Chapter 5
After a night spent thrashing against the bedclothes, worrying for her father and the fate of her betrothal, Gillian formulated a plan to secure Kincreag for good.
Early the next morning Sir Evan accompanied her to the little hamlet across the loch.
Her attempts to make polite conversation with the knight were met with monosyllabic replies or silence, so she quit trying, thinking instead of her task. To visit Old Hazel.
She vaguely remembered Hazel from when she was a child. Hazel had been a great friend of her mother’s, and some relation to them as well. Some of the MacDonells of Glen Laire were relations to the chieftain’s family. Others had just adopted the MacDonell name to live under Glen Laire’s protection.
More importantly, Old Hazel was a witch, and gifted with potions.
It was not spoken of now, and when Gillian had tried to ask around about it, folks had made the sign of the horns and shaken their heads fearfully.
Gillian knew it was the state of the country that caused such fear.
No one wanted it known they’d associated with a witch—mere association was cause enough for burning these days.
But they’d also wanted to protect one of their own.
For now at least. And so no one mentioned Hazel and her doings aloud.
Glen Laire had been blessed with good luck these past years—no failed crops, no plagues, no rash of dying animals—and so no scapegoat was yet needed.
But a time could yet come when Hazel and other fey members of the MacDonells would be forced to serve as sacrifices to ease folks’ fears.
Gillian hoped that day would never come. The witch hunt had spread throughout Scotland, even to the remotest parts of the Highlands, and it showed no signs yet of dying down. And so her excuse for visiting Old Hazel this morning was to ask about an herb Rose had no time to fetch herself.
Gillian waved greetings to the cottars they passed as she and Sir Evan strolled down the single hard-packed dirt lane that constituted the hamlet of Glen Laire. All the while she thought furiously of some means to rid herself of her escort.
She paused in front of the alehouse and gestured to it. “Perhaps you’d like to wait within. I’ll be visiting with an old friend and may be a while.”
Sir Evan shook his head firmly, staring at some point above and beyond her right shoulder, his pale eyes remote. “Nay, I’ll come with you.”
Gillian smiled weakly and continued on her way.
Having her own personal knight was not nearly as amusing as she’d thought it would be.
She’d tried to leave the castle without him, but he’d been keeping track of her and had insisted on accompanying her for her protection.
Nothing she’d said had dissuaded him. Though her visit to the village was a sensitive one, she didn’t want to rouse his suspicion by making an issue of it, so she’d relented, hoping she could somehow lose him in Glen Laire.
Unfortunately, he was sticking like a barnacle.
Hazel’s cottage was at the end of the lane. Mud and heather protruded from the cracks in the black stone house, and peat smoke blackened the thatched roof. The door opened before Gillian could knock.
Hazel had been uncommonly old when Gillian was a child; now she was positively ancient. Paper-thin skin stretched over her narrow skull, sagging in soft folds beneath her eyes and chin. A red and green plaid shrouded her from forehead to toes.
“Mistress MacDonell, I’ve been expecting ye.”
Gillian stepped forward uncertainly. “You have?”
She smiled, displaying a row of stained and missing teeth, rickety as an old fence. “Aye, I have.” Old Hazel disappeared inside, crooning, “Come in, come in.”
Gillian turned to Sir Evan. “I would like to visit with Hazel alone. Prithee wait outside.”
He stepped to the doorway and quickly scanned the interior of the cottage before giving her a curt nod and taking up his position beside the door.
Gillian hesitated, wondering if he would be able to overhear their conversation from his post, but she finally decided it would be suspicious to ask him to move.
She entered the cottage and shut the door behind her.
The interior was dim and dusty, motes swirling around before her eyes.
The small windows let in little light. It smelled of must and mildew, wrenching a sneeze from her.
Once her eyes stopped watering and adjusted to the gloom, she surveyed the little cottage with interest. It was spartan—only a table, a bench, a single chair, and a cabinet against the wall.
A profusion of glass bottles and clay bowls of various sizes and shapes cluttered the cabinet and tabletop.
Gillian peered at a dingy jar that appeared to be filled with scores of dried frogs.
“Come, come,” Hazel urged. “A spot of trouble wi’ the lad?” She nodded to the door.
Gillian frowned absently. “Oh . . . him. Aye, I don’t know how to make him go away.” She was to be a countess, and she supposed countesses needed guards and attendants. She hadn’t thought such a thing would be so inconvenient.
“Ye’ll be wantin’ to curse him?”
Gillian laughed ruefully. “I’d better not.”
Hazel gestured to a bench. “Gude, because I dinna do that. White magic only.”
Gillian sat and looked up at the old woman. “You’re free with your speech. Have you no fear of the witch hunters?”
“Nay, the MacDonells will protect me.”
“For now . . . but what if things go poorly? They’ll blame you.”
Hazel just smiled her rickety smile. “I’m auld, lass, and past caring. I mun go sometime, aye?”
