The Night Side Read Free Page B

female competence with immorality, but the church had proclaimed it truth, so truth it now was.
    Tearlach claimed, when pressed by an angry George, that he followed Frances about so that he would be at hand to protect her if any enemy tried to seize upon her while they were outside the castle walls. Frances did not believe this, either. A naked man armed with only a dirk would be of no assistance in a battle—unless, of course, the glimpse of his bony shanks had the effect of a Medusa upon a raider. Frances’s first glimpse had very nearly paralyzed her. The thought of facing such male ugliness on her wedding night was enough to end all aspirations of marriage. She could only hope that other men were less repulsive.
    No, Tearlach had other reasons for following her and George, and she had soon discovered that they were not polite.
    Though some effort had been made to preserve her innocence when she returned from the convent, Noltland was a small castle and its occupants not immune to the sin of gossip. Frances soon discovered Tearlach’s unsavory history. He had, in his youth, been a rather dissolute person and a great fancier of those of lower classes who wore the kirtle. Doubtless that was why he had been such fast friends with her father.There was no sin of the flesh to which he had not turned a hand—or worse body part.
    Now that Tearlach was old and unable to “dance a mattress jig,” as he so colorfully phrased it, he was in the habit of following young people about in the hope of catching them in the act. He believed it would reanimate his “hanging Jimmie.” His organ had been useless since the old laird’s death. Guilt at his own survival, when all others had died at Flodden, had appeared in the form of a grievous ghost, a specter that no one except Tearlach could see. The vengeful spirit had removed his ability to copulate. He was desperate to try anything that would again make him able to enjoy a sexual connection with a woman.
    Unfortunately, when he could not find anyone to watch, he liked to ask personal questions. The coarse people who lived at Noltland thought this amusing and did not understand Frances’s distaste for the man. They excused his behavior because he was one of the few men left near the castle and a piper. They asked: Was he not as impotent as a capon? Why should she fear him and try to escape his watchful eye? She did not have a lover who she wished to keep secret, did she?
    He might well be a human capon, but impotent or not, she did not like the man. And now that she had relearned more of her native tongue and comprehended the true meaning of his words, the thought of some of Tearlach’s impudent inquiries caused a flush to mantle her cheeks. So angry and embarrassed had they made her that she had, in a fit of rage, accepted the visiting MacLeod’s offer to supply her with a young— and strong —Master of the Gowff who might serve as her guard and protector when she and George went out to play.
    She had also finally told Tearlach that if he again raised the subject of bollocks, pillicocks or membrum virile in her presence she would have him whipped. Further, she had told him that his air-bathing must be done away from her or she would see that his hanging Jimmie was castrated from his body, making him a capon in fact and not metaphor. She would have said more, but the man was fouler than the limitations of the English language would allow her to express. All of her available insults were agricultural, and one could not very well ask what sheep had spawned him without being insulting to perfectly innocent animals that provided them with much-needed wool.
    Unfortunately, these threats to his person had only increased Tearlach’s interest in her, and until the new Master of Gowff arrived, she did not know whom she could get to beat or castrate the privy-mouthed broganeer. George was too young, and the other castle inhabitants regarded him as some sort of combination of buffoon and