Sophia James: Lady with the Devil's Scar

‘What did you do there in France?’

‘Many things.’

‘Was soldiering one of them?’

He stayed silent. With no idea of the leanings of the Dalceann cause save the knowledge of an ancient patriarchal title, he needed to be careful. The unrest in Scotland had filtered into France, after all, and David’s hold on the country had always been tenuous. Edward the Third of England had his champion in the factions of Edward Balliol and the vagaries of clan law had never existed under simple allegiances.

Besides, his head swam in a way that was alarming and the prickling heat from the flames made him move back into the cool. If he had been stronger, he could have walked away into the night and tracked west along the Firth, but the shaking that had plagued Simon was beginning to plague him, too. Grinding his teeth together, he swallowed and closed his eyes to find balance.

He rarely answered a question, she noticed.

She also noticed the sweat on his brow and the way his cheeks had flushed with heat. It was his wound, no doubt, the badness settling in. She should unwind the cloth and wash the injury over and over with water that was too hot to touch, infused with the garlic she had so carefully stored at Ceann Gronna.

But here in the open, with nothing save that which she had already used, she wondered if it would not be better to leave it till the morrow when they reached the keep.

If she was a proper healer she might have been able to make the call, but warfare had taken up all the years of her life and it was true when Ian had said that she was more skilled in the art of killing.

Still she did have valerian and the special medicine from England to stop him thrashing about and hurting himself. He would be thirsty and the powders were tasteless. Her fingers felt the paper twists in the pocket of her tunic and she held them safe in her palm. James was large so the dose would be high. Not so high as to kill him though, she amended.

She smiled as she saw his gaze upon her.

‘I will fetch cold water from the stream before we eat.’

The rain sounded far away. He felt it on his face when he tipped his head, but the sky that it fell from was blurred and hollow, no true sense in any of it.

Isobel Dalceann sat watching him, the meat between them blackening on the stick, overcooked and forgotten. He should have moved forwards and taken it from the flame, but his hand felt odd and heavy, too much weight to bother with.

Closing his eyes, he opened them again, widening the lids in a way that allowed more light.

‘How do you feel?’

Her words were flat.

‘How should I feel?’

‘Tired?’

Understanding dawned. ‘You put something in the water?’ He made to rise, but his knees buckled under his weight and he fell to the side heavily. She did not blink as she watched him struggle.

‘Why?’ It was all he could manage, the numbness around his lips making it hard to speak. His tongue felt too big in his mouth.

‘Because you are a stranger,’ she answered, ‘and because everything is dangerous.’

He conserved his breath and closed his eyes. Was the concoction lethal? Already his heart was speeding up and sweat garnered in the cold. He should have been more on guard, he thought and swore at his own stupidity.

‘You won’t die,’ she said flatly, the firelight falling in rough shadows across her eyes. ‘It is an opiate of valerian and gentle unless you fight it.’

Such a quiet warning. He almost spoke, but the dark was claiming him, his world spinning into all the corners of quiet.

She cushioned a blanket beneath his cheek and another across his shoulders. Her fingers she passed beneath his nose, glad when she felt the gentle passage of air. She had not killed him and, unconscious, her prisoner would be so very much easier to protect.

Already she could hear them coming through the trees, the light that she had noticed reflected in the hills above a good few hours ago giving her knowledge of their presence.

Angus would be leading them and he would be looking for vengeance. Please God, that James had told the truth about leaving Ian alive, for if he had not …

She shook her head, repositioning her knife on the inside of her kirtle’s sleeve. These days she trusted no one, for David’s edict calling on the forfeiture of Dalceann land made everything tenuous. Troublesome vassals needed replacement with more amenable ones, after all, and there were many lining up for the rich largesse that was Ceann Gronna.

Even this one, perhaps? Her eyes went to James’s face.

He looked so much softer in sleep than in wakefulness. His nose had been broken somewhere in the past, the fine white line on the ridge leaving a bump to one side. His clothes still worried her, for the velvet surcoat was finely stitched, every seam doubled into dark green ribbon and his bliaud was of fashionable cotton. For the first time she saw a scar just above the fleshy cushion of his palm, dangerously close to the blue lines of blood at his wrist.

No small wound that. She imagined how it must have bled out and the effort it would have taken to quell such a flow. It looked deliberately done, too. Like the mark of a sacrifice.

But there were voices now, only a few hundred yards away. Positioning herself before him, she watched the track from where her clansmen would come, on the other side of the clearing.

Andrew came first, followed by Angus. Both looked for Ian.

‘Your brother is back in the glade where I left you, Angus,’ she said.

‘He hurt him. The one from the sea. He kicked out with his hands tied and brought him down. If he has killed him …’

‘He says he did not.’

As his glance flicked across to James, Angus pushed forward, intent written in every line of his face.

‘No.’ Isobel held the knife where he could see it and he stopped.

‘I am a Dalceann …’

‘And he is asleep.’

‘Drugged?’ Andrew spoke, his voice imbued with the quiet knowledge of something being not quite as it ought.

‘Aye. The wound ails him. I stitched it and cleaned it, but it still bleeds.’

‘And the other?’

‘He died a few hours back. The cold of the sea sat inside him like ice.’

A dozen Ceann Gronna soldiers shuffled into the clearing as they spoke and Isobel tipped her head at their coming, their full-length mantles folded against the chill.

‘I want this stranger unhurt. We will send him by boat to Edinburgh with the ferrymen from the landing-place and he will be no further nuisance.’

‘Nae.’ Angus paced across the other side of the fire. ‘He is not one of us. I say kill him here and now and be rid of any menace.’

In response Isobel kneeled beside James. Pushing back her sleeve, she made a cut in her palm and another across the thickened skin below the strange mark on his wrist. Pressing them together, she smelt the rusty tang of blood.

Hecate, Cerridwen, Dark Mother Take Us In

Hecate, Cerridwen, Let Us Be Reborn .

The oath of loyalty and attachment echoed around the clearing.

‘You would protect him for ever?’ Andrew asked the question.

She shook her head, knowing he was her enemy. ‘Nae. But I swear by all the gods of this place that I will protect him for now.’

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