Sorcha disappeared down a garden path to return to the castle.
Dunna break his heart? Could Conall truly have grown to care for her a little bit? Or was it simply that his lust would soon be abated?
She thought of how she’d lain against his side, her cheek on his collarbone; she thought of her palm on his chest and the sturdy feel of his heart beating. She’d traced his battle scars with her fingertips. Kat had marked him. But he’d marked her too, in other ways.
Chapter 23
Kat was in the courtyard with Andrina, practicing swords, when Conall, Malcolm, and several other men rode in. After the stable boys had taken the horses, he sought Kat out.
“I will speak to ye in my chambers.” He strode away, the sun glinting off his glossy, black hair.
A smile danced on Andrina’s lips. “He is rather magnificent, isn’t he?”
Kat frowned. “He’s rather unbearably arrogant.”
She took her time as she made her way to his bedchamber. Once she was inside, he latched the door shut behind her with a thud.
Her words came out in a rush. “Ye dunna approve of my handling a sword, of teaching Andrina how to use one? Is that what ye wish to speak to me about? For I will tell ye it is only to her benefit. She’ll be able to defend herself. She’ll be stronger. I willna stop showing her. She speaks to me and is braver every day.…”
He crossed his arms over his brawny chest and stared at her.
“She’s getting to understand it rather well. I can tell ye yer own mother approves of it! We spoke of it in the gardens. I willna stop these lessons and….”
“Are ye quite done, wife?” He smiled, a devastating, brutal smile that made her knees weak.
“For now.”
“I dunna wish to speak to ye about Andrina or swords or whether my mother approves of ye teaching her.” He removed his plaid and ran a hand through his dark hair.
“What did ye wish to speak about?”
“Right now I dunna wish to speak at all.”
He pulled her roughly into his arms and kissed her. The pressure of his lips on hers caused tendrils of hot, spiky warmth to spread throughout her body. He kissed her forehead, her cheeks, her nose, and was back to capturing her mouth. “’Twas yer face I saw each night in my dreams,” he breathed, trailing his finger softly along her cheek. He pulled her closer so her head rested on his chest.
“Was it the face of a wild boar, then?” she asked. “Or a dirty Neep pulled from the garden soil?”
Laughter rumbled in his chest. “Nay.” He caressed her hair and sighed. “Now that I’ve tasted yer lips, there is something I need to tell ye, after all.” He took her hand and led her to the bed. “Sit, please.”
She perched on the bed, unnerved.
“I want to tell ye why I was away, why it was urgent I go.”
Kat nodded.
“Angus Og MacDonald is dead.”
Kat’s blue eyes widened. “Ye killed him?”
“Nay. I wish it had been me! We went to make sure his death was not a rumor. While ye and I will never mourn his passing, the clans will fight even more amongst themselves now that he’s dead, making us all more vulnerable to King James the Fourth, who would see us bow humbly to his throne. There will be difficult times ahead, lass. Did ye ken Angus called himself the King of the Isles? Arrogant bastard.”
She shook her head. “Nay, but I’m not surprised. How did he die?”
“An Irish harper was promised the daughter of a Mackenzie if he killed Angus. He snuck into Angus’ bedchamber and slit Angus’ throat while he slept.”
Conall watched Kat but she said nothing. Finally, she found her voice. “My Uncle John always said ‘twas better to die an honorable death in battle. He told Angus, on many occasions, if he wasn’t careful he would die dishonorably in his bed with his throat slit.” She shivered.
“He’ll never harm ye again, Kat,” Conall said, gathering her in his arms.
Chapter 24
The old hag before him would do. For that matter, any hump-backed hag would do. When he was finished with her, the tale of her suffering would spread far and wide, from villager to villager, like a plague, even, perhaps, into the Highlands. He hoped it would.
Laise of the Marked Face and the three men who rode with him were close enough to the border for that. Of late he’d been called closer and closer to the Highlands, there to do his work.
His mother had been raped by a Highlander and left to die outside of Edinburgh. But the crass woman had lived and given birth to a son. It was a secret Laise kept, that his father had been a Highlander. Laise had a special hatred for all Highlanders. He’d been born of sin but knew he was special from an early age. God sometimes picked the ugliest to do His divine work, after all.
