Once Upon a Plaid

by Mia Marlowe

  If the earl were younger, William might have been concerned. The old man had been a veritable mad wolf of a fighter in his prime. Even now, he could probably land a telling blow or two.

  “Her mother had trouble bringing bairns into the world too, ye ken.” Lord Glengarry dropped his voice to a whisper now, both because the subject was delicate and because they’d just spotted the twin almond-shaped tracks of their quarry. “Not that she couldna quicken. We lost count of how many times she failed to carry a babe longer than a couple of months. Still, she did manage to give me my heir.”

  “And your daughter,” William whispered back. He wondered if Katherine knew her mother had suffered from multiple losses just as she had. And if that knowledge would make a difference. The deerhounds’ ears pricked to a sound the men couldn’t hear.

  “Aye, and a surprise Kat was too,” the earl said, oblivious to the way his dogs’ ruffs were rising. “We’d thought we were past more children, especially as my Alva had such trouble bearing them. But then here came our Katikins to be a comfort to my old age. It just goes to show, William.”

  That I have to wait till I’m a greybeard to become a father?

  “It shows ye must never give up hope,” the earl continued as if he’d been asked.

  Hope was something William was fresh out of, but he was spared from having to reply when the two hounds darted forward in long-legged lunges. The thicket ahead of them rattled. There was a chorus of growls mixed with a plaintive cry that was abruptly cut off.

  The men chirruped to their mounts and forged through the dense undergrowth, finding the deerhounds seated next to a goodly sized deer carcass. Their blooded tongues lolled in macabre doggie grins. Lord Glengarry had trained the hounds to stop worrying the prey once it ceased struggling. He praised the pair in more lavish terms than William had ever heard him offer someone with two legs.

  “Well, that buck’s eighteen stone, minus the rack, I’ll warrant. Should feed us for a while.” The old man dismounted and started field dressing the deer, but William took the knife from him to spare him the chore of gutting the buck. “Jamison ought to be satisfied now.”

  The scream of a peregrine overhead made William look up. Murray’s falcon wheeled above them. Then it gathered itself into a killing wedge and stooped. Hidden by the forest, it dove into a meadow lower down the hillside. The raptor didn’t rise again.

  “Looks like your nephew’s party made a kill as well.”

  The earl ignored the comment. “Glad we didna bag a doe. That’s the trouble of hunting with the dogs. Ye can rarely see what they’re after till they’ve gone and killed it.”

  William wondered if he would figure out what Ranulf was after before Lord Glengarry’s nephew made a move.

  “And ye said he wouldna hunt coneys,” Hugh Murray said with a sneer at Sinclair while he fed the falcon a small bit of rabbit liver. Then he tucked the rest of the bloody organ into his other turned-back cuff to feed the bird later.

  “I said no such thing. I said peregrines prefer to hunt other birds. That’s all,” Sinclair said with an injured sniff worthy of a court dandy. “If ye’d get your head out of your arse and listen once in a while, Murray, ye might learn something.”

  “Weel, one coney isna going to make for much stew,” MacTavish said, with surprising practicality as he tied the rabbit’s hind legs together and affixed the carcass to his pony’s pommel. The beast rolled its eyes at the scent of blood but stood still when MacTavish grasped its mane and remounted. “Will the bird hunt again?”

  “He might if Murray doesna overfeed him,” Gordon said as Murray slipped the bird another tidbit. Then he raised a pointed finger at the western road below their hillside location. “There’s a rider approaching the castle. He’s wearing your plant badge, MacNaught, or I’m mistook.”

  Some clans decorated their bonnets with a cockade of colored ribbons. A thriftier method was to tuck a certain plant into a hatband to declare a man’s allegiance. Ranulf MacNaught’s men wore a sprig of holly when they wanted to make themselves known to each other.

  “Prickly and poisonous,” Ranulf had explained to his followers when he chose it. “One way or another, we’ll be a scourge to all who oppose us!”

  Now he squinted into the distance. There did seem to be a red-and-green spray attached to the rider’s tam-style hat. “Gordon, ye’ve sharper eyes than that bird. Keep on with the hunt, all of ye. Where there’s one rabbit, there’s a dozen.”

