A blessedly dead male . . . and soon to be roasted.
Cursing under his breath, Magnus crossed the dais with great strides, and snatched the dirk—snake, and all—from Dugan’s hand.
Before his brother could even think to form a protest, much less splutter one, Magnus hurled the dagger and its grisly victim into the hearth fire. Whirling back to Dugan, he unsheathed his own dirk—his best one—and thrust it, hilt first, at his brother.
“Keep it—with my gratitude,” he said, his voice a shade huskier than usual, his throat over-tight at what might have happened to Hugh. “Like as not, you saved our brother’s life.”
Dugan fingered the dirk, looked undecided. “Think you I would stand by with that . . . thing coiled and ready to sink its fangs into Hugh’s hand?” He lowered his voice. “He froze, I tell you. There was naught to do but knock him aside and kill the wretched creature. I just ne’er meant to shove Hugh so hard he’d stumble and fall.”
“A hurting arm is nowise so dire as a body filled with poisonous snake venom,” Magnus said, his voice pitched equally low.
“Aye, true enough, but . . .” Dugan blew out a long breath. “It still waters my bones to think what could have happened.”
Magnus gripped his brother’s arm, squeezed. “But it didn’t—as shall naught else.”
“I pray God you have the rights of it,” Dugan said, his brow still knitted as he peered down the hall again. He had yet to sheath the new dirk.
Taking it from him, but gently this time, Magnus tucked the dagger beneath the other’s belt. He gestured round him then, waving a hand at the arras-hung walls and the many long tables already groaning with viands and wine and ales, all in preparation for the night’s feasting.
“If I am expected to accept such plentitude without a flinch, you can receive my dirk as a token gesture of brotherly appreciation, can you not?”
“Hugh would’ve done the same . . . for me, or any of us,” Dugan countered, but patted the dirk hilt all the same, at last looking a bit pleased.
“So what are we going to do about the dark powers a-slinking about within these walls?” Their father’s voice rose above the chaos again. He stared at them from the high table as he tipped a leather-wrapped flagon of uisge beatha to his lips for a long, throat-bobbing pull of the fiery Highland spirits.
“My bones tell me there will soon be even more ruination coming down o’er our heads,” he vowed, glaring belligerence. “In especial, now that the adder failed to do their fiendish handiwork and devil ships are plying our waters! No telling what will become of us if e’er that ill craft chooses to set ashore!”
Magnus drew a great breath, pressed fingers to his aching temples. “We redress the balance is what we do,” he said with all the patience he could muster. “With the adder, this was a close strike—we dare not let any such danger come so near again,” he added, harboring no illusions of the difficulty in avoiding blows from an unseen foe.
A fiendishly clever foe.
But one he’d find—even if he had to overturn each stone of the castle, search every Devil-damned bog on the island.
An endeavor he would embark upon that very afternoon.
Hot gall thick in his throat, he tossed another glance at Hugh. His youngest brother had rolled up his sleeve now, and Dagda appeared to be clucking like a mother hen as she rubbed salve on Hugh’s fast-swelling elbow.
Seemingly oblivious to the chaos, Colin paced back and forth in front of Hugh, his gait nigh as smooth as before Dupplin, and chatting up a storm. No doubt sharing commiserations with Hugh upon the travails and hardships of assorted bodily injuries.
Only Janet stood a little apart, her troubled gaze fixed on Hugh’s reddened elbow, her pretty face a whiter shade of pale than Hugh’s own pain-pinched features.
Somewhere behind Magnus, someone opened the shuttering in one of the hall’s deep-set window embrasures, letting in gusts of damp, freshening wind.
The chill breeze brought the smell of rain and the sea, but also the odor of the burning snake. Magnus’s stomach pitched at the pungent smell, and he snatched up someone’s forgotten ale cup and tossed its contents down his throat.
He shuddered. Unthinkable, had Hugh not seen the adder before closing his hand on the lute. He wanted to tune its strings before the evening festivities—the celebratory wedding feast.
