Flame

Chapter 14

14

He hadn’t believed her.

Although she might have forgotten many of the manners of day to day court life, she would never forget how fine a weapon a look of scorn could be. It was clear to her now that Gavin Kerr regarded her revelation to him as daft. And it was crystal clear as well that he held the same opinion of her.

Indeed, she thought, she must be daft, because she was clearly smitten by the man. There was no denying it now, not after what had happened last night. Not after the way he’d kissed her, caressed her in his chamber. Not after the way she had felt in his embrace. Joanna knew now that Gavin Kerr had held the same fascination for her as her portrait had for him. And she had to admit—albeit reluctantly—that feelings for him had stirred long before she’d come face to face with him. Well, she was daft, after all. And in the same stubborn manner that he’d carried her picture back to his room time and time again, she too had been driven by some mad desire to look in upon him night after night. As difficult as it was to admit, she now knew the truth behind her midnight jaunts to his chamber. True, her visits had then only seemed to be a pleasurable thrill. But after meeting with him last night, she knew now that thrill could easily become a habit. And one to revel in at that.

But then, who was he to think her mad? She could picture him in her mind now, hardly listening to the truth—or anything else for that matter—if she were to say it. The thought of him standing by the door, the gray smoke from the fire still drifting about his magnificent body, flickered in her mind’s eye, and she drew in a sharp breath.

Well damn him, she thought, forcing the vision—reluctantly—from her thoughts.

Joanna leaned down and tried to focus on her task, stabbing again at the hard earth beneath her fingers. She hadn’t needed anyone for a long, long while; and she wasn’t about to start asking for help now. Not when it concerned a fight that was hers by right.

“Damn!” she cursed aloud as the dagger slipped out of her hand. She listened for a moment, startled by the echoing reverberation of her voice.

Moving the flickering wick lamp back a bit, Joanna straightened and stretched her stiff joints—knees, back, shoulders, and fingers—before kneeling again on the crypt floor. Edging backward, the young woman resumed her digging, using the tip of the dagger to extend the channel she had been working on for weeks. She had to wash away all thoughts of him out of her mind. She had to forget his stirring kisses, his roaming hands—touches that had made her feel like a woman. She had to focus her mind on one thing. Justice. This was why she was here. This was the reason she had endured these endless months of darkness and loneliness and pain. She had to proceed. She had to execute her plan.

After watching these women carrying out their rituals month in and month out, she had crept into the crypt when she knew she could search without fear of discovery. And she had found the way. Joanna had discovered the small channel that had been dug in a circle at the center of the vault. Over the channel they would build their pyre of branches and reeds. And around this circle, the women gathered. All of them at the full moon.

At the end of the circle, beyond where Mater stood, there was a large container of oil. Joanna had watched repeatedly how at the fevered height of their orgy, the old woman would release the oil from the container into the channel.

She edged back again along her path. This was her plan, simple and just. She had simply added an extension to the channel. One that would bring the river of oil to the door and block their only escape route. In the dim light, they would not even know there was anything different. Not until the fire had already been touched to the oil.

She could already feel the heat of the flames around her. She had envisioned the scene so many times in her mind. All of them still wild and unheedful in their frenzy. Her, standing by the door, blocking their way, the flames leaping at her back. For the rushes she would have quickly pulled from behind the crypts closest to the door, the ones she’d soaked in oil and hidden, would now be ablaze. Their only exit would be a smoky inferno. She’d feed the fire and watch them scream and die. The same way she knew her own parents had died. She would meet her own end in that room. But then, this was her destiny.

If it was madness, Joanna thought, then so be it. What other choices did she have? She was the one true heir to Ironcross. She was the only one capable of handing out justice to the she-devil.

He was a fool to think his reception would be any different than the one they’d given him before. But still, Gavin thought wryly, one could always hope.

Having left the few men who had come with him by the river on the outskirts of the village, Gavin led the mare carrying his offering of meat down the path toward the ruined abbey gates. Just the same as last time, emptiness and silence were all that greeted him.

Gavin tethered his horse to a small shrub by the same hut where he had seen Mater last. This time, however, the dying embers of an old fire and an empty block of stone beyond it were all he found. Still unaffected by this lack of welcome, the Lowlander turned to the mare and quickly unloaded the butchered venison. Bringing it back to the fire, Gavin spread the hide of one of the animals and laid the meat on it. As he worked, he was very conscious of the weight of many eyes peering at him from the darkness of the huts around him.

