Highlander Warrior

by Rebecca Preston

  “I will. Sorry, love. You get some rest. I’ll come in and check on you in the morning, okay?”

  “Mm. Night, Cora.”

  “Goodnight — Maeve,” she corrected herself, spying a servant nearby. But over her shoulder, she mouthed ‘Audrina’.

  Of course, she’d completely forgotten to ask where she might find Mary at this time of night. The castle was bustling, as it always seemed to be, but there was a different energy now — she realized this must be the mood in the air when dinner was being prepared. It felt strange to realize that she’d not even been there a full twenty-four hours. It was already beginning to feel like home, like she’d been there much longer than just a day. San Francisco was clear in her memory, but distant. That scared her, just a little. It was uncomfortable to think of her memories just…fading away, like old photographs. Ephemeral. Things always felt so real when you were there with your hands on them. But memory was as weak and fragile as paper, and as easily destroyed or manipulated.

  Lost in these rather somber thoughts, Cora’s nose took over, and soon enough led her to the dining hall. The kitchens were clearly in full swing, with servants bustling back and forth carrying jugs of drink and great plates heaped high with meat. Well, she was a working member of the household now, wasn’t she? It wouldn’t do to stand on ceremony. Cora took the nearest free seat at the table she could find and began helping herself to an enormous side of what she guessed was roast pork.

  “The men went huntin’ today,” a small bright voice piped up beside her. “This is the great boar they caught! Ten feet long ‘e was, with tusks as long as a man’s arm and as sharp as great swords!”

  “Hello, Donal.” Cora grinned at the little boy, then gestured for him to continue with his story. It seemed he’d been allowed to go along with a hunting party that afternoon — something his mother had only recently lifted a fairly substantial ban on. That was (if Donal was to be believed) to do with how brave and fierce he was, which made the grown men feel ashamed that a boy of nine and three quarters was a better hunter than them. Cora, reading between the lines, figured that it had to do with the boy’s ill health — Ian had mentioned a series of long illnesses that the lad had thankfully seemed to stop succumbing to in recent years. Perhaps that had something to do with a certain healer that had joined the castle staff in that time, Cora thought smugly to herself, feeling proud of her friend for making such a difference in the lives of these people.

  “Did you meet your new baby niece and nephew yet?”

  “Not yet,” Donal groaned. “Mam says I’ve got to wait and be patient like a good uncle. But I need to start imparting my wisdom onto them! Every single day I learn new things, what if I forget something because Mam won’t let me near the bairns?”

  His honest outrage was deeply comical, and Cora found herself hiding her laughter in great big bites of pork. The wild boar had been expertly roasted, and when the meal was over (Donal having already sprinted off to some bold new adventure, his meal only half wolfed down) she found her way into the kitchen. Just as she’d thought — Margaret presiding.

  “That was the best roast pork I’ve ever had in my life,” she told her quietly.

  Margaret smiled — a surprising gesture that transformed her stern face. “Kind of you to say, ma’am.”

  “Would you know where the Lady MacClaran can be found? I wanted to thank her for her hospitality.”

  Margaret nodded to something behind her, then turned back to her stove. Cora followed the gesture to find Mary MacClaran, resplendent in a simple but elegant gown, her eyes dark and shadowed. “You will always be welcome in this house,” she said lightly, but there was an unusual stress on the word ‘this’ that made Cora frown at the compliment. “Shall we talk?”

  “Please.”

  Mary led her through the castle to a small, unused room toward the south wall. There was not much more than a few chairs in it, and no fire burning in the grate. Nevertheless, Mary lit one of the torches and settled in a chair, gesturing wordlessly for Cora to take the one opposite. She did so, nervously smoothing the fabric of the dress that covered her knees. The flickering of the torchlight brought out strange shadows that danced across Mary’s worn, though beautiful, face. And though Cora was frightened, she had promised Audrina that she would follow this line of inquiry down to its result, as unpleasant as that result may be. No sense in being coy about it. If Cora had a problem, she faced it head-on.

