Cora beamed, her eyes filling with happy tears this time. “That sounds wonderful.”
“There’s no way I’d rather spend an evening.” He hesitated. “Well, there’s a few changes I’d make...”
She laughed. “No, really? What’s wrong with this?”
They passed the evening in happy conversation, him sitting cross-legged outside the bars, her perched on the edge of the stone bench that would be made her bed. It was a testament to the kind of man he was that he could make her feel so much better, even in the midst of such misery. And when she was tired enough to sleep, true to his word, he waited by her bedside until she drifted off.
All things considered, she’d had worse nights of sleep.
Chapter 29
Cold stone…hard floors…the distant smell of rot and damp… Bellina had lost track of how many days she’d been here. It was getting harder and harder to keep her wits about her. Five days? Six? More? The guards seemed to move in rosters but they must have kept them irregular to stop her knowing whether it was day or night. Every time they struck her, she kept hold of her faith, and her anger. She knew she’d done nothing wrong. Neither had her aunt. Neither had anyone in the village, which according to the Inquisitors was being torn apart in search of more witches. More witches! Like they’d even found one…she hated feeling so powerless, so trapped…but with her hands chained behind her (and at least one of them broken beyond repair, at this point) there wasn’t anything she could do.
Hope of rescue was gone. If anyone was coming for her, they’d have come by now. She’d also given up trying to give the Inquisition an answer they liked — the truth only brought more torture, and though she’d tried a few lies, they’d seen right through them. All she could do was live — keep living, keep thinking. Remember who she was, who her family was. Think back to her dear friend, Maeve — that brought a pang of sadness to her aching body. They’d promised to always be there for each other…but how could Maeve be here for her now? Here in this cell on the other side of the world…she wouldn’t even know that anything had gone wrong for weeks yet, if she ever did… A tear rolled down Bellina’s cheek as she realized, perhaps for the first time, how truly alone she was…
Cora jerked awake, and felt her face, wet with tears. She flexed both her hands and found with some relief that both were intact — that was her least favorite part of the dreams, the way the injuries seemed to follow her into the real world, lingering in her muscle memory. Nothing broken, nothing bleeding. For now, whispered an unpleasant little voice in the back of her mind that Cora resolved to ignore.
It must have been morning — she could hear the distant sounds of movement in the kitchens as breakfast preparations were made. The troubling loneliness of the dream was still with her, and she sat up wearily. Outside the door, the guard was staring at her, impassively. Not alone, then. A much more welcome sight was Ian, spread out asleep in front of her cell, using a jacket as a pillow. She gazed fondly down at him for a few minutes before gently nudging at him with the tip of her toe to wake him up. He sprang to his feet in a rush, staring around bleary-eyed, before he realized what was going on and smiled at her sleepily.
“Good morning, my love.”
“Did you sleep well?”
“I feel like my back has been replaced with a bundle of sticks, but otherwise, fine,” he replied, stretching and grimacing.
She laughed despite herself. The insights into Bellina’s last few days alive only made her more grateful for her own blessings. It was with determination and purpose that she allowed herself to be escorted upstairs by the guard to where the Inquisitors were waiting.
And, to her delight, Colin and Audrina were both there, too. Her friend rushed forward to embrace her, despite the guard’s surly expression — she checked her over as though looking for signs of injury, then returned to Colin’s side.
“The interrogation will continue,” the first Inquisitor said flatly.
“To what end?” Colin’s voice rang out across the room.
“To ascertain guilt.”
“You questioned her for an hour yesterday,” Audrina said, her voice as composed and lordly as Colin’s had been. “Have you anything new to discuss with her?”
“We must —”
“Have you anything new to discuss with her?”
“No,” admitted the second Inquisitor, a little surly.
