The Ghost

by Greyson, Maeve

  After several fumbling attempts, Cadha leaned back against the wall and waved upward. “Try it now but go slow lest the oil shifts and tips it.”

  Brenna eased the smoking oil lamp upward, noting the slight weight of it and wondering how long Cadha had been wandering the caves. She set it aside and dropped the extra rope beside it.

  “Hurry. I dinna like the dark.”

  Brenna understood. She secured the rope tied to Cadha around her back and planted her feet to hold the girl’s weight. Slow and steady, she pulled, feeding the rope through her hands. The lass weighed more than she looked. Brenna backed up a step and resettled her stance, bracing herself as much as she could. “Climb some if ye can,” she called out, but the girl didn’t answer. Brenna feared the maid had passed out from the pain of her broken arm. She inched backward, keeping the rope taut and hoping the edge of the precipice wasn’t sharp enough to sever it before the girl reached safety. When the lass popped into view and clamped her forearm up over the edge, Brenna blew out a relieved huff. “Praise God!”

  “Dinna drop me, ye cow!” Cadha struggled to grapple the rest of the way out of the fissure. “Ye can sing yer praises to God once I’m sitting by the fire, ye ken?” She rolled to her back, gasping to catch her breath.

  “Ye’re an ungrateful creature, I’ll give ye that.” Brenna yanked hard enough to drag the sour-faced girl well away from the pit. She untied the slip knot and jerked it from around the maid’s body. “There. Get close to the fire, and I’ll check yer arm.”

  “Dinna ye worry with it.” Sullen as a spoiled child, the lass dragged herself over to the fire, hugging her wounded limb to her chest. “I’ll find me a healer on my way to Fort William.” She shot a narrow-eyed glare back at Brenna. “Thanks to ye, they captured him. I hope ye’re happy. I heard’m say they plan to hang him.” Her sullenness shifted to seething hatred. “I came back here to tell ye afore I left, so ye’d know what yer deceitfulness done to him.” She snatched up a broken piece of wood and pointed it at Brenna like a knife. “Now I’ll be going to Fort William, so’s he can at least see me a grieving for him while he hangs.”

  The girl’s gut-wrenching revelation knocked away Brenna’s ability to stand. She dropped to her knees. “Ye lie, ye vicious girl,” she choked out once she calmed enough to draw a breath. “Dinna think I willna kill ye for telling me such tales as a cruel jest.”

  “Why would I lie?” Cadha dared. She dismissed Brenna with a rude flip of her hand. “I’m nay the one who got him hunted down like a rabid wolf.” She jabbed the stick at Brenna again. “That there sin lays at yer feet, not mine.” With a scowling glance around the cavern, she shook her head. “I’m also nay the one who done all this. Them feckin’ Sassenachs came through here. Lost four of their own whilst they sacked the place and didna even care about them there men.”

  An ugly snort exploded from her as she tossed the shard of wood into the fire.

  “The redcoats destroyed the stores? All of them?” Brenna wondered if the lass spoke the truth or if the malicious babbling came from her madness.

  “Aye, they did. All the necessaries I was using done been ruin’t. Ever last bit.” Cadha stared at her as if she thought her a dullard. “Why would I do it? I been living in these caves since old Fitzgerald kicked me out.” She scooted closer to the fire. Disgust twisted her face. “That wicked old cow. I warned her ’bout that Alice whoring around with that lying redcoat, and she called me the liar. Pulled me out by my ear in front of God and ever’body.” She angled around toward the fire, lifted her chin, and tapped a string of mottled bruises framing her jawline. “I even showed her proof. See here? All them MacCoinnichs trusted Alice’s soldier, but this here’s what that man done to me when I told him I’d be telling my Magnus about him spying to help that new Fort William officer clear them off the mountain.” With a curt dip of her chin, she snatched up an oatcake and tore into it. “That Thomas Parlorn wouldha sold his soul to the devil himself if’n he thought it’d get him ahead.” She laughed, spitting oatcake everywhere. “Guess he’s talking to old Scratch right now. As long as his yelling lasted, probably shook every wall in Hell when he finally hit bottom.”

  Brenna remembered Catriona had spoken about Thomas Parlorn and Alice as though she trusted them. The picture Cadha painted said otherwise. “Ye said Magnus had been captured,” she reminded, forcing the words out. “When?”

