As if she’d just been slapped, Laoghaire recoiled. “I cast no spell upon my husband. And while many have given false witness, I hereby avow that the charge of witchcraft is baseless. I would never doanythingto harm my husband.”
“So you claim, and yet your husband lies gravely ill,” Father Giroldus retorted as he continued to dangle thegloine nan Druidhbefore her. “Moreover, this charm is irrefutable proof that you are in league with the devil.”
“Have ye taken leave of yer senses?” Laoghaire blurted.
“By the grace of God, I have not.”
Her fear escalating, Laoghaire felt a trickle of sweat run between her breasts. Only now did she realize that she’d been led into a snare from which she could not extricate herself. “Every word I have uttered, ye have twisted. I love Galen! And I would willingly give my own life to protect him!”
Unmoved by her outburst, Father Giroldus turned to the assembled throng. “The female is by nature a lewd monstrosity that bleeds monthly, blood that is eagerly lapped up by the Dark One. Furthermore, it has been proved that she used demonic wile to lure her husband to his death.”
“Galen is not dead!” Laoghaire exclaimed. “He is still among the living!”
“Just barely,” the priest countered. Then, continuing to address those gathered in the hall, he said, “The fact that the countess is unrepentant is proof of her guilt. In burning the witch, all of our souls will be cleansed and purified.”
Giving her no time to refute the hideous accusation, Abbot Theodore rose to his feet. Filled with a horrible premonition, Laoghaire’s entire body tensed. She assumed there was nothing to come between her and a pile of kindling.
“Lady Angus, you have been found guilty of witchcraft and the practice of the unholy arts,” the abbot proclaimed. “This court is now ready to pass sentence.”
On the heels of the abbot’s announcement, an expectant hush fell over the hall.
“To purify your soul and to free us of your demonic taint,” the abbot intoned in an ominously impassive voice, “you shall suffer the punishment of death by conflagration.”
Laoghaire’s mouth went dry as the room began to spin, her vision blurred. She knew there would be no appealing the verdict, and no mercy would be shown to her. At the conclusion of the official proceedings, she would be dragged out of the chapter house and burned on a pyre.
“I am an innocent woman,” she steadfastly maintained. “As such—”
“Take her away,” Father Giroldus said over the top of her voice, motioning for the deputies to step forward.
“As granted me by Scottish law,” Laoghaire continued, raising her voice so she could be heard by all present, “I demand the right to prove my innocence.”
“You have been condemned as a witch. Therefore, you have no rights,” Father Giroldus declared indignantly.
“Ye may have condemned me, but I still have the right to request a trial by combat.”
Clearly taken aback, Father Giroldus gaped at her, wide-eyed. He undoubtedly knew that judicial combat was a time-honored legal practice in which a defendant’s innocence, or guilt, was decided by single combat between defendant and accuser, either of whom could pick a worthy champion to fight their cause.
Having regained his composure, the priest said, “If you do not burn, the devil will thrive unchallenged.”
“And are ye prepared to challenge the king’s law?” she retorted, determined to stand her ground.
Father Giroldus’s eyes gleamed darkly. With an incensed huff, he scurried over to the abbot. Long moments passed as the two men engaged in a whispered discussion. Though she could not hear what was said, their debate appeared heated.
Looking none too pleased, Father Giroldus finally stepped away from the abbot. Then, standing before her, he said, “Laoghaire de Ogilvy, countess of Angus, the court grants your request to trial by combat.”
For the last several hours Laoghaire had been listening to the repetitiveplopof water from some unseen recess, the staccato echo maddening. Although given that her stomach had begun to growl with great ferocity, she assumedthatsound would soon eclipse the annoying drip.
“Can they not find it in their hearts to bring me a morsel to eat?” she murmured dejectedly, having imbibed her last meal before the farcical trial.
To add to her distress, a meager band of late afternoon sunlight shone through the clerestory window, casting moody shadows across the undercroft’s main chamber. No one had thought to bring her torch or candle.
Before long it will be as dark as the grave in here,she ruminated, the irony of that thought not lost upon her.
Needing to stretch her muscles, Laoghaire scrambled to her feet. She then began to pace restlessly back and forth in front of a sarcophagus. While she tried not to dwell on her dire predicament, she nevertheless feared that she was gazing upon the shady side of death, her hours numbered. It was an unnerving realization, one that caused her heart to pound dully, as though a large stone had somehow gotten lodged behind her breastbone. Barring a miracle, she knew there wasn’t enough time for Iain to make the journey from Castle Balloch, her request for judicial combat having gained her only a temporary reprieve.
With no champion to defend me, I am as good as dead.
Admittedly frightened, Laoghaire’s throat tightened while she struggled to draw air into her lungs. It wasn’t the idea of death that incited her terror; it was the thought of being burned alive that filled her with a dread unlike any she’d ever before experienced.
