The Sixth Labyrinth (The Child of the Erinyes Book 4) (41 page)

They stared at each other.

“Tell me the rest,” he said. “Why do they call you a witch?”

“It gives them the excuse they need, so they can do what they want—”

“I’m sorry,
a ghaoil
.”

She sighed again, ashamed of raising her voice. Plucking one of his hands from her shoulder, she wove their fingers together and pressed her palm against his. Warm tingling traveled up her arm, like sunlight in her blood.

“I’ve a husband and two wee daughters.” She frowned. “No, three, I think. Men break down the door and fill my house. My children are screaming.”

Curran rubbed his cheek against her forehead. “Stop,” he said. “I don’t like to see you so upset.”

“I have to say it.” The words would suffocate her now if she didn’t speak. “They’re begging me to save them.” She pressed her hands over her ears. “But I… can’t.”

“Morrigan, it’s horrendous. No wonder….”

She needed a deep breath to continue. “They kill my daughter. I try to force the blood back into her, but it keeps coming out between my fingers. I’m dragged from my baby. I feel the blade. I see my blood. Then… there’s nothing. I wake up.”

Curran leaned across her to set her cup on the table. He gathered her against him, tucking her head in the hollow below his chin.

“Why would I dream such things?” Morrigan asked. A shudder formed, small at first, then migrating outward. Speaking the nightmare seemed to make it so much more sinister.

“I don’t know.”

She listened to his pulse beat. Her muscles relaxed and the headache retreated. A deep inhale cleansed most of the tension, and she could think clearly again. It did feel better, now the words had escaped, like the draining of an infection. She closed her eyes.

“You’ve had this nightmare your whole life?” Curran asked.

Nestled against his throat, she felt the reassuring vibration of his voice. “As long as I can remember.”

“You know what I’d like to do? Replace your nightmares with other dreams. We can do it.” He spoke gently, and kept up a slow, circular stroking on her temple. “Are you listening?” He pressed one of her hands against her stomach and placed his own over it. “Our son or daughter is growing inside you. If our child’s a girl, she’ll look like you, and we’ll spoil her so much no one will ever want to marry her, and she’ll always stay with us. We’ll grow old here at Kilgarry. We’ll be a noisy horde. Our sons will treat their sisters like princesses, and will put any suitors to the sword. We’ll have picnics by the sea. You’re going to get fat, because I’m going to feed you cheese, and scones with cream and jam, every day.”

Morrigan turned her face up, smiling.

“When you smile like that,” he said, “you cast a spell over me. Your smiles are magical, my Morrigan. Right now they’re rare, but I want to see that smile every day, all the time. I love how it reaches into my chest and squeezes my heart.”

Embarrassed, she hid her face again, longing to believe him but afraid. It was hard to believe. Hard to feel both yearning and fear at once.

He laughed and patted her cheek, and she felt he understood.

The patient brush of his fingers calmed her, so that she saw them picnicking at the seaside, surrounded by a rowdy gaggle of sticky-fingered weans, and she was plump, with a double chin and dimpled thighs.

He continued to describe their future and she tried to stay awake, not wanting to miss one word.
All my life,
she heard him say,
I’ve lived with a feeling that I’m missing something, something I could never stop searching for. It vanished that day on the moor, and I’ve never felt it since. Not once
.

His voice drew her deeper. She couldn’t keep up thinking or wondering about anything.

She sank into green waves. Feeling playful, she threw handfuls of water into sprays as glittery as diamonds. Her clothes vanished; her hair streamed loose. A porpoise chittered at her, then a seal appeared. It nosed her, round and round, until she was breathless from giggling, before its flippers vanished and she was clasped against a man’s bare chest. He held her close, his hand pressed against the back of her head so she couldn’t see his face as he kissed her shoulder then the sensitive place behind her ear.
Save me, Aridela
, she heard.
Open your heart
. Yet with astonishing violence, the figure blurred, alchemized. Now his grip was brutal; his hand smashed over her mouth.
You didn’t want me to die,
she heard.
You were happy for me to trick you, as long as you didn’t get blamed.
Pain speared her neck and she screamed.

The ocean swept away. Morrigan rushed through a cold black tunnel.

“It’s a dream, Morrigan. A dream. I’m here.” Curran’s clasped her upper arms.

