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

by Rebecca Lochlann

  “Hold still.”

  A heavy weight settled beside her and a face bent over her. This must be a nightmare. Could it really be Matthew Weir, the minister? “Bring the candle closer,” he said, and there was Beatrice, holding a glaring light.

  “There’s a bit of glass in there,” he said. “Hold still, aye still. Don’t blink. There, I’ve got it. You’re in need of a surgeon.”

  An awful rattling sound brought her head up. Every breath burned, grinding over the damage in her throat.

  Ibby stood in the doorway, wringing a handkerchief as she sobbed, for once making no effort to appear polished.

  Beatrice set the candle down and knelt beside Douglas. His eyes bulged. The odd rattling noise was coming from him.

  “He’s hurt.” Morrigan coughed. She remembered the glass falling, piercing him. Yet he was still alive, still breathing. Here was proof of what she’d always suspected. Her father was indestructible.

  “It’s his heart, I think,” the minister said. “My wife’s gone for the surgeon, but… I fear, Miss Lawton….” He clasped her hand. “He’s asking for you, lass.”

  “No,” Ibby cried. “Keep him away from her! He’s a beast! A beast!”

  Beatrice rose swiftly. She grabbed Ibby’s arm and dragged her out of the room, hissing something in her ear.

  “Aye,” Morrigan tried to swallow. “Please help me.”

  Supported in Matthew Weir’s steady arms, she dropped to her knees beside Douglas. Glass imbedded in her hair and skin made her feel she was scoured raw everywhere. It hurt like the devil when she blinked, but if she didn’t, she couldn’t see through the blood. Without the minister holding her, she thought the shuddering, the chattering of her teeth, might tear her apart.

  Beatrice returned alone and knelt on Douglas’s other side. She picked up his limp hand and caressed it.

  “I thought it was her,” he said faintly, his face bloody from the grooves she’d scraped into his cheek. “Hannah. The painting. Seaghan…. Mocking me. I… I know I’ve sinned.” His free hand found and seized Morrigan’s in a surprisingly strong grip. “I wasn’t always this way. Don’t let anyone make you forget…. Beannachd leat, mo nighean.”

  Air whistled from his lungs. The guttural breathing choked and stopped. His eyes went blank. Empty. No longer terrible. No longer anything.

  Beatrice fell upon him. “No,” she cried. “Don’t leave me, Douglas.”

  Matthew Weir pried Morrigan’s hand from her father’s. Raising her, he said, “There, child,” and patted her forearm.

  Morrigan’s heart was hammering. “He hated me,” she whispered.

  “Oh, lass. The man was ill. I saw he didn’t want to leave you.”

  Morrigan stared at her father’s face. It still scowled, even in death. “You can’t die.”

  Beatrice worked her way to her feet. “It isn’t so easy letting him go, is it? Never let anyone tell you otherwise. Douglas Lawton was your father.”

  “Come to the kitchen,” the minister said. “I’ll brew you both a cup of tea.”

  “Tea?” Morrigan laughed. “Tea.” God had abandoned her, but there would always be tea.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  NO MATTER HOW many hundreds of times she pictured him gone, she could not accept it.

  Douglas, Nicky, Hannah… her father, her mother, her brother, all dead. She had no kin left but her two aunts.

  Yet whenever she retched into her washbasin, she was forcibly reminded that another life was coming.

  Since he couldn’t forbid it as he had with Nicky, Beatrice placed Douglas on a board in the Highland manner. She covered his body with scalloped linen and set a wooden platter on his chest holding two mounds, one of earth, the other salt.

  “The earth is his body,” she told Morrigan. “The salt his indestructible spirit.”

  Ibby refused to see Douglas, much less give him honor, so it was left to Beatrice to sit with him through the night in the candlelit parlor singing his eulogy, her voice eerie and unsettling. It was odd how the woman so suddenly returned to the language and customs she had long discarded. The only Gaelic Morrigan had ever heard from her were a few rare endearments, and all she’d ever said about the Highlands was dismissive and rude.

  White cloth shrouded the mirrors and windows. The grandfather clock stood silent, stopped at the hour of death.

