The Sixth Labyrinth (The Child of the Erinyes Book 4) (97 page)

Seaghan stepped into the hall, glaring. Behind him, stupid Ibby was blubbering, and Diorbhail was trying to soothe her.

“It’s my fault,” Ibby cried. “I should’ve refused to tell her. Beatrice, I told Morrigan of the clearings at Glenelg.”

“Why?”

“She wanted to know.” Ibby wrung her hands. “I thought she had the right. Now Curran has told her his da’s part in it. It was too shocking. It’s upset her.”

Beatrice snorted. “She doesna care about that old history. She’s just gone off to be with her paramour.”

Curran stared at her, eyes widening, while Beatrice removed her shawl and shook the sand from it.

“Worthless hussy!” Seaghan growled. “What are you on about?”

“How am I a hussy?” Her laugh faded to a glower. “You’d be more honest to call your dear Hannah that.”

Seaghan stepped towards her, fists clenching, but Curran placed a restraining hand on his forearm. “Wait,” he said, frowning.

“Aye.” Beatrice nodded. “You’ll not want to miss what I’ve got to tell. But first, I’d like a cup of tea.” Dropping the shawl on a table, she moved past them into the parlor.

Diorbhail helped Ibby to a chair and remained at her side, staring at Beatrice, saying nothing, but taking it all in.

“She’s naught but lies and tricks,” Seaghan said. “Throw the witch out. You don’t know her like I do, Curran.”

“There’s fear in you, Seaghan,” Beatrice said, “and every one of us can hear it.”

“Leave her be, Seaghan,” Curran said. “She obviously has something to say.”

Ibby looked confused. Seaghan leaned against the doorjamb, scowling.

“You’ve always got tea, hot and ready to drink.” Beatrice took a cup and settled in the rocking chair. “It’s one of the best things about living in the Laird of Eilginn’s home.”

Would Aodhàn be prepared for a husband so blinded by rage that nothing short of cold-blooded murder would satisfy him? The prince of Mycenae had always been shortsighted, caring only for the moment, a night’s pleasure, having whatever female he’d taken a fancy to. He probably wished to humiliate Curran by flaunting Morrigan’s infidelity. But, using a bit of well-turned imagination, Beatrice would see to it that Aodhàn had trouble enough of his own to deal with.

“My Douglas enjoyed his tea,” she said. “I made it dark and strong. He hated a watery brew. Hannah now, she preferred the
uisge-beatha
. That lass could drink like a stevedore. Sit, Master Ramsay.”

“I warn you,” Curran said. “I’ve had a trying day, and I’ve no patience at the moment for idle blethering.”

“Stop me whenever you wish. This tale’s waited over twenty years to be shared, and there’s none left alive who know it but me. I think you’ll find it interesting. I know Seaghan will.”

“Should it wait for Morrigan? She promised she’d be back by sundown.”

“Well, let’s begin. If she returns, she can hear the end of it.”

Curran stared at her. She waited. His eyes narrowed and his hands clenched, but after a long pause, he sighed and sat in one of the other chairs.

“You never knew Hannah,” she began, “or how men went mad over her. Her daughter’s given you a taste though, hasn’t she?”

The stubborn lout said nothing but, “Are you drunk?”

She snorted. “Hannah inherited all the beauty. Makes a body wonder if we didn’t have different fathers. If I’d received even a small portion, well….” She shrugged. “Who knows?”

“You’re a cow next to her,” Seaghan said.

Beatrice flushed. “Hannah used folk for her own ends. She didn’t care what it did to them. We’ll see if you still think she’s so lovely when I’m finished.”

“You bloody bitch. You couldn’t change what I think about anything.”

“Seaghan.” Curran waved sharply. “Let her get on with it.”

Beatrice sipped tea and examined her audience— Ibby, the baffled innocent, murderous Seaghan, Diorbhail, who was strangely unsurprised and alert, and lastly the exhausted, scunnered Curran Ramsay.

“Hannah stole everything from me. I can’t mind when I began to hate her.”

“I thought you were inseparable,” Ibby cried. “You always took such care of her.”

“Aye, well, Mam didn’t like her much either,” Beatrice replied scornfully, “so she made Hannah my fee, in a manner of speaking. Of course, I didn’t get paid to change her hippins and feed her. Da seemed to think I was born to be her maidservant. Like that’s all I was good for.”

