The Sixth Labyrinth (The Child of the Erinyes Book 4)

by Rebecca Lochlann

  Curran rose from the bed with alacrity, his face flushed, a guilty stallion.

  “I know you’re newly wed, but do you not care about your wife? What of the health of your child? Shall I ban you from her presence altogether? Don’t think I won’t.”

  “I wasn’t… we didn’t….”

  Morrigan grabbed his hand, but the midwife’s expression, so stern, brought up the old terror she’d felt around Douglas, and she couldn’t form a single word of defense.

  “Away with you, Master Curran. I want her calm and quiet. Strong emotions are not good for her, nor for the babe.”

  Suitably chagrined, he inclined his head, sent Morrigan an apologetic glance, and left.

  Eleanor perched on the bed and held out a spoonful of steaming liquid.

  “What is it?” Morrigan asked. She had to admit it smelled good.

  “Barley broth blended with honey. For strength. When you finish, I want you to drink this tea. Chamomile with red raspberry leaves. It’s good for soothing contractions, and helps control the flow of blood.”

  “This broth is delicious.”

  Eleanor placed her hand on Morrigan’s forehead. “Are you still dizzy?”

  “It’s better. My neck is stiff.”

  “It may get worse over the next few days. Try not to turn your head sharply, and be careful getting out of bed.”

  Eleanor watched her until she was finished, then removed the dishes and smoothed the blankets. “You’re an excitable woman, I think. In a stew about things most of the time. But I’ll warn you not to tease your husband. Do you want him roused when you cannot be with him? What if he chooses to console himself with someone else?” She added, “Do you think there would be none willing? Curran Ramsay could have most any female he fancied.”

  “You’re outspoken.” Morrigan’s cheeks burned. Her head renewed its pounding, sending out repeated hammer blows of pain.

  “I have better things to do than play coy. You’re aye young, and maybe such things are like a game to you, but I assure you, to men these are not light matters.” Eleanor’s scrutiny remained cold for a moment, but gradually her expression gentled. “You don’t even know that, do you?” She stared at Morrigan a moment more before she added, “You’ve much growing up to do, I think.”

  Morrigan wanted to shout at her, tell her to mind her own affairs. But the way the woman could turn from understanding to steel-like judgment stopped her.

  The midwife picked up the tray and straightened. “I’ll come again this gloaming,” she said, “and I’ll decide then if you can go to church tomorrow.” At the outer door she paused. “Have no fear, mistress,” she said. “I do believe you’ll recover.”

  “Thank you,” Morrigan managed.

  The mantel clock ticked. Kilgarry felt like a mausoleum.

  Eleanor had been gone about twenty minutes when Curran reappeared. He crept into the bedroom, saw Morrigan was awake, and said, “Is it safe?”

  She laughed. “Come away, Mr. Ramsay. Lie here with me. I swear to behave.”

  He draped himself across the foot of the bed. “Eleanor’s tongue’s as sharp as a cutlass.”

  “And I received a bloodletting. I’m no’ to tease you, for fear you’ll soothe yourself with some other female. There’s thousands willing, supposedly.”

  “Is that so?” He threaded his fingers through hers. “I’d sooner cut off my own bollocks—”

  “Curran.”

  He laughed. “You need anything, a ghràidh?”

  Her succinctly phrased answer sparked an appreciative laugh. He crawled over the blankets to lie by her side, and they spent a good half-hour kissing until Tess brought more of Eleanor’s herb tea.

  “All my life I’ve had dreams of a man,” Morrigan told him after she left.

  “Oh?” Curran’s left brow rose, accentuating the crescent scar.

  “I’m telling you because I think it was you.” She set her cup and saucer on the table. “You wanted to know my dreams, didn’t you? You were a statue.”

  “A statue.”

  “Stop interrupting. A marble statue. But you came to life.” The memory returned; she’d dreamed it so many times it never completely faded. It puzzled her, because in the first part, the statue had Curran’s eyes, though his hair was long and dark. Then he changed. He became the blond male she’d long ago named Theseus.

  “Morrigan? Aren’t you going to tell me after all?”

  She returned to the moment. “I’ve always called the statue ‘Theseus,’ after the Greek stories.”

