Flame (36 page)

Mater raised a shaky hand and stabbed away
the tears that hung on her sharp, bony chin.

“Duncan laughed. It was a vile, drunken,
disbelieving laugh, and he told me that he would take care of it.
And then he left me there.” She let out a mirthless laugh. “I never
even had a chance to gather myself together. I looked up and saw
your grandmother standing by the door. Aye, that was Duncan’s way
of taking care of it. He’d gone to his wife and told her to see to
it.”

“Did she help you?” Joanna asked, choking on
her question.

“Help me? Aye, she helped me. Lady MacInnes
was young, and did not yet know Duncan the way she would someday.
She called me a whore.” Mater held Joanna’s hands tightly in her
own. “She called for one of Duncan’s men. He dragged me out the
front entrance to the Great Hall and threw me down the steps into
the courtyard.”

“Nay...” Joanna whispered raggedly, unable to
hold back her tears. “It cannot be so.”

“Aye. ‘Tis the truth. Every word.”

“I know of my grandmother’s hatred for you.
‘Tis then that it all started?”

Mater nodded. “Aye, she has always blamed me.
Seeing me there and knowing it was not the first time, since I
carried his child.”

“Still, for her to carry her hatred for so
many years.”

“A woman does not forget.” Mater paused and
her eyes took an unnatural brightness. “But ‘twas what I said
later, when I was thrown out that she holds against me. I fell down
the stone steps and landed on my belly in a bloody heap beneath the
great iron cross that hangs above that door. I could feel the
warmth of the rushing blood against my legs, the pain, and I knew
that already I’d lost my child. But then I looked up at the moon,
and when I saw the iron cross, I remembered the tales of the women
who were buried in the vault. The ones that the women of the abbey
still venerated. Everything came together in my mind then. I was a
victim, just like them. I was lying sprawled in my own blood, as
they had in theirs.”

Mater’s hands squeezed Joanna’s hard. She was
sure that the old woman did not even know that she was hurting
her.

“I cursed her then. The wind came up, strong
and fresh, and I cursed your grandmother. I should not have done
it, but ‘twas she who stood above me.”

“She had hurt you.”

“Nay. ‘Twas Duncan who hurt me. Only he. As
the years have passed, I have never held a grudge against your
grandmother. She was hurt as well. He used her, too--I know
that--and tortured her like any other woman.”

Joanna stared, tears streaming from her eyes,
her heart ripped from her chest.

“I cried out to God against their lust and
their brutality. I shrieked the curse of Ironcross Castle. The wind
whipped at those who looked upon me, and I brought back that curse
with my cries. I invoked the Power. ‘Twas then that she started
hating me. ‘Twas then that she began fearing me.”

Margaret stirred slightly, but settled again
on the straw bedding.

“Twas then that I became Mater.”

As the first rays of morning sun were
breaking across the sky, Joanna wrapped herself in her cloak and
stepped into the darkness of the passages behind the panel door in
her chamber.

She needed to go to the vault. She had to see
it again.

In the past, she’d treated the crypt as a
place of evil. To Joanna, it had been the unhallowed ground of
fiends and their rituals. But now Joanna understood it to be a
place of goodness, a sanctuary, a temple from which the women drew
sustenance as well as peace.

She needed to go there and experience that
herself, look at it with a new eye, feel it with an open heart. And
she needed to go there to undo all she had prepared. After hearing
the abbess’s story, a story in which her own grandfather had played
the most horrible part, Joanna simply could no longer see herself
as Mater’s judge and executioner.

Their talk last night had ended with Joanna
asking about the ritual. Mater had explained it as the prayers that
their sisters offered to keep away the violence and the lust of the
lairds. Prayers! That’s all she had said. But Joanna did not
believe prayers were capable of killing people.

Not that Duncan had not deserved to die after
all the misery he’d caused so many women. But what could explain
the other deaths--of his sons, and Joanna’s mother, and the
servants who had perished as well?

