Beneath a Dark Highland Sky: Book #3 (27 page)

43

The morning was warm and brilliant with sunshine as Malcolm, his hands tied behind his back, was led from his dark cell and up through the twisting bowels of the castle.

He was taken outside, to a hill that overlooked the town below. A stake had been erected and wood piled round it, and a large crowd had eagerly gathered for the rare event of a male witch burning, to see a powerful sorcerer writhe in flame. A powerful sorcerer who, until the night before, had been simply a man attending a royal banquet.

Peasants, merchants, nobles, and royals watched him as he was tied to the stake. Children were hoisted to their father’s shoulders to get a better view. There were crude cheers and taunts.

When Sorcha saw Malcolm she gave a startled cry. Tears sprung to her eyes and she felt so weak her legs nearly buckled beneath her. He was shirtless, wearing only his trews, and his face was bloodied, his eyes swollen nearly shut. There were bruises on his arms and ribs. “Malcolm!” she cried and he looked up, his amber eyes finding her in the crowd just before they slipped a dark hood over his head.

              “Nay!” Sorcha cried. She made to run toward him in her desperation but Leith and Isobel held her back. “We must wait, as difficult as it is. We must trust in Jehanne. It is Malcolm’s best chance.”

              Sorcha nodded, feeling as if she might faint. “Malcolm, I love ye!” she shouted above the crowd, hoping he heard her. She did not see Maira or Maira’s father John in the crowd. Had he already departed the castle, seeking a ship to set Maira from Scotland forever? Sorcha hoped so, for if she e’er met Maira again, she would be sore tempted to kill her. 

A dungeon guard, a brute of a man with a block for a head, stood ready to set the wood at Malcolm’s feet afire. “I am Darach, head prison guard and the king’s executioner,” he said. He pointed to a window high up in the castle wall. “King James watches as if from heaven, passing sentence, waiting for this soulless bastard to burn. When he gives the signal, I light the wood.”

Sorcha looked up to see the young king’s silhouette in the window. Her fingers toyed with the Viking pendant she wore around her neck, the necklace Malcolm had given her. Memories spun and crashed together in her mind: Malcolm’s warm hand upon the stone as they took their wedding vows. Malcolm’s arms around her, keeping her warm after she’d almost drowned in the Black Burn of Sorrow. Malcolm making love to her in the castle alcove, telling her for the first time he loved her. She prayed as she’d never prayed before, barely breathing, for Jehanne had yet to appear. Had he succeeded in preparing for the grandest and most difficult illusion he’d ever perform?

Sorcha and Isobel embraced.
Hold on Malcolm, hold on. We will nae let them do this to ye!

There was a crackling sound but it was not the wood at Malcolm’s feet. A voluminous cloud of smoke formed, and to the crowd’s delight, Jehanne emerged from it. He bowed dramatically, his purple robe swishing at his feet as he greeted the crowd. “Dunna forget, Darach, the king has first ordered entertainment of another kind for the blood-thirsty crowd! Magic! So Darach, I’ll need ye to step back and join the crowd until I’m finished.”

Darach frowned, impatience glowing in his cruel eyes. He looked angry but finally moved to the edge of the throng. Children cooed and clapped their small hands, unaware of the violent spectacle that would follow Jehanne’s performance, and Darach frowned at them, too.

For the next hour, as the sun beat down, Jehanne performed the trick with the goose that had been so well received at the royal banquet the night before, where he seemingly severed its head and put it back together and it waddled away. Several peasants laughed while they chased it, hoping to have the fat goose for their evening meal.

A piper stepped from the crowd and began to dance and play the pipes.

Sparks flew from Jehanne’s fingers as he created great clouds of smoke, disappearing and reappearing to the delight of the crowd. He removed a snakeskin from his pocket and threw it on the ground. He chanted and it turned into a live lizard, the small creature slithering away, women and children screaming and the men laughing.