Cora was looking back and forth between them as though she was at a tennis match, astonished to see the Inquisitors actually looking a little sheepish. Had Colin and Audrina planned this last night? A line of argument that would actually sway the Inquisitors from interrogating her any further? She almost wept in gratitude for the support of her friends. To think she’d considered leaving this castle, this place that felt like home — thought of returning to San Francisco, that huge, ugly city, when she had such fine, wonderful people all around her…a single tear ran down her face and she dashed it away. Had to hold composure.
“Then I fail to see what the purpose of a continued interrogation could possibly be,” Colin said firmly. “She has proven nothing but unwavering faith — has gone along with the investigation, answered every question you could ask of her, submitted to imprisonment and being treated like a common criminal...”
“Lord Cotswold has leveled some very serious accusations,” the first Inquisitor said mildly, turning his eerie, cold eyes to Cora — she met his gaze bravely, trying to keep her expression neutral. “There are questions that have not been satisfactorily answered. We need to apply some — persuasion.”
Cora’s stomach clenched. She felt a sudden, numbing flash of every memory she’d tried to suppress from the dreams — every violation, every injury, every drip of blood, every torn ligament and broken bone…she found herself praying desperately that they didn’t break her hands. She needed her hands…she couldn’t deliver babies without her hands...
“Persuasion? You mean torture.” Colin’s voice was full of restrained fury. “You propose to torture an innocent woman, a member of my family, a member of my household and of this Clan, based on the word of a madman.”
“Lord Cotswold —”
“Isn’t a Lord,” snapped Ian, a little less composedly than Colin had — Cora saw the Laird shoot his cousin a warning glance, which served to straighten his back and calm him a little. “We refer to him by the title to be polite, but both his land and all his holdings were taken from him after the episode he had last year. Have you heard about that?”
The Inquisitor’s face stayed blank, but his eyebrow twitched a little. “We have not interviewed Lord Cotswold.”
“See that you do,” Ian suggested. “Ask him about what happened last year. He came charging in here, accusing Maeve of witchcraft, totally baselessly, and had a complete breakdown when it was made clear to him that he was mistaken. He’s been on a vendetta ever since, it’s clear to me, and I have no evidence whatsoever that his mental state has improved since that day.”
The Inquisitors looked at one another. The second one — the one who kept yelling at her in Italian — shifted from foot to foot, clearly frustrated by the situation. The calmer one with the dead eyes gave him a meaningful look, and he quieted, though the murderous look in his eyes suggested he wasn’t very happy about it.
“We will confer,” the Inquisitor said flatly.
“Does that mean Cora is free to go?” Audrina demanded.
“She will remain in the cell until we have conferred,” the second Inquisitor said.
“But —”
“It’s alright, Maeve,” Cora said quickly, giving the Inquisitors a grateful little nod. “I’m happy to wait wherever they want me to wait.”
“We will delay the final judgment until we have spoken to Lord Cotswold. His testimony will be necessary for the final decision.”
The Inquisitors nodded to the guard, then walked out through the doors to where their horses were waiting. Heading for Lord Weatherby’s castle, no doubt, to have a bit of a
chat with Lord Cotswold.
Hopefully the man is drunk already, Cora thought with uncharacteristic spite. Then they’d see what kind of a person they were dealing with — what kind of a man it was who made these baseless accusations against innocent women. Who called month-old babies ‘hellspawn’ and deliberately goaded men into attacking. Who had been in the habit of stealing newlywed women away from their husbands and — Cora stopped that line of thinking as soon as she could.
The guard gestured in the direction of Cora’s cell, and she sighed. It was going to be another cold, boring day of waiting, it seemed. Before she went, Audrina pulled her into a quick hug, and Ian gave her a much longer one.
“Well, it was nice to see a little bit of sunlight,” Cora joked as she headed back down the stairs.
“That’s my girl. Keep those spirits up. It’ll all be over soon.”
“I hope so,” Cora murmured to herself as the cell door slammed shut on her yet again. “I really do.”