  Any moment Papa would open his eyes. He would scowl and demand to know why she hadn’t finished her chores. Irritation flamed as Morrigan brushed her fingers against his temple. His flesh was cold, a rotting shell, all that remained of what she’d believed eternal. Trembling settled in her muscles, spiraling inward, digging a chasm she feared might swallow her.

  “He’s dead.” She said it, over and over. Yet the words were meaningless. She tried to see death on the person of Douglas Lawton, but the picture wouldn’t form. Death couldn’t sit on his body. In truth, wouldn’t it be feared to try?

  He was the force that pushed her from bed each morning, directed her every movement, even her thoughts, more often than not. Tall and dark, always scowling, he had created her world, and never allowed her to forget his supremacy. He was the possessor of knowledge she could never hope to understand, of beginnings, the first ray of earth’s sunlight, the initial gasp of human lungs. His death was incomprehensible. She could more easily believe he’d simply deserted them to lord over some other realm. From the moment of her birth his had been a force as powerful, as uncontrollable, as a blast of wind. If he could die, what did that say about everything else? Perhaps tomorrow she would wake to find all of life a fantasy… the sun, the moon, the ground she walked upon.

  Yet at the same time, she couldn’t help but wonder if she had murdered her father by wishing the glass shard to fall.

  The surgeon assured her, and a hovering, anxious Ibby, that her eye would heal. Had the glass punctured her cornea, he said, it might have gone differently; she should thank providence it hadn’t. He bandaged it, telling her she could remove the gauze in three days, after the funeral. The bruises on her throat caused his brows to lift and his gaze to meet hers searchingly, but he said nothing other than to advise the application of cold water and vinegar, combined with rest, and promised her voice would soon return. He tended her cuts and scratches, accepted a cup of tea and slice of cake, and left them to their dreary business.

  “Morrigan,” her aunt said when he was gone, “we think it best Curran not be told what happened. We’ll say you tripped on a floorboard that wasn’t properly nailed and fell into the window. I’ll make you more collars to cover your neck if necessary, and we’ll wait until after the funeral to send him a message.”

  Morrigan took a deep breath and met Ibby’s troubled gaze, knowing her aunt was afraid Curran would withdraw his proposal if he discerned the truth.

  For the second time in one month, the residents of Stranraer gathered at the Wren’s Egg for a funeral. Morrigan felt their curious stares and overheard some of the careless gossip. Why does the daughter stand so stiff and silent, with no’ a tear for her father? What are those cuts? Why is her eye covered? Morrigan sensed malicious gratification beneath their conjectures. You’ve heard the rumors… what goes on at this godforsaken inn. Didn’t the son run off? The minister’s wife told me the daughter has never entered a kirk in her life, ever!

  Matthew Weir didn’t once ask about that night. He and his wife had been taking their customary predawn stroll, discussing additions to his sermon, when he’d heard the screaming. He’d broken the door to get in.

  He visited Morrigan after the funeral. As he prepared to leave, he grasped her hand, closed his eyes, and spoke a prayer. His sincerity left her tongue-tied, shamed at her ignorance of religion.

  Beatrice sent a letter to Sir MacAndrew, asking for his instructions, and another to Curran.

  Workmen repaired the broken door and replaced the window. No doubt they would go home, and over tea would help spread tales about the devil’s lair on Neptune Street.

 
; Ibby took the bandage off Morrigan’s eye. “It’s no’ so bad,” she said, adding, “You’d be surprised how quickly folk will forget this.”

  Each day in the cusp of dawn, Morrigan walked. Sometimes she saddled Widdie and rode to Finnarts Hill or the other way, to the Corsewall lighthouse, astounded at the realization Papa could never again punish her for taking a morning ride. But the world of newfound freedom remained indistinct. Douglas’s voice drowned it. Your brother would be alive but for you.

  If she hadn’t fought him, would he still be here? Should she have let him kill her? When she considered such questions, the bruises around her neck, in the shape of her father’s fingers, throbbed, and it hurt to breathe.

  She lived in a fog where nothing existed but endlessly circling impressions. Ibby and Beatrice had to sit her down to eat— she never felt the slightest pang of hunger or thirst. Neither attempted to stop her from walking or riding. At Finnarts Hill she relived stolen mornings when she and Nicky watched the sun rise or played at war with their wooden swords. He had listened to her read from her mythology book until he knew the stories as well as she, and he’d accused her of believing in them like they were fashioned from true history.

