Blood Rite (Maggie Devereaux Book 2)

by Stephen Penner

  “A paramilitary force of loyalist Scots set up by the English crown after the Second Jacobite Rebellion to quell what Highlander foment might have survived the brutal repression that followed the rebels’ defeat at the Battle of Culloden?”

  “Er.” He blinked at her. “Right.”

  “Come on,” she tugged at his arm. “Let’s settle into our room.”

  “Suite,” he corrected.

  Maggie smiled up at him, her eyes twinkling. “Why, thank you, Iain. Nice of you to say so.”

  And before he could reply, she pulled him up the staircase toward their waiting accommodations.

  ***

  The room was very nice. Spacious, well decorated, comfortable, with a nice view of the grounds and its own bathroom. Iain didn’t pay much attention to all that though. His mind was fixated on one little detail.

  “There’s two bedrooms,” he observed. A suite.

  “Er, right,” Maggie replied uncomfortably. “It was, um, all they had left?”

  Iain narrowed his eyes at her, uncertain. He was getting to know her pretty well.

  She pressed on. “Yup, all they had left. But it’s probably just as well. I’ve, well, I’ve been having nightmares lately—nothing too terrible, don’t worry—but, you know, this way, I won’t keep you awake.”

  He stepped over and grasped her arms. His eyes seemed especially blue as he looked down at her. “I don’t think I’d mind being kept awake by you.”

  Maggie felt her face flush red. She suppressed a nervous giggle. “Er, right. Um, well, we’ll just see how that turns out, eh?” She pulled away and began unpacking her bags, trying to ignore his stare on her back.

  She couldn’t tell him the truth. She was going to need an opportunity to sneak out that night after Iain had fallen asleep. Separate rooms would have been too obvious. And too cold. And just no fun at all. But separate bedrooms in the same suite would be good enough. She had considered perhaps trying to cast some sort of sleeping spell on him, but there was no such spell in her Dark Book; she would have been crafting, which was tantamount to playing with fire. One little syllable off and she might have ended up with the male equivalent to Sleeping Beauty or Snow White. And she doubted Iain would appreciate a big wet one from Prince William.

  She also didn’t want to inflict the nightmares on him. They had been the worst after she’d cast the translation spell on herself. Using the magic on herself was one thing. Using it on another, a friend, a boyfriend—she blushed again at the thought—well, that was quite another.

  Having filled the small dresser with her clothes and toiletries she turned to Iain, who had not even unzipped his bag, let alone taken it into the other bedroom.

  “Welp,” she announced with her hands on her hips. “Shall we tour the grounds?”

  Iain sighed, then tossed his bag toward the other bed chamber. “Sure.”

  ***

  The clouds were beginning to roll in. Maggie and Iain walked across the castle grounds chatting and glancing skyward, wondering whether they would make it back before the rain started. They were almost to their destination, although Iain didn’t know it. He thought they were wandering more or less aimlessly, letting themselves be drawn by the next interesting flower, garden, pathway. Maggie, on the other hand, was using the flowers, gardens and pathways to lead them to the kirk. They stepped through a row of bushes and found the stone church waiting at the end of their path.

  “Oh look!” Maggie pointed in feigned surprise. “It’s the little kirk we found last time I was here. Come on, I want to show you something.”

  She did in fact want to show him something. She also wanted to confirm the location of the kirk and whether it was still boarded up. It was indeed still boarded shut and Maggie made sure to study the doorway and windows as they walked past it into the small cemetery beyond.

  “This,” she said as they reached a weathered old grave marker of particular significance, “is Brìghde Innes’ headstone.”

  “Oh aye?” Iain was genuinely impressed. “Your great-times-whatever-grandmother? Well, that’s grand. Did you find it last time you were here?”

  “Yeah, it was pretty exciting.” She looked up at him, took his hand, then looked down again at the stone. “And, well, I wanted you to see it.”

  Iain smiled but didn’t reply immediately. Instead, he leaned forward and squinted at the gravestone. “So what does it say?” It was in Latin.

  “Er,” Maggie too squinted at the worn etchings on the centuries old marble, “it says: ‘Brìghde Innes Gordon. Born the fourteenth of April, 1600. Died the seventh of August, 1652. Wife of Alexander. Mother of Margaret. Healer of All.’”

