The Sixth Labyrinth (The Child of the Erinyes Book 4) (39 page)

“Thank God you’ll be here to watch them.” A devilish glint lit Curran’s eyes.

“You don’t know the servant class as I do, Curran Ramsay,” Beatrice said coldly.

Ruairidh, sitting up front with Kyle, broke in. “I hope I see you again.”

“Please, our home is yours,” Curran said. “Thank you for all you’ve done.” He shook hands with Ruairidh, then with Quinn.

“Bring Lady Eilginn to London,” Quinn said as Kyle flicked the reins. “We’ll take her to the opera and show her the sights.”

The carriage wheels crunched across the drive. Ibby waved her handkerchief until they passed through the iron gates and disappeared into the forest.

“Shall we have that ride?” Morrigan asked.

“If you think Logan can saddle the horses,” Curran said. “If he isn’t too laggard—?”

“Don’t take me to task over what Beatrice says!”

Father Drummond laughed. “The two of you are at the beginning of a long, bonny adventure. And so it comes full circle.”

“What do you mean, Father?”

“Why, that West Highland blood flows in your veins, lass, and you’ve come home at last where you belong. This is where you were born. I believe it called to you these many years, though you may not have known it for what it was.” He paused. “The Highlands never relinquish a soul.”

The barn, stables, and carriage house were situated beyond a gate at the far end of a graveled path. Rowan branches, heavy with scarlet berries, met overhead, tangling into a ceiling, and Scots pine sent the breeze sighing mournfully.

As they approached the cobbled courtyard, Logan led a chestnut stallion from the stable. The beast tossed his wheat-colored mane and lifted his head, nostrils dilating as he sniffed the air.

“Augustus,” Morrigan said fondly, having become acquainted with him during Curran’s time in Mallaig.

“How has his leg healed?” Father Drummond asked.

“It’s fine now,” Curran said. “We tried a new tincture. It reeks, but it cured the infection.”

Morrigan sighed. “I wonder how Leo fares, and Widdie, and Cloud, and the foal? I wonder if Sir MacAndrew is caring for them properly?”

“We’ll ride over to see them one day. Would you like that? In the meantime, I hope you can get some use out of this.” He nodded to Logan, who disappeared into the stables, leaving Curran to hold Augustus’s reins.

Logan soon reappeared, leading a slender mare. Her russet coat, black mane and tail almost shimmered in the variegated sunlight. A long white star swooped between dark, intelligent eyes.

“Do you like her?” Curran asked.

“Well, will you look at this?” Father Drummond cried.

Morrigan touched the velvety nose, but the mare shied, snorting. Undaunted, Morrigan brought out a carrot she’d slipped into her pocket earlier.

The mare sniffed it, nickered as if to say
thank you
, and took it in her teeth.

“Her name is
Stoirmeil
. That means Stormy in the Gaelic, though she’s Arab,” Curran said. “I know better than to give you a gentle nag. But let’s not share that bit of information with your aunt.”

“Are you stormy?” she asked. Stoirmeil obligingly nodded.

Morrigan kissed Curran’s cheek. “I love her, Curran. You’re spoiling me.”

“I’ve only begun,” he replied. “I’d do anything to cause you to smile that way.”

Blushing, she turned to the priest. “Can you ride, Father? We could take the gig if you’d be more comfortable.” From beneath her lashes she gave the mare a longing glance.

“No, lass,” he said. “I’ll curl up and die when I can no longer ride.”

Logan bent over, cupping Morrigan’s boot in his hands, and swung her onto the sidesaddle, then returned to the barn for two more horses, one for Father Drummond and one for himself.

The four left the courtyard, following an overgrown track, and soon had climbed onto the road leading towards Glenelg.

Curran and the priest chatted as they rode, about the state of the wool market, and how much of the Highland forests were being cut away to suit English hunters.

Hugh Drummond sat his horse well, for an old man who had mentioned joint pain. Though Morrigan knew little of religion, she recognized an air of authority mixed with a generous helping of kindness. She had always pictured clergy berating from behind high, forbidding pulpits. Never would she have imagined she might see one in a loose-fitting sark, breeks, and old leather boots, looking much like an aging crofter. Douglas had ridiculed Catholics, the same as Presbyterians. There had been no difference save for the particular disgust he’d voiced for Catholic popery.

