Claire Delacroix (28 page)

It was as if Adaira had wrapped the forest around herself like a cloak. Much of the moss was growing, to my surprise, and the walls were alive with small creatures when one truly looked.

I chose not to truly look.

There was a hole in the roof at one end and a hearth in the middle of the hut. A great flat stone made the base of the hearth, the fire kindled atop it and contained by a ring of smaller stones. There was a band of carving upon the big stone that looked like knotted cords, its relief dark with soot.

Adaira had left a fire burning low, the amount of stone evidently allowing her to have no fears of the fire spreading. I sat upon the bench she indicated, surprised at the comfort to be found here. It was not only dry within these walls but fragrant.

Tied clumps of plants hung from the ceiling to dry and a cauldron simmered upon the embers. I could spy an array of bowls in the back corner and various implements, including a drop-spindle. Two rabbit skins cured in the corner, notable because they were the sole things within these walls wrought of dead creatures.

The pottage she offered to me contained no meat, solely onions and wild leeks and some kind of legume stewed to softness. It was flavored with herbs and hot and perhaps the finest fare I had eaten in years.

Hunger, as it is said, is the best sauce.

She gave me some dark bread as well and a cup of her ale. I ate with inelegant haste, but my manners did not seem to trouble her.

Sated, I set the bowl aside and thanked her most graciously. She inclined her head, but said nothing, her gaze seeming to be fixed upon the fire.

“You said you would tell me some of the tale,” I prompted.

“Perhaps I lied.”

“Perhaps you do not truly care for the fate of another.”

She tilted her head. “Is that not what is said of you?”

I stood. “I thank you again for the fare, but I will not trouble you further. It seems that you will not aid Evangeline…”

“Will you?”

“Of course.”

“For the sake of your unborn son?”

“You cannot know the babe’s gender. Evangeline is not even certain that she carries a child.”

“The lady does not heed the signs of her own body. She bears your son, upon this you can rely. I ask again: is this why you would aid her, to ensure that your son is born?”

“No.” I would have halted there, but she watched me, a curious smile upon her lips that prompted me to say more. “She trusts overmuch and that trait will be her bane.”

Adaira’s smile broadened. “Why would you care what fate awaits the lady?”

I felt my color rise in a most uncharacteristic way and my words faltered. “I know that she does not understand what she does, yet I know that her intentions are good. I know that she places too much trust in justice and truth, and I would not see her suffer for it.”

“You sound to be a man besotted.”

I halted and stared at the old woman. She poked the fire with a stick. Every defense that rose to my lips sounded like something another man would say. It is not like me to behave honorably, and yet, here I stood, intent upon saving a lady from peril and unable to claim my intent so clearly as that.

“I am fond of her,” I managed to admit.

Adaira smiled and said nothing more.

Mortified that I had confessed as much as I had, I turned upon my heel to leave. I would not humiliate myself further by begging an old madwoman for crumbs of information. I reached the portal before she spoke.

“What do you know of Gilchrist of Inverfyre?”

I halted, blinking. “Who?”

“The lady’s father.”

I glanced back as I shrugged. “Nothing, beyond the assumption that she had one.”

Adaira sighed. “You can know nothing of Inverfyre without knowing about Gilchrist, even less without knowing of Magnus Armstrong, the forebear of all the lairds of Inverfyre.” She gestured imperiously to the bench I had vacated. “Sit.”

I hesitated, then driven by a curiosity I had not known I possessed, I sat.

* * *

XV

As I settled myself, Adaira began to murmur beneath her breath. It was a rhyme of some kind, though it took me a moment to discern the words.

“When the seventh son of Inverfyre,

Saves his legacy from intrigue and mire,

Only then shall glorious Inverfyre,

Reflect in full its first laird’s desire.”

It was clearly a prophecy. “Gilchrist was the seventh son of Inverfyre?”

“No. He was the sixth.”

I settled my elbows upon my knees, intrigued beyond expectation. “I have not heard that Evangeline has any brothers - does she?”

Adaira smiled.

For a long moment I though she would not respond, but then she did. “One of Gilchrist’s many flaws was his ambition. He would do any deed to enlarge his holdings, to grow his power, to broaden the repute of his name. He cared for little beyond prestige - and the sating of his own desires. He had inherited his own father’s lust abed.”

“The laird whose wife had the trapdoor constructed that her husband’s courtesans might be cast into the lake,” I said, remembering.

Adaira nodded, “Gilchrist’s lust was why he came to me.” I must have recoiled, for she smiled. “I too was young once, and not so hard upon the eyes. I suspect, though, that part of my allure was that I was from one of the few serf families left at Inverfyre. Gilchrist owned me, and he savored that.”

I looked away, awkward with such intimate and unsavory details.

“And so, he had his son, but the boy was a bastard and thus not acceptable to his sire.” She cocked her head. “Worse, he was a bastard with the taint of his father’s ambition in his blood.”

I was intrigued by this detail, though could not guess its import. “What happened to your son?”

“Why do you think I live in the woods?” Adaira asked. “Gilchrist had no qualms against killing to see his ends achieved. He feared both me and the child I bore - and I refused to be rid of my babe, certainly not to suit the convenience of the man who had used me and discarded me.”

“So, you raised him here, in the woods?”

She laughed. “Gilchrist was not so timid that he would not come down from Inverfyre to his own forest to hunt the babe! I bore my son here, it is true, and when his gender proved to be as I had feared, I gave him away. It was vengeance enough for me to have Gilchrist tormented with the possibility of the boy’s return one day.”

“To whom did you give him?”

“To strangers. He could not fare worse than the fate I offered him at Inverfyre, and I dared not leave Inverfyre.”

