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

by Rebecca Lochlann

  “It is,” Hugh said. “Be patient. She’s trying her best too.”

  Curran stopped. “Is she?” he said. “This is her best?”

  “You’re her husband. You took her to wife, in good times and bad. If you love her, you’ll not give up at the first sign of trouble. You’ll protect her, like she deserves.”

  Hugh’s voice was sharper than he’d intended. Too sharp, judging from the way Curran’s head reared and his eyes widened. No matter. The point must be cemented while he had the man’s attention. “Mind, will you, how young and innocent she was when you got her with child— aye, you didn’t think that was still a secret, did you? And her father and brother were not faceless strangers to us but locals, known to nearly everyone here, and, not a year has passed since they both died. Before she could properly mourn or make peace with her loss, you pushed her into marriage and transported her across the country, away from everything she’s ever known. That’s not the least of it, is it? She wasn’t raised to be a lady but a simple laboring woman. This life is unfamiliar, and I have no doubt it’s terrifying. I know she fears shaming you.”

  “So it’s my fault.” Curran wearily rubbed his eyes. “I know it. What I did was unforgivable. But I’ve done everything I can think of to make it right.”

  Hugh stood. “Aye, you have. You’re a good man, Laird. I wish I could tell you what we spoke of today. I know it would ease your worry. But what is said between a priest and a penitent is sacrosanct. So I’ll only ask you to be patient awhile longer.”

  “Douglas beat her. Did she tell you that?” Curran’s pacing resembled an angry carnivore. Hugh half expected to hear a growl.

  Pausing before his wife’s portrait, Curran stared at it then pivoted. “Her back was covered in welts, this wide, from one of his whippings.” He held out his thumb and forefinger. “They were bleeding. She just shrugged. That’s how accustomed she was to it. Eleanor thinks Morrigan has….” He stopped. His teeth gritted and he sucked in a harsh breath. “An injury to her brain, and she said it’s likely incurable. She suspects that’s why Morrigan swoons, and it may be the cause of her nightmares. Now you’re telling me she needed more time to mourn his death? Forgive me, Father, I don’t understand.”

  Remorse flooded Hugh’s throat with bile, but he made himself continue. “He was her father. The only one she had, even if destroyed by madness. Don’t you see she feels responsible? Her nightmares are like pages in a book, telling us the story, if we take the time to read them. Morrigan blames herself for her mother’s death too, and… and Nick’s.” His voice broke as he thought of Douglas’s son, that braw lad with his mother’s enormous blue eyes. He remembered thinking Nicky’s eyes were angelic.

  Rain pelted the leaded windows like otherworldly fingernails.

  “She had nothing to turn to,” Hugh said. “When Douglas died, he left his devils to Morrigan, who knew only his strength, his omnipotence. Some folk ease their pain with prayer, but she couldn’t. And she’s never witnessed love between a man and woman.” The answer exploded, an interior volcano annihilating doubt. “Love, violence, hatred, failure… they’re all the same for Morrigan. That’s all she knows.” Certainty filled his heart. “Don’t you see? It’s as clear to me as this vase.” Prisms flashed through the crystal as he picked it up.

  “No, I don’t.” But Curran’s voice slowed like he did see, too well, though he didn’t want to.

  Hugh set the vase down. “Let me speak to Beatrice. She’s the only one left alive who knows everything. She’ll understand what drove Douglas.”

  “The harpy. She won’t help you.”

  “Let me try. And I beg you, don’t disown your marriage. Didn’t Browning say:

  “Truth, that’s brighter than gem,

  Trust, that’s purer than pearl,

  Brightest truth, purest trust in the universe—

  All were for me

  In the kiss of one girl.”

  “That sounds aye secular, Father.” A smile played faintly on the young laird’s face. “What would the bishop say if he heard you quote that?”

  “He is far away in Inverness, and I’ve a weakness for poetry.” Hugh returned the smile, happy to see any hint, no matter how slight, of the Curran Ramsay he knew and loved.

  Without hesitation, Curran replied, “Then you’ll mind what Burns said:

  “Their tricks an’ craft hae put me daft,

  They’ve taen me in an’ a’ that.