Moments later, after the laird had finished with this portion of what he’d come here to do, he crouched down beside the fire and started feeding kindling into the coals. Small flames leapt up, and, though the day was still warm, Gavin gradually added larger pieces of wood until he had a fairly large blaze. For all any of the onlookers would be able to tell, he looked as if he planned to spend the day. This, Gavin knew, would be somewhat bothersome to the folk who had hurriedly left their undone work in the fields. He knew the abbey had been feeding its people and eking out an existence, without any help from the Ironcross lairds, for a long while. He also knew that the growing season was short enough in the Highlands. Losing out on a day’s work, he was quite sure, would be a high price for them to pay.

It took some time, but at last Mater’s thin frame emerged from the hut. Her disapproving scowl at his relaxed position by her fire was a prize well worth waiting for. Gavin smiled in greeting and stood up. She glared back at him before casting a disdainful look in the direction of the meat.

“What brings you here?” Her tone was ice cold and impatient.

With a nod, he crouched down and began to feed the fire again—the same way she had done the last time he’d been here. “We finished a fine day of hunting, and I thought it appropriate to share the spoils.”

“We have no need for acts of charity.”

“If that is so, Mater, then you must be the only religious leader this side of Jerusalem who feels that way.”

The old woman stared at the laird in silence, and Gavin knew she was working hard to hold her tongue.

“Actually,” he continued. “It is no charity. At least one of these does was probably taken on your lands. It’s only right that your people have a share of the meat.”

She stood still, looking across the flames at Gavin's face. “You keep yourself and your men away from this abbey. We gladly forfeit all rights to any game you take. And we’ll not touch this meat.”

“That, of course, is up to you, but you’ll have to put up with a fearful stench as it rots here by your fire.”

“Now, that is a feeble threat,” she scolded. “But wasting such quantities is sinful. Nay, laird, you have to take it back.”

“I shan’t,” he answered determinedly. “And if you continue with this foolishness, I’ll have my men bring provisions for you on a daily basis. In fact, I may just have them go back to Ironcross and return with the rest of what we killed today.”

She stared at him as if he was some hideous, savage beast. Gavin came to his feet in one fluid motion and smiled down on her. “But I must tell you that they have had a hard day of riding. And once I drag them in here after all that extra work, I don’t believe it will be a very easy task getting them back on their horses so soon. I fear you may just end up with a wee bit more company than you’re accustomed to. But you needn’t trouble yourself—they will be happy enough sleeping out here on what is sure to be a fine, clear night.”

Her wrinkled complexion flushed and her eyes were blazing coals. “Are you threatening me?” she asked, her fury ready to burst forth.

“Nay, I’m trying to befriend you.”

Gavin watched as his simple statement caught her up short in whatever she was about to say. A fleeting look of confusion played across her wrinkled brow as the flash of anger visibly diminished.

“I don’t understand you, laird,” she said at last.

“That is your own fault and none of mine.”

She again resumed her effort to stare him down, but Gavin had heard the distant alarums of victory, and he was not about to back away now.

“What is it that you want from us?”

“Are you going to ask me that every time I come here for a visit?”

“If I thought anything I might say could deter you from persecuting us, I would pray for angels to repeat those words each day over Ironcross Castle.”

“Well, you might consider praying for something more useful, abbess,” he answered. “Just accept the fact that Ironcross has a laird who takes an interest in his people. You must become accustomed to having me around. The sooner you do, the more comfortable your people will be and the less disrupted...” He gestured toward the empty fields. “The less disrupted everyone’s life will be.”

“You think it’s just that simple?”

“You make it too difficult.”

Mater’s frustration hissed out in a loud breath as she turned on her heel and stormed toward the gate.

“Wait, Mater,” he said, laying a huge hand on her bony arm. She paused, glaring at him. “You might tell your legions of angels that this meat should be taken out of the sun.”

The old woman glanced at the meat for a moment, and then gave an almost imperceptible nod in the direction of the hut she had come out of. Without another word or even a look at the him, she strode—with Gavin on her heels—out the gate, following the ruined wall until the valley floor began to rise toward the fields above the village.

Before they had traveled an arrowshot from the abbey, the sun faded from view. As he glanced to the west, Gavin could see the black clouds of a storm advancing over the distant loch. He turned his attention back to the wizened old woman.

