Rumours in Wick
Tattletongues and Tallow
By nightfall Wick was a net of whispers strung from wynd to wynd. The King's Arms sweated tallow and stale ale; the hearth coughed smoke; men hunched close to catch each other's words as if they were coins rolling across the table. Outside, gulls griped in the harbour and a salt wind rattled loose shutters like dice in a cup.
"They say the pans boiled men alive," a cooper muttered, palm spread over his mug. "Skin sloughed like fish off bone."
"Aye, and they say Gunn walked through steam with no eyes in his head," answered a sailor with tar under his nails. "Only holes where the English shot him in the Forty-Six. That's why he doesn't blink."
An old woman at the settle laughed, a dry bark. "Och, away wi' ye. Men bled an' men ran. That's the whole of it." She dipped bread in broth and added, softer, "But there's a lass up there—Agnes Craik—wi' fire in her. The land likes her, and that counts more than any sword."
From the hearth-side, a voice: "More than a Keith sword?"
"Aye," she said, and did not look around to see who bristled.
Keith men drifted in twos and threes, hands raw, faces blistered. They joined their own clusters, keeping to the shadowed corners. A bandage hid MacRobb's blisters; he drank with a grimace.
Davie Kerr set his broadsword across his knees like a lap-cat. "They're not soldiers," he said, not to boast but to confess. "They're something else—folk bound the way rope binds barrel hoops. Ye strike one stave and the whole cask answers."
Murdoch the bow-legged farmer grunted. "Smoke was the devil. Kelp reek right into the lungs. Thought my lights would crawl out o' my chest."
"Smoke didn't swing the big blade that took Hamish's head," a younger man snapped, fists white on his cup. "That was Gunn."
"He bleeds," Rory whispered from the bench's edge, voice cracked, eyes rimmed red. "I saw it. Coughed blood like he'd drunk it. And he kept coming." He shuddered. "Chan e duine a th' ann." He's not a man.
Davie tossed back a mouthful, wiped his lips. "Man enough to bury you if you stand wrong. Forget ghosts. Remember the edge."
A Lowland mercenary snorted. "Edge or no, I'll not be cooked like a herring in a pan again. The lady can keep her silver if that's the wage."
"Mind your tongue when ye say 'the lady,'" warned Murdoch. "She's not one to forgive an ill word."
"Aye," said another, half-prayer, half-jest. "Ban-dia na fuil, the blood goddess." He meant Margaret, but two men crossed themselves anyway.
Wick's market murmured by day, gossiped by night. In the lane by the fish-tables, wives gutted haddock and traded news with the flick of knives.
"They say Agnes keeps a charm in her shoe—rowan and red thread—so bullets turn," said one, wiping scales from her sleeve.
"They say she kissed the pans and the salt hissed her name," said another, and they all laughed because that was daft and because terror needs foolery to keep its shape.
A ferryman leaned on his pole. "They say Margaret Sinclair has a mirror that shows not her face but other folks' deaths. She looks and then she smiles. I've seen that smile. I'll not row for her unless my belly is empty enough to echo."
A baker said, careful, "Hush wi' such. The Sinclairs feed as well as starve."
"A king feeds and starves too," the ferryman answered. "But we still count the bones after."
Margaret walked Wick as if it were a corridor in her own house. She kept to the lamplit edges, where flicker made faces beautiful and terrible by turns. Conversation hushed when she passed; men stood, some because awe lifted them and some because fear shoved.
In the King's Arms she paused by a table of pikemen. "Gentlemen," she said, and her voice laid silk over bruised pride, "you stood like oaks in a storm. I am proud to have you under our banner."
Pride flared under the grime. A lad blurted, "We'll stand again, my lady."
"I know it," she said, laying a coin by his mug. To his mate—older, eyes wary—she brushed a knuckle as if by accident. "We were unlucky. Next time we bring wind enough to blow out any fishwife's fire."
As she turned away, she caught Bain's glance in the passage's dark. He peeled off the beam like a shadow dislodging, sidled to her with that fox smile.
