Chapter 17
Chapter Seventeen
MORRIGAN
For the next three days, nightmares hung about Morrigan like spirits of the dead. Every dark corner of her bedchamber seemed to be inhabited by shapes that shifted and changed and disappeared when she mustered her courage to approach them.
It was the coming observance of Samhain. It had to be. The ongoing preparations in the castle and the village were affecting her.
She had no desire to sleep. Closing her eyes would surely bring these spirits and fairies creeping across the wood floor, their fangs and claws out and gleaming in the moonlight.
She wouldn’t give them the chance. With a blanket around her and a lit candle in her hand, she paced like a caged beast. Like a condemned prisoner waiting for the dawn.
Waiting. Finally, she could walk no longer.
She’d settle in her chair, fighting to stay conscious and alert.
Then she’d doze, awaken with a start, and resume her nightlong watch into the dark places, praying for the rising of the sun.
Praying for release from these night terrors.
As soon as the sky began to lighten, she’d descend to the kitchens, where the fires were lit and the smells of bread filled the air and bleary-eyed workers went about their daily tasks. She was safe here.
The Mackintoshes of Dalmigavie had a kirk in the center of the village, and a chapel in the castle.
Both had seen changes in services performed within their walls.
Several times. But the folk held to the auld ways for the most part, in their language, their traditions, and their beliefs.
Christianity itself was still a newcomer in the Highlands, where the belief in fire and stone and oak and wind and rain and darkness was as old as the earth and the sky.
There was the world that could be seen and the world that could not be seen.
Morrigan had come to learn that these Highlanders had a special reverence for the threshold places and threshold times.
Borders, bridges, crossroads, doorways. Dawn and dusk.
The spring and autumn equinoxes. Samhain marked the transition between summer, a time of growth and light and order—and winter, a time of death and darkness and chaos.
Morrigan had heard the Highland folk believed that time lost all meaning at Samhain. Past, present, and future became one. Now, living among these people, Morrigan knew it to be true.
She’d run from her past, ignored and hidden from it. But the past had caught up to her here, weighing on the present, and threatening all of her tomorrows.
For the three days since talking to Aidan on the tower roof, she’d walked past that door. Morning, midday, and evening. The words he’d spoken tormented her. If she rejected his plea and Edmund and George Chattan died because of her, Morrigan would not be able to live with herself.
Every time she approached, she broke out in a cold sweat.
Bile rose up in her throat. And each time, an inner rage rose in response, fierce and hot.
She couldn’t trust herself to go through that door.
Morrigan didn’t know if she trusted herself to be alone with him.
She didn’t know if she could see him, talk to him, and not put her dagger in his shriveled heart.
By Sunday, guilt and exhaustion threatened to drive her insane. Morrigan had heard that Aidan and his brother were going to Inverness the following day. If she was going to help him, if Wemys was going to give Aidan the name, then now was the time. But she still couldn’t bring herself to face him.
Knowing that Isabella visited Wemys twice every day, Morrigan went to her infirmary room around noon. She was dressing the burned arm of a young boy who was stubbornly holding in tears while his worried mother looked on.
When they were finally alone, Isabella turned to her. “I see nothing bruised or swollen. But from your mood of late, one would think you’d been kicked by a horse.”
Morrigan had been rolling a strip of linen, but Isabella took it out of her hand and put it on the table.
“What has he done? Or rather, what has he said to you?”
She knew who Isabella was talking about. Everyone had gotten the wrongheaded notion that some sort of attraction existed between her and Aidan. From Sebastian, most likely.
“Mr. Grant has done nothing wrong.”
“You always say that.”
“It’s the truth.” She heard the quaver in her own voice.
Isabella noticed, as well, and took hold of her hands. “Morrigan, you can tell me what’s wrong.”
For years she’d hidden the truth from Isabella and everyone else. Remembering her past was painful. In that moment, however, with Samhain nearly upon them, Morrigan realized she no longer wanted to carry the weight of that past in her heart.
