The Chieftain's Curse Read online

  “Well?” the McArthur closed the gap between them in one short stride. He didn’t look in the mood to stand any more nonsense. If she hadn’t been able to surmise his mood from the derisory flare of his nostrils, the feel of his voice grazing her ears confirmed the notion.

  “Don’t just stand there staring, woman.” Mhairi was anxious to have her say, but Euan cut in.

  “Mhairi will take you above stairs and tell you what to do. Just don’t expect her to help with the work. Even if she were able, the woman has hardly slept in three days.”

  The crone looked a good age, and Morag found she could sympathise. She was a mite deprived of sleep herself. Yet before she laid another foot on the stairs, Euan halted her progress with a firm touch that made her breath catch.

  His hand wrapped round her upper arm, fingers easily meeting, since she had lost so much weight on her journey. “Wait!”

  For an excruciating moment she thought she was discovered, but when she glanced back over her shoulder and examined his expression, she saw him look away, eyes narrowed as he watched the maids begin to disperse. It seemed he wasn’t done with them yet. “Before you lassies leave the hall, I want it made known that I am black affronted by what has happened here today. All the maids, barring one should think shame. This woman’s offer to perform a task that petrifies you doesn’t excuse your behaviour. It will be a long time till I can bear to lay eyes on any of you. So, should you see me coming, don’t dare dawdle, run.”

  Morag felt a pulse beat where Euan’s palm pressed against the inside of her arm—his or hers she couldn’t tell. She knew only that the anger inside him flowed through his fingers and hence into her—a connection tainted by his emotions, wanted or not.

  Behind her, Morag heard feet shuffle upon the rushes, their scrape against the flagstones as the maids took him at his word and disappeared. She envied them the knowledge that they had places to lay their heads down. Yet she sensed a portion of despair in the sounds of their leaving, as if they wondered whether anything would ever be the same again. As if they were in mourning—not for the woman upstairs but for what her death had cost them.

  Drowning in her own thoughts, Morag wasn’t aware of Euan staring at her with the same wary expression she had noticed when she first made herself known by stepping out of the crowd.

  “Who are you?” he asked, searching her face with a question, but with no real recognition in the eyes that had tempted her to ruin her life.

  She relaxed a mite. “Morag of Roslyn,” she told him, using the name she had taken to hide behind on this part of their flight.

  “From Roslyn, hmm, the place is not familiar.”

  “It’s to the south, near Northumbria. My brother and I were traveling past Cragenlaw as the storm was breaking. The seneschal took pity on my brother and gave him work. Truthfully,” she lied without blinking, having rehearsed it so often in her mind. “We’d hoped to find some of our mother’s relatives living along the coast a ways, Stonehaven, but we found neither hide nor hair of them and no one knew of their whereabouts.”

  Twisting the truth was all that had kept them safe on the long journey from the edges of the disputed country lying between England and Scotland until they reached Cragenlaw. Morag felt not a twinge of conscience at misrepresenting them once more. “We’re right grateful for the shelter of your house.”

  “Tonight, the indebtedness is mostly on my side. What troubles me is why the curse doesn’t frighten you the way it does the other maids? Even a few hours at Cragenlaw are long enough to have heard the tales of the curse.”

  For once, she need not shelter behind a lie. The truth would serve her better. “I’m barren,” she spoke brazenly, as if challenging him to acknowledge her reality—that in her own way, she too lived under a curse.

  Euan’s reaction was to shutter his emotions behind the dull haze she glimpsed at the back of his eyes as he released her arm.

  His response didn’t surprise Morag one whit. After her lack became known, her value to her father and older brother vanished. She’d become a useless creature, to be pitied but not married.

  Yet still a danger to Doughall.

  Why else had Morag worn through two pair of rough boots on the journey to Cragenlaw? If only she had been cognisant of the black cloud shaping the lives of all those residing under Cragenlaw’s roof, perhaps she wouldn’t have gone to the bother.

  It took her less than a second to reconsider that thought.