He hypnotized a woman in the crowd and made her dance to the piper’s music. He took stones and turned them into hunks of cheese, handing them to people in the crowd. Finally, he took a candle from his pocket and lit the flame, walking through the crowd and asking several people to try to blow it out. When none of them could, there were murmurs and whispers. A man yelled, “Use it to light the wood at the sorcerer’s feet!”

The crowd was growing impatient. Jehanne stole a glance at the king in the window, who also seemed to be losing his patience, for he had seen all of these tricks before.

Jehanne was out of time and he knew it. Taking a deep breath, he chanted over the candle and it seemed to go out of its own accord. That silenced the crowd. Jehanne bowed and created the greatest cloud of smoke yet. It swallowed him up and the crowd waited to see what would happen next.

Darach waited too, becoming more and more eager to get on with things.

When the smoke finally cleared, James gave the signal from above and the people cheered. Darach marched to the pile of wood and lit it. The flames spread quickly and the figure began to struggle against the ropes.

Those moments, watching the body on the stake jerk and convulse, when Sorcha did not know if the magician had succeeded in untying Malcolm and replacing him with a fake body, were the longest and most painful of her life. She sobbed and would’ve fallen to her knees if Leith and Isobel did not hold her up and comfort her.

When the figure had been engulfed and moved no longer, James disappeared from the window high above the murderous crowd. Isobel, Leith, and Sorcha stayed long after the crowd disappeared. Then she sunk to her knees. “If Jehanne did not succeed and I did nothing while they burned my husband alive, I dunna wish to live.”

Isobel sank to her knees and wrapped her arms around Sorcha, whose body heaved with her sobbing. “We must believe in Jehanne’s magic,” Isobel breathed. “We must. And now we will go into the town below and wait at the herbalist’s shop and hope Malcolm will join us there soon, as Jehanne instructed.”

Sorcha nodded, her face and gown wet with tears. Leith helped both women up from the ground, his own eyes wet with tears.

44

King James the Third had retreated to his royal apartments, where his father had first met Malcolm all those years ago when Malcolm had been a lad of only eight summers.

              The apartments were empty now but for the troubled king, who wished to be alone, his guards stationed outside the door. He sat at the long table where his father had once sat listening to astrologers and Seers cast his horoscope and divine his future and watching dwarfs and jugglers and magicians perform. Like the kings before him, James preferred the comfort of the Abbott’s house of Holyrood, for there was something cold and forbidding about this room, even when it was filled with guests and entertainment.

He closed his eyes and put his head in his hands. He felt a childish relief at destroying a powerful sorcerer and his dark magic but could not stop dwelling on what Malcolm had told him from his dungeon cell—that he must build ten churches. He began to feel better thinking about it, for he had found a way to deal with Malcolm’s treason and a way to avoid the future where he died at the hands of a supposed priest in a village hut. For deep down, he had believed Malcolm about the churches. He had always loved the quiet piousness of holy buildings, the clean beeswax candles burning on the altars that did not stink of animal fat, the overwhelming feeling of holy devotion that enveloped his soul when he prayed for hours on end, knowing he was the divine hand of God, meant to rule all of Scotland.

              A loud noise startled him and he opened his eyes, not believing what he saw.

“No one needs to teach a falcon to hunt,” Malcolm said. “It is born knowing how. It is the same for a great sorcerer. No one teaches him the magic, he is born with it.”

The king froze in fear, believing he was hallucinating. He was too frightened to call out to his guards, his voice stuck in his throat. The sound he’d heard had not been the door opening and shutting, yet Malcolm stood before him, as if he’d materialized from thin air.

              “I will nae harm ye, yer Grace.” He approached the king, whose eyes bore his shock.

              Malcolm grasped James’ hand before he could snatch it away. “Lest ye think I am a ghost and nae a flesh and blood man.”

              “But I saw ye burn,” James croaked. “How is it ye stand before me now?”

              “I told ye before, I dunna practice the dark arts. But my magic is powerful. I ha’e something to ask of ye, King James.”

              James managed to nod.

