Bond of Passion (25 page)

“Ohhhhh!” Annabella groaned as a hard pain assaulted her.

Jean shook her head in the negative. “Nae time, madam.” She turned to the cottage’s tenant. “Margaret, we’ll need hot water, and some clean rags if ye hae them.”

Margaret nodded, and hobbled about collecting the required items. She also added a bit of ribbon from her sewing box. “To tie the laddie’s cord off,” she said.

Between them Jean and the lady Anne quickly stripped Annabella down to her chemise, which Jean then pushed up, revealing her mistress’s enormous distended belly.

“Push yer legs up so I can see what’s happening.” She peered down. “Holy Mary! The wee thing is about to be born! Can ye push, Annabella?”

“Mother of God, if I dinna, I fear I shall burst,” Annabella exclaimed. Then she bore down with all of her might and pushed.

“Again!” Jean said. “And again! Ahh, here’s the bairn! We hae a lassie!” She held up the bloody infant, who began to squall loudly.

“Let me see her! Let me see her!” Annabella said. But then suddenly she cried out again. “Sweet Jesu! The pain! The pain!”

Jean handed the crying infant to her grandmother. Old Margaret pulled her aside to where she had laid out a basin of warm water, some lamb fat, and a rag to bathe and soothe the infant before she was swaddled.

Annabella screamed aloud. The urge to push down again was building up once more. What was happening? She had already birthed her child. “Jeannie,” she cried out. “Help me!” She groaned.

Bending, Jean saw a second head just crowning. “We hae a second bairn!” she said excitedly to the others.

“Twins!” the lady Anne exclaimed, cradling her now swaddled granddaughter. “Ye were a twin, Annabella.”

Jean nodded. Obviously Annabella’s mother had lost her other bairn, but no need to point that out as her young mistress labored to deliver that second bairn.

“Ohhhhhh!” Annabella groaned once more, but her second child was as quick to be born as its sibling had been. It slipped from her body after but two pushes.

A smile lit Jean’s face. “’Tis a laddie,” she said. “They’re both wee, but they’re both strong.” She turned back to attend to the afterbirth.

And as if to prove her point, the newly born infant began to howl as loudly as his sister had, extremely annoyed at having been pushed from his mother’s comfortable, warm, and dark womb. His little face squinched itself into a red wrinkle, and his balled little fists waved in protest. He was quickly bathed and wrapped tightly in swaddling clothes before being placed in his mother’s arms.

Annabella was astounded as she looked from one tiny face to the other. Neither of them seemed to have inherited her plain features. These were her bairns. She was a mother now. Her eyes grew wet, and tears slipped down her cheeks as her mother came to kiss her and praise her accomplishment.

Someone had had the presence of mind to send up to the castle. The Earl of Duin had come immediately, and now burst through the door of Margaret’s cottage, his handsome face filled with concern for his wife.

“We hae twins, Angus!” she crowed triumphantly. “A lad and a lassie!”

Angus Ferguson glanced at the infants and saw they were healthy. But it was his wife’s face his eyes sought. Kneeling by her bedside, he took her hand in his, kissing it fervently. “Thank ye, sweetheart!” he said to her. “Thank ye!”

“Are they nae beautiful?” she cooed at the babies. “Are they nae perfect?”

“Ye’re beautiful in my eyes,” he said to her. “Ye’re perfect.”

“I love ye, Angus,” Annabella said boldly to him. She had not until now felt brave enough to admit it to him.

“I love ye more,” he surprised her by replying, for neither had he ever until now admitted the emotions that had been filling him for the last months.

“What will ye name them, my lady?” old Margaret said. She was very proud that the earl’s heir and daughter and been born in her humble cottage.

“The lad shall be James Robert,” the earl decided. “James for the king and Robert for my lady’s good sire.”

Annabella smiled up at him. She knew the James was for James Hepburn and not the toddler king. “With my lord’s permission I should like to name our daughter Anne Margaret,” the Countess of Duin said. “Anne for my mother, and Margaret for ye, good dame, in whose house my bairns were born and first saw the light of day.”

“Ohh, my lady, such an honor.” And the old woman wept.

“We must get my daughter and her bairns back to the castle,” the lady Anne said. “When I think of all the preparations made for this birth, now useless . . .” She sighed.

“We’ll need a second cradle,” Jean said in practical tones. “How did ye know to come?” she asked her brother as she washed up from her labors.

“Little Una ran all the way up to the castle and came to fetch me,” he replied.

“Bless the lass,” Jean said, nodding. She had thought Annabella a bit sentimental when she had taken the girl in to educate, but the eight-year-old lass was showing a great deal of promise, having been the only one in the village to go for the earl.

A litter was brought down from the castle. It contained a woolen blanket and some furs. Annabella was well wrapped and carried from the cottage, to be put in the litter. The twin infants were snuggled down in the furs with their mother, and the litter was quickly carried back up to the castle. Jean remained to help old Margaret put her dwelling back in order. She sent one of the clansmen up to the castle to fetch fresh bedding for their hostess, for what was there was now wet with blood and birth fluids.

The two afterbirths, which had been saved in a basin, would be buried beneath an oak tree near the castle. They had dug the hole for it just a few weeks prior, lest the ground be frozen too hard when the time came.

Agnes was waiting with her father to greet her sister’s return. The laird of Rath voiced his approval at his daughter’s success in providing Duin with not just an heir but an heiress. Agnes cooed over the twins, marveling at their miniature perfection.

“Perhaps I’ll gie them a playmate one day,” she said coyly.

“If I hae not already gotten ye wi’ bairn after this week of trying, I am not the man I used to be,” her husband boasted, grinning.

