Firebrand (Rebel Angel Series)

by Gillian Philip

  ‘Come on,’ I said, and I grabbed the pony’s bridle and dragged it into a shambling trot.

  * * *

  When I left her, the sun was low in the sky and we were high enough above the glen to see the curve of the ocean, shimmering silver at the horizon.

  ‘Well,’ she said, ‘I’ll never be seeing my whisky stores again, but I thank you. Will you be fine yourself?’

  I turned to look back down the glen. ‘He never saw me.’

  ‘Donal did.’

  ‘Well, but I’m a fool. They’ll think you hit William yourself,’ I said with a shrug.

  ‘Aye. Well, it’s true that I could and it’s true that I would.’

  ‘I’ll be fine,’ I said again. ‘You’d best go. Go far away.’

  She leaned down and I felt her dry lips kiss my cheek, her whisky breath on my skin. ‘And you go further, you and your brother. It’s time for you both to go, I’m thinking.’

  ‘Aye.’ I had a nasty feeling she was right. I squeezed her gnarled hand tighter on the pony’s rein. ‘Go, Ma.’

  She turned once to look at me and smiled. ‘I told you,’ she called.

  ‘Told me what?’

  ‘I’d keep on your good side. I was right to be superstitious, aye?’

  ‘Aye,’ I muttered.

  I watched her and her pony till they went over the brow of the hill, her skirts hitched up her raw bare legs, and the pony trudging stolidly down the whin-thick hillside, whisking midges with its ragged tail. She didn’t turn back again.

  That was the last I saw of Ma Sinclair. I never found her alive anywhere, but nor did I see her in any stinking jail and I never saw her squeal in a fire, so I like to think she found another place to be. I hope she found some village that liked her whisky and didn’t mind her healing ways and her potions and her handsome crone-face. I like to think she survived that witch-terror, and all the others after, but I don’t know and I never will.

  I turned back to the clachan, smoky and faint with distance, and I began to run.

  16

  I did not want to go through the clachan again, and I’d planned to give it a wide bodyswerve and take the long path home, but I couldn’t fail to see the knots of people hurrying towards it, surging into an already busy marketplace. Watching their urgency, hearing their voices high and drugged with the thrill of danger, I knew I had to take notice. I crept inside the low walls, slouched in the wake of the gossiping clusters, and kept my head down.

  Like always.

  The priest was there, standing on a straw bale. He wasn’t waiting for the people to gather and fall silent, but berated them as they approached. His urgency made them hurry all the more, afraid to miss a word.

  ‘What are you waiting for?’ he cried, thumping his fist against his cracked old bible. ‘Are you waiting for them to come for your children in the night?’

  I halted uneasily, edging under ratty overhanging heather-thatch. Just those few words had chilled my spine. Perhaps I knew what was coming.

  ‘Are you waiting for them to feed your babies to their wolf-familiars?’

  A gasp of horror went round the crowd. ‘They have taken a baby already,’ shouted someone. ‘Isobel’s bairn!’

  ‘Aye! My poor sister! Her poor wean!’ The sobbing voice was Morag MacLeod’s. ‘Reverend Douglas it was who found her. He brought her for burial but she could not go in the holy ground. The Lord have mercy on her.’

  ‘Found her?’ snapped the miller. ‘It may be he was in league with the warlocks!’

  I had to put my hand over my mouth to stop my gasp escaping. They’d all adored the old priest. But this was madness I could smell in the air.

  A male voice interrupted. ‘I heard she could not feed it. The last thing she needed was another wean. She only left it near the smith’s because of her conscience.’

  ‘That is a lie!’ screamed Morag MacLeod.

  ‘It was a cold night. The bairn was not well. You cannot blame the smith.’

  ‘We can blame him for killing it!’ shouted the miller. ‘A sacrifice to his Master!’

  The priest was holding out his hands, pleading for calm. ‘If your old minister had allied himself with the Enemy, then he is answering for it before God, as we speak. Let us not concern ourselves with the dead.’ He paused, the wrinkles deepening on his pallid brow. ‘Though it’s true that his death was an unnatural one.’

  ‘Witchcraft,’ hissed someone.

  How did I just know that word was going to come up?

