The Guardian

by Margaret Mallory

  Before she could get to the table, men started snatching pitchers from her tray.

  “Stop it, ye animals!” she shouted and lifted her tray higher, fearful they would take it all.

  She had only one pitcher left when she reached the table—but it was the one with the extra poison. She tried to hide her smile as she set it between Murdoc and Angus.

  Another man shoved her aside and grabbed the last pitcher. Fury burned in her chest as she watched ale drip off his chin while he gulped the ale straight from the pitcher.

  “Take my ale, will ye?” Angus punched the man in the belly and jerked the pitcher from his hands.

  Hope rose in her heart as Angus lifted the pitcher to his mouth—and sank again when nothing came out of the pitcher. Angus threw it against the hearth and commenced to beat the man who took it about the head.

  “Get more,” Murdoc said and slapped her behind hard enough to sting through the layers of her gown. “And tell that worthless cook I’ll take my dirk to him if he doesn’t get food up here now.”

  She had made a grave error. What she should have done was saved all the poison for Murdoc and killed him. Without him, the other men would run around confused, like a chicken with its ugly head cut off.

  Murdoc turned and caught her glaring at him. “What are ye doing looking at me?” he said and slammed his fist on the table. “Go!”

  Sìleas stood against the wall with Dina, watching the men eat and waiting for them to show some sign of illness. Her time was running out.

  She chewed her lip. “Why isn’t the poison working, Dina?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe it’s too soon.”

  Sìleas jumped when Murdoc stood and banged his cup on the table. When he had the men’s attention, he shouted, “ ’Tis time for a wedding!”

  He scanned the room until he found Sìleas and then motioned her to come forward. When she did not move, he nodded to two burly men.

  “I’ve heard Angus can’t perform unless a woman is screaming and crying,” Dina said, squeezing her hand. “So lie still.”

  Sìleas looked frantically for a means of escape as the two men came toward her. Despite Dina’s warning, she screamed as they dragged her across the hall to stand before Murdoc and Angus.

  “You’ll say your vows now,” Murdoc said.

  “I won’t,” Sìleas said, meeting his eyes. “If ye couldn’t make me do it at thirteen, ye must know ye cannot now.”

  “Perhaps ye will be more willing after the bedding.” Murdoc shrugged. “But if not, all we truly need is a MacKinnon child by ye.”

  “My husband Ian will kill ye if ye let a man touch me,” she said. “And the MacDonalds won’t rest while ye hold Knock Castle.”

  “Ye are so naïve it pains me,” Murdoc said, shaking his head. “Hugh MacDonald and I made an agreement. I get you and Knock Castle in exchange for killing his nephew Connor.”

  A well of anger rose up from deep inside her. With it came words she did not know were there.

  “In the name of my mother, I curse ye, Murdoc MacKinnon,” she shouted, stretching out her arm and pointing at Murdoc. Then she turned slowly and swung her arm in a wide circle. “I curse every one of ye! Ye shall suffer for snatching me from my husband and for taking what belongs to me and my clan. Every one of ye shall suffer!”

  The hall went quiet. Every man’s eyes were upon her, and a few crossed themselves.

  “Angus!” Murdoc’s deep voice broke the silence, filling the hall and reverberating in her chest. “Take her upstairs.”

  Panic flooded through her when Angus picked her up with one arm and tossed her over his shoulder. With her head hanging down, blood pounded in her ears as she screamed and beat her fists on his back. The men’s laughter faded as he climbed the enclosed spiral staircase that led to the family’s private rooms above.

  When Angus carried her into the bedchamber that had been her mother’s, true hysteria took her. It blinded her to everything but the image in her mind of her mother lying on the bed with blood soaking her shift and the sheets beneath her. Sìleas saw the tiny droplets that fell from the bed to the floor as her mother died.

  Sìleas clawed and screeched like a wild animal. When she sank her teeth into Angus’s hand, he let go long enough for her to scramble off the bed and sprint for the door.

  She ran headlong into Murdoc in the doorway. He held her fast.

  “No, not here,” she pleaded, flailing her arms and legs. “Please, not here, not where she died.”