They crossed the bridge over a glistening river, and followed its course into Gleann Beag. Hills rose on either side of the glen, which wound away to the east like a discarded emerald hair ribbon. The riding party passed the waterfall, and the ancient ruin, Dùn Teilbh, then further on its companions, Dùn Trodan and Caisteal Chonil.

“I wonder who gave these their names?” Morrigan asked.

“I’m not sure anyone knows,” Hugh said, “but I suspect the Picts.”

The track decomposed into deep, grassy ruts. The landscape opened up as they achieved the summit of a hill; mountains piled before them, purple with heather. Crisp and cool, the breeze was redolent with pinesap and clover.

Glenelg and the sparkling Sound lay behind them, and before them towered the Five Sisters, lined up so majestically it nearly stole Morrigan’s ability to breathe. To the south, Beinn Sgritheall was somehow comforting in its implacability, as though assuring her;
here I am, still looking over you
.

Curran led them back towards the Sound along a narrow track hemmed in by brush and forest. He showed no hesitation— clearly he’d grown up here, and knew each hill and glen, all the lochs and everything in between. In time they came to the main village road, where they passed a blacksmith’s, a general store, and a mill. Beyond, squatting in the shadow of a hill, were the massive ruined barracks, built for soldiers in the last century. They started southwards, the bay on their right, and passed Glenelg’s Kirk, where William Watson delivered his sermons.

But she was given only a moment to fret about the minister’s obvious dislike.

“Father Drummond is a fine vet,” Curran told her. “A man of many talents.”

“Are you, Father?”

“We’re jacks-of-all-trades, these days.” Hugh gave a shrug. “So many of the folk have gone. Those who remain must muck in together or we’d not last a year. Your husband helps most, of course. He compares in certain ways to the old clan chieftains, those who carried the responsibility of their brethren from birth to death, and in return enjoyed vast power. Let’s say a clan member’s wife died. If he wanted to remarry, he’d have to address himself to his chief for permission, and the chief himself picked the woman. Aye. No doubt many drams of whisky were needed to dull the bitterness of that. Clan members had no choice in time of war, either. Their chief held the power of life and death over his tenants, from infant to old man.”

“But Curran, he’s not like that, is he?”

“Oh, no, my dear. Those days are long gone with Culloden. But Curran, and his father before him, earned the respect and loyalty of the few who were left here, on their own merit, not because of their name or birth. It’s why they call him
Eilginn.
He is their chosen honorary laird, over every speck of land between Àrnasdal to Loch Alsh, and east to Loch Duich. There’s nothing they wouldn’t sacrifice for him, and for you. They’d die for you if the need arose.”

“I hope it never comes to that.”

“It’s true, mistress,” Logan said.

Hearing it from him moved her deeply.

“You’ll see, once you’ve lived here awhile.” Hugh nodded. “These people, and the land, are not what you knew in the Low Country. Modern days have not yet come to Glenelg. Here folk are knitted to each other like wool in a scarf. They’ve had to be, for many reasons. Loyalty has meaning. Yet, I avow Glenelg is a special case.”

“How so?”

Hugh glanced after Curran, who had spurred his horse forward to speak to a middle-aged woman digging in a potato patch. The woman straightened, smiling, and rested her hand on the laird’s knee. The others pulled their mounts up to wait for him.

“Most wealthy Lowlanders came here for one reason,” Hugh said. “Sheep. They saw the chance for profit and seized it. Much to their shame, many Highland lairds collaborated with them. In the old days that would never have happened, but poverty, and loss after loss changes things. Lairds had grown as poor as their crofters. After Culloden, everyone suffered persecution. Loyalty and duty died on that field, brought by wholesale slaughter and the rape of women and children. No surprise that history calls Cumberland ‘The Butcher.’”

She had learned of Cumberland at school, but said nothing.

He paused, exhaling. “Many of our lairds aped England’s aristocracy, and for that, they required gold. These crofts brought hardly a pittance, and when the potatoes rotted, they cost. Brocade and lace remained out of reach, until the landowners formed a plan.” A frown tightened the priest’s lips. “Randall Benedict sold Thomas Ramsay this estate on which to graze the Cheviot, and swore he’d already cleared the villages and people who lived here. Thomas purchased the land sight unseen, wanting a part in the profits. But when he brought his wife and son to Kilgarry that winter of 1854, he found rather more than he’d expected.”

“Us,” Logan said. “Those who refused to board Randall Benedict’s bloody ship. We’d survived two months in the forest. He’d burned Glenelg and anything we could use for shelter.”

