My Shadow Warrior (9 page)

But she was older now, smarter. She could handle Strathwick and his advances. She was no silly outraged female. It was just a kiss. It wasn’t as if she hadn’t been kissed before. The important thing was that he’d finally said yes, he would come to Lochlaire and heal her father.

Someone knocked at the door. Rose gripped the sides of the chest, wondering if it was Strathwick, come back to finish what they’d started in his chambers. Her heart resumed its frenzied pace.

“Aye?” she called cautiously.

The door opened and, to Rose’s embarrassment, the woman she’d held hostage in the courtyard entered, shoulders hunched, as if she expected to be bludgeoned. A young man bearing an armful of peat blocks followed, staring threateningly at her, as if daring her to attack the woman now. As Rose sat in mortified silence, her fingers digging into the wooden chest, the lad arranged the peat in the fireplace and the woman set a pitcher and ewer on the hearth.

“Miss?” Rose said, when the woman would not look at her.

She glanced suspiciously at Rose and moved closer to the lad. She was a very pretty lass, with big blue eyes and bright blond hair pulled back into a thick braid.

“What is your name?” Rose asked, smiling politely.

“Betty.”

“Betty—forgive me for what happened earlier. I vow I would not have hurt you…but I was desperate.” When the woman only stared at her, wide-eyed, Rose stood and took a step toward her. Betty backed away, and the lad at the fireplace straightened to give Rose a warning look.

“My father is dying…I’ve been writing Lord Strathwick letters. Then I came here and he wouldn’t see me. I didn’t know what else to do. Please forgive me?”

Betty’s suspicion softened as Rose spoke. She smiled slightly, showing good teeth. “Aye. I ken how it is. People come all the time and yell and scream for Strathwick to aid them. But they’ve never made it in—and it was all my fault.”

“I hope I didn’t cause you any trouble?”

Betty shook her head, and the lad returned to his work.

Rose took a step closer, and this time the servant didn’t retreat. “Your name is Betty? Are you from the village? Allister’s wife?”

Her face fell and she looked at the floor, nodding. “They told you about me?”

“Tadhg did.”

Betty looked up, her expression fierce. “They’re wrong, all of them. Lord Strathwick is not evil. And I am not a witch.”

“I know,” Rose said gently. “But this is a bad time, and people frighten easily. What happened? Lord Strathwick healed you?”

“Oh, aye, miss, he did. I don’t remember it, ken? But I remember Allister axing me. I remember the pain and the fever when it began to fester. Then I remember naught else but nightmares. I would have died. Then it was all gone. I opened my eyes, and there was my lord’s fair face, gazing down at me.”

“Did he say anything?”

She shook her head. “No. When Allister saw I was awake, he grabbed me and started bawling like a bairn. When I was able to breathe again, my lord was gone.” She smiled shyly, looking down at her feet. “I’ve been able to thank him since I’ve been here, though.”

I’m sure you have
. The thought pricked her when it shouldn’t have. She didn’t like imagining Strathwick embracing Betty as he had her—but it was good that she did imagine it, she told herself firmly. That was the way of things. He wasn’t Dumhnull, and he hadn’t kissed her for any reason but lust and that she’d been available. Rose wondered if he was married. Not that it mattered; lords and chiefs accosted female servants with or without a spouse.

“What happened in the village?” she asked, as much to stop the troubling direction of her thoughts as from curiosity. “Tadhg seems to believe you killed someone’s chickens.”

Betty shook her head, her shoulders slumping dejectedly. “I didn’t! Gannon left those poor beasts out in all sorts of weather. All I said was, ’Gannon, you must let those poor chickens in your house when it snows, or build them a shelter. Otherwise they’re going to die come winter.’ When the snow came, most of the chickens managed to get under the cottage, but two couldn’t fit and they froze. He said I killed them with the evil eye.”

The story chilled Rose, so similar to others she’d heard. It took so little to incite people these days.

“Do you believe me, miss?” Betty asked anxiously, her hands twisting in her skirt.

Rose gave her a reassuring smile. “Oh, aye.”