Slamming down the cup, Magnus wiped his mouth on his sleeve and pushed that last from his mind. He’d set sail on that jabbly sea when its waters began swirling round his ankles and not a moment before.
For now, a silent prayer of thanks for his brother’s life would serve.
If the good saints would hear him.
And thanks were due indeed—whether his voice was recognized or no.
Magnus would have had to bear the weight of knowing Hugh had met his untimely end in an effort to ready himself for his role as sole entertainer at Magnus’s own wedding feast.
A wedding for a night only.
If he had aught to say in the matter.
But a night he’d ensure would be one his bride would ne’er forget—even if she did relish traipsing up and down dank stairwells!
Aye, for the hours of this one night, he would love her well and truly. With the deepest part of himself and setting aside his pride and frustration, to give her the wedding night she deserved.
His honor would not allow otherwise.
And something in the raised flesh at the back of his neck told him whoe’er had sought to ruin the day knew fair well that he would put his all into assuring his lady’s pleasure.
That he would be her knight in the fullest—if only just this once.
An all-too-fleeting joy someone meant to steal from him.
But just when the hazy suspicions tiptoeing along the edges of his mind began to loom clear, a sharp tug on his sleeve chased the fragile inklings right back into obscurity.
“By the Devil’s slippery tail, son, just how do you mean to redress the balance when the Fiend hisself is after us?” Donald MacKinnon clutched at him, the glimmer of fear in his uisge beatha-bleared gaze belying his earlier belligerence.
And landing another smashing blow to Magnus’s pride.
“Well?” The old man poked a finger in Magnus’s ribs. “Have you lost your tongue . . . or are you still thinking up a plan?”
Magnus shoved his hair back from his forehead, bit back a snarl of frustration. He’d already taken more precautions than if they were in danger of a siege, up to and including the barring of all gates and doors—even in daylight hours.
Yet all his efforts thus far had served but ill.
“I dinna blame you, laddie,” his father said on a grieved-sounding sigh. “I could ne’er think of ways to outmaneuver the curse, either.”
Magnus opened his mouth to speak, but before he could, the old man shuffled back to the high table, one hand pressed against his hip as he went.
“I will set double guards,” Magnus called after him, hating the resignation he’d glimpsed on his father’s face, the sag to his thin shoulders. “I am even patrolling myself,” he added, lifting his voice. “Through the night, early mornings, in the emptiest passages of the keep . . . in especial those!”
“We are signed and sealed to our fate, lad,” his father declared without turning around, his thin voice somehow cutting through the din.
Magnus stared after him, watched him pick his slow way through the crowd. “God aiding me, an end will be put to this. I promise you. . . .” He had raised his voice again, trying to comfort, but broke off because the words sounded so empty.
So useless and ineffectual he almost wished he hadn’t voiced them.
His father looked back at him. “Your keenest vigilance will avail nothing,” he claimed, his voice weary now. “A malaise has e’er hung o’er this house. The man has yet to be born who can guard hisself against a curse. To be sure, I e’er misliked it myself, but I learned to live with it. Not that I’d care to tumble down the latrine chut
e again. Nay, I—”
Tumble down the latrine chute.
The words leapt at Magnus, shooting round his chest to squeeze so tight he could scarce breathe.
Troublesome words that clamped even harder the moment his da lowered himself into his chair at the over-laden high table. With surety, the massive oaken piece could not have weighed much more were it carved of granite . . . and that, fully unadorned.
At present, it groaned beneath the weight of more heavy-silver platters, candlesticks and candelabrums, and other assorted feasterly trappings than Coldstone Castle had likely seen in centuries.
If ever.
And once the coming night’s revelry and carousing began in earnest, and his kinsmen reached the depths of their cups, every one amongst them who could yet stand would rush the dais to drag Magnus and Amicia abovestairs. Each man, and even some of the bolder womenfolk, would vie for the privilege of stripping them for the bedding ceremony.
A ribald and raucous undertaking, the bawdy rituals of which he could do without.
