Chapter 18 #2
Sir Philip still had not returned with Sir Donnan, but William had indicated he might have an accomplice within Lochlaire.
Hilda had already been at Lochlaire when Rose had arrived, but only for a few months—Uncle Roderick had engaged her services when Tira had become pregnant, which was about the same time Alan MacDonell had fallen ill.
Even if Hilda did work for Sir Donnan, it did not explain why she would kill Tira.
Perhaps the servant fancied herself in love with Uncle Roderick—he was a comely man, after all—and was ridding herself of the competition?
It seemed a rather far-fetched theory, but then people did strange things for love.
There was no limit to what she would do to protect William.
Rose knocked at the door to her uncle’s tower apartments. When no one answered, she tried the door and found it open.
“Uncle Roderick? Hilda?” She stepped into the room.
There was still no answer. The chamber was dimly lit with two candles and a dying fire.
The scent of dried blood and incense hung thick in the air.
Rose was immediately struck by how bare the room was, as if all signs of her aunt had been obliterated.
She wandered about the room, looking for something, anything that would indicate Tira had inhabited these apartments—her sewing, her needles, her clothes, her comb—anything.
But it was all gone, even the chair she’d sat on.
Why would Roderick dispose of her things, and so quickly?
The answer came to Rose with sudden, startling clarity.
Because of Isobel. Isobel could touch objects and uncover all manner of information.
This opened up new, more sinister possibilities.
Uncle Roderick? A witch? She remembered the things Tira had screamed during her labor.
It will kill me! He put it in there—it’s unnatural!
It’s a monster! Could it be that Tira knew something and could not be allowed to live?
Her heart beating erratically, Rose returned to the door and shut it, then began methodically searching the room, opening cabinets, pushing aside the Turkey rugs to tap on the floorboards.
Nothing. She went to the bedchamber and found that door locked.
Her hands shook as she located a stiletto blade of her uncle’s and picked the lock.
Where was Uncle Roderick? What would he do if he found her in here, rifling through his things?
She felt time slipping away, and yet she had to find something, some proof of this if anyone was to believe her.
She wasn’t even certain she believed it.
The bedchamber was elaborately appointed, the bed piled high with furs and velvet coverlets trimmed in gold. Thick Turkey carpets covered the floor and walls. The ceiling was carved and painted with gold and red paint. As if he were already the chieftain.
Rose circled the room, searching everything.
When again she found nothing, she moved the carpets aside and tapped the floorboards with a cane she’d found.
She finally found what she searched for—a hollow knock.
She knelt, sliding the stiletto in and around the sides of the floorboard. It pried up easily.
She fetched a candle and held it over the dark recess.
Several dark shapes rested inside the hole.
One item at a time, she removed the paraphernalia.
A wand made of black glass, a small black bowl, smooth and gleaming like ebony.
Inside the bowl rested scores of pins and three rusty nails.
Also inside the recess were a small ivory casket and two lumps of dirty wax pierced through with long pins.
Rose studied the wax lumps uneasily. Both contained embedded objects—hair, fingernails, and other unidentifiable things—and a rusty substance streaked them.
Blood. Hair protruded from the tops of the wax.
One was a wad of black hair, as if gathered from a comb, and the other, a dark auburn tuft streaked with gray, clearly cut with shears.
Both effigies were anatomically correct—one with a phallus, and the other, the black-haired one, with breasts.
Rose noted on closer inspection that on the auburn one, nail parings had been placed along the base, as toenails.
She stared down at them in horrified revulsion, understanding what she held in her hands.
Dark magic. Effigies her uncle used in his spells.
The auburn one must be her father. Who was the black-haired one?
She fingered the strands. Too long to be William or Drake; both wore their hair short.
Both effigies had long pins piercing them.
Rose was frozen with indecision, uncertain what to do with them.
Instinct urged her to destroy them, but she feared that anything she did to them would harm the persons they represented in some manner she couldn’t begin to imagine.
She peered under the floorboards again and saw something else—a dark rectangle.
She drew out a black leather book. The pages were sewn in, and the scrawl was Gaelic.
