“I have been there,” he growled. “It is cold. It chills you to the bone, and the people are cold too. As soon as they hear that you are English they turn their backs on you, and they pull their children out of your way and cross themselves as if you were the devil incarnate. It rains almost constantly, and everything is covered in moss.
“As you go north the country becomes hard and rocky, and then rises into great mountains. It is even colder there, and is practically uninhabited. There are no travelers’ inns, and in the winter it is dark by mid-afternoon. The only creatures built for survival there are the cattle, which have long shaggy fur and massive horns. It is a truly horrible place, and I have no wish to live there, but I will go as a proud Englishman flying the flag of my country. And if the Scottish barbarians do not like it then let them shun me!”
He stopped, breathless, having talked himself into doing what he had not intended to do.
The ladies clapped and cheered, and Wilfred handed him a glass of French wine. “Only the best for my brother, the Laird of Inverinch!” he cried, holding up his glass. “Sláinte Mhath!”
“Sláinte Mhath,” Adam replied. “I did not know you knew Gaelic.”
“Sláinte Mhath,” Wilfred said again. “That is the sum total of my knowledge. I have only been to the land of the barbarians once, remember?”
“Would you like to come with me?” Adam asked.
Wilfred looked horrified. “Thank you for the invitation, Brother, but I would rather die!”
2
Emilia was tired; since her father’s death she and her mother Agnes had managed their big farm all by themselves, but it had been a dreadful winter and all the tenants of Inverinch, the large estate next door, were beginning to ration their food. Fortunately, due to prudent husbanding of grain from the previous year, they had not found themselves in such dire straits, but they could not stand by and watch their neighbors starve.
“I do not know what will happen to them now that Laird Mackintosh is dead,” Emilia said sadly as she poured ale into her friend Maura’s cup. “He had no sons or daughters, and as far as I know no other living relatives. I hope the estate does not become a battleground between McElwee and any other hopefuls who want to walk in and occupy it. They would not care about the land, the village, or the people who live in it.”
“And the place is in a bad enough state as it is,” Maura remarked, sighing. “I feel so sorry for the people who work in the castle. Who is going to pay them? How are they going to survive?”
Emilia shook her long auburn locks and gave a deep sigh, and her large green eyes became distant as she looked back into the past and smiled. “I remember that this whole Inverinch valley used to be such a happy place,” she laughed. “My father was alive and I always felt so safe. I have not felt that way since his death. I miss him so much. It seemed that when he was here no harm could ever come to us.”
Maura put her hand over her friend’s and squeezed it gently. She too knew what such a loss felt like, having lost her mother a few years previously.
“I miss him too.” Agnes McKnight walked in and smiled sadly. She was carrying a great bucket of milk which she put down thankfully on the stone-flagged floor. She poured herself a cup of ale and drank it all down in one draught, then poured another. “He was a good and kind man.”
Agnes looked much like Emilia, but her red hair was now threaded with gray and her recent loss of Emilia’s father Mungo had aged her beyond her years. His loss had been so sudden; not a lingering illness, but a sudden seizure that had snuffed out his life in mere seconds. The monk physicians at the monastery had said that it was a condition of his heart, but as with everything else in the world, it was the will of God and must be accepted meekly.
Emilia, however, was not made of the stuff of meekness. She had been angry with God ever since her father had passed on.
“We have a problem, Emmy,” Agnes announced. “One of our farmhands has accused one of the estate workers of stealing his food. Apparently it became very heated and eventually came to blows. Someone will have to go and see to it.”
Emilia groaned. She was hungry and tired, and the last thing she wanted to do was intervene in a fight between two workers, but she had some sympathy for them. Times were hard, and the food situation was becoming dire.
“Someone,” of course, always meant Emilia herself, but she accepted this as part of her duty. She had no male relatives, so she had to shoulder the responsibilities that would normally have been taken on by a father or a brother.
She had embraced her burden without complaint, however. She could wrestle a sheep to the floor at shearing time and lift sheaves of barley and oats by herself, and she had gained respect from her men by never giving up before she had tried her utmost to do something. Even then, they usually had to force her to abandon her task because she was as stubborn as a mule.
Yes, it would be relatively easy to sort out a situation like this, but nothing would solve the real problem: how to get more food. She sighed, then took some bannocks and cheese from the pantry and stored them in her saddlebags. She reasoned that the men might be more amenable to reason without their stomachs growling.
She rode along for a while, thinking how bare and tired the land looked. Many of the cottages were badly in need of repair but most people did not have the money or the energy to do it.Even the cows look depressed, she thought. It was shocking to think that these poor people might be rejoicing because they had no rent to pay, but neither did they have protection from the Laird’s enemies.
Any one of half a dozen lairds could spot the opportunity left by Malcolm Mackintosh’s death and try to take advantage of it. Indeed, it might end up in a territorial dispute between two rivals. Emilia sighed. She could see no good end to this.
Presently she saw another horse trotting towards her, and she could tell by its size and quality that it had not come from one of the surrounding farms. This was a horse of a pedigree that only the nobility could afford to own.
It was being ridden by a tall dark man whose clothes also proclaimed him to be someone of consequence. As she drew closer to him she realized that he was one of the most attractive men she had ever seen. However, he was not a Highlander.
Like Emilia herself, most Scots had red, fair, or light brown hair and blue, gray, or green eyes. They were usually quite short, but she could see that this man was tall and strongly built. He was wearing expensive clothes too; the lining of his cloak was made of silk, and suddenly she felt very shabby indeed in her linen work dress which was ragged and threadbare in some places.
He looked at her out of dark blue eyes under lowered brows, and she imagined that she was being inspected for her quality and found wanting. She saw that he was going to greet her and gave him a courteous little smile and a nod, but he did not return it. Instead, he reined in his horse and stopped to talk to her.
She did likewise and waited. She expected the upper-class Scottish accent of a Lowlander or a man from the Border country, but she was astonished when he greeted her in a Northern English one, and a genteel one at that. Luckily she spoke English, but the common people did not, and he must have been lost amongst their thick Scots and Gaelic utterances. She found herself unable to feel much pity, however. Not many Scots had time for the Sassenachs.
“Do you speak English?” he asked with a hint of desperation in his voice.
