“Open the door to me, Sir Udolf Watteson! I have come for my wife, and as God is my witness, I shall have her!” Malcolm Scott called out. He banged the door again.
Finally a tiny window high up in the door opened. It had an iron grating and all but obscured the face of the man who spoke from it. “What is it you want, Scotsman?”
“Are you Sir Udolf? For I shall speak only with him,” the laird told the speaker.
“I am he” was his answer.
“You have my wife, my lord, and I have come to take her back,” the laird said.
“You are mistaken,” Sir Udolf replied. “Go away!”
“Alix Givet was married to me in the rite of our Holy Catholic Church,” the laird answered quietly.
“Alix Givet is my betrothed wife,” Sir Udolf responded. “I have the dispensation from Yorkminster that permitted me to take her as my wife. My claim is prior, and it is just. You cannot have her.”
“You had no authority over the lady, my lord. Therefore your dispensation is not valid, for it was obtained under false circumstances,” Malcolm Scott said. “Alix is my wife, and she is carrying my bairn. I want them back.”
“You lie!” Sir Udolf told the laird in a tight voice. Alix with child? She had not told him that. But in the week he had had her back she had spoken but few words to him. She could not be carrying this Scot’s bastard! He would not allow it! She was meant to bear him a child. Another son to take Hayle’s place. A son to inherit Wulfborn one day. “My wife is not with child,” he finally said to the laird.
“That could possibly be truth if you had a wife, Sir Udolf, but you do not. I do, and she is with child. You are holding her captive in your house. Release her, and I shall go my way peaceably. Deny my request, and you will feel my wrath,” the Laird of Dunglais said in a hard voice.
“Get you gone from my lands,” Sir Udolf responded. “Alix Givet is mine. If she is indeed with child, I will gladly return your bastard to you when it is born, but its mother remains with me, you rough savage. You have raped and abused her! You have forced her into an unholy and illegal union! But I shall protect her from you! Go!”
Malcolm Scott shook his head in disbelief. “If you truly believe what you say, my lord, then you are a bigger fool than I took you for,” he told Sir Udolf. “Release my wife to me, or suffer the consequences of your folly.”
The little window with its grating slammed shut above him, but not before Sir Udolf had shouted, “I will see you in hell first, you filthy Scot!”
“God’s wounds!” the laird swore angrily, and his stallion danced nervously as its master swung it around and galloped back through the village and up the hill with his men to where his uncle waited with his own clansmen. “The stubborn fool wants a fight, for which he is neither prepared nor able to win,” he said to Robert Ferguson.
“The house is strongly made,” Beinn said to his lord. “While you spoke with the Englishman I sent several of our men to ride about it, looking for weaknesses in the structure. There are none we could see. The windows are all shuttered for winter, and there are but two doors. The one before which you stood, and a tiny door that probably leads to the kitchens. Like its larger mate, it is iron-bound and oak. The walls are all stone and of a deep thickness. It needs no wall or moat about it, for it is as strong as any keep, my lord. We are not equipped to batter it down as we are now.”
The laird said nothing for what seemed a long few moments, but then he spoke. “This Englishman sits behind his house walls smugly holding my wife and our unborn bairn as his captives and thinking she is his for the taking. We will fire the village and take his livestock first. But when I return it will be for my wife, and once she is safe I will kill Sir Udolf Watteson myself for his temerity. Which will you have, Uncle? The four-legged sheep or the two-legged ones?”
“I’ll take the four-legged,” the Ferguson of Drumcairn replied. “Easier to manage, and I won’t have the bother of selling them off. What about his cattle?”
“Next time,” the laird said grimly. Then, before they realized what he was doing, Malcolm Scott rode back down the hill, through the village, and up to the front door of Wulfborn Hall.
“Alix,”
he shouted in as loud a voice as he could.
“I will be back for you, lambkin! Do not dispair! I will be back!”
Seated in the hall of the house Alix heard him calling to her through the closed shutters of the windows. She smiled, and her hands encircled her belly in a soothing motion. “There, my bairn,” she whispered. “Do you hear your da?” And she smiled to herself even as Sir Udolf stormed into the hall, coming over to the hearth where Alix sat.