Roderick’s grimoire. Rose paged through the dark spells with growing horror, stopping at one for summoning demon incubus to set on a victim—to suck the life from them.
A loose page fluttered to the floor. The paper was different—not parchment but smooth vellum, the corner torn.
She unfolded it with trembling hands and immediately recognized her mother’s handwriting.
The first line read, I think Roderick is not all he seems…
Rose heard movement in the next room. Quickly she replaced the objects in the recess, slid the floorboard in place, and covered it with the carpet. She kicked the cane away and hid the stiletto behind her back just as the door to the bedchamber opened.
It was her uncle, stunned into immobility at finding her in his bedchamber.
His gaze immediately went to the floor, then darted back up to her eyes.
He held his son swaddled in his arms. Liam cried weakly, a strange, warbling cry that raised the hair on Rose’s neck and arms. What was it?
Was it a child? Or some product of black magic?
“What are you doing in here?” her uncle asked, scanning the room, eyes narrowed, looking for anything out of place. Murderer. Rose saw him with new eyes. Greedy, scheming, evil, out to ruin her life.
“I was looking for Hilda.”
“Why?”
“Because she was there when I delivered Liam. I thought she might be able to tell more about what happened after I healed Tira.”
“She left after Tira died.”
Rose’s heart stuttered. “Left?”
His eyes were flat, his face expressionless. “Aye. I didna need her any longer and sent her away.”
“Who is taking care of Liam?”
Roderick gazed down at his son. A small, pale fist waved from the swaddling. “He has a wet nurse. She’s in the kitchens right now. Not that it matters…he’s dying.”
The urge to cross the room and pull back the swaddling to examine the child herself was strong, but Rose did not trust her uncle anymore, and besides, she hid a knife behind her back.
“What is wrong with him?” she asked.
“I know not…I thought Strathwick healed him.” When he looked up at her, his face was hard, full of accusation and betrayal. “This is proof he’s a charlatan.”
“No. What he saved the baby from was strangulation. Liam was suffocated by the cord. Whatever ails him now developed later and can probably still be healed.”
Roderick regarded her for a long moment. “You’re no charlatan. I saw how you…resurrected Alan.”
“I didn’t resurrect him. He wasn’t dead.”
Her uncle’s eyes glinted, but he made no reply to that. His gaze swept the room again, then he looked her up and down. “What are you hiding behind your back?”
Rose’s fingers clenched around the stiletto’s hilt. “Nothing.”
“If you were looking for Hilda, why were you in my bedchamber with the door closed?”
Rose could think of no good answer to that. “Th-the door was closed?”
He gave her a reproachful look, then gazed back down at his son. “Will you heal him, Rose?”
She looked from her uncle to the bundle in his arms. “Perhaps…though I cannot now.”
“Why?”
“Because I take on the illness, you saw that. And I cannot do that now. I must remain strong.”
“Why?”
“Someone is trying to kill my father.”
As she spoke, she heard the soft tapping of toenails, and Conan’s black nose appeared from behind Roderick’s legs.
Rose’s free hand went to her shoulder, remembering the marks that had been there, bruises, just like her father’s, present after a night spent with Conan in her bed.
And now that she thought back, one of the dogs Roderick had given his brother had always been present when her father had had the nightmares.
And when the bruises had appeared, Alan had always felt worse, weaker, more feeble.
Just as Rose had been nearly overcome with lethargy. The incubus.
Rose gripped the stiletto hilt tighter, her heart fluttering madly with fear.
She knew too much, and she was fairly certain her uncle was aware of it.
Tira and Hilda likely had known too much, too—and one was dead, the other had disappeared.
And what of William? She had been upset and hurt at his abrupt departure, but she’d refused to examine it, like so many other things in her life, putting her mind to other tasks instead.
But had he departed voluntarily? Whom did the other wax lump represent?
“Why did Lord Strathwick leave?”
Roderick shook his head slowly. “I know not.”
“I think you do.” Rose crossed the room until she stood in front of her uncle. She looked down at Liam. He seemed shrunken, smaller than he’d been when she’d delivered him. His pinched face had a bluish cast. He squalled suddenly, an odd, quavering cry.