Eochaidh - Legend of the Horsemen (Book One) (10 page)

The candles were guttered and a warm fire danced in the
grate.
 
Meaghan lay against the pillows
in her bed listening to the noises in the house.
 
They were old, familiar and comforting
noises.
 
The tick of the grandfather
clock at the end of the hall, it’s pendulum slowly counting down the seconds.
The soft footfalls of the footmen extinguishing the candles
throughout the house, filling the coal buckets and banking the fires in unused
rooms.
 
The whisk of Mrs.
Gallagher’s stiff bombazine gown against the floor as she finished her daily
duties: putting folded linen into the closets, taking fading flowers from a
crystal vase or quietly admonishing a new chambermaid about a dusty
surface.
 
Then, as the grandfather clock
chimed the hour of eleven, unless there was a house party or other
entertainment, the house would quiet and Meaghan could hear the rattle of the
wind against the windows or the crackle of wood in the fire.

Tonight she sat still in her bed, waiting for the clock to
finally chime the eleventh hour.
 
She
heard Mrs. Gallagher whisper a fond goodnight to Fitz.
 
She heard the servants climb the back
staircase to the servants’ quarters on the third floor.
 
She heard Fitz lock the front door with a
solid click.
 
And then she heard a hush
fall over the house.

Climbing from her bed, she slid her feet into slippers,
pulled her robe over her nightgown and picked up her candleholder.
 
Tiptoeing to the fireplace, she bent over and
lit her candle on the low flames.
 
Sheltering the flame with her hand, she silently moved across the room
and opened her door, careful not to allow the locking mechanism to click
loudly.

Leaving her door slightly ajar, she stole down the hall to
the main staircase. Pausing at the top, she peered over the side.
 
The doors of the downstairs rooms were open,
casting a soft glow of orange from the glowing coals in the fireplaces into the
hall.
 
The shadows of the furniture
inside the rooms danced on the floor in the hall in a familiar, yet slightly
macabre manner.
 
Easing her hand onto the
banister, she slowly glided down the stairs.
 
Moving beyond the parlor and library, she headed toward the staircase
that brought her down into the kitchen and the quarters for the upper servants.

Now the air was cooler, the floor a little rougher and there
was no soft glow of banked fires.
 
Her
little candle danced and wavered in the drafty hall and Meaghan prayed it would
not be extinguished, leaving her standing in the dark.
 
One hand on the stone wall, her candle held
as high as she dared, she moved forward.
 
Her heart was beating rapidly and she felt a little foolish.
 
This was the kitchen of her home, for
goodness sakes.
 
She had baked Christmas cookies
with Mrs. Gallagher here, helped place the tokens into the Christmas pudding
and even assembled baskets for the renters on St. Stephens Day.
 
But somehow, in the gloom of night, when she
was alone in the dark, it became a sinister place.

She swallowed loudly and nearly frightened herself. Shaken,
she took another few steps forward and froze.
 
Had she heard someone breathe?

“May I be of assistance?” Fitz’s voice came out of nowhere.

Meaghan yelped, jumped and dropped her candle onto the stone
floor, shuttering her world into blackness. “Fitz,” she whimpered softly.
“Please say it’s you.”

A spark from a tinderbox a few feet away, a flare of a wick
being lit and a moment later, a warm glow from a candle infused the small
space.
 
Fitz stood a few feet away from
her, dressed in his shirt and breeches, his vest, jacket, socks and shoes
already removed.
 
But even in this state
of undress, Fitz was entirely dignified.

“If there were something you needed from the kitchen, Miss
Meaghan, you had merely to pull on the bell rope and we would have assisted
you,” he stated, his eyebrows
raised
reproachfully.

Sighing, she shook her head. “I didn’t need anything from
the kitchen,” she admitted, hoping he would understand. “I…I couldn’t sleep
without.”
 
She paused and then decided
she might as well confess. “I had to see Jepson for myself. I had to know he
was fine, for myself.”

His eyebrows lowered considerably, Fitz met her eyes. “And
our word was not good enough for you?” he asked.

Embarrassed for a moment, she looked down at her feet, then
lifted her face and met his gaze. “Sometimes, though I will never understand,
things are kept from me because some people think I am too young or they want
to protect me,” she explained. “I needed to know he is safe.” Her voice broke.
“I needed to know he is alive.”