Laise hadn’t been raised in the Highlands. He’d been raised in Edinburgh, where his mother and he had lived, helping a butcher with slaughter in exchange for a room to sleep in. On market day, animals were brought in on the hoof. From an early age, Laise helped to slaughter them and they were butchered for the sale of their meat. He found a strange satisfaction in the way the blood dried in the sun, amid piles of offal and swarms of flies.
The meat was sold as well as the skins; local cordiners would tan it and make it into leather products. Women used the fat deposits to make their candles and soap, and the intestines and stomach linings were made into sausage and haggis. Laise even used the jaw bones as ice skates in the winter.
He knew most of the other merchants by name and had learned most of their secrets—how the bakers cheated on quality and weight, how wine was watered down, how stale fish was reddened with pig’s blood and how cheese was made to look rich by soaking it in broth. He’d thought to be a butcher himself one day, and the thought now was laughable.
As a lad, he’d become sick, feverish and weak. It was smallpox. That’s when his mother started to beat him, and when she’d pushed him into the fire. That was also when God first started to speak to him. He told his mother God watched her, that he heard His voice at night. He told her if she ever pushed him into a fire or hit him again, the gates of hell would open and swallow her up. She’d taken to drinking more and more after that, and the beatings had stopped.
That was long ago. Laise hadn’t ice skated in years. He hadn’t been that boy for a long, long time. He was a man now, tall and pale. His eyes were a nondescript grey, his hair more orange than red. His face and parts of his body bore pitted scars from the smallpox. And half of his face was twisted into frozen scar from the fire.
Even though he was ugly, he wore fancy clothes. He liked the feel of silk against his scarred skin. He hoped God would forgive him for the indulgence.
He’d killed many witches by fire and hanging and he would kill many more. It was his devout calling. Every night, when he knelt to pray for hours and his knees were stiff, he heard a voice telling him where to find the evil spawn of the devil. And always he set out, his faith sufficient to find the hags.
Laise was a witch hunter and his reputation had grown. He and his men—Thomas, Gordan, and Macgrath—stood inside a pathetic, smoky hut, forming a tight circle around a woman named Skena. Laise needed the other men’s strength. Fortunately, it could be bought with ale, whisky, and whores in the taverns where they bedded down during their travels. In fact, Laise recognized at once the true reward for these men was violence.
Laise and his men did not speak Gaelic, so he would need to find a man who did, who could accompany them into the Highlands when he was called. That meant more coin, more whisky, and more whores.
Laise’s face contorted into a frown. He wished the wrinkled, sour-smelling woman kneeling before him was younger. He chastised himself. He would add three extra hours to his prayers this dark, wind-buckled night. God always sent him to the witch, and who was he to complain about her age? Although ‘twas true a younger woman could withstand torture longer, providing him with more righteous satisfaction.
Skena wore a ragged brown dress
and was barefoot. The floor of her thatched hut was covered in straw. In the center, a fire of peat burned low, the smoke funneling through a hole in the roof. The hole, or the chimney, was nothing more than a whisky barrel with its ends knocked out.
Skena knelt at the men’s feet, her dull grey hair bound in a single braid down her back. Laise’s eyes bored into the woman’s weary face. His fingers caressed his jeweled dirk, which had been blessed in Iona, a tiny holy island in the Hebrides. His lips stretched into a hideous half smile. He hadn’t been able to smile fully since he was a lad.
He relished the fear and uncertainty swimming in the woman’s eyes. Like the pilgrims, monks, chiefs and kings before him, he’d once crossed the ocean to get to Iona, where the light was more heavenly than anywhere else on earth and the sea mists brought rainbows of every kind arcing across the waters. On the horizon, Iona looked like the form of a sleeping woman, and water broke at the foot of the steep cliffs with their darkened gullies. The imposing abbey and the shrine, where his dirk had been blessed, were to the north.
He had yet to use the jeweled dirk to kill a witch; he was saving it for a witch with powerful magic, not a common witch like the one kneeling at his feet.