"Word spreads," he murmured. "Gunn's a ghost. Craik's a witch. Keith's a fool. Sinclair's a purse." He angled his head. "It would help the tale to change a name or two."
"Change it," she said. "Make Gunn dead and Craik silent."
"And make Bain rich?" He showed teeth.
Her eyes gleamed. "Richer than your courage is long."
He laughed. "Then I'd best stretch it."
Robert Sinclair, who had once believed markets were made of numbers and not of breath, took a slow path through the wynds with his cloak pulled tight. He heard his family name in mouths that mangled it, met men's eyes that slid away as if his ledger could burn them. He paused by the quay and watched the tide nudge boats like a mother scolding tardy bairns.
A priest, cassock patched, stood near him, jaw set against the wind. "They speak ill," Robert said without preface.
"They speak true as they ken," the priest answered. "Truth's a cairn with many hands laying stones. Yours, too."
Robert flinched. "We bleed coin to keep men in the field. What do they think war costs?"
"More than silver," said the priest, and looked at him as one might look into a mirror and step back from what he saw. "Less than souls."
Robert let out a breath. "Dè tha romhainn?" What lies before us?
"Storm," said the priest simply, and turned away to light a guttered lamp before the Virgin's chipped image.
At the Crooked Net tavern, a thin-shouldered bard with a cracked harp sang what he said was an old song and what everyone knew was yesterday dressed in moss:
"Salt on the wind and fire in the pan,
Kelp-wife dances and out bleeds the man.
Gunn with a blade and breath like smoke,
Keith swears vengeance and words he spoke.
Silver in the dark and a lady's smile—
Count your fingers after she bids you a while."
Men laughed and groaned and threw him a coin for rhyming what should not be rhymed. The innkeep, wiping a spill, muttered, "If Margaret hears, you'll sing with no tongue."
The bard bowed toward the door. "Then I'll sing with my hands." He waggled fingers and plucked a last bright chord. Fear loosened in the room by a notch; jest is the Highlander's second shield.
Whispers of Witch and Saint
In a cold garret, three women spun wool with stiff fingers and sharper tongues. "Agnes Craik's no witch," said the eldest. "She's what a woman becomes when nobody comes to help."
The youngest, eyes starry with stories, breathed, "Maybe she is a saint."
"A saint who stabs?" the middle woman snorted. "Best kind. All the rest just float."
They laughed—soft, guilty. Then fell quiet because some names require silence to keep their edges keen.
Keith came in off the square with mud cracking at his boot-seams. Margaret intercepted him where the stable lantern threw a fierce ring of light.
"You let them drift," she said without greeting. "Taverns chew discipline like grist."
"I let them breathe so they'll march tomorrow," he returned. "Men break if you pull the string tight as harp gut."
"You keep your strings," she murmured, stepping into the light so it turned her hair to a crown of flame. "I'll play the tune." Her eyes glinted past him. "Bain is ready."
Keith's jaw set. "Bain is a knife that slips in the hand that holds it."
"Then hold him by the edge," she said, and glided away before his answer could catch up.
Keith stood a long moment, lantern hissing, breath smoking. "A Mhoire," he said to the cold air, "gleidh sinn." Mother, keep us. Then he snorted at his own reaching for a heaven that had not answered fields of men before and would not answer him now, and went to find Davie Kerr.
He found Davie in a side room oiling Beanntan, the old broadsword, with a care some men give to wives. "They say you called me overcooked herring," Davie greeted without looking up.
Keith almost smiled. "I called you a man boiled by women."
"Better boiled than bought," Davie said, and finally lifted his eyes. "Captain, the men are split. Half want a straight stand—line against line—like the old days, as if the old days were anything but a poet's lie. Half want to burn pans and bairns and go to sleep in warm beds."
"And you?"
Davie's jaw set. "I'll not put flame to a cradle. Not for Sinclair, not for the Devil. But I'll take a pan with steel if I must, and I'll meet the Gunn if he'll meet me."
