Flame (7 page)

Well, he thought, so much for the possibility
of anyone using a ladder to climb the wall.

Gavin let his eyes travel over the faces of
his own men and those of Ironcross Castle. They all depended upon
him, now. The confused expressions, the low murmuring undercurrent
of fear assured him that the culprit of this trick was not standing
amongst them. And that included his three warriors.

“Well lads, if the worst this ghost can do is
steal and rehang pictures, then ‘tis a harmless fellow, to be
sure.” Gavin’s words brought a smile and some encouraging nods from
the men. “Though with all the work to be done in here, he might
have busied himself a bit more productively.”

“He’s probably a gentleman,” Peter said under
his breath, loud enough for all to hear.

Gavin’s laughter matched the response of the
crowd and dispelled the eeriness that had gripped them all just
moments earlier. As the throng broke up, with most heading off to
their day’s tasks, Gavin turned to Edmund. “Get ladders and
whatever else you need and bring the damned thing down.”

“After we take the painting down, m’lord,
where do you want it?” Edmund asked. “Shall we pack it up for its
journey?”

Gavin paused for a moment before answering
and stared musingly at the smiling face on the wall. The honorable
thing would be to send the portrait off to its rightful owner. But
this bit of mischief from last night only added to his desire to
hold on to the painting. Just for a short time.

“Take it back to my room,” he ordered,
walking away. “Put it where it was before.”

“Shouldn’t we have someone guard the
painting, m’lord?” Edmund called after him. “To stop it from being
stolen again?”

“Why?” Gavin asked, pausing and turning to
look at the three. “Now that we know how far that painting can
walk, I have no worries about it. Besides, with Andrew riding to
Elgin, I should be able to keep my eye on two of you.”

Not a sheep. Not a shaggy red cow. Not a
soul.

Gavin, riding alone toward the abbey, spurred
his charger to the summit of the rocky, heather-covered hill. The
last of the mists had burned off hours earlier, and only a few,
solitary wisps of white marred a brilliant azure sky. But the land
that met the new laird’s gaze was as empty as the vault of
heaven.

To his right the waters of the loch curved
away to the west. Beyond the line of peaks in the distance, Gavin
knew that the Spey River flowed to the sea. And rising above the
Spey, perhaps only a day or two away, sat Benmore Castle, home of
the Macpherson clan. Twisting his body around, Gavin looked back
over the ground he had traveled.

Above the hills, he could see Ironcross
Castle, rugged and proud on its high ground overlooking the loch.
It would be a good holding, he decided, once he rebuilt the south
wing. And once he had dispelled the old beliefs in its curse.

The black-haired giant turned his gaze to the
north. Drifting in the sky over the next hill, he could see a hawk
circling and hanging in the occasional breeze. As he watched, the
predator suddenly plummeted toward the ground, disappearing behind
a jagged crest. To the north, the Earl of Athol was Gavin’s nearest
neighbor. Gavin had seen him on a number of occasions. He was a
relative of the king...and an odd man, this John Stewart.

Shrugging off his thoughts of Athol, the
warrior chief turned his attention back in the direction of the
abbey. The place lay in a small valley leading up from the loch.
Not far, Andrew had told him.

At the bottom of this hill, beside a grove of
tall trees, Gavin spotted a handful of huts huddled together.
Turning his steed down the slope, the new laird was disappointed to
find the dwellings deserted. He had hoped to find farm folk on this
trip to the abbey, but so far he had found nothing on his lands but
jagged outcroppings of rock and the broad empty waters of Loch
Moray.

As Gavin reached the crest of the next hill,
he brought his charger to a halt. At the bottom of slope, beside a
broad meandering creek, lay the ruined abbey. Stretching out from
what had once been the front gates, a cluster of twenty or thirty
cottages formed a thriving little village. On this side of the
brook, an orchard of fruit trees ran in neat rows up the hillside,
and shaggy red cattle grazed in a small herd in the pastureland. On
the other side of the valley, he could see good-sized flocks of
new-shorn sheep. Standing tall in his stirrups, Gavin let his eyes
take in the fields of grain and other crops stretching up along the
small, brisk running stream.

