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

by Fiona Faris

  Moult lounged behind the table in his office and considered the two women who stood before him.

  They were not a ladylike sight. Margaret was still dressed only in her chemise, which was torn and bespattered with mud from their journey. Her long blonde hair was tangled and disheveled, and she smelt of horse and forest loam. Lady Maria looked frail and exhausted in her ungirdled gown; she stooped painfully, and her breath came in labored sobs. The wrists of both women were still tightly bound behind their backs.

  “A fine pair of tinkers you look.” Moult sneered.

  Margaret held her head proudly and defiantly, but she kept her eyes downcast in her expressionless face.

  “The question is, what are we going to do with you?” he mused out loud, laying a finger along the side of his nose and pursing his lips.

  There was a long pause while he considered the question, though Margaret knew he had already made up his mind. He was just toying with them, as a cat might toy with a mouse.

  He stood up and came around the table to stand in front of them. He was a short man; Margaret stood a head taller than him. She felt that he knew and resented that ‘inferiority’. He raised his hand and gathered a tress of her silvery blonde hair between his fingers and thumb and felt it like he might feel the quality of some cloth.

  “You will scrub up well.” He leered up into her face.

  He let the tress drop, and his hand moved to cup her breast. He felt the bud of her nipple against his soft palm, and his breath caught lightly.

  Margaret blushed but did not flinch. A single tear trundled down her cheek.

  He gave her breast a gentle squeeze before he moved on to Lady Maria.

  “But you, you old hag…” He looked her up and down with a sneer of contempt. “For you, I’m afraid there is no hope. The traitor Fraser has fucked you done. You are of no use to me. You’re no longer fit to serve even as a fuck-pig for the old serf who collects my night-soil.”

  He turned and took a few steps away from them.

  “You will return to Neidpath,” he told them, addressing some parchments on the table. “I have had suitable quarters prepared for you there. There, my lady Margaret, you will await my pleasure. You—” He turned suddenly and grabbed the collar of Lady Maria’s gown, ripping it from her shoulders and throwing it to the floor, revealing her withered nakedness. “You will await the winter.”

  Lady Maria let out a thin, reedy wail, and her legs gave way. With a howl of utter anguish, she collapsed to the floor.

  “Guards!” Moult shouted. “Take them away.”

  The same two officers that had escorted them to Moult’s office entered the room and hauled Lady Maria back onto her feet and roughly pushed the women back down the stairs and into the courtyard.

  Margaret and Lady Maria were loaded into a tumbrel that was still caked in dried manure and led through the Old Town to the north of the Castle towards the Bridgegate and the high road that ran along the shoulder of the Castle Braes to Neidpath. As the open cart rumbled its way along the street, people were drawn from the workshops and cottages by the sight. They lined the road in silence, apart from an occasional sob from the crowd.

  “Oh, my lady…” A woman keened out piteously at the sight of Lady Maria’s humiliation, and there was also a single defiant shout of “I am ready!” – the war-cry of the Fraser clan.

  Both women sat in the filth of the dung-cart, their heads hanging in shame and despair. Margaret desperately wanted to comfort her mother, but the bonds that held her wrists behind her back made that impossible. She whispered encouragement to her as they passed through the Bridgegate and into the forest of the Castle Braes, but Lady Maria remained unresponsive, and Margaret could not be sure that she even heard her.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  They arrived at Neidpath to find it garrisoned by a small contingent of sheriff’s men, who were wearing surcoats over their mail that bore the Durham livery. As Margaret and her mother were helped from the tumbrel, Margaret noticed that the stables and workshops that lined the courtyard wall had fallen into disrepair in the four years since she had last seen the place and that moss and grasses had been allowed to sprout from the wall-copings. Drifts of crumbling brown leaves from the previous autumn lay gathered by the winds in every nook and corner of the yard.

  A clatter of iron-shod hooves on the cobblestones announced the arrival of Moult and his bodyguard shortly after them.

  Moult dismounted and handed the reins of his horse to the nearest soldier. He strode purposefully across the yard towards the women, his black clock, bordered in gold embroidery, flowing out behind him.

  “Welcome home.” He snarled as he walked past them and entered the door to the keep. “Come!” he instructed over his shoulder.

  The guards who had helped them from the cart shepherded them roughly towards the door with their staves. Lady Maria clutched the remnants of her gown to her breast and hips as she shuffled through the low door. Margaret stooped as she trailed her mother into the semi-darkness.

  The ground floor storerooms had been emptied and turned into a makeshift barracks for the small garrison. Weapons and bedding lay scattered about the floor, along with ale firkins and wineskins. The whole floor smelled of stale sweat, damp clothing, and rotten eggs.

  The women were pushed up the turreted staircase, past the hall, and into the solar. Here, Moult awaited them. He was gazing from the window into the long drop towards the Tweed.

  “Ah,” he said, turning, as the women stumbled into the main room. “Here we are at last.” He indicated to a pair of chairs by the hearth. “Please, be seated. You must be tired after your long journey.”

