The Chieftain Needs an Heir - a Highland ménage novella (Clan MacKrannan's Secret Traditions) (3 page)

Sorcha beheld the trencher
with disdain.  Blaeberries, oatmeal bannocks, a great mass of kail barely cooked, and two bits of salmon somewhere underneath.  This confinement to her bedchamber would be a long time in passing.  And she was yet to be told what was to happen at the end.

"Eat it up, milady.  Ye will need yer strength."

It boded well if activity was foreseen.  Being the victim of murder was more usually a passive event.  Sorcha squashed blaeberries onto a bannock and munched, finding herself smiling for the first time in too long.  They had brought her the gift of hope.

The Three Wisewomen convened briefly in the privacy of the garderobe
, which was not unexpected.  They knew what they were about.  Sorcha would naturally be excluded from their hatchings.

Oona
ate a bit of dinner with them all, packed Mirren's unopened basket into the empty hamper and sought out the Bard.

"Carrot seeds, ye say?  But
they would stop the lass getting wi' child!"

"
The wild carrot species, aye, and that is what these are," said Oona with a sadness. "And mair than that, husband… they would cause her to slip any she conceived."

"Ye're sure it has been Mirren herself? 
A mischief-maker in the kitchens, perhaps…"

"The seeds are raw, worked
right delicately into the cakes after they are baked, and they're only in the harder ones.  These seeds must be chewed well to work. Mirren has had them for her own use since her two babes were birthed.  I have seen her in my scrying and here is the proof now.  It was Cecily warned me, for she had marked the time when Mirren's face changed and then followed the lines of treachery grown deeper with every moon."

The Bard sat back in his chair.  Sorcha's fallow womb was explained.  His problem now
lay in deciding what to do with the information.  Who stood to gain from this?  Mirren was wed to the younger brother Ruaridh and their son would be in line for Chief if Niall had no heir.  Was it just Mirren, or was Ruaridh involved?  Yet the brothers were close, and Ruaridh had saved Niall's life only last year when an escapade went awry.  Nay… this was just Mirren's doing.  A minx, she was.  But who to tell?  Should he convene with the Chief and his two sons?

"Dinna fret, husband.
  None need be told. Sorcha is safe wi' the Wisewomen for a while yet."

"
But the Tradition need no' be invoked at all now, as long as Mirren's cakes are stopped.  What is the point o' keeping her confined?"

The grin now on his wife's face was enough to make the Bard wonder what Mirren's comeuppance might be.

"We will still be invoking the Tradition.  We canna let Hilde and Cecily's work preparing the Chamber of the Green Man go to waste."

"
Aye, well,  I suppose a century's worth o' cobwebs has been a long time in clearing."

"Nay, nay
, husband, every generation o' Wisewomen have kept it decent and ready.  There has simply been no call for its use, for we have bounteous harvests every year and the livestock have birthed fine all that time.  Nay, it's the incantations have already been done, and supplies ordered, and... ach, all sorts o' things ye needna trouble yerself about, but they canna be left unused once they're invited.  Besides, it will do Niall and Sorcha the world o' good afore their lives are filled wi' bairns.  Now, tell me, have ye finished yer research yet?"

"I have
."

"And are ye decided?"

"I am.  It has to be Hector, though I am no' sure he'll be pleased to hear it."

"Hector?
"

Oona threw back her head and laughed herself off the chair.

The boat ride to the Clootie Well was fast becoming a daily run for Mirren since the cake parties with Sorcha had stopped.

Being the wife of the
chieftain's younger brother was not as high as her aspirations.  She had ever felt second best, the runner-up in the competition, the bridesmaid instead of the bride, the… ach, what was the use.  She could feel the wrinkles cracking deeper when it came to mind.  It wouldn't do to start wrinkles and her so young.

Her father would not
have forced her to wed a MacKrannan, knowing that the clan's traditions were abnormally queer although he was stumped when asked the details, but she had gladly agreed.  Ruaridh was a handsome big Highlander and a grand husband, and she'd been gotten with child near straight off.  He was attentive enough, when she crooked her finger and could be bothered with him, and he treated her decent.  What more could she have asked for?  

