by Mia Marlowe
“There was still a matter between me and God. He’d spared ye, as I asked, but after all ye suffered, He still took our son. So after I buried Stephan, I went back to the chapel and railed at God for putting ye through hell.”
“Oh, Will, ye didna.”
“I did. And I’d do it again. I swore. I raged. I dared Him to smite me for it. I screamed until I was hoarse, but there was nothing but silence.” William’s lip curled. “Either He doesna care or He doesna exist.”
Katherine couldn’t stop the tears from coming this time. “I dinna want to be the cause of ye losing faith, Will.”
“’Tis not your fault. Never think it. God had His chance to show a little mercy and He didna.”
“But He did. I’m still here. Ye’re still here, and after such blasphemy, I wonder that Father Simon hasna excommunicated ye.”
One corner of William’s mouth lifted. “No need. I excommunicated myself. Besides, when I first started my tirade before the altar, the priest ran for cover. He expected flaming bolts from on high. In any case, he wasn’t in the chapel for the worst of it.”
Katherine read pain in William’s eyes despite his bold words. He’d needed to lash out and God was a convenient target for his anger and grief. She feared for him. It was no light matter to fling insults heavenward, but she was also strangely comforted that William had taken Stephan’s death so hard. It was as if his admission was the first step to bridging the gap that yawned between them. Her soul strained toward him, stretching to graze his spirit’s outstretched fingertips. Only a little farther and they’d find each other again....
Then William looked away and shifted the sleeping child on his lap so that his head and neck were better supported. “Let’s talk on something else.”
Katherine breathed a sigh. They weren’t done with Stephan’s death, not by a long stretch. The wounds were still deep, but at least now, they’d been reopened so the poison of deadly silence could leach out.
“I heard about the hunt for the scepter,” Kat said. “I’m surprised ye’re not looking for it.”
“’Tis not exactly a hunt as Nab said. This is no game. The scepter has been stolen, but it’ll turn up. I’m not worried.” A muscle in his cheek ticked.
Katherine knew that tick. He was worried. No matter what he might claim, that scepter and what it stood for meant the world to William.
Wee Tam fidgeted in his sleep and whimpered. Katherine shifted him to her other shoulder and patted him back to sleep.
“Ye know, I’ve been thinking. There’s nothing to keep us from filling Badenoch with wards and foundlings,” Will said. “Every child needs a mother, and it doesna follow that it must be the one who carried him for months and brought him into this world.”
She smiled sadly at him. “I’d love nothing better. To hear the laughter of children in our halls would be a blessing indeed.”
“Then we’ll do it.”
“But it doesna solve our problem, Will. Ye are not a man who can do what he wishes without thought of your holding. Ye need an heir.”
“I, for one, havena given up hope of getting ye with child.” He shot her a wicked grin. “And I’m looking forward to the effort verra much.”
A warm glow washed over her, but she didn’t bask in it long. “I can conceive. There’s no doubt of that,” she said. “I just canna carry a child.”
“The past is no proof of the future,” he said.
“But ’tis all we have to go by.”
“Now that’s a wee bit surprising seeing as between the two of us, ye’re the one with all the faith,” he said.
Faith had nothing to do with it. There was something wrong inside her, something that kept her from bearing. She felt it to her bones. She was broken. She wouldn’t break William too.
“Even if we are never given a son, I’ll train up one of my brother’s lads to take over the barony when I’m gone,” he said as if it were as easy as handing down a used plaid.
Katherine knew it was not. Will’s younger brother had been made a father twice already and his sons seemed sturdy and strong enough. But a man’s nephew couldn’t replace a son of his loins, especially in the Douglas family.
“Ye canna hand down the Scepter of Badenoch to a nephew,” she insisted. “It has never been done. Time out of mind, for generations, it has been passed from father to son in a line unbroken.”
Will laughed, but it seemed forced to her. “Ye’re putting too much stock in bards’ tales about that pretty trinket. Perhaps ye’ll allow that I can take care of my family’s traditions without your fretting.”