Aye, the coming night would prove a challenge to be suffered through—lest some dark-hearted soul had ventured into a secret vault beneath the dais end of the hall and meddled with the workings of an ancient trapdoor that one of his more dastardly-minded forebears had built into the floor beneath the high table.
One touch to the triggering mechanism, and anyone sitting on the wrong side of the dais table would vanish into a supposedly bottomless pit—trestle bench and all.
A convenient way to dispose of an enemy.
Or, with a wee bit of devious contrive, a whole horde of carousing revelers.
Laird, family, and kinsmen alike.
Plunge down worse than the latrine chute, you will, you stoop-backed bastard! A certain someone stood swathed in the hall’s blackest shadows and glared the threat at Donald MacKinnon, even as he lowered his bony bottom onto the padded seat of his laird’s chair.
The pestiferous old goat needed cushions to sit upon—frail and feeble as he was. Not that his scant weight would keep him from falling all the harder into his own keep’s deepest pit!
Aye, hearing mass on his knees for a thousand years wouldn’t save him.
Him, his fool sons, and—would the gods of wrath and vengeance be kind—as many MacKinnons as the gaping dais floor could swallow.
A pity the eldest son, great champion of the field and unwilling husband, hadn’t the wits to recall his dastardly forebear’s favored means of having done with those who displeased him.
A greater shame that no MacKinnon chief since those times had thought to take an ax to the rusty but still-functional triggering mechanism hidden away in a dank, cobwebby corner of Coldstone’s deepest, least-visited undercroft.
Melting out of the darkness, a certain someone took especial care to blend into the milling throng, and even to offer Hugh a few words of solace on his busted elbow.
But urgent matters needed attendance, so the vengeance-seeking figure pushed with ever more determination through the smoke-hazed hall, cutting a path through boisterous clansmen and scurrying servitors.
Eager to slip from view and mind, Clan Fingon’s faceless foe sought the blessed shadows. And savored the anticipation, basking in the glory of knowing fullest retribution would soon be had, and not long thereafter nothing would disturb the desolation of MacKinnons’ Isle save the sound of the sea and the cry of seabirds.
Lips twisting in a grim smile at the notion, someone finally reached the sheltering gloom at the lower end of the hall, only to spin around, eyes flying wide at the sudden commotion on the raised dais.
Hands curled in tight, white-hot fury, that same someone looked on as Magnus barreled his way through startled-looking kinsmen. He burst onto the dais, plucked his spluttering da out of his laird’s chair, then tossed the old he-goat over one shoulder and leapt off the dais before anyone in the hall could even draw a breath.
A great ruckus ensued, shouts and outcries ringing all around, the confusion so great, not an intelligible word could be understood.
Not that everyone present required an explanation for the laird-in-waiting’s odd behavior.
Frowning blacker than the coming Highland night and muttering damnation, the figure slipped from the hall, alone and unobserved.
Old MacKinnon’s tourneying son did indeed have his wits about him. A surer method of having done with Clan Fingon would have to be found.
If sawed-through privy seats, poisonous adders, and ancient trapdoors proved to no avail, more drastic methods would be employed.
Or aimed at softer, less-suspecting targets.
He’d given an oath and was a man of honor.
Magnus would not lose his head and rail at the evidence that his express orders had been so baldly ignored.
Thus determined, he repeated the words to himself as, much later, in the gathering dusk, he stood in shadow and watched her creeping through the even darker shadows of the stables.
Old Boiny’s presence should have warned him, though. The calf-sized beast lay snoring before the stable door, his great and shaggy bulk sprawled across the threshold and blocking the entry.
Magnus blew out a breath. He’d only wanted to stroll about a bit, examine the curtain walls and mayhap ride around the outer perimeters, looking for a newly dug tunnel or any such hidden means into the stronghold, when he’d noticed wisps of pungent smoke drifting out from the stable door.
A door that stood ajar . . . curling threads of smoke he had no explanation for—until now.
