The Chieftain Needs an Heir - a Highland ménage novella (Clan MacKrannan's Secret Traditions)

"Wife,
I am called to the Vault…"
said Niall, crumpling the Summons in his angry fist and dashing it into the fire.  It ignited as if infused with gunpowder and was gone as swiftly as his temper when he saw Sorcha's tears.

He gathered her
head onto his shoulder, the standard refuge he offered from her hurts, and she tucked her hand into its usual warm place under the plaid across his chest.  Battlewounds did no' pain his heart as much as his crying wife, and her broken spirit cut him daily.

"Dinna weep, my lass.  It is good news, if ye think on it, for the Bard and
his Wisewoman must have cure to offer."

"
It is the Bard's cure I am affeared of, Niall!" she sobbed.  "Were it the Grandam Wisewoman only, she would have come to me herself with more herbs and incantations.  But the Vault?  And if the Bard himself has sent the Summons… and I am not to go with ye…"

"It will all come right, Sorcha. 
Ye must learn to trust their wisdom."

Wise they may be, thought Sorcha, but the
strange traditions of the clan were legend and it was the Bard and his Grandam Wisewoman wife Oona in charge of their enactment.

Two
Yuletides had come and gone since Sorcha's glorious wedding to the chieftain of MacKrannan.  Their passions had been many and wondrous since the time of their first Coupling, a witnessed event, her first insight into exactly how strange the clan's ancient customs could be.  And even last eve in the secluded shadows of her bedchamber, she and her chieftain husband had enjoyed much gratifying lust.

Sorcha understood that t
he passions of their early days were unsustainable, of course, for men must make time to sleep lest a lapse in concentration cost them their lives in battle or even in weapons training.  Still, it was not for the want of opportunity that the Heir's Cradle lay empty, yet this morn her womb had wept in disappointment.  Niall had five sons born to five different women before their marriage.  The fault clearly lay with the wife.

"Niall
," she snivelled, "What kind of remedy would the Bard think on, save all that has been already tried?"

In times
long past such remedy came too often by the chieftain marrying again after the death of his first wife.  Sorcha was in the best of health, but barren wives seemed ridiculously prone to tragic accidents… and her name was not on the Bard's Summons to the Vault.

"I would tell ye if I knew,
Sorcha.  The problem has no' arisen in a hundred years and more.  We will find out very soon, aye?"

A knock
ing on the door bade him peck his wife on the forehead and extricate himself from her clutches to walk past her.  To his surprise, it was the two neophyte Wisewomen who curtsied and asked for admittance.

"Hilde
, Cecily…" he greeted them, "But I think to know the way to the Vault unaccompanied, thank ye both."

"
As ye say, milord," said
Hilde, with another curtsy. "The Bard and Oona await ye there.  It is yer dear wife that we seek, pardon our intrusion."

"Ah… right
, come in then."  He ushered them into Sorcha's bedchamber, wondering briefly at the amount of baggage they trailed in along with them.

Making his way
through the labyrinth of corridors and down the stone steps into the bowels of the castle, he wondered further about the twinkle in Hilde's eye and the distinct sound of the door key being turned after his departure.

Oona's presence was keenly smelled
, for she made her own beeswax candles and added a particular scent she would identify to none.  That same mystical aroma assaulted Niall's nose as he stood now at the entrance to the Vault, trying to remember the code he'd seen but once before his reckless burning of the written Summons.

Three knocks, was it?  Everything else with the Bard and the Wisewomen seemed to connect to that number, so he
tried it.  Nothing.  Ach, just three knocks would be far too unpretentious.  He chapped another three, stopped, and then a further set.

"Chieftain, enter!"

Three times three, that was it.  Why did they make everything so complicated?  It was no' as if anyone but him was expected.  A Summons from the Bard to the Vault was an alarming dispatch, even if it was to offer the Chief or the chieftain a way out of the trouble they'd gotten themselves into.  Whatever, it would take more than sheer nosiness for a man to attend here.

Niall was hesitant to accept Oona's
offer to sample her latest batch of mead as he settled himself on the vacant middle chair at the fireside and stretched out his long legs. Good manners and deference bade him take the goblet and swig the heady brew.  God's teeth… she'd been at it again with her bees…  Whatever she had bidden the creatures eat, his own suffering the following morn was as sure as the sunrise.

He remained sile
nt.  This domain belonged to the Bard and his wife the Grandam Wisewoman, representing the clan, and it was they who must state their purpose in Summoning him.  The focal point was the flames crackling off the applewood logs.  All present were expected to keep their eyes looking that direction throughout the meeting.  This saved any embarrassment when announcements were made and their content unwelcome. 

After a time of reflection, the stillness broken only by three goblets moving from knees to mouths, the Bard spoke out.

"Niall MacKrannan, chieftain of Clan MacKrannan, son of the Chief of the Name of MacKrannan – I address ye.  Seven and twenty moons have waxed and waned since ye took Sorcha to wife."

The silence resumed, and it was
the words that the Bard did
not
speak which took flight to ricochet around the Vault.  Niall had led the clan into several battles in that time and won them all with little loss of men.  The king was well pleased.  But in that same time Sorcha had not borne as much as a daughter to portend that a son might be next.  The warrior chieftain had neither heir nor the hope of one.

Although the Bard's voice had contained no accusation, the chieftain nevertheless felt a wee twinge… nay, a big whack of guilt at the current state of affairs.

He loved his wife dearly, and had been ardent in his visits to her bedchamber – well, for the first year, anyway.  He had kept from wenching for much longer – for the first year and a half, anyway.  Lately he had found his attentions wandering off to the playing fields quite frequently, and was that a rare habit amongst Chiefs and their chieftain sons?  No' in the slightest.  His brother Ruaridh was out wenching hardly a month past being wed.

Indeed, he was to be congratulated f
or his fidelity in the main, for with every moon that passed his wife's desolation ravaged his sensibilities beyond any man's endurance.  His thirtieth year was yet to come and already he felt like a tired old bull trying to get a bawling cow into calf and no' managing at all, more the pity.  So focussed had she become on talking him through the correct positionings, and then turning herself upside down immediately he'd spent, that some nights he almost wished his manly parts were detachable for sending in a dispatch bag.