For the last three days she’d pored over her nain’s book. Certainly in all these receipts and spells for healing, for fortune, for doubts and fears, there must be one to cast off death.
The handwriting on those yellowed pages was cramped and in many places faded. Fenella had signed the front of the book but not referred to it often, at least not once she’d memorized the cures for fevers and agues that plagued children and concerned mothers.
She’d been surprised to discover Rose had also been reading the book. She’d found where Rose had written the name “Charles” beside a spell to find true love. It called for a rose thorn to be embedded in the wax of a candle and burned on the night of a full moon.
They found a piece of the burned candle, the thorn still intact, its tip charred, beneath Rose’s pillow.
Fenella held the wax in the palm of her hand. Slowly, she closed her fingers around it into a fist and set aside mourning.
Grief made her mad.
The Chattans were far from the Highland’s mountains and moors. Charles thought himself safe. He was not.
There is no sacred ground for a suicide, but Fenella had no need of the church. She ordered a funeral pyre to be built for her daughter along the green banks of Loch Awe, directly beneath a stony crag that looked down upon the shore.
On the day of Rose’s funeral, Fenella stood upon that crag, waiting for the sun to set. She wore the Macnachtan tartan around her shoulders. The evening wind toyed with her gray hair that she wore loose under a circlet of gold, gray hair that had once been as fair as Rose’s.
At Fenella’s signal, her sons set ablaze the ring of bonfires she’d ordered constructed around Rose’s pyre. The flames leaped to life, and so did her anger.
Did Chattan think he could hide in London? Did his father believe his son could betray Rose’s loving heart without penalty? That her life had no meaning?
That Macnachtan honor was a small thing?
“I want him to feel my pain,” Fenella whispered.
Her daughters Ilona and Aislin stood by her side. They nodded.
“He will not escape me,” Fenella vowed.
“But he is gone,” Ilona said. “He has become a fine lord while we are left to weep.”
At last the moon was high in the sky and the bonfires’ flames were hot and strong. They feasted on the wood, making it crackle and sending sparks and ash into the air.
The time was right. Nain had said a witch knows when the hour is nigh—and this would be a night no one would forget. Ever.
Especially the Chattans.
The fires had drawn the curious from all over the countryside. They stood on the shore watching. Fenella raised her hand. Her clansmen and her kin fell silent. Her son Michael, laird of the Macnachtans, picked up the torch and held it ready.
Fenella brought her hand down, and her oldest put fire to the tender of his sister’s funeral pyre.
’Twas the ancient way. There was no priest here, no clergy to call her out—and even if there was, Fenella’s power in this moment was too strong to be swayed. It coursed through her. It was the beating of her heart, the pulsing in the blood in her veins, the sinew of her being.
She stepped to the edge of the rock and stared down over the burning pyre. The flames licked the skirt of Rose’s white funeral gown.
“My Rose died of love,” she said. She whispered the words but then repeated them with a commanding strength. They carried on the wind and seemed to linger over Loch Awe’s moonlit waters. “A woman’s lot is hard,” she said. “ ’Tis love that gives us courage, gives us strength. My Rose gave the precious gift of her love to a man unworthy of it.”
Heads nodded agreement. There was not a soul around who had not been touched by Rose. They all knew her gift of laughter, her kindness, her willingness to offer what help she could to others.
Fenella reached a hand back. Ilona placed the staff that Fenella had ordered hewn from a yew tree and banded with copper.
“I curse Charles Chattan.”
Raising the staff, Fenella said, “I curse not just Chattan but his line. He betrayed her for a title. He tossed aside handfasted promises for greed. Now let him learn what his duplicity has wrought.”
The moon seemed to brighten. The flames on the fires danced higher, and Fenella knew she was being summoned.Danse macabre.All were equal in death.
She spoke, her voice ringing in the night.