  “Mary, I want to know more about Bellina. I can’t tell you if I share a face with her the way the woman I know as Audrina does with Maeve — I don’t know myself. All I know is that I come from the same future world as your daughter-in-law does, and I was brought back here the same way that she was. Whether that makes the connection more likely —”

  Mary nodded. “I was afraid of that. When I realized that you weren’t her —” Her face twisted and her hands clenched a little on the necklace Cora suddenly realized she was clutching between her fingers like a lifeline. “I knew. That was when I knew for certain she was dead.”

  “I’m sorry,” Cora said quietly, reaching out unconsciously to touch Mary’s hand — but she flinched away as though from something unclean, and the look on her face in that moment made Cora recoil in fear and shame. “She was your cousin?” she prompted, to break the awful tension that that brief interaction had caused.

  “Yes. A distant relative, from Italy originally — dark hair, pale skin…well, you’d know all about it, wouldn’t you? You see her face every time you look in a mirror. Truly, the spitting image.” Mary gazed at her face openly for what felt like a full minute, lost in her remembrance.

  “Please,” Cora said finally, trying to speak as gently as she could to a woman who was clearly going through a lot. “I need to know more about her. Audrina — Maeve was saying she learned about her ancestor through dreams, and began to share her memories. Maybe if I learn a little more about Bellina from you, I’ll start having similar dreams —”

  Mary’s face tightened. “I’m not sure that’s such a good idea, child. There are things — there are things one shouldn’t ask questions about. That’s all.”

  “Like what? What was it that happened? I know she was tried as a heretic — but what then? What was it about her that made them —”

  “That’s enough,” Mary murmured, but she sounded like she was talking to herself and not to Cora. “That’s quite enough. Oh, Lord, why did you send this poor girl to us? What has she done to deserve such a trial by fire?”

  “Mary? What do you mean?”

  “All it would take would be one.” Mary turned her green eyes back to Cora, and there was nothing but dread in them. It was as though the stately woman was looking straight through her to some terrible fate beyond. “Just one of the wrong people to lay eyes on your face, and all would be lost. Her enemies would be your enemies — nobody would believe you’re not one and the same... Oh, Bellina, I wish I could have been there. I hope —” A tear rolled down her cheek and her mouth twisted to the side. “God help me, I pray she went quickly.”

  Cora took Mary’s hand again, and this time the woman didn’t resist, so lost she was to her own grief. She stayed with her for a long time, stroking her hand over and over, murmuring soothing, wordless things until Mary was calm. The woman took a great, shuddering breath and then released it — and like a cloud passing over the sun, her expression cleared again. No, not like a cloud clearing, Cora realized — this was more like watching a knight put his armor back on after bandaging a wound.

  “You’re a brave woman, Lady MacClaran,” she said, and she meant it. To be caught in the midst of a war like the one between the Scottish and the English…to try to run a household in the face of Inquisitions, of family and loved ones dying and going missing, to have a son like Donal who seemed determined to catch his death some way or another — this woman led a life that was mostly fear and had little power to do anything about it.

  “That’s too kind of you.” Mary deflected
the compliment like an expert, then rose resolutely to her feet. “I apologize for losing my composure. The resemblance you bear my cousin — it stirred up some memories.”

  “Of course,” Cora said gently, sensing that the conversation was over for now. “I hope you’ll get some rest.”

  Mary smiled, a worn smile. “With two newborns in the castle? Not likely. But thank you.”

  Cora watched her go, admiration mingling with frustration. She’d almost said so many intriguing things! Something about an Inquisition — and about Bellina’s enemies becoming her enemies too…she made a mental note to get hold of some kind of writing implement to keep track of this information. Surely there was some kind of medieval pen she could use…they certainly had charcoal, as the drawings that were scattered around Audrina’s chambers attested.

