The Captive Heart (18 page)

Fiona was excited with the longer days that were growing milder. Finally the laird gave his permission for them to ride outside the gates of the keep as the snow was almost all gone from the moors. He even decided to ride with them. Escorted by four men-at-arms they left the keep one midmorning. The laird’s daughter was ecstatic when she was finally allowed to gallop her pony, her father’s horse keeping pace with her. Her dark hair blew loose from its red ribbon, which blew across the moor, one of the laird’s men cantering after it to retrieve it. He brought it to Alix and she thanked him.

Finally, as the horses all slowed to a gentle walk, they were approached by a small party of riders coming over a hill.

“God’s nightshirt!” the laird swore softly. “ ’Tis my uncle the Ferguson of Drumcairn. He’ll have another candidate for my hand, to be certain. Perhaps two as he has not been able to get over the moor since the snows set in.”

As Alix looked puzzled, Fiona explained, giggling. “My da’s uncle wants him to remarry and sire sons. But Da loved my mother so greatly he wants no other wife. Whenever he comes to Dunglais, he brings with him the suggestion of another lass for my da to wed. He is very persistent, as you will shortly see.”

“He looks too young to be your father’s uncle,” Alix said.

“He was my grandmother’s half brother, born the very year she married my grandfather. His mother was stepmother to my grandmother. He is just five years older than Da,” Fiona explained.

“He behaves as if he were fifty years older,” grumbled the laird as the Ferguson riders approached. “Uncle! You have survived the winter, I see,” Malcolm Scott greeted Robert Ferguson jovially. “What brings you to Dunglais this fine spring day?”

“Nephew,” Robert Ferguson responded, but his eyes quickly turned to observe Alix. “And who is this lovely lass?” he asked, smiling at her.

Had she not known he was the laird’s uncle, Alix would have never thought them blood related. The Ferguson of Drumcairn, while a big man like the laird, had a shock of bright red hair, a freckled face, and sharp blue eyes that were hardly discreet in their curiosity and admiration of the girl riding with his nephew.

“This is Mistress Alix Givet, Uncle. She is Fiona’s companion and instructor in all things the daughter of the Laird of Dunglais should know if she is to be a proper wife and chatelaine one day. She came to us late last autumn.”

“Vous êtes Francaise, mademoiselle?”
Robert Ferguson asked.

“My parents were from Anjou, sir, but I was born in England,” Alix answered him. So this border lord was educated, she thought, interested.

“How on earth did you find the lass, nephew?” his uncle asked.

“I didn’t find her, Robert. She found us,” the laird replied with a grin. “Come along now and let us return to the hall, where I will satisfy your insatiable curiosity.” He turned his great dappled gray stallion about, and they returned to the keep.

The Ferguson of Drumcairn was off his mount quickly and by Alix’s side, reaching up to help her from her mare. His hands lingered about her waist a moment too long, and while she said nothing she glared indignantly at him. With a grin, he released her, watching as she turned to take Fiona by the hand and enter the house. “Indeed, Malcolm, I shall look forward to hearing the story of how you came into possession of that spirited little wench. She’s more than just pretty.”

“Remember you have a wife,
Uncle
,” the laird reminded him as they entered the hall and found places by the blazing fire. Alix and Fiona were nowhere to be seen, but the servants hurried to place goblets of wine in their hands.

“Aye, and a fine woman my Maggie is, but it doesn’t keep my eyes from seeing. Is she your mistress, Malcolm? You’ll have to put her somewhere else when you take a wife, y’know. Maggie’s niece is now sixteen, and ripe for marriage.”

“How many times must I tell you, Robbie? I have no intention of marrying again,” the laird said to his uncle.

“And how many times must I tell you that you owe it to the Scotts of Dunglais to remarry and sire a son? If I had known how wild Robena was I should have never suggested her to you as a bride, Malcolm. We will be most careful with the next wife you take, but take another wife you must.”

“Nay, Robbie, I do not have to take another wife,” the laird said heatedly.

“Is your daughter’s
companion
your mistress?” his uncle asked again.

“Nay, she is not,” the laird answered.

“What is it that prevents you from making her so?” Ferguson wanted to know. “She’s lovely, and certainly can be no virgin at her age. How old is she?”