  Margaret and Lady Maria made to sit, but they found it difficult because of their bound hands.

  “Oh.” Moult shook his head. “What am I like? Forgive me.” He beckoned to one of the guards. “Cut their bonds, man.”

  One of the guards stepped forward. He drew his dagger and slit the ropes that held the women’s wrists. Rubbing the abrasions left by the rough bonds, Margaret and Lady Maria sat down gratefully.

  Margaret surveyed the room. It was much as they had left it, over four years earlier. The painted panels, the embroidered wall-hangings, the furnishings were all there, as were most of the keepsakes that adorned the windowsill and mantle-shelf. The room had also been kept clean and fired. To Margaret, it seemed that she had been taken back in time, that none of the trials of the past five years had happened.

  “These will be your chambers, Margaret,” Moult told her. “As you see, they are little changed. You will live here, sleep in the large bedroom, and take your meals in the smaller bedroom I presume you once shared with your bitch sister. I have arranged it as a small dining room.”

  “And the hall?” Margaret enquired.

  “The hall is my playroom.” Moult grinned fondly. “You will see it by-and-by. But it will be off-limits to you except when I am entertaining you in it.”

  “And I am to share my mother’s bedroom?”

  Moult’s grin broadened to a smug smirk.

  “I have arranged other accommodation for your mother.” He sneered. “Come and see.”

  He beckoned Margaret to the window. Margaret rose from her chair and stepped across the room as he unlatched the small casement.

  “Look.”

  Margaret peered from the window. From a gallows construction overhanging the parapet above the solar hung a wooden cage, about the size of a garderobe.

  “It is a similar arrangement enjoyed by Mary Bruce, the false king’s sister, at Roxburgh Castle, and his doxy, Isabella MacDuff, at Berwick Castle,” Moult explained, “living in her own dung until starvation or exposure takes her. You may feed her scraps from this window. But, to be plain, it might be a blessing to let her starve before the winter comes.”

  “No!” Margaret cried and made to rush to her mother.

  Moult threw an arm around her waist and dragged her back.

  “Take the old sow to her pen,”
he instructed the guards. “Now.”

  The guards seized Lady Maria and dragged her away.

  Margaret wept and struggled, but Moult held her fast.

  “Stay, lady.” He hissed in her ear. “I would show you my playroom.”

  Margaret continued to struggle vainly as her mother was dragged up the turret stair to the roof. The chains suspending the wooden cage shrieked and rattled as the cage was pulled up level with the parapet. Moult forced Margaret to witness from the window as the cage was lowered once again, with Lady Maria lying in nothing but her torn gown on the bare wooden floor. The door of the cage, Margaret noted to her horror, had been nailed shut.

  The guards also nailed fast the door to the roof as they withdrew into the turret. Margaret realized in despair that there would be no hope of her being able to free her mother; she would be obliged to watch her dwine away from hunger or cold.

  “You are a monster.” She spat at Moult.

  Moult pursed his lips and made a face.

  “No, not a monster,” he demurred. “A connoisseur of sorts. You will see what I mean when I show you my playroom.”

  He dragged her to the staircase and down its spiral to the floor below. Margaret stumbled and sprawled across the floor as he pushed her into the hall. She tugged her chemise down over her exposed thighs and closed the loose neckline over her breasts as she scrambled into a sitting position.

  At first, she did not understand what she was seeing as she gazed around the former hall. Her eyes flitted uncomprehendingly from one tableau to the next, while Moult stood back and let her take in his work with pride and satisfaction. About a dozen different framed constructions had been arranged about the room, many of them draped with manacles and chains, others with leather straps, metal-studded collars, and cuffs. Empty braziers stood at several of them, in which a variety of iron tongs and pokers were arrayed; from others, leather whips and hazel switches hung from hooks screwed into their timbers. Each tableau was supplied with several large free-standing iron sconces, each holding a cluster of thick beeswax candles.

  “Welcome to my dungeon of delights,” Moult said, giving a little bow. “Here we shall entertain ourselves of an evening.”

  “It’s… it’s a torture chamber,” Margaret said in a hollow voice.

  Again, Moult’s mouth pursed as if he would quibble over the description.

  “Not… exactly. My playroom has a different purpose. The purpose of a torture chamber is to extract information. The purpose of this…” He swept his hand over the scene. “… is purely to give me pleasure. This, my dear, is where we will play.”

  Margaret stuck out her chin defiantly.

  “I will not ‘play’ with you,” she told him.

  He smiled at her as if she were a child, amusing in her naivety.

  “Ah, but I think you will find that you have no choice in the matter.” He laughed. “You are completely in my power. Now, isn’t that delicious?”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  By late afternoon, the raiding party was still three miles from Dryhope when it met Bridget and Jean on the road to Auld Wat’s keep at Harden Castle.

  Wat, Patrick, and Joan kicked their ponies into a gallop as soon as they recognized the two women. Their alarm grew when the spotted wee Simon in Bridget’s arms, happed in her shawl against the thin drizzle that was falling.