  “A healer,” Iain repeated. “Just like it says on the portrait I got you.”

  Maggie smiled at the memory of that heartfelt gift. “Yeah, just like that.” She was starting to feel bad for, if not deceiving him, at least not informing him fully either. “Come over here, there’s another one.”

  This next gravestone held the dubious distinction of being the only one standing outside the cemetery’s fence. The rail around the graveyard ran between the graves of James Wilkie and Margaret NicInnes Wilkie. Mrs. Wilkie was outside the cemetery.

  “That,” Maggie said, pointing to the banished grave marker, “is where Brìghde’s daughter Margaret is buried.”

  “Outside the church grounds?” Iain asked with raised eyebrow.

  “You noticed that did you?” An embarrassed grin accompanied Maggie’s question.

  “A bit hard to notice. And pray, what does her gravestone say?”

  Maggie squinted again, but she knew what this one said. It was hard to forget. “Er, it says: ‘Margaret NicInnes Wilkie. Wife and Mother. Born the 18th of January, 1620. Burned the 22nd day of December, 1644.’”

  “Burned?!” Iain’s startled voice carried across the silent graveyard. “She was a witch?”

  Maggie was offended. “Of course she wasn’t a witch!” she retorted automatically. “There’s no such thing as witches.” Then she remembered her Dark Book. “I mean, you know, not really. But they must have thought she was one.”

  “Well, that seems rather unfair,” Iain offered, “to put it mildly.” He paused. “Ever notice they never seemed used to burn men as witches?”

  “Pretty suspicious,” Maggie agreed. “I figure it means one of two things.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Either the men used it as an excuse to get rid of the uppity women they didn’t like.”

  “Or?”

  “Or,” Maggie smiled up at him, “the men were too stupid to figure out the magic.”

  Iain laughed at this even as the first raindrops started to fall.

  “Come on,” Maggie tugged again at his arm. “Let’s get back to the hotel before it really starts to rain.”

  And Iain gladly took her hand as they turned back toward the castle.

  ***

  The suite also had a fireplace. Maggie hadn’t expected to use it in July, but the rain had brought with it a cold front and the temperature had dropped noticeably by the time they’d finished dinner. The roaring fire was cozy. And unrelentingly romantic.

  There was a couch in front of the fire and Iain and Maggie had cuddled up together in front of the dancing flames. A half an hour later Maggie knew they’d better stop or they wouldn’t be using separate bedrooms that night. It was with the utmost reluctance that she resorted to ‘the tap.’

  At first Iain didn’t realize what the tap on his shoulder meant, but then he regained his senses and gazed down at Maggie.

  “What is it?” he whispered. “Is there something wrong?”

  “Um.” Oh, she really didn’t want to say this, but the whole point of the trip had been to sneak out that night. She’d wanted Iain along for companionship, and a ride. She hadn’t anticipated simply wanting him. “I— I think we’d better stop.”

  Iain’s eyes widened in incomprehension, then disappointment, then concern. “Why? Did I do somethin
g wrong?”

  “No, no,” Maggie quickly assured him. “No, it’s not you. It’s me.”

  “You?” He didn’t understand.

  “Um, yeah.” Think, Devereaux. “Er, it’s a female thing,” she tried.

  Confusion spread across Iain’s countenance, but then he looked down the length of her body and thought he understood. “You mean…?”

  Maggie grimaced. “Yeah. That time of the month,” she lied. “Sorry.”

  Iain considered this for a moment, then rolled over and propped himself up next to her. “Oh, don’t be sorry. You can’t help that. I understand.” His heaving chest told her that his mind understood, but his body was less certain.

  “I’m really sorry, Iain.” She touched his face even as she felt the squeeze on her own heart, for rejecting him—and for lying to him. “I—”

  “Hush.” He placed his hand over hers on his cheek. “I told you I understand, and I do. I’m here to be with you, not just to, well, not just to ‘be with you.’ you understand?”

  “I do.” And she felt horrible for it. Then she said what felt like the first honest statement to him in a long time. “Thank you, Iain.”

  He smiled, but didn’t say anything. He contented himself to squeeze her hand and kiss it gently before pressing it back against his cheek.

