The Laird's Bastard Daughter (The Highland Warlord Series Book 1)

by Tessa Murran

  Kenzie MacDonald grimaced. ‘He is a weak fool with unnatural appetites and…’

  ‘His nobles are not,’ snapped the King. ‘They will soon wail like bairns about losing their lands in the north, and then they will bully Edward into acting. He will raise an army and march. If he takes back Stirling Castle, he will garrison it with enough English troops to crush Scotland again. I have sacrificed too much, spilt too much blood to gain the ground I stand on, so there is no way in hell I am giving it back. To that end, we must have unity. Clan cannot fight against clan. This feuding and bloodletting must stop. We are all rebels against the English throne now, and unless we stop bickering over petty slights and old quarrels we will all die a rebel’s death. I for one, refuse to meet a traitor’s end, butchered and gutted like a pig, my entrails spilt onto the streets of Smithfield.

  Cormac considered the King’s words carefully. It was true Robert the Bruce had spilt blood, English blood for sure and lots of it, but he had also spilt Scots blood. The Bruce’s had coveted the throne for generations, and like his father and grandfather before him, Robert clung to his regal ambitions. When he spoke of unity, he side-stepped his murder of John Comyn - his main rival for the throne. He had claimed it was self-defence, but the Comyns and the Bruces had a bitter rivalry stretching back generations, every bit as murderous as his own rivalry with the Gowans and John Comyn had been in his way. Robert made sure he had got out of his way by sticking a knife into him, before an altar, in a kirk, at God’s own feet.

  Cormac had no illusions about the King’s honour. The Bruce was a formidable man of single-minded ruthlessness and had a consuming ambition to seat himself on the throne of Scotland. If he were not, he would not still be breathing.

  ‘Sooner or later Stirling will fall to us your Grace,’ Kenzie continued.

  ‘No, it won’t. They will never concede defeat and surrender such a fortress while they hold out hope of reinforcements and a counter attack. If the English march north to bring men to their aid, we must find a way to face them. Let us get to the matter in hand.’

  He regarded them stonily.

  ‘Buchanan, Gowan, you have one enemy here, and it is not each other. The English have exploited the divisions within the clans for years and, in doing so, they have played us for fools, using our bickering and blood feuds to divide us. Together, burying old enmities, that is the only way we will survive and emerge triumphant. To that end, I will have a truce between you, which you will swear under oath to abide by, before these witnesses here. Once the fighting is over, I will happily let you murder each other but, until then, you fight the English and not each other.’

  ‘Buchanan loyalty is yours and always has been,’ said Fearghas evenly, his eyes meeting Cormac’s with a warning.

  ‘Aye, and I trust in it Fearghas,’ replied the King.

  ‘The Gowans will fight to the last man for your cause, Your Grace,’ said Baodan smoothly.

  Fearghas was not prepared to let this rest. ‘But you cannot be trusted, any of you Gowans.’

  ‘Which is why I am commanding you two to seal your truce with more than an oath,’ said the King. ‘I want a blood bond. I command that you join your clans through marriage. Your eldest son, Fearghas, to one of Gowan’s daughters.’

  ‘Two of his daughters are married to English lords,’ snarled Fearghas through gritted teeth. ‘He’ll never be true to your word and to even think of polluting our blood with his…’

  ‘As if I would lower one of my daughters to lie with you filthy mongrels, I’d as soon wed them to swine,’ shouted Baodan.

  Cormac listened to the insults back and forth across the table. He noticed the King’s face harden and his eyes narrow and then he brought his fist down on the table with a bang, silencing everyone.

  ‘We all have to make sacrifices for the sake of Scotland. Have I not given to the cause? Three of my brothers have been executed at English hands.’

  ‘But surely there is another way than through marriage. Your Grace, my son Cormac was only last year made a widower by the death of his wife,’ said Fearghas.

  Cormac dug his nails into the palm of his hands. They should not talk of Alain, he could scarce bear it.

  ‘Those who make sacrifices now will be rewarded,’ continued the King. ‘They will sit at my right hand. Those who do not can expect a reckoning.’