  “Ah…. That’s what you called me when we met.”

  “In many ways, you resemble him.”

  “And you…” He bent and kissed her, “could easily bring a statue to life.”

  After a moment, he said, “What of the dreams that frighten you? Will you tell me those?”

  She hesitated. But why not? Perhaps speaking of them would break their somber spell.

  “A crowd of men is all around me. They say I’m a witch….”

  He didn’t laugh or smile. Didn’t even blink. But his brows did lower slightly.

  “I’m not this evil thing they’re calling me. I’ve done none of what they’re accusing me of.”

  She heard the rising defensive note in her voice, and her hands clenched.

  Curran brushed strands of hair from her forehead. “Dreams are vapors of the night. You told me that.”

  “Aye.”

  “Is that what frightens you, being named a witch?”

  How could she say it? She almost feared describing it might make it real.

  “The wean….”

  Morrigan shook her head. “I’m fine.” She picked up the teacup and held it in her lap, running the tip of her finger around the rim. “The dream feels like it’s in Scotland. Someone calls it… Barra.”

  “Barra is an island. It’s part of the Hebrides.”

  “Truly?” She hadn’t known that. The dominie hadn’t been too interested in geography.

  He frowned. “Barra,” he said. “Barra.”

  “Curran?”

  “I think I’ve dreamed of it as well,” he said in an oddly contained voice.

  They stared at each other.

  “Tell me the rest,” he said. “Why do they call you a witch?”

  “It gives them the excuse they need, so they can do what they want—”

  “I’m sorry, a ghaoil.”

  She sighed again, ashamed of raising her voice. Plucking one of his hands from her shoulder, she wove their fingers together and pressed her palm against his. Warm tingling traveled up her arm, like sunlight in her blood.

  “I’ve a husband and two wee daughters.” She frowned. “No, three, I think. Men break down the door and fill my house. My children are screaming.”

  Curran rubbed his cheek against her forehead. “Stop,” he said. “I don’t like to see you so upset.”

  “I have to say it.” The words would suffocate her now if she didn’t speak. “They’re begging me to save them.” She pressed her hands over her ears. “But I… can’t.”

  “Morrigan, it’s horrendous. No wonder….”

  She needed a deep breath to continue. “They kill my daughter. I try to force the blood back into her, but it keeps coming out between my fingers. I’m dragged from my baby. I feel the blade. I see my blood. Then… there’s nothing. I wake up.”

  Curran leaned across her to set her cup on the table. He gathered her against him, tucking her head in the hollow below his chin.

  “Why would I dream such things?” Morrigan asked. A shudder formed, small at first, then migrating outward. Speaking the nightmare seemed to make it so much more sinister.

  “I don’t know.”

  She listened to his pulse beat. Her muscles relaxed and the headache retreated. A deep inhale cleansed most of the tension, and she could think clearly again. It did feel better, now the words had escaped, like the draining of an infection. She closed her eyes.

  “You’ve had thi
s nightmare your whole life?” Curran asked.

  Nestled against his throat, she felt the reassuring vibration of his voice. “As long as I can remember.”

  “You know what I’d like to do? Replace your nightmares with other dreams. We can do it.” He spoke gently, and kept up a slow, circular stroking on her temple. “Are you listening?” He pressed one of her hands against her stomach and placed his own over it. “Our son or daughter is growing inside you. If our child’s a girl, she’ll look like you, and we’ll spoil her so much no one will ever want to marry her, and she’ll always stay with us. We’ll grow old here at Kilgarry. We’ll be a noisy horde. Our sons will treat their sisters like princesses, and will put any suitors to the sword. We’ll have picnics by the sea. You’re going to get fat, because I’m going to feed you cheese, and scones with cream and jam, every day.”

  Morrigan turned her face up, smiling.

  “When you smile like that,” he said, “you cast a spell over me. Your smiles are magical, my Morrigan. Right now they’re rare, but I want to see that smile every day, all the time. I love how it reaches into my chest and squeezes my heart.”

  Embarrassed, she hid her face again, longing to believe him but afraid. It was hard to believe. Hard to feel both yearning and fear at once.

  He laughed and patted her cheek, and she felt he understood.

