Sue-Ellen Welfonder - [MacLean 03] (20 page)

Chill gray light slanted in on them through narrow, high-set windows to illuminate their ill ease—their fulsome belief in Donald MacKinnon’s nonsensical ravings about curses and suchlike devilry.

Magnus frowned.

The discovery of the adder, and the superstition clouding his kinsmen’s eyes, laid a pall over an afternoon he’d already been dreading for days.

And now it’d gone from bad to worse.

Clearing his throat, he eyed his ashen-faced clansmen, forced himself to swallow the bitter taste in his mouth. “My sorrow that our minds run so wide apart,” he said, steely-voiced. “But I say you, the only fiend of hell who had aught to do with bringing yon adder into our midst is a flesh-and-blood man walking amongst us—not some nebulous creature from the hoary realm of the dead or the secret land of the fey!”

His pronouncement made, he folded his arms and let his gaze rake each man.

To his relief, he caught a few nods of accord from within the circle of gawking men. But only a few. Most turned away to reach for the nearest ale cup or scratch with furious intent at sudden-appearing itches. A curious affliction that seemed to ripple through the entire ranks of MacKinnons gathered in the hall.

Bothered by nothing of the sort, Donald MacKinnon all but snorted.

He flashed a defiant glare at Magnus. “You needn’t glower at the rest of us, laddie,” he said, his tone cantankerous. “I vow you’d be equally loath to doubt had you not been away all these years, if you’d seen the stress and strife we’ve suffered.”

“I have seen my share of suffering, never you doubt it.” Magnus smothered the images before they could take form, closing his mind’s eye to the sight of mangled bodies and torn flesh, his ears to the soul-splitting screams of men in mortal agony, his nose to the stench of freshly spilled blood.

Glancing at the smoke-blackened ceiling, he pinched the bridge of his nose until the memories receded.

“’Tis the goings-on and turmoil on this isle, I meant, and well you know it,” his father groused. “Our trials have been great, our sorrows endless.”

Loud cries of assent greeted these words. Shouts accompanied by the stamping of not a few booted feet and the jabbing in the air of more than one clenched fist.

Spurred on by his kinsmen’s support, the aging laird banged the hilt of his dirk on the table, silencing the men he’d just rallied. At the ensuing quiet, he clutched the back of his chair with a white-knuckled grip and fixed a hot blue gaze on Magnus.

“If you doubt me and these men of your own good blood, ask your lady wife. She has seen enough to fill your ears for days,” he said, his stare a snapping challenge. “’Tis a wonder she hasn’t hied herself straight back to Baldoon and its curse-free, snakeless comforts! Aye, be glad she is abovestairs tending her ablutions or whate’er it is womenfolk are e’er about, and didn’t see . . . this! And on the very day of your wedding celebration revelries.”

His piece said, he swayed a bit on his feet and, seeming to sink into himself, began mumbling inanities. Blessedly inaudible ones, too low-voiced to be understood.

Not that Magnus needed to hear them.

The increased mottling of the old man’s face spoke loudly enough.

As did the renewed unrest sweeping the length and breadth of the crowded hall.

“Hear me, good men,” Magnus called out to them. “Such talk serves nothing. Senseless beating of the air brings naught but wasted breath. But, aye, I agree. This”—he jerked his head toward the adder—“reeks of someone choosing the day with care.”

That last got his father’s attention. “So you admit the snake didn’t slither in here on its own to say us a fine g’day?”

Magnus hesitated, choked back a groan. “Nay, there, at least, we stand in fullest agreement. I hold that it was indeed deposited here—just not by unworldly powers.”

“So says he of little faith!” His father threw up his hands. “Faugh and bother! There be more to this world than cold steel, coin, and what we can see with our naked eye,” he railed. “Some things a man just kens with his heart, laddie. You would be wise to learn that.”

“And how say you, Dugan?” Magnus rounded on his brother, slid another half-fascinated, half-repulsed look at the dangling adder.

Dugan shrugged. Standing alone, for no one seemed wont to seek his company, he held his arm extended well before him, his swarthy features working with clear distaste.

“I say it scarce matters how the thing came to be here. Only that we found it before . . .” Dugan let the words trail off, looked across the torchlit hall to where their youngest brother, Hugh, sat on a trestle bench, a knot of cooing womenfolk gathered round him.