And he saw men and women working diligently
on the land.

The happy shrieks of children drew the
laird’s gaze back to the huts, and the edges of Gavin’s mouth
turned up in a smile as he watched a dozen small, barefooted
urchins running in playful pursuit of a dog. Allan had mentioned
that Joanna had a fondness for the abbey. He could now see why. For
the first time since arriving, Gavin was faced with life.

“You see? They haven’t all gone into Athol’s
service,” the laird said aloud, patting the thick, muscular neck of
his steed. “Well, what do you say we pay these folks a visit?”

As he rode down through the groves of trees
that lined the steep hillside, Gavin considered what might have
drawn these people to the ruined abbey. Certainly this valley was
no better suited to farming or grazing than the land around the
loch. He would need to entice them back, somehow, though perhaps
they would be more than willing to come, were they to see that the
new laird of Ironcross was not about to fall before some curse.

He would give them time. After all, these
lands were as much a part of his domain as those surrounding the
castle. It was just the distance that he wished he could do away
with. Having the bustling activity of a working clan around him,
that was what he missed.

Breaking out of the trees into one of the
upper pastures, Gavin reined in his mount with alarm.

Not a man, woman, or child remained to be
seen in either field, pasture, or village. Where he had seen
workers bending to their tasks, there now lay discarded farm tools.
Alert to possible trouble, the warrior urged his stallion ahead
slowly. Whatever had startled this community, Gavin could see no
sign of it. As he approached the village, he glanced around at the
freshly worked gardens, the baskets of vegetables abandoned in the
flight. Before leaving Ironcross Castle, Gavin had strapped the
scabbard of his broadsword to his back, and he reached over his
shoulder now to loosen the weapon.

The little road that led up to the ruined
abbey was eerily silent until, with a growl and a frightened bark,
an agitated dog rushed at Gavin’s horse from one of the first
cottages. The lone animal was the only sign of the group of
children who had been chasing him so playfully only moments past.
Without stopping, Gavin spoke sharply to the cur, and as horse and
rider continued on, the animal retired to the hut he had defended
with such valor.

Rather than stopping at one of the hovels and
searching out the peasants who lived there, the laird decided to
ride straight on to the abbey. Whether they were hiding in the huts
or had fled into the trees beyond the orchards, Gavin was certain
that their eyes were upon him. He could feel their presence, and he
could feel their fear. It was he that they were hiding from, and
the alarm his arrival in the village had caused disturbed him
greatly. He tried to think back over everything that Andrew had
said of his visit here.
An odd lack of farm folk
. Obviously,
they had responded to his man in the same way that they had
responded to him. They had simply vanished.

Beyond what had been the gates of the abbey,
Gavin could see the ruined walls of the kirk. While much of the
stone from the abbey walls had apparently been used to construct
the village cottages, the kirk’s walls rose high above the rest.
There was no roof on the building, though, and it had clearly gone
unused for ages. A circle of stone huts, ruder than the thatched
cottages of the village, sat to one side of the church, and as
Gavin rode past the first one, he spotted the old woman.

She sat on a stone, feeding twigs into a
fire. Yellow flames licked the bottom of a small cooking pot. Gavin
dismounted, tossing the reins of his horse over the branch of a
scrub oak, and approached her, watching keenly as she never once
lifted her head or acknowledged him in any way.

“Good day to you,” Gavin called out
pleasantly.

Finally, as she continued to work, the old
woman’s gray eyes lifted slowly and fixed critically on his face.
The Lowlander returned her appraising gaze with one of his own. She
wore a veil of white, but a cross on a leather thong about her neck
was the only indication of religious vocation. Her direct stare
told him that she had no fear of him, though beyond that, a guarded
expression hid any hint of what emotions lay beneath.

He came to a stop before her fire and
crouched down across from her. “Your face is the first cheerful one
I have come across since leaving Ironcross this morning.”

