Wedgewick Woman

by Patricia Strefling

  “It’s broken badly, I’m afraid,” the physician announced.

  A cloth-covered board was brought and she was taken away, but not before he endured the glare his father sent him.

  “Did you not notice you had run her down? Did you not see the other two riders were not with you? Even they had the sense to stop and inquire about the lass.”

  “I did not see her, father.”

  “Whatever damages you have caused you will pay. This lass’ mother is a vengeful woman, I’m afraid. You will pay to the uttermost. And I as well…” He predicted. “You are seventeen years of age and the Laird’s son.”

  Lee went about his business, sorry for the lass. He knew his duty—to right whatever wrong he had created.

  Changing from his dusty clothes, he freshened up and went to her room kept watch by her English servants.

  He knocked, waited until called and entered.

  “The physician has only set her ankle. It is nearly crushed.” The mother cried into her cloth.

  It hadn’t been that long since he’d passed the physician in the halls and wondered that he could have set the ankle so quickly, if it had been that bad, but he dared not question the lass’s mother, who sat staring at him as though he’d shot her daughter with an arrow through the heart.

  “You will pay for your misdeed,” she said tearfully…only he didn’t see any tears, only heard the whine in her voice.

  When others came into the room he noticed the mother whispering behind her handkerchief and in fact she otherwise seemed in high spirits. Another girl, younger, the sister of the injured one, called Meredith entered.

  Something seemed out of order, but he did not know what. His father soon called for him and he retreated to his office to await punishment.

  “Sit down.” He ordered. The scowl on his father’s face told him this was not going to be a pleasant visit.

  “You are going to marry the lass.” He announced, lifting angry eyes to his only heir.

  “Marry? Whatever for?” He stood.

  “Sit down. You chose to be foolish and you will pay the fool’s price.” He said by way of explanation.

  “Sit down.” His father ordered again when he found his son still standing. “It has been arranged. As soon as the girl is able you will find yourself before the magistrate and doing your duty.” His father pressed some papers into his hand.

  “What duty, father? I injured her ankle…I did not….”

  “Matters not the least to Lady Wedgewick.” His father interrupted. “She is of English blood and related to the royals. We cannot allow this woman to go back to England and soil the name of Carmichael. I will not allow it.” He was standing now. “At least I managed to claim Helen’s lands that belonged to her father. As the eldest daughter she was given the largest section of the Mulhannon lands…so at the very least we have gained some status.” He rocked on his heels, his hands behind his back…musing at the small piece of luck he’d managed to derive from the entire state of unfortunate affairs.

  Coming back to himself he boomed, “The lass’s father is dead and there is no one to care for her. You will marry the moment she is on her feet again. And you will endure whatever is necessary. Now…sign the papers.” He commanded and was gone.

  Marry? Marry? He didn’t even know the girl and he was only seventeen, ready to become a soldier alongside his father. What in the world would he do with a wife? He was the only heir and lost his mother at the age of eight when she died from an illness caught while she was caring for one of the peasant’s children. What was he to do? Hurling the papers from his hands, a root of bitterness settled itself in his heart.

  Within a fortnight he found himself a married man. The magistrate had come and justice had been meted out…to him. Helen was smiling as she walked lamely down to meet him. He would never forget her beautiful smile but it would be much later before he knew that it came from a wicked heart.

  The girl, called Helen was now his wife. Her mother had dashed away the day after the wedding, with what he determined must have been a small fortune, from the whispers of the servants.

  At the first Helen had been so beautiful he had not noticed her flaws. He managed to avoid the wedded night and evaded consummation of the marriage for nearly a week, preferring instead to shoot birds and chase rabbits than to be married…to a girl…no a woman. When she unwound her waist-length, yellow hair in his room that first night he’d been mesmerized. She was a woman possessing all of the female charms a man could possibly want and before long she had carried him along with her every whim and notion.

  By the time a year and four months had passed, his father had been killed in a battle with the Campbells, leaving him Laird of the Carmichael family, a most burdensome task. His father had fallen a hero in the clan’s eyes, but away from the eyes of the others, he had known his father was a ruthless man. He had cheated the peasants out of their pay, started trouble with other clans and then blamed the weaker clans for his own misdeeds, so that many of their own men had been killed in raids without cause or provocation.

  After his father’s death, Ross, his father’s lead man, told him all because he knew the new Laird, Leon Charles William Carmichael, must know the truth. “It is time for you to become a man.” Ross said. “And only truth will entertain that notion.” He added. Ross, an even-tempered man and faithful to his master told his new Laird, “I will not perform the evil deeds for you as I was forced to do for your father. I would rather take my devotion elsewhere.”

  Lee had been shocked at the revelations he’d heard that day and promised that as Laird he would not perform evil deeds in order to gain lands or peoples.

  “Your father was a good man at the beginning.” Ross began, paused, and went on. “Then as the years went by he became more determined to crush other, smaller clans, and become the leader of them all…including the Campbells.” Ross finished.

  “The Campbells did not fear him?” The younger Carmichael asked, surprised. He’d thought all men feared his father.

