“Ceana,” she heard him call her name, but she could not help him.
* * *
Torcall would not have pushed back at those men had he not heard Ceana scream. The sound of her in distress had been enough to send him in a fit of rage.
Why are ye all quick to judge me?
What is happenin’ to Ceana?
She is a woman. How dare ye lay a finger on her body?
Torcall thought these things and more, and before he could try to calm himself down to reason, his trembling fist was already clenched in a ball. The next man that pushed him got a heavy punch to his face and fell flat onto the ground. The crowd was astonished at his strength and resolve, only for a moment before they all pounced on him.
He realized his mistake all too late and tried to stop, but he had already infuriated the mob. They charged at him; hit him with their fists and with their sticks in anger. He held his arms up to protect himself, but even he knew it was futile against a number that large.
They pushed him onto the ground and held him down. He did not know what they would do to him next. All his worry was about Ceana. He could not hear her scream anymore, and he wondered if that was because she wasn’t hurting anymore, or she had been hurt so badly that she could not utter words anymore.
With his face pressed against the rough, dusty earth, his wish was not of himself but of her.
“Let him go, let him go,” he barely heard the words clearly until the men were taken off him. He was dragged up to his feet rather roughly by a guard.
“I shall take him to the Laird to decide his fate,” the guard said to them.
Ceana’s Faither came out of the crowd that had swallowed him whole a few minutes ago.
“He was innocent. I saw him-” He started talking before he was cut off. The man to whom he spoke was his superior.
“That is left for the people and the Laird MacGregor to decide,” the man told him before binding Torcall’s wrists with a rope. The binds were tight, but Torcall chose that discomfort over being lynched by the mob that raised sticks and other crude weapons.
“I am nae yer killer. Yer killer is out there, and he would kill again. Ye should protect yer loved ones,” Torcall shouted at them. He looked to Ceana’s Faither, who stood by without a word. His heart held no malice towards the older man. He searched for Ceana, but he did not see her.
The guard who arrested him put him on a horse, and from that height, he saw her, standing at a distance from the mob and next to her was Tam. He hated the two of them being together as much as he knew that Ceana hated it also, but at that moment, he was glad she was with someone he knew. He turned away from her and looked ahead to the fate and battle for innocence that awaited him.
Chapter Nineteen
Ceana watched the crowd of people leave slowly as Torcall was taken away by the guard and searched for her father. She did not see her father in the crowd, the first time she realized that he was close was when Tam took his hand off her arm abruptly.
She looked beyond him and saw her father return to her side.
“Good mornin’ to ye, sir,” Tam said in a polite tone that was unusual to him.
Her father only nodded at him and took her hand as he led her away and back to the house. She looked back at the crowd that was quick to calm when Torcall had been taken away. They came to the body of the dead woman and lifted her off the ground. She still could not tell who the dead woman was. Looking at her, she knew she could not have been much older than she was, still quite young.
However, she knew her name would become known to everyone in the clan when the day was brighter.
“Why did ye nae speak when they took Torcall. Ye ken he is innocent. Ye ken that he tried to save the woman’s life. He didnae kill her,” she raised her voice at her father. Her father gave her no reply, and that angered Ceana. She yanked her hand from his grip and looked at him as though she could not understand how easy it was for him to just turn his back on Torcall.
“How can ye be alright with this? They could kill him.”
“They wouldnae kill him. There is a guard with him,” her father assured her.
“Ye are a guard, faither. Ye would have taken him,” she argued.
“The guard who came outranked me. There wasnae a thin’ that I could have done,” her father told her. She wanted to be mad at him, but she knew her father was a good man and would have done his bit to save Torcall, except it was beyond his power.
“Ye could have told the guard that Torcall didnae kill the woman. Ye saw him,” she pushed on.
“Nay, Ceana, I didnae see him. I didnae see the man who attacked her. All I ken are the words that Torcall told me himself-” He put a hand on her shoulder when he saw the look of betrayal in her eyes “-I trust him. He is a good lad, but this is more than me words.”