  This train of thought was interrupted by a yawn that nearly took the roof off the castle. Cora chuckled to herself. She’d spent the whole day telling other people to get some rest — it was high time she took her own advice. She ambled up the stairs at an easy pace, nodding to the servants she met as she went — it was amazing what a difference a day had made to her comfort in this strange old stone building. It almost felt like it could be home, one day.

  And it felt even more like that when she stepped into her chambers. A fire had been set in the grate, and a cheery warmth and light bathed the room. There was even a plate of the pastries she’d so enjoyed earlier, fresh and steaming slightly — and a small plate of leftover roast pork beside them. How had Margaret known she was still a little hungry? That woman was a miracle. Smiling to herself, she polished off the beef and the pastries while she warmed her toes by the fire. Yes, this was definitely something she could get used to.

  She hardly remembered climbing into bed — just an overwhelming sense of pleasant exhaustion, bearing her body and soul deeper and deeper into the comforting oblivion of sleep at last.

  Chapter 13

  Cold stone. Metal bars. A dull, stale stirring of air, the kind of air that hadn’t been touched by sunlight in years. A damp smell in the air — a mingling of rot with an awful metallic edge of dried blood. In the distance, the tiny sound of scrabbling paws, vermin scurrying across flesh and bone and stone alike. And lower than that, so close to the edge of hearing that you’d wonder if you were imagining it, a voice crying out in pain, over and over again, unheeded and unheard.

  She was awake, she knew that much. She tried so hard not to be awake — sleep was a blessing from God himself, an escape, a freedom that was no longer available to her waking body. In sleep she knew nothing, saw nothing, felt nothing. Oblivion. It lured her, taunted her, evaded her at every step — thanks to her tormentors. They would not let her sleep.

  And they would not let her die.

  There it came, the crash of her old friend again — pain burned through the side of her face and she cried out. Or rather, her body cried out. She’d long since given up on the idea that anyone would hear her, take pity on her or spare her from this fate. But her body, dumb animal that it was, kept crying. Kept fighting. Kept her here, awake. Kept her here, alive. For another day, another day, another day. All she wanted was for every last drop of blood to abandon her body so that she could finally drop into the kind of sleep nobody would ever wake her from. But every time she thought they’d finally done it — hit too hard, cut too deep, left her too long without food or water — the stupid, wretched traitor that was her body brought her back around.

  The question sounded again — a long time ago, the totally different animal she’d used to be had given the questions numbers, and the animal she was now remembered those numbers out of spite, or chance, or sheer dumb malevolence. This was the third question. It was asked, over and over again, with a downward inflection — as though they knew she wouldn’t answer, couldn’t answer, had tried over and over and over to answer until they’d broken her hands and her teeth and her spirit. Her spirit, oh yes, a thousand times over they’d broken her spirit. She’d thought that would never break, but she had been wrong about so many things. The only thing that hadn’t broken was her body’s will to live. That burned on, like a beacon of futility a hundred feet high.

  The question would be asked, and then there would be pain. For a while, she had experimented with answering the question, but there didn’t seem to be an answer that resulted in less pain, only different pain. One answer brought pain to her hands, one answer brought pain to her feet, one answer brought pain to her mouth. There was no rhythm to it, no pattern — and if there was an answer that brought no pain at all, she hadn’t found it yet.

  At this stage, speaking was agony enough all by itself, so she had renounced that idea. No more words to be spoken. An animal she had been, a thousand years ago, used to speak and laugh and sing. Now the implements of those fanciful hobbies were just so much wet red meat that sat in her mouth like slugs. Oozing. Always oozing that acrid tang of metal, blood running down the back of her throat and pooling in her empty stomach until it weighed heavily enough to make her vomit it back up. Healing didn’t seem to be in her repertoire of tricks any more than speaking did, these days.

  The pain came again, an old enemy who was never the same. She did not allow herself to wish for death, because wishing for anything made her more aware of its absence. She may as well wish for no pain, or a soft bed, or a hearty meal — it would only cause her more pain, but this was the kind she inflicted on herself. Pain only from her tormentors that was the only principle she had left, here in this cold place that was not Hell because Hell was a place away from God and all these men spoke of was God. God’s grace. God’s light. Once upon a time, she had known what these words represented. They had been connected in her heart like lights, like beacons. They had brought her a thing called joy, which was something that the animal she used to be felt regularly.