Gillian smiled weakly, recalling her mother. She thought there were better ways to go. Her temples throbbed sullenly, and she closed her eyes, blanking her mind until the pain receded.
When she opened her eyes, Hazel peered at her with a narrowed green gaze. “It still hurts, aye?”
“No, it’s gone now.”
Hazel said nothing, though the folds in her skin deepened as she stared at Gillian.
“What?”
“That’s no what I meant, lassie, but ye’ve confirmed my suspicions.”
“What did you mean, then? What suspicions?”
“Ye’ve been cursed since ye’ve been a child.”
Gillian blinked. She opened her mouth to speak, then closed it in consternation.
Cursed? She didn’t feel particularly cursed.
She’d suffered hardships, but she’d had her share of goodness, too.
Unlike her sisters’ foster families, hers had been warm and loving.
True, she’d lost her mother in a most horrible manner, and her father was dying, but with the witch hunts, many others had lost mothers, wives, daughters—even some husbands, fathers, and sons—to the fires.
No, she was no more cursed than many others.
“I don’t understand,” Gillian finally said.
Hazel smiled at her rather sadly. “Ye would if ye could, my lass—oh, ye would.”
“What does that mean?”
Hazel reached out a long, thin finger and tapped Gillian’s forehead. “It’s yer head. The pain is meant to hide something from ye, but I fear trying to determine what may kill ye.”
Gillian shook her head to deny such a thing was possible, but she trailed off, staring blankly into the cottage.
The headaches were fleeting, and she often was forced to think of other things—or of nothing at all—to make them recede.
She turned the silver ring on her finger, trying hard to remember what she’d been thinking when the pain had assaulted her.
Her mother, or more specifically, her mother’s lynching, and—
Gillian clutched her head as pain ripped through her temples, blinding her with a searing flash of white light. She had the sensation of falling, and when sense returned to her, she lay on the dirt floor of the cottage, blinking up at the ceiling, motes drifting about in front of her. She sneezed.
Hazel’s face appeared over her. “Dinna think of it, lass! Not here!” She looked fearfully at the door.
Gillian sat up gingerly. The pain had receded but her temples felt bruised. How could such a thing be? Why would someone curse her? The pain encroached again, like a sharp silver mist, and she quickly cleared her mind.
The thought that she was cursed terrified her, but Hazel was right—this was not the place to investigate it further. She would need Isobel’s and Rose’s help. She settled back on the bench, achy and weak.
“Is there some way to remove the curse?”
Hazel shook her head. “It would take powerful magic and knowledge of the curse in order to counter it. I’m but a wise woman, child. Yer mother, God rest her soul, could have saved ye, but I fear, unless yer sisters are as skilled as she, there’s no hope.”
Gillian sat very still, fighting against the pain again. Think of something else. Think of something else. She hadn’t realized how difficult it was to clear her mind of these painful thoughts. In fact, it hadn’t been before. But now her fear made it difficult.
Hazel seemed to sense the difficulty she was having and said, “But this is no why ye’re here, is it? Tell me why ye came to see Old Hazel.”
Grateful for the distraction, Gillian pounced on the subject. “A philter—a love philter.”
Hazel’s beetled brows raised. “Well now . . . I can do that. But it’s no a simple thing, ye ken?”
Gillian leaned forward eagerly. “Tell me what I must do.”
Hazel considered Gillian silently for a long moment, her brows knit together in a frown. “What would such a bonny lassie need wi’ a love philter?”
“Surely you’ve heard I’m to wed the earl of Kincreag?”
“Och, I have. And it’s him it’s for?” Hazel looked wary, her frown deepening.
“Aye, but I vow to you, I will never reveal from whence it came.”
Hazel waved at the door. “Ye wilna have to. Yon knight will do it for ye.”
Gillian hadn’t thought of that. But she couldn’t let that stop her—Hazel had said she could give her a love philter. Gillian’s pulse skipped excitedly. It was possible. “No, he thinks I’m here for another reason. And if I am caught with the philter, I’ll lie.”
Hazel still looked uncertain.
Gillian clasped her hands together in a pleading manner. “I pray you, I need this.”
Hazel shook her head, clearly perplexed. “But why, my dear? Ye’re to marry him, what need ye of a philter?”
“I don’t think he means to marry me at all. I think the betrothal is to make my father happy, and then when he dies”—she stumbled over this, but then rushed on—“then he will break the betrothal. If he does, my uncle will send me to France.”
Hazel considered her for a long time, clearly uneasy about it, but finally she nodded. “Verra well. Here’s what ye mun do. . . .”
Gillian left Hazel’s cottage nearly an hour later, with a packet of herbs tucked into her bodice and a set of instructions committed to memory.
She felt better than she had in days, as if a great weight had finally eased from her heart.
She had a plan, a good one, and she’d thought of it on her own.
If the earl believed himself in love with her, he would go through with the wedding, and the sooner the better.
Her belly tightened in anxious anticipation.
The moment he returned, she would slip him the philter.