The Raven's Wish (38 page)

"Prison cell!" Elspeth stepped forward. "Why are you doing this? Duncan is my husband. He is kin to you now!"

"Elspeth," Duncan said quietly. He moved to take her hands, small and cold, in his. "This will be a formal proceeding only. There are two men to whom I will appeal."

"Prison," she murmured. "He said prison."

"That will not happen, if I can reach Moray and Maitland."

"You must not go to Edinburgh," she said, and turned to Robert. "You cannot take him there. It will be his doom."

Robert raised his eyebrows. "Is this a prophecy of yours? If he stays here, it will be his doom for certain. The Privy Council has put him to the horn. We can take his life here and now."

"You are a heartless beast, and no brother of mine!"

Robert frowned. "Watch your tongue. Have you not recently been accused of witchcraft? Should the Council have someone look into this?"

"What is it, Robert?" she said. "Why do you hate my husband so? He is a fine lawyer, and has achieved the regard of the queen and her closest advisors. He was asked to handle the matter of the Fraser bond, where you were not. Is that why you seek to destroy him? Out of jealousy? Are you so small a man?"

Robert's face became a pale stone mask. His eyes slid around the room as if to judge others' reactions to his sister's accusations. Then he turned away from Elspeth as completely as if she no longer existed.

"Duncan Macrae," he said. "Will you come with me and my Gordon escort, or shall we take you by force?"

"I will come," Duncan said. Elspeth squeezed his hand, and he gripped her fingers. "But I will speak in private with my wife now." He pulled on her hand and drew her along beside him, walking steadily past Robert, past the Fraser cousins, past his own family. He opened the door of the great hall and held it while she crossed the threshold ahead of him.

"We will depart within the hour," Robert called toward them. "It is early in the day, and we can make good progress."

"Why is he in such a hurry to take you away from here?" Elspeth said, as the door closed, leaving them alone in the corridor.

"I think he is does not want to spend the night here, even with the guarantee of Highland hospitality," Duncan said. "Your cousins would happily murder him."

"I had begun to hope that my vision could be wrong after all. I thought you would stay here as laird of Dulsie, and never go south again. I thought we were safe, Duncan—"

"Listen to me," he said, taking her hands in his. "We are safe. But I did break the bond by my own action, and I must speak to the Council. Would you have the blame laid on one of your cousins? I made the choice to ride out, and only Magnus went with me. Only you and I, and God, care how Ruari's death came about; he died fighting with me. None of this is conduct for the queen's lawyer." He gazed evenly at her, his heart thudding as he tried to keep his expression calm, hiding the tumultuous doubt and fear that now roiled inside of him.

"When we went reiving after the MacDonalds' cattle, you said that it was a cold ride, a legal one, with you present as the queen's man. This last ride with Magnus must have been a hot ride. It was a legal pursuit," she insisted.

He shook his head. "It was not. Only Magnus and I rode out, without witnesses. I did not think this last time, Elspeth. I had no plan. I acted out of anger, out of a need for revenge. And murder was done. Niall believed that Ruari was murdered, and he made sure that his uncle knew."

"If I had killed Niall myself with that sword—"

"Hush. That would not have helped anyone. I broke the bond. And I must pay the price."

She broke his grasp and began to pace. "The Frasers should pay the fine, with no harm to you. What was the fine?"

"Seven thousand pounds."

She began to breathe quickly. He knew the amount shocked her; few Highlanders, even chiefs, had that kind of coin. "We will raise it somehow. It is only a bond, after all," she said. "Do not go to Edinburgh, but send word to your friends, Moray and Maitland. State what happened. You do not have to go with Robert. He is no threat to you, with my cousins here."

"Elspeth."

"Surely your friends on the Council will pardon you and then arrest Robert for his shameful betrayal. He is your kin, though I am sorry to link you to him in that way—"

"Elspeth, stop." He took a step toward her.

She twisted her hands together frantically. "We will ask for time to pay the fine. Coin rules in government, does it not?"

He grabbed her shoulders. "Stop, girl." Wrapping his arms around her, he rested his chin on top of her head. "I must go to Edinburgh. If I do not, worse trouble will come to the Frasers. Fire and sword will be declared, and the outlawing of the entire clan for the breaking of this bond."

She pressed her forehead into his shoulder. "But there has to be some way to explain to the Council what happened. They would not execute a man for protecting his wife."

"They will interrogate me, but they will not execute me."

"Duncan—"

"No one will harm me," he said. He took her by the shoulders and looked into her eyes, knowing her greatest fear, wanting to eliminate it. "Your vision cannot affect me. Remember that I do not believe in the Sight." That was no longer as true as it had once been; he said it now to comfort her.

"Duncan, you do believe in the Sight," she whispered. A deep sob burst from her. He caught her within his arms again and held her.

"You have been put to the horn because of what happened to me. I have led you to this." She raised her head and looked at him, tears glistening in her eyes. "The vision—I knew that I would have a hand in your fate. I felt it that day."

"Hush," he said. "You had no hand in my fate. I led myself here by my own actions. And I would choose the same again, and ride after you, Elspeth Fraser, to keep you safe."

"But you placed your life in the balance when you rode out."

"Your life was already in the balance. Should I have done nothing, because of a bit of paper?"

She smiled then, a wobbly, wet smile that took his breath away. "For a long-robe," she said, "you sound very much like a Highland man."

"I am a Highland man, and proud of that." He smiled into her hair. "Very proud."

She sniffed. "I will come with you to Edinburgh. We will fight this together."

"You will not," he said. "Stay here at Dulsie."

