The Chieftain's Curse

by Frances Housden

  “Is that so?” Colin Ruthven’s voice rose in a lilt as he finished speaking, and Euan could see his mind working behind his bright blue eyes.

  In contrast, Euan’s reply was straightforward, iron cast. “Aye, you could say it’s a measure of the trust I place in Graeme as both cousin and friend. Unlike some men, he’s not one to take advantage,” he reiterated, settling comfortably, elbow resting on the board.

  “That being said,” added Graeme, “You can be sure that Iseabal’s future is secure hands. I ken she is a mite younger, but by the time the Keep is built, she’ll be at least two years older, and ready to become mistress of her own home. Until then, we can be considered betrothed.”

  “I’ll have to talk to Iseabal first.”

  Graeme grinned and Euan remembered his cousin and Iseabal’s heads together over supper table. It would seem his constable was quick with more than his sword. “Well, Ruthven, what better way renew our alliance?”

  The man nodded. “Agreed, I’ll speak to Iseabal straight away, but I can conceive of no problems.”

  Euan glanced up to see Morag gingerly crossing the hall with her skirts lifted clear of the floor, avoiding the clutter as the last of the boards were cleared by the servants. As she reached the raised platform, he pulled her up to stand beside him. Every breath reminded him of holding her in his arms in the night. “You’re just in time to hear the news.”

  “Aye,” said Colin Ruthven, brightening. “There’s to be a betrothal, our Iseabal.”

  Morag blanched, and for an instant Euan thought she might swoon. Moving quickly, he put an arm round her waist. “Graeme has just asked the Ruthven for his daughter’s hand. Do you know, I think that calls for a celebration.”

  Immediately, Colin Ruthven reminded him, “We have to return home tomorrow, Flora is nearing her time.”

  “Tonight, then, we’ll have supper out in the Baillie with fires cooking some beasts on spits. It isn’t every day my cousin gets betrothed. I’ll leave the two of you to speak to Iseabal, while I warn Duncan. He’ll have to make the cooks get a spurt on.” He watched the other two men walk away, certain that Iseabal wouldn’t be as surprised as her father had been.

  Alone with Morag, if one didn’t count the masses of servants milling about the hall, Euan looked down at her, noticed her smile was shaky. It hurt him to see such an expression on her face, though the blame was his.

  “Surely, after last night you don’t think me unkind enough to announce my betrothal without giving you warning?” He found it hard to stand beside her without touching. Placing one hand on her shoulder, he tilted her chin with the other, so that he could look into her eyes and saw a wealth of emotions, fear and desire, but most of all love, and cursed himself for a fool.

  He had been that cruel. Yet he couldn’t bring out the words that would reassure her. He might not be careless of her feelings, but where she was concerned, he was selfish. Just for once, he wanted to receive all that love as if it were his right. To be like Graeme, who had obviously found a lass to love, who would love him back, instead of an arrangement between clans and kings.

  “I thought you would remember there will be no wife for me until the curse is broken.” The moment he spoke the words, Euan faced an unpleasant truth.

  Aye, he could be that cruel.

  “Come,” he said, “I want to talk with Rob and may need your help to persuade him. I ken he loves the horses, but he is also as brave a lad for his age that I’ve ever met.”

  Perhaps, excepting myself, he thought, remembering an incident in his youth.

  “Alexander is volatile, and Jamie reserved—lads who are complete contrasts, and Jamie likely to get the worst of it. Your Rob is level-headed enough to knock both their skulls together if there’s any nonsense.”

  “Oh, I … it’s … not that,” she stammered. “Their fathers are chieftains. We’re just … plain folk.” She lied.

  “Enough, Morag. Do you take me for a fool? My name isn’t Nhaimeth.” He took her arm and they both stepped onto the floor of the hall.

  “And I’m certain, he would tell you as well as I can that there isn’t one plain thing about the pair of you. I realise you have your reasons for coming to Cragenlaw, and I’ve let you keep your secrets. You’re running from someone. I don’t know who, but it shows. When you find the need, I’m sure you’ll tell me.” He guided her across the great hall toward the door.

  Once outside, they crossed the bailey. Overhead the sky was bright, clear. Seagulls wheeled and mewled against the blue.

