Once Upon a Plaid

by Mia Marlowe

  Even though the workmanship of the chest made it a princely gift, William doubted the young king would spare it a second glance once his state treasures were locked away in it. That secret compartment the castle carpenter was so proud of might very well stay secret forever.

  Once William climbed the stairs from the lower ward to the central portion of the bailey, he discovered most of the denizens of Glengarry Castle were roaming over the place in search of Nab’s “hidden” scepter. From the corner of his eye, he even caught the dark blur of Angus zipping across the bailey from behind the chapel to the stable. However, he doubted the terrier was after anything except rats. Everywhere Will went, folk were looking under benches, opening cupboards, and peering behind every closed door. When he reached the great hall, he wasn’t surprised to find it nearly empty.

  There was a small boy playing with a deerhound pup in one corner. Will figured it was probably the lad Fergie whom Nab had told him about because he was perfectly positioned to surreptitiously keep an eye on the only others in the large space.

  Ranulf MacNaught and his toadies were tossing knucklebones near the fireplace.

  William swore under his breath. MacNaught hadn’t risen to the bait yet. But since Ranulf probably knew where the scepter was, there was no hurry.

  “Not interested in trying out the laird’s seat?” he asked Ranulf as he walked by, fully intending not to stop.

  “That seat should only be occupied by the man who deserves it.”

  “In that, we are in complete accord. Lord Glengarry is entirely worthy of his station.” Will decided to give Ranulf a nudge. “But I suppose it doesna hurt for others to see someone else there. After all, no man holds power forever.”

  Something dark and dangerous flicked across MacNaught’s features. It reminded Will of a wolf slinking from shadow to shadow, nearly invisible except for the feral glint that made its eyes glow copper in the dark.

  “No man holds power forever,” Ranulf repeated. “Words to live by, Badenoch.”

  “Or die by,” Will said.

  “Assuredly,” Ranulf said. “All men die.”

  “Aye, that they do. Some sooner than others.”

  “Were I not a guest in my uncle’s home, I’d think that a threat.” MacNaught barked out a rough laugh. “But ’tis Christmas and I’m willing to believe losing the treasure of Badenoch has addled your brains, so I’ll not hold it against ye. Will ye dice with us then? Losing a few throws will keep ye from taxin’ your brain overmuch. Or since your precious scepter has gone missing, has the house of Badenoch lost enough this day?”

  “No one said the rod was missing.” Except ye. That slip of the tongue cinched matters. Ranulf had stolen it. “According to the Laird of Misrule, it’s been hidden away for someone to find. And I’m guessing it’ll not be found by someone who’s content to while the day away with a pair of dice.”

  Hands clenched by his sides, Will headed for the spiral stairs that led to the family’s chambers. Katherine was probably sleeping. He hoped she was after her sleepless night, but he had a fierce need to see her. He wouldn’t wake her. He’d just watch her for a bit. Simply being in the same room with Ranulf MacNaught made him want to bash someone’s head in. Preferably Ranulf’s.

  Kat’s face in repose always rested him. She smoothed out the wrinkles in his soul and gave him space to breathe. He needed her.

  Somehow, he had to convince her of that. If possible without groveling.

  He hadn’t made more than two turns on the staircase before he was nearly knocked into next week by Dorcas, wielding a broom as if it were a mace. She brought the handle down on his crown a second time with a resounding thwack. Then her eyes flew wide as she recognized him.

  “Oh, oh! Lord William, I’m that sorry. Truly I am. I didna know ’twas ye.” She whipped the offending broom behind her and bobbed half a dozen curtseys in rapid succession. “Thank ye for seein’ to Nab. I’m so verra grateful, indeed I am.”

  “Ye’ve a funny way of showing it.”

  She turned her lips inward for a moment, then chattered on as if she hadn’t just clubbed the earl’s son-in-law. “How is Nab now that he isna fixin’ to leap from the bastion any longer?”

  “He was never going to leap anywhere,” Will said crossly, rubbing his head. “And I expect he’s fine since he’s not the one having his head bashed in with a wee broom.”