My family, he said. His family. Not our family. The distinction wasn’t lost on her. She might be Lady Badenoch, but she and William weren’t a family. That would take a child in the center of their circle.
But before she could say more, Nab appeared at the nursery door. “Fergie says to tell ye MacNaught’s on the move.”
“I have to go,” Will said.
“Why?”
“Because I’m fair certain MacNaught’s behind the scepter’s disappearance and I mean to catch him at recovering it.” He rose to his feet, cradling Lucas in his arm and carrying him over to the bed in the corner, where the lad could finish his nap.
“Seems ye’re fretting over the ‘pretty trinket’ as much as I,” Katherine said. “Probably more.”
Of course, he was. The symbol of Badenoch handed down through the ages wasn’t one he could set aside lightly. The scepter itself might be on the smallish side, but it was weighty and dear—both for the rich metal from which it was fashioned and for the ponderous history it bore.
Will strode across the room and placed a quick kiss on her forehead. “Get some rest, wife,” he whispered. “With what I have planned for us this night, ye’ll need it.”
On the fourth day of Christmas
My true love gave to me four calling birds.
—From “The Twelve Days of Christmas”
“Counting this day’s gift, the singer has been given a total of ten blasted birds. Ten. At some point, wouldna someone’s true love realize that a body only needs so many gifts with feathers?”
—An observation from Nab,
fool to the Earl of Glengarry
Chapter Thirteen
The sky lowered to meet the earth, washing the world in shades of grey and giving no hope that the snow in the bailey would melt anytime soon. It crunched underfoot as Will strode out of the keep with Nab at his heels. Will’s breath streamed out in dragonish puffs, but he didn’t mind the chill.
In fact, he had the feeling that he’d escaped the nursery just in time. It was beyond uncomfortable talking to Katherine about their dead son. It was like opening his chest and letting her see his beating heart.
A man ought not to betray that sort of weakness. Not to anyone.
But that wasn’t the worst of it. Once the subject had turned to the missing scepter, there was a bite in her tone. He felt a definite undertow in the conversation. It was likely to drag him and Kat into another round of argument, a sucking whirlpool that could only lead to colder depths.
“Where’s MacNaught now?” he asked Nab.
“I canna be sure since his boots are not nailed down somewhere, ye ken.” Nab had to take two strides for each of William’s long-legged ones. Though the effort left him red-faced and huffing, he scrambled to keep pace. “Fergie said MacNaught and his men had left the keep and seemed to be meandering toward the chapel.”
“That’s where the scepter must be hidden.” MacNaught and his cronies were no more likely to be going there to pray than William was.
The chapel was located midway between the keep and the stables, squarely in the middle ward of the bailey. It had been built into a natural hillside so that earth was bermed on the north and west sides of the stone structure, angling up to the thick timbers of the eaves. In fact, the ground was close enough to the chapel’s roof on the northwest corner that every so often a goat had to be shooed off the slanting thatch. Bu
t the protective earth on two sides of the building made for a sacred space that was warmer in winter and cooler in summer than the rest of Glengarry Castle.
William always suspected it was a silent inducement for folk to spend time there, whether they had a chat with the Almighty in mind or not.
“D’ye think Ranulf might have hidden the scepter under the altar?” Nab asked.
“’Tis bold enough, few would think to look there.”
“Odds bodkins.” Nab wrung his hands, worrying under his breath over the audacity of stashing stolen treasure in such a place. When he spoke again, his voice seemed preternaturally loud. “Seems an unchancy thing to do, squirreling away ill-gotten goods under the Almighty’s very nose, as it were.”
“I dinna think Ranulf is overmuch concerned about the Almighty or His nose.”
Pressing a finger to his lips to silence the fool, Will opened the oak chapel door and peered inside. Shafts of faint light streamed in through the green glass of the high windows on the eastern wall of the space. The pervasive moldy damp of smoke-darkened stone filled William’s nose first, followed by the pungent fragrance of incense that didn’t quite cover the first smell. The altar was alight with tallow candles. Aside from the priest, who was kneeling before the flickering votives, there was no one else in the chapel.