“It didn’t work.”

“It will,” he said. “I will make it work.”

Agnes’s warning returned.
Selkies have a way about them. Male or female, they can enchant humans, can make them do anything. Beware the selkie
.

She sent out a desperate prayer.
Mama, what’s happening to me? I need you
.

But now, because of Logan, the only picture she could form of her mother was of her lying in bloody snow, screaming, helpless, and suffering as Morrigan ripped her apart to be born.

CHAPTER TEN

ELEANOR GAVE MORRIGAN
permission to attend the kirking, as long as she returned home straight after and did nothing strenuous.

Morrigan sat in a pew near the front, reveling in her triumph and looking about with great interest until William Watson began his sermon. For nearly an hour, he spoke about the sanctity of virgins, the imperative that a man’s chosen come to him not only innocent, but also ignorant of life’s baser aspects, for, as he claimed, female purity was the glue that held civilizations together. If men had to spend their days wondering what their wives were up to, or who had fathered the children they bore, that glue would disintegrate, and society would crumble into violent anarchy.

She soon felt as humiliated as he no doubt intended, convinced she was little more than spoiled fruit that ought to be tossed out. Then came teeth-clenching fury. He managed to speak the entire sermon without saying one word about male purity. Curran sat beside her, his hand resting calmly upon hers. And why not? He wasn’t being attacked. Though they’d never discussed his past with women, Morrigan reckoned her husband was not as innocent as she had been.

There was something else to notice and ponder: a fresh bunch of daisies on Hannah’s grave. What had Morrigan’s mother meant to Seaghan MacAnaugh, the gigantic man with the tender heart? He still thought of her, after so long. Morrigan wanted to ask, but feared being hurtful or rude. Maybe when she knew him better.

After the service, as the congregation formed a corridor beneath the yews for the laird and his wife to pass through, Curran squeezed Morrigan’s hand, leaned close, and said, “His balls withered away years ago since no woman will have him. He says those things because at night in his lonely bed, he wishes he was me.”

Which made her smile and utterly routed the suggestion that she was something foul or sinister.

Morrigan’s fine new station was snatched away as though it had been mere fantasy. Even Tess and Violet ordered her about. Eleanor insisted she not get out of bed except to use the chamber pot, but when left alone, Morrigan defied every command. Wrapped in a tartan shawl, she limped to the window seat and gazed out across Kilgarry’s gardens and beyond, to rolling wooded hills. Sometimes she managed to get the window open, and was able to breathe the enticing aroma of sea and forest. Spellbound by beauty and her tendency to daydream, she’d forget to keep up her guard, and was all too often startled by a hand clapping upon her shoulder, and orders to return to her stuffed-feather prison, usually with stern lectures on obedience.

By Tuesday, her healthy body, so used to activity and toil, rebelled. Aches gnawed at her spine. Her limbs stiffened. Bruises manifested and patience splintered.

“Tell me more about this kirking,” she asked Curran as he squatted on the floor beside the bed, massaging her ankle in a salt-water bath. It had turned ten different shades of purple by now, and was still swollen.

“Lower, Morrigan. Put it all the way in the water.” When she did, he said, “It’s an old custom. Every newly married couple is kirked. Like Agnes said, it blesses the marriage in the eyes of the parish. If there happens to be more than one wedding in the same week, which is as rare as a drought these days, the couples vie to be first to reach home after the sermon. It’s said the first couple home will enjoy a long, happy life while bad luck and misfortune dooms the losers.” He dipped his hands in the water and rubbed her ankle before grinning at her again. Sunlight, snaking through the east window, lit his face and filled his eyes with indigo sparkles. “There weren’t any other weddings, so calm your superstitions. I don’t know why I let you talk us into such needless risk. I’ll admit my crofters would’ve been disappointed if we hadn’t gone, and those who believe in omens and evil eyes… like Agnes… would’ve made dire predictions. But be careful, Morrigan. Agnes will have you seeing ghosts on the staircase if you give her half a chance.”

Morrigan dismissed his warning. The consequences might be dire even without Agnes to predict them. She’d looked back at Aunt Ibby’s shop as she ferried off to be married, and some might believe she’d broken a vow to Kit.

In all her life she’d never fallen off a horse. That it happened the day after her wedding, with a child in her womb, had to be a sign.