  Murdoc did not heed her pleading any more than he had her mother’s.

  How many times had she stood on the other side of the door and heard her mother weeping? Her mother had suffered the attentions of two husbands who wanted an heir to this castle and did not care if they killed her in the process.

  For years, Sìleas had pushed the memories of her mother’s suffering to the far recesses of her mind. Her mother had seemed so unlike her—beautiful, frail, compliant. In truth, Sìleas had blamed her mother for the choices that had led to their misery. Now she realized her mother must have felt as trapped as she did now.

  As Murdoc dragged her back to the bed, she saw her mother’s strawberry blond hair fanned out on the pillow, its beauty a stark contrast to the dark blood on the sheets. The smell of blood and the sweat of illness filled her nose. She saw the deathly pale skin and limp arms of a woman too weak to weep anymore.

  When Murdoc dropped her on her back on the bed, Sìleas felt her body sink into the mattress, heavy with the weight of her grief. She saw her mother as she had the very last time, with her eyes open but unseeing, and one thin arm stretched out across the bed, as if she were still hoping someone would take her hand and rescue her from the nightmare that was her life.

  In the end, it was God who had mercy and took her to join her dead babes.

  Sìleas lay unblinking, her gaze fixed on the beams of the ceiling. She felt immune to the men now, drenched in grief for her mother, grief that she had denied until now.

  CHAPTER 37

  The darkening sky increased Ian’s sense of urgency as he scanned the top of the walls of Knock Castle.

  “Only two men on the wall,” his father said beside him.

  Ian nodded. “Are ye ready, Father Brian?”

  “Aye.”

  Ian climbed into the handcart and crouched down next to the barrel of wine. God’s bones, what was he doing?

  “We should have used the horse cart, so da and I could go in with ye,” Niall complained, not for the first time.

  “The guards would be more suspicious of a large cart,” Ian said. “I’ll open the gate for ye to join us as soon as I can.”

  The truth was that Ian did not know if there were two men or forty waiting on the other side of the gate, and there was no point in all of them being killed.

  “God be with ye,” Father Brian said, and flung the tarp over Ian as if he were spreading a cloth over an altar. Then he tucked it around Ian and made sure it didn’t cover the wine barrel.

  Their trick was as old as the ancient Greeks. It seemed unlikely, however, that Murdoc or Angus had studied the classics.

  Father Brian grunted as he picked up the handles and pushed the cart forward. ’Twas a good thing the priest was a strong man, for it was a hundred yards from the trees to the castle out on the headland.

  With the wine barrel sloshing next to his head, Ian wondered if the Trojans had been as cramped in their wooden horse. He held on to the edges of the tarp to keep it in place as the cart bumped over the boards of the drawbridge. When Father Brian brought the cart to a jerking halt and dropped the handles to the ground, Ian had to brace his feet against the sides to keep from sliding out the back.

  Through a hole he poked in the tarp with the point of his dirk, he watched the priest bang on the wooden gate. A voice responded from the other side, but Ian couldn’t distinguish the words.

  “I am making my rounds of Skye, as I do every year,” Father Brian said in his deep, rumbling voice.
He gestured toward the cart. “I’ve a barrel of wine from the monastery on Iona I was bringing to my bishop, but it’s too far to carry. I’m willing to sell it to ye.”

  The gate creaked open. Ian gripped the hilt of his dirk as Father Brian picked up the cart handles and pushed it forward.

  “Since we’re celebrating a wedding, I’m sure ye will be wanting to make a gift of that wine,” a guard said.

  The blood in Ian’s veins turned to ice at the mention of a wedding, and he prayed he was not too late to save Sìleas from rape.

  “There will be no taking the wine until I have payment in my hand for the good monks’ work,” Father Brian said, as he brought the cart to a halt inside the bailey yard.

  As Ian had predicted, the guards were not inclined to wait. When the first one lifted the tarp, Ian stuck his dirk under the man’s raised arm and killed him before he could utter a sound. There were only five other guards around the cart. As he sprang to his feet, he drew his claymore and swung into one of them.

