The apothecary's powders were ground fine, pale as chalk. He poured them into small paper twists, folding each like a letter of doom. "This much will lame a cow," he muttered. "Twice that and she'll bloat and stiffen by nightfall. For dogs, less still."
Margaret's smile curved cold. "A sick beast brings more despair than a dead man. A man may be mourned, but a herd feeds the children. Starve them, and they'll scatter like gulls."
Keith stepped forward, boots heavy. "This isn't war, Margaret. This is pestilence. My grandsire fought the Gunns at Torran Dubh, steel against steel, eye to eye. That was honour. What you plan dishonours every blade we've ever drawn."
Margaret turned slowly, her gaze fierce. "And did your grandsire win, Keith? No. The Gunns bled him white. Honour is a dirk in the dark when your enemy sleeps. Honour is a cairn for fools. I want victory."
Keith's jaw clenched. "You'll turn every crofter in Caithness against you."
Keith's jaw tightened. "I saw him bleed. I saw his people hold. Poisoning cattle will not make you queen, lass."
"It will make me victorious," she said simply.
Robert sat silent, his head bowed. He could not look at her. She mistook it for weakness; in truth, it was the weight of shame pressing him down like a millstone.
That night, Robert walked the wynds of Wick until his legs ached. He remembered every ledger he had balanced, every coin he had slipped across a table to smooth his daughter's path. I built this monster, he thought, stone by stone.
Robert Sinclair walked without direction, cloak drawn tight, his breath steaming. His boots found puddles and cobbles, slipping as if the town itself tried to trip him. He had drunk nothing, yet he staggered like a man with whisky in his bones.
He climbed the wynd past the kirk. The bell was silent, but the stone seemed to hum in the night. He slipped inside. The nave smelled of peat smoke and old prayers. No lamp burned, only moonlight filtering through high glass, painting pale crosses on the floor.
Robert dropped to a pew, head in hands. He tried to pray, but the words stuck. "Lord," he whispered finally, "forgive me. I raised her with coin, not conscience. I taught her sums but not mercy. I told her winning was everything."
His throat closed. He forced the words out. "Now she kills cattle, and tomorrow she will kill children. And it will be by my hand as much as hers."
The silence swallowed him. No comfort came. Only the creak of timbers, the shuffle of a rat.
He thought of the Craiks, of Seumas coughing blood but still standing, of Agnes with her flame hair and fierce eyes. He thought of the boy Ruaraidh, who had risked the road with his warning. They deserve better than my cowardice.
In his chamber, he lit a single taper and began another letter. This time it was not warning but confession.
If I am found dead, know it was my daughter's hand that set the draught upon the beasts. Forgive me, for my sin is that I made her and did not stop her. Pray God her line ends with her.
He sealed it, but he did not know to whom it should be sent.
The third morning after the feast broke like hammered pewter—flat light, a cold breeze running low over the grass, the loch dull as a blade that had seen too much work. Smoke lifted straight up from the kelp pits; women were already at the pans, their paddles turning the slow, patient boil; children trotted with peat and driftwood; a pair of boys raced slingshots at a row of driftwood stumps. Peace, thin and serviceable, lay over everything like a well-mended plaid.
Then Domhnall the herdsman ran.
"A Aonghais! Agnes!" he bawled, legs churning, cap in his fist, breath coming like torn cloth. "Up the east pasture—a' bhò mhòr, the big cow—she willna rise!"
The word cow rang through the morning like a cracked bell. Men straightened. Women stilled their paddles. Agnes was already moving, dagger at her belt, skirts hitched, hair braided tight. Seumas fell into stride beside her, plaid thrown broad across his shoulders; the cough that often seized him at dawn was strangled to a low rasp as he lengthened his pace.
They climbed the short slope above the loch where the pasture cupped into a shallow bowl. Dew silvered every blade. Small white flowers—eyebright, pearlwort—starred the turf like watchful eyes. Near the hawthorn stile a red cow lay on her side, legs folded awkward, the rich hide steamed where the morning chill took it. Her tongue lolled; foam clotted at the corners of her mouth. Her flanks heaved.