  “They did not.” Ross said quietly. “That is why he is dead.”

  Taking the reins of the people meant he had to answer questions day upon day concerning this or that. Then there was Helen. She caused such a ruckus among the servants, the peasants, and even his own guard, that he’d done little more during his marriage than get his wife out of trouble with most everyone in the castle.

  He would forever remember the pouting words she would pretend to mean. And the tears that were like her mothers. Unseen. Unshed. She cried only when she felt slighted and that was all day, every day.

  Two years into the marriage he knew she had not only been unfaithful to him, but that she flaunted every opportunity to stand close to his guard. The Four. Her blatant character flaws shamed him among the men and the people; but he truly did not know what to do…so he allowed her travel to England and France to visit her mother as often as she wished. At times she would not come home for months on end. He knew she spent much of her time in London among the ton; for stories of her flirtations always found their way to him. More than once he’d had to send a troupe to bring her home when she’d done some evil deed that shamed even her mother enough to send her eldest daughter back to her husband.

  The last time he ordered Helen home from London, she had been so overcome with spirits that she’d gambled away a month’s fortune in the men’s gaming rooms, and then embarrassed everyone by falling drunk on the boulevard, tearing her well-made gown into shreds in the doing of it, and sleeping the night away in front of Whites.

  All of London spoke about it, Helen’s mother informed him, her aristocratic nose in a snit.

  That was the day he made the decision. He would not let Helen ruin his life, nor would he allow the land acquisitions to rule his every move. Ross had been his father’s guard as had Cameron. Fergus and Ewan had joined him by his appointment. Heretofore he felt it his duty to make decisions without benefit of counsel to show his strength. He realized that he
required their advice and called his men together.

  Ross wisely suggested he break up the lands into sections and give more power to the landowners; appointing leaders to oversee the smaller groups. Cameron agreed wholeheartedly.

  Together he and The Four wrote the Writ of the Carmichaels, allowing more authority to be given to those who could be trusted. That done, it had taken nearly a year for all the people to come into agreement, but in the end he demonstrated that even though young, he did have his own ideas and he expected the clan to follow their Laird.

  Now as he sat in James’ seat, his thoughts returning to the present, he wondered how they had gone wrong. James had been stealing from the servants and giving the money to Helen. For what purpose? Most likely she had gambling debts, which his English wife was so well known for. He could not, in his Scot’s nature, imagine why people would give their money away for such whims as betting on horses, a very unsure thing to his way of thinking, or placing wagers on most any foolish inclination they could think of. Had they no discretion? He wondered. Evidently not, for his wife was the worst of them. And now James had been found out. All this under his roof.

  The servants said they had received money back faithfully from James, so he was making restitution but what would cause him to flee now? He had given James freedom to assert himself as his accountant and worse, he had truly trusted him.

  Had it been Helen’s youngest sister he assisted for reasons other than Paris gowns? Had she some sinister notion of thieving the Carmichaels as her mother and elder sister had done? Perhaps because he had been a weak husband?

  He took the papers with the girl’s name…what was it? Annabel Wedgewick. He committed the name to memory.

  Knowing this woman had lived here in his castle precisely under his nose, made his blood boil. Why hadn’t she shown her face after her sister’s death? What was she trying to hide from him even now? Had Helen hated him so much as to intentionally injure his name in England and ask the assistance of her youngest sister to espy the deed? The thought turned his stomach.

  Well rid of her he was. Those were evil thoughts, to be glad of your wife’s death, he realized. “God forgive me.” He whispered and realized he had not spoken to his mother’s God for a very long time.

  Chapter 12

  Finding nothing to ease his mind regarding James’ flight from his castle, Lee took the stairs to his parents’ rooms. Entering first into his father’s, he remembered he had not been in it since his death, more for lack of time than any other reason.

  But now he needed something. What, he didn’t know. Outside the bleating of sheep could be heard through the open windows. The shearing was taking place and he had naught to do than to command that this would be the day and it was done. The air, thick with the aroma of wet wool entered his nose as he slowly opened the massive door to his father’s inner quarters.

  There upon the over-sized bedstead, lay the armor he had worn at his death; weapons of steel with the Carmichael impression hammered into the huge flat plate, helmets dented from arrows that slung to the ground in defeat of their purpose. The Carmichael banner was spread across the bed as Ross had arranged it after his father’s death. The plaid of Gold and Green lay folded in it’s majesty…and shame. His father had died at the hands of a Campbell, yet Lee felt little sorrow for his dead father and wondered why.

  Picking up his father’s sword, he realized it was much easier to handle. As a boy he’d barely been able to lift it and now the sword lay in his hand easily. Somehow the sight both sickened him and filled him with dread. Would he, too, become an evil man like his father? Slay those who dare to disobey him without cause? His father had been a Jacobite…a man who claimed the Church of England and Rome to be the only religion. His mother had been a Covenanter believing that man should choose how he worshipped God.

  Both zealots to their separate causes the two lived together as man and wife; but he had sensed, even as a child, there was no love between them. His father had long hoped to make his only son a fierce warrior, his duty to protect the Church of England; his mother wanted her son to be someone who would serve God and the people.

