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

by Fiona Faris

  Joan flew to him as he dismounted and clutched him to her. His two companions spurned the attention of a pair of stable lads and retreated to the shadows of a wooden lean-to to see to their own horses, avoiding the castle’s company.

  “See to it those men receive food and ale,” Patrick said to her, as he freed himself from her embrace. “Otherwise, leave them to their own devices. They are nervous about being here, within reach of the law’s arm.”

  Joan’s eyes widened in alarm.

  “Are they dangerous?”

  Patrick smiled grimly.

  “Aye, they are dangerous.” He laughed softly. “Just tell the stable lads to steer well clear of them. They trust no one.”

  He cast his eyes about the yard.

  “Where is your mother?” he asked. “I must speak with her.”

  Joan looked up at the tower, towards the solar, a worried frown creasing her brow.

  “It would be better if you spoke to Margaret,” she advised. “We had a visit from the new sheriff this morning, and it has left my mother broken. Margaret has been taking charge.”

  “The new sheriff?” Patrick started in surprise. “Edward has not dallied, to have appointed a new Sheriff so quickly.”

  “A Walter Moult of Durham,” she told him, “a French knight from Normandy.”

  Patrick gave a low whistle.

  “I have heard of him,” he said. “He has a reputation for cruelty. It is said that he is a friend of the torture chamber. Some of the mercenaries I’ve fought with have even said that he flays maidens alive and makes soft purses of their skin, but I suspect those are just tales.”

  Joan shuddered.

  “There is surely a cruel streak to him, an evil that runs deep and seeps through his pores. He has all but destroyed my mother and has affected Margaret badly.”

  “Where, then, is Margaret?” Patrick asked. “I must appraise her of what I have arranged so that she can make the household ready.”

  “She is in the solar, beside my mother’s chamber, so that she can be close to her should she have need.”

  Patrick stroked Joan’s cheek lightly, then dashed to the door of the keep.

  Margaret sat by the ingle and gazed into the fireplace in the family room of the solar, the psalter she had been reading from lying forgotten in her lap. She watched the yellow tongues of flame lap the flanks of the log in the iron grate and heard the hiss and crack of sparks exploding within the gnarled wood. Apart from the sound of the fire, the room – indeed, the entire castle – lay in deathly silence.

  She loved this place. The realization settled on her like a soft linen sheet. She loved her home and would do anything to remain there, to preserve her life there and cherish it for future generations of her father’s seed. That was her calling as a lady.

  But would she? Do anything? Make any sacrifice? She thought back to Sir Walter’s proposition and the quandary it had put her in. She could have all that, her Neidpath, but only at the terrible price of her body, which he would use and abuse as he pleased. Was that a price worth paying? A part of her said that it was, that it was almost a duty to pay it if it meant she could fulfill her calling. But another part of her revulsed at the thought of his grubby hands on her body, the humiliations he would subject her to, his swollen member tearing its way violently through her maidenhead. It was also her duty to remain pure and faithful to her lord, to Gilbert to whom she was betrothed. How could she reconcile those two voices? Which sacrifice was a virtuous lady meant to make? Transgress she must, it would seem. But was she to transgress by surrendering her family’s inheritance, or by surrendering her duty to her lord?

  She stood, the psalter falling uselessly to the floor. She moved across to the wall and began to trace the outlines of the green-and-gold stars that were painted on its wooden panels. There were the retainers too, she reflected. By submitting to Sir Walter, she would preserve their living as well as her own home and her family’s heritage; if she refused him, they would more than likely be cast out and replaced by Sir Walter’s own people. As her father’s dependents, she owed them a duty too.

  She did not know what to do. Her mother had taught her well in the art of ladyship, but nothing could have prepared her for this.

  She felt tears of frustration and self-pity spring up behind her eyes, but she knew those would be no good, serve no purpose. She spread a palm over one of the stars and wished that she could obliterate her fate so easily. Perhaps she should take herself up to the roof of the tower and cast herself down onto the castle’s rock. She entertained that thought too, but for just a second. That would be cowardice; she would be abandoning everyone – her family, Gilbert, and her people – just to save herself the trouble. It was the most unladylike course she could imagine.

  There was a tap at the door. She turned, and there was Patrick framed in the doorway, his now-gaunt features picked out by the light of the fire. The poor man looked utterly exhausted, not just by the recent exertions on the battlefield and road, but also by the enormous burden of care that had been so recently laid upon his shoulders.

  “Sir Patrick,” she said. “I did not know you had returned. I did not here you arrive. Forgive me!”

  Patrick dismissed the lapse in manners with a grimace and shake of the head.

  “We came quietly,” he explained, “so that none might meddle with us.”

  “What news?”

  Patrick entered the apartment and moved quickly to the fire, seating himself in what Margaret noted, to her slight annoyance, was her father’s chair. How dare he assume, the thought rose automatically to her mind, but she shooed it away, impatient at the pettiness of that thought.