  Who else could she ask to defend her against Doughall if not the McArthur? She pondered the conundrum as once more she climbed the stairs to the Chieftain’s apartments. All else was forgotten the moment she passed through the solar and entered the bedchamber once more.

  Her gaze encompassed the whole.

  Morag had never met the woman, and in these violent times the sight of death held no fears. Men lived, they fought and they died. It was the way of her world. That being understood, she had no explanation for the tears that rushed to her eyes and brimmed over onto her cheeks.

  Why then did she sense that she cried not for the woman on the bed, nor for own fast-growing problems?

  No. Her innate self-knowledge understood that the tears she shed were for the man downstairs in the great hall.

  Astrid’s death had obviously addled his brain. Ach, and who would wonder at it if he did end up mad?

  Three wives—three marriages—none of them love matches. Not for him the grand passion sealed with a swift clasping of hands. No, the getting of an heir could not be left to chance. Arrangements were safer.

  Aye, well, if that were true, why did he feel like a murderer, and guilty that he still noticed Morag’s perfume on the air about him. Euan drew in one more breath before striding across the hall, feeling oddly comforted by its presence in his head.

  He had not seen his constable, Graeme McArthur, since Astrid began having pains. However, as his father had before him, he trusted Graeme with his life and his castle as well as his clan. Graeme had ridden by his father’s side, had been with Euan when the witch had laid her curse on him.

  It had happened following one of King Malcolm Canmore’s raids into Northumbria. They had been searching for stragglers, trying to escape the Scots. Using fire, they flushed out the faint-hearted, through a forest of oak and ash, soft underfoot from the detritus of years.

  Unexpectedly, a couple of his men at arms had dragged into camp an old harridan screaming and carrying on at the top of her lungs. “Where is he?” she’d yelled. “Where is the lord o’ these rogues who burned my cabin down to the dirt it stood on?”

  “I’m their leader, Euan McArthur, at your service,” he mocked, pushing back the metal links forming a hood above the hauberk that covered him from neck to thigh. Then he had snorted, still young enough then to find humour in the sight of a filthy scrap of humanity screaming like a banshee and thinking to challenge him. “And for the information of ignoramuses, such as yourself, my men are warriors, not a rogue amongst them,” he boasted while he dismounted.

  He should have run.

  By age eighteen, he had been as tall as he was now, but with a lot less sense. Naively, he presumed that the wrinkled bag of bones might feel intimidated if he remained on horseback. Life with old Mhairi had taught him to respect women old enough to be his mother, and for sure that one could have been his great-great-grandmother.

  Once dismounted, he had discovered his mistake.

  “Well then, ‘tis the McArthur is it?” She pointed a bony finger and, bent over as she was by age, it quivered in the direction of the plaid kilted around his thighs.

  “That would be my father.” His youthfulness letting him down again, the words came out with a gurgle as he forced down the laugh lying at the back of his throat. Before him, he saw a creature from the scary stories Mhairi used to tell to pass a cold winter’s night, told when the snow lay thick on the ground outside as they sat snug by the fire burning in the hearth.

  The witch’s lip curled and her bushy gre
y eyebrows twitched as if she read his thoughts. “Hear me, young McArthur, hear me true. For the last of the o’er proud McArthur line will be you.”

  “Hah, will you listen tae that, McArthur,” bellowed Graeme. “She’s going to shrivel your cod.” All the men around them had laughed, thinking it was a fine jest.

  Euan had joined in, but it was all he could do not to clutch his scrotum with both hands. Next to fighting, at that age the skill he’d been most proud of was giving a lassie a good ride.

  “Not to worry, that would be too easy on you. Nay, this I know for sure, not one o’ your wives will bear you a live son. Aye, this I promise, your seed will plant well, but all that will thrive is fear. Live with that if you can, McArthur.”

  “Wives!” he howled with laughter, slapping his thigh. “I’m not married, and not likely to be for many a long year.”

  “My curse has no limit. It will stay with you all your days.” Then she cackled and rubbed salt into the wound, assuring him, “And your nights as well.”

