It did not stay tentative for long.
"Curse!" came a shout from the right, louder and more certain.
"Burn her!" The cry came from the back, where the faces were blurred by torch-smoke.
Catriona locked her fingers together behind her back.
She could feel the fine, uncontrollable trembling in her hands and fought to keep the vibration from reaching her shoulders or her face.
The acrid smoke from the torches stung her eyes, making them water. She blinked deliberately, once, twice, swallowing back the lump in her throat. She was not going to weep in front of a crowd that was looking for evidence of guilt in every tremor. Weeping would be evidence, and she knew it.
The council elder stepped forward, his heavy robes rustling against the stones.
"The evidence presented before this council is serious in its nature," he said.
He spoke slowly, weighing his words one at a time. "A charm of dark construction. Livestock dead in the field. A healer whose very methods have been questioned by more than one voice since her arrival." He clasped his hands behind his back. "The council will hear testimony."
"There is nothing to hear," Catriona said. She didn't shout, but her voice cut through the murmurs like a whetted blade. "I am a healer. I have spent six weeks tendin' that child's lungs. I have nae harmed a single livin' thing inside these walls or out, and I can account for every dried leaf on me table and every drop of tincture I have compounded since the day I arrived."
"She accounts for herself," someone muttered from the crowd, followed by a derisive snort.
"Of course she does."
"Who else would account for a stranger?" another voice added.
The elder raised a hand for silence, and the courtyard settled into a restless, shifting quiet.
"The healer will have her opportunity to speak before the council," he said. He didn't sound unkind, which felt like a fresh insult. "For now, she will be held in the keep until-"
"Someone call for the Laird!"
The voice was Donal's.
Catriona spotted him in the press. Grey-bearded and broad, his arms crossed over a chest.
Donal's mouth thinned into a hard, bitter line, his brow furrowed. He looked at the council through narrowed eyes, his jaw set with the rigid disgust showing he had lived long enough to know what a rushed judgment looked like and did not enjoy the sight of it.
"Anthony MacArthur is Laird of this land. Nae a decision of this weight gets made without his boots on these stones."
A ripple of hesitation moved through the crowd. They didn't agree, but they knew the law of the keep.
"The Laird rides the eastern ridge," the elder replied, his mouth thinning into a hard line. "He cannae be reached before nightfall."
"Then we wait," Donal said, his voice dropping into a stubborn register that echoed off the masonry.
"The livestock are…"
"Already dead," Donal snapped, the bluntness of his words ending the protest. "Waitin' another hour willnae bring them back to life."
Catriona looked at him. He didn't return the gaze. His eyes remained fixed on the elder. She felt a sudden, complicated warmth prickle behind her ribs. A small thing she didn't have the strength to hold right now, but could not push away.
"Riders have been sent," the elder said.
So, Anthony would know soon.
The question formed in her mind before she could catch it, sharp as a needle.
Would it matter?