  “Right ’fore I came back here to tell ye.” Gingerly touching the purple knot swelling just above her wrist, Cadha frowned at the injury as she talked. “I tried my best to get to Magnus to warn him ’bout the trap the English planned to set, but I had to wait ’til I didna think the soldiers was in that part of the caves anymore.” She frowned, turning her arm and studying the break from a different angle. “But they blocked my way. It took me a while to find another opening.” Easing her arm down to rest in her lap, she gave a sad shake of her head. “I came out near their horses. Saw them throw my Magnus over a mare like a sack of grain.” The girl drew herself up and jabbed a finger at Brenna. “This here’s all yer fault. If ye hadna made him feel all sorry for ye about yer whoring days, he wouldha never tried to jump that English dog. He and I couldha been together, like I planned.”

  “Enough! Just because a man saved yer life doesna mean he loved ye!” Brenna had tolerated all the insults she could stand. “Ye might think ye love him—” Both hands fisted, she charged forward, ready to fight. “But know this, ye hateful bit of scum, he is my husband, and if ye dinna shut yer maw, I’ll be shutting it for ye!”

  Cadha jerked away as though dodging a hit. “He saved me, he did, and I know’d him long before ye did,” she said, but her tone had changed. She still reeked of jealousy, but her hatred had somehow waned. In its place was a hint of respect and maybe a little fear.

  “Aye, that’s true.” Brenna stood her ground, forcing a calmer demeanor but keeping her hand on her dagger. Cadha couldn’t be trusted. The girl’s eyes gleamed with madness. If she wished to best the maid, she had to keep a cool head and reason with her addled mind. “Ye have known him longer.” She sidled around the fire, deciding it safer to keep her back to the wall rather than the bottomless fissure. A good shove could be disastrous. “And Magnus saved ye because he has a good heart and doesna wish for anyone to suffer—not because he loved ye.”

  The maid frowned. Not a hateful scowl, but a studious pucker as though sorting through her thoughts. “But I love him,” she argued with a disturbing calmness.

  “Aye, but he doesna love ye back,” Brenna said. “Unfortunately, love doesna always work as we wish it.” The swelling on Cadha’s arm looked worse. It needed a splint, a poultice of knitbone, and a good wrapping. Brenna nodded at the lass’s wound. “Let me help ye now, aye? I’m a healer.”

  “Why ye acting like ye want to help me? There’s no one here to see yer charity and tell ye how good ye are.” The lass cradled her arm in her lap and crammed the last of the oatcake into her mouth. “My arm be fine enough healing on its own.” She shrugged. “Long as I dinna fall and hit it again.”

  “I dinna live my life to impress anyone.” Brenna fetched the bag she had filled with every remedy she could tote. Without water, she would be hard-pressed to make a poultice, but it could be done. She glanced over at the rock with the nearly depleted puddles. Nay, she couldn’t risk using the last of it. “I wish we had some water.”

  “Water that moves be good to use,” Cadha chanted as she stretched out on her side and lay staring into the fire. She yawned. “Water that’s still will make ye ill,” she mumbled as she pillowed her head on her uninjured arm.

  “Aye, and water from a cave gives ye the skitters,” Brenna added as she labored to work the knitbone into a paste by crushing the leaves without the addition of any water.

  “Does not.” The maid rubbed her nose as though it itched something fierce, then settled back down. “I been drinking cave water since the redcoats came, and I dinna have the skitters.” She made a face and shrugg
ed. “All’s ye have to do is to be sure ye dinna drink water fouled with bat shite or something dead.”

  Brenna paused, trying to decide whether Cadha could be trusted. “Magnus said it was unsafe.” She would leave it at that and see if the girl argued.

  “He is wrong,” Cadha stated as she pushed herself up to a sitting position. With a smile that gave Brenna chills, the lass tilted her head toward the rear of the cavern. “Them rocks back there, the ones that look like soft dough piled on a board? They weep, and the water gathers at their base. I drank it yesterday and day before that, too.”

  “Drink it again right now, and I just might believe ye.” Brenna was not that naïve. Cadha might have stopped with the insults, but that didn’t mean she had stopped planning ill will.

