best stop being so smug because you have the confidence of our mistress.'
Alix sought for her husband and found him at the keep's smithy talking with the blacksmith. He had recently found his cattle herd increased by several beasts, and they had no markings on them. He wanted them marked with the Dunglais D so if they wandered again he could find them. He had waited the summer long for someone to come and claim them, but no one had. She waited while he discussed the matter, and when he had finished he turned to her, smiling.
'Why have you sought me, lambkin?' he asked her, taking her hand and walking from the smithy. 'Have you missed me this day?' He raised her hand to his lips and kissed the palm tenderly.
'I have news I believe you would want to hear,' Alix told him almost shyly. 'I am with child, Colm. Come late winter, with God's blessing, I shall give you a child.'
The laird gave a joyous whoop, and picking Alix up, he swung her about. 'A child!' he exclaimed happily. 'We are to have a child!' Then he kissed her hard. 'Thank you, my darling lambkin! Thank you!'
'You want a son,' Alix said as he set her down upon her feet again. 'I hope it is, but it could also be a darling little girl like our Fiona.'
He sighed. 'Aye, I find I am like other men after all,' he admitted. 'I do want a son, but should it be another daughter I will be content, Wife.'
Alix glanced about the courtyard at the curious faces of the men-at-arms. 'We must tell Fiona before you announce it to the hall,' she said.
'You are certain?' he asked her anxiously.
Alix nodded. 'Aye, and Fenella concurs. I have had no show of blood since the end of May, my lord. And my breasts are growing fuller and I am suddenly always craving cheese.'
'You always loved cheese,' he noted.
'But not like this, my lord. I sat at the high board after you had left it this morning and ate cheese until Fenella finally took it away from me,' Alix told him. 'She says there is no doubt I am with child.'
'Do you know when?'
'We think sometime in late February or early March,' Alix said.
They entered the house to seek out Fiona. They found her playing with her cat in the hall. Both the little girl and the creature were enjoying themselves as Fiona pulled a piece of yarn to which was tied a rag and the cat pounced and wrestled with the toy. She looked up as her father and stepmother came into her view. 'Finn likes to play with me,' she announced to them. 'He is more fun than his mother ever was.'
'His mother is older, and older cats do not play as much,' Alix said. 'Come, Fi, and sit with us. Your father and I have something to tell you.'
Fiona arose from the floor where she had been sitting and came to join them by the hearth. 'Am I to be betrothed?' she asked. 'Have you found a husband for me? Is he handsome? Is he rich? How old is he?'
The laird laughed. 'Ever since you visited the king you have been fixated upon a match for yourself. Nay, lass, I am not of a mind to let you go yet. Perhaps when you are thirty or forty I may consider it.'
'Da! You know I should be wed by the time I am fifteen or sixteen else I be too old,' Fiona scolded. 'Well, if it is not a marriage, then what is it?'
'Your mam is with child,' the laird told his daughter. 'You will have a brother or a sister come the spring.'
'I hope it's a brother,' Fiona surprised them by saying. 'I don't want to be the heiress of Dunglais. That would mean I would have to stay here and have a second son for a husband. I want only a first son and an even bigger keep of my own.'
'Gracious!' Alix exclaimed. 'You have been thinking about this, haven't you?'
'I will be eight this year,' Fiona said. 'The young king explained to me the importance of make a good match and making it early. Why, surely you remember that before the old king died he made a match for our king with the king of Denmark's daughter, and James is but two years my senior. But his bride is younger.'
'The old king began the marriage negotiations, but they are not yet confirmed,' Alix told Fiona, 'although Queen Marie says they will be. It takes time to negotiate a proper marriage contract between kings.' She reached out and smoothed her daughter's dark hair. 'Are you content you are to have a sibling, my daughter?'
'Aye,' Fiona said with a smile. 'But, Mama, please have a lad.'
The laird laughed. 'I am pleased to see you will not be jealous,' he told his child.
'Da!' Fiona gave an exasperated sigh. 'Why would I be jealous of a bairn? I shall be married and gone long before he is grown. I have seen bairns in the village. They suck, shit, and sleep, and then suck some more for at least a year. They are really not very interesting at all.' Then she put her arms about Alix. 'I am glad for you, Mama.' And she kissed Alix's cheek sweetly. Then she ran off to find her cat, who had disappeared from the hall.
'I suppose you must begin considering a match for her,' Alix told her husband.
'Not until she is twelve and her beauty can be seen. Her dower won't be a great one, and so it is her beauty that must help us to make Fiona the best match we can.'
'You know I saved some of what my father gave me for myself after I gave you a dower portion,' Alix said, and he nodded. 'I will have a gold piece for Fiona's dower.'
'How fortunate I was that you were found on my lands, lambkin,' he said. Then he reached out and gently touched her belly.
'How fortunate I was that it was your men who found me and not some hungry beast,' she answered him, holding her hand against her still-flat belly.
In the hall that night Malcolm Scott announced to ail there that his wife was with child. A child to be born at the very end of the winter. A health was drunk to the laird's wife by all there. By the following day all of the Dunglais folk knew that Alix was expecting a bairn. Walking or riding through the village she was smiled at and blessings called out to her. Dunglais would have an heir, for it was certain that the laird's wife would have a son, all the women of the village decided.
The autumn arrived and one bright blue and gold late October day Alix decided that she would ride out one final time, for now that her belly was beginning to grow round she thought perhaps it would be wiser to forego her daily ride. And the winter would set in before long, making it impossible to ride anyway. She was accompanied by two of the castle's men-at-arms and little Fiona. The sun was warm upon their backs as they rode.
But as they topped a hill they unexpectedly came face-to-face with a large band of men coming up the other side. Immediately one of the Dunglais men-at-arms reached for the bridle of little Fiona's mount, and turning, began to dash back towards the keep. The other soldier with Alix called to her to do the same while he remained behind to give her a head start and defend her flight. A band of armed men in daylight upon the moor could only presage a raid or some other mischief. Alix took flight, as she had been bid.
She turned back once to see the Dunglais man battling valiantly, but he soon fell to the ground mortally wounded. There was also a group of men galloping after her. Alix urged her mare to greater speed, but to no avail. The creature could only go so fast. She was shortly surrounded. A man reached for the mare's bridle. Alix slashed out at him with her reins. 'Take your hands from my horse!' she shouted at him. 'How dare you attack a woman out riding upon her own lands?'
'You have a choice, madame,' the obvious leader of the group said. 'You will come quietly with us upon your own mount, or I will take you by force upon mine.'
'Do you know who I am?' Alix said. She was terrified, but would not show it.
'You are the Laird of Dunglais's mistress,' the man replied.
'I am the laird's lawful wife, you fool!' Alix snapped back.
'Not according to the church in England,' the man said.
'We are not in England,' Alix answered, but an icy chill ran down her spine.
'We will be by tomorrow' came the reply.
'Sir, I am with child,' Alix told him. 'My husband will pay the ransom you ask, if you will but approach him. Even now my daughter has regained the keep and given the alarm. You will quickly be caught. Do not be foolish, and endanger your life or that of your men. My husband is a fierce fighter.' Alix attempted to bargain with the man.
'Madame, I have been sent by your betrothed husband, Sir Udolf Watteson, to retrieve you from the shameful captivity in which you have found yourself,' the man told her. 'I have come to bring you home to Wulfborn. What Sir Udolf does with the bastard you now carry is not my affair. I have but one mission. To bring you back to Sir Udolf.
