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The Outskirts of Edinburgh, Late Spring 1307
“Tosia, can ye bring me some eggs? We can boil them for dinner.”
Flipping her chestnut hair over her shoulder, Tosia rushed to her mother’s side. The woman had looked drawn as of late, tired, and her skin had a gray pallor that sent a lurch of fear over her spine whenever she thought on it.
Her mother’s cough had been growing worse, sometimes making it difficult for her mother to even speak. And there was something more — something her mother wasn’t telling her but made her mother cry herself to sleep at night when she thought Tosia wasn’t listening.
Something dire was weighing on Maggie Fraser, and she wasn’t telling her children.
“Aye, Mother. Can I get ye anything else?”
Maggie shook her head and began coughing, covering her mouth with a rough linen cloth. Tosia set her jaw and patted her mother’s shoulder before heading outside into the drizzling rain in search of eggs.
Her brother, Tavish, was outside, his broadening shoulders and arms swinging an axe at a stack of split logs. The poor lad, well, not so much a lad anymore. Tavish had grown into a strapping young man, but with few prospects. Tosia sighed. Neither of them had prospects.
She hadn’t been deaf to the rumor that she and her brother were bastards of some laird or other man of import. Her mother had never shared that information with them, keeping her scandalous history a secret. Tosia didn’t know who her father might be, but being labeled as illegitimate meant no offers for her hand and few opportunities for Tavish. Since they also lived on the outskirts of Fraser land, they had little interaction with those in the village or in the clan at all.
Life for Tosia had been her mother and her brother. She had no idea how her mother supported them on the Fraser lands. They weren’t tenant farmers — did her mother have to pay the Fraser laird for usage of the land? Their rents? If so, where did that coin come from?
Most importantly, what would happen when her mother died?
Because that event was on the horizon. Tosia may not know much, but only a great fool could miss the signs. Tosia was many things, but she was no fool.
Tosia’s mind whirled at these thoughts as she absently collected the small brown eggs scattered about the thatched chicken coop. Once her basket was full with all the eggs she could find nested in the grass and peat, she stepped outside into the drizzle.
Tavish met her at the door, his arms full of stacked wood. More scarce, it burned hotter than peat, and they needed all they could to chase away the chill, for their mother’s sake.
“How is she?” Tavish asked before they entered. So many conversations about their mother began this way — questions about her health out of her earshot whilst they labored.
Tosia shook her damp head. “The cough is just as bad. I dinna know what to do for her anymore. Yet she will no’ say what is going on.”
Tavish shifted the lengths of firewood in his arms. “Mayhap ‘tis time to confront her.”
Though the idea had merit, Tosia dropped her gaze and dug at the mud with her toe.
“We canna force her to speak on it, and I will no’ put her in that position. She will tell us when she is ready.”
Maggie’s cough grew more worrisome. Then one morning, blood clots accompanied the cough. That morning, instead of sending her children out for their chores, she asked them to join her at their narrow wooden table. She took Tosia’s hand in her left and Tavish’s in her right. Her gray skin hung on her frame, and Tosia’s heart pounded erratically in her chest.
‘Tis the moment. She’s going to tell us she’s dying, Tosia thought as her watery eyes gazed upon her beloved mother. What would Tosia do without her?
“Tosia,” Maggie said with a glance at her daughter, then flicked her eyes to her son. “Tavish. I have a bit of news for ye, and I would ask that ye let me get through it afore ye ask questions. ‘Tis much, to be sure.”
Tosia tightened on her stool and the pounding in her chest stretched to her temples. But she did as she was bid and remained silent. A furtive look to her brother showed that he, too, was as still, as stiff, as she. Their shared panic filled the room more fully than the weak heat from the hearth.
“Ye’ve had questions about your father, and I’ve avoided many of them. I know it has angered ye. But I swore to the man I would no’ mention his name to ye. To anyone. That I would keep the secret of ye to myself out of respect for him and his family.”
Family. The word bit like a dog. Their father had a family somewhere? A family that didn’t include them? Already Tosia disliked the man. Even if he was her father.
“Dinna judge the man too harshly. He was away from his family for a long time, and I was there. He gifted me the two best gifts a woman could ask for. And for the past twenty years, he’s made certain our needs h ave been well met. This sturdy roof over our heads, food in our bellies, and a bit o’coin in our purse.”
Twenty years? The man paid for their care for twenty years and Tosia had not known? How had her mother managed such a task of keeping that a secret?
“What has happened, mother? Is the man no longer paying because Tavish and I are older? Does he expect us to be on our own now?”
How could any man call himself a man and leave a woman in dire straights? The deep-seated anger at how this man left her mother inflamed Tosia’s cheeks and burned in a hard ball in her stomach. She hated this man she’d never met.
Her mother must have seen a movement on Tosia’s face, for she patted her lass’s hand.
“Now, Tosia. Dinna judge harshly. I knew what would happen when I agreed to be with him for the short time I was. I loved him, and he loved me, and if all I had was those few years, then they were worth it. And he did as best he could for his children he couldn’t claim. I never begrudged him that.”
Tosia disagreed but didn’t press the issue and let her gaze fall to the worn tabletop.
“He’s no longer providing for your care, because he died last fall. As a high commander of the Bruce’s army, he was captured by the English, hanged, drawn, and quartered, and his head now resided on a pike next to Wallace’s.”
Good riddance, Tosia thought spitefully, but the catch in her mother’s voice when she spoke of her father’s death gave her pause. Did her mother still love this man who’d left her? From the sadness in Maggie’s voice, Tosia believed she must.
“I’m sorry for his death, Mother. But—”
“Let me finish Tosia. There is quite a bit more. Ye see, your father was an important man, and no’ only to the Bruce. I know ye’ve heard rumors about who he might be. In truth, your father was Laird Simon Fraser. Ye are the illegitimate children of one of the most powerful men in Scotland, who was, until his death, a close confidant, ally, and warrior for King Robert the Bruce himself. Ye see why he couldn’t claim ye? Why ye had to remain a secret?”
Tosia couldn’t respond. Her mouth dried out, and with it her words. What could she possibly say to this shocking information?
She was part of the great Fraser legacy? And his family didn’t know? And her mother lived alone all this time to protect the man’s lineage and his standing?
Tosia raised one eye to her mother, almost afraid to look at her in this new light. Maggie had a strength Tosia hadn’t known was possible.
Her mother had said quite a bit more. Surely there couldn’t be more information? Was there? Tosia struggled with what she had learned thus far.
“I’ve a letter here in my pocket from King Robert the Bruce,” Maggie continued, ignoring the shocked expressions of her children. She released their hands and withdrew the missive from a fold in her skirt.
Tosia and Tavish could both read. Maggie had been taught by this great man himself, and she’d made sure to teach both of her children. Men should be able to read, she’d claimed. For women, reading might serve in a dire time of need one day, Maggie had told her, so she’d taught Tosia basic letters and reading as well.
The letter Maggie withdrew had a broken seal, but enough of it was still intact for Tosia to make out the emblem. The brownish-red seal portrayed a mounted soldier bearing a sword. The seal of King Robert the Bruce.
The pounding in her head and chest grew insufferably worse. Why did her mother have a letter from the king? Tosia cut her mother a skeptical gaze — who was this woman she thought she knew?
Maggie took a moment to cough tiredly into a rag, and Tosia tried not to notice the heavy red streaks left behind. Then Maggie opened the letter and let her eyes peruse the words before she spoke again.
