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He was expecting to feel the man’s fist in his face, thinking that it was worth it to turn Gregor’s cruelty away from Kenna, but to his surprise, the man beamed at him.
‘You have your father’s courage, I’ll give you that. But you won’t hold on to it for long, not where you’re going.’
Gregor turned to his men. ‘Teach this arrogant whelp some humility and then throw him in the oubliette.’
Chapter Eight
Conall’s predicament had become so much worse. How long had he been languishing in this stinking hole, seething with rats and other lurking, repulsive things? At night he woke many times to the feel of their greasy tails dragging across his hands or face or any other piece of exposed flesh. Or he would feel the spiteful nip of their jagged teeth, needle-like, testing his flesh as they waited for him to die. Sometimes he would feel panic rise up in him at the thought of them eating him alive in his sleep. Sometimes he prayed they would, so that his suffering would end.
Down in the half-light, Conall had lost all sense of time. A minute felt like an hour, an hour like a day, a day like a lifetime. He was confined in a small room, not much wider than he could reach with outstretched arms. A trapdoor closed over the narrow entrance hole, solid apart from one small metal grill in its centre, through which a tiny shaft of light shone. Above him, not far, for he had broken no bones on his fall inward, there must be a window and daylight, for it was a steady sort of light coming through, not a flickering one from a torch burning or a candle. That bright hole above had become his sun and his moon, his whole existence, for when it got dark, and everything faded to an inky blackness, he felt as though he were lying in his grave, a dead man raving his madness to the world. He was close to not being a man at all anymore. They had reduced him to nothing in this tortuous black hole.
Conall knew he was slowly losing his mind. The lack of any kind of stimulation distilled his fear and pain into something infinitely more acute so that every ache, every sound in the darkness was amplified a thousand times. Sometimes he felt himself screaming for no good reason. When he regained his senses, he would hug his arms around him and rock back and forth for comfort, hoping to God his tormentors had not heard his weakness. He had to be strong. He had to endure.
Kenna came to him sometimes as if in a dream. He would hear her voice whisper, ‘Conall, Conall,’ but when he awoke, she was gone.
It had begun to dawn on him that they hadn’t taken him for ransom. No, they had a darker purpose. He might die without ever knowing what it was. Helpless for the first time in his life, Conall turned inward for strength to endure it, to go on, to survive.
But at least Duncan would be proud of him. He hadn’t let them hurt that girl. He had done the right thing, spoken out and tried to protect Kenna. It was probably the least selfish thing he had done in his life. He wondered if she was alright up above or if they had hurt her for screaming, ‘Stop, stop,’ over and over as they had thrashed him. Of course, it could all have been a trap to make him trust her, but he doubted they were that clever and besides, there had been real hatred in Gregor Moncur’s voice when he talked to his daughter. No, Kenna was speaking the truth when she said she was as much a prisoner as he was, of that he was certain. She was not playing him false.
A sound up above had his ears straining. A clanking and scraping and the hatch lifted up, flooding the chamber with more light. He put his arm across his eyes.
‘We are throwing down a ladder. If you want to live, you will climb it.’
Conall felt a rope ladder hit his face, and he grabbed it. Perhaps death waited at the top of it. They were too lazy to come down and kill him. His body would be hard to pull up from the hole. What if they wanted him to climb out so they could end him somewhere more convenient, out in the yard perhaps, for the amusement of the Moncur Clan, watch him dance on the end of a rope, or weigh him down and let the swamp take him?
‘Are you going to climb Campbell, or would you prefer we leave you to the rats.’
Heart thumping, weak to his bones, Conall put one foot on the ladder.
***
At Dunslair, Rory looked up at the night sky, silvery clouds skidding across a full moon.
‘Are we ready to ride out?’ he shouted to the men around him.
Suddenly Monnine ran out from the shadows and got before his horse, which stamped and reared in panic, hooves flailing.
‘Get back, out of the way!’
She ignored him and grabbed for the bridle. The instant she got hold of it, the horse calmed again. How did she do that? Saints preserve him. Perhaps she was a witch.
‘You little fool, you could have been trampled.’
‘Laird, ‘tis too foul a night to be outside. A storm is coming, the horses are a-feared, and so should you be.’
‘So you have finally decided to speak to me, Monnine.’ She looked down at the ground. ‘Storm or no, I have a long way to go and can make ground up if I travel now.’
‘There’s a full moon tonight. Spirits rise on a full moon.’
‘What do you know about spirits?’
‘Enough to know you shouldn’t go. Please don’t.’
‘I must.’
‘It lies heavily upon you, Conall’s disappearance?’
‘Aye, for I promised his father, I would look out for him, and if I don’t recover Conall, I will have failed them both.’