Two little girls hovered by the fence, eyes wide, fingers knotted in aprons. Domhnall's wife, Una, held them back with a forearm like a wall. Domhnall himself knelt at the cow's head, crooning, "Mo chridhe, eirich, eirich," my heart, rise, rise, as if the old endearment could coax muscle to remember itself.
Agnes dropped to her knees in the wet. "How long?"
"Found her like this at first light," Domhnall panted. "She calved clean last week. Ate yesterday. Drank. Then this."
Seumas crouched opposite, palm to the beast's ribcage. Heat throbbed. He slid his hand lower, felt the gut shudder. A sour reek lifted under the milk-sweet. Not the smell of fever. Not rot. Something else. He said nothing yet.
The cow's eyes rolled. She made a sound low down, as if trying to remember her own voice.
Màiri Mhòr came stumping up the slope with her rowan staff, two apprentices at her heels carrying baskets of plantain, yarrow, and the stubborn belief that work can beat death if you start early enough. "What's broke?" the old woman demanded, though her eyes had already read the shape of it.
"Won't rise," Agnes said. "Ate, drank, then down. Foam there." She jerked her chin at the lather. "Domhnall says no change of fodder."
Màiri Mhòr grunted, knelt with more ease than her bones might admit, and pinched a bit of foam between finger and thumb. She lifted it to her tongue—only a touch—then spat sideways into the grass, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand.
"Bitter," she said flatly. "Not the bitterness God put in plants. The other kind."
Domhnall flinched. "Naomh Màiri, don't say it."
A murmur ran around the little knot of people who had followed: men with targes half-on, women with paddles still in hand, children on tiptoes behind hips. Old words surfaced without being called: murrain, elf-shot, mallachd—curse. Someone crossed themselves. Someone else touched rowan in a pocket, because touching is quicker than theology.
Agnes lifted the cow's lip. Black gums, saliva roping. She smoothed the broad forehead, the gesture more for Domhnall than the beast. Then she stood, damp soaking her knees, and turned slow so her eyes could find every face.
"There'll be no witch-talk," she said, not loud but iron. "This is no curse from wind or hill. This is a hand."
"Whose?" Una demanded, chin up, voice trembling with a mother's anger on behalf of children who would drink less if the cow died.
Agnes didn't soften it. "Margaret Sinclair's."
The name cracked the morning a second time. It electrified the murmurs into mutterings, the mutterings toward words like fire and rope. Seumas rose, lifted a palm. The semaphore of that scarred hand calmed them a shade.
"Let Màiri work first," he said. "We'll bury rage soon enough if need be."
Màiri Mhòr was working already. "Plantain mash," she snapped to her apprentices. "A fist of it. Warm water, not hot. Grind charcoal from last night's peat—proper black, not ash. We'll pull what we can pull." She eased a cloth between the cow's teeth, "Easy, mo ghràidh," she crooned to the beast, the older endearments not just for folk. "Agnes—hold the head a wee."
Agnes steadied the broad skull. Domhnall hovered like a man trying not to drown beside someone else drowning. Seumas slid his palm long down the neck to the shoulder, feeling the tremor roll under hide like distant thunder. He exchanged a glance with Agnes across that living bulk. The look said the same thing: this was done.
"Anything new from Wick?" he asked aloud, making the words plain so panic couldn't fill the spaces.
Ewan, who had come up panting with a sling still looped at his wrist, shook his head. "Only a peddler passed on the north track. We didn't let his wheels cross our yard."
"Good," Agnes said. "We keep our gate like we keep our throats."
Màiri Mhòr's mash came—plantain crushed, charcoal ground fine, warmed in a cup that once held ale and now held caution. They worked it into the cow's mouth a thumb at a time, stroking the throat so swallowing remembered how to be done. After a long minute the beast managed a convulsive gulp. A little of the foam thinned. The great barrel of the belly still heaved.