“You feared to leave your master, even knowing he might kill you?”

“There was another reason, one of no interest to you. I cannot leave Inverfyre, not for long. I left once and only once, only to carry my babe three days to the north. I left him on the steps of the monastery in Glenfannon. I thought it far enough.” She seemed to find this amusing, though I could not guess why.

“And?”

“The monks sent him back to Gilchrist, unaware of what they did.” Adaira laughed bitterly. “The monks thought such a hale child better suited to a life of warfare, and every soul for miles around knew how Gilchrist wished for a son. The monks thought they showed compassion for an orphan and gained the boy a fortune that might suit him better than a life of prayer.”

“But they, however unwittingly, unfurled what you had tried to do.”

“We cannot challenge the gods. I have tried to thwart their schemes a hundred times, I have tried to avert tragedy and wring kinder solutions from the elements at hand over and over again.” She lifted her head and I fancied that she looked into my very thoughts. “I have lost, every time. The gods will not be thwarted. Any deed can be twisted to their purposes; any mortal intent can be undone.”

Her shoulders sagged and she appeared more ancient than she had all along. It struck me that she would not live long, perhaps not long enough to see what came of what had begun.

I had to know more while I had the chance. “But what became of the boy?”

“He was raised at Inverfyre, for Gilchrist was not adverse to another warrior in his hall and he knew nothing of the child’s origins. I said nothing, for I still hoped to see matters resolved for good.”

“And when he grew, the boy chose to stay?”

“If you were a young and valiant warrior fostered by the laird, would you leave a holding that lacked an heir?” Adaira shook her head and answered her own query. “Not if your father’s ambition burned in your veins. No, you would fight for the chance to make that holding your own, to have yourself declared heir.” She arched a brow as she turned to face me. “You might even demand the hand of your laird’s daughter as your bride.”

“Niall.” I breathed the man’s name in sudden understanding.

“No man of merit would let his son and his daughter become man and wife,” Adaira said, poking the fire with her stick, her expression grim. “Gilchrist, for all his faults, was a man of merit. I had no choice but to tell him the truth once Niall’s intent was clear, and Gilchrist acted with honor.”

“Niall and Evangeline are siblings.”

“Half-siblings: Evangeline wrought in the marital bed, Niall wrought where you sit.”

I leapt to my feet, not having desired that particular detail. “But do they know?”

“Niall knows. Gilchrist had to grant a reason when he refused Niall’s request for Evangeline’s hand. I would have preferred that Gilchrist lied and the secret be left a secret between we two, but the revelation from me came too soon before their meeting, too soon for Gilchrist to hide his disgust from Niall.”

“But Evangeline does not know.”

Adaira shrugged. “She cannot. Their nuptials will be celebrated on the morrow.”

I felt my jaw drop. “What is this?”

“The lady confronted Niall in the forest and demanded they be wed. She declared that they had been lovers and that she would have their child born in legitimacy.”

“I am that child’s father!” I declared, more irked by Evangeline’s deed than I could say.

Adaira smiled. “The prophesied son must be born legitimately to the Laird of Inverfyre. No doubt, the lady thought that both she and Niall would win their desire with this wager.”

“Why would she do this?” I raged.

“They have long been friends,” Adaira said mildly. “Doubtless, she thinks Niall her sole ally at Inverfyre.”

I frowned at the floor of the hut, disliking the web that seemed to be tightening around me. I knew Evangeline had been stung by Niall’s refusal to take her cause before Alasdair and now I knew why. Her annoyance with his lack of faith made sense if they were old friends - while his ambition explained why he was intent upon being shown to be a just lawgiver.

But if Evangeline bore a son, that child would be the obstacle to Niall’s ambitions. Indeed, he could only assert his claim to the lairdship if there was no other seventh son to compete with his claim.

I feared suddenly that Evangeline’s child - my child! - would die very young. Babes died in childbirth very commonly and none would ask questions if another failed to draw its first breath.

I stood, impatient to do some deed to aid the lady who stumbled unwittingly into a nest of vipers. “How ruthless is your son?”

“As ruthless as his father.” Adaira turned and presented a vial to me, one that exuded menace even as it lay cradled in her palm. “As ruthless as his mother.”

I disliked the look of the vial’s dark contents. “What is that?”

“A remedy I granted to Evangeline and one which she refused.”

I stared at her, horrified. “An abortifacient. You favor your son’s cause! You too would ensure that this child never sees light.”

Adaira licked her lips. “Understand that I have a fondness for the lady, but I know my son as few others do. She will find that there is a price to be paid in trusting to the goodness of others. She has seen only the sunshine in Niall’s heart, not the shadow.”

“But…”

“But there is more at stake, far more. The lady bears her heir too soon. This soul returns too early. Trouble will come of it, trouble far worse than a child dying in the womb. My solution was the more kind one.” Adaira turned aside, but our conversation was not finished. She mused as she fingered her herbs. “Can you guess how often a seed takes root but never ripens to fruition? It is common, appallingly common.” She paused and pursed her lips, as if considering whether to continue.

“The choice is not a mortal one to make,” I retorted. It seemed that the priests had found an unlikely champion in me.

“What if the child threatens the mother’s survival, solely by occupying her womb?” Adaira turned to me, her milky gaze seeming to hold mine. “Recall that until a child looses its first bellow, its survival depends solely upon the survival of its mother. It may be simpler, to the thinking of some, to be rid of both mother and child lest the lady later conceive again.”

My blood ran cold as I understood her warning. The matter was more urgent that I had realized. Evangeline would die, by some supposed accident, so Niall would never face a challenge to his claiming of Inverfyre. Indeed, she might not survive her wedding night.