Magnus followed Dugan’s gaze. “Nay, my brother, it matters greatly. Hugh could have been bitten—reaching for his lute and finding an adder coiled beside it!” he said, turning back to eye the snake again.

“Think you I dinna know that!” came Dugan’s hot rebuttal, but Magnus scarce heeded him, his attention on the snake.

Skewered through the middle, it twitched and jerked in the last moments of its venomous life. Fire glow caught on the adder’s scales, turning the pale gray skin a bright-gleaming silver, while the black zigzag running down its back and the beady red eyes showed the creature to be a male.

A blessedly dead male . . . and soon to be roasted.

Cursing under his breath, Magnus crossed the dais with great strides, and snatched the dirk—snake, and all—from Dugan’s hand.

Before his brother could even think to form a protest, much less splutter one, Magnus hurled the dagger and its grisly victim into the hearth fire. Whirling back to Dugan, he unsheathed his own dirk—his best one—and thrust it, hilt first, at his brother.

“Keep it—with my gratitude,” he said, his voice a shade huskier than usual, his throat over-tight at what might have happened to Hugh. “Like as not, you saved our brother’s life.”

Dugan fingered the dirk, looked undecided. “Think you I would stand by with that . . .
thing
coiled and ready to sink its fangs into Hugh’s hand?” He lowered his voice. “He froze, I tell you. There was naught to do but knock him aside and kill the wretched creature. I just ne’er meant to shove Hugh so hard he’d stumble and fall.”

“A hurting arm is nowise so dire as a body filled with poisonous snake venom,” Magnus said, his voice pitched equally low.

“Aye, true enough, but . . .” Dugan blew out a long breath. “It still waters my bones to think what could have happened.”

Magnus gripped his brother’s arm, squeezed. “But it didn’t—as shall naught else.”

“I pray God you have the rights of it,” Dugan said, his brow still knitted as he peered down the hall again. He had yet to sheath the new dirk.

Taking it from him, but gently this time, Magnus tucked the dagger beneath the other’s belt. He gestured round him then, waving a hand at the arras-hung walls and the many long tables already groaning with viands and wine and ales, all in preparation for the night’s feasting.

“If I am expected to accept such plentitude without a flinch, you can receive my dirk as a token gesture of brotherly appreciation, can you not?”

“Hugh would’ve done the same . . . for me, or any of us,” Dugan countered, but patted the dirk hilt all the same, at last looking a bit pleased.

“So what are we going to do about the dark powers a-slinking about within these walls?” Their father’s voice rose above the chaos again. He stared at them from the high table as he tipped a leather-wrapped flagon of
uisge beatha
to his lips for a long, throat-bobbing pull of the fiery Highland spirits.

“My bones tell me there will soon be even more ruination coming down o’er our heads,” he vowed, glaring belligerence. “In especial, now that the adder failed to do their fiendish handiwork and devil ships are plying our waters! No telling what will become of us if e’er that ill craft chooses to set ashore!”

Magnus drew a great breath, pressed fingers to his aching temples. “We redress the balance is what we do,” he said with all the patience he could muster. “With the adder, this was a close strike—we dare not let any such danger come so near again,” he added, harboring no illusions of the difficulty in avoiding blows from an unseen foe.

A fiendishly clever foe.

But one he’d find—even if he had to overturn each stone of the castle, search every Devil-damned bog on the island.

An endeavor he would embark upon that very afternoon.

Hot gall thick in his throat, he tossed another glance at Hugh. His youngest brother had rolled up his sleeve now, and Dagda appeared to be clucking like a mother hen as she rubbed salve on Hugh’s fast-swelling elbow.

Seemingly oblivious to the chaos, Colin paced back and forth in front of Hugh, his gait nigh as smooth as before Dupplin, and chatting up a storm. No doubt sharing commiserations with Hugh upon the travails and hardships of assorted bodily injuries.

Only Janet stood a little apart, her troubled gaze fixed on Hugh’s reddened elbow, her pretty face a whiter shade of pale than Hugh’s own pain-pinched features.

Somewhere behind Magnus, someone opened the shuttering in one of the hall’s deep-set window embrasures, letting in gusts of damp, freshening wind.