"Water," Màiri said. "From the south well only. Drawn now. I'll taste it first." The apprentice ran, braids bouncing.
An old man near the fence cleared his throat. "In my father's day," he began, because old men hold stories like tinder, "Sinclairs on a bad summer put powder in the trough at Reiss. Seven head down in a day. The folk said it was sìthichean—the fair folk—but my father said it was men with hands and too much time."
"Then we'll not give men time," Agnes replied. "Nor our water."
The apprentice came back with a brimming pail, chest heaving. Màiri dipped a horn in, sipped, swished, spat, nodded. "Clean." She let the cow nose at the brim; the beast lapped weakly. Some went down; some spilled; all of it felt like a victory you don't sing about.
"How did it come?" Una pressed, voice tight. "Who brought it? No one strange set foot on our pasture."
"Fodder?" Seumas asked.
Domhnall shook his head miserably. "The same stack I cut myself. No merchant's hay."
"Then it came by hand, not cart," Agnes said. She looked uphill toward the narrow track where the fence ran ragged. Past that, heather rose to the brow, and beyond, the world—the road to Wick. "Or by a night foot," she added quietly, anger banked. "We double watches at the herds. Boys by day, men by night."
"Tha iad a' mallachadh sinn," someone near the back muttered—they are cursing us.
Agnes's head snapped around. "No. They are poisoning us. Don't give the enemy a glamour. Give them a name."
"Their name is Sinclair, Their name is Keith" Seumas added, voice low and raw. His hand settled on the targe at his hip. "Names can be cut."
Màiri Mhòr straightened, knees cracking. "She may live," she judged of the cow. "Or not. I've done what I can. The rest is between her gut and the devil."
"Then we do the living part," Agnes said. "Listen now."
They did. Even the children were quiet because they had learned that quiet is sometimes the only gift you can afford.
"From this breath forward," Agnes said, "no food, no fodder, no drink crosses our lips or the lips of our beasts unless it has passed a Craik hand and eye. We refuse gifts. We watch wells. The south well only for now; we ward the others with rowan and a man at each until Màiri gives her blessing. We walk the fences. We set snarls on the gorse-paths where a man might creep. Chan eil sinn bochd gun inntinn—we are not poor of wits." She pointed at the two little girls behind Una. "You—what's your names?"
"Bethag," whispered the older.
"Caitrìona," the younger said, sucking the corner of her apron.
"You do not eat a sweet from a stranger," Agnes told them, firm but kind. "You do not drink a drop unless your mother pours it. If a man smiles, you smile back—then you run."
They nodded, solemn, suddenly important. Children expand to fit the work the world hands them.
Seumas added, "If you see anyone near the herds you do not know, you do not challenge. You whistle—three short, one long—like the curlew, and an old one will answer."
Ewan demonstrated, pursing his lips. The sound lifted, plaintive, unmistakable. Three short; one long. Even the cows flicked an ear.
Niall, quiet as always, said from the fence, "We'll lay watch on the top path. They'll not come twice on a clear track."
Màiri Mhòr wiped her hands on her apron and thumped her staff twice. "I'll bless the wells now and the pans after. Bring me rowan twigs and a length of red thread. And a dram—chan e do dh'òl, Seumas!*—for burning, not for throats." There were chuckles, a tiny relief.
The cow shuddered, tried to heave up. The whole crowd held its breath as if willing the muscle to recall its trade. For an instant she lifted, elbows digging, then sagged with a moan. Domhnall pressed his forehead to her neck, shoulders shaking. Una did not cry. She glared raw hate down the hill toward Wick and set her jaw on survival instead.
Agnes touched Domhnall's shoulder. "If she goes, we lay her under the cairn," she said. "Not in a pit like shame. Under stone. We name it what it is: an attack."
"And if she lives?" he asked, broken.
Agnes smiled with half her mouth, the half that does not lie. "Then she gets the south field and no one calls her a' bhò mhòr anymore. She'll be Bainne-Beò—Milk-Alive—and she'll kick any hand that isn't Craik."
There was a ripple of real laughter, the kind that buys you another hour.