  She sat on the slope above Loch Ryan, staring at one brilliant, poppy-colored sunrise after another.

  Nicky wouldn’t have been pushed into fleeing had I not run away to the woods in a fit of rage. It doesn’t matter that I didn’t intend to cause it, or that Papa was wrong in his vengeance. Nicky is dead. Papa is dead. Both died because of me, and I can never make it right.

  Widdie grazed and Morrigan plucked wildflowers. She tore the petals without looking at them, then gazed, confused, at her damp, stained fingers.

  At sunset of the seventh day after Douglas died, she returned to the inn and glimpsed a hazy figure sitting on the front steps. His head was down, arms resting in a weary manner upon his knees. She stopped. Gloaming’s shadows made the figure nebulous, a phantom… a ghost. Blood rushed from her head, leaving her dizzy and breathless. She reached out to the rock wall to keep herself from falling. Is he going to drive me mad for what I did to him?

  The figure’s head lifted. He rose and approached her. “Morrigan.”

  A hard, aching lump formed in her throat. “You’ve come.”

  “I have.” Curran folded her in against him. “And I’ll never leave you again.”

  * * * *

  Tenderly scolding, he urged her to eat. “Feed my son, a nighean. I want him strong and healthy.”

  “What does that mean… a nighean?” she asked, a memory sparking.

  “‘My lass,’” he said. “Do you not know any Gaelic?”

  “Hardly any. But Papa… he said that word, nighean, before he died.”

  “From him, it would’ve meant ‘daughter.’” Curran frowned.

  “He said something else. ‘Byan-ach lat.’ What does that mean?”

  “He was blessing you, telling you goodbye.”

  Douglas’s last words, as kind and out of character as they were, didn’t soften Curran’s ill will. He quickly steered them back to baked halibut and barley bread, and how important it was that she have some.

  Was a child truly growing inside her? Her corset fit no differently, and her abdomen seemed as flat as ever. If it weren’t for the nausea, the cessation of her monthly courses, the tenderness in her breasts, and the fact that she could no longer bear the smell of cigar or pipe smoke, she’d never believe it. Yet wasn’t Curran dear, the way he touched her, kissed her hand and stroked her hair— like he found her extraordinary. As though he believed her the only woman on earth capable of providing his offspring.

  To please him, she ate.

  Thankfully, by the time he came, most of the superficial cuts and scratches left by particles of glass had healed over, and the injury to her eye had improved. The bruises on her neck had turned an ugly greenish-yellow, but that didn’t matter, as they were hidden beneath her collars and he never saw them. The three women kept to their tale of her falling into the window, and he accepted her peculiar clumsiness.

  Citing the double shock she’d suffered and her lethargy, he convinced Aunt Ibby to let him take her for a drive, to imbibe the “reviving fresh air.” With a basket of food tucked between them in the trap, he sent Leo eastward. In due course they came to a muddy turn-off that rambled through open country and woods.

  And oh, the hills… one over the next they rolled, draped with purple heather that resembled vast coronation robes for an unseen deity. Wildflowers burst from every crevice.

  Leo’s uniform hoof-beats lulled Morrigan into forgetful peace— or perhaps it was this lad beside her, gifting her with generous smiles, urging her to breathe, making her feel irreplaceable.

  The track led them around the edge of a loch and they found themselves on a narrow isthmus, glimpsing the upper tines of a citadel through a leafy frame of trees.

  “I’ve never been here,” Morrigan said to Curran’s inquiry. “I always go to the coast. Let’s see what it is.”

  Leaving Leo to graze, they clambered over a low wall into a clearing. The stone fortress before them soared high and forbidding; the window openings were blackly menacing. Not a breath of wind or a single birdcall broke the silence.

  Showers of ivy covered the ancient stronghold. Leaves brushed Curran’s shoulders as he stepped through the doorway. He turned, held out his hand and smiled, never to know how the image of him there, crowned in ivy, reminded Morrigan of Dionysos, Greek god of wine. Vibrating with emotion, she put her hand into his and returned his smile, letting him draw her into a chamber bright and shadowed, a place of immense, watchful silence, bursting with invisible memories of lost lives. She tiptoed, fearful any sound or misstep might bring the old keep tumbling onto their heads.

