What?
“Wot?”
“Huh?”
Her husband growled, low and deep in his throat. “Think, ye blockheads. Why would I so easily give up Lady Rebecca? I could have married her in a week’s time, had I the mind.”
Two of the men nodded at that.
“What is better than a lady?” he pressed. And when they didn’t answer, he rolled his eyes. “A queen, ye daft clods.”
The men looked at her confusion. Even in their inebriated states, they knew she wasn’t the Queen of Scotland.
“Do ye not know who her mother is?” His accent was changing as he spoke. It wasn’t exactly Scottish, but he had the beginnings of credible brogue. “Ach, she’s the most famous witch in all Scotland.”
Infamous, actually, and it was her grandmother, but she didn’t correct him.
“A witch and a fairy king sired my lady wife, and all of Scotland knows it. Why do you think her uncle is so fired up to keep her around? He’s got her dowry, hasn’t he? What does he need her for?”
A good question, and one that she had spent many nights wrestling with.
“Because of her blood, you fools. He knows the fairies bless her and protect her. And they’ll bless all who keep her safe.” He stopped long enough to study the men’s faces. They were confused, still trying to sort his words through their inebriation. But mostly, they were uncertain as to why they were on their knees before a woman in a dressing gown covered by a blanket.
“Look at her, you fools! Have you not seen a more regal woman? She’s dressed for bed, she is, and yet do you not see the fairy queen inside her?”
Now that was ridiculous, but she couldn’t argue with him. He’d declared it, so she lifted her chin and stared coolly down at them. She had to pretend to a nobility she didn’t deserve. And thank God for all the lessons her mother had given her in how to stand, how to walk, how to do nothing but exude enough confidence and power to make a man tremble.
It was about confidence. And it was about feeding into their superstitions.
So she stepped out from where she’d been cowering between the bed and a chair. She spoke clearly, modulating her voice as she had been taught. And she made the story simple because they were still very drunk.
“I knew nothing of my past,” she said, “until the night I turned sixteen. I was born at midnight, you see, as it was the moment when fairy and woman do their best work.”
Several heads nodded at that. It made no logical sense, of course, but what fairy tale did? There were only custom and guesses, but her mother had showed her how to use it.
“Many know the tale of my sixteenth birthday. Mother brought me to a field under a full moon—” Actually, it hadn’t been exactly full. Neither had it been her sixteenth birthday, but close enough. “She put symbols on my body in blood and copper and gold.” Dirt and paint, but even at home the tale had grown with the telling. “I was a child. What did I know of magic and fairies? But as the clock struck midnight, standing there in the moonlight with symbols of power on my body—” She took a deep breath. “I knew. I saw.” She lowered her voice. “Ifelt.”
“What was it?” Reuben asked, his voice rich in the quiet room.
“My mother’s curse or blessing. I’m not sure what to call it. But she said that from then on, any man who touched me against my will would suffer terribly. Any soul who crossed me would fare ill. Any—”
“Ach,” one of the men scoffed, along with a loud belch.
“Scottish nonsense,” one man—a big one barely in the room—said from the doorway.
“Is it?” Reuben asked as he turned on the man. He pointed to the sheet. “You see what all of us see tonight. Her virgin’s blood. Now look upon her. She ran on foot across all of Scotland. A woman alone. A girl of such beauty. What would happen, do you think, to any English girl who tried that? Would she end here, tonight, as a virgin?”
That, apparently, made sense to them. Any girl who managed to keep her virginity as long as she had was obviously cursed or protected. In her case, apparently, it was both.
Reuben squatted down before them. “Shriveled cocks is the least of what has happened to those who would touch her. Pox comes next and the waters.” He shuddered. “Men wasted away in days. It was powerful magic formed at midnight from blood and blessed by the fairies.”
“My mother put all her power into the spell,” Iseabail said. “Two weeks later, she was gone.”
“Taken back by the fairies?”
Killed by her uncle. “I don’t know.”
Reuben gasped. “She doesn’t know,” he said, his voice hushed. “But no man has touched her before or since.”
