The Chieftain's Curse Read online

  The Chieftain’s Curse

  The Chieftain’s Curse

  Frances Housden

  Euan McArthur is a chieftain in need of an heir.

  While still a young a warrior, Euan incites the fury of a witch. She retaliates with a curse that no wife will ever bear him an heir. As he buries his third wife and yet another bonnie stillborn son, Euan can no longer cast her words aside.

  Morag Farquhar is a woman in need of sanctuary. With a young relative in tow, Morag flees the only home she has ever known to escape her brother, Baron of Wolfsdale, and find sanctuary in the MacArthur stronghold. Pronounced barren by a midwife, Morag is of little value to her family, but a Godsend to Euan, a lover he can’t kill by getting with child.

  Years ago, chance drew them together, and tangled their lives in ways they could never have imagined. This time their destiny lies in their own hands, but it will take courage and strong hearts to see it through to the end.

  Acknowledgements

  Researching historical books takes time and I’m lucky to have a husband who doesn’t mind lending a helping hand when the going gets tough. This is to say thank you, Keith. Some of the other facts, such as Queen Margaret’s cave, came from places I visited as a child with my grandfather and through spending my formative years in the ‘Kingdom of Fife’, a county rich in Scottish history. I’d also like to thank Susan Church, my sister-in-law, who always reads my books first and isn’t afraid to tell the truth.

  Having written a book set in the past, I would like to dedicate this book to two people from my past who have helped influence my writing:

  John Gibb, my grandfather

  who imbued me with a love of history from a very early age and

  the late Beverly Barton

  who showed me, while I was still a very inexperienced published author, how to pick myself up and carry on doing what I love no matter what.

  Glossary of Scottish Words

  (in order of occurrence)

  Throng – bad-tempered

  Skelp – smack

  Breacan-an-feile – a kilted plaid held by a belt

  Skean dhu – dagger or dirk

  Aye – yes, but in some cases it means always

  Sauncy – attractive or sexy

  Cataran – outlaws

  Besom – a twig broom; figuratively, aggravating woman

  Ceilidh – a celebration with song and dance

  Fash – worry

  Capercailie – a very large European grouse

  Uisge beatha –whisky, the water of life

  Slàinte mathas – good health

  Linty – Linnet, a small finch

  Sleekit – crafty, deceitful

  Mho creagh – my heart

  Sept – a branch of a clan

  Caw canny – take it easy

  Syne – since

  Swither – unable to decide

  Prologue

  Year of Our Lord 1069

  The Abbot was forever telling Morag that disobedient daughters would go to hell. He forgot to tell her that hell lay only a few miles from her father’s hall, and here she was in the middle of it, with dire feelings of dread twisting in her belly.

  Stay or run?

  The battle was over, aye, but not the worst of its aspects. Around her, blood from the dead and dying seeped into the mud, churned earth, giving off a scent like iron. It reminded her of the amber-coloured water in the burn where she liked to bathe. She would never be able to go there now without remembering this carnage.

  Through the gloaming, souls rank with despair shifted like wraiths, silent, stealthily amongst the detritus of war. Once the scavengers had finished their gruesome dance, there would be no cover left for the slain, naught but the shroud of swiftly gathering darkness on the edges of the Northumbrian shore.

  Then it would be the wolves’ turn.

  Real live wolves, unlike her father’s men-at-arms, who fought under the beast’s name—as if it were in truth they who were Baron Farquhar of Wolfsdale’s litter, instead of Morag and her two brothers.

  Taking shallow breaths to damp the stench of blood and other scents invading her throat, Morag bent to roll another inert warrior onto his back. Still no sign of her brother Gavyn.

  The Black Wolf’s eldest whelp had fallen.

  Morag had watched him from behind the shelter of clumped bracken nearby. Her limbs trembling she’d hidden, fearful of discovery. Biting her lower lip till it bled had helped stifle her scream as she lost sight of him. The melee of struggling warriors had made it difficult to keep his colours in view. She studied her present surroundings, certain her last glimpse of Gavyn had been near this spot by the willow grove.

  One body then another on and on, Morag lost count of the dead faces she studied, features of both friend and foe, none of them her brother.

  Many of the Scots who had flooded across the Northumbrian border at King Malcolm Canmore’s behest would remain where they had fallen. The dead around her lay spattered with grey velvet catkins slashed from the branches.

  More waste, but not of her making.

  The gloaming deepened around her. A warning that she had little time left. Danger lurked in this place, floating above the dead and scavengers, a greed-filled miasma more terrifying than any fierce predator.

  The instant she decided to leave, she found her glance snagged by a large-boned frame, as large as that of the heir to the Baron of Wolfsdale. With no thought for the mud and gore, Morag dropped to her knees.

  In death, the ringmail-covered body sprawled face down, spilling over the muddy bank of a brook winding through a fold in the hills. Like so many warriors, he had been hit by a crossbow bolt, the type used by her father’s hired French mercenaries. This one protruded from below the shoulder of his muddied mail shirt.