“It’s Wemys. He has information for Mr. Grant that will aid in the defense of the Chattan brothers. But he refuses to help unless I agree to see him.”
“He’s said nothing to me about the trial, but he has asked me repeatedly to use my influence with you. He desperately wants to speak with you.”
Morrigan turned her face toward the window and forced down the lump rising into her throat.
“I’ve never been much of a mother to you, never mind a good one.”
If there was one person who carried no blame, it was Isabella.
“I was always pressed for time because of my patients, and you were a capable and mature fifteen-year-old when your father and I married. I let Archibald keep his past, your past, and your family’s past as private.”
Perhaps this was where everything had gone wrong. Morrigan was suffocated while her father pretended all was well.
“But I knew something was wrong because of the way he treated you. He was worried about you when I could see no cause. He watched you constantly. He wanted to shield you from the dangers of the outside world, it seemed.”
Too late. Far too late.
“So he kept you close at hand. He had his students, of course, but he always wanted you at his side, in the clinic and when he went to visit a patient. He needed to know where you were at every hour of the day.”
Morrigan thought back over those years. Maisie came and went as she pleased. Unbeknownst to the rest of the family, she was living the life of a radical reform activist, but no one ever noticed. Morrigan, on the other hand, was always under the watchful eye of her father.
“At first, I assumed it was because of your interest in becoming a doctor. That pleased me, to be honest. But that wasn’t the reason, was it?”
She shook her head. Isabella took hold of her hands. Morrigan welcomed the connection.
“As the years passed, I came to realize that Archibald was watching you in the same way that a doctor looks for symptoms. At night, he often had nightmares, calling out your name. In his dreams, you were always lost, and he was searching for you.”
Morrigan tried to steady her breath, but there was no hope.
She tried to hold back the tears, but her eyes burned.
When they began to fall, the droplets scorched her cheek.
The last image that she had of her father was on the day the soldiers attacked the house.
His eyes were fixed on her. He tried to speak, to get the words out, but it was too late. And then he was gone.
“Robert Wemys.” Isabella said the name slowly. She tilted Morrigan’s chin up and looked into her eyes. Her thumb gently wiped away fallen tears. “I saw the way you reacted to him. You’re not the person you were before they brought him to Dalmigavie. Would you like to tell me what he’s done to you?”
She knew. Morrigan felt a sob rise into her chest and expand, filling her with sharp pain. This time she let it go. Her anguished cry had been held in too long. It was a cry silenced for nearly a decade. The tears that followed could not be stopped. She didn’t try to hold them in.
Isabella’s arms encircled her protectively. Her body shook as she wept, but this loving woman didn’t tell her to hush. She didn’t ask any questions or demand the story. She simply held her tight and allowed her to empty out the agony.
When Morrigan tried to speak, to share the horror of her past, it was her decision.
She wanted to speak. Isabella was her mother and sister, protector and friend.
Morrigan trusted her. She felt safe with her knowing.
In Isabella’s eyes, she’d never be less of a person once the ugly truth was spoken.
“I was twelve years of age,” she began. “My mother had passed, and my father was at a loss as to what to do with me, I think. He took me to Perth and left me with my maternal grandparents. We’d been to their house many times when my mother was alive.
He assumed I’d be better off away from the city.
I’d grow up near uncles and aunts and cousins.
I’d have family around me. He thought I’d be safe. ”
Morrigan pulled out of Isabella’s arms and stabbed at the tears on her face.
“Wemys is my mother’s younger brother. I knew him from the time I was very little. I was happy to see him when he came back to Perth to visit his parents.”
She’d been so innocent and trusting. She’d listened to his stories and been entertained by him.
Impressed by him. He seemed to have traveled everywhere.
He knew important people. He was clever and drew pictures with his words so easily.
She never imagined someone could hurt a member of their own family.
She never thought he would. She let her memories pour out.
There had been no sign, no warning of what was to come.
She tried to continue, but she couldn’t. Her throat had squeezed shut, robbing her of the ability to breathe. Isabella’s eyes shimmered with tears, but she waited.