  Euan’s eyes held nobody’s reflection but Morag’s, as if she were all, and for that moment she actually was. “It’s only fair he should have this chance, so what say you, will you help me?”

  “As you well realise, I have no choice.”

  He hardened his heart. “Ach, aye you do. The same choice I gave you when you became my leman. Stay or go. Only you can decide which is in your best interest, yours and Rob’s.”

  Euan drew in sharp breath, felt his nostril flare, the air felt he breathed cold as ice in his gut. Aye, he was cruel, and hard, for he refused to tell her he would never let her go.

  Chapter 18

  Rob surveyed the scene in the outer bailey from the stable block. His head was fizzing with excitement. He took a deep breath to calm the sensation. He felt he was master of all he surveyed, as the saying went.

  He puffed his chest out bit more. Morag was proud of him, and the McArthur had plucked him out of the stables because he had done something heroic—not because the laird was sleeping with Rob’s mother. No one but he and Nhaimeth had that knowledge.

  It would be lying to say he minded his mother having a man in her bed. He was of an age to realise there must have been a man there before he was born How else would he exist?

  At times it bothered him that he’d never known his father. In the past he’d tried to picture an older version of himself without much success. The only thing within his scope was to be the best at everything he attempted and, eventually, become his own man. Here and now, at this very minute, his ideal would be someone like the McArthur.

  Wistful thinking.

  The bailey was pretty crowded. All had been invited—even clansmen frae the nearest hamlet. A piper played a tune with haunting notes of lost love and solitude, but that would change to something more riotous as the celebrations got well under way.

  It was Rob’s understanding that once the McArthur got his teeth into a scheme, there was no stopping him. After a moment’s consideration, Rob decided that’s how he would like to be, but not just yet.

  Cragenlaw’s cooks and serving maids, half the castle servants, were scurrying around at the seneschal’s behest. Outside the odorous stable building, Cragenlaw smelled of roast meats frae bailey to tower. Wee kitchen lads sweated, turning handles that spun whole beasts of beef, mutton and boar, around and around on huge spits set over fires glowing red hot in fresh-dug pits. The youngest of the kitchen lads kept the fires banked high, till the logs glowed. But the heat wasn’t enough heat to prevent some wee rascals from pinching slivers of meat and scampering away, juice running down their arms.

  Though the impetus for the celebration was Graeme the constable’s betrothal to Jamie’s sister Iseabal … Rob shrugged mid-thought … lassie stuff if you asked his opinion. No matter, it still felt as if he had some stake in the day’s events, what with his promotion to squire.

  He chuckled, remembering the shock on the other lads’ faces as the McArthur introduced them. If they’d been as tall as he, no doubt they would have looked down their noses. As it was, they sniffed.

  Stable lad!

  The laugh would be on them.

  His grandfather hadn’t had a care that Rob was a bastard; he was a Farquhar and, as such, entitled to the same training as his peers.

  Of course, his Uncle Doughall had scarcely been of the same mind. As far as Doughall was concerned, a sharp knife across Rob’s throat would best take care of his nephew—all the more ince
ntive to learn everything he could from the McArthur and his constable.

  Ale and wine had been flowing free for the last hour—not the watered-down stuff either. Folks were beginning to eat, bread trenchers sat in piles on boards across trestles near the fires, and the cooks’ knives were making short work of hot meat, slicing it in thick, tender chunks.

  For as long as he had been standing there, Rob’s eyes had searched the crowd for Nhaimeth. He was well aware that Morag’s place was by the McArthur’s side. He felt old enough now to go his own way, but Nhaimeth was his best friend, and Rob expected the two of them would celebrate together, if he could only find him.

  Giving up his post by the stable door, Rob began weaving his way through the crowd in search of the wee Fool. The difficulty was Nhaimeth’s lack of height. It made him hard to pick him out among the swirl of coloured plaids women draped over their shoulders and arms as they spun around in time to the skirl of the pipes. He grinned at the bairns dodging in and out, clinging to their mother’s skirts, reminding him of wee red squirrels, hopping from branch to branch.