  “’Tis dim in the stairwell. I didna expect ye back up to yer chamber till this evening,” she said with a sniff.

  “Even so, why are ye lying in wait on the stairs as if the castle were under siege?”

  “Och, I had to resort to violence to keep the rest of ’em out,” Dorcas explained. “There’s no shortage of those who hope to find the hidden scepter, ye see, and win the chance to sit on his lairdship’s throne. Several of the wretches thought to search the family’s chambers. With Lady Margaret under orders to rest and his lordship feeling a mite poorly as well, we canna be having that now, can we?”

  “No, we canna have that,” Will said, sure a lump was forming on his crown big enough to toss a ring over. “Wait. What’s wrong with his lordship?”

  “He woke with a fierce headache and told Jamison his left arm felt heavy. I didna hear him myself, mind, but word is Lord Glengarry sounded as if he’d been in his cups, and I know he wasna because Jamison says all the ale and whisky have been strictly accounted for. Something about mod . . .” She flicked her gaze to the right, searching for the word as if it might be hovering in the air beside her. “Mod-er-a-ta-tion. ‘Moderatation in all things,’ he says, lest we run short.”

  That explained why Lord Glengarry hadn’t cleared the bailey of onlookers when Nab was perched on the bastion. “How is his lordship now?”

  “Resting comfortable-like,” she said. “Old Beathag knows more than midwifery, ye ken. She fixed him a special tea—willow bark and ginger and meadowsweet and a few things she wouldna tell me. Ye dinna suppose it was anything nasty, do ye? In any case, it seemed to set him to rights, but Beathag insists he should keep to his bed today. So we’ve two members of the family confined to their sheets.”

  William chuckled. “Three, if ye count Lady Katherine.”

  “Oh, she’s not abed. Lucas and wee Tam were giving their nursemaid fits fussing to see their mother, and wouldna be comforted. But Lady Katherine told me to wake her if there was anything she could do. So she’s in the nursery with her nephews.”

  He should have known. Kat would run herself ragged before she’d let anything cause Margaret the slightest discomfort before her pains began.

  His gut clenched. What else should he have done when Kat was brought to childbed with Stephan? Was there something, anything, that might have made a difference? With effort, he shoved the thought away. It would do no one any good now.

  William turned around and headed back down the stairs.

  The nursery was located above the kitchen, which was off the great hall. This way, the room occupied by the earl’s grandchildren was always warm in winter. It was close enough to the source of food that the lads never knew hunger. Will had overheard Margaret complain more than once that her older boys were in danger of being thoroughly spoiled by Cook and the rest of the kitchen staff.

  And now the youngest two were being spoiled by his wife.

  Will paused at the open doorway to the nursery. Kat was tripping lightly across the room with wee Tam in her arms and three-year-old Lucas hopping along beside her. She hummed a dance tune as she turned and dipped, graceful as a falling leaf. The boys’ laughter made a spritely counterpoint.

  William stepped back a pace so he could watch her from the shadows. She formed a small circle of three with her nephews. She balanced Tam on her hip and palmed Lucas’s hand for each roundelay as they revolved around each other in the skipping dance.

  Will’s fingers curled into fists. Why couldn’t God see that his Katherine was born to be a mother? She was calm and loving and had so much to give to a child.

&nb
sp; Then she collapsed into a chair and began a game of peekaboo with Tam, who was now lying on her lap, his pudgy feet waggling in the air. Lucas found a comfortable spot where he could lounge on the hem of her skirts and lean his head on her knee. The toddler made a small wooden horse gallop across his ankles for a bit and raised the toy to his mouth to gnaw upon its pricked ears. Then Lucas caught sight of William, dropped his toy, and scrambled to his feet.

  “Unca Will,” he cried and hurried toward William in a bowlegged trot, arms uplifted.

  Will scooped him up and tossed him skyward, catching him on the way down. Lucas giggled as if he were being tickled by feathers.

  “Have a care,” Katherine cautioned.

  “He’s a lad, not Frankish glass. He’ll not break so easy.” William gave Lucas another toss and was rewarded with another round of shrieking laughter. “Besides, I willna drop him.”

