After he and the Magistrate had left, Gregor had maneuvered his way over to the Fordun’s window and was able to shimmy himself inside. Most of Fordun’s belongings were packed up high in trunks; impossible to get to. But he did find a small leather journal of sorts hidden far away from everything else.
Inside of the journal were pages filled with indiscernible handwriting and peculiar drawings. Many of them had been adorned with pentagrams, animal drawings, and some even depicted some rather intense sex acts.
“What do you think it is?” Morgana asked, leafing through the pages. “This isn’t even English. Not all of it anyway.” She turned to a page where a rather elaborate carnal ritual was depicted, and Gregor watched her pale.
“Oh my,” she whispered, abruptly closing the book.
“It’s evidence we now have, with or without Fordun’s head guard,” Gregor replied grabbing the book to flip through its pages. “I don’t need to ken anything else about it other than that.”
“Ye were a damn fool, balach,” Jamie cursed him, narrowing his gaze at Gregor. “Ye could have been captured! Then where would we be?”
“Well I wasnae, so let’s not waste time with it,” Gregor shot back. “What did ye learn Jamie? Any of those Englishmen have loose lips?”
Jamie’s seriousness twisted into a smile, and he nodded. “Och, ye wouldnae believe what these balachs are ready to spill about the girls Fordun has went after. Wouldn’t offer much up on him as a man, but they had no problem going through how he captured his victims over the last few years.”
He shook his head, his smile fading as he gave a look of disgust toward the witch-hunter’s book. “The things this man is capable of doing to a lass…it’s not right, Gregor. I don’t even ken if I’ve seen things in battle as harrowing as the stories I heard today.”
“That’s the upside of hunting a witch,” Morgana chimed in bitterly. “At least on a battlefield you’re a man fighting a man. But if you’re going to war with Fordun, he becomes a god and you’re marked as something less than human. Something vile; wrong.”
Feeling her tensions practically vibrating off of her, Gregor wrapped his arms around Morgana from behind, and kissed the side of her head. She relaxed then, if only slightly. Of course there was no way to ever make her feel fully relaxed, not with the threat of a rigged trial looming over their heads.
“Where’s Fergus?” Jamie asked, changing the subject.
“It’s still a little early,” Gregor replied, trying to keep the tension in the room to a minimum. “Give him a few more moments. He’ll be here.”
Sure enough, the lad showed up roughly twenty minutes later along with a tavern maid and a tray of food and ale. Gregor tipped the girl well to stay away from the room, and she bounced out of the room happy with the small fortune she was given.
Just as he had been told, Fergus had followed Fordun’s captain, Bartholomew, all day. He had a busy schedule that man, but Fergus was able to tell them that there were several moments in the day that the captain was left alone in his tent.
For what reasons, Fergus couldn’t say, but he did know that he would return every three or four hours and stay approximately a half hour each time. Whenever he did so, he sent whatever guards were with him far away from him.
“Whatever he’s doing, he wants his privacy for it,” Fergus explained. “I think one of those times would be the best opportunity to try and get him. The last break he took today, a little after half past seven, would be the best time to drop in. All the rest of the guard was out looking for a meal or company, and he’s all but left to himself.”
“Good lad,” Gregor praised. “I knew ye had it in ye!”
The boy beamed at him in admiration, and bowed formally.
“Like I said before, Laird Henwen, anything for Lady Morgana.” He turned to her and bowed to Morgana, who quickly thanked him for his service and implored him to rise.
“What will ye have me do now?” Fergus asked, obviously ready to be of more service.
“Now ye go home,” Gregor told him, clapping him on the back. The boy looked at him as if he’d been slapped.
“What? But, me Laird, he…”
“Ye did a brave thing helping us today,” Gregor interrupted, squeezing the boy’s shoulder. “But I’ve put ye in enough danger. If yer recognized by anyone at all they’ll string ye up like a common criminal and not think twice about it. Now, mind yer orders and leave for home at first light. Bruce and Clyde will be escorting ye, so daenae try to do anything wily.”
The young man protested for a little while longer, but Gregor wouldn’t be budged. Finally, Fergus gave up and said his sorrowful goodbyes before taking his leave. Once he was gone, the three of them quickly began discussing the next part of their plan. Morgana was insisting that she go with them to speak to Bartholomew, but both Gregor and Jamie balked at the very thought.
“The risk is too high,” he argued.
“It’s too high for me to not try,” she threw back. “Something about me triggered his protective side. Maybe I’ll be able to do it again.”
Chapter 31
Morgana flinched as she watched the tussle between Gregor and Bartholomew finally come to an end. Just as she had suspected, the Captain of Fordun’s guard put up quite a fight when he found all three of them waiting for him in his tent. Be that as it may, everyone’s head was starting to cool.
