Glenna wasn’t surprised when the weak shadow lengthened before her, though she hadn’t heard anyone approach—Dubhán was almost silent in all of his movements, and she’d known he would emerge from the hermitage sooner or later to find her there.
“Any better today, milady?” his smooth, low voice queried.
She merely shook her head, loathe to break gaze with the hypnotic monochromatic scene before her eyes, washing her consciousness blank, blurring the pain and fear she felt. But Dubhán did not press her, and she felt she owed him more than such a dismissive gesture after all he’d done for her and the village in the past fortnight. Her entire life, really.
“He yet lives,” she said at last.
Glenna couldn’t help but catch the movement of the overly large man as he came to sit beside her atop the fresh grave, but he still made no sound—as though his robes were enchanted with a special magic that ensured the keeper of the graveyard allowed the dead to rest in peace. His unique, sweet scent bloomed, and Glenna thought he smelled of great pools of warm beeswax and sweet incense.
“I wish you would allow me to see him.” It was as close to a rebuke as Dubhán would give her. “Have you been long away? I could go to him now.”
“Nay—not long. I wanted to visit the doocot. See if there were more eggs.”
“I should take over the duties of caring for the doves again. Perhaps it would be best not to draw Frang Roy’s attentions by insisting—.”
“I’m the lady of Roscraig, and I wanted to visit my doocot. I’m nae afraid of Frang Roy.” Glenna stared at the firth for a long time more while she waited for her heart to cease its wild pounding. When at last she could draw an even breath, she turned her head to look at the monk directly. “Forty-seven, Dubhán. Nearly the rest of the village this time, and right at the planting.”
His brown gaze was gentle on her face, his sympathetic smile warm in the exotic dark smoothness of his skin, framed by the black, wooly hair and beard. “Forty-seven,” he agreed.
“Forty-seven,” she repeated in an incredulous whisper. “All the children.”
“Aye,” he acknowledged. Glenna knew he waited patiently for the question she couldn’t resist asking again.
“Why?” she demanded. “Why would God do that to us again? To me? And take my father as well, before it’s all said and done, will he not?”
Dubhán shook his dark head. “I still have no answer for you, milady. I am naught to him. A bug. A worthless fly. He would not share such knowledge with the likes of me. But”—he nodded once, slowly, deliberately—“it is for our good.”
Glenna huffed and turned her gaze back to the flat water of the firth. She hadn’t really expected a different answer.
“God has sent sickness—again and again—to Roscraig, killed all but a handful of the village, would see us starved, for our good,” she muttered darkly. “Our neighbors call us cursed, and I have little choice but to believe what they say is true. I’m sitting atop soil meant to cover my da and me when we died; instead it covers a pit filled with good people I knew all my life.”
Dubhán nodded mildly. “I know. I dug the pit. But God didn’t send the sickness, Lady Glenna.”
Glenna didn’t bother to turn her head to look at him as she huffed in frustration. “You can’t have it both ways, Dubhán. If God didn’t send the sickness, who did?”
“You know who sent it, milady. Your father knew, as well, when it came.” He paused, letting the merry birdsong fill the space between them. “’Twas the devil.”
Glenna felt the hated tears swell against her eyes, her jaw push forward. “Da’s right; in my mind now, they are one and the same. Good day, Dubhán.” She pushed to her feet and half slid down the soft, rich, brown earth mound, leaving deep impressions as she departed the plot where she should have been buried, if not during the last fortnight, then years into the future.
She would never rest there now. Glenna felt her own remaining hours as Lady of Roscraig running away like the little crumbles of earth that chased her descent down the mound.
There was little to plant, and even fewer hands to harvest. They would be fortunate to produce enough to feed themselves; there would certainly be nothing to sell and no coin to pay the king. And once Iain Douglas was dead and King James learned of the latest plague that had all but finished the village, he would have no qualms about removing Glenna from Tower Roscraig and building the artillery he longed for on the firth. Then where would she go? She had no distant family with whom to seek refuge—the secluded clans in the Highlands were rough strangers to her.
I would be better off had I died with Mother, she thought as she strode past the short stone obelisk marking the place Margaret Douglas was buried, its intricate engraving softened by moss. Her mother had never been forced to deal with the loss of her home, her friends, her family—she had left them all behind to grieve her passing and left her infant daughter in the care of a father and lord who was perhaps too kind to be very successful.
And now even kind Iain Douglas would be taken from Glenna.
Glenna stopped on the woodland path that wound around the coastal cliff to duck inside the squat stone doocot, whose domed stone roof peeked up through the branches like the rounded head of a mythical gray bear. She reached into each cubby but came away from the aviary with nothing more than filth-streaked hands. No eggs again.
By the time she reached the edge of the village, the stiff, cold breeze had changed directions and now swelled with the clammy warmth of an exhalation. It raised the hairs on Glenna’s neck, and she squinted up into the bright gray glare at the roiling clouds that tumbled ever closer to the double turrets of Tower Roscraig. The approaching gale was screaming over the firth, lashing the placid gray waves into foamy spray and blowing Glenna’s thin skirts tight against her legs.
She looked over her shoulder as she rounded the village and saw one of the men pushing a cart from the river; she raised a hand to him, but his head was ducked away from the squall, and he did not see her hailing. Thankfully, there was no sign of Frang Roy, the coarse farmer who had outrageously suggested that the two of them should marry after her father’s death. The idea of it was ludicrous, and the memory of Frang’s rough, dirty hand trembling against her sleeve caused her face to heat.
Glenna walked up the footpath that met the wide, dry moat and followed it to the bridge. Her footsteps were hollow sounding on the wood, and she frowned as she saw that the unexpected and forceful winds were repeatedly sucking open and then slamming closed the door she’d left unbarred. She wondered if it had been enough to stir her father.
The gale waxed again, this time snatching her veil from her head and dragging her already disheveled blond curls from what remained of the twisted knot at her nape.
Glenna gave a cry of dismay as the small piece of linen disappeared like a seabird around the curve of the east tower, and she stretched out her arm as if she might catch it. Her skirts billowed and flapped like sails, and she looked to her right, where the beach and the now foamy, black waves were in view. Scraping her hair from her face, she looked up at the edge of a dark blanket of storm clouds, roiling just over Tower Roscraig.