  Kat seemed satisfied because she went back to the little hand game she’d been playing with Tam. William tired of the tossing game long before Lucas showed any sign of flagging, and sent Katherine a pointed “help me” look.

  “Lucas, why do ye not show your uncle your new pony?” she suggested.

  The boy scrambled down from William’s arms and scuttled over to retrieve his wooden horse.

  “I could kiss ye, lass,” Will said with a wink.

  “Promises, promises.”

  Well, that was an improvement. Almost an invitation. If he didn’t know better, he’d say he and Kat were flirting with each other.

  But the presence of two little boys limited what they might accomplish in that direction, so Will sank to the floor and crossed his legs. Lucas plopped down between them and leaned back on his uncle’s chest without invitation, making little neighing sounds and trotting his toy up and down Will’s shins. Then as the pony’s movements began to slow, Lucas explained in his babyish voice that the horse was tired and needed to “wie down to sweep in da paddock.”

  The paddock turned out to be William’s left boot. Once his pony was safely stabled away, Lucas tucked his thumb in his mouth. His head began to nod and he fell asleep sprawled happily across Will’s kilted lap.

  “I sent a messenger to fetch your brother home,” he said softly so as not to wake his nephew. “I canna promise it will be in time.”

  “At least ye tried. Thank ye,” she whispered back.

  Lucas shifted in his sleep and made a wee fussing noise. Will smoothed the boy’s downy hair till he settled once more. It was as soft as a spring lamb. And his fat cheeks were still touchably new, after the manner of all young things. The lad’s milky breath, his bonelessly relaxed body, they contrived to coax a memory to the forefront of Will’s brain. He tried without success to tamp it down.

  “How old is Lucas?” he finally asked.

  “Almost three and Tam was two only last month. Margaret had them verra close together.”

  “Hmm. I was just thinking. . . .”

  “What?” Katherine shifted Tam to her shoulder and patted his bottom rhythmically, in an effort to send him to join his older brother in a nap.

  Will hesitated. “I dinna want to . . . I mean, will it make ye sad if . . .” He sighed. “They would have been of an age, wouldn’t they?”

  The muscles in Katherine’s neck bobbed as she swallowed hard. “Who do ye mean?”

  “Lucas and . . . our Stephan.”

  On the third day of Christmas,

  My true love gave to me three French hens.

  —From “The Twelve Days of Christmas”

  “Weel, I must say, that sounds like a practical gift. But why do the birds have to be foreign? There’s not a thing wrong with a Scots Grey hen.”

  —An observation from Nab,

  fool to the Earl of Glengarry

  Chapter Twelve

  Stephan. Will had finally said his name. A cold corner in Katherine’s heart began to thaw a bit.

  “Aye, I was confined with Stephan about the same time as Margaret had Lucas.” Was it only three years ago? Sometimes it seemed another lifetime.

  “I didna mean to make ye sad all over again. If ’tis hard to speak of—”

  “It doesna make me sad to hear ye speak his name,” Katherine said. “’Tis a mercy. It means ye think on him too.”

  “Of course, I think on him. He was our child, Kat.” He laid a hand on Lucas’s head, but the lad slept on. Will’s voice dropped to a whisper. “He was my son.”

  “He still is. So long as we remember him.” She had plenty of memories of Stephan. It was only the final blood-soaked ones that were painful. She cast about for a happy memory. “I mind the first time I felt him move. I’d suspected I was bearing for some time, but then one morning, I felt this wee flutter inside me. Like a moth in a jar.” She closed her eyes and put a hand to her abdomen as if, by willing hard enough, she might somehow feel that slight vibration again. “It was so faint the first time, I couldna be sure I hadn’t imagined it.”

  William chuckled. “I didna have to imagine the time he kicked me in the head.”

  Katherine laughed with him. “Aye. He was trying to tell ye not to use his mother’s belly for a pillow, thank ye verra much.”

  “Opinionated, even in the womb,” Will said. His smile faded. “He’d have been a handful.”

  One that Katherine would have joyfully accepted. Stephan had seemed so lively, especially in the final months of her pregnancy. Her belly rolled in constant turmoil with his little body pressing against the confines of the small space. Then one day, without warning, he stopped moving.