“I understand,” he replied softly. “Follow me and we will
see if we can visit Jepson’s chambers for a moment to put your mind at ease.”

Wiping her sleeve across her eyes, she smiled gratefully.
“Thank you, Fitz.”

With Fitz leading the way, the walk through the servant’s
wing took no time at all and soon they were walking down a narrow hallway to
Jepson’s temporary quarters.
 
As they got
closer, they could both hear voices coming from his room, his door slightly ajar.

“We should go,” Fitz said, starting to turn back.

Nodding, Meaghan started to turn and follow Fitz when she
heard her name.

“Meaghan needs to know the truth,” Jepson argued. “She could
have been killed today and then how would you have felt?”

She froze and turned back toward the door.

“I know she could have been killed,” her father replied.
“And I berated myself for not telling her before now. But, Jepson, she’s still
a child.”

“She’s not a child, she’s a young woman,” Jepson argued.

“I don’t know,” Meaghan could hear her father pacing as he
spoke. “This could change her whole life. I don’t want her to hate me.”

Meaghan leaned back against the wall, placed her hand over
her mouth and slowly shook her head.
What
could he possibly say that would make me hate him?
 
What could he have been hiding from me for
all these years?

“Your choice is simple,” Fitz whispered to her. “You can run
away now, go back to your room and let your fears and your doubts control you.
Or you can face them right now.”

Looking up, she saw the encouragement in Fitz’s face.
Nodding, she took a deep breath and dashed forward down the short hallway and
pushed open Jepson’s door.
 
She saw
Jepson, lying against the pillows in his bed, his chest wrapped in bandages and
her father in the corner of the small room, pacing next to the dresser.
 
They both looked astonished when they saw
her.

“I don’t want secrets between us,” she said to her father.
“I want to know the truth.”

Murphy was unceremoniously dumped onto the floor of the
carriage by the Lady Strathmore’s henchmen.
 
His hands were still tied and once they had him in the carriage, they
tied his feet together too.
 
“Just so you
don’t think about trying to escape,” one of the men muttered.

“Where would I go?” he yelled. “I don’t have a damned idea
of where I am.”

Lady Strathmore stepped over Murphy and made herself
comfortable on the upholstered cushioned seat above him.
 
She pulled her skirts out of his reach and
rested her feet on the cushion on the opposite side of the carriage. “You
really don’t need to yell, Murphy,” she said. “My men have perfectly good
hearing.”

“Where are we? And why do you have men here?” he asked. “Did
you drug me?
 
Am I hallucinating?”

“You have so many questions,” she said. “But don’t worry,
soon all will be revealed.”

The carriage ride was brief and Murphy was grateful, as the
road seemed to be quite uneven and the carriage was jostled and jolted the
entire time.
 
When Murphy was pulled from
the carriage, he shook his head in disbelief.
 
A castle stood before him.
 

He quickly looked around.
 
A castle stood right on top of the place the old ruins had stood
before.
 
“When did you build this?” he
asked. “What did you do with the ruins?”

Rolling her eyes, Lady Strathmore placed her hands on her
hips and faced him. “Really, Murphy, must you be so dull-witted?” she asked.
“There are no ruins because the castle is still in place.
 
There are no ruins because we have gone back
in time one thousand years.”

Murphy scoffed. “Aye, and the next thing you’ll want me to
believe is that instead of being Lady Strathmore, you’re Morganna herself.”

Lady Strathmore smiled broadly and nodded. “Well, perhaps
you’re not as simple-minded as I thought.”

She turned to her men. “I want him to be brought up to the
Divination Chamber,” she ordered.

“Yes, my lady Morganna,” one of the men replied.

Murphy’s eyes went wide with horror and he shook his head.
“You can’t be,” he stammered.

“Oh, yes I can,” she replied.

Morganna’s guards pulled the unwilling former magistrate up
the stone steps of the castle.
 
The huge
oak doors were opened and he was dragged into the main hall where tapestries
were hung on the stone walls.
 
Long,
roughhewn tables stood side by side, forming the sides of a square and the
final side was on a raised dais looking over the rest of the room.
 
Behind the head table was a large tapestry of
Morganna holding the head of Merlin on a platter.

Strange symbols were painted at the tops of doorways and
windows in red paint. “What’s that for?” Murphy asked, as they passed by
another narrow window on the winding staircase they were taking upstairs.