They left Màiri Mhòr and Domhnall with the beast and fanned down the slope, orders sprouting into activity. Ewan peeled three boys off to walk the far fence. Niall ghosted uphill with his musket. Two women headed for the wells with rowan and thread; another took three littles to the longhouse and stood in the doorway like an oaken lintel while they filled buckets under her eye. Work re-knit the morning.
Seumas and Agnes walked back toward the yard together, pace in step without thinking.
"She'll try again," Seumas said.
"Aye," Agnes answered.
"At the herd. At the well. At the pot."
"Aye."
He glanced sideways. "You should not taste first every time."
She snorted. "Then you will?"
"I've drunk worse."
She stopped him with a hand on his arm, fingers closing where muscle and scar met. "If there is poison it will be for you first, Seumas Gunn. She hates me, but she fears you. I'll take it before you do."
His mouth twitched. "You're stubborn as a stone."
"And you're daft as a door."
They walked in silence for a few breaths, the sound of the pans picking up again below like a humming choir. The loch lifted a small wind and set it down again out of kindness.
"Do you remember the prophecy Màiri spoke?" Agnes said finally. "One iron arm. One flame heart. If one falls, the clan falls."
"We will not fall," Seumas said. It wasn't bravado. It was the way a wall speaks.
She nodded once. "Then let us be iron and flame and make poison into smoke."
By midday, a little strength had returned to the cow's eye. She swallowed more of the plantain mash, less of the foam. She still didn't rise. But Una dared to stroke her between the horns without weeping. That counted as hope.
When the sun should have warmed the pastures and didn't, when a gust lifted from the north like a spoken threat, Agnes had the herds driven closer and the children kept inside the stone dyke unless bidden otherwise. Old men grumbled and obeyed. Old women did not grumble; they set extra pots to simmer because grief burns calories quicker than joy.
Rumour travels even where roads don't. Before the afternoon burned itself out, three crofters from a mile east came down the track with their own tale: a heifer lowing strangely at dawn, a sheen on the trough that looked like oil and tasted like death. They tipped the water and dug a new channel from a spring they could name by its stones. They had no loss—not yet. Their eyes came to Agnes like hands.
"We're watched," one said. "They set eyes on our beasts."
"We'll set more eyes," Agnes replied. "Yours with ours. Còmhla gu bràth." Together forever.
The words felt different now that poison had walked among them. They weren't a boast. They were a binding.
Toward evening, Màiri Mhòr came down from the wells with rowan leaves in her hair and a smear of ash on her cheek, which on her looked like a stripe of rank. "Wells are clean," she pronounced. "The south one sweetest. Keep to it. The others I've warded, but warding is only as good as the hands that honour it." She skewered a boy with a look. "No daring each other to drink because I said not to. I'll tan the first backside and feed him nettles because nettles teach."
"Yes, a' mhaighdinn," the boy muttered, scuffing his shoe.
As the first stars thought about their work, the cow in the pasture finally pushed herself to her knees, trembling, blew a long, rattling sigh, and stayed up. It wasn't triumph. It was the kind of victory that smells like manure and makes grown men shield their eyes so no one sees. Domhnall made a sound somewhere between a prayer and a curse and kissed the broad forehead.
Agnes, watching from the fence, let out a breath she hadn't known she was holding. Seumas's hand eased off the top rail. Màiri Mhòr only nodded once and said, "Tell her she's Milk-Alive," and went down the hill to bless the pans, because blessing has to be stitched into everything you do or it unravels like bad wool.
Back in the yard, Agnes gathered whoever wasn't at a task and spoke clear as church bell:
"We will not stop our work. We will not stop our songs. We will not stop our feasts. That is how she means to starve us—by making us fear our own hands. We will be wary. We will be wise. We will be together."
"Còmhla gu bràth!" came back, not shouted but said as if they were telling the night their address in case it needed to find them.
And in Wick, though none at the loch could hear it, Margaret Sinclair tilted her head as if a wire had tightened miles away and smiled without mirth.