  “Where are ye off to?” Gordon asked.

  “To see what this fellow wearing my badge wants at Glengarry.”

  He left his followers bickering over which direction to take their hunt. Ranulf muscled his gelding into a plunge down the hillside so he could intercept the rider on the western road. To name it a road was to overdignify it. What Gordon had called the western road was little more than a well-worn path. Still, Ranulf meant to catch the rider before he reached the castle.

  By the time he reached the road, he recognized the rider as Duncan Burns, one of the men he’d left to guard the Italian friar. Ranulf stopped and waited for Burns to come to him.

  “What news?” he said when Burns drew his sturdy Highland pony to a standstill.

  “It took a bit of persuading to get the Italian to work on that contraption, but after Ogilvie cut off one of his fingers, he became fair enthusiastic about the whole idea.”

  Ranulf’s mouth twitched, but he wouldn’t bestow a smile on Burns just yet. He needed men who could do what was required, whatever that might be. Ranulf made a mental note to see that Ogilvie was suitably rewarded once he came into his own.

  “So what has the good friar come up with?”

  “He did all sorts of calculating and measuring and wasted any amount of paper drawing up plans based on the parts ye found in the cave. Long and short of it is, we finally have the thing put together.”

  “’Tis a trebuchet, not a thing,” Ranulf said. “Show a bit of respect. Call it what it is.”

  Because it’ll deliver everything I want into my hands.

  “The important thing is, does it work?” Ranulf asked.

  Burns cocked a brow and nodded. “We tested it. I figured ye’d want us to. Lost Finley on the first try when he didna heed the friar’s instructions and his arm got caught in the gears. We couldna staunch the bleeding.”

  “Finley was a fool.”

  “And now he’s a dead one, roasting in Hell for his folly. It gave the rest of them pause, I can tell ye. No one ignores the Italian now.”

  “What’s the most weight ye can hurl?” Ranulf asked.

  “We’ve tossed boulders that weigh more than twenty-five stone. Should do a good bit of damage, depending on where ye aim them. God knows they damaged a few of the men lifting them.”

  Ranulf brushed this off as unimportant. He glanced up the hillside where dark granite broke through the turf at intervals. There was plenty of raw material about that would serve as projectiles. In his mind’s eye, he could see work crews hewing rock from the earth, while others transported it to the machine’s maw to be loaded and finally flung at his enemies.

  “What else have ye thrown besides stones?” One of the old warriors in Edinburgh had spoken of hurling flaming bundles over castle walls.

  “We havena tried anything but loads of rock.”

  That didn’t mean something else couldn’t be used. The fellow he’d treated to drinks had gotten morbidly misty-eyed when he described how siege armies had gathered up the dead who’d made the mistake of leaving the walled citadel. Corpses thrown back at trapped defenders were great demoralizers.

  “It unmanned ’em something fierce,” the old warrior had affirmed.

  “What’s the range of my trebuchet?” Ranulf was feeling possessive of the collection of timbers and gears.

  “Over eight hundred yards with consistency on level ground. Less accurate at nine hundred.”

  Ranulf twisted in his saddle and gazed back at Glengarry Castle. The folk who had si
tuated the first keep on the banks of Loch Ness tens of lifetimes ago had committed a grave error. A steep incline rose to the north. If someone situated a trebuchet on those heights, the range of the weapon would be significantly increased. And the machine, and all the men who worked it and supplied it with its deadly projectiles, would be beyond the range of even the best-drawn longbow.

  “Tell the friar I want him to devise a method to hurl flames. And I want him and the machine situated there by Twelfth Night, ready to go.” Ranulf pointed to an overlook above Glengarry Castle. “Or he’ll lose more than a finger.”

  On the eleventh day of Christmas

  my true love gave to me eleven pipers piping.

  —From “The Twelve Days of Christmas”

  “Eleven Highland pipers would set up a caterwauling noise fit to wake the deid! I begin to think an Englishman, or someone else who doesna know their arse from their elbow, wrote this song.”

