Chapter 11
No matter how close she sat to the fire, nor how tight she hugged her cloak around herself, Catriona remained ice cold and numb clear to the bone. She stared at the roiling glow of the red coals and the pale weak flames flickering in the tiny hearth. How had everything gone so wrong? Who had betrayed her? She closed her eyes as a fresh onslaught of tears and despair overcame her.
Murtagh.The unrelenting pain of his murder assaulted her with guilt and remorse. 'Twas her fault. If she hadna challenged Calum, dearest grouchy old Murtagh would still be alive. “Sweet Murtagh,” she whispered between hiccupping sobs. “I’m so verra sorry.”
And Alexander. If possible, even more pain seared through her heart. She prayed he’d dodged the foul Duff’s bullet, prayed he’d been out of range and escaped. Calum’s hellhound had crowed with glee after firing the shot, sworn he’d hit Alexander, and gloated about it every step of the way to this godforsaken room.
Perched on the slab of dusty stone protruding up from the floor around the small fireplace, Catriona leaned against the flat, round sandstones forming the walls of the narrow hearth and the chimney. No other light flickered in the small forgotten room in the northernmost wing of the keep, the part of the keep her parents had shared when Motherstill lived. This part of the stronghold had been closed off for years. No one would look for her here. The tight, narrow room had more than likely been a tiny space for a maidservant.
A small cot, draped with a ratty, dust-encrusted sheet, took up one wall and a dented chamber pot squatted beside it. A tattered tapestry sagged down from the corner of the single window at the end of the boxy space; the glass cracked from top to bottom and smudged with so much filth little light, whether from moon, stars, or rising sun, filtered through it. A three-legged stool filled the small spot beneath the window. Candle stubs, squat and round but burned down to near uselessness, littered the floor along the wall. Perhaps, Catriona hadna been the first imprisoned here.
Keys rattled and clanked against the door.
Catriona pressed back against the stones of the hearth, swallowing hard as she watched what she felt was a demonic light flicker and dance its way toward her from under the door. It had to be Calum or one of his blackguards. No one else knew she was here. With a final heart-stopping metallic thud, the thick squat door swung open with a slow chilling creak.
“My dear sweet lass. What have they done to ye?”
“Gaersa!” Catriona sprang up from the floor, flinging herself into the aging housekeeper’s open arms. “I’m so sorry,” she sobbed against Gaersa’s plump shoulder. “I’m so, so sorry about Murtagh.”
“Hush now,” Gaersa soothed in a voice broken and quivering with her own tears. “'Twas no' your fault, child, 'twas no' your fault.” She patted and rubbed Catriona’s back as the two held each other tight and rocked back and forth in their misery.
Gaersa took a gentle hold of Catriona’s shoulders and set her aside. She reached just outside the doorway and fetched the small lantern hanging on the latch beside the door. Light held high, she looked about the small room, her mouth clamped into a scowling frown and her face drawn with weariness and sorrow. “I canna believe they put ye here. No’ in this room.”
Something in Gaersa’s voice told Catriona that they once used this small room for something sinister rather than an innocuous resting place for a servant. “I didna ken this place. Not even when Motherlived.”
Gaersa hitched her way to the window and placed the lantern on the small ledge. With a dismal sigh, she ripped the dusty coverlet off the small ramshackle bed, bundled it up and dragged it and the moth-eaten pallet beneath it into the hall. She turned back into the room and gave a sad shake of her head as she stared down at what was little more than a wide wooden bench. “This room is where your father found his pleasure when his drunken binges pushed his wickedness to even darker depths.”
She motioned a bent finger toward a pair of rusty shackles hanging from iron rings embedded in the wall above the bed, odiousaccoutermentsthat Catriona hadna noticed. “An evil monster, your father was.” Her hand dropped to her side as she turned to Catriona. “Calum kens this place well because this was where his father trained him to be just as vile and cruel.”