The smoke tendrils came from the small torchlight she held in her hand as she poked about where, regardless of what she sought, she’d find little more than dust, cobwebs, and a pitiful few underfed garrons.
Beasts who seemed to have given her their trust as wholly as old Boiny, for nary a one of the sturdy little horses so much as neighed protest at her intrusion.
Only he objected.
And to more things than discovering her thrusting her pretty nose into every dark corner of his lowly stables.
Aye, he must be in high favor with the gods indeed to live in a land of lochs, bogs, and rough moorlands and ne’er be able to take a step without one fetching raven-haired lass forever rising up out of the mists to plunge his life into turmoil.
As if sensing his stare, or mayhap his thoughts, she suddenly froze in her furtive exploration and whirled around. “Oh!” she gasped. “W-what are you doing here?” Her chest heaved, and a moth-eaten saddlecloth was clutched in her free hand. “I was told you were off making your rounds outwith the castle walls.”
Magnus had to smile.
At least the lass was honest.
“Do you always inquire of my whereabouts and undertakings before you set off on your own, my lady?”
She lifted her shoulders, had the grace to color. “I had reason to look in here,” she said, nipping the little handheld torch into an empty wall bracket. “I also did not want my . . . eh . . . search to upset you needlessly. There are already so many things weighing on your mind.”
“The time is long past to consider whate’er might be on my mind, wouldn’t you say?”
Magnus regretted the words as soon as they left his tongue, but, as so often in his life, the Lady Amicia brought out the worst in him.
As if to prove it, he stepped over Boiny’s sleeping form and strode through the darkened stables to stand before her. “You could lend my mind ease if you tell me what you hoped to find in here, my lady.”
He ran his fingers along the rough wood of a stall partition, the movement releasing a puffing trail of dust. “You could comb through this stable from now until the edges of doom and find nary a purse full of silver or a single length of fine braid,” he said. “Nary an ell of dearest cloth. Nothing at all to catch a woman’s eye and fancy.”
Her blush deepened and she glanced aside, her fingers still digging into the ancient saddlecloth. “I believe you ken such frippery holds little appeal for me, Magnus MacKinnon.”
; “Aye, I do know it,” he said, stepping so close the heat of his body warmed her. “So what were you hoping to find?”
Amicia felt her cheeks flame, more with his proximity than what she must tell him, so she peered into the deep shadows of a nearby stall and answered him.
“’Tis glass shards or narrow, sharp-edged pieces of metal I was seeking,” she said, meeting his eye—and not at all surprised to see the shock there. “That, or perhaps an overlong thorn or two,” she added, making it worse.
“I warrant I know you well enough, too, to trust that such objects were not sought to bring about my demise,” he said grimly. “Nor anyone else’s, aye?”
Amicia nodded.
“I wished to avert someone being hurt—including these dear beasts,” she said, casting a quick glance at a swaybacked mare watching them patiently from a nearby stall.
“And what kind of . . . harm did you think to prevent?” he wanted to know, sounding and looking as if he already did. “What made you think of such a danger?”
Scrunching the saddlecloth in her hands, Amicia sent up a silent prayer that he would not think her as prone to fanciful imaginings as his father. “I saw a dark-cloaked figure scurry in here earlier,” she said, kneading the rough, scratchy cloth. “Whoe’er it was, they darted from shadow to shadow, or crept along hugging the tower walls, until they reached the stables and slipped inside.”
She looked at him, letting her eyes dare him to believe her. “Just watching chilled my blood, and then I remembered my brothers speaking of a friend’s anguish when he lost a prized steed because an enemy slipped a thorn beneath their friend’s saddlecloth. The moment their friend mounted his horse, the thorn was driven deep into the horse’s back, plunging the beast into madness. The young man was thrown—he could have suffered grave injury or worse but took only bruises. Regrettably, the horse broke a leg in the frenzy and had to be killed.”
“And you feared I would face such a fate tonight?”
Sue-Ellen Welfonder - [MacLean 03] Page 16
