“Beginning. Middle. End. I want all the details, and none of the lollygagging.”
Well, they could do that.
“The castle belonged to Duncan, and he was a lord and knight. He went off to war, and left his much younger bride here. She was pregnant with their child.”
She paused the story.
“How much younger?” she asked.
They told her.
“She was seventeen, which was old for the sixteen hundreds.”
Okay, she’d give them that.
“Anyway, he was off with his man-at-arms, and that man-at-arms was his lover, Ciarán Begbie. Duncan only knocked the woman up to get an heir. He didn’t love her. He and Ciarán had been living a secret life for years before she showed up.”
She got it.
“So he married to hide in plain sight?”
They both nodded.
“Back then, gay was synonymous with death,” Gryphen said, as their food showed up, and they began eating and telling her the rest.
“Well, Ceit didn’t like Ciarán, and she suspected that something was up. We found letters from a journal, and we have put it back together again.”
She listened, and said nothing.
“Well, she writes him a letter, and it pretty much is a death threat to him. She cursed the castle and the family. She told Duncan in the book that every one of his heirs would walk in blood and suffer.”
Ouch.
That was some curse.
And some anger.
“Okay, and?”
“Well, Ceit gives birth to a son, Callum, and she gets a letter asking her to leave Ravensmire. Duncan is on his way home, and he wants her gone.”
“Uh, that sucks.”
Ian agreed there.
“Well, she writes a letter to her father, Oison Darragh, an Irishman who only sold off his daughter for money to pay his debts. Having his daughter be the wife of a brave knight and lord like Duncan was a feather in his cap.”
She sipped her coffee as she and MATE listened to the story.
“HE IS PISSED. So, he sends a letter back telling her to suck it up, and let the man have his dalliance on the side. Her job is to bear children, and keep her yap shut.”
Elizabeth gasped.
“Men always think women are property.”
Well, back then, yeah.
“So Ceit knows there’s only one way to end this. She’s going to curse Duncan, and end her life. She goes to the tower, where you saw Duncan and Ciarán during the wedding, and plans to swan dive off.”
