I gripped a meaty shoulder and pulled him onto his back once more. Geilie bent close over the staring face, calling his name, massaging his mottled throat. The eyes were rolled back now, and the drumming heels began to slacken their beat. The hands, clawed in agony, suddenly flung wide, smacking an anxiously crouching onlooker in the face.
The sputtering noises abruptly ceased, and the stout body went limp, lying inert as a sack of barley on the stone flags. I felt frantically for a pulse in one slack wrist, noticing with half an eye that Geilie was doing the same, pulling up the round, shaven chin and pressing her fingertips hard into the flesh under the angle of the jaw in search of the carotid artery.
Both searches were futile. Arthur Duncan’s heart, already taxed by the necessity of pumping blood through that massive frame for so many years, had given up the struggle.
I tried all the resuscitative techniques at my disposal, useless though I knew them now to be: arm-flapping, chest-massage, even mouth-to-mouth breathing, distasteful as that was, but with the expected result. Arthur Duncan was dead as a doornail.
I straightened wearily and stood back, as Father Bain, with a nasty glare at me, dropped to his knees by the fiscal’s side and began hastily to administer the final rites. My back and arms ached, and my face felt oddly numb. The hubbub around me seemed strangely remote, as though a curtain separated me from the crowded hall. I closed my eyes and rubbed a hand across my tingling lips, trying to erase the taste of death.
* * *
Despite the death of the fiscal, and the subsequent formalities of obsequies and burial, the Duke’s stag hunt was delayed by no more than a week.
The realization of Jamie’s imminent departure was deeply depressing; I suddenly realized just how much I looked forward to seeing him at dinner after the day’s work, how my heart would leap when I saw him unexpectedly at odd moments during the day, and how much I depended on his company and his solid, reassuring presence amid the complexities of life in the castle. And, to be perfectly honest, how much I liked the smooth, warm strength of him in my bed each night, and waking to his tousled, smiling kisses in the mornings. The prospect of his absence was bleak.
He held me closely, my head snuggled under his chin.
“I’ll miss you, Jamie,” I said softly.
He hugged me tighter, and gave a rueful chuckle.
“So will I, Sassenach. I hadna expected it, to tell the truth—but it will hurt me to leave ye.” He stroked my back gently, fingers tracing the bumps of the vertebrae.
“Jamie … you’ll be careful?”
I could feel the deep rumble of amusement in his chest as he answered.
“Of the Duke or the horse?” He was, much to my apprehension, intending to ride Donas on the stag hunt. I had visions of the huge sorrel beast plunging over a cliff out of sheer wrong-headedness, or trampling Jamie under those lethal hooves.
“Both,” I said dryly. “If the horse throws you and you break a leg, you’ll be at the Duke’s mercy.”
“True. Dougal will be there, though.”
I snorted. “He’ll break the other leg.”
He laughed and bent his head to kiss me.
“I’ll be careful, mo duinne. Will ye give me the same promise?”
“Yes,” I said, meaning it. “Do you mean whoever left the ill-wish?”
The momentary amusement was gone now.
“Perhaps. I dinna think you’re in any danger, or I wouldna leave ye. But still … oh, and stay away from Geillis Duncan.”
“What? Why?” I drew back a little to look up at him. It was a dark night and his face was invisible, but his tone was altogether serious.
“The woman’s known as a witch, and the stories about her—well, they’ve got a deal worse since her husband died. I dinna want ye anywhere near her, Sassenach.”
“Do you honestly think she’s a witch?” I demanded. His strong hands cupped my bottom and scooped me in close to him. I put my arms around him, enjoying the feel of his smooth, solid torso.
“No,” he said finally. “But it isna what I think that could be a danger to ye. Will ye promise?”
“All right.” In truth, I had little reluctance to give the promise; since the incidents of the changeling and the summoning, I had not felt much desire to visit Geilie. I put my mouth on Jamie’s nipple, flicking it lightly with my tongue. He made a small sound deep in his throat and pulled me nearer.
