibeal, Feargus the Younger's wife had moved up beside him. He had his arm around her shoulder and was smiling at her.

  None of it made sense. They talked riddles around her, as if she weren't there. Did her family understand what the Bold was saying? Would he now boast of her begging for him to take her?

  "Bold," she warned him. This was private business. And not at all settled, the way he told it.

  "Remember when I carried the twins? Remember how I was to the smell of roasting bird?"

  Feargus looked like he'd been hit by a bull. "You seduced my daughter," his words ominously soft.

  "I'm married to your daughter, you old goat!" Talorc bellowed to the rafters.

  "Don't call him an old goat." Maggie stormed. "He's my father, and I never pledged marriage to you."

  "Then you better do so, Maggie MacBede."

  She pushed out of his hold, settled her skirts with a harsh snap of fabric and a more gentle brush of hands, then looked up, ready to confront him. "Just tell me why, Talorc MacKay." She lifted her chin. "Tell me why I have to do anything of the sort, when I'm safe, here with my family?" Aye, maybe, just maybe, she was his wife but he had a few things to learn before she would be ready to leave with him.

  "Maggie." Her mother hissed.

  Talorc was gentler. "Maggie, have you not been listening to what we've been saying?"

  "Aye, I've been hearing you tell tales that are best left between us." She punctuated her words by shoving at him, glancing away only once at her da's startled bark of . . . well it wasn't quite laughter but it was far from anger. Which made no sense at all.

  Once again, they sided with the Bold against her. It had been the way of things from the first moment of their meeting as well as his habit of cornering her in front of others. They ganged up without her any the wiser, and ill prepared for the conflicts that would change her life.

  For once, she would like to know what everyone else knew ahead of her.

  For once.

  But the Bold would never give her that advantage.

  Everything was beyond her except for his high handed tendency to push her into tight places and make her a public spectacle.

  She was just as angry with her parents. They always knew what he was up to but they never told Maggie. They let him tell her, humiliate her, take all her own choices away befor
e she knew herself.

  Fiona beamed. Maggie scowled.

  "Bold," Maggie tugged at his sleeve, "You're right. It's time we had a private chat."

  "It's too late for that Maggie." He took her hand as if it were a precious, fragile thing. She snorted. She was no little blossom. "Maggie, you've been sleeping, you can't keep your food down and my dinner smelled foul to you."

  "You've been told, I haven't been well."

  "You're well enough, Maggie."

  She pulled out of his hold, "Easy for you to say. You tell him ma," but her ma only grinned.

  Talorc leaned closer. "Your ma knows you aren't ill, lass. You're with child. Our child. We're going to have a wee bairn."

  She blinked. Saw the huge smiles of everyone around her. She stood, like a silent jackdaw, mouth agape. Words wouldn't come. And then she realized, they had all known, her brothers, her parents, the clan members who still stood in the hall. They knew from the twisted words he'd been saying.

  He did it again. A huge moment in her life had been laid bared to everyone before she had a clue. As if she was the least affected by it all. Her scream erupted from the depths of her, a tormented banshee shriek, loud and shrill enough to split the drums of the ear.

  "You bloody, brutal, warring, skunk!" She heaved in air, fought to crush wild, uncontrollable tears.

  Married to the Bold there would be no romantic, sentimental journeys of memory. Each one was wiped out by a power play. He had taken, controlled and conquered. She was no more than another victory.

  In this moment she hated him.

  Her nostrils flared as she sucked in air, trembling with the loss of a magical moment. The Bold's proud pleasure transformed from joy to a frown, bewilderment to rigid icy horror. He bent over, a wary look in his eyes as he met hers.

  "We're talking about an innocent bairn here, Maggie."

  Aye, they were talking about her child as well as his, though you wouldn't know it. Too angry for words, she spat at the ground.

  "Do you hate me so much, you would hate my child?"

  My child, he had said. Fury trembled through her.

  "Your child, is it?" She shoved her finger against his chest. "Everything is about you, what you want, the way you want it. Victory for you, no thought for me." She spun half way, took a step, turned back. "You're having a bloody child, but I'm the one heaving." She shoved him, hard, in the chest and ran out of the hall, out of the keep, and as far from The Laird MacKay as she could get, to her brother, her twin, Ian.

  She collapsed on his grave; lay upon the snow, oblivious to the burn of ice against her bare hands as she heaved air, sobbed dry tears.

  "It's too much, Ian. Every time I turn around there's a new change, a massive, never to be the same kind of change and I'm the last to know of it, the last to be told the truth.

  "First you leave me, then the Bold comes into my life. Gone no more than a cycle of the moon, two at most, and I return home to find it's not the same, the people are changed." She rose up, braced herself on her elbows. "At least to me they are. And now . . .” her hand fisted at her belly. "I've a babe, Ian" she told him in wonder, "I've a babe, right here, in my belly. Maybe it's the boy you showed me."

  Tears filled her eyes, different from the ones that had tried to flow when she fled the keep. These were tears of happiness, fulfillment, excitement. She had not wanted the world to know of her and Talorc. She had wanted to have time together, to get to know each other in that wondrous way they had found in the barn.

  And she had wanted to adjust to what leaving her first home meant.

  They had more than a few differences to work on. Things had to be settled between them before spring, when, as she had come to understand, they would be united. Husband and wife.

  In the spring.