  Gavyn had worn such a one as that.

  Fearful of what she might find, Morag swallowed her breath until it seemed the air would burst out through her chest taking her heart with it. Gingerly, she placed both hands on the helm in an effort to turn the warrior’s head, yet fearing to look. She needn’t have worried, the failing light made it impossible to distinguish the features behind the nose-guard.

  With both hands, she tugged the cold, mud-smeared metal free of his damp hair, almost glad when a glimmer of colour, a plaid floating in the water, solved her lack of resolution. She no longer needed to look at his face to know it wasn’t Gavyn.

  She let the helm slip from her fingers, watched it roll down the bank into the water. What did it matter? The man wouldn’t need its weighty protection anymore.

  A rush of regret replaced the fear she’d felt when she believed he was Gavyn. The Scot’s raider had the body of a man, but the face of a boy, probably only a few years older than herself. So handsome, even in death, just to look at him made her chest tighten.

  With the dying of the light, her last chance of finding Gavyn disappeared. Her heart felt leaden as she realised the time had come to escape the battle’s aftermath while she was still able. Gathering up her skirts, Morag grasped the linen in small tight fists, raising the bloodied hem out of the dirt to make walking easier as she stepped away from the corpse.

  Tears of failure streamed down her cheeks as she turned to search out a safe path.

  A gurgle of fear spilled from her lips as, thwarted, she looked down upon the long fingers encircling one of her ankles. Falling to her knees her hands scrabbled in the dirt, seeking a muddied weapon she had glimpsed earlier, desperate to wrest it from the ground before the approaching murk of night dimmed her vision. Blood rushing in her ears, she doggedly sought the weapon’s help in the fight for her life.

  Then she heard a rough Scots voice, jagged with fatigue, begging, “Help me.”
/>   Contents

  Acknowledgements

  Glossary of Scottish Words

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  About the Author

  Chapter 1

  Twelve years later

  Months … weeks … all the angst-filled days she had spent trudging toward Castle Cragenlaw were over. She waited for joy to fill her soul, waited in vain. Aye, she had reached the castle but had yet to gain entry.

  Breaking all around her, the noise of the storm was fearful. Morag felt it sap her energy as her fists slammed one more echoing blow against the enormous wooden door. She sobbed aloud, convinced no one would hear, even if she gave sway to the cries that rang through her mind—cries she dare not give voice to. Help, the words rang in her head.

  Help us.

  Fears unspoken, prayers she held close to her breast loth to reveal them to Rob. The lad had come through enough without piling more worries onto the apprehension she had seen on his face.

  Keeping him safe had been her life’s work.

  Her forehead rested on the door, heavy rain pounding, seeping through the loose weave of her old plaid, soaking her hair, wetting her skin. She felt too weary to care that it ran in a stream between her shoulder blades, trickled over every ridge of her spine like the cold sweat of fear—something she should be used to. Aye, Morag was aware the trembles that shook her weren’t wrought from the chill in the air or the sudden eruption of thunderheads surging skywards to swallow the noonday sun.

  Nay, it was trepidation. Terror that, after all she had put both her and Rob through, she had failed utterly.

  Thoughts tumbled through her head, doubts she dare not share with Rob, dread of being denied entry no matter how hard her fists pounded the huge iron-banded doors barring the gated entrance to Castle Cragenlaw.

  Shuddering with exhaustion and breathing hard, she raised her forehead from the narrow split in the wood that marked the edge of a lesser gate set into the main portal. She needed a moment, just one—nay two, if she were honest—time to garner enough energy to wring a quivering plea from her throat, “Let … us … in…”

  She banged, she begged in vain, her words snaffled by the fierce swell of wind almost as soon as they were uttered.

  Close by, filling his usual space beside her shoulder, she felt Rob arrive, heard the rasp of his breath from the climb and his burden. Their remaining possessions were in the sacks he carried then dropped near their feet. Together they made the best of what little protection the stone arch provided.

  The silence between them stretched, felt worse than if he’d let out a curse. They had always been close. Always. She would hate to think he sensed her despair and resisted offering comfort as he flattened his weight on the gate next to hers. Rob wouldn’t thank her for treating him like a child. Young, Rob might be, he had still been her strength, her good right arm on a journey where danger dogged their heels and their destination held no certain promise safety.

  Behind them lay the long, steep sweep of the causeway. They had barely set foot upon it when the storm broke over them, turning noon into midnight. Thunderbolts split the clouds, crashes that smelled like sulphur or, worse, brimstone—the devil’s work. Or God’s, punishing her for daring to escape her sinner’s fate.

  Her strength was puny compared to that of the storm. How could anyone hear her fists on the door. The thumps would never measure up.

  Never, she thought, as a terrifying bolt of lightning split heaven and its report shook both the castle and the cobbles under their feet. “I think the causeway has gone,” Rob croaked as they both twisted round to look back down at the path they had taken but minutes before. At the foot of the raised jut of land that attached Cragenlaw to the Scottish mainland, a soughing and groaning flailed air. They stared, dumbfounded, as a huge tree growing on the low cliff above the sea was wrenched from the soil. Branches screeched in agony against the rocks as the giant toppled, blocking the causeway, trapping them.