“How many times will it take for me to come to the abbey before your people begin to accept my presence here?”

“How many breaths remain in your body, laird?” she said harshly. “You cannot force yourself upon them.”

“I do not intend to use force,” Gavin said matter-of-factly. “But these are now my people as well, Mater, and I want you to understand that you cannot make me simply disappear.”

She gave him a critical, sidelong glance. “I should not be so self-assured, if I were you. You are only a mortal creature—flesh and blood.”

“Do you think that only men are mortal?”

She didn’t answer him, but turned her attention back to eyeing the plants around them as they walked.

“What do you have against us, Mater?” Gavin continued after a slight pause. “Why is it that you welcome the visit of any woman, and yet you despise the company of all men?”

She ignored his question but came to a halt. Gavin watched as her gaze swept over to the ground. As her eyes lit on some frail-looking white flowers at the base of a protruding boulder, she turned from him and headed toward her prize.

Once again, he’d been dismissed, Gavin knew. But he was far from ready to leave. He strolled after her, watching her carefully. “Mater, what do you know of the crypts and the vaults beneath Ironcross?”

The obvious stiffening of her shoulders did not go unnoticed by the Lowlander.

“Why is it, Mater, that those people of the abbey were buried beneath the castle and not here...where they belong?”

She slowly came to a stop.

“Why are they thought of as saints?”

She turned her face and Gavin watched her hard unchanging profile as she looked down at the abbey below. She stood in stony silence.

“Is there a link between the deaths of those entombed in the crypt and the curse that has been plaguing Ironcross Castle?” he continued doggedly. “Why is it that no one even wants to speak of them anymore? What is the reason for such mystery, Mater?”

He moved around her until they were face to face. His tall frame and broad chest blocked her line of vision. She was forced to look up and meet his gaze.

“I’ll not give up until you answer at least some of my questions.” He tried to keep the harshness out of his voice. “Who is it that is buried there, and why?”

Standing there, awaiting her answer, he became for the first time aware of the sharp wind that had come whistling up the open valley from the loch. The heather and the grasses were bending to the rush of air, and he shook back the black mane that was whipping about his face. The old woman simply stared at him, seemingly unaffected by the piercing gusts.

“Tell me, Mater. Tell me of their past.”

Their eyes locked in a fierce battle of wills as the wind pummeled them.

“Women. They are women who are buried there,” she said at last over the rising wind. “They are our ancestors, our saints, and our sisters. And you, laird. It would be wiser for you to cease asking your foolish questions and let their souls lie in peace. It would be best for you to ride back down into the flatlands and never look back.”

“And if I do not?” he challenged, trying to ignore the wind that was yanking at his tartan. “Would I then fall from a horse and c***k my skull on a rock like Duncan MacInnes? Or would I drown in the loch like his son Alexander? Or perhaps I shall be poisoned like Thomas. But I suppose all of those are better deaths than being burned alive in a blaze that takes my family and innocent serving folk along with me.”

He saw the smallest of quivers in the line of her jaw. “So what is it, Mater? If I do not bend to your will, will you order my death as well? Will you call on the powers of those women and wish me into my grave?”

“What do you know of bending to one’s will? You...and those like you...know nothing of what it’s like to bend...to suffer.”

Somewhere not far down the valley, a flash of lightning was followed by the c***k of thunder. The storm was coming on fast. Gavin did not remove his piercing gaze from her hard gray eyes, even when he felt the first droplets of rain strike his face.

“I’ll do what I must to protect my people,” she said ominously. “And I’ll use whatever power I can muster to crush the evil in men.”

Without waiting for him to say more, the old woman turned and moved quickly past him and down the hill toward the abbey. She was halfway to the ruined walls before Gavin turned to watch her. Above her the sky had taken on strange, unsettling hues of gray and green, and the flashes of lightning were now followed immediately by crashes that seemed ready to split the firmament with their noise.

Gavin watched her march through the gate, and as she disappeared amid the stone huts, he was more certain than ever that Joanna’s accusation of last night had to be false.

Mater’s words echoed in his brain, and he considered all she’d said. True, she would protect her people. But somehow Gavin knew in his gut that her solemn vow did not include murder.

Nay, he thought as the wind hammered against him, Mater was no murderer.