“Indeed, lass, I cannot recall ever having had such a night,” Fin admitted. “But yer father’s price was that I service ye for ten days. He did not say how, just that I do it. If ye would both be well fucked in that term of days, then ye must do as I say. Which of ye is elder?”
“I am,” Sybil said.
“Then tonight ye’ll be the one sharing a bed with me,” he said. “Now, where is yer da?”
Lily laughed. “He’s gone off to visit a lady friend for a few days,” she said. “He said he could hear us all the night long, and it made him randy for a woman of his own.”
“Then until he returns,” Fin told them, “I am the man of this house, and ye’ll obey me, and do my bidding.”
“And if we don’t?” Lily said mischievously.
“I’m not above smacking bottoms,” Fin answered, and they both giggled.
Parlan Fife remained away for almost the entire ten days Fin owed him for his passage across the border river. Fin didn’t blame him at all, for he imagined that living with Lily and Sybil when they were in need of a man to assuage their lust wasn’t easy. As Fin had spent the winter nursing a dying old woman, Parlan Fife had spent a winter with two randy young females in need of a strong male cock. Fin hoped that by the time he left them to travel onward, the two sisters would be satiated for at least a few weeks.
His time in the cottage took on a sameness. Each day he did the household chores that needed doing for the two sisters. They seemed to have a flock of sheep they tended to, which was obviously what helped to supplement their income. He helped them with the animals too. When night fell, and the meal was over, the three children were put to bed. They were good bairns, and gave no trouble. Then he would take either Lily or Sybil into the big bed to pleasure the night long while the other sister slept in the little chamber with the bairns on a pallet.
Fin was not sorry to see the ten days coming to an end. His own months of long-enforced celibacy had been broken by the sisters, and his lusts were more than satisfied for the time being. He was ready to be on the road again, and another bit of his memory had bloomed. He had a devoted servant named Archie, and Iver was a man-at-arms.
Parlan Fife returned smiling and looking pleased two days before Fin was to depart the cottage. He announced to his daughters that he was marrying his Katie at midsummer, and that the cottage was now theirs. “Yer both more than old enough to manage on yer own,” he said. “It’s unlikely either of ye will wed. A man doesn’t want a wife whose road has been so well traveled as yers has been. We’ll not be far away if ye need us, my daughters.” He turned to Fin. “Well, ye look as if ye have survived these two.”
“I have,” Fin admitted. “But I’ll be on my way the day after tomorrow.”
“Ye’ve kept yer agreement,” Parlan Fife said. “I’ve no complaints, although I imagine the lasses will.”
“I suspect if one, or both of them, took up yer ferry boat, they might get more traffic,” Fin suggested.
The ferryman nodded his head in agreement. “What do ye think, lasses?”
“I know if I saw a pretty girl on the other side of the river offering me a ride, I would surely take it,” Fin told them.
“Ye can have the boat too,” Parlan Fife said generously to his daughters.
“Lucky old sot,” Sybil said that evening as she and Fin recovered from a bout of eros. “Katie is a widow, and her farmer husband left her rich. The land was his, no overlord’s. She owes allegiance to no one. I wonder if he can get a bairn on her?”
“Ye and yer sister will be fine without him,” Fin assured her as he played with one of her large breasts. He kissed the nipple lightly.
“Stay with us,” Sybil said.
“Nay,” he told her. “I have to get to Edinburgh.”
“Why? What’s there? A wife? A pretty woman?” Sybil queried him. She was curious, for Fin had not spoken of himself at all.
“My house. My servant who may think I’m dead,” Fin answered her. “I need to get home and pick up my life again.”
“As what?” she pressed him.
“I’m a soldier, lass. I hire myself out to anyone with the coin to pay,” Fin said.
“With a baby for a queen, I can promise ye there will be a war. Whether it is between England and Scotland, or just between the powerful men seeking to control the little queen, I know not. And France will be involved too, for the widowed queen is French, and a member of the royal family. The French will seek to protect both King James’s widow and his surviving child. I know there will be a conflict, may God help us all. And that’s how I earn my living—fighting other men’s wars.”
These were things he knew about himself, and about the world in which he lived. Some of them he had never forgotten in those months since he had awakened in Old Mother’s cottage. Other things had come back slowly over the months since the battle at Solway Moss. He sensed there was more, but he could not remember what. He hoped that reaching his house in Edinburgh, and finding Archie, his servant, as well as Iver, the man-at-arms, would help him to recall what it was that he was forgetting. It had to be important or it would not be tugging at the edges of his memory and niggling him so.
He spent his last night in Parlan Fife’s cottage with Lily to amuse him. It seemed fitting that since she was the first of the sisters he had enjoyed, he should also end his visit with her. As Sybil had, she begged him to stay with them; yet when the morning came, he rose, dressed himself, and reached beneath the big bed to lift the loose floorboard to retrieve his little purse. He checked and was relieved to find all the coins there. Fin had no doubt that had his cache been found, they would have stolen it. He tucked it in his jerkin.
When he came out of the bedchamber, the sisters fed him a good breakfast of hot porridge, fresh bread, butter and jam. Sobbing, they kissed him good-bye, but they saw he had a two-day supply of food wrapped in a napkin they tucked into the sack he carried.
He waved farewell to the three bairns. They were quiet little things, and he had barely seen them in the time he had been with their mothers. The thought suddenly struck him. Did he have bairns? If he did, could he have forgotten them so easily?