It was
at their wedding that she'd first met his brother Niall and saw she'd committed to the wrong man in the family.  Now there was a husband for a girl like her.  He had everything of Ruaridh and about a half again extra.  The stature that came with his responsibilities because he was chieftain, the extra deep curtsy from the servants because he was chieftain, the invitations to court because he was… ach, what was the use.  Niall never looked her road much anyway beyond good manners and a bit of conversation.  But in the dark of her bedchamber when Ruaridh came visiting, it was the chieftain's face she imagined above her.  The same hair as black as the night but more to bury her fingers in while he loved her, the same MacKrannan eyes but with the power of command in them, the same broad chest but with a set to his shoulders that… ach, what was the use.

All had been tolerable until Niall had wed Sorcha.  Built like a flagpole and the fairest of hair flapping in the wind.  And Niall was just besotted.  A fa
erie tale, they all said.

U
ntil she'd put a stop to it with her special cakes.  Her own son would be chieftain and then Chief if Sorcha couldna breed.  And a wife that couldna breed would soon lose her appeal.  Sure enough, the big lass was a mess now, going round the castle with her face tripping her.  And sure enough, Niall was back at the wenching.

The wife of
the chieftain's wee brother had little standing in society but she had a power over the clan that none knew of.  Oona the Grandam Wisewoman had come every morn since the Summons to bathe her, and never once given sign that she suspected anything amiss.

Mirren took her guard's arm to step from boat to shore.  The island was deserted, the way she liked it, and the
climb to the Clootie Well a peaceful one.  She took a white rag from her pocket and rubbed it on the grass till it came streaked with green.  And as she tied it onto the tree, her chant was
'Fertility be damned for Sorcha!' 

It
could never work as well as the carrotseeds in the cakes, but the older way of fixing ills was all she had left to try.  Tie a cloot with yer problem onto the tree at the well, and leave yer troubles there behind ye.  Green was the color of fertility, and Sorcha's impending fertility was the problem.

S
he was just turning to leave when she lost her footing, and would have fallen down the slope had she not managed to grab hold a bunch of cloots on a loaded branch.  An ominous creaking became a crack.  Mirren found herself sitting beside the well covered in years' worth of cloots of ailments and worries.  In her haste to be free of it, and trying to get a decent handhold to shove it away, she touched many more cloots than if she had merely stood up and let it fall.

Ach… w
hat the hell sort o' afflictions had she brought on herself… and how many?           

Two day's journey away from MacKrannan Castle, t
he king of Scots snored mercilessly in his own bedchamber.  His queen through the wall was restless and awake.  What had possessed her to order a plateful of spicy sausages before bedtime, and her not even with child, unusually?

The
vivid dreams repeatedly awakening her were about Hector MacKrannan, the Captain of her personal bodyguard.  It must be because he had now completed three years in her service, and it had crossed her mind that he should be entitled to a much longer leave of absence than the few days off she'd occasionally allowed him before.  Why this should be niggling her into sleeplessness she could not fathom, for the able Lieutenant would cover his post, but she depended much on Hector.  The prospect of his not being there to protect her did not sit easily.

The resolution came to her – the
sooner he was gone, the sooner he would return.  She'd send him home this very minute and get a restful sleep.  There.  It was resolved.  She sent her Lady-in-Waiting to the guard outside the door, who sent his fellow guard down the stairs to the Captain's room.

Hector
was already awake, for his mind seemed full of his cottage at MacKrannan Castle and the clansfolk there, and sleep had totally eluded him.  Middle of the night or no', the queen's orders were the queen's orders.  But just in case it was some enemy ploy to have him out the way, he went upstairs to check with the guard and the Lady-in-Waiting first, and then with Her sleepless Majesty herself.  And then he went to his Lieutenant's room to pass on the temporary command of the bodyguard.  And only then did he awaken the kitchenmaid and the stablehand, by good fortune both in the same bed, as he acknowledged with a slight lift of an eyebrow, to pack him some sustenance and saddle his horse.

The wench currently on her back with her skirts round her waist had been a favorite of Niall's in his stag days and nights, yet his mind was so far from the job that he'd not yet begun it.  The whole room reeked of honeysuckle, an unusual choice of decoration considering there was none in her garden, and his mindload of Sorcha was putting him well off his stroke.