  “I have called in a favor from Wat Scott, the Ettrick reiver.”

  “The outlaw?” Margaret gasped.

  “Aye, the same. He has an empty tower house, Dryhope, deep in the forest, far from the reach of any king or sheriff. He has consented to our flitting there, while the present situation holds. We can hide-out there, until such time as King Robert rallies his strength and can cast the English out of his realm for good.”

  Margaret swallowed, her eyes wide with apprehension.

  “But that could be years, if at all,” she observed. “Edward has already tightened his grip on the country; a new sheriff has already been appointed to Tweeddale.”

  “Aye, Joan told me. The butcher, Moult.”

  “You know him?”

  “I know of him,” Patrick responded grimly. “And, from what I know, we are all in immediate danger. The man will not rest until he has Tweeddale in his thrall, and he will begin here, with Neidpath.”

  “What are we to do?” Margaret moaned, wringing her hands, on the point of tears.

  Patrick gazed into the fire. His gaze was resolute.

  “First, we must disperse the household. Send your father’s retainers away, back to their homes, to Edinburgh, wherever they will be safe. Do you have silver in the castle?”

  Margaret thought.

  “Yes, the most recent feus my father collected at the last quarter. They will still be in his kist, waiting to be sent to the earl.”

  “Then give each of your servants a small purse of silver to help them on their ways.”

  She marveled. Why had she not thought of that?

  “Then we must flee,” he went on, “to Dryhope.”

  “Through the Ettrick Forest?” Margaret gasped in disbelief. “But… we shall have our throats cut.”

  Patrick shook his head.

  “That is why Auld Wat sent us two escorts. They will ensure our safe passage. No robber-chiel will want to cross Auld Wat. He would have their guts for garters!”

  “When should we leave?”

  “As early as possible. At first light. We do not want Moult to get wind that we are leaving and intercept us.”

  “He will not know that you are here?”

  “Not unless he has a spy at Neidpath.”

  “I can vouch for all my father’s people. They are lo
yal to him.”

  “Then we should be safe,” Patrick assured both Margaret and himself. “For I am sure we were not detected on the road. Those reivers know how to travel unseen and unheard.”

  Margaret turned and made for the door to her mother’s bedchamber.

  “I will ready my mother and fetch the silver. Will you warn Joan?”

  Patrick grinned.

  “Oh, I will ‘warn’ her alright!”

  Margaret covered her ears.

  “Oh, wheesht, I don’t want to know,” she said, but she could not help but smile despite herself.

  “But, remember,” Patrick cautioned, “we must travel light. A change of clothes and a few necessities at most. The journey will be hard and dangerous, for all Wat’s men. We cannot be encumbered.”

  Margaret looked around the room at all the family’s small mindings and geegaws, and her heart ached at the leaving of them.

  Chapter Twelve

  It was a sad and dreary leave-taking. A wind had risen, and dark smoky rainclouds tumbled down the glen from the west, bringing with them a heavy drizzle. The dawn sky was low; it settled over Neidpath, creating a somber mood among the already subdued household gathered in the courtyard. Many of the female servants were weeping beneath their shawls. The older men who remained, having not been conscripted into Sir Simon’s army, looked broken and bewildered, as if the world had suddenly become inexplicable to them.

  Margaret moved among them, dispensing the small purses of silver she had raided from her father’s strongbox, while Patrick, Joan, and Lady Maria looked on from their mounts. Finally, Margaret climbed up the mounting block and arranged herself on her sidesaddle, and the four of them passed slowly through the courtyard gate, led by their reiver escorts.

  They took the path by the river to avoid having to pass through the burgh, though it presented a very different prospect from the one Margaret enjoyed on the morning of their excursion to Peebles market. The thin rain gathered in the foliage overhead and fell on their heads and shoulders in large heavy drops. Instead of waving gaily in the sun, the leaves dropped under the weight of the moisture as if the trees had been drenched in the river itself. The Tweed itself ran deeper and faster from the rain that had fallen in the hills upstream and been channeled into its broad flow through the many tributaries that tumbled down the steep braes of Upper Tweeddale.

  They passed beneath the looming presence of the King’s Castle and crossed by the ford that lay outside the Bridgegate. From here they trailed the southern bank of the Tweed as far as Traquair, before striking south over the Meggat pass and into the lawless Marchlands.

  The pass rose through the thickening Ettrick Forest. The trees closed in around them, cutting out the meager light that fell from the heavy sky and leaving them in a drab twilight. No one spoke, and a dreary silence settled over the travelers, the only sounds accompanying them being the snorting of their horses and the occasional jingle of their harnesses.

  Their progress was slow, initially because they did not want their flight to be detected by the sheriff’s men, latterly because the going was more difficult as the track rose steeply on their rough ascent through the forest. And, of course, both Margaret and Lady Maria were riding on the more precarious sidesaddle, neither being able to ride as men do astride their mounts. Only Joan, in her yellow kirtle and heavy black hooded cloak, had mastered that skill.