  ***

  It hadn’t taken much convincing to ensure Iain took the inside bedroom. In addition to the fact that she had seized the dresser next to the bed in the main chamber, she had explained that she would be getting up repeatedly throughout the night to use the toilet—more alleged ‘female stuff’—and would thus likely wake him up as she traipsed past his bed toward the bathroom every hour or so. It had been a full day, he had driven, and he was eager for some uninterrupted sleep.

  One o’clock. She figured that was a safe time. By then he would not only have fallen asleep, but should be sleeping deeply enough that the sound of the door closing behind her wouldn’t wake him. She threw back the covers, slid from the bed and quickly pulled on the clothes she’d brought: a black sweater, dark jeans and black shoes. Then she swung the Dark Book-filled backpack over her shoulders and slipped out the door and into the night.

  ***

  The rain was letting up, but there was still a steady drizzle which spotted her glasses. Her flashlight illuminated her wet way and in a matter of some minutes she found herself back at the small stone kirk.

  The windows had each been covered with a single large plank of wood, as if taken from the side of a crate. The front door—and near as she could tell, there was no back door—was blocked by several planks which had been nailed to the wooden door frame. She set her flashlight on the ground, its beam lighting up the raindrops falling next to the door, and grabbed onto the top board.

  It barely moved on her first tug. But it did move a little. The nails had been pounded in some time ago and apparently never replaced. Years of the wooden planks swelling and shrinking with the seasons had loosened them from their moorings. She pulled again and the top board gave way, sending her reeling backward across the slippery stone path which led to the kirk’s entrance. Emboldened, she repeated the feat with the four remaining boards and then, her hands stinging from the work, she pushed open the church’s oak door, its rusty hinges groaning against their unexpected and unauthorized call to duty. She picked up her flashlight and stepped inside.

  The flashlight’s beam circled the interior of the church, illuminating in three foot circles the desolate interior of a Highland church put into disuse nearly a century before. The pews were gone—firewood, Maggie supposed, or some other use—leaving a cold stone floor stained from decades of dirt and weather seeping through the planks on the windows and doors. What stained glass as there had once been was long since shattered, the occasional small dark shard sticking out in front of the same wooden planks. Cobwebs filled the corners of the chapel and draped down from the beamed ceiling in sheets, a macabre veil pulled across the face of the ancient kirk. And the altar—the altar was abandoned, an empty stone stage at the far end of the empty stone church, the only sign of its once holy function being the discoloration in the stone floor where the offering table had once stood.

  Maggie closed the door behind her and ventured inside, suddenly unsure of exactly what it was she was seeking. In her dream, Brìghde’s grave marker had been in the floor of the church, but not only were there no such plaques imbedded into the stone blocks of the kirk’s floor, but she knew full well that Brìghde’s gravestone was outside in the kirkyard cemetery. So what was she looking for?

  The only thing of interest were a few tarnished metal plaques scattered unevenly across the kirk’s walls, between and beneath the empty window frames. She cautiously circled the perimeter of the church scrutinizing the plaques. The nearest honored the Gordons who had fought and died in the 1745 Jacobite rebellion against England. She stepped along the dirty, cobwebby wall to the next plaque. It commemorated the birth of a William Robert Gordon in 1731—and the death of his mother in childbirth. And so it went until Maggie reached the seventh of approximately ten such plaques. It was on the opposite wall from where she’d started and about halfway back toward the door. This tarnished plaque commemorated the marriage of one Alexander Malcolm James Gordon to one Brìghde Innes in A.D. 1619. Maggie knew this was it. But she didn’t know what to do next. Remembering the dream, she looked down.

  She was standing on one of the square stones which comprised the floor of the kirk. It was a bit over two feet square, as they all were, and rounded at the edges to create a rut between the stones. Unsure what else to try, she shifted her weight on the stone, first to one side then the other. The stone offered a wobble—slight to be sure, but there just the same.

  She set the flashlight aside, pointing back at her and the floorstone by which she knelt down. She ran her fingers along the edge but there wasn’t any room the get her fingers under the stone for leverage. She looked around for something akin to a crow bar, but saw nothing in the dim recesses of the empty chapel. Then she remembered the one tool she’d brought with her: the Dark Book resting heavily on her back. Without removing the backpack, she raised her hands over the floorstone and recited the levitation spell.