Chapter 30
It was a long day. Cora found ways of amusing herself — for a while, she played solitaire with the cards Ian had left her, then she experimented with trying to toss them at a certain point on the wall, and then, when even that grew boring, she tried to coax the guard into speaking to her. That was an entertaining game, albeit one that made her feel a little cruel after a while — she began to worry that the man had actually had his tongue cut out, so uninterested was he in what she had to say. After about half an hour of goading, he very deliberately turned his chair ninety degrees so that the angle of his body prevented him from looking at her, and she took that as a signal to stop bothering him. It wouldn’t do to antagonize her captor, she supposed. After all, she had no idea how long she was going to be down here. Maybe she’d grow old in this cell. She and Ian could get married down here…she could bear his children…a baby would probably fit out through the spaces between the bars so long as she made sure to pass it through before it got too big…
Cora shook her head, laughing a little deliriously to herself. She had definitely been left to her own devices for too long. Maybe that would be what happened — she’d just lose her mind and become the gibbering madwoman in the dungeons. Perhaps after she died, she could haunt the place! The Ghost of Castle MacClaran…it had a nice ring to it, didn’t it? But would she still be restrained to this cell if she was a ghost? It would be nice at least to be able to drift around the castle grounds…visit with Hamish…a pang of grief. She missed the silly old horse. Oh, and it would be great fun to torment Donal. He told such wild stories as it was that there would be no way anyone would believe he’d seen an actual ghost. She chuckled aloud at the idea of Donal desperately trying to convince his older brother the Laird that he had the Sight, and that he’d decided to be a ghost hunter.
She knew she was entertaining these silly little fantasies as an escape mechanism from the horrible reality of her situation, but she didn’t care. She certainly had nothing better to do — every bit of power she had to affect her situation, she’d already used. God, she hoped she’d done well enough to spare her life. Things were just starting to look so good — she had a handsome lover who was mad about her, an excellent job doing what she loved, a house and a home and dear friends around her. There was just the tiny little problem of the murdered ancestor and the accusations of witchcraft to deal with…she laughed again, weakly, then dragged some of the blankets over herself and tried at least to get some sleep.
This time, she dreamed of Bellina in the pauses between torture sessions — when she tried to sleep, or tend in some way to her horrible wounds. For a long time, she tried to figure out how she could possibly prove to the men that she wasn’t a witch. She thought through every possible method of argument, and came up again and again with the conclusion that it was men who decided who was and wasn’t a witch, not the accused women in question. All the tests were loaded — either the women would fail the test and be executed, or succeed at the test and be killed. They were all violent — and all profoundly unscientific, it went without saying. Just as a trial by combat was a terrible way of deciding the guilt or innocence of a criminal, so too were the various methods of testing for witchcraft a sham. She and Bellina were agreed on that, and she awoke disconsolate, but feeling an odd sense of solidarity with her past incarnation. God, she was hardly coping with being cooped up for a day — and she hadn’t been tortured. Bellina had been an incredibly strong woman, and Cora felt a strong sense of honor to be related to her, to be the bearer of some part of her spirit.
It must have been late at night when Ian came to her, because she was beginning to grow tired again even after her afternoon nap. She rose to her feet when she saw him, delighted to see his face but also deeply frightened, because it meant he was bringing her news. News of what the Inquisitors had decided — of what Cotswold had said — of her possible fate.
His face wasn’t a happy one. And he was swaying slightly on the spot — and was that alcohol on his breath?
“Have you been drinking?”
He had the good grace to look a little ashamed. “Yes.”
“You could at least share.”
With a rueful smile, he passed a flask through the bars to her. She took a deep swallow of the whisky, feeling it burn her mouth and throat and build a comforting warm fire in the pit of her stomach.
Ian opened his mouth, and hesitated.
“Well? What’s the verdict?”
“You — you’re being offered a chance to prove your innocence,” Ian said, sounding a little guarded.
She narrowed her eyes. “How?”