  Standing in the room, he stared at his father’s sword, now in his own hand.

  He must have the sword; it was the Scot’s chosen weapon of defense; it afforded the safeguard they needed from the other, more rebellious clansman, who would in a moment’s anger, relieve one of one’s head.

  His father had often said he’d rather face the guillotine than to hang on a wooden gallows. All that for power? Even though he had died in battle, supposing to be a hero, Lee wondered now what had it gained him in the end?

  He was now Laird of the lands he had inherited from his father and his dead wife. They were good lands, the hills and dales, the beauty of Scotland lay before his eyes every day to be enjoyed and yet…

  He had cottages to see to, peasants to protect, both inside and outside the walls of the castle. Miles of lands and the river Tweed flowing nearby. All of it belonged to him. Yet there was no heir. No one with whom to share his legacy. His family was now The Four and the others he was bound to by the one simple fact that he’d been born into it. He had not achieved it by skill, God knows he had fashioned his own young life by his foolishness and now stood before God and his people a failure.

  He knew they talked of an heir to the lands and feared that he, too, would become a harsh laird in the days to come. He’d surprised them by taking a more gentle hand, but had learned as well that too gentle a hand, caused as many problems as it solved. His marriage had been a farce, an unfortunate circumstance brought about by his own wild behavior. Yet he had possessed a kind of love for Helen that had broken his young heart. But that love died. Now he wondered if ever he’d trust a woman again.

  Rising from his thoughts came a voice behind him. He turned. “Blithers, what is it?” he heard himself say.

  “I’m sorry to inform you sir that we have trouble in the yard.”

  “What kind of trouble?” He turned his thoughts to the present.

  “It seems that there is a ruckus among the women.” Blithers studied his fingernails for a moment too long.

  “Is it jealousy again?” He found the matter, if it was to be believed, most absurd. Glad to be diverted from his own thoughts, he found himself laughing deep in his chest.

  Blithers looked up and allowed a slight smile to cross his features. “It would be that, my lord.”

  “Tell Bria to handle it.” He informed his valet in no uncertain terms and with great effort kept his laughter stuffed inside.

  “You wish a women to settle the problem?” Blithers blurted.

  “Of course.” He stated firmly and dismissed him with a look.

  “As you wish, my lord.”

  Lord Carmichael picked up his father’s sword and replaced it in the scabbard. There it will stay until I have need of it, he promised himself.

  He took himself to the window on the courtyard side of the room, lifted the heavy curtain and watched as the circle of women whispered amongst themselves, Bria now speaking from the center of the group. In a few moments he could see them separate into their own ways without any visible discontentment. How had she done it? He wondered, when each time he was brought to the center, there was more talking, crying, and begging until it had muddled his brain.

  Musing, he decided he would call on Bria this eve and find out what she had said. He turned from the window and made his way through the large double doors and entered his mother’s room. There he found more simple furnishings, unlike his father’s elaborate black and red drapes and bed coverings.

  On the bed stand lay the cross she’d worn around her neck. Made of Scottish stone, given to her by her great-grandfather, a survivor of the Glencoe Massacre some 100 years previous, he’d remembered playing with the cross as he sat on her lap. Next to the cross was her Bible covered in dust; it had lain thus for more than twelve years. By his father’s order, the room had not been touched and until now h
e had rarely entered himself. For the first two years after her death, as a small child he had snuck away in the night and slept in her bed. Blithers had found him thus many evenings, but had never spoken a word of it to his harsh father.

  When he was ten he was pressed into the training befitting the position of a Laird’s son. From that time until his unfortunate marriage he had lessons and learned the high points of being a good and faithful soldier.

  His musings finished, he turned his thoughts to duties at hand and left the rooms. The shutting of the heavy door behind him seemed a symbol of peace to his aching heart. He had thought about his past and now would choose his own future. With God’s help.

  Chapter 13

  The day of shearing sheep was now ending, while the Laird spent the entire day wasting his thoughts within the castle. Even now he sat at the table among the noise and bustle of the kitchen, Emerald Calvert, her blue eyes shining, was telling tales about his mother. Unlike other Lairds he preferred to mix with the servants, especially Mrs. Calvert who had been with the Carmichaels since before his birth and had dearly loved his mother.

  At the sound of a large clanging commotion in the storage room, she rose quick and waddled away, her broom in hand. He watched as she protected her kitchen with all she had within her.

  She rounded the corner with Cork’s shirt in her meaty fist. “Found him snooping around in my pantry.” She accused the boy and took him straight to the Laird.

  “What have you to say Cork?” His voice deep.

  “Sir, I was seeking a spoon.”

  “Whatever for?” Mrs. Calvert interrupted and then caught the eye of her Laird and quieted.

  “Well, lad?”

  “Sir, it was to plant a garden. There’s a small little square at the back, right near the door,” he pointed, “and it would serve me well to plant a few seedlings I have right here in my pocket. They were me mother’s. It was all I could save from our…our home.” He finished.

  Lee’s heart softened at the boy’s notion of trying to save himself by planting his own food.