“Open your legs,” he whispered. “I mean to be sure you’ll remember me while I’m gone.”
Sometime later, I woke feeling cold. Groping sleepily for the quilt, I couldn’t find it. Suddenly it came up over me of its own accord. Surprised, I raised up on one elbow to look.
“I’m sorry,” Jamie said. “I didna mean to wake ye, lass.”
“What are you doing? Why are you awake?” I squinted over my shoulder at him. It was still dark, but my eyes were so accustomed that I could see the faintly sheepish expression on his face. He was wide awake, sitting on a stool by the side of the bed, his plaid flung around him for warmth.
“It’s only … well, I dreamed you were lost, and I couldna find ye. It woke me, and … I wanted to look at ye, is all. To fix ye in my mind, to remember while I’m gone. I turned back the quilt; I’m sorry you were chilled.”
“It’s all right.” The night was cold, and very quiet, as though we were the only two souls in the world. “Come into bed. You must be chilled too.”
He slid in next to me and curled himself against my back. His hands stroked me from neck to shoulder, waist to hip, tracing the lines of my back, the curves of my body.
“Mo duinne,” he said softly. “But now I should say mo airgeadach. My silver one. Your hair is silver-gilt and your skin is white velvet. Calman geal. White dove.”
I pressed my hips back against him, inviting, and settled against him with a sigh as his solid hardness filled me. He held me against his chest and moved with me, slowly, deeply. I gasped a little and he slackened his hold.
“I’m sorry,” he murmured. “I didna mean to hurt ye. But I do want to be in you, to stay in you, so deep. I want to leave the feel of me deep inside ye with my seed. I want to hold ye so and stay wi’ you ’til dawn, and leave you sleeping and go, with the shapes of you warm in my hands.”
I pressed firmly back against him.
“You won’t hurt me.”
* * *
After Jamie’s departure, I moped about the castle. I saw patients in the surgery, I occupied myself as much as I could in the gardens, and I tried to distract myself by browsing in Colum’s library, but still time hung heavy on my hands.
I had been alone nearly two weeks, when I met the girl Laoghaire in the corridor outside the kitchens. I had watched her covertly now and then, since the day when I had seen her on the landing outside Colum’s study. She seemed blooming enough, but there was an air of tenseness about her that was easily discernible. She seemed distracted and moody—and little wonder, poor girl, I thought kindly.
Today, though, she looked somewhat excited.
“Mrs. Fraser!” she said. “I’ve a message for you.” The widow Duncan, she said, had sent word that she was ill, and requested me to come and tend her.
I hesitated, remembering Jamie’s injunctions, but the twin forces of compassion and boredom were sufficient to set me on the road to the village within the hour, my medicine box strapped behind me on the horse’s saddle.
The Duncans’ house when I arrived had an air of neglected abandon, a sense of disorder that extended through the house itself. There was no answer to my knock, and when I pushed the door open, I found the entry hall and parlor scattered with books and dirty glasses, mats askew and dust thick on the furniture. My calls produced no maidservant, and the kitchen proved to be as empty and disordered as the rest of the house.
Increasingly anxious, I went upstairs. The bedroom in front also was vacant, but I heard a faint shuffling noise from the stillroom across the landing.
Pushing open the doo
r, I saw Geilie, sitting in a comfortable chair, feet propped on the counter. She had been drinking; there was a glass and decanter on the counter, and the room smelled strongly of brandy.
She was startled to see me, but struggled to her feet, smiling. Her eyes were slightly out of focus, I thought, but she certainly seemed well enough.
“What’s the matter?” I asked. “Aren’t you ill?”
She goggled at me in amazement. “Ill? Me? No. The servants have all left, and there’s no food in the house, but there’s plenty of brandy. Will ye have a drop?” She turned back toward the decanter. I grabbed her sleeve.
“You didn’t send for me?”
“No.” She stared at me, wide-eyed.