  But clear your decks, and here’s—‘The Sex!’

  I like the jads for a’ that.”

  Hugh grinned.

  So did Curran, though he tried not to. Then he called Fionna and asked her to fetch Beatrice. “I’ll leave you,” he said. “For she’ll never say a word with me here.”

  “Thank you Curran.” Hugh settled himself to wait, enjoying a fresh surge of confidence. Only this morning, he’d mourned his uneventful, unproductive life. Now he felt certain he could serve once more.

  But Beatrice refused to share her secrets. He called upon her love, if she had any. “You know why Douglas acted as he did.” He smashed his fist against the table, causing knickknacks to jump and jangle in fragile protest. “Tell me. You do want to see your niece happy, don’t you?”

  Her lips whitened and her eyes turned black, hard and impenetrable as stones.

  Hugh’s head was throbbing again. He tried to hide it, to level Beatrice with a calm, commanding regard, but sweat broke out in his armpits. He kept thinking of those terrible days after Glenelg burned. They’d never truly faded into the past. They lived on, warping and molding everyone’s lives.

  “You know,” Hugh muttered as he pressed the heels of his hands against his eyelids. “You know—”

  “I do know.” Beatrice stared him down. “I know many things. Like how little you did after the clearings. You in your cozy cottage, us in the snow.”

  Hatred so feral sprang from her face it left him speechless. Her presence worked on him like a rope cinched around his throat. Wrinkled, vindictive woman. Everyone knew that Randall Benedict’s hired men had come to his home in the middle of the night with torches. They had heard about him taking in two of the cleared villagers, and made it clear that if he did it again, they would tie him to his bed and burn his manse and church around his ears.

  “And it was quite plain what you were thinking every time you looked at Hannah,” she added, as emotionless as a viper.

  He felt the blood drain out of his head like a blade had sliced his jugular. He stuttered something and left her as swiftly as he would run from a demon.

  Not until he’d made it halfway home did the trembling subside. Beatrice’s face, stony with old hate, kept materializing. I know many things. Many things.

  He mopped his forehead with his handkerchief, feeling as though he’d tangled with the Devil. Somehow, perceptive Beatrice had discerned his darkest secret… that those many years ago, he, too, had fallen in love with her sister. He was sure he’d kept it hidden in some shamed part of his heart, but maybe Beatrice had a witchy way of seeing.

  Mea culpa, he thought, as he’d done hundreds of times when Hannah walked down the main road through Glenelg, leaving every male she passed wrecked and filled with lustful fantasies.

  Lost in his guilty thoughts, Hugh belatedly realized his horse had strayed off the track in search of good grazing.

  No matter how furiously he blinked, everything remained a blur. He didn’t know where he was. Was that the sound of water flowing? Was it still raining? He felt as though he was rising into the air above his body.

  Morrigan’s voice echoed through his head. Your church teaches that women are products of the Devil. That we lead men away from God, and that we caused Christ to be crucified.

  He shuddered. “Forgive us.”

  Woman is an imperfect male, begotten because her father was ill or in a state of sin. Women are not worthy of life. You are the first deserter of the divine law.

  Why did he think of these things now? Th
ey were ancient teachings, mostly forgotten.

  Blinding pain shot through his head. He moaned.

  Then he heard another voice, an unfamiliar voice.

  I have sent you a miracle, and you have failed her. You and yours will always fail, until you return me.

  He heard grass rustling, and again, the murmur of flowing water. Where was his gig?

  A hand clasped his. A beautiful face swam into his eyesight, long auburn hair, eyes luminous with tears. Hannah, it’s you, he wanted to say, but he couldn’t speak.

  His attention was drawn from that celestial face by movement in the sky. An eagle was circling, coming lower, and lower still. Its beak parted, and it released a shrill, cold cry.

  Oh, God.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  AGNES AND MALCOLM reported Father Drummond’s disappearance. A tearful Agnes said he’d never returned to the rectory after visiting Kilgarry, and she was worried half to death. A search party was formed.

  Padraig Urquhart found him, hidden in long grass near the river, halfway to Dùn Teilbh. Something— birds maybe, had taken his eyes and pecked holes in his cheeks. Several of his fingers were torn off.