Will closed the door with a soft snick of the latch.
“Are we not going to check under the altar?” Nab asked.
“No. If it was there, it’s gone by now, since Ranulf isna in the chapel. I’m doubting he hid it there.” Not that MacNaught wouldn’t stoop to that level of blasphemy. But the men who ran with him struck Will as the sort to be swayed by the threat of divine retribution. “He’d not use the inside of the chapel at least.”
Someone gave a short whistle as if calling a dog. Will turned toward the sound. Not far away, the boy Fergie was perched on the parapet of the curtain wall, his knobby-kneed legs dangling, the deerhound pup still squirming on his lap. Once Fergie saw he had William’s attention, he pointed the pup’s paw toward the rear of the chapel.
Will nodded as his ears pricked to a whispered sibilance echoing off the stone wall behind the chapel. Someone was there. Several someones.
He started creeping around the chapel. Nab dogged him, the bells at the ends of the fool’s cap jingling with each step. Will rounded on him and stared at the offending cap.
Nab’s mouth opened in a silent “ah!” He removed his head covering and stuffed it up his sleeve. They started moving again. Will could still hear the bells, but their tinkling was muffled now.
“Look again,” a voice whispered furiously around the corner from them. “It has to be there.”
“I’m telling ye ’tis not. See for yourself.”
Several others joined the hissing conversation, their words tumbling upon one another’s without pause.
“Someone else has found it.”
“Then why has no one come forward to present the cursed thing and claim the prize?”
“Probably because no one dares sit on Lord Glengarry’s throne.”
“Fiend seize ye all, I dare!” There was enough voice in the last whisper that William was able to recognize Ranulf. “No one but we five kenned it was hidden here. So which of ye bootlickers has moved it?”
A vehement round of denials followed.
“If I find which of ye has crossed me, I’ll have your guts for garters,” MacNaught said, forgetting to keep his voice down.
The conversation was proof that Ranulf and his gang had stolen the scepter. But it was also proof that they no longer had possession of it.
Will’s gut roiled. Where was it now?
But as urgent as finding the scepter was, he couldn’t let this chance to confront MacNaught pass by.
Will put an arm around Nab’s shoulders and started around the corner toward MacNaught and his men, talking loudly as he went. “And so then the buxom barmaid said—Ho, now!” He stopped suddenly as if surprised to see the five men. “What are ye doing here, MacNaught?”
“What buxom barmaid, William?” Nab tugged at Will’s shirtsleeve in all innocence. “I think I must have missed something. . . .”
“Never ye mind, Nab. Weel, MacNaught, this is an odd place to find ye and your men. No horn nor trencher nor chance to toss a pair of dice in sight.” Will’s gaze flicked to the lowest corner of the chapel where the thatch of the roof had obviously been disturbed. In troubled times when the keeping of weapons was forbidden, common folk would hide swords and dirks under the thatch of the eaves of their houses. The kirk’s roof would have easily hidden the scepter as well. “Looking for a blade, are ye?”
“No need since I’ve one to hand.” MacNaught’s fingers curled around the hilt of the dirk at his waist.
“But no Scepter of Badenoch, aye?” William bared his teeth at Ranulf in an expression no one would mistake for a smile. It wouldn’t hurt to let MacNaught see that Will knew him for a thief. It also wouldn’t hurt to let him think Will knew exactly where the scepter was. When it came to controlling a man like MacNaught, keeping him off balance was almost as good as bashing his face in.
It just wasn’t nearly as satisfying.
MacNaught fisted his hands at his waist. “What makes ye think we were after the fool’s trinket?”
“A fool’s trinket with magic in it, ye mean.” Will noticed the quick glance that passed between Hugh Murray and Filib Gordon. He’d been right to think them susceptible to fantastic notions like a fey curse. “That’s right. The Fair Folk cast a glamour on the Scepter of Badenoch. Anyone who lays hands on it unworthily will find himself with a red palm.”
