Authors: Stephanie Sterling
“Isla, we could nae have kenned that
this
was what he intended,” Roan said, his voice very calm and even.
“But what if -”
“Shh -” In the darkness Roan’s fingers found Isla’s lips. “Ye canna live a life on ‘what ifs’,” he said gently. “Now try and get some sleep.”
“I’m afraid to sleep,” Isla mumbled. “Because when I wake it will be morning and then -” but her words descended into sobs. Roan gathered her against his chest and stroked her hair. Eventually, she cried herself asleep, but Roan stayed awake watching over her through the night.
..ooOOoo..
Isla woke to find her husband already dressed and out of bed. He stood looking out the window at the dark pre-dawn world beyond the glass. There was one glorious second of peace, when Isla didn’t understand the morbid set of her mind, and then it was gone, in a fierce rush of memory and realization.
“Tis nearly time, is it nae?” she asked. Roan didn’t answer with words, but in the dim light Isla watched him nod slowly.
“I’ll have to leave ye soon and see that everything’s proceeding as it should.” His voice was cold, detached, so unlike his usual rich, warm burr.
“There really is nae other way?” she asked, the tone of her voice betraying the fact that she knew the answer.
“Would ye like to ask that question to the parents who were forced to bury their two year old daughter?” he asked numbly. “Or any of the families and friends who’ve lost people thanks to MacEantach?”
“I dinna mean it like that,” Isla replied. She lifted her hand to his face. “I’m worried about ye. Ye seem so weighed down.”
“A man’s going to die today because of an order I’ve given. His blood is going to be on my hands.”
“Nae,” Isla said firmly. “He’s responsible for his choices… Tis really my fault. I’m the one who -”
Roan didn’t let her finish. He pulled Isla into his arms and smothered the dark words under a kiss. “I’m going to send Bridghe to sit with ye.” He said when he pulled away. “I’ve already asked her, she’s going to bring the twins.”
“Ye want me to stay here?” Isla’s eyes widened in surprise.
“Oh darling, I would never make ye watch such a terrible thing,” he said gently, and then dropped a kiss to her brow. He tightened his arms around her for a moment and then dropped them to his side. “I have to go.”
Isla held the embrace a moment longer, refusing to let him leave. “I love ye!” she said. “Dinna forget that.”
“Never,” he promised, kissing her a final time before leaving the room.
Isla was only alone for a matter of minutes before Bridghe and her children arrived. She was standing in the middle of the room, staring into space and still clad in her nightdress, when the knock on her door came and she managed to mumble a feeble ‘come in.’
“Morning, Isla,” Bridghe said brightly, far
too
brightly in fact, and the smile she was wearing looked decidedly forced. “Nae dressed yet?” Roan’s sister continued, not waiting for Isla’s reply of welcome. “Well, we dinna need to call the maid, I can help ye with that,” she announced, in such a cheerful tone that it made Isla’s already throbbing head hurt.
Bridghe stepped into the room, pushing her two children before her. Isla murmured a soft ‘hello’ to the whole family, which none of them seemed to acknowledge. “Now, ye two will play calmly, and nicely,
and calmly
,” Bridghe was saying, turning the twins back around to face her. “Yer Uncle Roan will tan yer hides if ye break anything in here!”
“Aww, nae, he will nae, mama,” Bridghe’s young son, Lachlan, argued emphatically. “Remember when I broke the basin in grandmother’s room? Uncle just laughed!” Bridghe seemed to pale visibly at the memory.
“Grandmother dinna laugh though,” Maeve chimed in helpfully. “She said -”
“I dinna think we need to dwell on that,” Bridghe said quickly. She turned to Isla and sighed. “They can be lively little things when the mood takes them.” She seemed to scan the room for breakables.
Isla glanced wearily at the two ‘lively little things.’ They were currently bouncing on her bed, trying to see which of them could jump the highest.
“Mama! Mama, tell Maeve I can jump better than her! She’s just a girl -”
Maeve gave an indignant scream and launched herself at her brother. Bridghe dove between the pair of them, pulling them apart and hauling them off the bed.
“Maeve, why dinna ye help me to get yer Auntie Isla ready?” Bridghe said, trying to distract the little girl. “And Lachlan, ye can -”
But Lachlan had already decided what he could do - it seemed to involve making a fortress out of the bed. Maeve squealed at the unfairness, and Isla told Bridghe to let the twins do as they pleased, she didn’t have the energy to witness tantrums this morning.
“Ye dinna have to come and stay with me, Bridghe,” she said quietly, disappearing behind a screen while her sister-in-law selected an appropriate morning dress.
“I dinna mind,” Bridghe said, her voice now devoid of its previous lightness. “Roan dinna want ye left alone,” she confessed. “And I agreed with him.”
“Why?” Isla sighed, allowing Bridghe to help her with the laces on her corset, but she didn’t listen to the answer.
What difference did it make if she endured the morning alone or surrounded by people? It didn’t change the fact that she, not Roan, was truly responsible for Tavish’s fate. She was frankly surprised that the MacRaes had decided to be so indulgent.
Bridghe’s chatter, or the children’s squeals and shrieks should have distracted her, but as time wore on, Isla began to feel as though she were standing outside of her body. Her mind was lost in memories from long ago: the first time she had seen Tavish, the days that Tavish had courted her, his proposal…and the way that he had immediately changed. Her only anchor to the present was the ominous tick of the clock.