“Then why—” My question was interrupted by a noise from outside. A far-off, rumbling, muttering sort of noise. I had heard it before, from this room, and my palms had grown sweaty then at the thought of confronting the mob that made it.
I wiped my hands on the skirts of my dress. The rumbling was nearer, and there was neither need nor time for questions.
25
THOU SHALT NOT SUFFER A WITCH TO LIVE
The drab-clad shoulders ahead of me parted on darkness. My elbow struck wood with a bone-numbing thump as I was shoved roughly over a threshold of some sort, and I fell headlong into a black stench, alive and wriggling with unseen forms. I shrieked and thrashed, trying to free myself from entanglement with innumerable scrabbling tiny feet and an attack by something larger, that squealed and struck me a hard blow on the thigh.
I succeeded in rolling away, though only a foot or two before I hit an earthen wall that sent a shower of dirt cascading down on my head. I huddled as close to it as I could get, trying to suppress my own gasping breath so that I could hear whatever was trapped in this reeking pit with me. Whatever it was, was large, and breathing hoarsely, but not growling. A pig, perhaps?
“Who’s there?” came a voice from the Stygian black, sounding scared but defiantly loud. “Claire, is it you?”
“Geilie!” I gasped and groped toward her, meeting her hands likewise searching. We clasped each other tightly, rocking slightly back and forth in the gloom.
“Is there anything else in here besides us?” I asked, glancing cautiously around. Even with my eyes now accustomed to the dark, there was precious little to be seen. There were faint streaks of light coming from somewhere above, but the tenebrous shadows were shoulder-high here below; I could barely make out Geilie’s face, level with my own and only a few inches away.
She laughed, a little shakily. “Several mice, I think, and other vermin. And a smell that would knock a ferret over.”
“I noticed the smell. Where in God’s name are we?”
“The thieves’ hole. Stand back!”
There was a grating sound from overhead and a sudden shaft of light. I pressed myself against the wall, barely in time to avoid a shower of mud and filth that cascaded through a small opening in the roof of our prison. A single soft plop followed the deluge. Geilie bent and picked up something from the floor. The opening above remained, and I could see that what she held was a small loaf, stale and smeared with assorted muck. She dusted it gingerly with a fold of her skirt.
“Dinner,” she said. “Hungry, are you?”
* * *
The hole above remained open, and empty, save for the occasional missile flung by a passerby. The drizzle came in, and a searching wind. It was cold, damp, and thoroughly miserable. Suitable, I supposed, for the malefactors it was meant to house. Thieves, vagrants, blasphemers, adulterers … and suspected witches.
Geilie and I huddled together for warmth against one wall, not speaking much. There was little to say, and precious little either of us could do for ourselves, beyond possess our souls in patience.
The hole above grew gradually darker as the night came on, until it faded into the black all around.
* * *
“How long do you think they mean to keep us here?”
Geilie shifted, stretching her legs so that the small oblong of morning light from above shone on the striped linen of her skirt. Originally a fresh pink and white, it was now considerably the worse for wear.
“Not too long,” she said. “They’ll be waiting for the ecclesiastical examiners. Arthur had letters last month, arranging for it. The second week of October, it was. They should be here any time.”
She rubbed her hands together to warm them, then put them on her knees, in the little square of sunlight.
“Tell me about the examiners,” I said. “What will happen, exactly?”
“I canna say, exactly. I’ve ne’er seen a witch trial, though I’ve heard of them, of course.” She paused a moment, considering. “They’ll not be expecting a witch trial, since they were coming to try some land disputes. So they’ll not have a witch-pricker, at least.”
“A what?”
“Witches canna feel pain,” Geilie explained. “Nor do they bleed when they’re pricked.” The witch-pricker, equipped with a variety of pins, lancets, and other pointed implements, was charged with testing for this condition. I vaguely recalled something of this from Frank’s books, but had thought it a practice common to the seventeenth century, not this one. On the other hand, I thought wryly, Cranesmuir was not exactly a hotbed of civilization.
