Tempting the Sinful Highlanders

Prologue

“T

he mad ghalla bit me hand!”

The soldier was trying to defend his actions to the irate tavern keeper.

“Aye, that’s all well an’ good, ye doaty rascal!” The tavern keeper was not in a forgiving mood. “But then ye give the wench a smack around the lug, ye don’ stick her with a knife!”

The two small boys cowering in the dying woman’s arms were too horror-struck to react. They leaned close to their mother’s face to hear her final words, ignoring the bickering between the two men going on above their heads.

“I…love ye both wi’ all me heart, me wee angels…” The woman licked her parched lips as the lifeblood leaked out of her. “Promise me ye will be good boys henceforth…b-brave an’ strong…an’ stay away from hard spirits…”

The tavern wench was dying, and all she hoped to pray for was that her two young sons did not grow up to be like the men who bedded her after drinking their fill at the taproom.

“We promise, Mither,” the eldest boy—he could not have seen more than six summers in his short lifetime—whispered into his mother’s ear, not wanting to share his oath with the coarse soldiers milling about the room.

“T-Take care o’ ye wee b-brither, C-Callum… Ye must swear it…”

“I will, Mither, dinnae fash about us.”

The little boy did not waste his breath reassuring the woman with empty words about elixirs and silk thread stitches to sew shut the hole in her stomach.

The flagstone floor was already swimming in blood.

He tilted a cup of ale up to the side of his mother’s mouth and wiped away the dribbles after she could not swallow it, while at the same time patting his younger brother on the back to soothe the sobbing child.

The soldier and tavern keeper had already departed. They were off to speak to the captain of the guards about financial remuneration for the dead wench.

The captain heard out both sides of the story and then made a judgment.

“Well, MacTavish, here’s the rub. I have one man out of action for a goodly while because yon wench ripped a hole in his hand.

Now, I ken ye pick these women up cheap from the slave ships that are permitted to dock and water at the bay, an’ she has no clan to demand compensation from ye, so mayhap I figure ye owe me for allowing the gallah to injure me soldier! ”

The tavern keeper gobbled like an angry brood hen.

“What!? I will speak to yer laird, who is me half-brither. Don’ ye forget we have the same faither, even if me mither was a slave wench an’ Hamish’s mither was a lady!

I swear he will give me justice if ye dinnae see yer way to settling me claim!

I give Hamish MacTavish permission to clear out the slaves’ children every five years or so to keep me stables clean, but I want extra payment for the worker ye killed!

If ye go inside an’ look at her, ye will see at a glance why she was me biggest earner: hair like golden sunsets, eyes like sapphires, lips like cherries…

and young enough to keep earning me gold for another ten or even twenty years! ”

The soldier, who was still nursing his shredded hand against his chest, scoffed, “She’s had two bairns already. She was no’ the tempting maiden ye’re makin’ her out to be!”

The captain held up his hand. “Now, now, Milne, the honest tavern keeper here says the slave traders put the girl’s age at six and ten years when he bought her, and I have nay reason to doubt his word that she had plenty of work waiting for her in the years ahead.

” He turned to the tavern keeper. “I will ask the laird to add another gold sovereign to the amount he is paying ye for all the children. Come now, ye will nae find a friendlier offer than that.”

The tavern keeper, Mister MacTavish, looked dissatisfied but nodded his head.

“The woman could earn that sum in one month, even with the amount o’ time she spent teaching her sons how to read an’ write in that barbaric Norse language o’ hers.

Very well.” He shook the captain’s hand and went back into the alehouse.

The woman was already dead, and the soldiers had wasted no time in tearing the young boys away from their mother’s corpse and harnessing them to the back of a cart using the ropes tied around their necks.

The captain walked down the line of wailing children and poked the tip of his truncheon against wee William’s back. “This one’s too small to follow the cart. Place it in the back of the wain with the bairns.”

Callum bit his lower lip to stop himself from shouting out when his half brother was untied and thrown into the back of the cart like a sack of turnips. His mother had always warned him this would happen, but he had never dreamed it would be accompanied by her death.

“Ye’re the sons of a slave, me wee darlings,” she would remind them all the time.

“The sons of a tavern wench too,” she would whisper to them every morning during the lessons she would give them by drawing numbers and letters in the mud or snow in the backyard of the tavern.

“But ye must never grow up thinkin’ ye are lesser men because of it.

Back in Flekkefjord, I was the daughter of a wealthy merchant.

I had to leave me home and foolishly hid away in one o’ me faither’s ships bound for Fair Isle without telling anyone.