“
Them’s
protective symbols,” one
of the men explained. “Makes sure your enemy can’t pass through the openings.”

“Makes double sure when you use their own blood to paint the
symbols,” the other joked.

“Blood?” Murphy asked. “Those are drawn in blood?”

“Yeah, but don’t worry, it didn’t hurt them
t’all
,” the first one said. “They heads were cut off first
and then we opened ’
em
up and took the blood.”

They finally arrived on the upper floor and Murphy was
brought into a room on the south side of the castle.
 
Sunlight poured in through tall narrow
windows, causing the calcium in the stone to sparkle. He looked around and saw
that all along the bare walls were stacks of cages that held a variety of
animals. Smaller ones were caged according to species; rabbits, ferrets, fox
and small rodents like chipmunks and squirrels.
 
Larger ones, like sheep and poultry, had pens in the corners of the room
filled with straw.
 

“She likes animals, does she?” Murphy asked, his stomach
tightening.

“Sometimes she likes animals and sometimes she likes
people,” the second man said with a mocking laugh. “Guess today’s your lucky
day.”

Turning, Murphy saw that in the middle of the room were two
tables made from black stone.
 
A small
one, the size of a large platter, and a large one that was longer than the
length of a man and half as wide.

“What is this?” Murphy asked as they pulled him further
inside. “You eat your meals in a room with animals?”

Morganna walked through the door.
 
She had changed from her 18
^th
century clothing into a long flowing black gown and woven silver girdle, more
suitable for her current time period.
 
She strolled up to him and lightly stroked his cheek, exposing the silver
cuff etched with symbols molded around her wrist.
 
“You’re a smart one, aren’t you
Aloysius
?”
she asked. “Perhaps you’ve heard of
hepatomancy.”

He pulled his head
away and glared at her. “No, I haven’t,” he said.

Walking away from
him, she slowly moved to the cages, gliding her hand over each one as she
crossed the room. “It’s an ancient art of divination,” she explained. “A
skilled seer would take an animal and secure it to a sacrificial table.”
 
She walked over to the small table and patted
it. “Like this one. And then, using a very sharp knife, she would cut the
animal open to reveal its internal organs.
 
The shape and size of the organs and even the way the animal finally
dies would give her great insight into the future.”

“Seems more
far-fetched than anything else,” he said. “You can’t tell nothing from a
rabbit’s liver.”

She turned back to
him and smiled.
 
Reaching inside the
pocket of her gown she pulled out a handful of narrow black stones containing
markings on them.
 
Holding her hand out,
she walked back to him.
 
“Another way to
tell the future is runes,” she said. “They can be very helpful, but
unfortunately, the information they offer is far too vague to do me any good.”

She rolled them in
her hand. “They have been useful enough to tell me that something important is
going to happen during your time period,” she explained. “But I need to know
more.”

“So, are you going
to get a fox or squirrel from the future and slit its belly open?” he asked.

Shrugged lightly,
she came over and patted his cheek. “You are correct in presuming that I would
need a creature from that time period in order to divine clearly,” she said.
“Very well done, Murphy.”

Turning, she walked
over to a small table across from him, opened a drawer and slipped something
into her skirt pocket.
 
Then she picked
up a large leather apron that was lying on the desk and slipped it on over her
dress.
 
The apron, once white, had a
number of brown-colored stains on it and Murphy realized with horror that they
were stains of dried blood.

She looked over her
shoulder and focused back on him.
 
“But
the distance is too great and my success too important to rely on the miniscule
organs of a squirrel.
 
Have you ever heard
of anthropomancy, dear Mr. Murphy?”

His face turned
white and he began to sweat. “No, can’t say that I have,” he whispered, his
throat dry.

Morganna smiled
knowingly at him as she walked closer. “But you are a smart man, aren’t you?
And you did say you still wanted to help the cause,” she said. “You’ve already
figured it out.
 
Haven’t you?”

He shook his head.
“No, no I haven’t figured nothing out,” he stammered, his voice shaking.

“Well, good,” she
replied, pulling the long narrow knife from her skirt and lifting it into the
air. “Then this will be a surprise.”

The look on his face
when Morganna plunged the knife into his body proved her prediction to be
correct.
 
He had been very surprised.