  —An observation from Nab,

  fool to the Earl of Glengarry

  Chapter Twenty

  The hunt was an unqualified success. In addition to Lord Glengarry and William’s buck, other parties brought in several smaller red deer. Ranulf and his friends contributed so many coneys to boil in a cauldron of rabbit stew, it was enough to feed the entire assemblage that night.

  However, MacNaught’s entourage was conspicuous by their absence at the earl’s board.

  Even so, William almost failed to notice it at first because Katherine was seated next to him at the table on the raised dais, as a good wife should. They spoke softly together about nothing of importance, but the nothings felt normal. Good. So did her soft thigh brushing against his under the table.

  “I dinna see my cousin,” Katherine said as she offered William a bite of her bannock. She’d slathered it with butter and it dripped honey, just as he liked it. “Is he not back from the hunt?”

  William surveyed the great hall but saw no sign of Ranulf MacNaught or his friends. He leaned toward the earl at his other elbow. “Where’s your nephew?”

  “Gone. Ranulf came to my chamber and made his farewells as twilight fell. Wouldna even stay for supper. Seems he received a message from my sister asking him to return home. Says she’s taken ill.”

  “Oh?” Katherine leaned forward to peer at her father over William’s trencher.

  “I dinna believe the sickness is serious. Most like ’tis a light case of catarrh. Now that she’s a widow, she doesna do well without her son close by, Ranulf says.” Lord Glengarry tucked into his stew with more gusto than William had seen in him for days. Fresh air and the exercise of the hunt had been good for him. “My sister always did want to be the center of attention. She may well be shamming. So farewell to Ranulf, and I canna say I’m sorry for it.”

  “I am,” William admitted. “If there’s a snake in the middle of the hall, at least I know where it is. While Ranulf was here in the castle, we could keep an eye on him.”

  It crossed his mind that MacNaught might have found the Scepter of Badenoch and slipped out of Glengarry with it. Then he dismissed that notion, because Ranulf wouldn’t have been able to resist claiming the right to sit in the laird’s thronelike chair.

  “What are ye saying, Badenoch? Think ye I canna trust my own blood?” A vein popped out on Lord Glengarry’s forehead. “He’s my own sister’s boy. Ranulf may be rough about the edges, but he’s family. I’ll not hear a word against him.”

  “Not even if he has designs on your holding?”

  “Who dares say such a thing?” The earl’s voice rose to a roar and several diners’ spoons clattered to the trestle tables.

  William started to rise, but Kat stopped him with a hand to his forearm.

  “No one says that, Father,” Katherine said soothingly while shooting William a warning glance. “Nab, ’tis still Christmastide,” she called out gaily in an effort to forestall further argument. “Give us a story fit for the season, will ye?”

  The fool rose to his feet and fiddled with the ends of his multitasseled hat. While he knew plenty of stories, Nab didn’t have a bard’s ease of delivery in the telling of them. He hemmed and hawed and had to be coaxed to get the tale out. This time, however, Nab glanced over at Dorcas, who was refilling drinking horns at a nearby table. The serving girl tossed the fool a shy smile, and he stood straighter, clearing his throat.

  “Perhaps ye will have heard the tale of how the robin got his red breast?” he began.

  This was met with nods and smiles all around the great hall. Just because the story was familiar didn’t mean they wouldn’t enjoy hearing it told again, provided it was well told.

  “It came about like this, ye see, that on the night of Our Lord’s birth, his mother was fair concerned because of the bitter chill.” A puzzled look came over Nab’s face. “Makes a body wonder, does it not, why Our Lord chose to come to earth in the dead of winter when he might just as easily have been born on a soft spring night?”

  “He came to share our hardships,” Katherine whispered to William. “Few things are harder than winter.”

  Will could think of at least one—his wife’s stubborn head once she set her feet on a course. Well, he could be just as stubborn. If she thought he was going to spend his time in the chapel later praying himself into agreeing with her ridiculous scheme for an annulment, she was in for a grave disappointment.

  “There was a small fire in the stable for warmth on that holy night, but it had nearly burned itself out and Blessed Mary fretted herself that the Holy Child would be cold.” Nab punctuated this with an exaggerated shiver. “So she looked about at the animals in the stable to see if they would help.”