  The priest shook his head sadly. ‘If there is any truth in that accusation, Reverend Douglas must be exhumed and burned at the stake. It is prescribed.’

  ‘He should not be in holy ground!’ someone yelled. ‘Struck down by the Devil his Master. Did you see his staring eyes?’

  ‘Aye, and he wouldn’t close them! Something scared the man to death and Hell.’

  Silence fell. ‘Aye, that’s right,’ muttered someone at last.

  ‘He could not close his eyes on a servant of the Devil!’

  Remembering Conal, standing out there alone and helpless with the priest’s corpse, struggling to close those staring eyes, I wanted to be violently sick. But I couldn’t make a sound. I drew back into the shadows, and that was when the priest looked up and straight into my eyes.

  He smiled. I thought he would give me away, but he didn’t.

  I was close to yelling a protest; luckily someone got there before me. MacKinnon, the crofter, the stranger, the loner. ‘The smith is a good man,’ he shouted. ‘And all of you know it!’

  ‘Do you?’ asked the priest solemnly. ‘What do you all know of MacGregor?’

  ‘Nothing!’ yelled the miller, shooting a furious glare at MacKinnon.

  ‘A good man!’ he snapped. ‘The smith has cured your children! Aye, and yours, William Beag!’

  The priest closed his eyes, as if in distress. ‘Ahhh…’

  ‘Was it cures? Or was it witchcraft?’ A shrill woman said it for him.

  The priest turned to William Beag, who stood behind and a little to the right of him. There was an expression on the man’s face that combined wounded propriety with vicious hate, though it was half obscured by a length of bloodstained cloth wound round his head. His hand was bandaged too.

  Obviously I didn’t hit him hard enough.

  With one thin long-fingered hand, the priest gestured to him. ‘Here is a fine and a well-respected man,’ he said softly. ‘What is your story, William?’

  ‘We had determined to confront the witch who cast the charm on Roderick Mor,’ he said sourly. ‘Ale isn’t all she brews. I stood guard—’

  ‘You watched her while your mob assembled, you fat coward,’ called MacKinnon.

  William Beag glowered. ‘You stay out of this, Malcolm MacKinnon. You are not from here. And you know nothing of witchcraft.’

  ‘Indeed I do not. And even if you call him a witch, there is a court. The laird must hear the accusations!’ MacKinnon was a persistent bastard. Poor devil.

  The priest shook his head sadly, as if about to announce something that pained him. ‘The kirk session has jurisdiction in matters of heresy and witchcraft. The civil courts are subject to the justice of God. Besides, the MacLeod is raiding and burning in the north with his pack of mercenaries. When will he return?’ He paused for effect. ‘In time to save your children?’

  ‘No!’ screamed a woman.

  ‘He’s been gone too long!’ yelled another. ‘Too much harm can be done before he returns! I am with the minister. Who else?’

  There was a chorus of enthusiasm, and the priest had to call for calm again. ‘We will have no mob justice. The judicial process will take its course,’ he said gravely. ‘I insist on it.’

  There was much nodding of heads at that. ‘A fair man,’ called someone approvingly.

  ‘MacGregor the smith is a fair man!’ Malcolm MacKinnon was not giving up, bless him.

  The priest gave a tiny shrug. ‘He has found himself … unable to cro
ss the threshold of the Lord’s house. What does that tell us?’

  ‘He could not make the sign of the cross when Reverend Douglas died! Did you see?’

  ‘But none of us are supposed…’ someone began, but he was drowned out.

  ‘He brought the pestilence!’ They were getting more hysterical by the minute, dragging up every misfortune of the past year and longer.

  ‘He made the bere-crop fail on half the rigs.’

  ‘His brother plays the fiddle like the very devil. Such music is not natural! It is bought with the soul.’

  ‘They brought the plague!’

  ‘That was no plague,’ said MacKinnon in disgust. ‘It was a sickness from the grain, more like. If you were not so hidebound about your plantings the bere-crop would have been fine.’

  ‘Aye, and did he help any of us when the sickness struck us?’

  You’d have included it in his witchcraft if he had, I thought bitterly, but there was no point joining the argument. They’d stopped making sense now. They were losing all their reason, scrabbling for excuses to replace it with mindless hate.