  Done with her palaver, he had his men drag her away, and never thought of it again until Magdalene, his first wife, died in childbirth, bearing him a son. They were buried together, as would the ones above stairs.

  He hadn’t been the only one to recall that fateful meeting. By the time he lost Fiona, his second wife, what had begun as a murmur had become a roar with everyone talking about the curse.

  And here he was again, back at the beginning, with no son, no wife and still cursed. Euan the Cursed. Better the old crone had killed him than all those innocents.

  Yet he’d promised his father that the McArthurs would take the new road. Son would inherit from father. No more taking turn-about, one faction of a clan, or one brother, succeeding another while the real heir was cast aside. It led to war. “Remember Duncan and Macbeth,” his father told Euan. “Remember well.”

  Euan had vowed he would.

  Malcolm Canmore had borne the brunt of blame for Macbeth’s death, but Euan’s father had believed that following the old ways had rooted the country in a continuous struggle for power.

  In this if naught else, they would take the English way.

  Out in the bailey, cold air tugged at his hair. The rain and hail that had flooded burns and felled trees had receded to a drizzle. Its softness coated his shoulders in gleaming wet pearls, but failed to soothe. The weather had done its worst and beaten him by keeping the midwife from the castle.

  Dawn was breaking the most hellish night of his life. The fitful light allowed Graeme McArthur to observe his approach. He was out of the guardroom, quickly striding across the cobbled bailey toward Euan.

  Graeme was battle ready, sword at his hip, skean dhu strapped on his calf, and knife hilts poking from the thick leather shields strapped to his forearms. The constable could spit a quail at a hundred feet with a skean dhu. He was a good man to have on your side in a fight. Now, he simply opened his arms and grabbed Euan in a bear hug, thumping him on the back in the way of a man who knew better how to kill than to comfort. “Good God, Euan…”

  Graeme gasped for air and Euan knew his old friend was uncomfortable with the emotions he felt. “What can I do, what can I say? I’m fair frustrated. I just wish I had strangled that old witch. If you want me to kill the men who dragged her into camp, tell me, I’ll do it without a qualm.”

  Euan gave him a thump on the back in return. “I refuse to make a murderer of you, old friend. I’ve another way to punish them. First set them to dig the grave. I want it dug deep so neither dogs nor wolves can reach them. And rocks, lots of rocks. Make sure to tell them I want it dry as a bone without the slightest dribble of water in it or they can do it again.’

  “I’ll kick their arses if they don’t make a good job.” Graeme assured him, “but surely that isn’t punishment enough for such an error of judgement.”

  “Aye, you’re right. That’s only the start. Once the weather clears, they will go in search of the witch then tell me where to find her. She can remove the curse or die. I cannot keep burying wives and sons.” His hand curled into a fist he slammed into his other palm. “He was a big braw lad, Graeme. He would have made me proud.”

  “I’ll make sure they find her, Euan, for I’ll put the fear of death in them should they dare to fail.”

  “Better in them, than in me or mine,” Euan pronounced. Drawing himself up to his full height, he flexed his shoulders, ready once more to face the tragedy awaiting inside his apartments. Turning on his heel, he went to make sure his family were being well cared for by the stranger to whom he’d entrusted their welfare.

  Something about the woman niggled at the back of his mind, like an itch he couldn’t reach to scratch.

  Who was she, this woman who drew his attention away from the wife and child who deserved all of it and more?

  Barren, she said, but was she a widow, or had her husband cast her off because of that lack? Yet as he entered the great hall, he remembered how Morag of Roslyn had looked as she walked away from him without turning back, as if the attraction he felt stir his loins wasn’t reciprocated.

  Chapter 4

  Morag picked up the baby she’d dressed in a gown his mother had sewn with her own hands. The tiny stitches spoke of her expertise and set Morag wondering if the nuns had taught Astrid.

