Page 15 of The Story of his Highland Bride (Dancing Through Time #4)

15

S now clouded the roads, all the way to the village of Falkernside, falling thick and fast against the darkness of night. It made an already unpleasant journey far more unpalatable, as Jackson’s stallion trudged through the dense blanket of white, while Lennox rode alongside.

Why tonight of all nights? Jackson cursed the priest who had caused this outing, for Jackson’s thoughts were still far behind him, at Castle Faulkner, in Eloise’s bedchamber. He longed to be warm and content, entangled with her upon the bed, heating each other through the icy night like they were their own personal hearths, sharing in one another’s fire.

“Ye look like ye want to strangle somethin’,” Lennox remarked, as the horses continued to follow the now-hidden road.

The beasts’ noses could scent what men’s eyes could not see, and their memories did not need to be jostled by what physically lay in front of them. Otherwise, Jackson was fairly certain they would have all been lost by now.

Jackson laughed gruffly. “Aye, if it wouldn’ae cost me eternal damnation, I’d strangle that priest for his wicked ways. How does he have the gall to call followers of the Old Gods heathens, when he’s the one burnin’ young lasses who havenae done aught wrong?”

“Maybe she cast a curse.” Lennox shrugged, though he did not seem convinced. Indeed, since the dinner with Eloise, he had seemed a lot more amenable toward women who were, perhaps, a little strange.

“Aye, and maybe she dinnae, but whatever the case might be, I’d like to ken what right he thinks he has to take the lives of people in me territory?” Jackson spat, knowing he ought to calm himself down before he reached the village. “If he trusts so wholly in his God, why is he nae content to let his God pass judgment when someone’s life comes to a natural end? Why does he feel the need to be the holy executioner?”

Lennox shook his head. “I daenae ken, M’Laird. I just… I just hope it’s nae me Jane that he’s thinkin’ of burnin’, else there’ll be trouble.”

Jackson was aware that his Man-at-Arms had enjoyed a fleeting courtship with a woman from Falkernside named Jane McBride, but the lady in question had called a halt to it some months ago. Lennox had insisted that he was glad that Jane had ended the courtship but, glancing at his friend, Jackson had to wonder if it was not quite so simple.

“Do ye still care for the lass?” he asked.

Lennox stared straight ahead, as though he did not trust his expression not to give him away. “I’ve cared for her since I was a bairn, M’Laird. Just because she doesnae want me for a husband doesnae mean that I ceased to hold her in me heart.”

“Did she do anythin’ that ye’d describe as witchy behavior, while ye were courtin’?” Jackson thought he saw lights in the near distance, glowing hazily through the curtain of snow.

Lennox huddled deeper into his cloak. “There wasnae a herb she couldn’ae tell ye the name and purpose of, but it’s only because her grandmaither was a healer. To Father Hepburn, I suppose that might seem… ungodly.”

“Just walkin’ with a limp because ye’ve tripped and hurt yer ankle seems ‘ungodly’ to Father Hepburn,” Jackson hissed, wondering what the priest would think of a young woman who wrote with a mysterious quill, and carried strange stones with captive souls within them, and swore she had come from the future through a magical stone. Moreover, what would the priest make of Jackson’s growing affection for that woman, and the unyielding desire that pulsed through him, every time he thought of her?

A short while later, the hazy lights gave way to the squat houses and deathly silent streets of Falkernside. The thick snow had a way of dulling every sound, but the absolute quiet that surrounded the two men was not entirely the snow’s fault. Of that, Jackson was certain, for there was a tense quality to the silence, like everyone in the village was holding their breath.

“He must have gathered them all,” Jackson grumbled, urging Claymore into a lope, and praying he had not come too late to save the poor girl who had been accused.

He charged into the village square, causing a few alarmed shouts to rise up from the crowd. Just as Jackson had suspected, the priest had corralled the villagers into the square, to form an audience for the grisly performance that was about to take place.

In the center of the square, a stake had been erected, piled high at the bottom with straw and kindling and wood. Tied to the wooden pole in the middle was a young woman who could not have been older than twenty or so: a familiar woman, at least beneath the dirt that smeared her face and the tears that cut two meandering streams down her filthy cheeks.