* * * *

Father Drummond visited on Wednesday. Curran assisted him into an armchair beside the bed while Violet bolstered Morrigan with pillows and brought the tea tray.

Though near-crippling joint pain plagued the poor man, a smile flickered about his lips, waiting for the slightest cause to turn full-blown. She decided he was merry, a blithe, caring gentleman with an inexhaustible sense of humor.

He asked after her injuries, and expressed his happiness that the bump on her head hardly hurt anymore and the swelling in the ankle was receding.

“I do hope you’re strong by Michaelmas, my dear,” he said. “Folk come from near and far to attend our festivities. It would be awful if you missed it.”

“I’m going to win the
oda
.” Curran moved his chair closer to the bed and rested one arm on the quilt. “I’ve found the perfect hiding place for Brutus and Glendessary.”

Hugh slapped his black-clad thigh and guffawed. “His finest Clydes are forever being stolen from him,” he told Morrigan. “He’s left with Thoroughbreds, and sometimes, as an added insult, a swaybacked nag or two. Your husband’s never won the Michaelmas race, and he with the most highly prized horseflesh in three counties.”

Puzzled by this talk of theft coupled with laughter, Morrigan asked, “Who steals his horses?”

“I’m sure it was Logan last year.” Curran shrugged. “Though he still denies it.”

“Why would anyone do that? And why Clydes? Wouldn’t your Thoroughbreds fetch more silver?”

“Not around here.” Hugh nodded at an offer of more tea. “Only Clydes run the oda. Tradition, you see. They’re stolen because there’s glory in lifting your neighbor’s steeds the night before Michaelmas. They’re returned after, of course.” He scratched his nose with the tip of his pinkie finger. “Curran’s beasts do often win, yet he’s never the one riding them.”

The way the priest’s eyes twinkled made her want to smile. Morrigan dropped a smallish lump of sugar into his cup. “Doesn’t seem like they’d be good runners. More, Father?”

“Aye, lass, give me another. I’ve a sweet tooth. The race is short, along the beach. Clydes can run. They love to run.”

“I mind how Leo used to race round the paddock.” She sighed, remembering the huge and gentle animal. “I’ve never heard of the oda, or stealing horses for Michaelmas. I’m afraid I’ll shame Curran.”

Her husband laughed. “Of course you won’t, silly wench.”

“Never concern yourself about such things, lass.” Hugh stirred his milky sweet brew, the spoon grating over sugar in the bottom of the cup. “Your husband and I will make you so familiar with our traditions you’ll feel you were born here. Oh….” He broke into an unselfconscious bellow of laughter. “You were! Though…” his smile faded, “the circumstances….” He shook his head, refusing to succumb to distress. “Things did turn out well in the end.”

“Aye, Father,” she said, frowning at her tea.
But the cost was high
.

“Michaelmas is held on the twenty-ninth of September to celebrate the harvest.”

“Aye, it’s the same at home… I mean Stranraer.”

“Everyone attends hereabouts, from grandmams to suckling babes. It’s something we look forward to during the growing season. Along with giving Christian thanks, we feast, dance, and race. This year will be especially happy. The harvest was good, and you’re here. It’s a miracle. One of our own restored to us. There’s much to celebrate.”

Curran perched on the edge of the bed, crossing his legs and knitting his fingers through hers. “Next Sunday is Carrot Sunday. All the women come together and dig for wild carrots. Then they bake
strùans
… a holiday bannock. Men slaughter lambs for the feast and steal horses. On Saint Michael’s Day, we attend church, show honor to our ancestors, and feast. We hold the carrot giving and the oda. There are other sports as well, much like the Highland games, and the normal mischief and drinking.”

“Mischief?” Morrigan said, lifting a brow.

Hugh’s lips twitched. “It’s traditional to ask your true love to become your wife on the night of Saint Michael’s. Sometimes there’s the sort of revelry we clergy frown upon.” He attempted to appear disapproving, but his infectious grin triumphed. “One man watches the crops and circles the town, guarding it from evil spirits. These customs come from a time long ago, when folk believed in gods and witches. Few understand nowadays the old meanings behind what they do. They perform the rites because they grew up seeing them done. I doubt there’s many left who could tell you Saint Michael used to be the god Michael, once upon a time.”