“I’ll give ye another chance, Skena, and yer life may yet be spared.” His voice was unnaturally deep and sinister. “Confess. Confess that yer spells brought failed crops to yer village. Confess ye change into a black bat at night and murder people while they sleep. Confess ye whip up the winds and cause storms that kill sailors.”
“I am a healer, not a witch. I have nothing to confess except I help the villagers when they are sick.”
He grabbed her braid and jerked her head up. “Oh aye, there is a difference indeed. Witches are cunning, often appearing as helpless auld women who yet possess a vera dark power. Witches are an abomination and must be destroyed, ye see. We have to be sure.”
Outside in the cold dusk several villagers stood huddled, bewildered, and helpless. They were not soldiers; they were simple folk.
Across the loch a ribbon of crofts stretched down to the water’s edge. On the horizon was another string of older crofts on the coast’s edge. The strips had gone to bracken and those crofts were long deserted. A small valley to the west held sheep, their tufts of wool studding the grass, giving the illusion of snow. The mountains across the loch were hazy and cloud-covered, and the air held that peculiar smell of an approaching storm.
Laise felt a deep contentment in such places, for there weren’t enough fit men here to put up a fight against his accusations.
“Skena,” he said, his grip tightening on her braid, “do you ken the first thing we do to weaken a witch’s power?”
Skena stared at him. He’d made sure the woman hadn’t slept for two days. His men had to hold her up so she wouldn’t fall on her face. Thomas and Gordan each held one of her scrawny arms. Macgrath stood at her back.
Laise raised his dirk and sliced off her braid. “We cut off yer hair, for the hair of a witch is vera powerful indeed. And then we prick ye. If ye dunna bleed, well then we ken yer a witch.”
Skena managed a laugh. “Ye should have started with that straight away! Yer heid’s mince!”
“Mind yer tongue, cunt, or I’ll cut it off!” Thomas, a big man with a bushy dark beard, struck her hard on the jaw and she whimpered. Her vision swam. Skena knew her time on earth was coming to an end, no matter what she said or did.
Her eyes touched on the simple things she owned. Her pots on a trivet; baskets hanging from the ceiling, away from the mice; her earthenware bowls, herbs, and potions for healing; a bag of nuts; and her straw pallet on the floor with its threadbare woolen blanket. She inhaled the familiar smells of cow and hay inside the snug earthen walls. She could hear the water of a nearby stream bubbling over stones. She watched smoke weave in and out of the blackened rafters overhead. If only she could drift away too.
Though her jaw was afire with pain and her head ached unmercifully she managed to speak. “When ye prick me, ye will see I bleed like any other.”
Laise laughed as he pushed her sleeve up. “But we have pricked ye and we see not a drop of blood! Ye dunna remember?”
Skena knew when she’d been defeated. She’d felt no prick on her arm. They’d never intended to prick her.
Roughly, the men drug her from the hut into the rain and threw her on the ground. Laise grabbed her arm and lifted her sleeve once again to show the other villagers standing there. “This woman is a witch. Though she has been pricked, she doesna bleed!”
“This sarding weather will prevent a witch from burning,” Gordan said. “A sarding shame.”
Skena knew better than to hope they would let her live because of the rain. The rain felt cool on her face after the stifling presence of the men in her hut and she welcomed it.
Laise nodded. He preferred to see a witch burn rather than hang, but so be it. Skena lay now on her side, her cheek spattered with mud. Her woolen tunic and mittens with worn-out fingers were mud-spattered too. Her lips dry and raw, she swallowed the rain, for she had been given only sips of water over the past two days.
“Thomas, put this in the saddle bag.” He tossed the woman’s severed braid to Thomas. It flew through the air like a silver snake. Thomas caught it with one hand and held it away from his body as if it were a plague-ridden rat. A wee child cried and his mother shushed him. None of the villagers present were strong enough to fight the witch hunters. “And get the rope.”
“On whose authority do ye do this?” a villager demanded.
“On God’s authority,” Laise said. “Do ye have a quarrel with that, auld man?”
The man, tears in his eyes, looked as if he would challenge Laise and his men but his wife put her hand on his arm to stay him.