“Is it true?” he demanded to know.
“Is what true?” she responded in a cool voice.
“He’s put a bastard in your belly,” the master of Wulfborn said.
“My husband and I are expecting a child, aye,” Alix answered him.
“He is not your husband! I am your husband!” Sir Udolf almost screamed. “I have the papers declaring a betrothal between us. You are mine!”
“You had no right to seek a betrothal between us,” Alix told him quietly. “You are not, were not, my legal guardian. I was a widow, and free to choose my own husband if I wanted another. You were my father-in-law, and I told you when you suggested it that I wanted no marriage between us. How could I when I thought of you as I thought of my own dear father, God assoil his soul? I should have felt as if I were committing incest. And certainly the church would not allow such a union.”
“And yet it did,” Sir Udolf said almost triumphantly.
“You as good told me that you would buy this dispensation, and I have been given to understand it took Father Peter three trips to York before your wishes were granted. And how much gold did it cost you, my lord? And it has all come to naught. Let me go home to my husband. He’s still out there, isn’t he? I could hear him through the shutters in the hall when he cried out to me.”
“He has bewitched you!” Sir Udolf insisted. “And seduced you not only in body but in soul. When your bastard is born it shall be taken from you. Then we may count this unfortunate incident closed. Father Peter will bless us and our union, and you will give me a son to replace the one you took from me.”
Alix looked at him, astounded. “Are you mad, my lord?” she wanted to know. “I took nothing from you, but that son who grows more saintly in your eyes daily took much from me. He took the most precious gift I had to offer any man, my virginity. On our wedding night he took it cruelly, brutally, and then left me to return to his mistress. I lay in a cold dark chamber frightened and in pain. Hayle hated me for being his wife. He called me a whore because I agreed to our union so that my father would be safe in his last days, so that I might have a home. I know that most marriages do not begin with love, and knowing your son’s devotion to his Maida, I did not expect his love. But I was entitled to his respect, for I was willing to give him mine. And a little kindness would not have gone awry with me. Instead I was mounted in the dark almost every night like a mare in heat. He did not want to see my face or even have me looking at his shadow, for the guilt that overwhelmed him at the taking of a woman other than Maida was too much for him. Hayle was like a boy with his first and only love. Sometimes I felt as if I were years older than he was, and yet it was he who was the elder.”
“But I would not—could not—treat you like my son did,” Sir Udolf told her.
“I know you would not, and I do not disagree that you need another wife, my lord,” Alix said. “But you cannot have me. I am already a wife to the Laird of Dunglais, and soon to be a mother to my husband’s son. Let me go, and find yourself another. I am certain there is a family hereabouts who has an eligible daughter. I know you have not spoken to your neighbors in years, but now would be a good time to renew your acquaintance with them. We are all at peace with one another.”
Before he might answer her, a serving man ran into the hall. “My lord! My lord! The Scots are burning the village! They are driving off the people and your sheep!”
For a moment Sir Udolf looked befuddled and bemused. Then he cried, “This savage whose bastard you carry has done this! He will never have you back!
Never!
And when the brat springs forth from your womb, madame, I will slay it myself and send its body back to him at your Dunglais.”
“You have brought this upon yourself!” Alix told him angrily, coming quickly to her feet. “If you had returned me to him when the laird asked you, we could have gone home. My husband would have left you in peace. This is his answer to your intractability, my lord. You wish to blame someone for this misfortune? Blame yourself!” Then she pierced him with a hard look. “And if I have the misfortune to still be at Wulfborn when my son is born, I give you fair warning. Make one move towards him, and I will kill you myself! You are mad to believe I would allow you to harm my child.” And turning on her heel, she left the hall while behind her the few servants stared open-mouthed at Alix’s outburst.
