Flame (2 page)

“But there
is
a reason for me to go,”
Gavin interrupted. “There was something else she said that started
me thinking--that made me decide to go there myself.”

He paused. The two before him stared in
silence, awaiting his next words. “Lady MacInnes says that although
‘tis unnatural how many of her kin have died there, she still
believes that the curse of Ironcross Castle lies not in the realm
of ghosts and goblins. There is evil there, she says, ‘tis true.
But the evil is human.”

Gavin let out a long breath. “‘Tis time
someone sought the truth.”

The charred shutter, high in the ruined
tower, suddenly banged open as the afternoon breeze moved around to
the west, and the golden rays of sunlight tumbled into the scorched
chamber.

Huddled in the corner on a pile of straw, a
startled figure pulled her ragged cloak more tightly around her.
Even though it was late spring, she found it more and more
difficult to shake off the chill that had crept into her bones.
Perhaps it was because she so rarely saw the sun, she thought. For
she was now a creature of the night, a mere shadow.

She shivered slightly, acknowledging the
gnawing pangs of hunger in her belly. She shook her head, trying to
dispel the feeling. There would be no food until tonight, when the
steward and the servants that had remained since the fire all
slept. Then she would partake of her nightly haunt. Then she would
search the kitchens for some scrap that might sustain her.

Those remaining in the castle thought her a
ghost. What fools they would think themselves if they only knew how
human her needs were.

The wood plank continued to bang against the
blackened sill, and she glared at it. This was her rest time, she
silently scolded the troublesome shutter. Like the bats and the
owls, Joanna thought. For it was only under cover of darkness that
she could move about freely in this burned out prison she had once
called home.

Pulling herself to her feet, the ragged
creature moved silently across the floor. As she neared the
offending shutter, she was suddenly aware of the sound of horses in
the distance. Shouts came from the courtyard below, and as she
listened, the yard below seemed to explode in a frenzy of
activity.

Taking hold of the shutter with her swathed
hands, Joanna eased it shut without peering below.

The doomed man, she thought. The cursed laird
had arrived.

**

The pawing hooves of the tired horses against
the soft ground raised a gray cloud that swirled about the riders’
heads. Gavin Kerr lifted his eyes from the approaching grooms and
stared at the huge iron cross fastened to the rough stone wall
above the archway of the great oak entry doors. From the blood-red
rust stains on the stone beneath the cross, the new laird judged
that it must have hung there for ages. Tearing his eyes away, Gavin
glanced around at the buildings facing the open courtyard.

The castle itself was far larger than he’d
expected. Stretching out in angles of sharp stone, the series of
huge structures wrapped around the courtyard like a hand ready to
close. Far above, small slits of windows pierced the walls of the
main building as well as the north wing. The south wing’s upper
windows were larger. A newer addition, he thought. Gavin let his
eyes travel slowly over what he could see. There was no sign of the
fire that had claimed the life of the previous laird, his family,
and their servants. The winter sleet and rains had scoured the
stone of any trace of smoke, no doubt.

He caught the movement from corner of his
eye--the slow closing of a shutter in the tower at the top of the
south wing.

However, men approaching drew Gavin’s
attention earthward again. The tall one scolding the running grooms
had to be Allan, steward to the last four MacInnes lairds. The
man’s graying hair and beard bespoke his advanced years, while his
powerful frame--slightly bent though it was--told of a strength
necessary for the position he had held for so long.

Dismounting from his horse, Gavin nodded to a
groom and handed off his reins as he exchanged greetings with the
bowing steward.

“You did indeed arrive just as we had
expected, m’lord. Not a day too soon nor a day too late.” The old
man’s hands spread in invitation toward the entrance of the castle.
“I took the liberty a day or so ago to have Gibby, the cook, begin
preparing a feast for your arrival.”

He paused as a dozen household servants,
along with a dwarfish, sickly looking priest, came out to welcome
the new laird.

