The Sinner

by Margaret Mallory

  It finally dawned on him that Sabine wanted him to take the child. He began pacing the small parlor again, feeling like a trapped animal.

  “Ye say this child is a girl?” He could hear the desperation in his voice.

  “Why yes, she is,” Sabine said, cool as could be.

  “And now, after all this time,” he said, flinging his arms out wide, “ye want to give her away, like some garment you’ve grown tired of?”

  “Hardly that.”

  Alex felt as if he’d been tossed overboard in a rough sea, and the waves were too high for him to see which way was the shore.

  “You must take her, Alexander.”

  He ran his hands through his hair as he walked back and forth. “What is the child’s name?”

  “I believe,” she said, shifting her gaze to the side, “that the couple she lived with called her Claire.”

  “Christ above, Sabine, ye didn’t even give the child a name?” He was incensed, but he may as well be angry with a cuckoo bird for being a bad mother. Sabine was who she was.

  Alex felt sorry for the child, having a mother with so little regard for her. While his own parents fought like hungry dogs, he never doubted that they cared for him. They simply cared more about making each other miserable.

  “I have provided for her from birth,” Sabine said. “Now you must take her.”

  He heard Teàrlag’s voice in his head: Three women will ask for your help, and ye must give it. No, not this.

  “What would I do with a wee girl?” he demanded, raising his hands in the air. The notion was ridiculous.

  “You must know someone who could care for her,” Sabine said, as if she were talking about a pet dog. “I heard your cousin Ian has wed. Perhaps he could take her? If you’ve no one else, you can always put her in a convent.”

  “A convent?” he said, raising his voice. “The child is what—five, six years old?”

  Sabine got to her feet and smoothed her gown. “Before you decide to abandon her—”

  “Me abandon her?”

  “I suggest you meet your daughter,” Sabine finished, ignoring his interruption.

  His daughter. Could it be true that he had a daughter?

  “My ship leaves in two days.” Sabine pulled a slip of paper out of her sleeve and handed it to him. “Meet me at this address at dawn, and I’ll take you to her.”

  Alex heard the rustle of Sabine’s silk skirts as she walked to the door, but he did not look up from the folded paper clenched in his hand.

  “One last thing, Alexander,” she said. “Albany intends to have you arrested as soon as D’Arcy leaves the city.”

  CHAPTER 21

  Skrit scrit, scrit. Claire drew her feet in as the mouse crossed the floor. It was bigger and bolder than the mice in the fields at home.

  The old woman had not brought food yet today, so she and her doll were hungry. Poor Marie was dirty as well. If Grandmère was here, she would scold Claire for not taking better care of her doll. Grandpère had made Marie specially for his little girl from straw and rope, and then Grandmère had sewn her pretty gown from scraps.

  The girl pressed her nose against Marie’s soft belly and sniffed, but the smell of Grandmère and Grandpère had been gone for a long, long time.

  CHAPTER 22

  When Glynis came down for supper, a man dressed in a priest’s robes was already sitting at the head of the table. He looked at her with gray eyes that were the same color and shape as her own, but they were as cold as a frozen pond.

  “She does look like our former sister,” the priest said in a flat tone.

  “Ye are my uncle?” Glynis asked.

  After growing up in a family in which she looked like no one else, Glynis had been disappointed to see no resemblance between herself and her aunt. She could see herself in this tall, gaunt priest—but she did not like what she saw.

  “Yes, I am Father Thomas,” he said, as if being himself was a great responsibility. “You may sit.”

  Glynis’s backside was barely on the bench before her uncle started the prayer. He recited it rapidly with no inflection, giving Glynis the impression that his mind was elsewhere. When he finished the prayer, he helped himself to the choicest piece of meat on the tray and began eating before the rest of them had any.

  “I hope you have a more obedient nature than your mother did,” he said, looking at her with a grim expression. “I pray you will not bring more shame upon our family.”

  He did not expect an answer, and Glynis had to bite her tongue to prevent herself from giving him one he was sure not to like.