  The others who had crowded around the cart, intent on relieving the priest of his wine, stepped back quickly. The ever-helpful Father Brian stuck his foot out, causing one of them to fall backward with a shout. When one of his companions turned to look, Ian’s sword whooshed through the air, nearly severing the man’s head from his body.

  By now, the other guards had their swords out and ready. There were only two of them standing, though. Ian moved toward the pair swinging, anxious to finish the job.

  From the corner of his eye, he saw the man Father Brian had tripped get up and charge the priest with his blade drawn. A moment later, the guard lay at Father Brian’s feet, and the priest was wiping blood from his attacker’s blade on his robe.

  Ian swung in a full circle, and one of his opponents shrieked as Ian’s blade struck the man’s side. Damn, they were making too much noise. The last guard charged, believing Ian would not be quick enough to recover from his last swing.

  It was the last mistake the man would ever make.

  Ian scanned the walls. When he didn’t see anyone, he assumed the two who had been on the wall earlier had come down for the wine and were among the dead. He ran to the gate and waved to signal his father and brother.

  “Ye weren’t always a priest, were ye, Father?” Ian said, as the two of them dragged the bodies of the dead men into an empty storeroom built against the wall.

  “I thought I’d put my fighting days behind me,” the priest said. After they had moved the last man, he crossed himself and wiped his hands on his robe. “There should have been more guards here. Where do ye suppose all the other men are?”

  “Inside the keep.”

  Celebrating a wedding.

  Angus’s massive frame appeared at the edge of Sìleas’s vision. As if from a great distance, she saw him drop his plaid and lift his shirt. She shivered, her body sensing the danger, as she struggled to push aside the images of her mother and the weight of the grief that pinned her to the bed.

  But when Angus’s beefy hands gripped her thighs, she came back to herself with a jerk. She could not bear to have this vile man touch her. Before she could gather herself to fight him, Angus looked over his shoulder.

  “What?” Angus said. “Are ye going to stay and watch me?”

  “I want to be sure it’s done. Capturing her does us no good unless she bears a child.”

  She could not see beyond the mammoth man standing between her legs at the edge of the bed, but it was Murdoc’s voice she heard.

  “I can’t do it when she’s staring at me like the dead,” Angus complained.

  “We both know what ye need to take a woman,” Murdoc said. “So do it.”

  At Murdoc’s words, Dina’s advice came back to her: Lie still. As Angus turned back to her with his arm cocked to strike her, she steeled herself to take the blow.

  But then, Angus froze in place, his eyes fixed on something above her. As an eerie keening filled the bedchamber, Sìleas looked up to see the translucent form of the Green Lady floating above her. She was weeping, making a pitiful sound.

  Angus staggered back from the bed. “The wretch has called up a ghost with her curse!”

  Angus held his arms in front of his face as the Green Lady’s wailing grew louder. The sadness in the ghost’s voice was enough to make the angels weep.

  “She’s coming for me!” Angus stumbled over his own feet as he turned and fled from the room.

  Sìleas sat up and met her stepfather’s eyes. The Green Lady’s intervention had given her time to get her courage—and her anger—back.

  “It is you who makes her weep,” she said. “You have always made her weep.”

  Murdoc crossed the room in three long strides and shoved her down on the bed.

  “Her weeping never stopped me before,” he said. “And it will not now.”

  Sìleas stared up at him, terror gripping her heart. “I am your wife’s daughter. Not even you would commit such a grave sin.”

  Murdoc held her shoulders fast and leaned over her until she felt the heat from his body.

  “I will tell ye the same as I told your mother,” he hissed in her face. “I need a child of my blood.”

  The Green Lady’s weeping had grown soft, as if she knew it would do no good against Murdoc.

  “After being such an ugly child, ye have become a pretty thing,” Murdoc said, leaning back to fix his hard black eyes on her breasts. “If Angus can’t do the job, I’m sure I’ll have no trouble.”

  CHAPTER 38

  “We’ll see if the wine works a second time,” Ian told the others. “Father Brian, are ye willing to take the barrel into the hall to distract them?”