“Your neighbor, the Earl of Athol,” Allan
continued, “has been quite anxious for you to arrive, m’lord. If
you wish, I can send a man over now and invite...”

“Nay, Allan. That can wait for a day or two.”
Gavin’s gaze took in once again the towers at either end of the
courtyard. “While my men settle themselves in, I want you to take
me through this keep.”

The older man nodded his compliance as he
fell in step with the new laird, who was striding toward the south
tower. “You might, m’lord, wish to start in the main part of the
house--what we call the Old Keep--and work toward the kitchens and
the stables in the north wing. There is very little to see in the
south wing.”

Gavin halted abruptly, glanced up at the
south tower, and then looked directly at the steward.

“Much of this wing was ruined by the fire,
m’lord,” Allan explained quickly. “From the courtyard, it looks
sound, but inside, especially where the wing joins the Old Keep,
the damage was extensive. The roof is gone in some places, and I’ve
had the outside entrances to the building barred to keep...”

“Barred?” Gavin interrupted, staring at the
tower.

“Aye. The worst of the damage is on the far
side, though, where the tower looks over the loch. That’s where
they were all sleeping when the fire started, God rest their souls.
By the time the rest of us in the Old Keep and the north wing
smelled the smoke, the whole south wing was ablaze.”

Gavin strode to the stone wall and peered
through the slits of the lower windows. He could see shafts of
light coming through the rafters of the floors above.

“Why do you allow servants into this wing?”
Gavin asked shortly, making the old man’s face suddenly flush red.
“Those upper floors look dangerous, even from here.”

“No living person, m’lord, has stepped foot
in this wing since the fire,” the steward responded with
conviction. “As I said, I myself had all the doors barred and the
inside corridors walled up. With the exception of some badger...or
a fox, perhaps...” His voice trailed off.

Gavin stepped back from the building and
looked upward at the windows in the tower, his eyes finally coming
to rest on the last one in the top floor. “I saw the shutter in
that chamber move.”

The steward stared briefly at the tower
windows, then looked at his new master.

“Aye, m’lord. We see the same thing from time
to time, but ‘tis just the wind.” As the new laird moved along the
front of the edifice, Allan followed along. “The smoke was
everywhere, and the stairwells leading up to it are ruined. Of that
I’m certain. The roof there may be sound, though, and a bird or two
may have taken up lodging there. And wings are what you’d be
needing to make your way into the tower.”

Gavin peered up again at the looming tower. A
number of shutters were banging against stone in the rising breeze.
Nature, it appeared, had the upper hand in every window...but one.
The window that he had seen open before, now stood closed against
the north wind.

So the birds of the Highlands can latch a
shutter, Gavin thought to himself. Turning without another word, he
started for the main entrance of the Old Keep, his steward in
tow.

**

No one ever dared step into her domain.

The crumbling, fire-damaged roofs, the gaping
holes in the walls overlooking the sheer cliffs of Loch Moray, and
the scorched, unsteady floors all combined to make the south wing
of Ironcross Castle a forbidding place to enter. But as Joanna made
her way quietly through a blasted room toward the wooden panel and
the secret passageway that would take her down to the subterranean
tunnels and caverns, she suddenly sensed that someone had been
through there, and quite recently.

She paused and looked about her in the
encroaching dusk. There was little to be seen. Dropping softly to
her hands and knees on a plank by the doorway, she peered closely
at the ash-covered floor of the passage beyond the door. She
herself always avoided those corridors for fear of being discovered
by some intrepid soul snooping in this wing.

Squinting in the growing gloom, she saw them
clearly--the faint imprints left behind by someone coming from the
Old Keep. Whoever it was had gone in the direction of her father’s
study...or what was left of it. Quietly, Joanna rose and, hugging
the wall, followed the passage toward the study.

Standing rigidly beside the door, she peeked
inside the charred room. The chamber was empty. She peered into the
murky light of the corridor again. Since she had just come from the
top floor, whoever had come in here must have continued on and
descended the nearly impassable stairwell to the main floor.

