“All right, I’ll go,” she agreed, leaning down to lay the side of her face against his sunken and bony cheek. She closed her eyes. “I’ll go now, Da. Right now.” She pressed her lips to his temple.
Glenna rose and swept from the room, Tavish at her heels. She heard him call to the guards to bring rope, and they loosed two horses from the king’s party tied beyond the bridge and raced up the cliff path. Dubhán appeared to have been waiting for them, and Glenna began calling for him before she had reined her horse to a halt.
“Dubhán, Dubhán,” she sobbed and slid from the saddle.
He walked toward her calmly. “What troubles you, Lady Glenna?”
“It’s Da,” she said, falling into his arms. Dubhán, who had been here as long as she could recall, watching over the graves, watching over her. “He’s asking for you at last. I don’t think he has much time left.”
Dubhán cradled her face in his smooth palms, the sweet smell of him filling her disoriented senses. “Praise to him,” he said with a smile and kissed Glenna’s forehead between her eyebrows. “At last.”
“Take my horse,” she said. “I will follow with Tavish.”
Dubhán nodded serenely and went astride, his stained slippers dangling outside the stirrups. He turned the horse easily and disappeared into the trees, passing the pair of riders bearing the rope for Tavish’s descent. She felt a sprinkle of rain on her crown.
“Hurry, Tavish,” she urged as he was lowered over the side.
It seemed like he was gone for ages, but it was only moments later that she heard his shout and the guards began to pull him up. He carried the trunk easily, and when he gained the solid ground in the dampening clearing, he hurled the trunk toward the graves with a roar, where it burst apart against a stone in a shower of splinters, empty.
Glenna’s stomach turned.
Hoofbeats sounded in the clearing, and Glenna turned to see Hargrave arriving with an order of the king’s men, including the priest who had married them. The old cleric looked around the clearing with what appeared to be pleasant surprise.
“Where’s my coin, Cameron?” Hargrave demanded with a smile.
Tavish charged him, causing the horse to shy. The king’s men dismounted and pulled him away, but Tavish shook them off. “You took it! You knew it was gone the entire time!”
“My dear man,” Hargrave said in mock offense. “I’m sure I don’t know what you mean. I’ve only come for what pittance your foolish king has determined is mine. If you do not pay me, you must declare forfeit.” He looked to the guards surrounding them. “I’m fine—he’ll not harm me. I’ll grant him a grace for the time. You may leave us. That’s right—go on, go on. Leave us.”
The soldiers reluctantly gained their mounts and turned to the cliff path again, leaving only the old priest behind to wander through the grave markers some distance away.
“I told you this on the occasion of our first meeting,” Hargrave said to Tavish when they were alone. “Accuse me all you like, but I never lower myself to perform all the base acts you would accuse me of. No, no,” he denied. “They are beneath me. You doubt my power. But perhaps you will not after today.”
He looked to Glenna with an expression of indulgence on his face. “You ignorant little slut. Your mother was not my servant. She was mywhore,” he said with a smile. “Just like the bitch who couldn’t keep her feet at court. Only…prettier. A whore, though, whom I took a fancy to in London. I bought her.”
He leaned forward in the saddle. “From a whoremonger. And I took her to Darlyrede and dressed her in pretty clothes and taught her how to speak. She tutored my daughter in the day and I fucked her at night. She was well trained, and she bled so very well. But the bitch bit the hand that had pulled her by her scruff from the gutter. And so after she whelped you,I hunted her down and I put her back in the gutter.”
Tavish rushed the man again, but he stopped as Hargrave pulled a small arquebus from the voluminous folds of his cape and rested it across his forearm, leveling it directly at Tavish’s chest.
Then he leaned back, and his face resumed its mildly amused smile as he looked once more to Glenna. “Her grave on this hill is empty. She died screaming. And if it weren’t for your idiot king’s protection, you would have died screaming, too.” His smile broadened, and Glenna saw the insanity in his eyes. “You may yet.”
“You did kill her,” Glenna choked.
Hargrave chuckled and leaned over the arquebus balanced on the front of his saddle as if preparing to deliver a wonderful joke. “You’ve heard nothing I’ve said, you stupid bitch That’s the best part—I actually didn’t kill her. But I confess, I did want to.” He began to turn his horse. “I shall see the pair of you again.”
He sped into the trees just as the king’s priest approached them; his face wore an expression of bemused pleasure.
“Who has been caring for the old hermitage?” he asked in delight. “It’s marvelous—some of the stones are very old. Likely the bones of a saint are buried somewhere here. We thought it had all collapsed into the sea years ago.”
“Dubhán, the monk,” Glenna stuttered inanely, running her hands into her hair. “He’s…a Franciscan.”
The priest’s mouth turned down a bit. “Not to refute you, milady, but I am a Franciscan. There has been no one missioned to the cave in two score year.”
Glenna frowned. “You must be mistaken, Father,” she said, and Tavish left her side to begin walking toward the vined hermitage. “Dubhán was— Tavish?”
But he was pushing the door open, walking inside.
In that moment, the years of Glenna’s youth bubbled up around her, conversations, warnings from her father. Snippets of Dubhán’s strange way of speaking. She began walking toward the cottage.