  Nab scratched his head. “This part of the story always makes me wonder where St. Joseph was, for surely he could have stoked up the fire.”

  It was unusual for a storyteller to depart from the original and interject his own thoughts into the tale. Perhaps that was why, instead of listening in quiet expectation, Beathag, the midwife, felt moved to add her conjecture to Nab’s telling.

  “No doubt he was seeing the shepherds who’d come visiting back out the door,” Beathag piped up. Margaret was doing so well, the midwife had allowed herself the luxury of dining in the hall for a change while one of the nursery maids sat with the lady. “The last thing ye need in a birthing room is a bunch of fellows who reek of sheep!”

  The whole company laughed soundly.

  “At any rate,” Nab continued with a pointed glare at Beathag for the interruption, “the Mother Mary asked the ox would he blow on the fire, but he’d already settled for the night on his bed of straw and was fast asleep.”

  “I’m not surprised in the least,” Lord Glengarry said, waving an admonitory spoon at Nab for suggesting such a thing might be possible. “An ox is not the most biddable of creatures at the best of times. How much less so on a cold winter night?”

  “Aye, I take yer point, my lord.” Nab tugged down his motley with exaggerated dignity. “However, may I remind ye that I didna make up the story? I’m merely telling the tale as I heard it told.”

  “Fair enough, Nab.” Lord Glengarry raised his soup bowl to his lips and slurped noisily. “Pray, continue.”

  “So then, Mary turned to the jackass that had borne her safe to Bethlehem. ‘Please, Master Donkey,’ quoth she, ‘will ye snort on the fire and bring it back to life?’”

  “It appears to me that the donkey had already done its part,” William said, for the pleasure of watching Nab’s ears turn bright red. “As I understand it, ’tis a long, weary way from Nazareth to Bethlehem.”

  “Aye, and bearing a woman near her time is no light matter,” came Margaret’s voice from the base of the stairs. When she appeared on the last step, a hand resting on her protruding abdomen, the entire hall erupted in cheers and applause, for they hadn’t seen the lady in several days.

  Katherine leaped to her feet and scurried over to help Margaret to the empty place on the other side of Lord Glengarry. Margaret protested
that she was fine and needed no special coddling, but her sweet smile said she was pleased by it nonetheless.

  “I couldna bear to be missing out on Christmastide up in my chamber a moment longer. I’ll be fine. Truly, I will,” Margaret said to keep Katherine from fussing over her. “I’m sorry to have interrupted your tale, Nab.”

  “Ye’re the only one,” he muttered. “Everyone else feels it their duty.”

  Katherine settled next to William again. He slid his hand under the table and took hers. To his surprise, she didn’t tug it away.

  Perhaps there’s something to what folk say about Christmas miracles.

  “We’ll listen quiet now, Nab,” Katherine said. “Finish the tale, if ye please.”

  “One by one, Mary asked the horse, the sheep, and the goat for help.” No one interrupted the fool this time, but some wag in the corner managed to get in a rather convincing “neigh,” “baa,” and “bleat” at appropriate times. “But none of them would tend the fire.”

  “Disheartened, Mother Mary wrapped her baby and held him close. Then she heard a flutter of wings. A small brown bird flew up to the rafters and peered down at her. He cocked his head, like this.” Nab gave a fair imitation of a robin eyeing something it intended to have for breakfast. “Now back then, the robin didna look as he does today. He was just a plain mud-colored bird, but beneath those drab feathers, there beat a great heart. Without being asked, the bird flew down to the dying fire and began flapping his wings with all his puny might.”

  Nab demonstrated by waving his arms before himself like a bellows. He made huffing and puffing sounds till he was quite red in the face.

  “That’s enough, Nab. We can imagine the rest,” the earl said. “I dinna want my fool to fall down trying to imitate a bird.”

  “Weel,” Nab said as he caught his breath, “I wasna done just yet. Ye see, according to the story, the robin sang the whole time too, so I thought I’d—”

  “In that case, we definitely want ye to stop!” Lord Glengarry roared with laughter. Nab’s singing more nearly resembled a bullfrog’s than a songbird’s. “Skip over the song for now and end your tale.”