Chapter Thirty-One
All was strangely hushed on the approach to Scarcross.
Summer had softened the woods around the place, everything leafy and green, but the tower house still looked like an ugly bruise looming over the landscape.
‘There is nothing but pain here,’ thought Cullen, and for an instant, he faltered in his purpose.
Scarcross was no great birthright. It was a burden, a misery he would have to fight to the death to obtain.
There would be a struggle to hold onto it.
And would his Macaulay clansmen even want him as laird?
Other challengers could have come forth to claim leadership of the clan, and there could be many men to fight.
Cullen pulled up his horse and let cold calculation take the place of anger.
Lowri would never be safe from Allard if he did not end this now.
His half-brother would always try to stamp her out, along with the bairn she was carrying.
He could not have that. He must put Allard in the ground this day, or die trying.
When he rode into the yard, the hair stood up on Cullen’s neck, and a cold hand dragged a finger down his spine.
All the cottages around the house were shuttered, doors closed, windows barred.
Chickens still clucked and scuffed at the dirt, and the snort of pigs carried in the wind, along with a whisper from the trees, but silence hung over Scarcross like a foul mist risen from a bog.
Cullen tied up his horse and banged on the main door. Silence. He banged again, and behind him, a door creaked open from the nearest cottage, and an old woman peered out. ‘You’ll get no answer from within. Sick, they are.’
‘With what?’ cried Cullen, walking over to her.
She backed away and put a rag over her face. Her eyes were watery slits in her face as she squinted at him. ‘Stay away. Get back, stranger.’
‘I mean you no harm, and I must know what has happened here.’
‘Tis the sweating sickness.’ She spat. ‘The Warden’s English dogs came visiting a while back and carried it with them, like fleas on rats.
Burned through us in a week. Many folk are sick or dead of it.
Some ran off and stayed clear, but they’ve not come back for fear of it catching them too. You should go. Save yourself.’
‘I cannot. I would know what has become of my father and brother. Are they still living?’
The woman risked peering out. ‘Come a little closer, so I can see you. My eyes aren’t what they used to be.’
Cullen stepped forward. The woman’s mouth fell open.
‘Cullen Macaulay, god be damned. So the bastard is back, eh. This is a nice turn of events.’ She gave a laugh like a death rattle.
‘The Lord is fickle indeed if you are to be the last one standing. Or maybe you are an imposter, and the Devil has sent you to lead us all to hell.’
‘You’ll be getting there soon enough, if you don’t tell me what has become of the laird and his family, old crone.’
Her lip curled. ‘Not much to tell. Laird Macaulay may be all airs and full of himself, but the sickness takes who it pleases, cares nought for rank or riches. As soon as the sickness came, that lump of a wife of his, she ran off with the little ones, back to her family. Probably took the sickness with her, so good luck to them.’
‘And my father?’
She shrugged. ‘Locked himself inside, and locked all of us outside, suffering. We kept it quiet as best we could, so as not to encourage our enemies. Once they sense weakness, they swoop down like crows and pick our bones clean.’
‘I am here to stop that happening,’ said Cullen.
The old woman snorted. ‘By yourself.’
‘Where are all the men?’
‘They went to ground - sweating out the sickness in their beds, or in the fields, or stables, weak as kittens.’
‘They should be guarding the place.’
‘Hard to do that with one foot in the grave. And the stronger ones are lazy without Laird Macaulay putting a boot up their arses.’ The old woman peered up at him.
‘You don’t look that much like the Cullen Macaulay, I remember.
He was a sour-faced, miserable whelp, all skin and bones and airing his grievances to anyone who would listen. ’
‘Aye, well, I was just out of boyhood when I left Scarcross. But I’m a man now, and back here to take charge.’
The old woman was not impressed. She shrugged. ‘If you want to get into the house, you’ll have to wriggle in through the back door. If you really are Cullen Macaulay, you will know where that is. If not, you can stay out here and rot for all I care.’ She tottered inside and slammed the door on him.
Cullen banged on the main door of the house again, but no one answered.
There was no breaking it down either, as it was inches thick, solid oak.
So Cullen made his way to the woods at the back of the house.
He fought his way through a tangle of old brambles and ivy cloaking a high stone wall and found the door to the tunnel.
It had been dug many decades ago as an escape route by some fearful, and probably cowardly, Macaulay ancestors.
What could lead out, could also lead in, and so Cullen crouched down on his hands and knees and began a slow crawl along the fusty tunnel.
It was not for the faint-hearted, and only a soul desperate to avoid being murdered when all was lost, would attempt it.
All the while, Cullen feared the walls would crumble and bury him alive.
After an age, when he wanted to scream out his fear at the top of his lungs, he emerged through a trap door in the cellar of Scarcross.
As he made his way upstairs, the air hung sour and dust-laden, as if the house had been abandoned for generations.
It was as quiet as a tomb. Cullen walked through the downstairs chambers, ears straining for danger.
In the hall, abandoned food lay on the table, ripening the air as it rotted.
The sweating sickness must have hit hard and fast for food to be left uneaten, as the Macaulays were always hungry.
He prayed his little blonde half-sisters had escaped in time.
The thought of their delicate little bodies lying in the earth was too much to bear, especially Reeva’s.
Cullen mounted the stairs and headed upwards. The higher he went, the more the eerie feel of the place unsettled him. On the second floor, the quiet seemed thicker somehow, and it was clear that death had visited. The stench was unmistakable. Cullen entered his brother’s chamber.
Allard’s corpse lay on the floor beside his bed, arm outstretched, reaching for help that did not come.
No doubt, the servants had fled in fear once the sickness took hold.
Cullen stared down at his vicious half-brother.
Allard’s cheeks were sunken, his once pudgy face now just grey skin hanging over bones.
