On a Highland Shore (3 page)

“Dagmar’s hardly a suitable wife for the heir of Somerstrath,” Fiona said crisply. “Can ye imagine her as the lady of Somerstrath?”

“How would we ken who fathered her children?”

“Someone should tell Dagmar she’d best set her sights elsewhere.”

“Someone has. My mother was quite emphatic.”

Margaret sighed, thinking of her mother’s irritability in the last few months. Surely it was only because of the babe she carried, but Mother, always quick-tempered, had been especially difficult lately, her moods unpredictable, her annoyance with Margaret obvious. And frequent. Margaret couldn’t wait for her wedding. She’d escape Mother’s moods, go to court, and be part of its glittering world. Be the mistress of her own home, which she was determined would be filled with laughter instead of constant strife as Somerstrath was. And she’d have a husband who was both charming and devoted to her.

They turned to other topics, their conversation slowing, then stopping altogether. Margaret closed her eyes, telling herself that she needed to enjoy the sunshine, and after a few moments, she slept.

“Margaret! Wake up!”

She gasped in surprise and opened her eyes when four-year-old Fergus threw himself atop her with a gleeful cry. She smiled and clasped the little boy to her chest. Nell was right behind him, but the other boys ran down to the water instead, chasing the shore birds into the air with hoots of delight. Fiona laughed and shook her head.

“Ye were asleep, Margaret,” Fergus said. “In the day.”

Margaret laughed. “So I was.”

Nell’s mouth was pursed as she sank next to Margaret. “Mother is in one of her moods. Nothing makes her happy. She’s constantly cross.”

“She’s tired,” Margaret said. “Ye ken what she’s like in the last few weeks. Everything wearies her.”

“I,” Nell intoned, “will never have children.”

Fiona rolled her eyes. Margaret fought a smile and brushed Nell’s light brown hair back over her shoulder. She remembered being twelve, remembered the struggle she’d felt she’d waged to be treated as an adult. Her sister was voluble, quick to love, quick to anger, quick to forgive. Impatient. Headstrong. And the most loyal ally Margaret could imagine. They were very close. She told Nell things she wouldn’t even tell Fiona. She would miss that. As she’d miss the little boy curling now against her, the smell of sunshine and earth in his hair. She smiled at Nell. “No children? Not even if they were like Fergus?”

Nell shook her head and heaved a great sigh. “No, not even then.”

“I get tired, too,” Fergus said, dropping his head to Margaret’s shoulder.

“Of course ye do,” she told him. “We all do.”

“Mother should take a nap,” Fergus said. “Like ye did.”

“She should indeed.”

“Father’s cross as well,” Nell said, “and he’s not even having the child.”

Margaret looked into Nell’s green eyes, seeing her sister’s confusion. Their father was cross because he was worried. The wet weather had prevented the crops from being sown on time; the harvest would be lean. The cattle had found little to eat on the sodden hillsides when at last the men had led them to their summer grazing fields. And their mother was near her term, which always made her father worried and his moods unpredictable. But Nell was too young to realize all that; she would learn the fragile nature of life soon enough. And Margaret’s thoughts were far too serious for such a lovely day.

She rose to her feet, pulling her brother up with her. “We’re not cross, are we? The sun is out and we have no work to do right now. We’re happy, Fergus, are we not?”

Fergus laughed. “Aye, Margaret. We’re happy!”

Nell’s expression softened as she reached for the child’s hand. “Come, wee one, let’s go see the lads,” she said and led him down to the water, where the other boys were running out on the sand, then darting back as the waves tumbled in.

“Och, will ye look at them?” Margaret said, half-exasperated, half-entertained as her brothers, drenched to the knees, ran back from the water. She should tell them to be careful. But it was summer, the day was lovely, and this was one of her last days with them. “Remember being that age?” she asked Fiona. “When a summer was an eternity and we thought life would always be like that?”

Fiona looked wistful for a moment. “I do. We thought nothing would change, didn’t we? But we were wrong.” She stood, then, her tone brisk again. “I wish I could stay, but I’d best get back before Father misses me. Come down after yer meal, aye?”

“I will,” Margaret said, then watched her friend head back to the village. She would convince her parents to let Fiona come with her and never hear that note of envy in her friend’s voice again.

She joined Nell and the boys then, dancing with the water and laughing, lunging forward, then hanging back to let the waves catch a foot or a dangling skirt. Overhead the birds joined the game, calling to each other, as though they, too, were savoring this hour. After a while Margaret stood back with Fergus while the others continued playing. The day was cooling; clouds were moving toward the sun. Farther down the beach something bobbed in the water, now visible, now hidden, finally tossed onto the sand by the waves. The boys, weary of their game, ran to see what it was. Davey reached it first and let out a shout.

“Look!” he cried, bending over it again.

Nell, just a few feet behind him, screamed and backed away. “Margaret!”

Margaret hoisted Fergus onto her hip. “What is it?”

“A head!” Davey cried, waving Ewan and Cawley toward him.

Fergus turned to stare at Margaret.

“It’s probably just a clump of seaweed,” Margaret told him as she started forward, “or a seal’s head, or their idea of something funny to tell us.” But when she saw what had washed ashore, she stopped laughing.

Davey was right. It was indeed a man’s head, long blond hair still attached to the skull. He appeared to be in his middle years, his face broad with flat cheekbones and lips drawn back in a grimace. Skin still clung to his cheeks. Which meant he’d died recently and probably not far from here.