“Well — Cotswold, it seems, lost it completely when they questioned him. Yelling, raving, the whole nine yards. It didn’t look good. But accusations of witchcraft are still a big deal, so the Inquisitors decided to leave it in the hands of a trusted test…and to let the result of that be the deciding factor.” There were tears in his eyes, she realized, with alarm growing in her stomach. “Cora — oh, my beautiful Cora. Please, please be brave. Please be braver than me.”
“What is it? Ian — tell me. What’s the test?”
“They call it a lot of things,” he murmured, “but the name I always knew it as was the Trial of the Depths. They throw you in the water, Cora. If you float, you’re a witch. If you sink —”
“You drown.” It was exactly as she’d feared. One of those no-happy-endings kinds of tests where the woman was either guilty or dead. Tears welled up in her eyes and her knees went weak — she retreated to the bed, dropped heavily onto it and buried her head in her hands, shaking as sobs racked her body.
She heard Ian murmuring to the guard — and when she looked up, to her absolute surprise, the man was disappearing into the depths of the dungeon. Ian was holding the key.
“I’m not running away,” she said immediately, through her tears. “They’ll only come down harder on the castle and the village.”
He smiled, unlocking the door and stepping into the cell — then locked it behind him.
“Of course not, my brave wee warrior woman,” he murmured. She stood, gazing up at him, and he swept her into his arms. “Of course not.”
When he kissed her his mouth burned with whisky and the desperation of their situation. She kissed him back, knowing it may be their last chance, wanting only the touch of his skin and the taste of his lips. If she was to be drowned tomorrow, or burned, she would first drown in her lover. He pinned her to the wall, kissing her with an urgency that she met and exceeded, dragging his shirt from his shoulders and pulling the belt of his kilt off with a practiced ease. No time to go slow — the guard could return at any minute — she took the length of him into her palm and stroked him until he was hard and jerking his hips in time with her movements. With a groan, he gripped her hips, lifted her up (her back pressed against the cold dungeon wall) and entered her in one sudden movement that knocked the breath out of her lungs.
They moved together, frantic and urgent, muffling their cries against eac
h other’s flesh. This wasn’t a position they’d tried before and Cora was amazed by how quickly she began to near the edge — clearly the built up frustration, panic and fear needed to find its release somewhere, and here it came, in the arms of her lover. He, too, was beginning to get close, his breath coming in sharper and sharper spurts, his mouth on her neck, definitely leaving bruises that she was too overcome to think about. They climaxed simultaneously, her nails raking down his back as she bit down hard on her scream, him uttering a guttural moan that he cushioned in the side of her throat. Spent and exhausted, he turned and lowered her to the bed, then crawled onto it beside her and pulled the blanket over them both. They began to drift toward sleep, wrapped in each other’s arms. They shouldn’t have, not really, she thought drowsily — the guard would be coming back soon — surely they’d be punished for breaking the rules — but she may never have the chance to fall asleep with Ian in her arms again. Not if she was going to die in the morning anyway. To hell with the guard.
She heard his footsteps some time later — and then she heard him gently retrieve the keys from where Ian had dropped them by the door, and resume his seat. If he had a problem with there being two prisoners in his cell instead of one, he certainly didn’t say anything about it.
Thank God for small mercies, Cora thought, and then oblivion claimed her.
Chapter 31
The guard woke them early — the door unlocked, he jerked his head in the direction of the staircase, face expressionless. Ian nodded, pressed one last kiss to the side of Cora’s head, pulled his clothes on quickly and stole out of the cell and into the darkness. It wouldn’t do for the Inquisitors to discover her in the arms of her lover, she thought begrudgingly, but the bed was cold without him and she felt very small and lost and alone. The guard must have had advance warning of the Inquisitors’ schedules, because it wasn’t long before both men came down and stood outside the bars of her cell, staring her down. She met their gazes, defiant.
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