Dread crept up Moire’s limbs. “Is anyone else sick?”
Effie shrugged. “I’ve only had eyes for my own son, but I did hear that old Muriel Sinclair, Wee Alex’s great-gran, is poorly.” Her eyes pleaded with Moire, and tears spilled out over her plump cheeks. “Is it a curse? Can the goddess save my son?”
Moire looked up sharply. “A curse?”
Effie wiped away tears with the back of her hand. “There’s talk that the Sinclairs are cursed, or ill wished, that evil came when the holy maid died, and all those men with her, then the chief, murdered on his own lands. And Alasdair Og is mad as a—”
“Wheesht!” Moire said quickly, not liking where Effie was going. Folk needed someone to blame when things went awry. Fear gripped her old bones, hummed a warning along her limbs.
“Should I bathe Robbie in the spring? Make him drink the water?” Effie asked, stroking her son’s face. But it was too late for that. Moire closed his eyes and sat back to let his young soul pass unimpeded.
His mother’s wail shook the birds from the trees.
Not an hour later Annie Sinclair came to fetch Moire, her face white with worry. Her son was sick as well, and her elderly grandmother was failing. Annie was still grieving the loss of her infant daughter, and the stark terror in her eyes made Moire follow her.
The village was a somber place, with folk muttering among themselves. Several made a sign against witches as Moire passed by, and she felt fear chill her old bones.
Angus looked up from the bed where he held his son’s hand when Moire entered. She’d feared the worst, but the boy was awake, and though he was pale, the dreadful smell in the cott attested to the fact that he’d already purged most of what ailed him. She touched his forehead. There was no fever.
“Will ye give me medicine that tastes bad?” he asked.
“If ye have the strength to ask, ye don’t need it,” Moire said.
In the opposite corner of the cott, behind a curtain, Muriel Sinclair was tucked up in bed, dozing. Annie gently bathed her gran’s lined face with cool water, her tears falling on the plaid that covered the old one’s withered body. “She’s reached a great age,” Moire said gently. “’Tis nothing for that. It’s her time to depart.” She slipped out as Annie burst into tears. Angus followed her.
“Will my son live?” he asked.
“He’ll have a life as long as Muriel’s, if nothing takes him before that.”
Folk crowded around Angus. “Was Wee Alex cursed, like Robbie?” someone asked.
“And Muriel—what cause was there to curse her?”
“’Tis not a curse—’tis a blessing to live so long,” Moire said.
“Och, aye? Then what’s to keep her from going right on living?”
There was a shout from the end of the lane, and Alan Sinclair hurried toward them. “My cow is dead,” he said. “She keeled over in her stall and died, just like that. If there’s no curse, why would a healthy animal just up and die?”
“Just like poor wee Robbie, and Muriel,” someone muttered.
“Last I saw Robbie he was running in this very lane with Wee Alex. Strange they should both become ill so sudden-like.”
“Aye—I remember that day. Fia MacLeod was here, and the lads ran into her, knocked her down.”
Moire felt her stomach draw in against her backbone. She watched as people’s eyes narrowed and they began to whisper. The sound rose, swelled, filled the road, the sky, grew louder still, until it buzzed over the whole village like a swarm of angry bees. Amid the shouts and the accusations, Moire heard just one word, repeated over and over.
“Witchcraft.”
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
There were rumors that the men who’d murdered Padraig were hiding in a cave on Sinclair lands. Dair took a tail of ten men, went out to investigate, and found nothing. “No one’s been here in months,” Ruari said, looking around the old shelter travelers and herders used when sudden storms came in over the mountains or off the sea. Dair stood in the mouth of the cave, looking down over the hills and valleys of his clan’s lands—his lands. Something felt wrong here, and he kept his hand on his dirk, half expecting an ambush, but the men with him were loyal, his father’s men, men who’d sailed with him a hundred times. “There are no tracks, no provisions. Who said they were here?” Jock asked.
“Logan said he heard it in the village. Some of the women told him, said they heard it from a hunter,” Dair said. “’Tis a false lead. We’d best go home, I think.”
Would someone lie, purposely lure him away? He scanned the dense forest, the deep heather, the mountains rising so high their peaks were hidden in the misty clouds. Instinct prickled along his nerves, warned of danger. He frowned as he turned the garron’s head for home.
By the time Dair got back, dusk had lengthened the shadows, turned the daylight gray. Yet another storm was coming. He felt it in his bones, smelled it on the wind. He needed a bath, a clean shirt. He couldn’t wait to see Fia again, in the hall at supper, and after . . .