“I’m sorry,” she apologized, cringing as Bartholomew glowered over at her. “But you’re my only hope in all of this. If we can get an eye-witness testimony, the Magistrate will have to let me go.”
“I told you, lady, there’s nothing I can do,” he replied, his voice dripping with fear.
“Please,” she begged, walking up to him. Her voice was shaking with emotion as she looked up into his eyes, refusing to look away. “You know I’m not a witch. But whatever Fordun is, it’s pure evil. The Magistrate is hearing too many rumors, being given too many bodies. Fordun’s reign is ending, with or without your help, and you can make sure he doesn’t take one more innocent life.”
For the longest time, Bartholomew simply glowered at Morgana as if she were the very bane of his existence. She couldn’t blame him of course. She was, after all, putting his life in a very dangerous situation in order to save her own. But she had realized earlier it wasn’t just her life she’d be saving. It was all of the others that would come after her if Fordun wasn’t stopped once and for all.
Gregor, seemingly having enough of the man’s apathetic nature, delivered a swift right hook to his jaw.
“Gregor!” Morgana gasped as Bartholomew spit a mouthful of blood onto the ground. She pushed herself between the two men and begged them both to take a seat. The two glowered at each other for a long minute before either gave in. Finally though, they both took a chair opposite of one another.
The punch must have been the final straw for Bartholomew, for he finally broke the staring contest and got up to remove a flagon of liquor from his table. He took a long pull of it, then tossed it to Gregor. To Morgana’s relief, he caught the skein and took a swig off of it himself.
“Fordun used to be my hero,” Bartholomew admitted after a spell. “Believe it or not, he has killed witches.”
Gregor and Morgana shared a glance, but didn’t interrupt.
“I know, because one killed my mother. She came to us as an old beggar woman, pleading for safety from the storm that night. My mother let her in, of course, and sat her by the fire to dry out while she had me ladle out a bowl of stew for her. I couldn’t have been more than fourteen or fifteen at the time, just five years or so younger that Sir Fordun himself.”
“She seemed fine, perfectly normal. But then suddenly she wasn’t anymore. There was this look that came over her. Her eyes went dark and she was rushing toward my mother. I hadn’t even seen the knife. At first I thought perhaps she was just showing gratitude toward my mother, but then her eyes went wide and her mouth dropped.
The old woman stepped away
then, the knife still in my mother’s belly. I froze, completely terrified. I thought surely, I would be next, but no. She just cackled wildly for a moment, then disappeared right back out into the storm.
My senses came back to me finally and ran after her, but by that time she was long gone. I rode into the nearest town for help. By the grace of God, Sir Fordun was there investigating some whispers of pagan rituals. It didn’t take them long at all to find the old beggar woman, and that very night Sir Fordun captured, tried, and executed her.”
“I’m so sorry,” Morgana whispered, her eyes full of compassion. Unable to ignore his pain, she reached out and placed her hand on his shoulder. He looked up at her as if shocked, but didn’t move her hand away. Behind her she heard Gregor shifting in his chair, ready to pounce if need be.
“No wonder you admire him,” she told him. He nodded, his eyes still on hers.
“He helped me bury my mother and made sure that she had a proper funeral. My father had died long ago and I had no one, so he took me in as his ward. He taught me how to protect myself, how to be a man.” He paused, his eyes breaking away from Morgana’s.
“How to turn off pain in order to move forward.”
A silence stretched through the tent then. So intense that the only sounds that could be heard was the wind rustling around the tent, blowing the candle flames this way and that to cast curious shadows over their faces. The sadness in the space was palpable, but Morgana knew she had to let Bartholomew continue his story on his own.
“I’ve known about you for a long time now,” he said finally. “Sir Fordun, he told me about you, about your family. He would speak about how evil you all were, and how it was his Godly mission to see you captured and burned. You were always more important to him than any other witch we ever encountered, and through the years, I watched him go from practical, faithful witch-hunter to a fanatical murderer.”
“Still, I didn’t say a word. I followed orders and I obeyed him because I thought surely once we captured you his mania would desist and I would see my brave, stable Lord rise again. Then I saw what he did to the priest. He had done something similar in the past, but nothing so visceral, so unmistakably evil.”
“Faither Monahan?” Gregor asked, his brow furrowed. “What did he do to him?”
For the first time Bartholomew’s face paled. “He sacrificed him. To the Devil. Or Devils. I don’t know. I’ve seen him do things, some really terrible things. But nothing like what he did to that poor priest.” He shook his head, as if trying to chase the memory from his head.
Morgana felt pity for the priest well up inside of her. She hadn’t liked the man, and it was no secret that he thought incredibly lowly of her, but still. She never wished malice on anyone who misunderstood. Rather she’d pray for them and wish them peace, although the priest had finally found it, she wished it wouldn’t have been in such a frightening way.
