Chapter 8
Iona told Ada to go down the cellar stairs before her.
“That way, I’ll have something soft to land on if I fall.
” Ada had offered to fetch Lachlan to carry her, but Iona shook her head.
“Nay, Daughter. I’ll take me chances. I have a bit o’ thinkin’ to do before I allow such a darkly handsome young man into our lives. ”
Ada knew this was not because her mother was afraid to cut the apron strings; it was so she could manage the conjecture that might spring up around such a union.
As much as it still rankled her to know Lachlan had been given the power to release them from staying at the Castle and then went ahead and denied their request, a tiny part of her was happy when he was close by.
Whenever Ada tried to suppress the urge to run to the laird’s grandson’s side and increase her initial repulsion of him, her body seemed to have a mind of its own.
Even now, when they entered the small cell where the body lay, Ada’s stomach gave a little flip when she saw Lachlan standing there.
Aye, Calvin is a fine specimen of manhood, but there is some indefinable attraction he has that draws me to him with an irresistible force.
She knew about the prediction her mother had made when Ada had come to womanhood: that only when a man could throw a glamor around her to match the one she cast on him would the healer’s daughter marry.
And the way she felt about the laird’s grandson…
Well, if that was not some kind of hex, then Ada was no judge when it came to such things!
He acknowledged their entrance with a curt nod of his head and stepped aside so that Iona could stand closer to the table.
Ada found herself very aware of how close he was standing next to her.
She could not resist looking up at him from over her shoulder.
One corner of his mouth tipped up, which made his expression lose its severity and his eyes twinkle.
It elicited an answering sparkle in her eyes.
Ada watched as her mother pulled over a small stool to stand on so she could bend over the scrivener’s body.
“There is no odor in his mouth,” Iona said.
She inspected the body more closely. “I agree with the master physician. The man’s body shows signs of being stooped over a desk for many bell tolls in the day.
” She lifted up the man’s hands, inspecting the fingers very closely. “This…this is interesting.”
“What is interesting, Mither?” Ada stepped closer so she could see what Iona was referring to.
Iona said, “Ada, be a dear child an’ remove the sheet from the man’s feet.” Ada turned up the sheet to expose the feet. Iona peered intently at the toes, then said, “Aye, good, ye can cover him again.”
The master physician, obviously trying not to sound impatient, blurted out what everyone in the cell wanted to know.
“Well?! D’ye concur with me diagnosis, Mistress Iona? Poison? Aye?”
Iona had never been one to be rushed, especially when it came to such important matters.
“Let us leave this dank cell, gentlemen. What I have to say must be said in front of our laird first.”
This time, Ada did not need to ask the laird’s grandson to carry her mother up to the hall; he did it without either woman having to ask him, picking Iona up gently and lifting her up the steps as if she weighed nothing more than a feather.
Iona ruined the kindness of the gesture by saying in a voice loud enough for Ada to hear, “If ye think doin’ this will get me to allow ye to take me daughter behind a closed door again, Lachlan, ye’re much mistaken!”
But all this critical statement made him do was throw back his head and laugh.
“When all this is over, Mistress Iona, ye will have to rethink that statement for one reason or another.”
The healer chuckled but shook her head. “We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it, young man! There is still much to do.”
As they assembled in the hall, the cook stuck her head around the kitchen entrance.
“Can we clear away the boards an’ trestles now, Laird? I have to set the scullions to work scrubbing the boards afore the next meal. The thresh must be layered, the glasses washed…”
“Aye, go about yer business, Cook,” Laird Calvin said. “We will sit at the lowest table, which should nae interfere with yer clearing too much.”
“Make sure ye leave all the food ye served out, Cook,” Iona requested. “It must be checked to see if it was the source of the poison.”
Cook grumbled, “I keep a generous kitchen, Iona! How are we meant to do that? There are nae enough sick dogs in the world to test the food with!”
The lowest table—the trestle and board set up the furthest away from the high table on the dais—was reserved for those with the lowest rank.
Everyone not closely related to the clan; traveling merchants, apprentices, and youths who had not yet taken up a trade were seated there.
Ada helped her mother to sit down on the bench and sat next to her.
She tried hard to concentrate when Calvin came to sit next to her.