  The priest nodded.

  “Once all the men inside gather around Father Brian, we’ll go in as quietly as we can,” he said to his father and Niall. “If Sìleas is in the hall, we’ll take her and be gone before most of them notice we’re there.”

  Or so he hoped.

  “If she’s not in the hall…” Ian swallowed at the thought of what that would mean. “Then Niall and da will guard the stairs while I go up and fetch her.”

  It was a poor plan, but he could think of none better.

  Father Brian said a quick prayer for them, and they all made the sign of the cross. As Ian and the priest carried the cart up the steps of the keep, he turned to watch his father crossing the bailey yard. Seeing how slowly his father moved, he feared he was leading all the men of his family to their deaths.

  “God is on our side.” The priest patted Ian’s arm as he spoke, then opened the door and wheeled his cart inside, calling, “Good evening to ye, MacKinnons!”

  Ian waited a few moments, every muscle taut, before he eased the door open and slipped inside. No guard was posted at the door—or if there was one, he had left his post to join the throng of men gathered around Father Brian and his barrel. When Niall poked his head inside, Ian waved him forward and moved along the wall into the shadows.

  He scanned the dimly lit hall, searching for Sìleas. There were fifty MacKinnon men in the hall, to his four, but there were almost no women—and Sìleas was not among them. His stomach tightened when he realized that Angus and Murdoc were also missing from the hall.

  His eyes went back to one of the women. What was Dina doing here? Her gaze was fixed on him. His muscles tensed as he waited for her to give them away.

  After glancing about her, Dina removed the torch from the wall bracket beside her and dropped the torch onto the rushes on the floor. Then she met Ian’s eyes again and nodded toward the stairs.

  She was telling him they had Sìleas upstairs.

  As he ran through the arched doorway to the stairs, the rushes were already beginning to flame. The spiral of the stone staircase was built clockwise to give the advantage to the defender, who could swing his sword arm freely, while a right-handed attacker going up had his sword arm cramped against the middle of the spiral. The advantage was lost, however, when the attacker had taught himself to swing
equally either way. As Ian sprinted up the stairs, he shifted his sword to his left hand.

  Other footsteps echoed above him. An instant later, a huge man barreled into him, sending them both tumbling down the stairs. When Ian saw that the man on top of him was Angus MacKinnon, rage nearly blinded him.

  “What have ye done to her?” he shouted, as he plunged his dirk into Angus’s gut.

  Angus was strong, but he fought with wild, panicked punches, as if he were mad. In no time, Ian was sitting on Angus’s chest with his dirk at the man’s throat.

  “I asked what ye have done with my wife.” Ian pressed his blade against Angus’s throat until he drew blood.

  “I saw her ghost!” Angus cried out. “It was hovering over me.”

  Ian’s heart stopped in his chest. He had feared they would rape Sìleas, but he’d never thought they would murder her.

  He heard an eerie, unnatural sound, and a coldness passed over him. God, no. Don’t let her be dead! Ian slashed his blade across Angus’s throat and ran up the stairs.

  When he reached the next floor, the open door from the stairs led into a large bedchamber. Through it, he saw a man leaning over the bed, a woman’s bare knee, and a bit of bright blue fabric hanging over the side of the bed. The blue was the same shade as the gown Sìleas was wearing when last he saw her.

  White hot rage pounded through him. With a roar, he burst into the bedchamber swinging his claymore.

  CHAPTER 39

  Murdoc clamped his hand over Sìleas’s mouth as she fought to get out from under him. She could not hear the Green Lady’s weeping over his harsh breathing.

  Even the castle’s ghost had deserted her.

  “Your mother was a weak vessel,” Murdoc said. “Poking her was dull work. But a lively lass like you will surely give me a strong son.”

  Murdoc suddenly released her as a murderous war cry rolled through the room like a thunderclap. Relief washed over her.

  Ian had come for her.

  Murdoc spun and drew his sword with lightning quickness. Although he blocked Ian’s thrust from reaching his heart, blood seeped down his arm, soaking the sleeve of his shirt. The clank of swords filled the room as the two men moved back and forth.