Page 3 of A Song of Ravens and Wolves
‘Olith!’ I heard Bethóc shout from somewhere beyond the door. ‘I know you’re in there. You can’t avoid it by spending all day in there. Father has asked for an audience with us before the wedding.’
With my foot, I slid my damp clothes beneath my pallet and kicked it with my bare toe.
‘Ouch!’ I grabbed my foot but was hampered by my ridiculous skirts.
Angus woke with a start.
‘Olith, I can hear you.’
I limped around until the pain subsided. ‘I’m coming,’ I said, pulling on my shoes. ‘I can think of nothing worse, Angus.’ he looked at me with sad brown eyes. ‘Better do as she asks, we can’t be late for the Laird King. Coming.’ I shouted again.
I took the worn steps one at a time, steadying myself against the wall as Angus’s soggy coat brushed past, trying to be first to the bottom.
‘I’m here,’ I said emerging into the courtyard. ‘You can call off the search.’
‘Must you always make a show of yourself?’ she hissed. ‘Look at that!’
She pointed to the muddied smear that weaved its way, Angus height, the width of my dress. I did not care then, and I do not now. We are not in this life long enough to worry about such things.
‘Father will be furious.’
‘Ack, he’s always furious about somethin’ and it’s usually me.’ I tried to smooth my riotous hair. ‘What is it the Laird wants with us?’
‘Why will you not call him father?’
‘I’ll call him father when he treats me like a daughter.’
Our father was a poison, and we all knew it, but Bethóc preferred to deny it. She had always been his favourite.
‘He will. He does.’ Bethóc sighed, linking her arm through mine.
‘He does not.’ Angus came to heel. ‘Makes no matter. I am fine on my own and do not need his respect. Anyway, you’ll be married to Crinnin soon enough and you’ll be gone from here.’
‘I know. I know. I can’t wait to marry him and give him and father a wee boy, an heir to the throne.’
She thought of nothing other than being a wife and mother. I was never sure if it was her way of escaping. Even when we were children, she would dress up and force, Uid, the son of one of my father’s kinsmen to pretend to be her husband. He hated it but was too afraid of our father to say no. She had been raised to only ever further the Laird’s cause. She would give him an heir to Dunkeld, and she would escape, meanwhile I would be left to pick up the pieces.
I would have rather been dead than bring a child into the world to be an heir to my father’s throne.
‘I can’t wait to return in the spring with a babe in my arms and have Father’s priest baptise him.’
‘How do you know you’ll have a boy?’ all the while I kept an eye on the direction of the Northmen’s approach. ‘What if you’re cursed, like mother? And you can only bear him girls?’
‘Olith! Don’t utter those words or it might come true!’
‘Hush, of course not. I said it only in jest and would it be such a bad thing if they were wee girls? At least then they’d no have to be part of the Laird’s quest to hold the crown.’
In my periphery the men from the north closed in, moving closer towards the walkways of the high gate.
Bethóc rolled her eyes. ‘Olith, it is our birthright, and it would be theirs, boy or girl.’
‘Fate isn’t dictated by birthright. It’s no beyond our command. I choose my freedom. I choose my own destiny. Not our father.’
Looking back, if our mother had been present, I may have felt differently. I had already lost so much of my childhood caring for my sister that I could not bring myself to lose even more by becoming a wife.
Bethóc flashed a look that stirred up a memory of our mother from before when there was still a light behind her eyes.
‘Marriage isn’t the end of the world, despite the lies you tell yourself.’