  She thought there was time to work at who they were together, before finalizing their commitment.

  Then came his announcement. The gall of it, that he should tell the world of their private affairs. Tell them all what they had been about in the barn. Personal enough, but then he tells them she carries a bairn, before she had an inkling.

  He lets them know before she knows when it's her body doing the carrying. The shock of it, especially now, when so fragile, and knowing it was a boy child, like in her dream. Another man to steal her heart and risk it as easily as her da, her brothers.

  Alright, so she had been bred to marry a man like Talorc. And he was the man for her. She no longer had a doubt, knew she would never find another, after being with him. But she would not allow him to command her life or push her faster than her emotions could tarry.

  "You can stop your tears."

  Maggie spun around to face Talorc, his eyes colder than the stone of Ian's grave, voice sharper and harder than the frozen ground. She'd never heard him like this before.

  "We've made a baby, Bold." But the magic of it was lost in her words, which faltered over his icy glare.

  What was wrong with him?

  "Aye, we've made a babe." He wouldn't look at her, not really, he looked at her belly, he looked at the stone before the grave, he even looked at her nose, she was sure of that. But he wouldn't look at her eyes.

  "Why are you angry with me?"

  His nostrils flared. His fists, held rigid at his side, bunched and flexed. Would he strike her? Never.

  "I'm taking you back to Glen Toric, to make sure you don't do any harm to the child. When it's born, you'll be brought back here. Alone."

  She couldn't breathe. Why was he doing this? Why had he turned so cruel?

  The whole of her body started to shake. "You'll not have my child."

  He turned away and spit. "Not your child. My child. You let your family, your whole clan, see well enough how you felt about that."

  "What are you saying?"

  "You said it yourself. Screamed it, like a banshee."

  She remembered now, the look on his face. He did not understand her fury, and took it upon himself to choose assumptions. Well, he could just swallow those thoughts.

  She stood. "You tell the world things about me, private personal things, before you even speak with me." She closed her eyes. Even to her, the argument sounded weak, did not warrant the fury she spilled in the hall.

  "I thought you were a better woman, Maggie MacBede. I didn't think you would be so greedy for my touch and hate me at the same time. Nor did I ever dream your hatred would carry over to a harmless babe. I never thought you were so . . ."

  He looked away.

  He believed she didn't want him. He imagined she didn't want the babe. Stunned, she waited to hear just what he thought of her. How wrong he could be.

  "Rest assured, you'll be free to go for one of those puny weak men you want without burden of my child. I'd not have you near it. It's bad enough that you have to carry the wee one for months. I can only hope the MacKays will make-up for that."

  He spun around and left her to the frozen ground . . .

  to a frozen heart . . .

  to a life that appeared as dead as her beloved brother.

  CHAPTER 3 – BROKEN

  Wind whipped through Seonaid’s hair, a banner of dark tendrils in her wake. Sitting straight in the crux of her lap, his face alive with excitement, her son, Deian, rode before her on the grand gelding.

  Ingrid was gone. Again. But this time she left Deian on his own. A wee child, barely five years, and she left him alone. For certain, Ingrid held no love for Seonaid, but they had an arrangement. All without family or protection Seonaid, Deidre and Deidre’s sister, Ingrid banded together. Power in numbers. They managed without a man, helped each other with chores and watching both Deidre’s Eba and her own young Deian.

  Dear Lord, please don’t let the Ingrid fall prey to the swine who has been stealing young girls, the same who took Ysenda.

  Desperate to get to Glen Toric, Seonaid pushed their mount goaded by the swell of fear from the moment she walked through the cottage door. Ominous silence greeted her, a heavy, forboding. S
o she searched, afraid to call, afraid to draw attention causing a situation where she would be of little help.

  Silent as one could be on rushes, she moved through three small rooms. That’s when she heard a shifting in the loft. A small sound but enough to tell her she wasn’t alone. She stood for an eternity at the foot of the ladder, looking up, waiting for something to happen. What, she didn’t know, but something so she wouldn’t have to climb up there, vulnerable to anyone, anything.

  She would have stayed there except she didn’t know where Deian was, what had happened to him and answers might be above. And so she moved, slowly, one foot up a rung, then another and another all the while knowing whoever was there would see the top of her head before she could see anything. Still she climbed, her head cocked defensively. Just before the top she pushed straight up to find a set of dark eyes peering out from beneath the bed.

  “Deian!” She whispered and hauled herself up onto the floor to pull him out, hug him close, rocking, comforting him, comforting herself.

  He wasn’t allowed in the loft. That’s where the sisters slept and the drop was too dangerous for a wee tyke. “What are you doing up here?”

  Squirming he pushed away. “Can we go down now?” he asked. “I need to piss.” He wailed, his tunic growing wet even as he wailed.

  “Oh, aye, we can go down.” She promised, not mentioning the mistake, not pressing for answers. “You just let me start.” She lowered herself onto the ladder and opened an arm, hunched her body, so he could climb between her feet and her shoulders.

  “I was good.” He sniffled. “I tried hard to wait.”

  “Aye, you did lad.” She comforted. “How long did you wait.”

  “A long, long time.”

  “Och, no,” she helped him jump the last few rungs, “so long, too long I’m thinking.” She wanted him safe, but she also wanted him comfortable.

  She looked down at the sorrowful bow of his head.

  “She promised me you would be quick.” He sniffled.

  “Me now?”