She inspected her fingernails then lifted her gaze to Curran’s. “Your wife is planning a change in her circumstances tonight, Master Ramsay,” she said. “If you want to know what it is, you’ll hear me out.”

CHAPTER NINETEEN

MORRIGAN AMBLED ALONG
the precipices, keeping a safe distance from the edge. The breeze, the ocean, the scent of wildflowers and call of seabirds— all helped cool her panic. Olivia, ever a trusting baby, was content in her mother’s arms.

Soon she stood at Dùn Mhiughalaigh, the hulking promontory that thrust into the sea like a giant’s great nose, which must be why they called the far end of it
Sròn an Dùin
, Nose of the Dun. She crossed over the wide, sinking dip where it linked to the main part of the island.

“Let’s sit here awhile, eh dablet?” she said. “Then we’ll go home to your papa.” She settled on the northern edge of the dip, crossing her legs, her full skirts forming a hammock for the babe to lie in.

The ocean sang. Below her feet it was angrier, thundering as it funneled into the narrow space between her resting spot and Gunamuil, the lower outcropping next to it. A storm skulked on the northern horizon, bringing coolness that teased her ankles and calves. Two quick flashes of blue-white lightning streaked through the clouds.

Olivia shoved strands of her mother’s hair in her mouth. She cooed, kicked, and played with her blanket. Morrigan held her child close, soothed by her sweet smell, the smoothness of her flesh, the grip of her miniature fingers.

But Olivia didn’t want to be hugged. She protested until Morrigan propped her in the pool of fabric where she could stare at the birds and the ocean, and play with her mother’s delicious long hair.

Morrigan had imagined herself a wind creature, and perhaps she’d succeeded too well. For were not hurricanes, mistrals, monsoons, and cyclones all examples of wind, leaving destruction in their wake?

Why had she said such terrible things to Curran? What Douglas had done was her deepest, darkest secret; one she’d believed would go with her into death. Why had she revealed it? She couldn’t be certain. The workings of the heart and brain seemed beyond her understanding.

She glanced at far-off lightning, fast-moving clouds, and the sun, making its way down to the sea. She’d promised Curran she would be back before dark, but she didn’t want to leave this landscape. The cottage offered only arguing, unhappiness, and pain.

Even so, there was a niggling, uneasy conviction that part of her had remained behind with him, and that more was breaking off even now, rolling back over the hill towards him.

“Mama,” she said. “What have I done? What should I do?”

She dropped her gaze to the sea.

Diorbhail had once claimed that women could cause their own pregnancies, using the north wind or water.

Water is the beginning and the end of all things, and woman is water’s guardian
.

Washed in sea breezes, Morrigan experienced an instant of connection to the water. She sensed how it would feel to break down, bones dissolving, rising and falling according to the whim of the moon. The cadence stole into her, glimmering like fired oil.

The wind’s breath carried a rumble of thunder, but a swift examination convinced her the cloudbank was retreating, blowing off to the northwest.

She stayed in the furrow between Dùn Mhiughalaigh and the main island, observing the myriad faces of the water as it stretched into an unknowable beyond. Waves edged with foam, curling, sliding, lost in vastness, murmuring then pounding like bass drums.

“See,
a leannan
?
” Supporting Olivia under her arms, she helped the wean stand upright. Olivia’s legs stiffened in the instinctive primal rush to grow and be independent. Lightning flashed, followed by thunder, and the baby laughed as though it was a puppet show put on for her enjoyment.

“
Yonder Clouden’s silent towers
,” Morrigan sang. Olivia turned her head up to her mother’s face, wide-eyed.

“
Where at moonshine’s midnight hours
,

O’er the dewy bending flowers,

Fairies dance sae chearie
.”

It was enticing to imagine stepping off this cliff and onto that sparkling pathway created on the surface of the water by the setting sun. They would be forgotten, nothing to mark their passing, lost yet joined with immense magnificence. Finally they would descend to the underwater castle and live for eternity among pearls and lost gold from sunken galleons.

She helped Olivia take a few stumbling steps.

If things were different, the idea of death might overwhelm me
, she’d written that morning in her diary.
I might turn it into magic and poetry, and succumb to it as Iseult did. But I choose life. Life for my babies. My weans will grow up with their mother, knowing they are loved.