  “Ha! Ye dinna trust me. Maybe ye’re no’ as big a fool as I thought.” Wincing, the maid rose from the floor and grabbed her dented oil lamp. After taking a few steps toward the back of the cavern, she stopped and looked back. “Well? Be ye comin’, cow? Ye canna verra well see me drinking the water from back there.”

  “If ye dinna stop calling me cow, I’ll be coming up with an insulting name or two for yerself.”

  Cadha barked out a laugh, then pinned her with a haunted sneer. “Ye canna think of a slur I havena been called before. I promise ye that.”

  Something about that made Brenna’s heart hurt. It reminded her of her own upbringing. She motioned for Cadha to keep moving. “On wi’ ye now. Prove yer words.” She didn’t dare let the conniving wench think she had let down her guard.

  “These rocks here.” Lifting her lamp, the maid cast the light across the rocks. She had described them aptly. Colored a slick-looking milky gray, the formation did resemble soft globs of dough piled high and waiting to be punched down and kneaded. At their base, hollowed out by ages of moisture trickling down and around the pillars, was a shallow basin of water. Cadha scooped up a handful and drank it. “I know it’s still, but I been drinking it.” She shrugged. “I havena shite m’self dead yet.”

  “Since you seem to know these caves so well, why did ye not just go outside and find a spring?” Brenna couldn’t imagine choosing to drink stagnate cave condensation rather than clear, sweet spring water.

  “Murdering redcoats, remember?” With a disgusted shake of her head, Cadha dried her hand on her skirts. “The mountain’s crawling with them. The MacCoinnichs just dinna know it.” Retrieving her lamp from the floor, she turned and headed back to the fire. “I’ve had enough dealings with bloody Sassenachs to last me a lifetime.” She shuddered, hugging her broken arm tighter to her chest. “Cruel bastards,” she added under her breath, but Brenna clearly heard it and agreed completely.

  Brenna tasted the water. It wasn’t good, but at least it was wet. She scooped up a handful and carried enough back to add to the knitbone paste. “After I set yer arm, we’re going back to Tor Ruadh.” She would warn Alexander about Magnus’s capture and make a case for saving him from the noose—either legally or not. She didn’t care. All she knew for certain was that she wasn’t content to be a widow yet. “Ye’ll help me find the way, aye?”

  “I canna go back there,” Cadha said, snorting as if Brenna had just told a poorly fashioned jest. “Fitzgerald probably set the dogs on me. Old hag hates me.”

  “She doesna hate ye. ’Twas all a misunderstanding. Once she sees ye were trying to protect the MacCoinnichs, I’m sure she’ll welcome ye back with open arms.” Brenna had to convince the girl to help her find her way back. She might make it on her own, but they could move faster with the maid’s certainty of the tunnels. “Would ye not rather return to living in the keep than hiding in these caves, like a wingless bat?”

  Cadha’s narrow face puckered at the question. Lips pursing tighter, she looked to be weighing her options. When her shoulders relaxed and her head tilted, Brenna knew she had her. “Ye think Lady Catriona would tell Fitzgerald to let me go back to feeding the hens and gathering eggs?”

  “I will vouch for ye myself.”

  “Why would ye do such a thing?” Angry wariness shone in the girl’s weary eyes. The maid looked like a chained animal, trying to find the strength to fight off another beating.

  With the poultice in one hand, Brenna held out her other. “Ye and I are not so different, I think. I’ve not had an easy way of it either.” She nodded toward the girl’s arm. “Although, I believe ye’ve endured more cruelties than I have. Now, give me yer arm so that we can be on our way, aye?”

  Cadha stared at her for a long while. Silent. Unmoving except for the rise and fall of her chest.

  “I know it’s nay easy,” Brenna said softly. “But ye can trust me. I willna hurt ye.” She offered a teasing smile. “Unless ye go after my husband again. And then, I will have to kill ye.”

  Cadha revealed a toothy smile that chased away the hatred in her eyes. She placed her wounded arm in Brenna’s hand. “I guess ye’re nay so bad.” Her smile crooked farther to one side. “For a cow.”

  “I’ll make ye think cow,” Brenna pretended to threaten. As gently as she could, she spread the pasty green mash on the purpling knot on the girl’s arm. No bone had poked through the flesh, nor did her arm show the unevenness of a severe break. But Brenna had no doubt that at least a small fracture had occurred just above the lass’s wrist. With a barrel stave as a splint, she wrapped it in strips of linen she had torn from the hem of her shift. “There now. The knitbone will do its work. If I had a pot, I’d brew ye some willow bark tea for the pain.”