“In that case, it’s too bad there won’t be one,” I said, though recoiling slightly at the thought of being stabbed repeatedly. “We could pass that test with no difficulty. Or I could,” I added caustically. “I imagine they’d get ice water, not blood, when they tried it on you.”
“I’d not be too sure,” she said reflectively, overlooking the insult. “I’ve heard of witch-prickers with special pins—made to collapse when they’re pressed against the skin, so it looks as though they don’t go in.”
“But why? Why try to prove someone a witch on purpose?”
The sun was on the decline now, but the afternoon light was enough to suffuse our hutch with a dim glow. The elegant oval of Geilie’s face showed only pity for my innocence.
“Ye still dinna understand, do ye?” she said. “They mean to kill us. And it doesna matter much what the charge is, or what the evidence shows. We’ll burn, all the same.”
The night before, I had been too shocked from the mob’s attack and the misery of our surroundings to do more than huddle with Geilie and wait for the dawn. With the light, though, what remained of my spirit was beginning to awake.
“Why, Geilie?” I asked, feeling rather breathless. “Do you know?” The atmosphere in the hole was thick with the stench of rot, filth, and damp soil, and I felt as though the impenetrable earthen walls were about to cave in upon me like the sides of an ill-dug grave.
I felt rather than saw her shrug; the shaft of light from above had moved with the sun, and now struck the wall of our prison, leaving us in cold dark below.
“If it’s much comfort to ye,” she said dryly, “I misdoubt ye were meant to be taken. It’s a matter between me and Colum—you had the ill-luck to be with me when the townsfolk came. Had ye been wi’ Colum, you’d likely have been safe enough, Sassenach or no.”
The term “Sassenach,” spoken in its usual derogatory sense, suddenly struck me with a sense of desperate longing for the man who called me so in affection. I wrapped my arms around my body, hugging myself to contain the lonely panic that threatened to envelop me.
“Why did you come to my house?” Geilie asked curiously.
“I thought you had sent for me. One of the girls at the castle brought me a message—from you, she said.”
“Ah,” she said thoughtfully. “Laoghaire, was it?”
I sat down and rested my back against the earth wall, despite my revulsion for the muddy, stinking surface. Feeling my movement, Geilie shifted closer. Friends or enemies, we were each other’s only source of warmth in the hole; we huddled together perforce.
“How did you know it was Laoghaire?” I asked, shivering.
“ ’Twas her that left the ill-wis
h in your bed,” Geilie replied. “I told ye at the first there were those minded your taking the red-haired laddie. I suppose she thought if ye were gone, she’d have a chance at him again.”
I was struck dumb at this, and it took a moment to find my voice.
“But she couldn’t!”
Geilie’s laugh was hoarsened by cold and thirst, but still held that edge of silver.
“Anyone seein’ the way the lad looks at ye would know that. But I dinna suppose she’s seen enough o’ the world to ken such things. Let her lie wi’ a man once or twice, and she’ll know, but not now.”
“That’s not what I meant!” I burst out. “It isn’t Jamie she wants; the girl’s with child by Dougal MacKenzie.”
“What?!” She was genuinely shocked for a moment, and her fingers bit into the flesh of my arm. “How d’ye come to think that?”
I told her of seeing Laoghaire on the stair below Colum’s study, and the conclusions I had come to.
Geilie snorted.
“Pah! She heard Colum and Dougal talking about me; that’s what made her blench—she’d think Colum had heard she’d been to me for the ill-wish. He’d have her whipped to bleeding for that; he doesna allow any truck wi’ such arts.”
“You gave her the ill-wish?” I was staggered.
Geilie drew herself sharply away at this.
“I didn’t give it to her, no. I sold it to her.”
I stared, trying to meet her eyes through the gathering darkness.
“There’s a difference?”
“Of course there is.” She spoke impatiently. “It was a matter of business, was all. And I don’t give away my customers’ secrets. Besides, she didna tell me who it was meant for. And you’ll remember that I did try to warn ye.”
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