The lad finished with the fire. Rose moved closer to the blaze. Pale smoke wafted from the fireplace, and the sweet, acrid scent of burning peat filled the air. Rose coughed, but she welcomed the warmth, rubbing her hands over her arms.

“Your leave?” the lad asked, kinder now that Rose and Betty had made amends.

Rose nodded, and Betty followed him out.

Rose sat before the fire, warming herself and thinking about Betty’s tale and the caution with which Strathwick left his castle. Men had come for him, to lynch him, and that had been after he’d healed a child—brought her back from the edge of death. She unbraided her hair and combed her fingers through it, thinking about Strathwick, the miracle he’d performed, and how it had debilitated him afterward. That was why they were leaving at night, to avoid being seen and mobbed. What a dismal existence, to be hated and hunted by your own people. Even when her life on Skye had been naught but misery, she’d never feared for her life.

Her mood low, she lay in bed unable to put all the thoughts from her mind. Sleep would not come, and her stomach growled sullenly. She threw back the covers, slipped on her shoes, threw her arisaid around her shoulders, and left her room in search of food. The cavernous stone corridor was deserted and silent. Torches sputtered at intervals, casting strange, fluid shadows along the walls. Rose stole through the castle, feeling the intruder still.

There was no one in the great hall, not even the dogs. She went behind the screen, into the kitchen. The vast room was redolent of stew and bread, but it too was empty. She considered just helping herself to the larder but decided against it. On Skye, the punishment for pilfering from the larder was harsh. It was probably locked anyway. Surely someone was nearby. The stew bubbled merrily over the fire. Partially chopped vegetables lay on the table, knives beside them, as if something had caused the servants to drop what they were doing and leave. With a last, longing look to the loaves lined up along the table, Rose returned to the hall. It was then that she noticed the double doors leading to the courtyard standing open.

A breeze blew through the open door, setting the rushes to swirling and disturbing the hem of her nigh-trail, sending currents of chill air up around her ankles. She pulled her arisaid closer around her shoulders and stepped outside in time to see Lord Strathwick climbing the battlements, his long, lean-muscled body moving with quick grace that belied the many hours he’d spent wasted with illness. Her heart sped. Something was wrong. Half the household lined the torch-lit battlements staring at something over the wall. Rose climbed the ladder to follow. The wind caught her loose hair, wrapping it around her body and arms.

It was still dark out, being the early hours of dawn, but the battlements were alight. Strathwick immediately drew her gaze. Like the rest, he leaned forward, hands braced on the wall, peering at something below.

“Keep your witches!” someone shouted below.

The wall came to Rose’s chest, but raised blocks rose from the ground at intervals against the wall. She stepped onto one and leaned forward to see over the side of the thick stone. A group of men bearing torches and weapons had gathered on the other side of the wooden bridge. One man crossed it, dragging something behind him. Rose inhaled sharply. It was a person. The flickering of his torch revealed skirts—torn and stained. The face seemed strange, distorted, but it could have been the firelight; the hair, however, was loose and wild, matted with a dark, glistening substance. He hauled the body a few feet from the portcullis and dumped it next to another, smaller bundle in the same appalling shape.

These were the witches? A woman and child? They were dead, whoever they were. The man spotted Strathwick on the wall and shook his fist at him. “We don’t want your sorcery! Keep your hands off our women!”

With sick horror, Rose recognized the man and realized who the bloodied lumps were. Ailis and her mother. “No!” she cried. She whirled, to descend the ladder and examine their bodies for herself. They couldn’t be dead. She’d just seen them! Just seen Strathwick breathe life into Ailis’s wee body.

Wallace caught her at the top of the ladder. “No, you cannot go out there.” She tried to pull away from him, but he grabbed both her arms and shook her slightly. “Don’t you see? Look at yourself—you spent the night in these walls and you show up on the wall with your hair down. You go down there and try to intervene, and they’ll burn you as his witch, too.”

“But I helped them…I tended them—”

“It doesn’t matter.”

He was right; she knew how it was. A sense of numb unreality descended on her, as if she were trapped in a nightmare. She turned away from the ladder, returning to the wall to stare down at the poor broken bodies.