  Strange how, in the midst of all that noise, Rob was able to pick out one single sound: bells jingling. Nhaimeth’s sister had sewn them on all his clothing. Most of the annoying wee decorations had been removed by Morag, but Nhaimeth was wearing the suit he kept for high days and holy days. Ears pricked, Rob stopped, a lone figure in the midst of a seething crowd of folk after a guid time. When he heard the sound again, he was ready for it and, quick as a flash, spun on his heels in time to catch a glimpse of red and green surging through the stable door.

  He followed the sound down to the far end of the stables the McArthur’s horses were stalled. where Diabhal was stalled. Rob ran. His friend Nhaimeth was small and awkwardly shaped, but he could play chase-me like a wee linty.

  It was dim inside the stables, but Rob’s eyes adjusted as he ran, listening for an angry snort from Diabhal or any of the other beasts stalled alongside him that might be affronted by someone running between its legs. Now all he could hear was the thud of his own feet on the cobbles and the swish of straw as he skidded to a halt. His breath came up his throat in great harsh gulps; yet what he noticed as his chest stopped heaving was the quiet. Not a murmur from man or beast, as if his glimpse of Nhaimeth was a figment of his imagination.

  He might have returned to the bailey there and then had he not heard what sounded like a child crying its heart out.

  And there he was, wee Nhaimeth, in the darkest corner of Diabhal’s stall, head braced on his arms, shoulders shaking. Rob was surprised at how much the sight shocked him. He skimmed a palm over the destrier’s round rump as it turned and gave him a nudge with its long black nose.

  “Nhaimeth,” Rob whispered and staggered back, stunned as his best friend raised a hand wielding a knife to him.

  “Christ’s blood, what’s amiss?” Rob hissed the words as he staggered back. Bad enough to be stabbed by his friend, but he’d no intention of being trampled as well.

  “Och, I’m sorry, Rob. I thought you were someone else.”

  “Someone you wanted to kill? That’s not like you, friend,” Rob said in what he hoped was a calming voice. “You had me worried. I saw you racing into the stables as if the deil was on your heels.”

  Nhaimeth let out a long sigh. “Ye ken I’m no coward, Rob, but by all that’s holy, I thought … ach you’re o’er young, you wouldn’t understand, but I tell you, Rob, I was scared.”

  “Perhaps you have the right of it, eleven isn’t very auld, but I’ve gone through a lot in a short time. So, what say you, we go up to the loft so you can get it off your shoulders.”

  To his surprise Nhaimeth laughed, though it sounded more like a hiccup. “You’ve no notion how close to the mark you are. But aye, let’s get away frae here before that great beast realises I’m whau I am and tries to eat me.”

  Up in the loft, sitting atop the stacked hay, Rob could no longer wait to find out what had upset his friend. “Well now, I’ve a mind to know what made you lift a hand to me of all folk.”

  “In hindsight, it sounds a mite stupid but, as I said, I was scared. I’d been out at Astrid’s tree, telling my sister about all that has happened. I was laughing, telling her how brave I’d been yesterday, Erik the Bear’s warrior son.” He looked down and scratched his knee through a hole in his hose. Outside, the piper was playing a reel and everyone would be doing a circle dance.

  At a loss for what to say, but wanting to encourage Nhaimeth, he said, “Aye, it’s a guid tree. This year the fruit on it will be sweet, just like her, but why would that upset you?”

  “No, it was afterwards, when I took a shortcut through the brewery. There was a man there, a stranger helping himself to ale, aye and looked to have supped more than his share already. I just paid him no mind. It’s the brewer’s task, not mine, to stop thievery. Besides, I’m sure he was one of Ruthven’s men, a guest, for I’d ne’er seen his like before, with his pale squinty eyes. He put a shudder through me with a glance even before he grabbed me.” He held a hand out in front of him. It shook. “I cannae stop it. How’s that for a jest?”

  Rob hated see his friend that way. Nhaimeth might be little, but Morag had told Rob about some of the tricks he’d played on men three times his size. “What did he do to you?” he demanded anger burning in his throat.

  “I’ll tell you what he did. He grabbed me and pushed me in between the barrels, pushed my face against the wall, and said he only wanted to touch my hump … that his mother had said it was lucky. He held me with one hand and scrabbled under my tunic with the other. I thought I would be sick. I might be wee, but in my head I’m a man, and I knew what he wanted to do, for I could feel him pressing the length of it against me.”

