Maren announced herself to the servant who wrenched open the door. ‘My name is Maren, and I am here to see your Laird.’
He looked her up and down with a leer. ‘Are you sent for his pleasure? I thought all that was well behind him.’
‘No, fool. I am Colm McEwen’s daughter. Go and tell him that I am here.’
‘Daughter?’
‘Aye, so tell him I am here, or you will suffer his displeasure and mine.’
The old man shuffled off and eventually returned at a snail’s pace. ‘My master will see you now,’ he said resentfully.
The man led Maren to the first floor of the house, past a series of shut-up rooms. The whole place looked shabbier than she remembered - cobwebbed, damp and unbeloved. Maren shuddered at the memories it inspired. She was shown into the great hall, which was as cold as the grave, boasting a meagre fire barely breaking the chill and windows, heavily shuttered, save for one which let in a shaft of sickly sunlight.
A figure shuffled forward, and when it entered a stream of light from the one unshuttered window, Maren could not suppress a gasp. It was a shock seeing her father after all the years between them. He was a stranger, a ghost of a man. His face had a sickly pallor, and the flesh seemed to have been sucked onto his bones. His eyes were red and rheumy, and there was but a shadow of his former, burly self. Even his hair was tinged with grey. She expected him to have aged, but not this decay, this utter ruin.
‘So, it really is you. My beloved daughter has returned to the fold,’ declared Colm McEwen with a smile which belied the snarl to his voice. Even in his decrepitude, he still had the power to make her flinch with a word. The tone of his voice was enough. ‘Come towards the light,’ he commanded.
Maren stepped towards him, squinting into the sunlight as he paced around her – a beast in a cage.
‘Take your fill of looking, for I will not tarry long, Father,’ said Maren.
‘To what do I owe this honour?’ he spat. ‘Could it be that you have come back to look after your old father in his dotage?’
‘No. I decided long ago that I would be no man’s slave.’
‘You are but a woman. What use are you beyond pleasing a man and doing his bidding?’ His black eyes held a wintery disdain.
‘You have no power over me now, and I do not fear you as I once did. Time has moved on,’ said Maren with a defiance she did not feel.
‘I disagree,’ he replied. ‘I see fear on your face, plain as day. And what is one little lass to me when I hold men in the palm of my hand? I get one rat to kill another with just a word.’
‘You play with people, that is all.’
Colm McEwen rushed closer, making her flinch. ‘I inspire fear in others but do not succumb to it myself. That is the trick. Have you not seen a dog fight? ‘Tis not the biggest dog that wins. ‘Tis the small, agile ones that can think through their fear that tear out their opponent’s throat. And speaking of dogs, why are you back with your tail between your legs, like a craven little bitch?’
‘To deliver us both from evil.’
He gave a deep, throaty laugh. ‘And what evil might that be?’
He was mocking her. Perhaps it was a mistake to open the door to this monstrosity who was once her father. Maren gathered her courage, for she had to get the answers she needed.
‘Have all the rats deserted your sinking ship?’ she said, going on the attack.
‘Who says my ship is sinking?’
‘You never came back to Inverness. That makes me think your last encounter with the lairds there cut too deep. As I hear it, they slaughtered many of your men and almost got you too.’
‘That well had run dry a long time since. I was ready to leave the cursed place. What was back there for me anyway?’
‘A daughter,’ spat Maren.
‘You flew the coop long ago, and you burned your bridges when you would not be obedient.’
‘When I would not enter another gruesome marriage, you mean.’
‘When you would not be useful, Maren,’ he barked. ‘You made a comely widow, and I could have profited from it by making connections of the highest order. You were always a clever lass. If you put your mind to it, you could have graced a rich man’s bed. Aye, you have your mother’s look, womanly and soft, yet with an underlying wildness waiting to break out. And with your education and manners, you could move in high circles. Yet look at you, dressed in poor garb and here with a hand out to your old father, begging.’
‘I would never beg to you, for it would do me no good. You would only sell me again, just as you did by wedding me to Drayton.’