  Morag grabbed Rob’s arm as another flash exposed the tree’s earth-clogged roots. Black fingers reached skyward in a defiant gesture, much like the one that had brought her here.

  There was now no turning back.

  She had come seeking safety for herself and Rob. Now chances were they’d die where they stood. The thought had scarcely formed when the gate behind her abruptly swung open. Morag tumbled through the gap, heart racing, and a stifled scream stuttered in her throat as muscular arms opened to break her fall. The man put her away from him, held her arms by two age-worn fists. “Lord save us, woman, where have you been?”

  For all the ferocity of the booming voice, Morag caught a glimpse of relief in the bright blue eyes as another flash lit his beard-grizzled face. “The castle has been in an uproar. It’s over three days since the messenger was sent. More than enough time, one would imagine, for you to have arrived days ago.”

  Bewildered, Morag’s heartbeat faltered. “The messenger,” she whispered. Fear blocked her windpipe, but she took heart that the gate was still open—a circumstance she clung to with what little remained of the optimism they had started out with. They had survived their horrendous journey. She felt Rob tug on her plaid. It took all her strength to resist clutching his fist in hers, but resist she did. No matter the cost, Morag intended that she and Rob would pass through the opening. Would, step inside the solid granite walls encircling Cragenlaw at last.

  “Aye, the McArthur sent his man off himself. I’m Callum of Stonehaven, and I mind the gate. I see them all. ‘Fetch me the midwife’ he shouted as soon as Lady Astrid’s birth pains began, and he roared those very words as the messenger rode through this gate like a man with the devil on his heels. But never mind that, where is he now?”

  Morag ignored the question, instead she said, “Three days and she still hasn’t given birth?” She prayed the horror twisting her innards didn’t show overmuch. There would be no midwife arriving that day, or any day soon. The castle was impregnable. With waves licking halfway up the castle’s sides there was no way in but the causeway; but first, one must climb over the tree.

  She took a deep breath. “You had better take me to her,” she said, trying to ignore Rob’s gasp of surprise, but all he did was nudge her leg with one of the sacks. Rob was as aware as her that if the birth went wrong at this late stage, the blame might fall on her head.

  She’d take that chance willingly if it meant Rob would be safe. Safely hidden behind the thick granite walls of Castle Cragenlaw.

  Callum was mumbling into his beard, but she was interested only in asking, “Was there no one else to help the poor lady? I’d have thought in a castle this size there would be plenty of women with experience of birthing.”

  She couldn’t very well admit to having more experience with mares than mothers. Her personal experience of child-bearing had gone dreadfully wrong and shaped her life from that day to this.

  “Ach, they all claim ignorance when it comes to a happening that should be natural,” he said not bothering to hide his scepticism as he herded them before him. “Still, one can hardly blame them.”

  Shocked, Morag formed a sharp edge around her next question. “And why would that be? I should think womanly compassion would wring their
hearts to see another in need.” She knew how deep that need could run.

  “Oh, they can’t see her, but there is no escaping her screams no matter where you hide in the castle.”

  Hear their Lady screaming… Had nobody thought to give her some wood to bite on? Morag knew to her cost that although the practice didn’t stop the screams it did dull the roar. She would admit she had tasted wood at the back of her throat for weeks afterward. Even now, memory coated her tongue with the tang of resin. “It shocks me that people can be so cruel,” she spat out her disgust.

  “Lady Astrid is far from alone. There’s old Mhairi and the McArthur himself. He hasn’t left his wife’s side since she began to labour.”

  There … it was confirmed. Euan had a wife. What else had she expected?

  She watched Callum’s shoulders lift and fall, heard him sigh, and knew he was building up to justify the women of Cragenlaw’s reasons for failing their mistress. Even before he spoke, memories of suffering hardened her heart against any excuse he could make. She felt it sit like a stone locked in her chest.

  “It’s the curse you see. Aye, few women living at Cragenlaw have had babies, and the childless lasses have gotten it into their heads that the curse is catching. It’s a sorrowful state of affairs, and all because the McArthur needs an heir. Though, it has to be said in his favour that he hasn’t been backward in the attempt. Three wives he’s taken to his bed, and this one’s likely to go the way of the others. Hadn’t you heard, lass? His first two wives died in childbirth.”

  Stunned, Morag shook her head, but Callum wasn’t done. What could she say that wouldn’t give lie to his assumption that she was the midwife? “Three wives and two dead in childbirth,” she sputtered.

  “Aye, and the McArthur’s sons along with them,” he continued. “That’s why the castle lasses won’t go near Lady Astrid. Once they knew she was carrying, they gave her a wide berth. Very few women dinnae want babies at some stage or another, as no doubt because of your calling you’d be aware.” A trident of light splashed the sky with cold fire, as if his words had dragged it down on them—a fine reason for Morag to let her shocked expression show.