Relieved, she wrapped her cloak tightly about
her and glanced inside the study again. Her chest tightened with
that familiar sorrow as she stepped inside the fire-ravaged
chamber. Nothing had changed here since that terrible night. All
lay in ruin. Hanging from one wall were the scraps of burned rag
that had once been a tapestry. Elsewhere a scorched table and the
broken sticks of a chair. Everything ruined.

Everything but the foolish portrait hanging
over the mantel of the fireplace. She stared loathingly at the face
that smiled faintly back at her. Her throat knotted at the sight of
herself, of the picture of perfection she had once been. What
vanity, she thought angrily.

She wanted to cross the room and take hold of
the fire-blackened frame. She wanted to pull it down, smash it,
destroy it as it should have been destroyed long ago. But the
unsteady floor stopped her approach. From experience, she knew
every loose board, every dangerous plank. Nay, she hadn’t survived
this ordeal so long just to break her neck falling through the
floor. But those eyes dared her. Challenged her to come ahead. She
hated that painting. Why should this blasted thing survive when no
one else had? No one, including herself.

As a tear welled up, Joanna dashed at the
glistening bead. Turning away from that vain and beautiful face,
she pulled her hood forward and headed for the darkness of the
passages that would take her deep into the earth, where no one
would see what she had become...a ghostly shadow of the past, a
creature of the night, burned and ugly, miserable. Dead.

Disappearing into the dark, Joanna MacInnes
thought once again of her poor mother and father, of all the
innocent ones who had perished in the blaze with them.

Well, it was her destiny, now, to hide and
await her chance for justice.

***

As the fire’s embers burned out beneath, a
huge log crashed down, sending crackling flames and sparks flying
in the Great Hall’s huge fireplace.

The new laird’s face was in shadow as he
looked around at the young features of the three men sitting with
him. Scattered about the Great Hall, servants and warriors slept on
benches and tables, and a number of dogs lay curled up amid the
rushes covering the stone floor. Most of the household was already
asleep, either here or in the stables and outbuildings, but Gavin
had kept these three trusted warriors with him. In the short time
since they had all arrived, these men had been tasked with
determining what needed to be done to secure the castle. Each man
had gone about his business, and now the Lowlander leaned forward
to hear them.

Edmund began. “I heard with my own ears the
steward passing on your wish to have the south wing opened for you
to view in the morning...”

“Aye,” Peter broke in, gruff and impatient.
“And a couple of the grooms and the old smith hopped to the task of
pulling down one of the blocking walls.”

“The steward has fine control of the castle
folk,” Edmund added admiringly.

“That he does,” Peter agreed. “Though a body
would think barring a door might have been plenty good enough.
Building a wall to stop trespassing!” The thickset warrior spat
critically into the rushes on the floor. “Why, most of the servants
are too old even to lift a latch unaided!”

Gavin interrupted the two men. “I can see
Allan’s concern. He told me that after the fire, he wanted to be
sure that no one would go in that wing, not until such time as Lady
MacInnes or the next laird came along to go through what was left.”
The Lowlander sat back and lifted a cup as he looked about the
silent hall. “With so many accidents plaguing the lairds over the
years, I am certain it shows good judgment to leave everything
untouched. What did you find, Andrew?”

Andrew cleared his throat and spoke. “In my
ride over to the abbey, m’lord, I ran into some of the Earl of
Athol’s men heading north. They all spoke of how strange it was
here after the fire. None of the last laird’s warriors stayed
behind, they said. It seems that they all fled into the mountains
as if they had the devil himself on their tails.”

Gavin drained his cup and put it back on the
table as he turned to Andrew. “What can you tell us of the
abbey?”

“‘Tis an odd place, that abbey. Nary a league
from here, following the shore of the loch, but ‘tis nothing but a
heap of stones and ruined wall in the shelter of the high hills.
The place is surrounded by pasture and farmland and some crofters’
cottages, though there is an odd lack of farm folk about the
place.”