The chill breeze brought the smell of rain and the sea, but also the odor of the burning snake. Magnus’s stomach pitched at the pungent smell, and he snatched up someone’s forgotten ale cup and tossed its contents down his throat.

He shuddered. Unthinkable, had Hugh not seen the adder before closing his hand on the lute. He wanted to tune its strings before the evening festivities—the celebratory wedding feast.

Slamming down the cup, Magnus wiped his mouth on his sleeve and pushed that last from his mind. He’d set sail on that jabbly sea when its waters began swirling round his ankles and not a moment before.

For now, a silent prayer of thanks for his brother’s life would serve.

If the good saints would hear him.

And thanks were due indeed—whether his voice was recognized or no.

Magnus would have had to bear the weight of knowing Hugh had met his untimely end in an effort to ready himself for his role as sole entertainer at Magnus’s own wedding feast.

A wedding for a night only.

If he had aught to say in the matter.

But a night he’d ensure would be one his bride would ne’er forget—even if she did relish traipsing up and down dank stairwells!

Aye, for the hours of this one night, he would love her well and truly. With the deepest part of himself and setting aside his pride and frustration, to give her the wedding night she deserved.

His honor would not allow otherwise.

And something in the raised flesh at the back of his neck told him whoe’er had sought to ruin the day knew fair well that he would put his all into assuring his lady’s pleasure.

That he would be
her knight
in the fullest—if only just this once.

An all-too-fleeting joy someone meant to steal from him.

But just when the hazy suspicions tiptoeing along the edges of his mind began to loom clear, a sharp tug on his sleeve chased the fragile inklings right back into obscurity.

“By the Devil’s slippery tail, son, just how do you mean to
redress the balance
when the Fiend hisself is after us?” Donald MacKinnon clutched at him, the glimmer of fear in his
uisge beatha
-bleared gaze belying his earlier belligerence.

And landing another smashing blow to Magnus’s pride.

“Well?” The old man poked a finger in Magnus’s ribs. “Have you lost your tongue . . . or are you still thinking up a plan?”

Magnus shoved his hair back from his forehead, bit back a snarl of frustration. He’d already taken more precautions than if they were in danger of a siege, up to and including the barring of all gates and doors—even in daylight hours.

Yet all his efforts thus far had served but ill.

“I dinna blame you, laddie,” his father said on a grieved-sounding sigh. “I could ne’er think of ways to outmaneuver the curse, either.”

Magnus opened his mouth to speak, but before he could, the old man shuffled back to the high table, one hand pressed against his hip as he went.

“I will set double guards,” Magnus called after him, hating the resignation he’d glimpsed on his father’s face, the sag to his thin shoulders. “I am even patrolling myself,” he added, lifting his voice. “Through the night, early mornings, in the emptiest passages of the keep . . . in especial those!”

“We are signed and sealed to our fate, lad,” his father declared without turning around, his thin voice somehow cutting through the din.

Magnus stared after him, watched him pick his slow way through the crowd. “God aiding me, an end will be put to this. I promise you. . . .” He had raised his voice again, trying to comfort, but broke off because the words sounded so empty.

So useless and ineffectual he almost wished he hadn’t voiced them.

His father looked back at him. “Your keenest vigilance will avail nothing,” he claimed, his voice weary now. “A malaise has e’er hung o’er this house. The man has yet to be born who can guard hisself against a curse. To be sure, I e’er misliked it myself, but I learned to live with it. Not that I’d care to tumble down the latrine chute again. Nay, I—”

Tumble down the latrine chute.

The words leapt at Magnus, shooting round his chest to squeeze so tight he could scarce breathe.

Troublesome words that clamped even harder the moment his da lowered himself into his chair at the over-laden high table. With surety, the massive oaken piece could not have weighed much more were it carved of granite . . . and that, fully unadorned.

At present, it groaned beneath the weight of more heavy-silver platters, candlesticks and candelabrums, and other assorted feasterly trappings than Coldstone Castle had likely seen in centuries.

If ever.

And once the coming night’s revelry and carousing began in earnest, and his kinsmen reached the depths of their cups, every one amongst them who could yet stand would rush the dais to drag Magnus and Amicia abovestairs. Each man, and even some of the bolder womenfolk, would vie for the privilege of stripping them for the bedding ceremony.