  The stone scraped reluctantly from its moorings as Maggie demanded it raise itself into the air. Once it was several inches airborne, she gestured it heavily to the side and set it to rest with a hollow clunk on its stone neighbor.

  Looking beneath where the floorstone had been, Maggie found what she’d come for. The stone had served as the lid to a shallow stone capsule. Inside the capsule was a metal box. And inside the metal box was the small leather-bound journal from her dream. She opened it up and failed utterly to read it.

  It was gibberish. Handwritten in black ink, the penmanship was exquisite, but the words made no sense whatsoever. She ran through her available armory of languages: English, Scottish Gaelic, Irish Gaelic, German, Latin, French. Nothing. She was considering attempting the translation spell again when she noticed something at the same time she remembered something.

  She noticed that when a paragraph ended, the last line of the stanza would jut out from the right margin to stop halfway toward the left margin, rather than vice versa as one might expect. And she remembered that Leonardo da Vinci had written his journals backwards lest they fall into the wrong hands and he be accused of witchcraft. She looked down again at the journal.

  It was in Scottish Gaelic. And its author had written it backwards.

  The first line was: ‘mag edaifh san nàf a maga saloè na liehb ug hboìrgs, sennI edghìrB gai ahtal-rahbael na oes-na e S.’ ‘This is the journal of Brìghde Innes, kept that my knowledge might survive me.’

  Maggie sat down on the cold, dirty floor and began to read.

  44. Brìghde Innes’ Diary

  Monday, 22 December, A.D. 1645.

  It was one year ago today that Margaret was burned as a witch. The time for mourning is now past. The time for action is now here. We
must ensure nothing like this ever happens again. I shall send out coded missives calling together the coven. We shall meet in two moons here at Park. We must unite to eradicate the darkness which consumed my daughter lest someone else’s daughter also be consumed in flame. We carry the torch of the Shining Folk, but we must shine without burning.

  ***

  Thursday, 18 January, A.D. 1646.

  Margaret would have been twenty-six today. I spoke with mother. She said the magic feels weaker somehow. I do not feel it myself. Still, I shall be sure to raise the topic with my sisters next month.

  ***

  Tuesday, 26 February, A.D. 1646.

  The meeting went well. We are united in purpose. We shall use our resources and our abilities to battle the dark magic and strengthen the light magic. The others reported that they felt no weakening of the light magic. All agreed to keep watch for any signs of such weakening.

  ***

  Saturday, 29 May, A.D. 1646.

  I visited with Rhonwyn ab-Morgan today. She was in Inverness with her husband on business. She convinced him to stop at Park on their way back south. She asked how I was doing since Margaret’s death. I told her what I could. I also told her of mother’s concerns. She said she thought she felt it too, but was uncertain. She spoke of a Welsh prophecy in which the magic eventually disappears. She stated her belief that the disappearance of the magic was connected to the phrase ‘The Celtic Continent.’ It was agreed that she would return in the summer with details. I shall reconvene the coven for then.

  ***

  Monday, 4 June, A.D. 1646.

  I spoke with Catherine today. She suggested calling for envoys from the other Celtic lands—‘our sisters abroad’ she called them—to see if they know anything of this prophecy. It was agreed, but we shall forego an envoy from Brittany just now given that the prophecy threatens to come to pass on ‘The Celtic Continent.’

  ***

  Friday, 1 August, A.D. 1646.

  The coven was convened today. Ambassadors were also present from Wales, Cornwall, Ireland and Man. Rhonwyn brought word of the prophecy. If it is true, then the magic shall eventually abandon the Celts, and we shall be helpless against our enemies. It was resolved: our mission is now two-fold. We shall contain and destroy the dark magic even as we protect and preserve the light. As the prophecy is not meant to come to pass until centuries hence, a blood oath was taken. Each of us shall pass our charge, mother to daughter, as long as necessary. I shall pass mine to Margaret’s daughter, Catrìona, when she is old enough to understand. The coven shall meet every seven years, or more often as is necessary to track our progress. I can only hope the day never comes where the dark arts of blood and death have survived while the light arts of soul and healing have perished.