"And not know for weeks, even months what has become of you? I cannot bear that, Duncan."

"I will send word to you. Stay here. If you are here"—he drew a deep breath—"then my heart is here, and I know I will return. Remember the Dulsie legend, the fairy's silver net."

"The lairds of Dulsie always return," she breathed.

"The laird of Dulsie will return," he said. "Believe that, if you will believe any prophecy."

Chapter 23

The fetters they are on my feet,

And O but they are cauld!

My bracelets they are sturdy steel,

Instead of beaten gold.

~"Johnie Scot"

His dreams were as dark as his days, as black as his nights. Even in sleep he could not escape the enveloping blackness. No images came when he slept from exhaustion, no respite, no hope. Whenever he woke, it was to the same cold darkness.

Only a tiny opening in the wall provided light and air in his prison cell. He often looked up at that chink, a few feet above his head. Sometimes when the shaft of light cut through the dark, he would pass his hand through the transparent, pale light that flowed down.

At other times, amber light glowed through the small grate set in the thick iron-bound wooden door. He could hear voices, distorted by the narrow stone passageways beyond his cell. He heard the scrape of heavy boots and the clink of pikes and swords. But those voices were rarely directed at him, and the firelight was not always there.

He was in a cell in Edinburgh Castle, one of a block of cells on the south side of the castle, below the palace apartments. He knew exactly where he was, having visited prisoners here himself. But he had never spent more than a quarter or half of an hour here before. He had been held here ten days, two weeks perhaps. Though he had tried to observe and record the cycle of light and dark in the tiny shaft of outside light, he was not certain of his count.

The cell was small, a pacing of eight one way, ten the other. The floor was well below the level of the door, forming a kind of dark pit. At night the cold was piercing, and he would burrow under straw for warmth. There were no furnishings, unless he considered the covering of straw and filth on the floor to be his bed, his table and his chair. Once a day a bowl of gruel and a hunk of bread was handed down to him, and every few days the guard would bring in a bucket of water.

Adequate accommodations for a condemned man, he thought. Most prisoners sentenced to death received less than this, unless the man was of very high rank and could offer better bribes to the guards. Duncan had offered what coin he had on his person, and had traded his boots for fresh water.

He had plenty of funds elsewhere, but no way to get more coin unless a friend were to contact him. To the guards, he was only a man doomed to die in another week or so. Without more money for bribing, his status as a lawyer or a Highland laird was of no use to him. For now, water, bread and gruel would come his way, although he doubted that the straw would be changed.

He sighed loudly and slid down to the floor. The iron fetters around his ankles bit unless he sat a certain way. The heavy chain that bound his wrists was long enough to allow movement. Heavy enough, too, to challenge his strength. He had spent hours lifting and lowering the chain methodically as he paced the cell.

His legs and arms were just as strong as they had been when he had been thrown in here. He would not die a weak man. He ate every morsel of the gruel and bread each day, drank the stale water, and began to understand why some prisoners ate the mice and rats raw, when they could catch them. He preferred his meat cooked, and so let the creatures nibble at straw undisturbed.

Most of his time was spent thinking of alternatives to the sentence of beheading that the Council had passed down to him. He had had few visitors since the day of the trial, that swift afternoon of justice-mocking that Robert had somehow arranged. Swift and sure, for Duncan had not been entitled to counsel at the trial due to the harsh Scots laws concerning treason.

Robert had come once, but had not entered the cell, and had only passed on a document to him requiring his signature. Duncan's houseservant, a dour old woman, had visited to inquire if the rooms Duncan kept should be rented out to another. He had asked the servant to keep them at least until he was gone. Then he had asked her to send word to William Maitland, the secretary to the Privy Council, who was away from Edinburgh, to inform him of the situation. He had asked, too, that word be sent to the Earl of Moray, the queen's half-brother, who was also away. The woman had seemed intimidated by the two great names uttered in the dark prison cell. She had left, and Duncan had little hope that she would contact either of those men.

So each day he slept, and ate, and lifted his chains for strength, and watched the dusty beam of light that divided his cell. Helpless to affect his situation, he waited for a miracle.

On the twenty-fifth day, by Duncan's count, Robert Gordon came again. The key grated in the lock, the door swung open, and Robert jumped the length of the drop to the cell floor. Cloaked from head to foot, he tossed back his hood. The door swung closed, but Duncan knew a guard waited in the corridor.

He would gladly have throttled the man who stood a few feet away from him. He considered taking that moment of pleasure in exchange for his life, knowing that the guard would surely kill him if he even attempted to kill his visitor.

But he decided, rationally and coldly, to wait. Curiosity, if nothing else, rose in him as Robert stood in the deep shadows.

"What do you want?" he asked in Gaelic. He hardly recognized the rasp of his own voice.

"I have received word from my sister," Robert said, in Scots. "Your wife rides here with her Fraser cousins."

Duncan stood slowly, all of his senses tingling at the mention of her name. "I did not send word to her."

Robert shrugged. "A gillie arrived yesterday with the message that she was on her way. She had not heard from you, I suppose, and decided to make the trip before the winter snows close the passes to the Highlands."

"Perhaps." Duncan stepped forward, into the beam of light that sliced through the darkness. He knew how he must look, a bearded wild man, but he knew, too, that the steady gleam of hatred in his eye kept Robert standing nervously by the door.

"I informed the Council that an appeal might be presented. They told me to come down here and tell you, since it is your right to be aware of such proceedings. But I wouldna hold out hope for an appeal, Macrae. Especially from a girl dressed like a wild Scot. She will make scant impression on the Council. And the Frasers are not in favor just now."