  ‘Cormac grieves still,’ continued Fearghas.

  The King turned on him. ‘His wife is beyond suffering while mine is still a prisoner of the English. By God, they once had her hung from the walls of Roxburgh castle in a cage for all to see and for me to suffer it. You think I don’t feel that every day, that my wife is subjected to such ill-treatment as would make a corpse of her?’

  Cormac was fuming. Why the hell didn’t his father bite his tongue and just bow to the King’s order? It was not as if they had much choice. The King wanted obedience and unity, and he would get it no matter the cost.

  Gowan started shouting about how his own son had been cut down in an attack by the Buchanans. How he would never trust them. How there was too much hate to ever heal the wounds between them.

  ‘I’ll do it,’ Cormac shouted, over the top of them. ‘I will do as you command, Your Grace, and marry Gowan’s daughter if that is what it takes, if he will agree to take an oath of truce and stick to it.’

  Gowan looked fit to choke on his anger. His face was a seething mass of red as he struggled to remain calm and play the part of the loyal subject.

  ‘Very well, I agree.’

  ‘I will come to your keep, Gowan, with my men, and choose a worthy wife,’ growled Cormac.

  ‘You will not choose, you will get what you are given,’ shouted Gowan, who turned to the King. ‘Am I not shamed enough by polluting my blood with theirs? Must I also parade my daughters like pigs at market for him to leer over?’

  ‘I don’t care, Gowan,’ said the King, indifferent now he’d had his way.

  He turned to Cormac. ‘Take what he gives out Buchanan, for I am weary of this matter. I care not which bride you get, just make it binding, keep your oath to cease hostilities and when I need men and arms provide them and yourself too. Are we agreed?’

  ‘Aye, I suppose we are agreed,’ growled Fearghas.

  ‘Good, now let’s fire this castle to dust so it shelters no more English garrisons.’

  With that, the King stood up, and they were dismissed.

  ***

  Cormac rode away from Dumbarton at sunset. Behind him, the sky glowed red as the once proud edifice burned. The English took castles and garrisoned them with troops to terrorise the people of Scotland. The Bruce simply razed them to the ground as a warning to those who had not pledged loyalty to join with him or lose all. It was a mark of his determination to win the war at all costs and left Cormac in no doubt that this pledge he had made to marry a woman he did not want, must be honoured.

  Chapter Two

  Ravenna knelt on the cold stone at matins murmuring her prayers along with all the other nuns, gathering together before the simple altar. What a drab flock of birds they looked in their worn, grey habits. Once again, she felt she would choke on her wimple, cursed thing, digging into her neck. She should have got used to it by now, as the ox lives with the yoke, but she could not, and every day it felt like a noose tightening around her throat.

  The novices were not allowed to show their hair so most of them had it shorn off, like lambs before slaughter. Her father had insisted she retain hers and the Abbess, eager for the coin he offered for Ravenna’s keep, had resentfully complied with his wishes. Everyone thought it strange and the Abbess, a spiteful woman at the best of times, had tutted and said how awful it was that she was forced to suffer a novice with such vanity. Often she told Ravenna that she looked little better than a whore of Satan, with her long, flowing tresses. It wasn’t Ravenna’s doing but, as usual, she suffered for it anyway. She tugged at the wimple, feeling the heaviness of her hair on her neck, pulling at her scalp in its tight,
plaited coil. All tucked out of sight so no one could see its beauty, just like the rest of her.

  Three years she had been on her knees, her every waking moment set out for her in a series of monotonous tasks, some hard, like cleaning the stables or tending the gardens. Some were more genteel, like weaving or decorating the holy books. Some were unbearable, like tending the sick and injured with their festering wounds and shattered limbs. Ravenna had a strong stomach, but in this time of war, there seemed to be a never-ending stream of injured men and starving women and children, limping to the convent for succour and salvation. She was heartily sick of watching impotently, as people died, as she so hated their suffering and lingering. Better a firm hand over mouth and nose and an end to the pain. But that wasn’t God’s way, so she had to make do with sitting by and watching them die slowly. It tortured her to see it, though she tried her best to comfort them in their last hours.