  Curran went off to explore, leaving Morrigan in the central hall, or whatever it had been. She listened for his footsteps, but instead heard subdued laughter and the spirited beat of drums. Staring at a wall still webbed in shadow, she gave herself over to envisioning what it might have been like to live here. There… a carved throne near a roaring fire, and sitting in it a man with a full black beard, holding a goblet. Next to him, spackled in firelight, stood a tall, solemn-faced lass, her knee length hair braided with ribbons. Morrigan smelled roasting game, heard the sizzle of dripping fat. Thrusting the point of his dagger into a great hunk of meat, the man ripped off a mouthful with his teeth and laughed as juices ran through his beard.

  Morrigan closed her eyes to better visualize the spectacle. This man was a powerful chief. He had waged battle, enriched his clan, and won cattle through canny raids. His face wore pride, selfishness, and more than a dab of cruelty.

  An old child’s ditty trailed through her memory:

  Frae Wigtown to the town o’ Ayr,

  Portpatrick to the Cruives o’ Cree

  Nae man need think for to bide there

  Unless he court a Kennedy.

  Curran appeared at her side, laughing when she jumped and released a startled shriek. Her fancy dimmed and she stood once again in an empty, echoing ruin, housing only mice and spiders.

  They walked outside, fetched the basket, and spread a blanket beneath the branches of a great old oak. Curran lay beside her, whistling as he spread jam on a scone and held it to her mouth.

  She nibbled. “You’ll have me big as a house.”

  “That’s my plan. You’re far too appealing. I don’t want to spend all my waking hours fighting off Glenelg’s lusty men.”

  “Oh, Curran.”

  “You don’t know, do you, how bonny you are?”

  A flush crept through her cheeks. She laughed and unwrapped a wedge of cheese. She knew too well it was beauty that brought Curran back from Ireland, then from the Highlands. He’d probably tried to forget her and couldn’t. That would explain why he hadn’t appeared in June, as he’d promised. There was power in beauty. Because of it she sat on this blanket being fed by an ardent lover who declared his willingness to
marry.

  Though she was gratified to possess the magic requirement that pulled him to her, she also wanted to demand more of him. But he wouldn’t understand if she tried to explain. How could he, when she didn’t understand herself?

  “Morrigan.” He clasped her hand, turned it, and rubbed the birthmark on her wrist almost absently. “You’re the bonniest girl I’ve ever seen in my life… and I’ve seen a few. There’s more pretty flattery I could say, but you’ll have to marry me to hear it.”

  What if, that day on the moor, she’d had a missing tooth, a wandering eye… or was simply ordinary?

  Had her nose been longer, or pointed… her eyes a wee fraction closer… lips half-a-heartbeat thinner… he might’ve spilled his seed then refused to marry her. He would have gone on with his merry life while she and his unwanted child joined the fate of women like Diorbhail Sinclair.

  Beauty put this babe in her womb. Beauty carried her to this place. Beauty would see to it she remained unscathed by her reckless choice.

  The paths that stretched from the hub of birth, some thorned, some smooth, were fair mischancy. Beauty seemed a flighty, insubstantial thing. Strange to think that, in the end, suffering or joy could be created by the way a woman’s face and body were molded, rather than her ability to love, her loyalty, or her day-to-day efforts to make a worthy life.

  Years of hard work and trying to be good had brought Morrigan sorrow and pain, but beauty had transformed the path to one of warmth and sunlight.

  What if it vanished, this sole ability she possessed? No, she couldn’t call it an ability, for she’d done nothing to achieve it.

  “Why d’you stare at me like that?” Curran traced the frown between her brows. “You can be fierce as an eagle sometimes.”

  He didn’t wait for an explanation. Light and quick, he dropped his hand down and stroked her stomach. “Our son will show before long. I’m scunnered by this waiting.”

  “It isn’t me,” she said, struck by his vehemence. “It’s Aunt Ibby. She insists on a year of mourning.”