  Glynis’s lively aunt Peg and Henry seemed to wilt in the priest’s presence, and the supper conversation was stilted. Midway through the meal, the priest put away his eating knife.

  “Gavin Douglas has been imprisoned,” he announced.

  Aunt Peg gasped, and Henry went pale.

  “How can that be?” Henry asked. “He was supposed to become the Archbishop of St. Andrews.”

  “The queen nominated him, and she is no longer regent,” Father Thomas hissed. “Now the Douglases are out of favor.”

  “What does this mean?” Peg asked in a hesitant voice.

  “It means, dear sister,” Father Thomas said, turning his venomous eyes on her, “that I will not be going to St. Andrews with Gavin Douglas.”

  Glynis was tempted to suggest that Father Thomas should be grateful he was not following this Gavin Douglas to prison.

  “What in the name of God possessed Gavin to advise his nephew to marry the queen?” Father Thomas raised his hands as he spoke, as if beseeching Heaven. “As her lover, Archibald Douglas had the queen in his pocket. And the council could do nothing because the king’s will provided that the queen should be regent so long as she did not remarry.”

  Glynis dropped her gaze to the food growing cold in front of her.

  “Damn him to hell,” Father Thomas said. “Gavin should have stuck to his poetry.”

  “He is a poet?” Glynis asked, hoping to divert Father Thomas to a topic less upsetting to him.

  “Gavin Douglas is famous for his own poetry as well as for his translations of ancient poems,” Father Thomas said. “A useless activity, of course, but one that would not have cost him a bishopric.”

  “Useless?” Glynis said. “We Highlanders hold our poets in high esteem.”

  From the way Father Thomas’s eyebrows shot up, he was not accustomed to disagreement.

  “Why has the poor man been imprisoned?” Glynis asked, her curiosity overtaking her caution, as it often did.

  “He is accused of attempting to buy the bishopric from the Pope.” Father Thomas shrugged one bony shoulder. “If Albany’s faction did not suspect Gavin had also advised the queen to flee to England with the Scottish heir, no one would care if he bought it.”

  Glynis cleared her throat. “Are ye aware, Uncle, of what this new regent’s attitude is toward the Highland clans?”

  “Of course I am,” he snapped. “’Tis fortunate that you escaped that God-forsaken place, for Albany has given the Campbells the crown’s blessing to destroy this Highland rebellion ‘by sword and by fire.’”

  Glynis put her hand to her throat, fearing for her family back home. “What does that mean?”

  “It means they have a free hand to lay waste to the rebels’ lands and murder anyone who stands in their way, including women and children,” Father Thomas said, “When the rebels submit, as they will, the Campbells are to collect the rebel chieftains’ eldest sons as hostages to assure their father’s good behavior.”

  “My brother is only four years old.” Glynis felt sick to her stomach.

  “Then it may just be possible to teach him civilized ways.”

  If her father knew of this plan, surely he would see sense and leave the rebellion. Before Glynis could question Father Thomas further, he got to his feet.

  “I must pursue my advancement independent of Gavin Douglas now,” he said, fixing his hard gaze on Henry.
“It will be costly.”

  Father Thomas did not wait for a response. Without so much as a fare-thee-well, he left the room with long-legged strides.

  “Thomas is an important man in the church,” Peg said when he had gone, as if that should excuse his rudeness.

  “Eat up,” Henry said to Glynis, as he stuffed an apple tart in his mouth. “A man likes a woman with some flesh on her bones.”

  Glynis could not recover her good humor as quickly as her Aunt Peg and Henry, but she managed a weak smile and took a bite. The apples were not as tart as at home. Nothing tasted good here.

  “What do ye think about James the Baker?” Henry said, looking at her aunt. “He’s a fine man. Wouldn’t he make our bonny niece a good husband?”

  Glynis choked on the bite of dry tart caught in her throat. “Thank ye for your concern,” she said when she could speak, “but I don’t wish to marry again.”

  “Don’t wish to marry?” Henry said, then repeated it more loudly: “Don’t wish to marry?”

