Tales from the Tent Read Online Free Page A

found it hard not to laugh at the poor soul’s predicament, because he had been blowing a hardy trumpet that very morning about how his new-bought Bentley ‘was the maist reliant
motor vehicle in all the countryside.’
    But when he saw his dear friend Mac lying sprawled upon his bed, storybook opened, he put the car aside for another day’s conversation. Daddy asked me to fetch a pot of tea while the
threesome had a wee crack. He’d been away himself most of the day at Stirling selling a vanload of brock wool.
    Although pleased, as I always was, to see my father safely home, I was also annoyed that the pair had interrupted Charlotte’s tale. ‘Are we going to find the end of our story?’
I prodded Mac on the arm.
    Now, I know this seems a bit uncommon to say the least, given the ungodly hour, but Daddy said he’d haggled all day with the rag merchant and would take a tale before bedding himself.
Portsoy, who’d heard Mac’s tales before, was also in the mood for hearing it again. So, after going hurriedly back to the beginning of the story for our added listeners, Mac continued
with ‘The Severed Line.’

    One day, while out walking in the thick forest with her old housekeeper, Charlotte was stunned to silence by the appearance of a small band of passing tinkers. It was not their
lowly existence nor tiny abodes secured to bent backs that took her eye, but the fine fiery red hair cascading down a slender spine. The girl, Iona by name, was a mere fifteen, if that, with
flashing green eyes and oh! that so thick red hair—the hair of the Royal Stuarts.
    Charlotte was already sealing the fate of this impoverished band, and before that fateful day slowed to its end she had paid two henchmen to slit all their throats. All but the wench. She was
gagged, bound hand and foot, and brought into the stately home. There she was forced up the winding metal stairway and thrown into the den of Charlotte’s twin sons. ‘I shall surely have
my heir to this country now,’ she cried, as she shook her fist at the heavens above and swore that this was a God-given day.
    The two sons had grown up as twisted in mind as they were in their maimed bodies. The innocent tinker girl was subjected that night to the most horrific attack upon her small frame. Had the
housekeeper not entered later to remove her shattered and torn body, no one knows what they would have ended up doing to Iona that night. Next day Charlotte insisted her sons taste more, and in she
threw an exhausted and half-dead girl. This she did daily for a week, allowing both her sons to abuse her at will.
    After that she imprisoned Iona in a tiny basement and waited. Within two months her housekeeper brought the news—Iona was pregnant. On the old housekeeper’s advice a warmer, more
comfortable apartment was prepared to imprison the mother-to-be. After all, it would be a royal Stuart who was coming once again to the Scottish nation, one whom the clans had been awaiting for a
long time. They would listen and believe Charlotte when the truth was shown to them. She would be the Queen Mother and instruct the new heir. Oh, how she schemed and plotted!
    Now, while all was being prepared, the old housekeeper began to think remorsefully on the road her life had taken. She could feel that her life was slowly dwindling and felt it wasn’t
Charlotte’s fault but hers for disclosing the truth in the first place. She thought on the husband who had died far from his estate. She thought about the sadly malformed twins who had never
been kissed or cuddled by a loving mother, and now poor Iona, whose family had been murdered for sake of this woman whom she had nurtured.
    Any day now Iona would give birth and then what? What if it was a girl? Would she be thrown into the den of the twins once again? What if it was indeed a son? Of course, with her task complete,
the young mother would never see another day. When would all this evil end? The old woman was the only one who