"The maid's name," Anthony said, to the courtyard generally, "is Effie. She has been in Lady MacLeod's service for four years." He turned slightly, and the gesture was so minimal, barely a degree of movement, but every eye in the courtyard followed it to where Moira stood on the steps. "She travelled here with her mistress. She travelled here with specific instructions."
Moira's face did not move.
She's extraordinary at this.
The absolute composure of her, the held stillness, the eyes that gave nothing, the slight, sorrowful downturn of the mouth that said,
I am grieved by these proceedings.
Without committing to anything that could be answered.
Anthony gestured toward the shepherd.
The man came forward on his shaking legs and stopped in front of the council and swallowed twice before he could make words come out.
"The bones," he said. His voice was thin but present. "In that bundle there." He pointed at the charm, which the council elder was still holding. "I buried a stillborn lamb three weeks past. Near the old wall on the northern boundary." A beat. "The boundary of MacLeod land."
The murmuring sharpened.
"Those are me lamb's bones," the shepherd said, and his voice steadied as he said it, as though the saying of it had been the hard part and now that it was done, he could breathe. "I'd ken them anywhere. I wrapped them in sacking and put them in the ground meself. I went to check today, and someone had dug them up and put them in that thing, and I want to ken who, and I want to ken why."
Anthony reached into his coat and produced a length of rosemary, still bound in the fragment of cloth it had been preserved in, still carrying its sharp, bright smell even in the damp afternoon air. He held it up.
"This was inside the bindin'," he said. "Rosemary. Still fragrant. Which means it was added recently, nae left to dry with the other materials, but placed fresh."
His eyes moved to Catriona for just a moment. "Catriona Campbell's rosemary stores are dried and pressed. She uses fresh only for immediate preparation and disposes of the stems the same mornin'." He looked back at the crowd. "The rosemary in this charm was placed there the evenin' before the accusation. Fresh cut. By someone with access to a livin' plant."
"The MacLeod party," Fergus said, stepping forward, "arrived with a cart of provisions. The provisions included, among other things, a cuttin' of rosemary in a glazed pot."
He was not a man who enjoyed speaking in public, Catriona could see it in the set of his jaw, but he held the discomfort and kept going.
"I have two men here who saw Effie carrying that pot to the lower stores on the night of their arrival. I have one man who saw her leave the lower stores after dark on the night before the accusation." He looked at the maid. "Effie."
Every head turned.
Effie had gone the color of cold ash.
Her hands were at her sides, and her chin was up, but her breathing was wrong, visible from ten feet away. The quick, shallow kind that happened when a body was working very hard on the inside and showing it on the outside despite everything.
She looked at Fergus. Then at Anthony. Then at Moira, and that was the look that told the story. The desperate, searching quality of it, looking for instruction, for a sign, for something that would tell her what to do.
Moira's face gave her nothing.
"Effie," Anthony said.
His voice had changed. Not louder. Not harder. Quieter, if anything, and that was the thing that did it.
The specific quality of quiet that came from a man who already knew the answer and was giving someone the opportunity to provide it themselves before he provided it for them. "I'm going to ask ye once."
Effie's chin dropped.
Her shoulders came up around her ears, and she pressed her hands together in front of her. The sound she made was not words at first, just a broken, desperate exhale, and then the words came through it.
"She said… she said it wouldnae hurt anyone. She said the healer would be sent away and no one would be harmed, and it was only… she said it was only to remove her from the keep, that it was for the better. That the laird needed to be free from the witch's hold."
She stopped. Pressed her fingers to her mouth. Started again.
"She gave me the herbs from the healer's own waste bowl so it would look, so it would seem real." Another stop, her voice cracking through the middle of the word like a green branch. "I didnae ken about the charm. I only carried the herbs. I only carried them."