  Something her own father hadn’t thought necessary for a motherless daughter. Sons with a good sword arm were more advantageous, in his opinion, and when it became known she was barren, her value fell even farther; even her dowry had ceased to be necessary. “No man with any sense in his head would take a barren woman to wife,” her father had roared at her. From then on, her contact with her father had deteriorated to practically nothing. While her father and older brother ate in the hall, she and Rob had felt more at home in the kitchen.

  She looked at Mhairi then back at Euan’s son as she wrapped him in a woollen shawl she’d taken from the chest. She tucked in the corners so it held his little body tight, secure. Sandalwood scented the garments and shawl—an exotic perfume, unexpected in a place so far north of what she regarded as civilisation. There had been no lack in the house that had provided the chest.

  What would Astrid’s father think when he heard? Would he beat his chest in grief? Or would he feel anger that he had lost the no small measure of power and protection that Nhaimeth implied the marriage had brought Comlyn.

  A sigh seeped between her lips as she handed the small bundle to Mhairi. The futility of these deaths was hard to bear. “The baby looks much like his father.”

  The old nurse nodded in agreement. “The others did an all. The McArthur seed always throws true. Euan was the spit of his own father.”

  Mhairi wandered off toward the wooden crib, humming a lullaby under her breath as she placed the baby inside. The crib began to rock as if some unseen hand guided the motion. In the back of her mind she saw Astrid, still big with child, rocking the crib as if practising for the impending birth, humming softly to the rhythmic sound the crib made.

  Morag knew how it felt to feel a baby kick in her womb, to rub a hand over her belly, thinking not long, not long now.

  What Mhairi had said about Euan looking exactly like his own father might once have put Morag in a panic. Perhaps bringing Rob here to Cragenlaw hadn’t been such an excellent notion. But, then, her choices had been few and now the die was cast, she felt remarkably calm.

  If she and Rob could depend on anyone to stand behind them, it would be Euan, even if she were forced to tell him the truth.

  She had decided to lead Rob to Cragenlaw Castle, because they couldn’t hide forever. She knew that if Doughall didn’t manage to rid the world of the threat Rob presented, the dark abomination at her brother’s right hand surely would.

  To the swarthy skinned Moor power was an aphrodisiac.

  Morag remembered her father having a board game, intricately carved pieces he moved in certain patterns that made no sense to her. She recalled only that the small ones were called pawns and
were at the mercy of the others. That was how the Moor saw the rest of the world, pieces he moved around to suit his plans.

  Kalem had been hunting with her father the day he reported that his lordship had tumbled from his steed and broken his neck. Her skin had prickled as she watched her father brought in draped across his saddlebow, the Moor leading his horse. She knew then they would have to leave, but the catalyst that finally sent them running had been something so terrible she couldn’t bear to think of it.

  With her back to Mhairi, she stared at the woman on the bed, coming to the conclusion that her life could have been much worse. She could be the one on the bed. She thought of the scented chest filled with baby clothes. Astrid must have anticipated the birth with a happy heart. And Euan … surely he had thought himself lucky to have such a beautiful wife. Contract marriages didn’t promise the wife should be well looking. It only needed an alliance and a dowry suited to her status.

  “There’s only her hair to be dressed now, lassie. Here, take this.” She handed Morag an ivory comb to attend to the red-gold tresses. She and Euan’s wife were like night and day. Unbound, Morag’s own hair was like the cloak of night. So dark that her father had once mentioned that when she walked through the dim places of his keep, it absorbed all the light, making her appear invisible.

  That had been before she’d earned his displeasure, after which he refused even to pass the time of day with her. Then, she had really become invisible to her fathers eyes.

  Unlike Lady Astrid whose beauty shone even in death.

  It felt strange to remove tangles from hair as gold in colour as the Norse torque around her throat studded with gems. The old nurse watched her comb Astrid’s hair saying, “I’ll tell that wee man in the solar he can come in, now that she’s decent.”

  Without turning, Morag felt the Fool’s eyes on her as she smoothed the comb through the fine strands, dividing and twisting the hair into ribbons, plaiting them into long golden braids so that they flowed over Astrid’s shoulders as if she were simply asleep.