“I don’t know,” Malcolm Scott replied. “But she is a widow, so nay, she is no virgin. Her marriage was an unhappy one. She says she seeks no husband or lover.”

“But you have begun to campaign to change her mind, haven’t you?” His uncle chuckled. “Well, perhaps after you have enjoyed the pleasure of having a woman in your bed again you will consider your duty and take a wife. Maggie’s niece is too tall anyway. The wench has legs like a stork and watery eyes. At least you wouldn’t have to worry about her taking a lover, but still you would have to bed her.” He drank down half his goblet of wine. “Ahh, the chase is always the best part of it, Nephew, isn’t it?” He chuckled again. “And here is the subject of our conversation now.”

“My lord.” Alix curtsied to him respectfully. “I thought perhaps that Fiona and I would have our meal in the kitchens so you and your uncle might visit more comfortably with each other this evening.”

“Nonsense!” the Ferguson of Drumcairn said before the laird might reply. “A lovely woman at the board adds much to the meal, Mistress Alix. Tell her she must sit with us, Malcolm. ’Tis your hall, not mine. Still, I would enjoy her gentle company.”

“The decision is Alix’s to make,” the laird said, giving her a small smile.

“Then you will excuse me,” Alix replied quietly. “Fiona is still quite excited by her ride and needs the calm of the kitchen table, not the excitement of the high board with a guest present, my lord.” She curtsied again.

The laird nodded. “I bow to your judgment,” he told her.

Alix then turned and hurried from the hall.

“You would indulge her and let her believe she is free when the truth is you are slowly tightening the bonds about her,” Ferguson noted. “You are sly, Nephew.”

“How long do you intend to stay with us?” the laird asked, amused.

“Your hall offers more peace than mine does,” Robert Ferguson admitted. “I have been cooped up all winter with my Maggie and our offspring. She is breeding again, Malcolm. This will make an even dozen. I but look at the wench lasciviously and her belly swells. Well, maybe this time it is the hoped-for heir. Eleven daughters are more than a man can bear. Other men breed on their wives, lose them in childbed, or lose the bairns. My wife is as strong as an ox and our daughters stronger. God only knows how I shall find husbands for them all, Nephew, and even the church requires a dower.”

“I’m sure eventually you will offer me one,” the laird teased his uncle.

Robert Ferguson laughed. “If you are not wed by the time the eldest is marriageable, which will be in another two years, I probably will. I have to get rid of them somewhere, and Maggie agrees with me. We must keep praying for a son. All men want sons, Nephew.”

“I have an heir in Fiona,” Malcolm Scott said stubbornly.

“If you manage to get that pretty wench who now mothers your daughter into your bed,” the Ferguson of Drumcairn said, “you are certain to get her with child. Will you let your son be born a bastard?”

“I only managed to get a daughter on Robena, and if I do indeed entice Alix to my bed, she bore no child to her husband. It is unlikely she would bear me one.”

“Then she would be the perfect mistress,” his uncle noted, “if all she gave you was pleasure but no encumbrances. ’Tis a rare occurrence, but I have heard of such.”

“You have not answered my question, Uncle. How long do you mean to stay?”

“A few days, a week, perhaps,” the Ferguson answered. “I should be ready to face my wife and daughters again by then. The new bairn isn’t due until autumn.”

“You are welcome as always, Uncle, provided you do not speak of marriage again,” the Laird of Dunglais said.

“I will hold my peace for now,” Robbie Ferguson said with a grin. “You have my word on it, Malcolm.”

In August of 1460 James II of Scotland had been killed when a cannon misfired during the siege of Roxburgh Castle. A special salvo had been arranged to greet Queen Marie, who had arrived to view the proceedings. The cannon, however, had been overcharged with gunpowder. It exploded and a piece of the metal had shattered the king’s leg as he stood nearby. He died almost instantly, and once again Scotland was faced with a child king. James II had been six years old when his father had been murdered. James III was eight.

Queen Marie took no time to mourn. Instead she hastened to fetch her eldest son, James. Bringing him before the commanders of Scotland’s armies she asked them to make her husband’s death not a defeat, but a victory for Scotland’s new king, James III. Encouraged by her bravery, Scotland’s army responded to the queen’s words and the sight of their young boy king standing proudly before them. Within a few days Roxburgh fell, and the new king was crowned at nearby Kelso Abbey on the tenth day of the month.