Gordon and Lamont Sinclair surreptitiously checked their hands. Between grubbing in the thatch searching for the scepter and the cold weather, Will was counting on all their palms being ruddy. He wasn’t disappointed.
“Look, William.” With an idiot’s grin, Nab held up his hand. “My palm’s not red.”
“That’s because I gave ye the scepter to hold for me. It knew ye were allowed to have it. But woe betide the man who takes the scepter with nefarious intent. After a time, the red may fade on a thief’s palm, but that’s when the yeuks start.”
“The yeuks?” Hugh Murray said, squinting at his own hand.
“Aye, and not just on the hand that touched the scepter, mind, but anyplace on the thief’s skin that hand touches thereafter.”
Will feared he might be going too far, but even MacNaught wasn’t immune to suggestion. He surreptitiously rubbed a hand on his plaid as if he might rub off the effects of the curse.
“I’m told ’tis unbearable. And dinna get me started on the part of the spell about what happens to a thief’s manhood after he lays hold of the scepter,” Will said, shaking his head. “It doesna make pretty hearing.”
Ranulf blanched at this. Ainsley MacTavish gave a deep sigh. “Good thing ye wouldna let me touch it, Ranulf.”
MacNaught cuffed Ainsley and told him to shut his face. Then he turned back to William. “I can see your talents are wasted on Badenoch. The way ye can spin a tale, ye ought to have been a bard instead of a laird.”
“Yet I was born to Badenoch and ye were born to . . . what exactly?”
They both knew the answer. Nothing.
Ranulf’s mother was Lord Glengarry’s sister, and might have expected a fairly grand match had she not run off with Archibald MacNaught, holder of a minor steading and possessed of no real title, though he’d styled himself a baronet. Some might say it was actually to Ranulf’s credit that since Sir Archibald’s death he’d built up his father’s holding and amassed more land, more cattle, and more crofters beholden to him. But he’d done it through brutality, coercion, and reiving the fruits of the hard work of others.
He spread over neighboring estates like a cancerous growth. Lord Glengarry had confessed to William that he was concerned about his nephew’s intentions. It was one of the reasons he’d invited Ranulf and his cronies to spend Christmastide in the castle.
“Keep your friends close and your enemies closer,” the old man had said to William that first night. But the laird’s teetering health had left him unable to do much about his renegade nephew.
William figured he was right to worry about MacNaught.
“I have what I have from my own actions.” Ranulf cast him an oily smile. “Fortune favors the bold, they say.”
“Bold is one thing. Grabby is another. Those who overreach should take care lest they draw back naught but a bloody stub.”
Ranulf’s face turned a deep shade of purple and he looked as if he was about to fly at Will, but Lamont Sinclair laid a hand on his shoulder. He jerked his head toward the guards filing by on the parapet overhead.
After the beating in the main hall, William was untouchable. Standing orders had been given. If MacNaught attacked the laird’s son-in-law now, he’d be set upon at once by the earl’s men.
“We’ll leave ye now, Badenoch. But let us know if ye find your wee bauble, aye? ’Twould be a pity should such a treasure be lost forever. What would the House of Douglas do without it?” Ranulf and his men turned and stalked away toward the stables.
William watched them go. His gut curdled. If the scepter were truly lost, what would he do indeed?
Priests were always talking about how the living were surrounded by “a great cloud of witnesses,” the souls of the departed. He wondered briefly if his forbears were hurling imprecations at him from heaven for losing the symbol of their family’s strength and stature. Then he remembered that he didn’t believe anything the priests said.
But it didn’t ease his gut one whit.
“Weel, that’s that,” Will said. “They dinna have it, but I’ll warrant they’ll start searching for it.”
“What do we do now, William?” Nab asked.
“We up the reward. If the scepter isna found by this evening, we’ll sweeten the pot.” He twisted the gold ring on his pinky that had belonged to his grandsire. “Tell everyone that in addition to being able to sit on the laird’s throne, I’ll give the finder this ring.”