  “When I started bleeding, I hadna felt him move for half a day,” she said softly.

  “Katherine, ye dinna have to talk about it again.”

  “But that’s just it. There’s no ‘again.’ We never talked about it in the first place.”

  “Maybe that’s for the best.” He didn’t meet her gaze.

  “No, ’tis not. Did ye never think that I need to know how it was, how it is, for ye?” Emptiness yawned between them and she rushed to fill it. “Silence is like death. There’s no light, no warmth, no hope in silence. It feels like a noose around my neck that tightens more with each smothered word, with each time we could have spoken our hearts and didna.”

  Will stared at the toy horse on his boot until she began to wonder if he’d even heard her. Finally, he raised his gaze to meet hers.

  “That’s what happened to Stephan. Did ye know that?” he said woodenly. “The cord was wrapped around his neck, they said.”

  His words cut like a knife, but if it could cut the putrefying silence from her marriage, she’d bear it. She still had no idea how he felt, but at least Will was naming their son and speaking about him instead of pretending he hadn’t existed. It was a start.

  “I didna ever know how Stephan died,” she said. “They wouldna let me see him at first. If I hadna demanded, I think the midwife would have just taken him away. I was weak from losing all that blood, ye see, and so tired, but I had to see him. When I started to drag myself from the bed whether the midwife allowed me or not, she finally promised to clean him and put him in my arms.”

  After two days of labor, sweating through countless sets of sheets, she had thought there was no moisture left in her. But if the child hadn’t been cleaned up by the midwife, Katherine could have washed his small body with her tears.

  “I was in the chapel when they brought him to me,” William said so softly she almost didn’t hear him.

  “In the chapel? Will, were ye praying for us?”

  “Aye,” he admitted. “Ye know I’ve never been a praying man, but I was that desperate. Ye’d labored for so long, and for much of the while I’d stood outside the door, digging my nails into the wood each time ye screamed. I wanted to go to ye, but the midwife said ye’d not thank me for invading the birth chamber.”

  His eyes became very bright, and for a moment she wondered if he was going to well up. She felt tears pressing against the backs of her own eyes and her nostrils q
uivered.

  Aye, love. Let them fall, and no slight to your manhood if ye do. Let us weep together until there are no more tears left in us. Show me that our son’s life and death meant something to ye.

  But then William looked away sharply. Katherine swallowed back the lump in her throat and blinked hard. He wouldn’t want to see her tears. It might make him stop speaking and she needed him to keep going.

  “The midwife was wrong,” she said. In the dark watches of those desperate hours, when her strength was fading and the shadows in the corners of the room seemed to close in upon her between one contraction and the next, she’d have given anything to see William. “I wanted to have ye near.”

  The lines between his dark brows deepened. “I didna know that. I should have forced my way in to be with ye, but I didna want to add to your troubles in case the midwife was right. I was no good to anyone hovering outside your door like a ghoul, so I went to the chapel. I spent the night prostrate on the stone floor, begging God for your life.” When he met her gaze again, the ferocity in his eyes made her flinch. “Ten sons couldna make up for losing ye.”

  Her chest burned with love for him, but she wished he’d prayed for his son as well. They were quiet together for a moment, the only sound the soft, wet snoring of their sleeping nephews.

  “I never thought God would take our son,” he finally said.

  “But ye did see him.”

  He nodded. “They brought him to me, all wrapped in a bit of plaid. He was perfect, ten wee fingers and ten wee toes. Tiny little nails glinting like the inside of an oyster. His eyelashes were fine, and pretty enough for a lass. Our Stephan had everything, except breath.”

  “I wish ye’d come to me right away,” she said. The midwife had claimed Katherine needed her rest, but she’d have rested easier if her husband had been by her bedside.

  “I couldna. I had some unfinished business.”

  William had taken care of burying Stephan while Katherine recuperated. It was the dead of winter and the ground must have been like iron when her husband dug that small grave in a patch of unconsecrated ground. William still hadn’t told her where the child rested, only that he’d done all he could for him.