Jane McBride wore a torn leine, and looked like she had been starved to within an inch of her life, judging by the way her head lolled and only the ropes that bound her were keeping her upright. It was a common enough tactic. Jackson had witnessed it before: Father Hepburn starved the women he accused, until they were so delirious and hungry that they would have admitted to anything to gain a slice of bread. Jackson also had his suspicions that Father Hepburn slipped the women tainted water, addling their minds in order to gain a false confession, but he had never been able to prove it.

“What is the meanin’ of this?” Jackson barked, leaping down from the saddle with Lennox only a step behind him. The Man-at-Arms had his hand gripped around the pommel of his broadsword, seemingly ready to cut his former lover down, no matter what the priest had to say.

Father Hepburn emerged from the crowd to meet Jackson’s stern approach. The priest was a tall, thin creature, who rather resembled a heron, with wisps of fine, gray hair atop his head and keen, dark eyes that never failed to miss an opportunity to see “ungodly” things in his parishioners.

The priest bowed his head to Jackson. “My Laird, I didn’t wish to trouble ye with this wickedness. The hour is late. Ye should return to yer castle before the snows prevents ye.”

Though he claimed to be a Scot, born and bred, Father Hepburn had always lacked much of a brogue. He spoke as if he had spent most of his days in England, and though his loyal flock did not seem to mind it, it had always rankled Jackson.

“Ye’ll nae order me to do anythin’ in me own lands, Father Hepburn,” Jackson shot back, pushing past the priest to reach the stake. “What crime has she committed, eh? Speak quickly, as I’ve nae a jot of patience for this wickedness.”

Father Hepburn walked slowly to join Jackson, crinkling his beak-like nose in annoyance before he replied, “She is responsible for the death of Anne Walker. Mrs. Walker’s sons swear to me that their maither was alive and well when they left her in the care of Miss McBride, but when they returned, their maither was dead… and there was blood upon Miss McBride’s hands when they found her with their maither.”

“Jane?” Lennox climbed up onto the stake and took hold of the young woman’s face, trying to urge her into awakening. “Jane, can ye hear me?”

The woman’s eyes opened. “Aye… Lennox, is that… ye?”

“It is, Lass.” Lennox nodded. “Ye’re safe, Lass. Nay harm will come to ye.”

Father Hepburn opened out his arms, addressing the crowd. “I assure ye, Miss McBride will pay penance this night for the evil she has done.”

“Anne Walker was sick,” Jackson interjected. “She’d been unwell for years, and almost five-and-eighty! If Miss McBride had been called to tend to her, it would have been as a healer, but there’s nothin’ a healer can do when death is already knockin’. Where are Samuel and John Walker?”

Two men stepped out of the crowd, raising their hands sheepishly. Jackson had always made a point of learning as many names as he could, and there was not a soul in Clan Faulkner who did not know of Anne Walker. She was famous among his people, solely because she had lived so long. Indeed, though macabre, each year he knew that many men in the village held a wager as to when she would finally die.

“Was yer maither more sickly than usual when ye called upon the help of Miss McBride?” Jackson figured that he would have to guide a trial himself, since it appeared that Jane had not been given one. Not one of any worth, at least.

Samuel and John exchanged a look, before nodding slowly.

“She’d been coughin’ blood for two days,” Samuel, the older of the two, replied. “It had happened before, ye see, and Jane had given our maither somethin’ to stop it. We thought she could do the same again.”

Jackson looked to the stake, where Lennox was in the process of discreetly cutting through Jane’s bonds. “And is it possible that the tonic or the herbs that Jane gave yer maither simply were nae enough, this time?”

“Aye, that’s what we thought,” John answered, “but Father Hepburn said that—”

“Father Hepburn told ye that this sweet, poor lass who has done nothin’ but help all of ye in yer hours of need—when ye’ve had sick bairns and poorly maithers and injured husbands and sons—cast some sort of curse upon an auld woman of five-and-eighty, who’d been coughin’ blood for two days already?” Jackson retorted, too incensed to listen to the end of John’s sentence.

John bowed his head. “Somethin’ of that ilk, M’Laird. Aye.”