Sir Udolf Watteson sat down heavily, remaining silent and still for several long minutes. Finally he stood up, and climbing to the top of his house, opened the shutters on the very window from which his son had hurled himself. Looking out he saw his village burning merrily and heard the faint cries of the wounded. His flock of sheep was gone from the hillside, as was the shepherd and his dog. His few cattle, however, remained. Of the Scots there was no trace now but for the destruction they left in their wake. He sighed as he drew the shutter closed and returned to his hall.
None of it mattered. Some of his villagers would have escaped the borderers. They would return to rebuild the village, and it would be the same as it had ever been. He would take the cattle to the final cattle fair of the year while they were still healthy with their summer grazing. In the spring he would purchase another flock of sheep with the monies he had gained from the cattle sale. He would have no livestock to feed over the winter months, he thought, pleased with his own cleverness.
And best of all Alix Givet was still his. While her strong will was pleasing on one hand, for it indicated the kind of sons she would give him, on the other hand it was not at all agreeable. He would have to beat her regularly in order to keep her in line. It was imperative a wife maintain her place in the order of things. A man could not be overruled in his own house, but then, and he smiled to himself, she was young. Once she understood what was expected of her he was certain she would become a model spouse. Alix was intelligent, and no one could call her a fool despite her stubborn insistence that she loved the Scot whose child she carried.
Alix did not come out of her chamber after that, much to Sir Udolf’s dismay. She did give orders from her self-imposed isolation that the hall was to be cleaned. She instructed the cook and his staff what to serve so that Wulfborn Hall once more became a pleasant habitation. But he did not see her, and she kept her chamber door barred to him. Only Bab was permitted admittance, and to Sir Udolf’s surprise Bab became devoted to Alix. He considered denying her food and drink. Perhaps she would miscarry her bastard, and the connection she seemed to have with the laird would be severed. But Sir Udolf suspected if he did that his servants would see she wasn’t fed and brought liquid refreshment.
Father Peter had escaped the conflagration that had engulfed the village along with some elderly villagers who had fled to the church for sanctuary. Sir Udolf knew they had been left in peace because the elderly were of little value. The priest made plain his disapproval of the master of Wulfborn’s actions. “No woman,” he told Sir Udolf sternly, “is worth the misery and destruction you have allowed.”
“She is mine by right,” the baron muttered.
“You are ensorcelled,” the priest responded.
“Yet you went to York for me,” Sir Udolf snapped. “Thrice!”
“Because you would not listen to reason,” the priest said. “When I returned that first time and learned Mistress Alix was gone, I told you to look elsewhere, but nay, you would not. When my contact in York wrote that more coins were needed for God’s work in order to make your dispensation a reality, I warned you to cease your foolishness and seek elsewhere for another wife.”
“Were those at Yorkminster going to return my offering?” the baron demanded.
“Of course not!” the priest said irritably. “You gave it for God’s work.”
“I gave it to get my dispensation to marry Alix Givet. God’s work indeed! We both know my coins went into the pocket of he to whom you gave it,” Sir Udolf said.
“You might have had another to wife by now. I would have sought for another good woman of childbearing age for you among our neighbors’ families if you had but asked me. And with God’s blessing that wife might have proved fecund, ripening now with a son for you as Mistress Alix ripens with her husband’s child, my lord.”
“He is not her husband! Do not call that Scots savage her husband, Priest!”
“I will know if he is her lawful husband, as she claims, once I have spoken to her again,” the priest told his master. “Where is the lady?”
“In her chamber,” Sir Udolf said irritably. “She has been there since the Scots burned the village. She will not come out, and only Bab is permitted her company.”
“I can see, however, that her influence has extended into your hall, for it is clean again as it has not been in months. And your table has been most tasty these past few days,” Father Peter remarked dryly.
“Go and seek her out, then,” the baron said. “And remind her of her proper duties as my wife and lady of Wulfborn.” Then Sir Udolf held out the large goblet in his hand to be refilled, and a servant jumped swiftly to do his master’s bidding.
The priest arose from the high board, where they had both been sitting. Familiar with the house, he found his way quickly to Alix’s bedchamber and knocked upon the door. A voice within inquired as to his identity, and he answered, “Father Peter. I wish to speak with Mistress Alix.”