Chapter 2 #3
Narrowing his eyes against the blinding rain, his eyes searched the dirt track he’d ridden along earlier.
Water was already gathering in each indentation of its uneven surface.
Dust was turning to mud, and stones that had been buried were becoming exposed like jagged islands in swiftly growing puddles.
The sound he had heard was of riders splashing through those same puddles and coming his way. Wary of them seeing him, he crouched down, hoping the lightning was at an end and the darkness would hide him.
Parting the grass in front of his face, he watched. Just as he’d guessed, there were horses – about five of them, good horses, but rough-looking men.
The group reined in and dismounted outside Mama Molly’s house.
No sign of the door being opened to welcome them. In consequence, fists pounded on the front door. The men shouted for Molly to let them in. The door remained closed. The pounding resumed.
‘We want the girl!’
Of course they did.
Nothing happened except for the sounds of jest and then of orders being given to break the door down.
Molly would be scared. Very scared as O’Neill slithered closer to the girl, ready to pounce on her, cover her mouth so she wouldn’t make a sound.
He was closer than Lochranza knew, crouched amongst the rough leaves of virulent plants and grass, holding her breath She did not see the horses.
Neither did she hear them. It was the man who had taken her from the only home she had ever known who she was hiding from.
If O’Neill took just one step her way, the toe of his boot would hit her thigh.
Gathering her legs more closely beneath her, she made herself as small as possible. It was not enough. Guessing she was about to leap from cover, he caught her shoulders and held her down.
‘Let me—’
‘Shhh!’
Face covered in dirt and wetness, she attempted to scream, but his hand was already covering her mouth.
‘Stay down.’
His voice was little more than a rasped whisper. The girl heeded the warning in that whisper and sank close to the ground.
Still with his hand over her mouth, he indicated the riders. ‘They’re after you. If they find us, they’ll kill us. Now think carefully before you scream. Though it’s planned for you to become a lady, I guarantee it might be better scrubbing floors than being thrown over a cliff!’
He felt the rigid resistance leave her body.
‘Good girl,’ he whispered. ‘Keep low.’
O’Neill settled himself down for a long wait and told the girl to do the same.
He reckoned they’d take their time. Only brutes could do the job they were doing, and brutes enjoyed their work.
Exhausted by fear, Lochranza fell into a fitful sleep, her head resting on a hillock of rough grass. Her limbs moved restlessly.
There were raucous sounds from the house, loud voices, shouting, laughing and making lewd comments.
As things stood, they would look in this direction from the house and see nothing.
The noise from the house persisted until finally there was one long piercing scream. A roll of thunder lessened its impact, but still he feared the girl might have heard.
He looked at the child. Her eyes were still closed. She might be feigning sleep, but he didn’t think so, unless she hoped by such means to keep the cruelty of this night at bay. Sleep could sometimes be a hiding place, somewhere to retreat to when the world was just too much to bear.
He looked up at the sky. The storm had finally passed, and a petal-pink dawn trimmed the horizon.
The horses had been dozing on three legs, protested at being mounted. Oaths uttered and whips cracked as the frightened animals wheeled and whinnied.
Not daring to raise his head, O’Neill waited until the sounds of horses and men had disappeared along the clifftop track. Using sight as well as sound, he made sure he was alone, then sniffed the air. The freshness left by the storm was tainted with smoke and he could see where it was coming from.
A black plume was rising from the back of the house. Deducing it was not a large fire engulfing the property, he sniffed again, trying to make out what else it was that was so pungent, so disgustingly familiar. Meat cooking. A stew. An Irish stew recalled from his childhood.
Carefully, he rose to his feet, mindful of not waking the child, and headed towards the smell and the smoke. The ground around him steamed as the rising sun sucked the moisture from the earth, the grass and the roof of the house, the latter in even greater density than the smoke.
As he entered the house, he heard the crackling of straw and kindling, the heat of a kitchen, a mix of steam and smell. The rain had soaked the dry timbers, the reason why the fire lit by the interlopers had not yet taken hold, though take hold it eventually would.
The sight that greeted his tired eyes was no more than he had expected.
Furniture had been smashed up, pictures torn from walls, cushions ripped apart – not for any real purpose.
This, he decided, had been done out of pure cussedness.
Here were people living better than they did, and here was the opportunity to vent their anger and frustration.
Smashed glass and crockery crunching underfoot, he made his way through the ground floor rooms. Molly was in none of them.
As he approached the kitchen, the warmest room in the house, an obnoxiously sweet and sour smell assaulted his nostrils. He paused, surprising himself how fast his heart was beating, the beads of sweat that had broken out on his forehead.
Decent sensibilities told him not to enter, that this was a scene he should not – must not – see. And yet some macabre insistence overcame him.
As he entered, he felt his legs turn to stone as his worst fears, his wildest nightmares, were confirmed. The result was here, before his eyes.
Demanding to know the whereabouts of the child and himself, they’d stripped the old nurse naked and whipped her, new open weals on top of historic scars of long-ago whippings.
Apparently that hadn’t worked. Why else would they then have turned her upside down, tied her ankles to an overhead beam and dunked her headfirst into a black iron cauldron of boiling, bubbling water.
Molly had not screamed during the whipping, and she couldn’t scream when her head had been held under the water. He hoped to God she’d died swiftly.
There was no time to dig a grave or even to get her down and respectably covered.
Soon the house and the horror would be engulfed by fire; her body cleansed and turned to ash.
The only thing he could do was pile more kindling onto the lazy flames.
The sooner this horrific scene was cremated, the better.
On hearing a sudden sound, he turned round. Eyes seeming to fill her whole face, the child stood immobile, her eyes round with horror.
‘Child,’ said O’Neill, his mouth too dry to utter anything else.
The jaw that had been so firm dropped a little and her bottom lip trembled.
O’Neill grabbed the girl’s shoulders. ‘Come on. Come away, you shouldn’t be seeing this.’
The girl struggled free. ‘No.’ Her defiance was surprising.
O’Neill was never a man to lose his temper, but he could be firm. He attempted to grab her again but held himself back when he saw her pick a book up from the floor. Clasping the book against her chest, she looked up at him with moist eyes, but a determined thrust to her chin.
‘Mama Molly’s recipe book. She would want me to have it,’ she said quietly, eyes averted from Molly and staring at him.
Surprised, confused and suddenly very, very tired, O’Neill ran his fingers through his hair. ‘I’m taking you somewhere safe,’ he said. ‘We take ship to England.’
Without saying another word, the little girl, her expression serious and a strangely closed look in her eyes, went quietly.
Lochranza hugged the book tightly to her chest as though it were a shield. A shield also took root in her mind, one that blotted out what had happened.
O’Neill didn’t realise exactly how the horror had affected her until they were halfway across the Atlantic. By then, the child seemed to have no recollection of her past life, of where she had lived and the woman who had brought her up.
He for one would not attempt to break through that barrier. It was best she had forgotten, for the time being and perhaps even forever.