13: FRIENDS AND EQUALS
“I’M GOING TO murder someone if we don’t find this lass soon,” Ross muttered, clawing at his neck.
“Get in line.” Ian took another swig of ale, grimacing.
Archie grunted, chewing doggedly. The mutton was gristly and foul. Rancid fat coated his tongue with each mouthful.
Across the scarred table, Ross picked at his trencher with barely concealed disgust, while Ian washed down each bite with ale that tasted like goat piss.
The Lochbuie Inn was a hovel, but it was the only lodging in the village. The lads still waited with the birlinn farther down the coast, but Archie, Ross, and Ian couldn’t leave yet. Cramped, filthy, and reeking of unwashed bodies and stale beer, this inn was worse than squalid.And the beds—Christ, they were crawling with beasties. Angry red bites that wept and itched without mercy now covered Archie’s arms. He’d scratched one until it bled this morning, and now the bite was hot to the touch.
“Three days in this shite-hole, and what do we have to show for it?” he ground out.
Nothing.
They’d questioned every black-haired, blue-eyed woman in Lochbuie. Some were too young, others too old. A few fit the description but had families that vouched for them, roots that went back generations. None of them were the bastard daughter of a rape thirty-one years past.
Archie was starting to think the old midwife had lied about more than just the bairn’s death. Maybe there had never been a bairn at all. Maybe Rhona Maclean had died barren, and Esme had spun a tale to save her own neck.
But that wouldn’t please the Macquarie chieftain. And vexing Hamish Macquarie was a good way to end up dead.
Shoving his trencher away, Archie reached for his ale. Movement caught his eye—a man limped toward their table. He was older, around sixty summers, give or take, with greasy silvery hair that still had flaxen threads through it. His face was florid; broken veins covered his high cheekbones, a sign of a heavy drinker.
“Ye are the men asking questions?” the man greeted them.
Archie’s interest sharpened. “What if we are?”
“My name’s Murdoch … and I know things.” The man’s bloodshot gaze darted around the common room before settling back on them. Cunning gleamed in the depths of his eyes. “Things about Rhona Maclean and what happened all those years ago.”
Ross leaned forward. “Then speak.”
“Coin first.” Murdoch held out a blunt-fingered hand.
Archie cut him a hard stare, but the man didn’t break eye contact. Moments passed, and it became clear this turd wasn’t going to talk unless they paid him.
Cursing under his breath, Archie fished a silver penny from his belt pouch and slapped it into the man’s palm. “Out with it.”
Pocketing the coin deftly, Murdoch pulled up a stool. “Rhonadiddie in childbirth,” he began, his voice low. “But the bairn lived.”
Archie’s pulse quickened. “Aye?”
“Her sister, Siùsan, took the child. Wrapped it in swaddling and fled to the woods that very night.” The man’s lips twisted into a sneer. “I saw her go. Sneaking through the village like a thief, clutching that bundle to her chest.”
“And ye never told anyone?” Ian asked, scowling.
“Wasn’t my business, was it?” Murdoch shrugged. “Siùsan set herself up as a herb-wife in the woods. Told everyone the bairn was hers … born after some tumble with a sailor who drowned before he could make an honest woman out of her. Folk believed it. Why wouldn’t they? Everyone knows Siùsan Maclean used to spread her legs for anyone when she was a lass.”
Archie’s fingers drummed on the table. The man’s voice held the bitterness of a spurned suitor.
“I saw what I saw.” Murdoch’s gaze never left Archie’s face; his intensity was disconcerting. “Siùsan raised that child as her own.” He licked his lips then. “A lass, tall and dark-haired … comely, like her mother. Blue eyes like hers too, the color of—”
“Where?” Ross cut him off. “Wherein the woods?”
“North of here,” he replied with a sneer. “Maybe twenty furlongs. There’s a cottage in a clearing, tucked away from the path.” Murdoch scratched his jaw then. “Siùsan died recently though. The daughter lives there alone now, as far as I know.”
A smile crept across Archie’s face. Finally. After days of chasing ghosts, they had something solid.
“Thisdaughter,” he said carefully. “What’s her name?”