  The English war effort rolled on, crushing everything in its path. Robert the Bruce was holding out for now, but all it would take was a head to head battle for the Scots army to be crushed into dust.

  Through it all, during periods of silent prayer, Ravenna screamed her anger silently out at the world. She was so tired of feigning piety and obedience, enduring grinding poverty as she watched herself on a slow, sexless slide into oblivion. She tried to hang on to the few stolen moments of pleasure she had shared with Brandan, but his face was less distinct in her mind now, the remembered ecstasy of sharing her body with him unreal, as if it had never happened. Sometimes she longed for a man again, to feel his touch on her skin, his mouth claim hers and that burning hunger in her loins to take and be taken in return. Outside these walls, the world was turning, and she was not part of it, instead, she was stuck here in misery, living half a life.

  She heard the drag of the Abbess’s skirt over the flagstones and a light touch on her shoulder. What that woman would say if she guessed her thoughts. A wave of the old woman’s hand bid her follow, to the little walled courtyard outside, where the herb garden sent up its fragrance when the sun warmed it. Today it was bitter cold, and the herbs had withered in the frost. In that quiet haven, she came face to face with her father for the first time in years.

  Her first thought was that he had aged, his blonde hair peppered with white, and her second, that the beaming smile he gave her was not to be trusted.

  There was no embrace or enquiry as to her welfare. How foolish of her to expect it.

  ‘My, how rosy those cheeks, a surprise to see it in a place like this. Is it anger at me still, Ravenna or could you have retained your bloom? I must say you look bonnie, daughter.’

  ‘Are you disappointed that I am not downtrodden and defeated?’ she bit back.

  ‘Not at all, for it serves my purpose, and I see your tongue is as tart as ever. Are you still ruled by lust or have you, by some miracle, found your way back to reason?’

  ‘Why have you come, Father? I thought you put me here to rot.’

  ‘I won’t deny I did, but things have changed, and now I have a use for you, a way for you to be accepted back into my household, to atone for your shamelessness.’

  ‘I did atone when the man I loved was cut down and left to die out on a cold moor.’

  ‘Ah well, as to that, it is time you loved another.’

  Ravenna frowned. Surely he couldn’t mean…?

  ‘Thankfully you are bonnie enough, and we can fatten you up and make you more comely in time. You are to be wed, as soon as may be.’

  ‘I am not.’

  ‘Do you want to stay here the rest of your life girl, to rot, as you put it? As one of my by blows, it is an honour far above you that I am offering. I have arranged a marriage to a man of standing and wealth, a powerful man.’

  Who could they possibly have found who would take her?

  ‘As if you would ever offer me an advantageous marriage, Father. You have no love for me. Do you think time in a convent has dimmed my wits?’

  ‘Let us speak plain then. It’s true I have never loved you Ravenna, but you are pretty and clever, and you have kind of dogged malevolence. Now that, I have always admired, and I have found a good use for it. To survive what I am suggesting, you will need every bit of your deceitful nature. You like your secrets, don’t you, and where you are going, you will need to keep them.’

  Ravenna narrowed her eyes. Not one word of kindness or forgiveness, not one word of apology for Brandan, just another one of his schemes.

  ‘Survive?’

  ‘You know the English are coming, to take back Stirling Castle, or do you turn a blind eye to Scotland’s struggle.

  ‘Of course, I know.’

  ‘King Robert has commanded the clans to stand united against them and to pledge fealty to him in the dark days ahead. Part of that pledge is that I cease hostilities with the Buchanans. I am being forced into a truce with them.’

  ‘I don’t believe it,’ Ravenna replied, shaking her head. ‘You’d never do it.’

  ‘I have to do it and, to make it stand, the Bruce demands an alliance by marriage. He wants one of my daughters for Cormac Buchanan.’

  Ravenna caught her breath. ‘Well, I wish you good luck with that.’

  ‘Must you insist on pretending to be witless, girl. I know full well, you are not.’