The laird and physician took their seats opposite.
“How now, Mistress Calvin, what did ye observe?” the laird asked.
Iona spoke with confidence. “He died from poison. There is no doubt.”
She nodded to salute the physician’s conclusion.
He beamed a wide smile. The physician was a man who did not like being contradicted, and besides, the healer and the physician knew one another from back when Ada was found in the village, and even if they would not go as far as to call their relationship friendly, it was cordial enough when needs arose.
“However,” Iona continued, “the poison was not meant to take such immediate effect. It was simply meant for the one ingesting the poison to be taken ill and eventually die. It was so sudden because the poor scribe clerk was already sick.”
Everyone seated at the table went still. It was bad enough to know a poisoner was in their midst but to know the person had a keen desire to stay hidden and possibly pass the death off as something else was disturbing.
“I ken this because of certain signs on the body: the lips were blue, the whites of the eyes were reddened, an’ the man’s fingertips an’ nails have turned lilac.”
“An’ from that ye ken the poisoner wanted their deed to stay disguised under the cover of illness?”
The laird’s grandson’s deep voice made Ada give a little jump. She strengthened her resolve to concentrate on what her mother was saying. No one wanted to look jumpy when the laird was frowning so fiercely.
“Nay, it indicates poison only,” Iona continued.
“What tells me the poisoner must have been as surprised with the swiftness of the bane’s ability to kill as much as we were is this: the ends of the scrivener's fingers and toes, and the nails atop them, bulge outward an’ upward.
This is a sign the man’s heart was in its final days with or without the administration of poison.
His body must have taken one taste of the toxin and forced the scribe to cock up his toes forthwith. ”
Everyone seated at the table was interested despite themselves.
“What was the poison?” the physician asked Iona. “Foxglove, wolf’s bane, cuckoo pint, monkshood?”
He wanted to show off that he knew just as much about deadly plants as the apothecary did.
The healer shook her head. “Nay, Master, the scrivener would still be alive if he had eaten a pinch o’ foxglove, for it is a goodly flower when taken in judicious amounts if the invalid has a murmur of the heart.
’Twas deadly nightshade that made his soul flee his body.
If young Lachlan MacNair here had eaten it, he would have broken out into a mild sweat, spewed the contents of his guts over the floor, an’ then taken to his bed to experience a few nightmares or fantastical dreams. But for poor Master Eustace here, it stopped his heart from beating as surely as if someone stuck a knife through him.
It’s all about how much is consumed an’ by whom. ”
Ada felt the man she liked to call Calvin shift in his seat, then he leaned across the table and banged his fist on it.
“This is all very well, but I want to ken what deadly nightshade was doin’ at me grandfaither’s high table!
What food was it put into! Why was Master Eustace singled out for such dastardly treatment?
Ye can hardly expect the people seated at the high table to be placed under suspicion?
We would have all partaken of the food, no’ so? ”
The physician butted in to say what was on his mind.
“Me own conscience is clear. Why should the people seated at the high table be absolved? We must all be held to account until the perpetrator of this evil deed is found. We were all willing to submit to a search, an’ naught was found.
That means we must look further than the hall. We must look at the kitchens!”
Ada tried hard not to think the physician’s eyes looked her way when he said this.
“I’ve sent soldiers down there to see naught is disposed of,” Lachlan said, “an’ I agree that we must all be under suspicion until the person has been found.”
Just then, a sharp cry was heard coming from one of the maids cleaning down the high table on the dais.
“What is it?!” Laird Calvin was an old man, and Ada could tell the strain and stress of the last few bell tolls had taken effect on their laird. “Cannae ye see we are in conference here, girl! An’ then ye set about shriekin’ like a scalded cat!”
The maid curtsied and then tried to explain herself. “Beg pardon, Laird, but I found something under the table…”
Laird Calvin beckoned the young girl forward. “Very well, come closer so that I might see what it is. Me eyes are no’ what they used to be.”
The maid walked forward, holding the item in her pinafore skirt. Everyone craned to see what was in the folds of the material.
It was one of the poisonous mushrooms Ada had pointed out to Lachlan that morning. The laird’s grandson shot one dark look at her and strode out of the great hall, leaving Ada to face all the accusing faces seated around the table who were staring at her.