              “Ne’er again accuse a Maclean of sorcery or burn one at the stake. Ne’er again ask a Maclean to tell a royal future. Leave us to our business. In fact, ye’d be wise ne’er to threaten any Seer again with execution. Build yer churches and make yer own future. Despite what ye did to me, and ye should be vera ashamed for letting yer fear rule yer actions and for nae listening to the truth of my words, ye can still be a good king. Build yer churches and dunna become over greedy for land.”

              The king’s face was white now. “Ye ha’e my word,” he said, his voice weak with fear. “I will ne’er again accuse a Maclean of witchcraft or sorcery or burn a Maclean at the stake or ask any member of yer clan to tell a royal future.”

              “Now stand up,” Malcolm said. “And turn around and close yer eyes. Dunna open them until I tell ye to.”

James was so frightened he did as Malcolm ordered. He closed his eyes so tightly they ached. He heard the same startling noise he’d heard before Malcolm had appeared and then an eerie silence. He waited a long time before he realized Malcolm was never going to tell him to open his eyes. He finally found the courage to turn around. Malcolm Maclean was gone.

James wondered if he had imagined the whole incident. Then he remembered the touch of Malcolm’s hand. It had been warm and alive.

              He decided it would be wise not to speak to anyone of the incident for the time being.

45

Malcolm lay hidden beneath scratchy straw in the back of a wagon that smelled of manure. Probably because there were bundles of it in bags. His ribs were sore, and every time the wheels clacked and bounced over the uneven stones he winced.

But he didn’t care. He felt incredibly lucky to be alive. He owed his life to Jehanne’s magic. And it was Tomas who had come to his aid after Jehanne had untied him from the stake and led him through the heavy smoke to the secret tunnels that descended beneath the main floors of the castle. Tomas told him of Jehanne’s ingenious plan, of his great illusion, the clever ropes and pulleys and the fake body that had taken his place and been burned in the flames. Malcolm would never again doubt the lad’s loyalty to clan Maclean.

He was impatient to reach Sorcha and his parents. He knew what she must be feeling, what they all must be feeling, wondering whether Jehanne’s plan had succeeded or if Malcolm was now dead.

Soon he heard the noises of the busy town all around him and he knew he’d reached the bottom of the hill. The wagon swerved around a corner and he rolled into the side of it, nearly crying out in pain. Finally, the wagon stopped.

“Effie, I’ve brought the load of manure ye ordered,” the wagon driver said.

A jolly voice responded. “Thank ye, Wallace, an herbalist can ne’er ha’e too much cac!”

Malcolm felt a pair of sturdy hands reaching through the straw and pulling at his legs. “Ye can come out now, Malcolm. Yer safe.”

Malcolm dug himself out of the straw to find a short, plump, pie-faced woman in a bonnet and an apron staring at him with curiosity. Her eyes were kind and intelligent. “Ye ha’e straw in yer hair and ye smell like dung,” she teased.

The door to the shop opened and Sorcha flew from it, climbing into the cart and throwing her arms around Malcolm. Leith and Isobel emerged from the shop next, relief and joy and tears of happiness on their faces.

“Och, careful lass,” Malcolm said, putting his arms around his wife. “I fear the king’s guards broke several of my ribs.”

Sorcha trembled in his arms. “I love ye, Malcolm.” She ran her hands over his face and tangled them in his hair. “Oh Malcolm, if Jehanne had failed….”

“But he succeeded, lass,” he said, kissing her tenderly. “I am safe.”

Effie and Wallace helped them down from the wagon and Isobel and Leith embraced their son fiercely. “Och, careful. As I told the lass, dunna squeeze too hard. I think my ribs are broken but I otherwise appear to be in one piece.”

They went inside the tiny shop with its crowded shelves and many flickering candles and Effie prepared a Comfrey poultice. She applied it to Malcolm’s ribs and then wrapped his torso in linen. “That’s to help keep yer ribs from shifting.”

“Thank ye, Effie, and Wallace, for yer kindness.”

Effie beamed and Wallace grunted.

“Let us leave this accursed place,” Malcolm said. “The sooner I get a bath and some whisky, the better.”

“Aye,” Sorcha said, smiling.