Perhaps what Gavin had said before had been
true. The power of the curse was at work, but perhaps the human
hand controlling that power was not Mater after all.

Making her way through the darkness of the
tunnels, Joanna desperately hoped it was so. Indeed, since their
talk together last night, Joanna had decided that no MacInnes would
bring any more harm to the old woman.

Mater had suffered enough.

***

The moon rested atop the crenellated ramparts
of the Old Keep as they rode into the courtyard. Leaving his steed
with the stablemen, Gavin stared at the giant iron cross, gleaming
in the torchlight over the door of the Old Keep.

They wanted women. They were warriors. They
deserved them...or so they thought.

Wild-eyed and drunk, they rode
out
--you know the look, laird, the old leper priest had
said--
and across the gorge their lust-crazed shouts rang to the
skies. The moon, full as a nine-month bride, lit their way. The
men, drunken, possessed, riding across hills and into the valley of
the virgins.

When the church roof at the abbey blazed up,
the flames scorched the very sky. The light from the fire could be
seen from Elgin to Aberdour.

Binding the women, they dragged them out and
tossed them like deer across the saddles of their waiting steeds. A
few of the villagers and the chaplain of the abbey protested, and
the warriors cut them down like dogs. And so they rode back, bloody
and hot with killing and lust. Back they came to their laird, full
of themselves, boasting, cruel.

Tossing aside his great drinking horn, the
laird stood on the steps of his keep, smiling like some pagan king,
his feet spread and his huge fists on his hips. Above him, the
great iron cross shone brightly on the wall of his new keep, and a
great fire burned in the courtyard before him. The women were wild,
thrashing against their bonds and crying out as, one after another,
the warriors dumped them from the backs of the horses into the
dust.

A virgin. Aye, a virgin. How long had it
been, the laird thought, the throaty bark of his laugh cutting
through the night. Ah, a virgin to bury himself in! That’s what
he’d sent them after!

Strip them all, he commanded. I shall have my
choice of them. That one! Nay, that one! By the devil, I shall have
all of them!

There in the courtyard, beneath the full moon
and the cross of our faith, they stole the maidenheads of the
innocent saints of that abbey.

‘
Twas a horrible night, a night of evil
that this laird wrought.

And then the women cried out, cursing him.
Torn and bloodied, but still proud and strong, they spat in the
dirt of that courtyard and cursed. Invoking the power of God, the
power of the cross, the power of the moon and the earth herself,
they cursed him and all who followed him, unrepentant.

The laird had them struck down. His men beat
and kicked them. Before that iron cross, they inflicted again and
again their foul lusts upon those guiltless women.

But then, when he thought they were finally
broken, the laird heard the women’s voices rise. Louder and louder
they moaned and wailed until their laments drowned out the foul
laughter of those monsters. The voices rose higher and higher until
they touched the moon, and that white glowing orb turned crimson
with shame.

They all stared, those warriors. Then someone
shouted, The cross! The laird looked on it, the once shining iron
now red with innocent blood. Spitting in the dirt, he drew his
sword. He would show them. The bloodlust gleamed in his wild eyes.
He raised his sword over the first woman. He would hack her body
into a thousand pieces and burn her in that fire. Then he would do
the same to all of them. He was laird of Ironcross Castle. He would
not be cowed by these witches’ tricks.

But before his sword could descend, the
wind came.
As the women’s voices continued to wail, the wind
grew wild, sweeping across the loch and blasting the walls of the
castle. Never before had anyone seen such power.

The laird staggered and fell, and the
warriors backed away. They watched as the gust swirled about the
women, watched as their bodies writhed as if possessed, watched as
the sparks of the bonfire swept around them, watched as one by one,
the women dropped lifeless to the ground.

Then, as quick as it came, the wind died,
leaving behind only the bodies of the women.

Without a sword riving them in two, without a
dagger cutting their throats, all from the abbey were dead. And
with them the laird--his neck broken, his unseeing eyes staring up
at the full moon.