  The patient brush of his fingers calmed her, so that she saw them picnicking at the seaside, surrounded by a rowdy gaggle of sticky-fingered weans, and she was plump, with a double chin and dimpled thighs.

  He continued to describe their future and she tried to stay awake, not wanting to miss one word. All my life, she heard him say, I’ve lived with a feeling that I’m missing something, something I could never stop searching for. It vanished that day on the moor, and I’ve never felt it since. Not once.

  His voice drew her deeper. She couldn’t keep up thinking or wondering about anything.

  She sank into green waves. Feeling playful, she threw handfuls of water into sprays as glittery as diamonds. Her clothes vanished; her hair streamed loose. A porpoise chittered at her, then a seal appeared. It nosed her, round and round, until she was breathless from giggling, before its flippers vanished and she was clasped against a man’s bare chest. He held her close, his hand pressed against the back of her head so she couldn’t see his face as he kissed her shoulder then the sensitive place behind her ear. Save me, Aridela, she heard. Open your heart. Yet with astonishing violence, the figure blurred, alchemized. Now his grip was brutal; his hand smashed over her mouth. You didn’t want me to die, she heard. You were happy for me to trick you, as long as you didn’t get blamed. Pain speared her neck and she screamed.

  The ocean swept away. Morrigan rushed through a cold black tunnel.

  “It’s a dream, Morrigan. A dream. I’m here.” Curran’s clasped her upper arms.

  “It didn’t work.”

  “It will,” he said. “I will make it work.”

  Agnes’s warning returned. Selkies have a way about them. Male or female, they can enchant humans, can make them do anything. Beware the selkie.

  She sent out a desperate prayer. Mama, what’s happening to me? I need you.

  But now, because of Logan, the only picture she could form of her mother was of her lying in bloody snow, screaming, helpless, and suffering as Morrigan ripped her apart to be born.

  CHAPTER TEN

  ELEANOR GAVE MORRIGAN permission to attend the kirking, as long as she returned home straight after and did nothing strenuous.

  Morrigan sat in a pew near the front, reveling in her triumph and looking about with great interest until William Watson began his sermon. For nearly an hour, he spoke about the sanctity of virgins, the imperative that a man’s chosen come to him not only innocent, but also ignorant of life’s baser aspects, for, as he claimed, female purity was the glue that held civilizations together. If men had to spend their days wondering what their wives were up to, or who had fathered the children they bore, that glue would disintegrate, and society would crumble into violent anarchy.

  She soon felt as humiliated as he no doubt intended, convinced she was little more than spoiled fruit that ought to be tossed out. Then came teeth-clenching fury. He managed to speak the entire sermon without saying one word about male purity. Curran sat beside her, his hand resting calmly upon hers. And why not? He wasn’t being attacked. Though they’d never discussed his past with women, Morrigan reckoned her husband was not as innocent as she had been.

  There was something else to notice and ponder: a fresh bunch of daisies on Hannah’s grave. What had Morrigan’s mother meant to Seaghan MacAnaugh, the gigantic man with the tender heart? He still thought of her, after so long. Morrigan wanted to ask, but feared being hurtful or rude. Maybe when she knew him better.

  After the service, as the congregation formed a corridor beneath the yews for the laird and his wife to pass through, Curran squeezed Morrigan’s hand, leaned close, and said, “His balls withered away years ago since no woman will have him. He says those things because at night in his lonely bed, he wishes he was me.”

  Which made her smile and utterly routed the suggestion that she was something foul or sinister.

  Morrigan’s fine new station was snatched away as though it had been mere fantasy. Even Tess and Violet ordered her about. Eleanor insisted she not get out of bed except to use the chamber pot, but when left alone, Morrigan defied every command. Wrapped in a tartan shawl, she limped to the window seat and gazed out across Kilgarry’s gardens and beyond, to rolling wooded hills. Sometimes she managed to get the window open, and was able to breathe the enticing aroma of sea and forest. Spellbound by beauty and her tendency to daydream, she’d forget to keep up her guard, and was all too often startled by a hand clapping upon her shoulder, and orders to return to her stuffed-feather prison, usually with stern lectures on obedience.

  By Tuesday, her healthy body, so used to activity and toil, rebelled. Aches gnawed at her spine. Her limbs stiffened. Bruises manifested and patience splintered.