  When Glynis shook her head, Henry and her aunt exchanged startled glances.

  “James is a steady man with a good future before him.” Her aunt reached across the narrow table and patted her hand. “It can’t hurt to meet him.”

  “Thank ye kindly,” Glynis said. “But meeting the man will no change my mind.”

  Bessie came in then and stooped to speak to Henry in a low voice.

  “James is here,” Henry said, and gave Glynis a wide smile. “Make yourself pretty while I fetch him.”

  Two hours later, Glynis was so bored she wanted to stab herself in the eye. James was easily the most tedious man she had met in her life. Alas, he was unattractive as well.

  “Do ye never leave the city?” she asked after listening to him drone on about meetings of his guild. “Surely ye must long to take a sail or a walk in the meadows now and again?”

  “There are pirates roaming the seas!” Poor James looked genuinely alarmed. “Besides, the sea makes me sick as a dog.”

  The sea made him ill?

  A wave of homesickness swept over Glynis, leaving a sense of hopelessness in its wake. She had always lived on the sea and had no notion how much she would miss it. Even when she was married to that despicable Magnus, she could hear the sea from her window and walk on the shore every day.

  Glynis’s attention was brought back to the present by the sudden damp heat of a heavy hand on her thigh.

  “Ye are a pretty thing,” James said, leaning close enough for her to see the spittle on his chin. “And I believe I’m just the man to tame a wild Highland lass.”

  CHAPTER 23

  Alex walked the city streets in the bleak hours before dawn. Occasionally, women of the night called out to him from doorways. No one else was out at this hour save for thieves and groups of drunken young men looking for a fight. But with his claymore strapped to his back and dirks hanging from his belt in plain sight, no one gave Alex trouble.

  After tossing and turning on the too-small bed at the tavern, Alex had given up on sleep. He wished he could talk with Glynis about the problem of this wee girl Sabine claimed was his daughter. Glynis would give him honest advice. But he could not very well wake up her relatives’ household by pounding on their door in the middle of the night.

  When the first streaks of dawn speared through the sky, he unfolded the paper that Sabine had given him and read the directions written there. What in the hell was wrong with Sabine keeping the child in the most wretched part of the city?

  Alex turned down a close and held his plaid over his mouth and nose as he walked farther and farther down the hill. He was nearly to the sewage-filled loch before he finally reached the place. He pounded on the door with murder running through his veins.

  A woman opened the door just wide enough for him to see her greasy hair and careworn face. Her eyes grew wide as she took him in.

  “Alexander MacDonald?” she asked in a hoarse voice.

  “Aye.”

  When the woman opened the door wider, Alex ducked his head and stepped inside. He found himself in a low-ceilinged room lit by a single, smoky lamp. There was no one in it but the two of them.

  “Where is the Countess?” he asked, though he had realized as he walked down the close that Sabine would never ruin her delicate slippers coming to this desperate place.

  “I never saw the lady,” the woman said. “Her maid said ye would be the one to pay me.”

  One brings deceit.

  “Their ship has sailed?” Alex asked, though he already knew it had.

  The woman nodded. “Aye, at dawn.”

  “And the child?”

  “I have her, but ye must pay me first.”

  Sabine had known that, regardless of whether the girl was his or not, Alex would not be able to leave a child in this squalid place with no one to care for her. At least, he hoped Sabine had known that when she abandoned her daughter.

  A ragged strip of cloth hung over the doorway to a connecting room, and he suspected the child was there. Though Alex could have fetched her himself, the woman deserved her pay. He dropped the coins into her waiting palm.

  His heart raced as the woman disappeared into the blackness behind the curtain. What in God’s name was wrong with him? He was fearless sailing into a squall or charging into battle, and yet an unfamiliar frisson of terror traveled up his knees over meeting a wee bairn.

  Before he had time to prepare himself, the woman flipped back the cloth and reentered the room leading a child by the hand. Sabine’s gift to him.