Morrigan shrank from the terrible expression of hatred and bitterness on Logan’s handsome face.

“Logan was only eight,” Hugh told her. “Forced into manhood before his time.”

The young groom’s lip curled. He spat on the ground.

“I wasn’t much help,” Hugh said. “Of course I wrote to Randall Benedict in Edinburgh, again and again, but he never replied. We received a pittance now and then from the Parochial Board, but the Destitution Board refused our requests since the tenants were offered paid passage to Nova Scotia. Many days those folk survived on rotted potatoes and dulse they scraped from the rocks. Sometimes they tried to dig tunnels in the earth, but the ground was frozen. In the beginning, they sought shelter in the old barracks, but when Randall Benedict heard of it, he sent his men to roust them out, and then kept it guarded. They ended up in the Pictish ruins in Gleann Beag.”

He blinked the tears from his eyes unashamedly. “Forgive me, lass, for dredging up this awful history the day after your wedding. I don’t know why I’ve done so.”

“No.” She worked to keep her voice neutral as thunder reverberated from a fast-approaching cloudbank. “I want to know. My kin were part of what you’re telling me?”

“Aye.” His white brows rose. “Your da, both your aunts, your dear mam, your grandmam—”

“My father wouldn’t allow anyone to speak of it. I know almost nothing,” Morrigan said earnestly.

Hugh paused. She saw him absorbing this information. Out of respect for Douglas, he’d no doubt find a way to dodge the subject, like everyone always did.

But Logan walked his mount closer to her. In a clipped voice, he said, “When Thomas Ramsay came to Kilgarry, mistress, he went out exploring and found the last of us. Seventeen were left to die that day in November when we were cleared. Ten lived to tell the tale, partly due to your father. He labored with the Devil’s own stubbornness to keep us alive. I was afraid of him before we were cleared. But by the time Thomas Ramsay saved us, in February, I knew him better. Your da gave me his boots so my feet wouldn’t freeze.”

Morrigan couldn’t meet the groom’s intense, long-lashed gaze. The old, suffocating obstruction lodged in her throat. Harsh, glittering light off the waves in Glenelg Bay made her head throb and created strange coronas. Humming filled her ears. For the first time in a long while, she feared she might swoon.

“Your mam gave birth on the ground, in the forest,” Logan was saying. “The midwife had boarded the emigrant ship, so all she had for help were your aunts and your grandmam. There was a storm that day, and for many days after.”

She’d always known her mother died giving birth to her. But no one had told her that Hannah hadn’t had a midwife, or a bed to lie in, or a roof, and no walls but what the trees offered. Some part of her may have known, but with the help of an incomplete story, she’d managed to lie to herself all these years, to paint a less gruesome picture.

A chasm dropped away before her. She felt herself tumbling, her head no longer attached to her body.

Curran returned. “Morrigan, come and meet Eleanor—”

“Wait, Curran.” Hugh held up his hand.

Their voices echoed. The chasm yawned. The ground tilted.

As clearly as if it were happening before her eyes, she saw great white walls and crimson colonnades buckling, choking pillars of dust ascending, along with terrified screams as once-solid earth roiled into a tidal wave and the sky exploded in fire and ash.

Stoirmeil reared, caught the bit in her teeth, and vaulted forward. Lost in the vision, unprepared for her horse’s abrupt leap, Morrigan tipped and fell.

The back of her head collided with the ground. Constellations of stars exploded, followed by thick blackness; pain sheared through her ankle, culminating in a blinding fire that was centered in her womb.

The babe
.

She heard a cry, and the shout of a man, before everything faded into nothing.

CHAPTER NINE

MORRIGAN LAY WITHOUT
moving, keeping her eyes closed. Her ankle and head were throbbing. She wasn’t sure what had awakened her, but thought it might have been Curran’s voice, gravely with unfamiliar anger.

She had fallen off the horse. After being so curt with Aunt Ibby, after saying
I’ve never lost my seat,
she had, and when it could do the most harm.

A female spoke. “Calm yourself, Master Curran. Panic will do no good. Let me see what’s what.”

“Curse that dog.” Aye, Curran definitely sounded angry. Morrigan sighed and opened her eyes. She was in a dim, echoing, rather chilly place, lying on something hard. A strange woman was folding her skirts up above her knees, exposing her. With the skirts out of the way, she lifted Morrigan’s legs at the knees.