The man had jogged back across the bridge. He had long dark hair. He’d been at Ailis’s house after Strathwick had left. The man with the blond beard, Allister, had called Ailis this man’s daughter. Rose’s hand went to her mouth and clamped down hard to hold back her cry of horror and disgust. The man returned with a bucket, still holding his torch high. Drake appeared beside Rose, a crossbow tucked into his shoulder, his face hard with fury. “The bastard had them stoned,” he hissed at no one in particular as he nocked an arrow in his crossbow. “Unfortunately they didn’t get away, like our Betty.”

Rose looked on her other side to Betty, whose face was bloodless, her gaze riveted on the grisly events playing out below. She’d been down there once, been the object of the stones.

“I’ll kill him,” Drake muttered. He raised the crossbow to take aim, but Strathwick was there, his hand on the arrow, pushing it down.

His eyes were narrowed, his mouth a hard uncompromising line. “Death is too good for him.” He was still un-shaven, black and silver stubble hugging his chin and jaw, making him look malevolent, a dark, angry wizard bent on mayhem.

The man emptied the bucket—pitch—on the broken figures, then dropped the torch on them. It burst into flames. He backed away, hand held before his face to shield himself. He looked upward, to the people lining the battlements. “You cannot have them, do you hear? You cannot!”

Strathwick uttered a vile curse and grabbed the crossbow from his brother. He sighted on the man shouting up at him. The instant the man saw what his chief intended, his eyes widened. Before he could turn to run, the arrow slammed into his shoulder, sending him sprawling in the dirt.

Strathwick shoved the crossbow at his brother and flew to the ladder, shoving past Rose and the others, his eyes wild with fury. He shouted to his men. “Stop him! Don’t let him cross!”

Rose stayed on the battlements. As the man tried to gain his feet, the thick wooden door below opened. Strathwick’s men poured from the castle walls to surround him. The villagers shouted and screamed, but no one dared challenge the heavily armed men.

“Why would he do such a thing?” Rose asked Betty, her voice hushed, transfixed by the gruesome events. She wanted to hide her face, yet she could not look away. Her mother had been lynched and burned alive. Rose had not been there, of course; she’d seen nothing. And though witches had been burned on Skye, she’d never witnessed such an event. It twisted her gut with fear and nausea.

The pale blond woman beside Rose didn’t take her eyes off the wounded man in the dirt. “That’s Pol, Ailis’s father.” Her voice was a thin, thready whisper. “When the MacKay healed me, they ran me out of the village, believing me a witch. I know Allister was furious when he heard the MacKay took me in. I guess Pol wanted to make certain my lord didn’t take his women, too.”

Strathwick exited the castle, striding purposefully into the circle of guards, his hands fisted at his side. Across the bridge, the villagers’ yelling abruptly ceased. No one attempted to cross to give Pol aid. The tension inside Rose wound tighter, and she realized she was holding her breath. Strathwick approached Pol, who was still sprawled on the ground, his hand gripping the base of the arrow that pierced his shoulder. He spit at Strathwick, though the spittle went wide, landing in the dirt. “You can kill me, but you’ll not make my women into the devil’s whores!”

Strathwick stared down at Pol, circling him slowly, balefully, a devil wolf surveying his next victim. His words, almost gleeful, carried to Rose on the wind. “Oh, I’m not going to kill you.” He gripped the arrow shaft and yanked it from Pol’s shoulder. Pol screamed and writhed in the dirt. Strathwick dropped to one knee in the dirt beside him and put his hands on the man’s shoulder.

Pol yelled and fought. Strathwick dropped a knee in his chest, pinning him to the ground. The sour, acrid scent of burning pitch and hair filled Rose’s lungs and singed her nostrils, making her eyes tear. She pulled her arisaid closer around her. Strathwick was healing him. He’d shot Pol and now he healed him. It made no sense. It made her angry.

It was over in a minute. Strathwick stood, yanking the man up with him. He dragged Pol toward the bridge, then ripped the man’s shirt from his shoulder and used it to scrub away the blood, exposing smooth, unblemished skin. Drake raised the loaded crossbow, training it on the men across the bridge. The men-at-arms on the battlements did the same.