  Oh yes, God. God was here with her. She knew this as a truth, in the way that she knew her hands were bound behind her, in the way she knew that the voice in her ears belonged to the man who was hitting her, in the way she knew that she had six toes left of her original ten. These were facts, simple facts. Not good or bad. Nothing in this place could be good or bad, because if you began to think of things as good or bad then you began to suffer. Whether she was suffering was a question she chose not to ask. Asking questions, even of herself, was another thing that brought the pain too close to the surface of her consciousness to be borne — and she had to bear it. There was no choice but to bear it. It was bear it or die, and her body had already made it clear that it wasn’t going to die. Not just yet.

  If she wondered anything — and she wondered with extreme caution, she wondered about things the way a man lying on a riverbank might look at the surface of the river and think that perhaps fish were beneath it, though he didn’t know for sure or care to find out. But if she wondered anything — if any fish swam by that riverbank — she wondered what God thought. What God thought, of all this. Of what was being done. Did God look upon the man before her — did God see him, striking her with the kind of precision a swordsman would envy, over and over on the same part of her jaw, so that each blow hurt more than the last, drove the bruise deeper into the bone, sent new hairline fractures splintering out from the dozen splits and breaks in the bones of her skull? Did God admire the man’s dedication to his work?

  She did. She admired it. It was an awful thing, to be so adept at such obscene cruelty, and the word awful had ‘awe’ in it. She wanted to tell him, suddenly, and that took her by great surprise, because wanting anything was no longer part of the list of things she could do. But to tell required to speak, and to speak required a tongue that was a live and dancing muscle, not a wet slab of macerated meat that oozed and oozed and oozed, so instead she smiled. There were only a few ligaments left in her face, so she could only feel one side of her top lip go up, but he saw it.

  He saw it, and he cursed, and what he said had a word in it that a person she used to be had known to mean warmth, and l
ight, and home. He said the word again, louder now, and more men came. She had forgotten most of what happened next — had forgotten that the door to her cell opened, had forgotten the corridor beyond it. Most of all she had forgotten the touch of the sun on her skin and the feel of a fresh wind.

  It didn’t feel right anymore. It stung her raw flesh and told her she was the wrong kind of animal now, to be in the sunlight, to be kissed by the breeze. The man said the word again and she saw a strange accumulation of another thing she had forgotten, which was called wood. In the center of the wood, a stick. In the center of the wood, now, her body. Still alive, her dumb animal body, still holding her up in the face of all this.

  The man said the word again, the word that meant light and joy and happiness to a person that she would never be again, and more men held bright sticks to the piles of wood that now surrounded her. They were far back from her, which was the best place for them to be, because when the men were far back they could not strike her ruined face or twist at her broken limbs or cut off any more pieces of the body she now dwelled in unwillingly. There was no word for what she felt now, as the flames began to rise between her and the men, began to creep in toward her stake. No word for it, because she had forsaken language long ago, and a new word would have to be made to describe what it meant for the barrier of the flame to rise and cut her off from the men who had struck and hit and questioned, questioned, questioned in Italian and Church Latin.

  The closest word was this one: “happy”.

  She was happy, as the fire roared, and claimed her.

  And to the very end, to the scorched and blackened end, to the end that crackled and screamed, Bellina’s ruined body fought with everything it had not to die.

  Chapter 14

  Cora’s eyes snapped open in the near-pitch darkness of the room that had been so comforting and safe only a few hours before. The fire had burned down and all she could see were the embers, reflected dimly across the stones. Cold stone. Damp air. Her whole body was shaking and she opened her mouth to scream before she realized she was already screaming, still screaming, had perhaps been screaming since the flames claimed her body, if not earlier than that, if not when the man had struck her fractured jaw again and again and again and again —