  ‘He is a good man, and no witch,’ grumbled MacKinnon. ‘And so was our minister! This witchcraft is nonsense. Childish superstition!’

  The priest chilled visibly. His voice was like a glacier, grey and cold, when he said, ‘Denial of witchcraft is heresy, and it would do you good to remember it.’ His call grew louder, all strength and purity and determination. ‘Evil is the more sinuous and deadly when it appears as an angel of light! Did you think they seemed good men?’

  ‘Aye,’ interrupted MacKinnon acidly. ‘And no seemed about it.’

  The priest ignored him. He could afford to; the crowd was with him. ‘The Devil himself can recite a prayer! What do you think: that it would burn his forked tongue and shrivel his lips? No! Evil can masquerade as good, it can disguise itself; it is superstition to believe otherwise! God himself despised and rejected Les Mauvais Anges: Satan’s evil angels: the fallen ones!’

  I slipped from my dingy corner and ran. Educated, and worse, clever with it. I wanted to cry, I wanted to scream; mostly I wanted to turn round and go back to the clachan and cut the priest’s throat. I couldn’t do any of those things. I kept running, though there was no chase. Yet.

  The judicial process will take its course. I insist on it.

  Oh, gods.

  The day was threatening, the sky heavy and pressing above me. Grey and overcast with a monochrome layer of cloud. No sun. I tried to remember if there had been sunshine in the marketplace; I didn’t think so. I should have remembered to take note, but then I didn’t understand Conal’s obsession. Besides, I could hardly think straight back there.

  The judicial process will take its course.

  ‘Conal!’ I screamed.

  I insist on it. The judicial process …

  ‘Seth?’ He hacked his axe into the chopping block and left it there, dusting his hands as he came towards me. ‘Seth, what’s wrong?’

  I didn’t waste time talking. I opened my mind and let him See it.

  * * *

  ‘They’re right. The MacLeod has been away too long,’ said Conal, breaking abruptly away from me. He’d been holding my head in one hand, staring into my mind, and when he let me go I almost stumbled, dizzy with the dislocated memory and all its horror. Remorseful, he seized my arm and steadied me. ‘Oh, Seth. This is more trouble than we can handle.’

  ‘We’re always in trouble.’ It was myself I was trying to reassure.

  ‘No, this is different. We have to leave now, or we’ll die. Witchcraft and lycanthropy? There’s no defence.’

  ‘I’m sorry. About the old woman.’

  ‘Don’t be stupid. You did right.’ He gave me a fleeting grin that didn’t hide his fear. ‘They won’t take chances again, they’ll do it properly. They’ll be coming for us.’

  ‘What’ll we do?’

  He shrugged. ‘We have to go back. I’ll throw myself on Kate’s mercy, but we can’t stay here.’

  I felt cold. ‘But Kate…’

  ‘Can’t do us more harm than that minister. Let’s get out of here.’ He started throwing our few possessions into a hessian bag while I hauled our swords and dirks out of the thatch, scattering mouldy straw and heather and mouse droppings.

  ‘Never mind that.’ He snatched up the sacking I was using to wrap them and took over the job himself. There was sweat on his temples. ‘Get Liath and Branndair. Make sure no one sees you, that’s all.’

  I flung open the rickety blackhouse door, catching his fear, but he stopped me.

  ~ Block, Seth. From now till we get home. His eyes met mine, his own block came down like an iron yett; then he was parcelling up the weapons again, and I turned and ran.

  The slope was treacherously steep, all clinging birks and jutting stone, thick with bracken, but I knew every inch of it. My thighs ached and my lungs stung, but I made it up to the sett in record time. Hauling away the branches, flinging small stones aside, I called to them.

  ~ Branndair. Lia …

  Block, Conal had said. Remembering, I was angry with myself. I raised my block and knelt by the hidden entrance as a doubtful snuffling nose met my hand.

  ‘Branndair.’ I scratched his throat. ‘We have to leave, my love. Come.’

  I wondered how the hell I was going to persuade them to travel in a knotted sack when I couldn’t even use my mind to reassure them. It was while I was pondering the logistics that Branndair’s hackles sprang erect, and he snarled.