And when death comes, somewhere, somehow, Mackinnon and I will find each other, we two who understand the darkness in the other’s soul
.

She picked Olivia up, kissed her temple, and to quiet the beginnings of a sulk, sang again.

“
Fair and lovely as thou art,

Thou hast stown my very heart
;

I can die— but canna part,

My bonny bonny dearie
.”

Only then, as the last words whisked away on a playful breeze, did she realize where she was, and what it meant. Mackinnon had asked her to meet him here. She had forgotten in the anxiety of Curran’s injuries, then their argument. Or had she? Had she come here in unconscious acquiescence to her lover’s demand?

She rose and turned… and there he was, standing a few steps away.

“Mackinnon,” she breathed. The selkie. Dionysos. Theseus. Fisherman. Tristram.

Husband.

He had many names and faces, all merging into one word.
Beloved.
Though she’d been determined to keep her distance, she was happy to see him. It gave her the chance to explain why this had to be the end.

“Morrigan.” He squatted and smiled.

They clasped hands. His felt cool and strong and reassuring. “I wasn’t sure you’d come.”

“I didn’t mean to,” she felt compelled to say.

He paused. “Yet you did.”

“Curran’s back from the mainland,” she said. “We argued and I ran away.”

He said nothing to that.

“I promised him I’d return by sundown,” she said. “I should go. I must go. But I am glad to see you….” She hesitated. It was hard to say
for the last time
. The words stung her throat.

He stood, reaching down to help her up. “There’s a place I want to show you before you go. We’ll have to do some juggling though, with the child.”

“I don’t know…. Olivia should not be here, with us.”

“Stay a wee while,” he said. “I’ve something to ask you. We’ll make do.” He nodded towards the west. “There’s still time.” He led her along the crags a bit, north of Dùn Mhiughalaigh. “We can climb down,” he said. “It’ll be an adventure.”

She resisted. “It’s straight down. We can’t.”

“There’s a ladder.” He knelt and pulled up a portion of it to show her. “See?”

She knelt too. It was woven of something rope-like, maybe horsehair. “Is it strong enough?” she asked doubtfully.

“I’ve been up and down it many times. I’ll go first. Hand Olivia down to me.” Grasping the rope, he maneuvered over the edge.

“Do we have to do this?”

“It’s not far,” he said, and climbed down a few more rungs. “Here, see? Solid ground. Hand her down.” He lifted his arms.

Morrigan lay on her stomach and held Olivia out, wrapped in her blanket. Mackinnon took her. She made a curious inquiring sound, and turned her head in search of her mother.

“Be careful,” Morrigan said.

“You too.” He stepped away from the ladder, turned, and went off through the scrub, out towards the overhang.

He’s a trickster, that one
, Diorbhail’s voice whispered as Morrigan watched him walk away with her child. She heard a disturbance all around, as though the breezes were adding to the warning by bringing the wildflowers and bracken to life.

“Mackinnon?” She tamped down irrational fright as she heard Diorbhail again.
I fear him. He is not what he seems.

She took a deep breath, trying to keep calm. “Wait for me, Mackinnon.” Not giving herself time to panic, she found the ladder’s rungs and propelled herself over the edge, cursing the hem of her skirt when it caught beneath her toes and pulled her off balance.

He wouldn’t harm Olivia, not Olivia, not her baby. Diorbhail didn’t like any men other than Curran. It had simply been a meaningless sigh of wind she’d heard.

We should die. It’s the only way.
Mackinnon’s words formed a litany as she stumbled down the ladder.

She had a terrible fear he meant to ask her to die with him. What if he decided Olivia could die as well?

She jumped off the ladder onto solid ground and turned, searching for the man and child, but they’d vanished. She took a few steps, stumbling over exposed roots. Unfounded terror was making her clumsy. She mustn’t think about how far they could all fall, or how many rocks lay below, or how cold and deep the Atlantic was.

I’m coming. I’m coming, my braw girl
. An interior avalanche of clarity exploded through her. The alchemy of two lovers dying in each other’s arms was a lie. They would simply be dead, rotting, eaten by fish. She didn’t want to die, not tonight or any night, with Mackinnon. She would never abandon her children, born, newly conceived, and yet to be imagined, not them and not Curran. As she scrambled for footing, a tiger’s ferocity flooded her. She would not be thwarted.

Her hem caught on something and ripped as she refused to pause.