“
Matthew!
” Agnes scolded, blushing.

Weakened as she was, Annabella giggled, for, despite being given quarters in an isolated part of the castle, Matthew was a noisy lover, and his efforts were heard by many.

“Annabella needs to rest,” her mother said. “Put the twins in their cradles by the hearth in their mam’s bedchamber,” she instructed the two little maidservants who stood anxiously nearby. Then she considered. “Has a second cradle been found?”

It had been, and the newborns were now settled within, each lying upon a thick piece of sheepskin that had been set beneath the tiny feather beds for warmth. Miniature down coverlets were placed over the sleeping infants. Annabella was now settled in her own bed, half-asleep, while her mother directed everyone.

The cradle rocker insisted she needed no help. “I hae two legs and feet, my lady,” she said. “Two are as easy to rock as one.”

“As ye will, then,” the proud grandmother said. How well Annabella had done. Despite the tragic loss of her first bairn she had still managed to give her husband two children within two years of marriage. Duin’s legacy was safe.

W
ith Annabella safely delivered of her bairns, and the weather still favorable, the laird of Rath and his wife departed for their own home. Annabella was sad to see them go, but their visit had been a happy and successful one. With Agnes now wed it was time to seek a wife for their only son and heir. The laird would not be happy until Rob had produced an heir for Rath.

Agnes turned seventeen. The winter set in. Christmas came, then departed. On the feast of Candlemas in February, Agnes announced she was enceinte. The winter dragged on with no visitors and consequently no word of what was going on outside of their little world. The snows piled up in the courtyard. Lambs were born. The days were becoming noticeably longer, but the wolves still howled out on the hillsides in the dark of night, reminding them that winter was not ready yet to relinquish its grip.

One afternoon a large vessel anchored in the cove beneath the castle. A small boat was rowed ashore, to be pulled up on the rocky beach. Its single occupant got out and slowly climbed the barely discernible narrow path up to a small door in the stone walls. He pounded upon the door for a time before someone finally came, opening the small grilled hatch to demand what it was he wanted.

“I’ve a message for the Earl of Duin from one James Hepburn,” the sailor said.

There was the sound of a key turning in a lock, and the hinges creaked resentfully as the small door slowly swung open. The seaman stepped inside and followed the man-at-arms who had opened the door down a long dark corridor lit only by the flickering torch the man ahead of him carried. The walls of the passage were covered in hoarfrost.

The visitor wondered whether it ever melted. They climbed three flights of stairs, finally exiting into a well-lit corridor that led to the hall. At the high board were seated what appeared to be a family.

“My lord,” the man-at-arms said, “here is a messenger come for ye.”

Angus Ferguson waved his guest forward. “Are ye off the ship now anchored in my cove?” he asked the man.

“Aye, my lord,” the sailor answered, pulling off his cap and bowing. “I have a message for ye from a James Hepburn.” The man spoke English but his accent indicated it was not his native tongue.

“Where are ye from then?” the earl asked him.

“Orkney, the isles,” was his reply.

“Where is Bothwell now?”

“Imprisoned in Denmark, may God hae mercy on him,” the seaman responded. Reaching into his shirt, he pulled out a carefully folded parchment tied with a bit of string and sealed with a small blob of wax. He handed it to Angus Ferguson.

Gazing down at the parchment, the Earl of Duin saw Bothwell’s rabbit crest imprinted in the wax. Looking up, he said to the messenger, “Find a place for yerself at the trestles and eat.” Then, turning back to the parchment in his hand, he broke the seal and slowly unfolded it. There was Bothwell’s impatient writing upon it.

Angus felt tears welling up as he read the brief letter. James Hepburn, his friend. The most loyal of the queen’s men, gone from Scotland, never to return. Imprisoned. Never to be free. He remembered with a brief smile their days as young men in Paris. He remembered a brave, bold, and dashing man with little tolerance for fools, and yet it was the fools who had triumphed over them all. What a tragedy!

“What is it?” Annabella asked, seeing the play of emotions across his face.

He handed her the parchment. “Read it,” he said.

She did, and her own tears slipped down her cheeks. “Is there nothing we can do to help him?” Annabella asked, looking up from the parchment to her husband. “Nothing at all? There has to be something.”

“Nothing,” Angus Ferguson said. “James Hepburn was always a gambler, and he gambled he could help the queen control her lords if he were her husband. This is one of the few times he has cast the die and lost.”

“Ye hae gold,” Annabella said.

“And I will use it to help make him comfortable in his prison, but if I used it to attempt to engineer his escape, to finance another rebellion, I could cost Duin dearly. Moray is in power now. He hae crowned the queen’s bairn, and there, sweetheart, is an end to it. Bothwell knows that. He is nae a fool except in love.”

“I understand,” Annabella replied, “but it still breaks my heart to know that Bothwell will die in a foreign place, and be buried in a lonely, unmarked grave. And the queen? What will happen to the queen?”

“I think after he feels he has the reins of power firmly in his grasp, Moray will put his half sister in a more hospitable place than Lochleven Castle. He is a wily devil, but he was always treated like the prince he might have been but for the accident of his birth by Marie de Guise, who raised him with the rest of her husband, James the Fifth’s bastards. He grew up at Stirling with Mary before she went to France, and he has always had a fondness for her, even if her behavior has confounded him,” the earl said.

But Mary Stuart had had a year to ponder her situation. Her half brother, James Stewart, should have known better than to think he might force her to his will. Had he treated her with firm kindness, housed her as befitted her position, and allowed her small access to her little son, he might have avoided what happened next.