  ‘He’s a monster, and you have daughters to spare.’

  ‘Aye, but to give one of my legitimate children to a Buchanan, to pollute my bloodline with theirs, it would be like throwing a ruby into the midden. No, my daughters are of pure blood, they are fine, worthy girls, but weak, all of them. Your mother was base-born, but she had grit in her soul, and so do you. You are a survivor.’

  ‘Cormac Buchanan is a murderous brute of a man, with nothing but vengeance in his heart, who will find a way to rid himself of me as soon as may be. He is probably even less sincere in this agreement than you. You are sending me to my doom, throwing me away on a monster.’

  ‘I would use you to further our clan’s influence, to bring down my enemies. I took you in, acknowledged you as mine, held my shame out in the open for all to see and let you have a life within my keep. You have repaid me with wantonness and deceit.’

  ‘It was not that at all. I loved Brandan with all my heart.’

  ‘And where did that love get you, eh? You were his doom, Ravenna, your name blackened and mine with it. How the gossips must have loved it all, my slut of a bastard daughter giving herself away to a cur. So no, Ravenna, I am not throwing you away, I am wiping clean your shame and mine. I am having done with you, once and for all, and you are atoning for your sin.’

  ‘I won’t do it, and you cannot force me to.’

  ‘Oh yes, I can. You will wed that dog Cormac, play the meek, little wife to the hilt, while you send me his secrets. I need to know what he is planning, if he gains favour with the Bruce at my expense, when he will be alone and vulnerable, so I can send men to cut him down.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Find a way to please him, you seem to have displayed a talent for it in the past, and give him an heir and anything else he wants, and then you can bring about his doom.’

  ‘You want me to have a Buchanan child and then betray its father?’

  ‘A child is the natural outcome of lying with a man Ravenna, and, unfortunately, it cannot be avoided. But when Cormac is brought down, as to the child, it can suffer the same fate as all the other Buchanans. I couldn’t care less about that if I tried, nor should you.’

  How awful he was. She had forgotten over these last few years just how ruthless her father could be, and she had to find a way out of his plan.

  ‘Cormac Buchanan will find out I am not legitimate and that you broke your oath to the king.’

  ‘Once it is too late. Besides, I said I would give one of my daughters, I did not say which daughter he was to have. So I have been true to the letter of the agreement.’

  ‘It is an insult, an affront to his dignity to have me. He will be angry and that ange
r will…’

  ‘Fall on you, yes, I know that. You see what I mean about you having an instinct for survival. Already your mind turns to your own skin and how to save it. His anger will be terrible, but you will bear it, my girl, you will bear it and much more besides. You will suffer Cormac MacDonald and all his rage and cruelty, and you will suffer him to have you and put a son in you if needs be, or by God, I will have you walled up in this convent for the rest of your days, until you are nothing but a dried-up old hag. At least this way you can be of use to me and my clan. You owe me that much after what you have done.’

  ‘He’ll never tell me anything useful, and he will not want me in that way, he hates all of us Gowans.’

  ‘You are a woman, use what God gave you. A night in a woman’s arms often loosens a man’s tongue.’

  ‘This is a sham marriage to appease the King, not a proper marriage, surely it does not have to be consummated?’

  ‘Don’t shy away from the inevitable Ravenna. Men yield their secrets only if they get something in return.’

  ‘He’s not won his reputation by being a fool.’

  ‘Nor did I sire one. Humble yourself for a short while, until you get what you want. The sooner you prise his secrets out of him so that I can lay a trap, the sooner you are out of his arms. Married to such a one as he, the only way you will survive his contempt of you is by being useful and warming his bed.’

  ‘Why would I ever agree to be your sacrificial lamb?’

  ‘Because otherwise, you stay here, just one more unwanted daughter put out of sight and out of mind to rot. If you do this, Ravenna, once Buchanan is in the ground, I will let you marry well, whichever man you can get your claws into. I’ll provide a handsome dowry so you can live out your days in comfort and, I’ll even let you take whatever bastard Buchanan whelps on you, along with you.