Gaersa’s words made the room feel even colder and the damp mustiness hanging heavy in the air took on a more nauseating stench. Catriona pressed her fists hard against her stomach and struggled not to gag on the bile rising in the back of her throat. She had always known her father was even more cruel when he drank but she’d imagined nothing as depraved as this. Now she understood why Motherhad become so inconsolable and enraged the night that Catriona had forgotten to bolt the door to her chambers and secure it even more so with a heavy bar drawn down across the inside of the door. She’d been less than ten years old at the time and had ne’er understood why Motherhad always insisted she bolt and bar her door whenever she was within and not in Mother’spresence. Now she knew.
A fearsome thought struck her. “Ye shouldna be here, Gaersa.” She took hold of the old woman’s plump arm and turned her toward the door. “I canna bear to lose ye, too. Go now and dinna come back.”
Gaersa gave her a sad smile and shook her head. “Calum knows I’m here and he willna harm me.”
“How can ye say that?” Catriona tried to move Gaersa with a firm but gentle push toward the door but the stubborn matron planted her stance and held fast. “He killed Murtagh just as sure as if he’d pulled the trigger himself.”
“Calum willna harm me,” Agnes repeated as she toddled just outside the door and fetched a cloth sack so bulging and full it almost became wedged in the small doorway. She pulled out bedding and blankets and spread them on the bed. Then she retrieved an even smaller cloth bundle and a wineskin from the bottom of the sack. “Bannocks and water. 'Twas all he’d allow me to bring up to ye tonight.”
“He allowed it? Why?” Catriona could scarce believe her wicked brother hadn’t just thrown her into the abandoned wing and left her there to die. She’d been more than shocked that Duff had even built her a fire before he’d left and locked the door behind him. “And how can ye be so verra certain that Calum willna harm ye if he sees all that ye’ve done for me?”
“Who do ye think tended to young Calum’s wounds after his father finished with him?”
A cold, ominous knowing wrapped around her like a killing frost. “He hurt Calum?” When Gaersa had said they had used the room to teach Calum cruelty, she’d ne’er imagined that Calum had been a victim rather than a participant. She couldna bear to think of what her father might have done.
But now that she thought back over her childhood, she could almost pinpoint when it must have first happened. Calum would have only been nine or maybe ten years old. That was when his behavior changed. He’d been so different before then. She and Calum had almost been close. She tore her gaze from the shackles and looked Gaersa in the face. “But how did he get to him? Mothertaught us to keep away from Father when he drank, taught us to bolt our doors whenever we went to our rooms.”
Gaersa looked away, avoiding Catriona’s gaze. “Your Mothergave him to your sire to keep ye safe.”
What Gaersa proposed was unbelievable. “Nay.” Catriona shook her head as she backed toward the window. “That canna be true. Motheralways favored Calum. Said he was the weak one. Spoiled him even.”
"Your Father made her choose. I remember that night as clear as if it were yesterday. He grabbed up wee Angus and held his blade to the lad’s throat. Little more than a bairn, he was, and just started to walking. He threatened to kill the wee babe if yourMotherdidna obey him and sacrifice one of ye to his games as he called them. Swore to her upon one of her most powerful curses in her grimoire, he did. Swore that whichever child she chose to spare, that child would be protected from him so long as he lived. 'Twas the dead of winter and he’d tired of the servants he’d already tormented and kent there’d be no fresh victims 'til they could hire new servants in the spring."
Catriona covered her ears and turned away. She couldna listen to any more, couldna bear any more pain, nor stomach any more suffering. Her splayed hand pressed flat on the cold cracked glass of the window, she shook with spasms of silent sobs, broken with dry retching.
“I’m thankful Alexander escaped this hellish place,” she whispered as tears burned down her face. “I hope he rides as fast and hard away from here as he can go.”
“Forgive me, lass. Believe me when I say, it breaks my old heart to have told ye these terrible things.” Gaersa squeezed her shoulders then lifted the lantern off the window ledge. “But it was time ye learned the truth to help ye better understand your brother and why he does such cruel things.”