  A messenger was dispatched to notify his bishop, and three priests swiftly converged. Dismissing the villagers’ protests, two of the priests removed the body to Dumfries, where Father Drummond’s brother lived. The third began an investigation. Days were spent poring through his papers and books. Much of it was packed up and taken away.

  Folk from every parish up and down the coast came to mourn him at a memorial service arranged by the Laird of Eilginn and his wife.

  * * * *

  Time spent with Olivia brought welcome peace. Morrigan told herself she could endure anything as long as she could be with her child.

  She hadn’t realized how thoroughly Father Drummond had knitted himself into her heart until she had to face the fact that she would never speak to him again. Remembering his benevolent smile and twinkling eyes, his unruly white shock of hair, his firm, warm handshake, was agonizing. Knowing animals had feasted upon his corpse sickened her. It seemed so disrespectful to a man who had spent his life helping others.

  Life returned to a semblance of normalcy, though an invisible chasm remained, formed of questions, mystery, and the unexpected, harrowing loss of a beloved member of their parish.

  Why had he gone to see Curran that day? She was too afraid to ask, especially as several times she caught her husband watching her, his gaze somber. Had the priest revealed what she’d told him? Weren’t they required to keep confidences a secret? She thought so, but then, what did she really know?

  As the days passed and Curran said nothing, her tense muscles relaxed. Still, her last encounter with Hugh weighed upon her. She wished she hadn’t burdened him on his final day of life.

  Adultery is a fearful sin. It will destroy your family. You’ll never see your child again.

  She would honor him by living in a way that would make him proud.

  Father Drummond had told her about the Celtic war-goddess, Morrígu. Tears had filled his eyes when he’d spoken of Hannah. More than anyone else, he had shown a willingness to speak to her about the past.

  I’ll never see Mackinnon again, she promised him as she carried Olivia through gardens bursting with blooms. Above them, Kilgarry’s central keep appeared to move through the heavens like a great ship, its sails formed of puffy white bannocks in an azure sky.

  Kyle had transferred hollyhocks from the hothouse to the entry into the hedge maze. Periwinkles and violets filled the shady spots with color. By the garden’s sun-warmed wall, lilac greened and budded. A Scotch Argus fluttered, searching for nectar, while bumblebees hummed from flower to flower. Kilgarry’s gardener, swiping one dirty hand across his brow and leaning on his shovel, told Morrigan he couldn’t recall a finer spring, and pointed out where he planned to start a batch of Scottish flame flowers.

  Lustrous as alabaster, rosy as the interior of a conch shell, Olivia eclipsed it all.

  Morrigan observed the changing color and light from a wicker bench in the gazebo. On one side of the path, a marble lion stretched out a paw as if to touch the unicorn on the other side, which dismissively polished its horn against its rump. At the end of the graveled walk, a naked goddess held an amphora from which water flowed.

  Had the unicorn just glanced at the lion? Did the goddess’s mouth turn up in a sly smile? Morrigan was beguiled into fantasy.

  Kyle broke into song as he worked.

  “Ae fond kiss, and then we sever

  Ae farewell, alas forever.”

  She found peace within Kilgarry’s gardens.

  “This will be yours someday,” she told her daughter. Olivia would have this legacy, the security provided by Curran’s wealth. It would be enough.

  Washed in sunlight and latticework shadows, she spent every afternoon reading. In some ways, she found a kindred spirit in Emma Bovary. But the woman’s stubborn selfishness enraged her and the ending offered no hope.

  When she’d first met Curran, he’d asked what she would do with freedom. Hadn’t she said she would never marry? Or that she’d not be a man’s possession? The exact memory escaped her. But she was married, and from the instant Olivia began forming inside her, she’d lost any possibility of independence, insubstantial though it had been. Olivia stole Morrigan’s longed-for emancipation more completely than any man ever could.

  Morrigan could not be sorry for it. She would give her freedom and more, if it brought Olivia happiness.