A tree as gnarled and bony as Skena stood next to her hut. Soon one end of the rope Macgrath held had been secured around Skena’s slender neck and the other fashioned to a sturdy branch above her. Thomas and Gordan held part of the rope and waited.
“Skena, ye’ve been judged by God and man to be an abomination. Ye shall die this day for yer sins, having been recognized as a witch.”
A loud rumble of thunder sounded. “Mama,” a wee lad cried, hugging his mama’s thigh. “She isna a witch! She helped me when my tooth hurt!” He was shushed again and the lad buried his face in his mama’s skirts.
Skena had never understood men with no feeling in their hearts, men who could burn another life away and ride on with the smell of burnt flesh clinging to their clothes; she’d never understood men who could squeeze life from another with a rope and an hour later be drinking and laughing in a tavern.
With her last breaths, Skena would utter her final words. This evil man thought her a witch. She might as well pretend to curse him! She knew he and his men did not speak the old Gaelic. He would not understand her words and she would take this one last delight—seeing fear in the cruel bastard’s eyes. If anyone was a spawn of the devil, it was this man and his companions.
“Èisd ri gaoth nam beann gus an traogh na h-uisgeachan,” she said, looking into the man’s eyes. It meant, listen to the wind upon the hill until the waters abate. The words were not meant for Laise the Witch Hunter. Laise the Pitiless. Laise the Slimy. Laise the Hog-Hearted, Hell-Spawned Maggot Pie. She was, in essence, telling the others to wait until trouble passed and not to endanger themselves. Then in Gaelic she told the others the man had lied, for he’d never pricked her arm. She told them she would soon fly on the wind and be with God.
“What did the evil cunt say?” Laise demanded in a furious tone, spittle flying from his twisted lips. Not one of the villagers answered. He turned back to the woman. “Did ye curse me, hag?”
The winds whipped up. Another flicker of fear in his eyes. Good. Skena spoke Gaelic again, comparing the man to a pile of steaming horse turds.
“It matters not, auld woman. I am impervious to yer curses and spells, as I was to all the witches who came before ye. In fact, I’ve killed f
our witches already this week.”
The villagers whispered among themselves as Laise gave the signal and the rope was jerked until Skena’s bare, dirty feet dangled inches off the ground. Her death was slow and agonizing.
When her body was lifeless, Laise turned to address the villagers. “Spread the tale of Skena far and wide. We are witch hunters. We will travel all of Scotland to find and kill witches, hanging by hanging, burning by burning, stake by stake. For we have been set about our task by God himself. I have rid ye of a great pestilence this day.”
As darkness groped the fields and hillsides, the men left Skena hanging there, her slight body swaying in the wind and rain, and rode away. They did not look back as the villagers began to remove Skena from the rope.
Despite all, the villagers began to sing, but Laise and his men did not hear their solemn voices on the wind, for they were men who did not understand spells of compassion or the prayers of weary souls.
Chapter 25
“I’ve brought some tea with herbs for the MacDonald,” Mollie said. “On Glynmyne’s orders.” She carried a tray.
Ronald, who had been set to guard Lorcan’s room, frowned but opened the door. Mollie entered the prisoner’s room and set the tray down on a bedside table. She shut but did not latch the door because she did not want to awaken Lorcan if he was sleeping. A sleeping MacDonald is better than an alert MacDonald, she thought.
She cast an eye at the bed to be certain, seeing a man’s hulking shape beneath the blanket and dark hair upon a pillow, then carefully stoked the fire in the hearth. She was curious about Kat’s brother. Was he as brave and spirited as his sister Kat? Had he been hiding in the hills since the battle? How would the Maclean men treat him?
Lorcan had pledged his allegiance to clan Maclean and she wondered if anyone had told him Angus Og MacDonald was now dead. For certain, he had pledged his allegiance to her clan before the news of Angus’ death had spread. She knew Kat and Lorcan had lost their parents at a young age. And she knew Lorcan had defended his wee sister from many of Angus’ beatings.
A Dark Highland Magic: Hot Highlands Romance Book 4 Page 14