  Occasionally, Margaret thought she saw from the corner of her eye a brief flash of movement through the trees, though whether it was a deer or a man or nothing at all she could not discern. It may just have been a shadow, a flicker of light through the canopy. No one else appeared to notice; if they did, they paid it no attention.

  They rode on in single file, Wat Scott’s men riding at the front and rear of the column, stern and inscrutable, as dour as the weather and the subdued light.

  At midmorning, they paused to break their fast. They turned into a sheltered glade, a slight dip in the forest floor in which the trees grew thinly, and the men laid blankets on the ground for the ladies to sit on. Lady Maria sat down, folding her legs beneath her and arranging the skirts of her cloak and gown delicately over them, but Margaret and Joan preferred to stretch their legs and walked a little way apart from the others to the edge of the clearing.

  “How is Mother faring?” Joan asked quietly, careful that Maria would not overhear.

  Margaret blew out a long breath through her nose.

  “She is bearing up,” she replied. “She has not uttered a word throughout the journey. It is as if her spirit has deserted her and she does not care anymore. Look at her; she has aged terribly in the space of a single day.”

  Joan cast a sideways look of concern at the woman who sat passively on the blankets, accepting a hunk of bread and a wedge of cheese from one of the sullen reivers. She looked so lost and forlorn.

  “The fate of our father has hit her hard,” Margaret observed. “And she has lost Oliver and Neidpath. Her world has collapsed, and she sits amid the rubble of it.”

  “Aye, she looks bereft.” Joan bit her lip. “Do you think we shall ever get her back?”

  Margaret heaved another sigh.

  “Who can tell?” she said. “Perhaps, once we are settled at Dryhope, and she has a household of sorts to run. Maybe then she will rally.”

  Joan fell silent and trampled the fringe of the undergrowth with her booted toe.

  “Dryhope will be mine to run,” she said eventually. “Patrick and I intend to wed as soon as we are settled. I will be his lady and tablemate.”

  Margaret shot her a look, as if she was about to protest, but stayed herself.

  “So you will,” she said instead. “I forget myself. Forgive me.”

  But the idea was strange and turned Margaret’s world topsy-turvy. The proper order of things had been reversed. Joan, who was formerly the least of the family, the little sister, the junior daughter, was now the head. Margaret and her mother were now Joan’s dependents, and they must henceforth defer to her rather than the other way around. Margaret felt the realization with a sense of loss and a stab of resentment. This was not the way things were supposed to be. Perhaps her mother had realized her situation sooner than Margaret had; perhaps that was why she was sitting so downcast on the blanket behind them.

  “I trust you will be kind to us,” she said to Joan.

  But the appeal for mercy, for charity, was barbed with bitterness.

  Joan looked at her sister with a slight air of chagrin.

  “Of course I shall be ‘kind’ to you,” she said. “You are my flesh and blood. What kind of sister do you take me for? ‘Kindness’ does not even come into it. I do this for our father’s sake and more than willingly. I love you both, you silly bitch!”

  Margaret smiled, her heart suddenly going out to her sibling. She stepped towards her and drew her into an embrace.

  “Forgive me,” she whispered again, and this time her petition was more heartfelt and sincere. “With all that has taken place, my feelings are disordered. With Father condemned, Gilbert in peril, and our lands and privileges gone, I am numb.”

  Joan held her sister at arm’s length and stared her straight in the eye. To Margaret, that steady eye felt like an anchor in the storm that raged inside her.

  “Gilbert will return, Neidpath will be yours again, and Father shall be avenged,” Joan said with fierce determination. “Do not despair, dear sister. It shall be so.”

  Suddenly, Margaret saw a movement in the trees away to her left. She turned her head sharply in that direction, and Joan followed the line of her look. Clearly, only fifty yards away, they saw two heads duck down into the undergrowth.

  Joan drew her dirk and made to step into the trees, but one of Wat Scott’s men was immediately beside her and pushed the hand holding the dirk down towards the ground and signaled the two women to move back towards the center of the glade. Then they drew their short swords and proceeded to march back and forward around the edge of the clearing, al
l but beating their breasts while issuing their challenge.

  “We are Wat Scott’s men,” they called in loud voices. “Meddle with us if you will!”

  They scanned the trees for any sign of their challenge being taken up, then grunted in satisfaction at the good sense of men who had been stalking them. The only sound that came back to them was the dying echo of their own voices ringing among the trees.

  The company gnawed on its bread and cheese, washing it down with small beer from leather skins. Casting the crusts and rinds to the crows, they then quickly remounted and continued on their journey.

  It was late in the afternoon by the time they descended the hillside from which Dryhope Tower rose like a squat stone crag. Its walls were rough and unfinished and punctured by only a few small square and barred windows marking the second and third stories. An irregular castellated battlement crowned the intimidating, inhospitable-looking structure.