“Enough of this!” Jackson turned on the priest, who had his nose in the air. “This is the true evil, Father—ye, choosin’ who ye’ve a right to burn, to make an example of them. For one thing, ye daenae so much as sneeze when ye’re in me territory, without me say so. For another, there’s nothin’ godly about terrifyin’ people into obeyin’ yer every whim and fancy. It ceases, now. If I hear ye’ve done this again, holdin’ trials and executions without me presence, I’ll write to the bloody King himself to have ye replaced by someone who isnae just itchin’ to burn lasses!”

A whisper of shock rippled through the crowd, none of whom looked too pleased to be witnesses to Jane McBride’s imminent demise.

Cowards, the lot of ye, Jackson seethed inwardly, unable to believe that no one had stood forward to defend their village healer. If anyone had attempted to do this to Old Joan, he knew the entire castle would have chased the accuser away with torches and blades.

“Tread carefully, My Laird,” Father Hepburn hissed, stepping closer to Jackson than was comfortable. “One wouldn’t want to think that ye were on the side of sinners.”

Undeterred, Jackson faced the wretch until they were almost brow to brow. “Daenae try and threaten me, Father. There’s nay sinnin’ been done here. And I mean what I say—if I hear of this happenin’ again in any village or town of mine, it’ll be ye that ends up bound to a stake.”

“It is my duty to cleanse this land of evil, My Laird,” the priest said coldly, as torchlight flickered in his dark eyes, flashing malevolence. “Ye ask me not to threaten ye, yet ye feel righteous enough to threaten me. I would offer ye a polite warning, My Laird—don’t try to stand between me and my duty. Don’t stand on the wrong side of the Lord above, or ye might find that my duty brings me closer to yer own door.”

Jackson narrowed his eyes. “And what do ye mean by that?”

“I hear there’s a lass at yer castle that isn’t exactly… ordinary.” The priest smiled with cruel glee. “Rumors abound, My Laird, and I don’t like what I’ve been hearin’.”

Jackson pushed his forehead down, butting it against the priest’s, while his hands balled into tight fists, his fingernails digging into his palms to prevent himself from striking a man of the cloth. “Is that what a priest is dutybound to do—listen to idle gossip?”

“There is often truth in gossip, My Laird.” Father Hepburn did not recoil from Jackson’s threatening proximity. “Perhaps, ye’ve been bewitched already, otherwise ye would remember that it should lie in the hands of the church to punish sinners, regardless of who rules them.”

Jackson dug his fingernails deeper into his flesh. “Threaten me or me castle or anyone within me castle again, Father, and I’ll kill ye where ye stand, even if it sends me straight to Hell.”

The priest seemed to falter at that, taking a step backward. He eyed Jackson as if he expected to see some deceit in the Laird’s words, but Jackson glared on, entirely serious.

With a grimace, Father Hepburn dipped his chin to his chest and swept his arm out, toward Jane and Lennox. “Do as ye please, but know that ye’ve stood in the way of the Lord’s work.”

“The heavens have nothin’ to do with this,” Jackson declared, shouting it loud so all of the villagers would hear, and know who they needed to pledge their fealty to. “The Lord wouldn’ae burn a lass who has dedicated her life to healin’ others, and if any of ye think otherwise, I’d urge ye to step forward and demand it.”

The crowd stood silent, bowing their heads in shame. Not a soul stepped forward, so perhaps they were not quite as cowardly as Jackson thought.

“Cut her down, Lennox,” he instructed, but the task had already been done.

Lennox scooped Jane up into his arms, and carried her down off the platform, wielding her all the way to his waiting horse, where he sat her up in the saddle and climbed up after her. Though it had not been part of Jackson’s plan, it appeared that Jane was returning to the castle with them, and considering what he had just done to protect Eloise—or put her in more danger—he could not blame his friend for taking decisive action.

Ye’d only burn her in secret, Jackson knew, scowling at the priest who, for now, seemed chastened.

“Whether or nae she returns to this village will be her decision, when she’s well enough to make it,” Jackson added, barking at the crowd. “And if she doesnae, let it be a lesson to all of ye that when ye see that somethin’ unjust is bein’ done, it’s up to each and every one of ye to make a stand!”

With that, he pulled himself up into Claymore’s saddle and turned toward home. But as they headed out of the village, he glanced back in time to see Father Hepburn’s mouth moving with silent words. A curse upon Jackson; he was sure of it, as he felt a chill run up his spine that had nothing to do with the snow falling all around them.