  Alex had never lacked for words in his life, but he was too stunned to speak. Looking at the child, he had the oddest sensation that he was seeing a feminine version of himself as a wee lad. Her hair was the same white-blond his had been as a bairn, and she was long-legged as a newborn colt.

  “She’s a strange child,” the woman said. “Can’t speak a word.”

  “Maybe she has nothing to say to ye.” Alex noticed how dirty the child was, and a horrible thought occurred to him. “How long have ye kept her here?”

  “Since she was brought to me a couple of months ago,” the woman said. “As ye can see, I’ve taken good care of her.”

  God have mercy. The child must have been here since Sabine arrived in Edinburgh. That had probably sucked the words right out of the poor wee thing. Alex remembered how desperate he had felt in that cell after just a couple of hours, and he could have wept for the child.

  Alex dropped to his knee to have a closer look at her. Eyes the same shade of green met his. Though her face was heart-shaped, rather than square-jawed like his, she had a delicate version of his straight nose and his generous mouth with its full bottom lip.

  Alex heard the woman leave, but he did not take his eyes off the child. He had a strange compulsion to touch her. He smiled at her as he cupped the wee lass’s cheek—and felt a surge of relief when she did not flinch. She had the soft skin of a baby. His heart hurt as he thought of her closed up in this dark, wretched place for so long.

  “I’m told your name is Claire,” he said, speaking to her in French.

  She nodded. While the child might be mute, she was not deaf.

  “Do ye know what your name means?” he asked.

  She shook her head a fraction.

  “Bright and shining. Radiant,” he said, fanning his fingers out. For once he was grateful for the Latin that had been forced upon him in university. “In Gaelic, the language where I come from, we say Sorcha.”

  Claire was a lovely name, but it sounded fragile to his ear.

  “Sorcha is a powerful name,” he said. “Would it be all right if that is what I call ye?”

  Her gaze never faltered as she paused to consider this and then gave him a slow nod.

  “Sorcha, are ye ready to leave this foul-smelling place and come on an adventure with me?”

  The girl nodded again. She was a brave lass, of course.

  “We have a long journey ahead of us,” he said. “I’m tak
ing ye home to Skye.”

  That was as far as his plans went. He had no notion what he would do with her once he got her there.

  “Skye is an island surrounded by sea,” he said, stretching his arms out. “And it’s as beautiful as Heaven.”

  She put her thumb in her mouth, but he could tell she was listening hard.

  When he picked her up, he was unprepared for the swell of emotion that filled his chest at holding his wee daughter for the first time. Her long hair fell in tangles over his arm as she tilted her head back to examine him.

  “If ye are wondering who I am,” he said, touching his finger to her wee nose. “I’m your father, lass.”

  CHAPTER 24

  A woman could do worse than James,” Glynis’s aunt said over breakfast. “He is a steady man, and you’d never need to fret about other women with him.”

  That was for certain. “I couldn’t marry a man who hates the sea,” Glynis said, since they would not hear that she did not wish to marry at all. “We would never get along.”

  Henry looked at her as if she were mad. “What has one got to do with the other?”

  A vision of Alex jumping over a log brandishing his claymore in one hand and throwing his dirk with the other came to her. Even if she had wanted a husband, how could she let one of these pitiful men touch her after Alex?

  “If ye don’t like James, what about Tim the Silversmith?” her aunt asked. “Ye must remember him—his was the third shop we visited yesterday.”

  Unfortunately, she remembered the silversmith all too clearly.

  “He’s shorter than I am.” It was the least of Glynis’s objections, but the first that burst out of her mouth.

  “’Tis a shame ye are so tall,” Henry said, shaking his head as if it were a great misfortune. “But I don’t believe Tim minded.”

  “He’s pale as a fish’s belly,” Glynis said. “And he has bad breath.”

  “What is important is that he could support ye very well,” her aunt said.

  Glynis was a chieftain’s daughter, and her father would provide a significant tochar, or dowry, if she should marry again. But she was becoming suspicious about the state of her Edinburgh relatives’ finances and decided not to enlighten them.