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“I just heard the news about our visitor. Tis’ a strange thing and make nay mistake. What is yer father goin’ to dae?” he asked, and Murdina shrugged.
“What my father does with anyone he does nae like, presumably. Throw him in the dungeons and let him rot,” she replied, just as her father demanded the man tell him what the meaning of the key should be.
“Carrick, get it out of his pocket,” the laird demanded, and the captain of the guards now stepped forward and pulled the key from the prisoner’s pocket.
It caught the light, its silver gilt shimmering in the sunshine, which had now broken through the clouds above. Murdina looked at it curiously as her father held it aloft. It was no ordinary key for a simple lock but ornate, gilded in silver, and attached to a chain.
“The key to a treasure,” Cillian said as Murdina shook her head.
“But if he does nae remember…” she began, but Cillian only laughed.
“Tis’ a convenience when a prisoner does nae remember even his own name,” he said, shaking his head.
Murdina’s father snatched the key from Carrick’s hand and examined it, his brow furrowed. Her father was not an intelligent man, more given over to his passions than his reason. He shook his head and placed the key in his pocket, much to the prisoner’s protest.
“Give me it back. You have no right to take what is mine, no right to hold me here…” he began, but Murdina’s father interrupted him.
“What makes ye so certain the key belongs to ye? If ye cannae remember, perhaps ye have stolen it,” he said, and the man’s protests fell silent.
“What are we to dae with him, laird?” Carrick asked, and Murdina’s father waved his hand dismissively.
“Throw him in the dungeons. A few days with the rats may well make him remember,” he replied, and Carrick now unlocked the stocks and signaled to two of the men to haul the prisoner away.
“Tis’ a strange thing,” Cillian said, shaking his head.
Murdina watched as the man was hauled away, and the crowd began to disperse. He made little by way of protest and put up no struggle, accepting his fate, or so it seemed. Murdina caught her father’s eye, and he smiled, looking pleased with himself.
“Another spy captured, Murdina. The English think they can treat us as they please and that we will capitulate to their Hanoverian usurper. But we shall nae. As long as I have breath in me, I shall resist them, and our cause shall grow strong once again,” he said before striding back inside the keep.
Murdina watched him go, unable to summon a similar enthusiasm for his words. She had been taught to despise the English and think of herself as an exile in her own land. But the politics of the wider world bore little concern to her, even as she knew the consequences which the defeat of the Jacobite cause would bring. Murdina’s troubles lay closer to home, and the loss of her sister had brought with it a sense of despair in the future, a future she could hardly contemplate in light of such tragic loss.
“Dae ye want to spar again?” Cillian asked, but Murdina shook her head.
“Nay, I want to be alone,” she replied, and without waiting for his reply, she strode off across the courtyard towards the castle gates.