The execution was scheduled for six o’clock, at the first chime of the bells from the castle kirk.
Somehow, some corner of Isla’s mind had never expected that moment to come. Time would stop, or skip forward, or
something
, it couldn’t really be going to happen, it was too awful, too unfathomable. Then it did. The castle seemed to shudder with the tolling of the bells. Isla closed her eyes and fought back the need to retch.
..ooOOoo..
He was going to remember the sight forever.
It wasn’t one of those things that would fade with time, or be forgotten as the years rolled by. It had been scorched onto the rawest corner of his memory. Roan already knew the image would stay with him for the rest of his life. When he closed his eyes he could still see it: Tavish MacEantach’s body twitching and writhing at the end of the hangman’s noose, looking like some grotesque parody of a worm on a hook. When he opened his eyes again, it was still happening there in front of him.
“Poor bastard,” Ian muttered quietly. Tavish’s neck had not been broken by the fall and he was forced to endure the slow torture of asphyxiation. Often the crowd would force the guards to take pity in such a case and quicken the condemned’s demise, but not today. Today they were thirsty to see Tavish suffer.
Isla’s brother was standing with Donaid beside the new Laird. To Roan’s eyes, the other men were watching the spectacle with a surprising amount of dispassion. His own stomach churned as he watched Tavish’s body gradually still, and his life ebb away. A few moments before, as Tavish had been lead to the gallows, he had searched the crowd and found Roan, Ian and Donaid. The look he had shot them had been one of pure eternal hatred.
Roan wasn’t afraid of the dead, but he worried for the living. He knew that Isla felt a misguided sense of responsibility for Tavish’s fate. He didn’t know how to change her mind. Quite apart from his wife’s well-being, Roan couldn’t be certain that some MacEantach relative would not show up at Erchlochy Castle one day in the future and demand retribution for the loss of a favorite uncle or nephew or son.
How many times had Roan wished that things had been different? That Graem, God rest his soul, had never extended an invitation for the Camerons to visit? Roan knew that such musings were hypocritical. He wouldn’t let Isla blame herself for decisions made in the past, but he couldn’t help doing the exact same thing.
“His parents will want the body,” Donaid was said quietly. The young Cameron tanist looked rather pale. Roan shook his head. Prisoner’s bodies were not given back over to their relatives; they were not buried in consecrated ground. “Laird MacRae, the MacEantachs are a powerful family within my clan I -”
“Dinna want them upset?” Roan finished smoothly. “I think tis rather too late for that.” Donaid looked affronted, but Ian laid a hand on his cousin’s shoulder. “Ye can take his signet ring, and anything else of sentimental value, back to his mother, but I canna let ye have the body. Ye say the MacEantach family is powerful within yer clan? Well my whole clan would revolt if I allowed the murderer of their friends, families and laird a proper Christian burial.”
“We understand,” Ian said seriously.
Donaid still looked unhappy, but he nodded his agreement. Roan dipped in head in return, and then gave the order for Tavish’s lifeless body to be cut down.
The crowd had fallen eerily silent. They had been baying for blood ever since Tavish had been led out in front of them, but now it was all over, and they seemed not to know what to do with themselves. They slowly dispersed, moved away from the gallows in a slow jumble of bodies. It was as though they had just woken up from a dream and were still coming back to their selves.
“Ye’ll want to go and see Isla, nae doubt?”
Roan turned in surprise to Ian. He was looking very brotherly and protective.
“I need -”
“I can deal with things here, sir,” Ross said quickly, and competently, and Roan didn’t really have a leg to stand on. Things
were
in order, to his quiet astonishment.
“All right, but I will nae be long,” Roan heard himself mutter as he headed back to the castle to speak to his wife – to tell her that her ex-fiancé was dead.
Roan could hear his nephew and niece long before he reached the chambers that he shared with his wife. He thought this was because the two youngest were being their usual exuberant selves – this proved partly true, but it also proved true that they were out in the corridors playing.
“Uncle Roan! Uncle Roan!” the pair squealed in delight the moment that they laid eyes on the new Laird. They bounded up to him excitedly, apparently unaffected by that morning’s gruesome events.
“What are ye two doing out here?” he frowned, but he let Maeve clamber up his leg and into his arms, while Lachlan bounced around his feet, happily telling his uncle that they’d been playing a game. Lachlan had been the fearless knight and Maeve the helpless damsel, only Maeve pouted about this and insisted that she was, in fact, the dragon.
“Yer too pretty to be the dragon, petal.” Roan couldn’t help but smile at her upturned face. “But why are ye playing out here and nae in with yer mother and Auntie Isla?”
“Auntie Isla’s sick,” Roan said simply.
Roan felt his heart clatter in his chest. “Sick?” he choked, but they’d already reached the door to his room, so he pushed it open hurriedly instead of waiting for further information.
To his relief, Isla was sitting in a chair by the fire, but Bridghe was flitting around her anxiously. She hurried toward her brother as soon as he entered the room.
“I - I dinna ken what’s wrong with her,” she stammered nervously as soon as she saw her brother. “We heard the bell chime,” and then Isla looked like she was going to faint. I sat her down in the chair, but she has nae said anything since.”
“Take them,” Roan grunted, gesturing to the twins. “Let me speak to her alone.”