  Nhaimeth gulped down air as if he were suffocating. And maybe he was, from emotions. His face colouring was high, and the words that spilled from his mouth were wet with spit. “I swear to god, if I could have reached my knife, I would have killed him.”

  Rob bit his lip, feeling more awkward than embarrassed, knowing his friend needed comforting but afraid to touch even a hand or arm in case his sympathy was misinterpreted. So, he merely asked, “How did you escape?”

  “Now here’s a laugh.” He chuckled, still spitting, yet it didn’t sound forced. “It was a rat. It jumped off a barrel and bit him. Morag aye said the Green Lady had been seen in the brewery, and I’d like to think it was her whau saved me.”

  “And I’d have liked to see the bugger’s face, serve him right.” Rob grew serious. Nhaimeth was looking down at his little legs as if he hated what he saw, as if he hated himself.

  Rob knew then he had to tell Nhaimeth what Morag had once had to tell him. “You haven’t anything to be ashamed of. He’s the one who’s sick, and he’s not the only one about.”

  Perhaps he ought to share his own story with Nhaimeth. Leaning back on the hay with a loud sigh, Rob whistled through his teeth, a tuneless song at odds with the brash skirl of the pipes and hand clapping in the distance. “What you said … ach well, you’re not the only one it’s happened to.”

  “The last time a looked your spine was straight and strong.”

  “Aye, and because of that, I hope you’ll aye remember I’m willing to use my strength in your service. It’s not an easy thing to forget. Morag told me yon men, well they’re called pederasts. Only she was talking about my Uncle Doughall’s friend. He’s a Moor, which means he comes from a far away country where they have sunshine all the time, for his skin is much darker than ours—brown—a place where their notions are most weird.”

  He had caught Nhaimeth’s attention. “Weird?” he said. “How?”

  “Like you were talking about, it seems a lot of the men prefer young boys to lasses. Kalem, the Moor, well he was a right sleekit beastie, nice as pie one minute and pushing me into a corner the next. Luckily, Morag came by. Right angry she was. Livid. She gave him the rough edge of her tongue, told him if he laid hands on me again, she would info
rm my grandfather. You know, I always thought my grandfather was a man to be feared, for they called him the Wolf, but a few days later, he went hunting with the Moor and came his body back home slung over the pommel of his horse.”

  Rob shuddered. “My grandfather was fierce, but the Moor was pure evil. While my grandfather’s body lay in state in the great hall, the Moor said to Morag, ‘That’s one problem out of the way.’ The way he looked at her, she could tell she was the second.”

  “Scary. Bad enough to face death in battle, or like we did yesterday, but to have death look you in the eye and speak your name quietly…” Nhaimeth appeared to have forgotten his own fright to concentrate on theirs. “All I can say is, it’s no wonder you left.”

  “Left… We ran for our lives. My grandfather’s auld steward always had a soft spot for Morag. When the steward overheard Kalem suggest that in a few years ‘young Rob’ and his mother might become a threat to Doughall’s barony, he confided in Morag. That’s why we stole away before the auld Wolf’s funeral. I think she had worked out that if we did not go then, Kalem would be asking one of us to go hunting with him next; and you know how that ended for my grandfather.”

  “I’m not sure why you two chose Cragenlaw, but I’m glad you did. Our stories have a lot in common, and that bodes well for our friendship.”

  Nhaimeth held out his hand and Rob gripped it. “Friends,” he reciprocated. “Only death can change that. As for that bugger who attacked you, we’re not going to let him spoil our celebrations. You stand by me, and I’ll stand by you. As we showed yesterday, together we’re unbeatable,” Rob stated with the confidence that came only with youth. That said, the pair climbed down from the loft and went to join the revels.

  Chapter 19

  Every particle of roast meat had been sliced away till naught was left but bones, the last few morsels stripped from the carcasses with the knives men wore at their waists. The long twilight made it easy for the revellers to keep eating and drinking. The best thing, to Morag’s mind, was that some folk had fuller bellies than they’d had in a while.