Margaret’s stomach heaved, but five young faces watched her, their eyes wide with fear. She pushed aside her sudden sense of foreboding and took a deep breath. “Poor soul,” she said, keeping her tone calm and trying to still her heart.

“How did it get here?” Davey asked.

Margaret looked across the water, half-expecting to see more heads bobbing in the waves, but the sea was empty. “Perhaps a ship got caught in a storm. Remember how hard the wind blew last night? Perhaps he fell off the ship.”

“And the wind cut off his head?” Nell asked.

Margaret frowned at her.

“Maybe a monster ate him!” Davey cried.

“Or there’s a war!” Ewan said.

“It’s probably nothing so dreadful,” Margaret said. “There are no monsters. And Father will ken if there’s a war.”

“We should take it to him!” Davey said. The younger boys echoed his words.

“I’m not carrying it!” Nell cried, stepping backward.

“None of us are,” Margaret said. “We’ll push it higher, away from the water, and tell Father about it.”

She glanced up at the sun, feeling a chill of apprehension. One man had died; it was nothing more. Ewan gave the head a kick, bouncing it away from the water.

“Leave it!” she snapped. “Let’s go home.”

Margaret herded her charges before her across the low hills of rock that separated the beach they’d played on from their village, relieved when she saw the keep rising starkly above the clansmen’s homes clustered at its base. The four-story unadorned stone structure was neither beautiful nor graceful, but fearsome. Built to protect its own and discourage visitors rather than welcome them, it lay at the heart of Somerstrath, overlooking the houses and the harbor below. Margaret had always thought it ungraceful and bulky, but now it looked beautiful to her. And the sight of the stone walls that enclosed the village, the ones that she’d so often considered confining, she now found comforting.

She began to relax as people waved and called cheerful greetings to the children. Men were returning from the inland fields. Down in the harbor the fishing boats were being unloaded, the men’s laughter drifting up the hill, and near at hand a plume of smoke rose from a cottage and danced on the breeze. She was being absurd. The head that had washed up on the beach was not an omen, not a sign of unrest across the waters or conflict within their borders, not a portent of the future. It was simply the head of some poor unfortunate soul lost at sea, washed ashore at the whim of the tide.
Missing his head?
She pushed the unsettling thought aside.

She let the others run ahead, waiting alone for Fergus to finish examining the worms he’d found, a battered flower clutched in his hand.

“Come, laddie,” she said, bending over him.

He held up a worm for her inspection. “Look.”

Margaret smiled. Someday she might have a child of her own as wonderful and full of life as this little one and his brothers. “Let’s let the worms live, shall we?” She scooped them back into the hole. “Put him with his friends. Aren’t ye hungry?”

Fergus looked from the worm to Margaret, then nodded and dropped his captive into the hole. She brushed him off as best she could, then took his hand and hurried him through the inland gate, where she collected the others and they made their way to the keep. The boys ran across the courtyard and barreled through the ground-floor storeroom that doubled as the guardhouse, then, punching each other, scrambled up the spiral stairway to the passageway that led to the great hall. They waited there, for Margaret and Nell and Fergus. She straightened their clothing and tidied their hair, then gestured them into the hall.

This was her favorite room in all of Somerstrath. The hall was not large compared to the structures she’d seen at Stirling and Edinburgh and in the mighty castles now being built in the Norman fashion all over central Scotland, but it was big enough to hold rows of polished pine trestle tables with their well-worn benches. And the stone-hewn fireplace at the end of the room was magnificent enough to grace any castle she’d seen. Her mother had warmed the room with tapestries, and her father had lined the walls with stag’s heads and the occasional boar’s head, which had inspired the boys to invent stories.

Several of her father’s men were gathered in a corner, talking among themselves. Her father and Rignor sat separately at another of the tables. Margaret’s mood sank when she saw their expressions. Father’s color was high, which meant he and Rignor had been arguing again. Father slammed his fist on the table as the boys approached, not even seeing their startled expressions. He leaned forward, glaring at Rignor.

“I am weary of yer excuses and yer complaints,” Father shouted. “Ye should have done it before midday, not ask someone to do it for ye. There is no job too small for the leader of a clan! It’s time ye stopped making yer own life easier and everyone else’s more difficult. Ye’d better start learning how to lead, lad, else I’ll be looking at the younger ones to replace ye when I’m gone.”

“Ye’ll have no say in it when ye’re gone,” Rignor shouted.

Father’s face mottled. “Say that once more, lad, and I’ll see it done.”

Rignor stormed out without sparing his siblings a glance. Father shook his head and stared into the distance while Margaret met Nell’s gaze. Would there ever be peace between her father and brother?

They were alike in so many ways, both tall and dark and powerfully built. Both had quick tempers, but her father’s behavior was usually measured, while Rignor’s was impulsive. Her father put the clan’s needs before his own—most of the time. Rignor rarely did. Her father listened to what he was told, and weighed it. Rignor was exhaustively garrulous and deaf to any comments that did not please him. Rignor rarely pleased his father, but where Rignor was concerned, Father was often unpleasable.

Her father’s expression lightened as he turned to them and pulled Fergus into his lap. “Into the mud again, aye, laddie?”

“Father!” Ewan said. “We found a head!”

Father smiled. “Will ye have to be sharing? Should ye not have six heads amongst ye and not just one?”

Ewan shook his head. “No, no, Da. Really, we found a head on the beach!”