The arching of one thin eyebrow and a
narrowing gaze made him retract his words. “Very well,” he said.
“Yours is the
only
face I have come across to since leaving
this morning.”

She lowered her eyes, seemingly directing her
whole attention to preparing the fire.

“Are you Mater?” he asked bluntly.

“I am.” Her voice was strong, confident.

“I am Gavin Kerr,” he returned. “I come
from...”

“I know who you are, laird,” she interrupted,
lifting her gray eyes again to his face. The piercing quality
emanating from their depths gave Gavin the impression that she knew
more than just his identity.

He realized immediately that this was no
woman for idle small talk. He also knew that she was not one to be
questioned. There was something quite different about Mater, and he
knew in his gut that it would be difficult to win her over. And it
was true that he
wanted
to win her over. She was the first
soul outside of Ironcross that he’d crossed paths with, but as the
religious leader of the region, right now it was very important to
Gavin that she accept his lairdship. From all he’d gathered from
those at the castle, it was clear that the way to winning the trust
of his folk was through Mater.

Mater’s attention was focused on her task. As
she stirred the contents of the kettle, the picture of Joanna
MacInnes flashed into Gavin’s head. It was so strange that he
couldn’t shake her free of his mind. This morning, before departing
Ironcross Castle, he’d followed his impulse and gone back to his
room simply to look again at her portrait. It was there where
Edmund had returned it, upon the hearth
.

Gavin was certain now that none of his men
had taken the painting. He knew that the three warriors would have
taken more pleasure in gloating over their daring move than in
actually stealing the portrait out of his chamber. But the whole
thing still puzzled him. It was so strange to have someone go to
the trouble of stealing that painting and putting it back where it
had always been. The act served no purpose.

Gavin shook his head and tried to tear his
eyes away from the fire.

“She would come here, you know, and do
exactly as you have done.”

Mater’s words pierced Gavin’s thoughts like a
bolt of the lightning. His eyes snapped up and stared into her gray
eyes. “Who?” he asked unsteadily.

Mater’s eyes drifted toward the direction in
which he’d come. “All alone, she would come to us, riding down that
hill. She would get down from her mare and walk to this fire and
sit so silently before it. Just as you are doing now.”

How could she know this? he wondered. How
could she bring up Joanna’s name when he’d just been thinking of
her. As far as Mater knew, he had never known the young woman.
Despite what his heart kept trying to tell him, he never had so
much as met her. He gazed across the fire at the old woman. One who
can read thoughts, Gavin knew, can be a powerful friend...or an
even more powerful foe.

“Your soul is tormented, laird,” she added.
“But hers was troubled as deeply as yours.”

Gavin’s face darkened and his eyes narrowed.
As far as her words about him, the warrior knew his features
reflected the grimness that he carried within him. But what she
said about Joanna alarmed him. That portrait was a picture of youth
and happiness and hope.

“Were you her confidante?” he asked. “Her
advisor?”

“To her, I was Mater.”

Her simple declaration was powerful, but he
wasn’t convinced. “A household of servants tell me she was happy,”
he stressed. “And yet...”

“Those who knew her well are dead.”

“And you are the last living person who can
tell me more about her?”

“Nay, not the last one,” she said
enigmatically, shaking her head. “But there was a time when she
would escape Ironcross and take refuge here. Aye, many a time we
would spend a few hours here by this fire...here in the abbey.”

Gavin’s eyes drifted to the woman’s hands as
she stirred the contents of now simmering kettle. “What was the
reason for her misery?”

She didn’t answer his question, but instead
picked up a wooden bowl.

“How could a woman of her age and place be
plagued with sorrow as deep as...” Gavin cut his own words
short.

“As deep as your own?” she finished. “Nay,
laird. How could a
man
in your place and position be so
tortured as
she
!”

She dipped the wooden bowl into the kettle.
Stretching her two hands across the fire, she offered him the
steaming potion. Gavin took it.

“How?” The warrior chief looked her in the
eye, and then, surprised at his own openness, heard himself say
plainly, “Grief!”