The pirates attacked the ship and took me in return for sparing the lives of all the crew… ”

“Why did ye want to leave yer Norse clan, Mither?” Callum had wanted to know.

His mother had shaken her head and leaned over to kiss the end of his nose.

“Because I was already expecting ye, wee Cal. I fell in love with yer faither at first sight. He was a tall, braw Highlander with charm that could lure the birds out of the trees and so handsome he made me knees buckle. It was he who taught me how to speak yer language. We planned to run away, but me faither got wind of the elopement an’ began making plans for me to enter a cloister.

Yer faither, Cal MacNair, got a letter to me, saying he was waiting for me at Fair Isle because my own faither had made it too dangerous for him to approach the Norseland. ”

“Is me faither also MacNair?” little William wanted to know.

His mother pulled him close, kissing the top of his head with a fierce protective love.

“Nay, Willie. Ye are mine, and mine alone. But I’m sure Cal MacNair will nae mind if ye take his clan name for yer own because we swore our oaths over the anvil and plighted our troth to one another.

No matter how many men offer tavern keeper MacTavish gold so that they might return home with me and take me as wife, I must always refuse them because I will always be married to yer faither in me heart.

We must stay here an’ wait for Cal to rescue us—because he will always be me husband an’ yer faither, no matter what happens or how much time passes. ”

Now, being dragged behind the cartwheel with a rope around his neck, Callum MacNair knew he must escape at the first chance he got. Unlike the other poor bastard children following the cart, he had a clan name!

They’re taking me off to be made a slave too, just like me mither was.

She always warned me about this. The tavern keeper is clan to Laird MacTavish and allows the laird to harvest the tavern girls’ children to go work for him in the fields and castle for free.

But I will nae allow that bastert to harvest me an’ Willie as if we were meek lambs happy to do his bidding!

After walking inland for many leagues, over the stony mountains and denes, a thick wood rose on one side and the lane circled around it.

“Let’s halt here for the night!” the captain of the guards shouted down the line. “Give the youngest children milk and bread; the elder ones must do with bread an’ water!”

A surly-looking soldier came down the line of neck-roped children with a ladle in one hand and a pail of water in the other, scooping the liquid into each child’s mouth.

All the other children sat slumped and bewildered on the grass, but Callum’s eyes were darting around, hidden under his hair.

He spied the dirk sticking out of the top of the soldier’s boot.

He remembered what his mother would whisper to him on Sunday nights sometimes when the tavern was closed.

She would croon wee Willie to sleep and then say softly to her eldest son, “When they come for ye, Cal, ye must escape if ye get the chance. Dinnae fash about me and yer brither if we cannae go with ye. Survival is more important than clan. When ye grow to be a tall braw Highlander like yer dear faither, Cal, then ye can come looking for yer brither an’ me. ”

“Excuse me, mister?” The young boy with the dark red hair falling over his pale face called to the soldier softly.

The man stopped and looked over at him with one eyebrow raised. “What?”

The little boy held his hand out toward the man; he was holding the man’s dirk. “This fell out of yer boot, sir.”

The soldier recognized the dirk. The boy looked beaten down and woebegone; he was no flight risk. The child had no fighting spirit; the rope around the boy’s neck still seemed to be tied tight when the soldier gave it a cursory glance. He took the sharp knife and put it back in his boot.

The soldier gave no further thought to the sorrowful boy until the next morning.

“Where’s the dead wench’s eldest boy?” the captain of the guards wanted to know as he walked down the line. “MacTavish will have yer guts for garters if ye have let him give ye the slip. The lad was strapping for his age and would have made an excellent field worker.”

“The boy had no fight left in him! If he’s gone, it means the wolves took him,” one of the soldiers who had been guarding the line of small children assured the captain, with no one wanting to be blamed.

“And anyway, the laird will nae miss one small boy when he tallies the slaves. What difference can one skinny whelp make in the big scheme of things?”

The captain debated making a fuss over the escaped boy but was interrupted.

“Hie over here, if ye please, Captain! There’s a wee boy on the cart who will nae stop weeping. If he continues like this, the laird will complain about us allowing his goods to be ruined.”

From the shelter of the woods, Callum MacNair watched the caravan of slave children disappear over the hillcrest after the captain had managed to stop wee Willie from bawling his eyes out by threatening him with a beating.

For one moment, the six-year-old boy thought his heart might break in twain, but he stiffened his resolve and made his way back to the coast.

I swear on me mither’s life, I will avenge me family on the MacTavish clan if it is the last thing I do.