  The back of my neck prickled.

  Liath forced her way impatiently through, scrabbling with her paws at the earthen entrance and nipping Branndair to get him moving. I laid a hand on her head.

  ‘Sh, earth-daughter. Sh.’

  I turned, still on one knee, and stared down through the trees. I knew I’d heard sounds. The branches dipped and moved, rustling in a cool summer breeze. Above them the angular jigsaw of sky was murky with cloud, but there was no rain, no mist. There was no birdsong.

  I shuddered. ‘Back in,’ I told the wolves. ‘Back in. Stay here.’

  Liath gave a whining growl of irritation.

  ~ Stay here, I told her, exasperated. ~ You must.

  This time she did as she was told. My block was down anyway, so I took my chance.

  ~ Conal!

  No answer. Only his remorseless block.

  ~ Cù Chaorach!

  Nothing. I shivered once, and then I was running and leaping, jarring my knees on the impossible slope but not slowing down. When the blackhouse came into sight, I only just managed to brake my hurtling run and slither onto my backside behind a great grey rock. My heart choked me; it thrashed like a hammer high in my chest, constricting my lungs.

  They had Conal. Six of the brutes, and the priest looking on with satisfaction. I don’t know if he’d tried to fight, but now he was on his back, wrists manacled, face bloodied as they hauled him towards a rough cart. He was conscious, but that block of his was immovable.

  ~ Conal! I screamed.

  He winced as his head cracked against a stone, then tried to scramble to his feet, but it was impossible, they kept on pulling him backwards, six of them. They were afraid of him, I thought. At the cart they stopped, kicking him over onto his stomach, then one put his foot against his head and shoved his face into the mud. Cowards, bloody cowards. As he kicked and struggled for air they looped a chain round his manacles, fastened it to the cart, then backed swiftly away. One of them whacked the pony’s rump, and it tossed its head and jerked the cart forward. Conal staggered to his feet before he could be dragged along the ground.

  They were going to make him walk, I thought, and that was what finally lit the fuse of my incoherent rage. I knew one thing: they weren’t taking my brother, not without a fight from me.

  I ran faster than I’ve ever run, and that was fast. I kept low and silent, my teeth sunk into my upper lip; I was biting it so hard I could taste my own blood but I didn’t care, I couldn�
��t contain my fury any other way and I had to reach them before I released it. I knew I would catch up. I had no other choice. We’d die today, or they would. I was close, so close, coming at them through a forest of birks down the last stony slope of the hill.

  They hadn’t seen me. Or so I thought till I felt the most incredible bolt of pain in my head. From temple to temple it seared my brain like cold fire; it hurt too much even to scream.

  I thought they’d killed me. I thought the priest had killed me. That’s what I was certain of as the world swung on its axis, and darkened around me, and turned into a cold blackness and deafening silence, and then into nothing at all.

  17

  I’d expected death. When that didn’t happen, when awareness and life and hard reality leaked back, I expected a dungeon. I remembered everything, instantly. I lay with my eyes shut, still unable to move for the pain that lanced my eyeballs. I did not want to open them and see utter darkness. I barely wanted to breathe, in case I would smell foulness and rot and fear.

  There was cold dampness beneath my bruised cheek: that was what I’d expected, but not fresh air, and the rich scent of earth and leaf-rot. Instead of looming silence, birds were singing once again, and there was a whisper of what might have been a breeze. I felt its breath on the skin of my limp hand, and that made me curl my hand into a fist.

  My fingers clutched damp leaves and scratchy bracken. Shocked, I let them go and opened my eyes. Daylight blinked and shimmered through the shifting branches above me. I closed my eyes briefly again as pain like a shower of sparks filled my brain. Then I forced my eyelids wide.

  I lay where I’d fallen, beneath the birks. I didn’t know how long I’d been unconscious, but a raging thirst and a biting hunger told me it had been a long time. Though it was summer, it was a Highland summer, and I’d lain on the cold ground too long. My bones were rigid with cold. As violent shivers erupted through my body, I realised that of course the priest hadn’t struck me down. The priest hadn’t shattered my block like some half-formed cobweb of thought. Conal had.