Keith nodded. "You'll have your stand." He clapped Davie's shoulder. "And if you fall, I'll drink your share and lie about your courage to your wife."
"My wife knows I'm a coward," Davie said, and grinned in that bleak way soldiers grin when the joke has a tombstone under it. "She married me anyway."
At the river mouth, two of Robert's clerks came with a waxed paper and the kind of arrogance that smells like new boots. "By order of Sinclair," they said to the ferryman, "you will carry our powder and our men across before dawn."
The ferryman spat deliberate and slow into the black water. "By order of the sea," he replied, "my boat doesn't move for men who can't count the waves. There's a chop. I'll not drown for your sums." He glanced at their soft hands. "Tell your master I owe him fish from last Lent. He can have that and a prayer, but not my boat tonight."
They blustered. He turned his back and checked his skiff's rope, humming the Widow's tune under his breath until they went away.
In the tolbooth's pantry, a scullery girl and a spit-boy shared a heel of bread and that most ancient currency—news.
"Bain says he'll stick the Gunn soon," the boy bragged, crumbs in his hair. "Said he'd carve the Craik woman first and wear her hair as a sash."
The girl made a face and crossed herself. "That man's tongue is poison. My aunt says if you dream of him you wake with fewer teeth." She leaned closer. "They say the Sinclair lass sleeps standing up like a horse, and never shuts her eyes. She's what happens when a candle burns from both ends and won't go out for shame."
The boy shuddered, delighted and terrified. "You'll cook for her tomorrow."
"She doesn't eat," the girl whispered. "She drinks knives."
Near midnight a single lamp burned by a shrine where someone had nailed a driftwood cross. An old fisher knelt, hat in hand, whispering in Gaelic to saints who had fished better waters.
"Eòin, Pàdraig, Brìde nam bàtaichean," he murmured—John, Patrick, Brigid of the boats—"keep our lads from boiling in pans and breaking on rocks. Keep our girls fierce enough to shame us into living. Keep the Sinclairs from counting us into graves."
He crossed himself three times, slow, and stood with joints popping. A wave slapped the quay as if in answer. He took that as good as any omen and went home to dream of nets unbroken.
By the second candle after midnight, Wick breathed in shallow pulls. Dogs tucked their noses under tails; lanterns guttered out. Somewhere a child cried and was hushed. In the King's Arms, men snored like a chorus of saws; a pair of dice lay abandoned under a bench where Rory had sat staring at his hands and seeing blood there that water would not lift.
Margaret stood at her window with the light low, watching the harbour masts like black thorns against a bruised sky. Behind her, on the table, three open letters bled wax: one to a captain in Leith, one to a cousin in Aberdeen, one – most dangerous – to a name she'd written without any title at all.
She did not blink for a long time. Then she whispered, "Soon," and pinched the candle out. The room did not get darker. It only showed its teeth in a different way.
Just before dawn a rumour ran through Wick like a ferret—fast, mean, uncatchable. A boy swore he'd seen shapes on the headland beyond the harbour, three faint red lights in a row, as if the Craiks had set beacons there to blink at the town like eyes.
"Tales," said the sleepy watchman. "Foxfire in the marsh."
"Foxfire doesn't beat a drum," said the boy, and now the watchman leaned out, listening, and heard only his own heart climb his throat because dawn makes drummers of us all.
He rang the hand-bell anyway, once, twice. Doors cracked. Faces peered. Wick woke to its own fear and found it practical: bread to bake, boots to mend, powder to dry, lies to tell.
So Wick filled and refilled its cup with rumour—ghosts in kelp smoke, witches at pans, a lady who drank knives, a captain who made oaths out of stone. Margaret walked among the lamps and fed the fear with coin and the curl of a finger; Robert walked the quay and learned how numbers lose their voice; Keith held his men together with the old language of steel and silence.
The town did not choose a side so much as choose to live long enough to see who would be worth fearing tomorrow. And above it all the wind carried one truth from mouth to ear and back again: the storm was not coming.
It was here.