The queen mother quickly took charge of the situation. The bishop of St. Andrew’s, Bishop Kennedy, was out of the country when the king was killed. This allowed Queen Marie to put her own people into place, much to the bishop’s annoyance when he returned. Still, the bishop’s powerful family was amenable to compromise. So was the queen. Although she had given sanctuary to her kinswoman, Margaret, and her mad husband, King Henry of England, she quickly saw the way the winds were blowing to the south. While she would do nothing to harm the English fugitives, she would do nothing to help those who would pursue them either. Still, she made a long-term peace with the new English king, Edward IV, who was being tempted into supporting a war against Scotland in order to partition it. The south would be held by the exiled Earl of Douglas, and the north by the MacDonald Lord of the Isles, both of whom would rule as vassals of England’s king. Queen Marie’s signature and that of her son’s on a document put a stop to that treasonous plan.

The Douglas family had been a thorn in her husband’s side since his youth. The fifth earl of Douglas had been governor of the realm when James II was a child, but he had proved a poor one. His weakness had allowed two lesser lords, Sir William Crichton, keeper of Edinburgh Castle, and Sir Alexander Livingstone, keeper of Stirling Castle, to seize the king. When Lord Douglas died, Crichton and Livingstone took the opportunity to murder his sons in the presence of the ten-year-old James II. It was believed the young Douglases’ uncle, known as James the Gross, who now inherited the title, was involved.

James II learned a lesson that terrible night when he begged for the lives of the two Douglases. And ten years later, encouraged by his queen, he finally asserted his authority, executing several of the Livingstone family and destroying their power. The Douglas family, now headed by James the Gross’s eldest son, William, however, was a more difficult problem. The Douglas earl had immense holdings in the borders. But when James II discovered him involved in treasonous dealings with England, and that he had formed a traitorous alliance with the Lord of the Isles, he called the Earl of Stirling and ordered him to repudiate his alliances and reaffirm his allegiance to Scotland’s king.

William Douglas refused, and after two days of negotiation James II lost his temper and stabbed the earl in his throat. The men with the king joined the fray. Considering that the Douglas earl had insisted on a safe conduct before coming to Stirling to see the king, the murder was a breach of the medieval code of honor. James II moved quickly, however, to shore up his defenses in the matter. Moving his pregnant queen to the bishop’s palace at St. Andrew’s, he quickly gained the support of his earls by a means of various reassurances and rewards for their loyalty. And considering that William Douglas’s brother, the new earl, arrived at Stirling with a large force of armed men, crying for vengeance, and then burned the town in their defiance of James II, who had already departed Stirling, the king’s actions were suddenly considered reasonable. The Douglases had obviously grown way too powerful in too short a time.

James II went to war against the Douglases. Fascinated by the new science of gunnery, he systematically battered down the walls of the Douglas strongholds with his great cannon, Mons Meg, which he had acquired from his wife’s uncle, the Duke of Burgundy, and which had been brought from Edinburgh Castle. Defeated at the battle of Arkinholm, James, the ninth Douglas earl, escaped to England. Of his two remaining brothers, one died at Arkinholm and the other was captured and executed.

In England at that time the War of the Roses had broken out, and James Douglas allied his fallen fortunes with the Yorkist faction. The king of Scotland, however, chose to support the Lancaster side of the quarrel. And then James II proved himself a worthy successor to his father, reestablishing the rule of law in Scotland. His patronage of his nobility extended to creating several new earldoms, namely Rothes, Morton, Erroll, Marischal, and Argyll. Then, having stabilized his domestic affairs, the king devoted himself to foreign diplomacy, including arranging the marriage of his eldest son, James, with Margaret of Denmark.

In 1460 war broke out again as James II thought to strike a blow for his ally, King Henry VI, laying siege to Roxburgh Castle, which was currently held by a Yorkist governor. Roxburgh had always been hotly contested between England and Scotland, but it had been in English hands since the reign of David II of Scotland, over a hundred years previously. And while the Scots regained Roxburgh that summer, they lost a capable king and once again found themselves ruled by a regency in the name of James III.