  She would do anything for this child. She’d told Father Drummond as much. Protecting a child was not wrong, yet Morrigan knew her fierceness wasn’t shared by all women. Females were expected to be delicate and helpless. They were supposed to swoon at the sight of blood and shrink from harming any living thing. Men must perform the crude work of violence so that women could remain pure ideals.

  Yet she had to admit Glenelg had introduced her to a whole new breed, an elite corps of naturally strong and practical women. There simply was no room or time to be anything else. These women were the descendants of Scatach and Aife. She suspected every one of them would flay the skin from any fool who might threaten their offspring.

  While the babe cooed and played with her fingers, her mother spun fantasies. She saw herself arrayed in trousers, top boots, and rolled up sleeves, dredging ancient civilizations from sand and soil. Curran had mentioned an ongoing excavation for the city of Troy, making her wonder what it would be like to turn a spade of dirt and find a gold bracelet or bit of pottery thousands of years old. How would it be, to earn her own livelihood, to not be dependent on anyone? She could hardly imagine. It was men’s domain, and they kept selfish possession of it.

  Kyle sang mournfully.

  “Had we ne’er loved so blindly,

  Never met— or never parted—

  We had ne’er been broken-hearted.”

  During the thick soft nights of May, her husband made love to her. He could still compel a fiery response, though she sometimes wept after, silently.

  If she had to, she would hang her existence upon self-control for the next fifty years. If it made Olivia and Curran happy, then all would be well.

  * * * *

  But for Tess’s inadvertent slip, Morrigan would never have known Mackinnon had vanished again.

  She was in the garden, reading a letter from Louis Stevenson. He told her he was pondering the idea of writing a book of poems for children. Inspired by what she’d told him about Nicky and the wind, he’d been playing with a wind poem of his own in a child’s viewpoint.

  “Mistress?”

  It was Tess, holding a thick warm plaid. While Morrigan had been reading, the skies had grown heavy, dark, and chilly. She tucked the blanket around Morrigan’s shoulders and, glancing at the heavens, said, “I hope Aodhàn Mackinnon finds his way home before it starts to rain.”

  “Has he been gone?”

  “One of his usual disappearances. It does ups
et Seaghan though, and that upsets my mother. Seaghan won’t stop searching, no matter how many times he does this, and no matter how miserable the weather.”

  “Is anyone helping?”

  Tess shrugged and Morrigan’s resolve disintegrated. “I’m just sitting here. I’ll lend a hand,” she said.

  She nursed Olivia, saying nothing of her plan to Diorbhail, dressed warmly, and went to the stables. “Would you saddle Stoirmeil for me?” she asked Logan as she drew on her gloves. When he had, she sent the mare from the courtyard in a clattering gallop.

  I’m not doing anything wrong, she reassured herself, tapping the reins against her mare’s shoulder. She knew she should have said something to Curran, but he would have argued, maybe refused to let her go. Still, he’d been in his study. She’d crept by the door without saying a word. Shame told her she should have done things differently.

  “I owe him this,” she said, remembering how Mackinnon had searched for her when she was missing, long into the night, how he’d carried her to spare her ankle.

  She searched along the coast, then at the cave clearing where they’d last met. She dismounted and walked the path in the Eilanreach, reliving the night of fog, and how his brief, bright elation was ruined by Curran’s appearance.

  The skies spattered and the wind rose. When she caught up to Seaghan, he seemed pleased and thanked her, but insisted if it started to rain in earnest, she must promise to stop immediately and come to his blackhouse for tea. About Aodhàn, he tried to sound nonchalant. He’ll return, the brawny fisherman said, when he’s good and ready, but his eyes said, will he?

  Morrigan wondered too. Had he decided to go away for her sake and Curran’s? Could he dredge up that kind of selflessness?

  Seaghan escorted Morrigan to Kilgarry at sunset, and his gratitude deflected Curran’s irritation. The next afternoon, Violet brought Morrigan a note. He came back on his own after midnight, it said.

  Why did he keep doing this? Morrigan’s worry turned to anger. She sent Violet to the stables with the order to saddle her mare again and once she assured herself that Olivia wouldn’t need her for a while, whipped the horse and raced from the courtyard as though chased by a moaning bean-sìth.