  “Oh, Maister!” Bridget cried as they dismounted hurriedly and surrounded the two women.

  “What’s afoot, Bridget?” Auld Wat asked. “What are ye daein’ out here? Where are the ladies, Margaret and Maria? Where’s my Mary?”

  “Taken,” Jean wailed, collapsing to her knees on the grass, her short dumpy figure quaking with tears.

  “Taken?” Wat barked. “What dae ye mean, ‘taken’?”

  “Kers,” Bridget spat. “The Kers came in the night. They smashed and burned their way into the house. They’ve taken the twa ladies, I kenna where.”

  Auld Wat’s face grew black as thunder.

  “Kers?” he repeated. “And where were Andra and Matthie while a’ this was going on?”

  “Dead, Sir,” Bridget told him. “Matthie had his guts torn oot by a dog and Andra was speared by a pike. They fought hard, Sir Walter; dinna blame the men.”

  Auld Wat’s eyes narrowed in calculation.

  “They’ll have taken them for ransom,” he said, mostly to himself.

  “Then we must free them,” Joan exclaimed.

  “Or pay the ransom,” Patrick added.

  Wat spat into the grass.

  “I’ll pay no ransom.” He growled. “It’s the Kers who will pay for this mischief.” He turned to Bridget again. “Was it the Kers o’ Cessford or the Kers o’ Ferniehirst?”

  “It was John Ker o’ Ferniehirst, owre Jeddart airt.”

  “I ken fine where Ferniehirst is,” Auld Wat snapped.

  He thought for a moment.

  “We’ll tak’ meat at Dryhope, then ride to Ferniehirst,” he said. “I’ll hae John Ker’s guts for garters afore the day’s out.”

  The party pressed on to Dryhope.

  While Bridget and Jean busied themselves in the kitchen, preparing a meal for the reivers, Auld Wat and Patrick surveyed the damage to the tower.

  “’Tis nothing a wright canna sort,” Auld Wat remarked, assessing the smashed door and the burned-out trapdoors.

  The dog had dragged Matthie’s entrails across the storeroom floor. Wat signaled to a group of men who were lingering close by.

  “Put poor Matthie together again as best ye can and gi’e him a decent burial,” he ordered. “He’ll need his giblets come Judgment Day.” He waved a hand up in the direction of Andra, whose corpse still hung impaled on the pike that projected through the hatch to the hall, the long wooden shaft slick with his blood. “Same goes for Andra.”

  The reivers ate a hurried meal of gruel and cold mutton in the kitchen before hurrying back to their ponies. With a weak sun breaking through the gray, leaden clouds and glinting off their steel bonnets and short lances, the raiding party galloped off east in the direction of Jeddart.

  Meanwhile, to the north and west in Neidpath, Margaret was preparing for her first night of imprisonment in her former home.

  To her immense relief, Moult had taken his leave shortly after he had shown her his infernal ‘playroom’, to ride back to Peebles to conduct some business. He had made it clear to her that he would not be sharing a bed with her and that the privacy of her apartment in the solar would be respected. She would, however, be called to the hall to ‘play’ with him whenever the mood took him. She dreaded to discover what ‘games’ they would be playing on his visits.

  Food had been prepared for her by the cook whom Moult had installed in the castle’s kitchen to cater for her. The woman was an evil-looking crow, dressed in a long sooty-gray habit with deep wing-like sleeves and a greasy wimple. She had a wart in the corner of one eye and a shrunken toothless mouth, so collapsed and misshapen that the end of her chin almost met the tip of her nose. The food had been brought up to the solar by a nervous-looking slip of a girl and laid out in Margaret’s former bedchamber on a small table with a small jug of wine.

  She had refused to eat any of it, but she had taken some bread and cheese and mutton to the window and tried to toss it to her mother. Most of it had either fallen short or struck the bars of the cage and dropped down the precipice of castle rock. What little had landed on the cage floor had been ignored by Lady Maria, who still lay curled in the foot of the cage, having not moved in the hours since her incarceration.

  Margaret considered her situation and reviewed the opportunities she might have to escape. She did not know when Moult would return to take his pleasure of her. She shivered at that thought, remembering the infernal devices by which he would extract that pleasure arrayed in the hall beneath her feet. She knew only that she had to escape before then and find some means of freeing her mother so that they could flee together. That was an added complication she did no
t need.

  She reflected that she had been confined to the solar, a hefty bar having been fitted to the outside of the door that let into the stair turret. She also reflected that the storeroom on the ground floor accommodated a small garrison of armed men, who were no doubt there to serve as her jailers. And even if some could somehow succeed in breaching the solar door and eluding the watchful guards, the sheriff had a small army of officers who would hunt her down before she got more than just a few miles from Neidpath.

  Her only hope, she decided, lay in being rescued by Patrick, Joan, and the Scotts. But did they even know where she was? And would the Scotts risk a raid into the heart of the sheriff’s jurisdiction, where they would be hanged like dogs as soon as they emerged from the fastness of the Marchlands?