  Running her fingers along the splint, the girl shrugged. “The pain is nay so bad.” She looked up with a sad smile. “I grant ye, I’ve had worse.”

  “I’m sure ye have,” Brenna agreed, her heart hurting for the lass. “Do ye feel able to start the trek back?”

  With a nod, Cadha stood, then lifted her sputtering oil lamp. “Need more fuel first and a new wick.” She nodded toward a small pile of broken crockery. “See those? Some had goose fat. Some had tallow. Doesna matter which ye choose. Both burn. Gather enough to fill the lamp and coat a good long strip of linen that we can shove down into the grease for a wick.” She cast a disparaging glance at Brenna’s faltering torch. “The lamp’ll give us a steadier burn than that thing.”

  Lamp filled and another strip of her chemise fashioned into a wick, Brenna held her breath as she touched a flaming brand to their creation and lit it. She had used oil lamps before, but never one so crude. Cadha was right. The light burned steady and bright. Much better than her sputtering torch.

  “I found a quicker way back to the keep,” Cadha said as she took the lamp from Brenna. “Opens out in an old root cellar they dinna use anymore ’cause it holds water. Probably floods in the spring.”

  “I wonder why Magnus didna use that route if it’s shorter?” Brenna wanted to trust the girl, but the fear of being trapped in the cave outweighed it. She would remain cautious until she returned to blessed sunshine.

  “I had to dig my through,” the maid explained as she led the way up a steep incline that wound around behind the weeping stone formation that had provided barely palatable water. “I found soft dirt blocking the tunnel instead of rocks. Seemed strange, so I dug through it for a spell. They must ha’ piled it there when they built the root cellar. Magnus probably thought it still closed off or forgot about it.”

  The explanation made sense. Somewhat. Brenna followed close, alert to any possible trickery. She had no idea in what direction they traveled. It felt like they still climbed upward, making her wonder how the trail could end in an old root cellar behind the kitchens.

  “Dinna think I’m trying to lose ye,” Cadha reassured her with a glance back. She lifted the lamp higher and kept trudging. “If’n I show up at the keep without ye, there’ll be no one to vouch for me like ye promised.”

  That made Brenna feel some better, but she still kept up her guard. “Ye said ye had to dig yer way through. Will we have to crawl into the root cellar?”

  “Aye. But it’
s nay as close as some places ye’ve already squeezed through. I’ll give ye the lamp when we reach it. I willna be able to hold it and crawl with just one arm.” She paused and turned, shining the light so Brenna could see her solemn look. “And dinna fret. I’ll still lead the way ’cause I know ye dinna trust me. Just stay close as ye can so some light reaches around me, aye?”

  That Cadha could almost read her mind was more than a little disturbing. “Ye’re a canny one. I’ll give ye that.”

  “Nay.” The girl shook her head and continued on, turning sideways to make it through the narrowing tunnel. “I just know how it is when ye dinna trust someone.” She snorted out a laugh. “I dinna trust ye any more than ye trust me.”

  “Aye, well…at least we understand each other.” Brenna sidled along, ducking down as the tunnel not only narrowed from side to side but dwindled in height, as well. Soon, she would be forced to drop to her knees. “Do ye need me to take the lamp now?”

  “Aye.” Cadha crouched low and passed it over her head. “We might as well start our crawling here.”

  “How far must we crawl?”

  “’Til we get there.”

  Brenna bit her tongue to keep from snapping at the girl. Fool lass. Now was not the time for sassing. They crawled along for what seemed like forever, their tangled skirts and Cadha’s splinted arm making their progress seem slow as tree sap in winter. Smoke from the lamp fouled the space, making it even harder to rein in the panic that there wasn’t enough air.

  “Breathe, ye cow, and dinna set my skirts afire.” Cadha’s scolding had a calmness and certainty Brenna envied. “I’m crawling fast as I can. Setting fire to me arse willna make me move any faster.”

  “What did I tell ye about calling me ‘cow’?”

  “If’n ye must know, I call ye ‘cow’ because I canna remember yer blessit name. I’ll be damned if I call ye ‘Mistress MacCoinnich’ before ye get me hired back at the keep. I’m nay in yer employ now.”