  “Tell me more about this kirking,” she asked Curran as he squatted on the floor beside the bed, massaging her ankle in a salt-water bath. It had turned ten different shades of purple by now, and was still swollen.

  “Lower, Morrigan. Put it all the way in the water.” When she did, he said, “It’s an old custom. Every newly married couple is kirked. Like Agnes said, it blesses the marriage in the eyes of the parish. If there happens to be more than one wedding in the same week, which is as rare as a drought these days, the couples vie to be first to reach home after the sermon. It’s said the first couple home will enjoy a long, happy life while bad luck and misfortune dooms the losers.” He dipped his hands in the water and rubbed her ankle before grinning at her again. Sunlight, snaking through the east window, lit his face and filled his eyes with indigo sparkles. “There weren’t any other weddings, so calm your superstitions. I don’t know why I let you talk us into such needless risk. I’ll admit my crofters would’ve been disappointed if we hadn’t gone, and those who believe in omens and evil eyes… like Agnes… would’ve made dire predictions. But be careful, Morrigan. Agnes will have you seeing ghosts on the staircase if you give her half a chance.”

  Morrigan dismissed his warning. The consequences might be dire even without Agnes to predict them. She’d looked back at Aunt Ibby’s shop as she ferried off to be married, and some might believe she’d broken a vow to Kit.

  In all her life she’d never fallen off a horse. That it happened the day after her wedding, with a child in her womb, had to be a sign.

  * * * *

  Father Drummond visited on Wednesday. Curran assisted him into an armchair beside the bed while Violet bolstered Morrigan with pillows and brought the tea tray.

  Though near-crippling joint pain plagued the poor man, a smile flickered about his lips, waiting for the slightest cause to turn full-blown. She decided he was merry, a blithe, caring gentleman with an inexhaustible sense of humo
r.

  He asked after her injuries, and expressed his happiness that the bump on her head hardly hurt anymore and the swelling in the ankle was receding.

  “I do hope you’re strong by Michaelmas, my dear,” he said. “Folk come from near and far to attend our festivities. It would be awful if you missed it.”

  “I’m going to win the oda.” Curran moved his chair closer to the bed and rested one arm on the quilt. “I’ve found the perfect hiding place for Brutus and Glendessary.”

  Hugh slapped his black-clad thigh and guffawed. “His finest Clydes are forever being stolen from him,” he told Morrigan. “He’s left with Thoroughbreds, and sometimes, as an added insult, a swaybacked nag or two. Your husband’s never won the Michaelmas race, and he with the most highly prized horseflesh in three counties.”

  Puzzled by this talk of theft coupled with laughter, Morrigan asked, “Who steals his horses?”

  “I’m sure it was Logan last year.” Curran shrugged. “Though he still denies it.”

  “Why would anyone do that? And why Clydes? Wouldn’t your Thoroughbreds fetch more silver?”

  “Not around here.” Hugh nodded at an offer of more tea. “Only Clydes run the oda. Tradition, you see. They’re stolen because there’s glory in lifting your neighbor’s steeds the night before Michaelmas. They’re returned after, of course.” He scratched his nose with the tip of his pinkie finger. “Curran’s beasts do often win, yet he’s never the one riding them.”

  The way the priest’s eyes twinkled made her want to smile. Morrigan dropped a smallish lump of sugar into his cup. “Doesn’t seem like they’d be good runners. More, Father?”

  “Aye, lass, give me another. I’ve a sweet tooth. The race is short, along the beach. Clydes can run. They love to run.”

  “I mind how Leo used to race round the paddock.” She sighed, remembering the huge and gentle animal. “I’ve never heard of the oda, or stealing horses for Michaelmas. I’m afraid I’ll shame Curran.”

  Her husband laughed. “Of course you won’t, silly wench.”

  “Never concern yourself about such things, lass.” Hugh stirred his milky sweet brew, the spoon grating over sugar in the bottom of the cup. “Your husband and I will make you so familiar with our traditions you’ll feel you were born here. Oh….” He broke into an unselfconscious bellow of laughter. “You were! Though…” his smile faded, “the circumstances….” He shook his head, refusing to succumb to distress. “Things did turn out well in the end.”