No one knows who took the bodies and
buried them in the vault beneath the keep--
have you seen the
crypt, laird? the priest had asked
. It does not truly matter who
put them there. However it was they came to rest there, the
Highland women knew where they lay, and they began to appear. Every
full moon, every year, they would come.

They would come. And they would remember!

Gavin stared at the red stain that covered
the giant cross above the door. How much was legend and how much
truth, the ancient priest had shrugged, was anyone’s guess. But the
lairdship of Ironcross Castle passed on to other, ill-fated men,
and eventually it came to Duncan MacInnes.

The old leper priest had looked hard at Athol
and then at Gavin. He knew more of Duncan that he cared to recall,
he’d said. And he remembered the laird’s death.

Gavin crossed the courtyard and ducked
through the arched passageway into the kirkyard. Past the graves of
former lairds, past the unmarked remains of countless others, he
stepped into the little church.

He stood there for a long while as thoughts
of dead innocents flooded through his mind. Thoughts of the women
of the abbey, of those who had died so senselessly in the fire.
Thoughts of his own family.

For the first time in his life, Gavin allowed
his grief to spill out of him. Kneeling before the wooden cross in
the darkened chapel of Ironcross Castle, he wept.

***

He was standing there when she opened her
eyes. The moon was streaming in, bathing her bedchamber in a bluish
glow. Gavin had come to her.

And it was obvious what he had in mind.

Shamelessly, she let her eyes take in every
bit of his glorious and naked body as he approached the bed.

His voice, a low growl, started her body
tingling with anticipation. “I was waiting for you in my chamber,
but you did not come.” With one hand he grasped the blankets and
cast them aside.

She thrilled at the way his eyes traveled the
length of her body. It was as if her thin shift could prove no
barrier to his scorching gaze. “I wondered if perhaps you had no
wish to see me. You went off...without saying a word...I didn’t
know you were back.”

Gavin lowered himself beside her. One of his
hands reached out and touched the neckline of her shift, running
his fingers lightly over her skin, sliding downward over the smooth
linen. She bit her lip, gasping with pleasure as his fingers gently
squeezed her hardening nipple.

“I am here to apologize for that.”

“Oh, is that what you are here for?” Joanna’s
gaze flickered over the fully aroused manhood pressing against her
thigh.

Gavin smiled, following her eyes. “Aye. The
old priest...well, Peter’s concern that he was at death’s door
forced my hand. He was the only one, I thought, who would tell us
the truth about Ironcross Castle and its past.”

“And did you learn...?”

“Later,” he ordered, pulling at the single
tie at the neckline of her shift. Then, with a mischievous look, he
slid the thin material down her body. Joanna moved slightly, and
Gavin quickly tossed the garment to the side. “I haven’t been
forgiven, yet.”

“But I...”

“Nay, lass. We will have plenty of time to
talk about the priest after you have granted me your pardon.”

Joanna shivered at the gleam in his eyes.
“I...”

“I wronged you, and I deserve to suffer the
penance of your choosing,” he continued with mock-seriousness,
draping a leg over her belly. “I must make amends. Force me work
hard, Joanna. I will sweat for your mercy.”

He traced the curve of her breast.

“I am no expert...oh.” She gasped as his
mouth settled on her nipple. “I am no expert in methods of
punishing a man like you. And besides, in seeking forgiveness, I
have always believed we were given tongues for a reason.” She
stopped as Gavin raised burning eyes to her face.

“You are right, my love,” he said huskily.
Flicking his tongue over her nipple, he slowly moved down along her
belly, the tip of his tongue scorching her skin as he went. When he
reached the mound of curls, he raised his head. “But as far as
methods, perhaps I can help.”

“You had better,” she said thickly, already
consumed by the whirlwind of colors and light that were firing
through her brain.

“Lie still, and do exactly as I tell you.
That will be my greatest punishment.”

She looked into his dark, clouded eyes and
saw the glints of humor. She didn’t know how far this game would
go, but if she had her way--and she
would
have her way--the
impending torture would be sweet, exquisite...and mutual.

“Spread your knees,” he ordered.