His mouth was open as if in a snarl, and where the skin had tightened in death, it exposed his teeth.
The eyes were unsettling, seeming to stare at Cullen in reproach.
Cullen reached down and closed them. He was numb, taking no joy in Allard’s lonely death, nor pity for his end, only relief.
The stench of death became unbearable, in his mouth, up his nose, and Cullen had to cover his face.
A clatter came from above, making him flinch and then bound up the stairs two at a time.
He burst into the East Tower and found his father abed, hand reaching out.
A flagon lay on the floor, spilling a puddle of whisky.
Its odour was pungent, but did not overcome the smell of the sick room.
The chamber was shuttered, and only a weak light bled into it.
Griffin Macaulay sensed Cullen and raised himself up on his elbow, his whole body shaking with the effort. It was as if the very life force had been sucked out of his father – eyes sunk in his head, face chalk-pale and lips bearing a bluish tinge. His end was coming.
‘What’s this? My loving son back from the dead,’ gasped Griffin. The bitterness of his father’s words tainted the air more than the smell of impending death.
‘And why would I be dead?’ said Cullen, forcing himself to move towards his father.
‘Because you were always headed to a bad end. You have your mother’s blood, tainted with madness and spite.’
‘Aye, maybe I do. But I am sure, I don’t have any of yours.’
‘Any why is that?’
‘I could never slither so low as you.’
‘Aye, and that is your enduring weakness.’
‘Strange then, that I am the last one standing,’ said Cullen. ‘Allard is gone.’
‘I know. He succumbed quickly, the weakling. Both my sons have been a disappointment.’ Griffin’s every word was a gasp for air.
Had Griffin been privy to Allard’s plot to kill him? What did it matter now? Looking at his father’s shell of a body, it was clear he was dying. And even his last words would probably be a lie. Why flay himself with more of his father’s disdain?
‘So, your servants have run off, your loyal clansmen too,’ said Cullen. ‘They all left you to the sickness, and here you are, in your tower, like an old badger dragging itself into a burrow to die.’
‘I’ll outlive you, worthless bastard, that you are.’
In the old days, Cullen would have argued his virtues, but he was suddenly exhausted by his father’s cruelty. ‘You don’t have much time left.’
‘Come to claim Scarcross, have you? Well, you are in for disappointment. Clan Macaulay will not have you, and I’ll not die quickly to make it easy for you.’
‘A pillow over your face would hasten the end.’
Griffin’s eyes widened. ‘You would not.’
Cullen put his face in Griffin’s. ‘I have hardened since last we met, so you will listen to me.’ Cullen looked around him. ‘There’s hardly any clan left to choose me or not, and I see no other challenger for the lairdship. I no longer need the crumbs from your table. I will just take what is mine.’
‘Is that a bit of iron in your heart, Cullen? It was always soft as porridge before, and no use to anyone.’ Griffin collapsed back down on the bed, gulping for air. ‘What hardened you?’ he croaked. ‘Was it that wild little Macaulay bitch, I wed you to? Made you miserable, did she?’
‘My wife has given me the only joy I ever had. Lowri is the love of my life.’
Griffin rolled away from Cullen’s words. He made a retching groan and sank down onto the bed. ‘The Clan will never accept a bastard as Laird Macaulay,’ he wheezed.
‘My clansmen will do as they are told.’
Griffin spoke no more. Cullen weighed his choices as his father’s breathing became laboured, a rattle which sounded deafening in the quiet chamber. Eventually, even that fell silent, and his father slipped away to an undeservedly gentle death for such a brutal man.
Cullen drew a blanket over his father and stepped up to the window.
He could leave now, take Lowri and head back to Ireland.
All his past pain, failures, his father’s disdain and his brother’s cruelties would be behind him.
There would be no reminders of his mother’s desperate unhappiness as she slid from madness to death.
He could be free of Scarcross and all its ghosts.
He stared out of the tower window at the rolling fields and hills of the West March.
He had skinned his knees slipping from the high stone wall at the end of the yard.
He had taken his first lass, clumsily and mortifyingly briefly, in the hay of the stable.
Even now, Cullen could feel the warm sun streaming in, the prickle of the hay, the slavish gratitude towards the lass letting him lose his virginity inside her.
Beyond the wall, out in an island of woodland, lay his mother’s last resting place.
There were clansmen and tenants who needed protection.
His half-sisters were out there somewhere, reliant on the dubious charity of Mabel’s family.
The English Warden would smell blood and come running to break up the clan.
Others would pillage and carry off the livestock.
Clan Macaulay was on its knees with no champion.
His birthright settled on Cullen like a comfortable cloak.
It emboldened and excited him. Clan Macaulay was in his blood, his bones, his heart.
He could not abandon it now, in its hour of need.
And Lowri was strong, with a stout heart, and brave and beautiful.
With such a woman by his side, he could lead his clan to greatness, restore its name and standing in the West March.
Cullen rushed out of the house, breathing in great gulps of clear, crisp air to force out the foulness of the sick room and his father’s last insults.
He marched to the stables, where he found a man lying in the hay.
At first, he thought it might be a corpse, but then realised the man was filthy and stinking of ale sweat, and he was snoring.
‘Get on your feet,’ he shouted, hauling the man up by his shirt.
‘What the…?’
The man recognised him, and his mouth fell open.
‘Did you have the sickness?’ said Cullen.
‘Aye, and I still suffer greatly. I am barely hanging on.’
‘If you are strong enough to stand, you are strong enough to ride. Go and find our clansmen. Tell them it is safe to return. Any who refuse to come and fight for the new laird this day need never return, on pain of death.’
‘Who…who is the new laird?’
‘That would be me,’ said Cullen.