She was starting to feel herself become wrapped up in the guilt of the priest’s death, but Bartholomew had begun talking to Gregor again, and she wanted to listen. When he finished, she could tell just by looking at Gregor that he was seething with rage. He had seen the cuts and bruises, had laid his lips on every single one of them.
She hadn’t told him how they were delivered to her, but Bartholomew did. He also told him about how some of the other guards imbibed in the cruelty with Fordun’s permission. By the time he was done, Gregor’s hands were shaking and clenched so tight that his knuckles had turned white.
For several moments he stayed closed in on himself, his rage so great that it ebbed off of him and waves and hit Morgana where she was standing. She couldn’t blame him, but she was also praying he wouldn’t take the conversation to blows again.
“Ye’ve got to testify,” Gregor said at last, when he appeared to be more in control of himself. “Ye’ve got to tell the Magistrate what all he’s done.”
“I know it,” Bartholomew shot back, surprising them both. He looked thoroughly disgusted. “But in freeing her from death, I’ll be paying it with my own.”
“We won’t let that happen,” Morgana interceded, but Bartholomew just snickered.
“Fordun’s influence extends farther than you understand. After the trial ye can run back to Scotland to safety where his soldiers will no longer bother ye. But it won’t be the same for me. I’ll be labeled a traitor, and a turncoat to God himself.”
“It doesn’t have to be that way,” Gregor argued, but he simply laughed.
“It does,” Bartholomew urged. “And you know what? That’s alright. I’ve seen enough death. I don’t want to see anymore. If the last one I see is my own, then I guess I’ll take comfort in that.”
Gregor’s hand traced lightly over Morgana’s bare back. It was pitch black and late, just after two in the morning. After they had left Bartholomew’s tent and snuck back into the tavern, they had made love almost desperately. Bartholomew’s story of her capture had frightened him more than angered him, and he had no idea how to deal with fright other than to divert his mind from it.
“I’m alive,” Morgana whispered, as if reading his thoughts. He had hoped she had drifted asleep, but he should have known better. In the time they shared together Morgana had learned to read him like an open book. Of course she knew he was struggling.
“I ken,” he whispered back, grazing kisses over the back of her head. He nuzzled his forehead against her then, his fingertips continuing to run down the curves of her spine. “I just didn’t realize how close you were to not be.”
Morgana pulled herself up onto her elbows and moved on top of him, resting lightly on his torso.
“Do you think this will work?” she asked, her fingers grazing over his chest hair.
It was a hard question to answer, but Gregor wanted to be honest with her.
“It has the potential to,” he admitted. “It will be a public trial and if we’re lucky we can sway the people to our side. With them watching I’m hoping the Magistrate will be forced to see that you’re innocent, that Fordun is truly the one that is a witch.”
“And if he doesn’t?” Morgana asked.
Gregor leaned up, captured her face, and kissed her passionately.
“He will, lass,” he promised. “He will. I’ll make him see.”
Through the darkness he could make out the outline of her face. She looked lost, frightened. Her lithe body trembled atop him, but not out of pleasure like he was used to. He wanted to comfort her more, to assure her that all would work out.
But he knew better. He knew there was nothing he could say to ease the worry in her mind. What he could do however, was hold her, and make her feel as safe as possible before the guards came the next evening.
“I love ye, Morgana,” he told her, the emotion raw in his voice.
He watched a small smile rise on her face before it fell once more into a look of despair.
“I love you too,” she whispered back, her lips grazing kisses over his chest.
“Thank you for everything you’ve done to help me gain my freedom,” she expressed, nuzzling into him. “I’ve never had someone fight for me like you before. Even if things end badly…”
“Don’t say that,” Gregor interrupted, holding her tighter. Morgana was silent for a moment, then changed the subject.
“What time are they coming for me tomorrow?” she asked. Morgana had tried to make her voice calm, but it still shook.
“At dusk,” he replied simply.
“What should we do with tomorrow then?” she asked.
Gregor reached down, framed her face lovingly with his hands, and kissed her passionately.
“I hope that answers your question,” he murmured, the words coming out between kisses.
Fordun could not contain his pugnacious smile as he walked with his men to the Red Hound Tavern. Around him the commoners were giving him a wide birth. Even though he noticed that they were sneering at him more than cheering for him like he was accustomed to, nothing could ruin his good moo
d.
“Good morning there, dearie,” he greeted Morgana as he let himself into their room.
“Say that again, and I’ll break yer nose,” Gregor warned him.
The two were standing by the fireplace, wrapped in each other’s embrace. Morgana had been taken out of her rags and been given a orangish-red peasant’s dress that was almost the same shade as her hair. Her face was still healing, but most of the bruises and cuts had shrunk significantly.
No matter. I can always give her new ones.
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