'Twas Florie who thought of the storage room. Soon it, too, would fill with smoke, but for a while at least, the closed room would protect the Father, who coughed uncontrollably now.
"Aye! Go!" Rane shouted, yelling to be heard above the ungodly howl of the fire.
They stumbled toward the haven of the storage room, and Rane hurried them through the passage. The ax he'd used to split wood for the vestry door leaned against the wall. He scowled at it, his thoughts racing. If he could hack open the church door before smoke overwhelmed the sanctuary, they might have a chance at escape.
"Where are ye goin'?" Florie asked in panic, somehow sensing he meant to leave them.
He hefted up the ax. "To kill the beast," he said.
"Nae!" she screamed.
Her cry clawed at his heart, but he couldn't afford to heed it. Every instant was precious.
He sent her one last look of fierce determination and fiercer love, a look that told her he was doing what he had to do. "I love ye, Florie," he said. "Never forget." Then he closed the door and squinted through the roiling smoke toward the fiery foe at the far end of the sanctuary.
He stalked toward the door like his fearless Viking forbears, letting rage fuel his advance until he was almost at a run. The orange dragon roared and bellowed in challenge, its fervor so intense that rivulets of sweat poured down Rane's face as he neared.
Then, gathering all his fury, all his outrage, all his strength, he charged the burning door, swinging the great ax with such force that when it struck, it shook the foundations of the church.
The door should have burst. The fact that it didn't meant that someone had sealed it shut. Someone meant for them to burn alive.
He shuddered with rage. The fire seared his skin, but he held on to the ax handle. He worked the blade free and backed away from the door, coughing as the ubiquitous smoke filled his lungs. 'Twas impossible to tell what damage he'd done. The door was so engulfed in flame that it flared brighter than the sun.
Again he rushed toward the door, blindly chopping at the burning oak. This time he thought he felt the wood yield, but as the beast sampled his flesh again, blistering his hands and scorching his brows, he was forced to retreat.
He doubled over with the force of his coughing. Tears streamed from his eyes as he blinked back the stinging smoke. He sank low, seeking whatever sweet air remained near the ground, took a deep gulp, then came up once more with the ax.
This time when he buried the ax in the door, sparks scattered, like teeth punched from the dragon's maw. Several of them lodged in his shirt, smoldering and burning tiny holes there.
The walls wavered in the unbearable heat like demon children taunting him, growing blacker and blacker as the smoke curled up against them. Then, over his head, an ominous rumble slowly ran the length of the sanctuary, as if the church itself groaned in anguish. Rane's gaze followed the sound as it traveled toward the altar.
"Nae," he choked out. Despair thicker than the ocher smoke smothered him. He couldn't even see the altar now. 'Twas completely enveloped in the dense cloud of Loki's breath. Surely Florie and the Father would suffocate.
He'd failed. Bloody hell, he'd failed.
His hair crisp, his clothing smoking, his skin charred, with one last bitter oath and the last of his failing strength, Rane stormed toward the door and embedded the ax deep into the wood.
'Twas the last thing he remembered.
"Rane. Rane. Wake up, Rane."
Sweet Valkyrie were calling him.
He wanted to wake up. Their voices sounded so soft, so gentle. But he had no strength.
Something poked at his side. He grunted. It jabbed him again, harder.
"Get up, ye worthless bastard."
Rane frowned. That was no Valkyrie. 'Twas Lady Mavis. He'd recognize her caustic whine anywhere. Even in Valhalla.
Nae, he decided, it must not be Valhalla, after all. Lady Mavis could never steal through the gates of the Viking heaven.
He felt a sharp blow to his ribs then, followed by several feminine gasps. He groaned, rolling onto his side in pain. Slowly he opened his eyes. They stung, and his throat stung, and against his will he began coughing, an ugly, hacking cough that rattled his bones.
"Where is she?" Mavis sneered.
Frigg, where was he?
He wheezed in a breath of cool, moist air. He was outdoors. He knew that much. The smell of wet earth permeated his nostrils. But his eyes were so dry, he could hardly see. A few raindrops struck his cheek and forehead. There must be clouds overhead. But the sky seemed so bright. Odin's wounds, he longed to close his eyes and return to blessed oblivion.
"Where is your doxy?"
She kicked him again, and this time he rolled onto his belly, fully awake and aware and in agony as memory rushed back too swiftly.
Florie. The fire. Bloody hell.
"Where is she?" he cried hoarsely, struggling to rise.
"Ye fool!" Mavis snapped. "Don't pretend ye don't know."
He peered through burning eyes at the fuzzy crowd of people gathered beneath the trees, then turned to see what was left of the church. The roof had collapsed. Someone must have dragged him to safety. But all that remained of the structure—the vestry, the altar, the nave, the storage room—were smoldering black beams and cracked stone. His heart seized. Had Florie survived the fire? Could they have possibly escaped the destructive inferno?
"Rane!" one of the maids sobbed. "Tell her what she wants to know."
'Twas the ladies of the burgh, keeping a safe distance from Lady Mavis, but present nonetheless. He staggered to his feet. Maybe one of them knew what had happened to Florie. "Have ye seen—"
"Answer me now, huntsman," Mavis barked, "or I'll string ye up in her stead!"
The ladies gasped and sobbed and carried on at Lady Mavis's words. But her threat was meaningless to Rane. If Florie was dead, he didn't care if she tore him limb from limb.
He turned in a slow circle, perusing the faces of the onlookers, searching for her familiar countenance. His gaze landed on the captain of the guard, who shifted uneasily from foot to foot, twisting his doffed coif in his fists.
"Did ye…" Rane asked him, squinting in confusion, "did ye set the church afire?"
"Nae!" he replied vehemently, casting a wary glance toward Lady Mavis, rushing to explain before she could hush him. "We were lured away by a pair of English spies. 'Twas…somebody else who did her biddin'. 'Tis unholy, unholy to do such a thing, to set fire to a—"
"Silence!" Mavis screeched, her eyes wild like a frightened mare's. "Ye'll hang beside him, ye treasonous patch!" She was breathing heavily now, as if simultaneously excited and terrified. "Besides, 'twas likely…lightnin' that started the fire."
Rane's mind might be dazed, but he could read Mavis's crafty eyes well enough. The rumble he'd heard last night might have indeed been thunder, but the fire had been no accident. Mavis had ordered it set, which meant…
She'd intended to kill Florie.
His heart sank into his gut like a lead weight. Were it not for the kernel of rage burning at the pit of his belly, he might have dropped to his knees in surrender, let himself drown in a mire of despair. But as he narrowed his eyes at the spoiled, simpering witch who had violated sanctuary, who had set fire to a church, who had—Thor curse her—slain his love, anger and injustice smoldered inside him, sparking, then flaring, then exploding into a conflagration to rival last night's blaze.
With a bellow of blinding fury, he charged toward the evil hag.
His scorched fingertips grazed her worthless neck, leaving black marks, but that was all. Before he could throttle her, the men-at-arms came at him from all sides. To his credit, it took several of them to subdue him, despite his diminished strength. But subdue him they did, much to the captain's regret. They tackled him to the ground, splaying him on his back in the mud. While they held him down, the rain spattered his cheeks like scornful spittle.
And his only gratification, one for which he'd undoubtedly pay later, was witnessing the ugly grimace on Mavis's face as she staggered back in shocked horror.
After that, he put up no resistance. He had neither the strength nor the heart for it. They shackled him and forced him to trudge to the tower house in the mud while all around him the heavens wept, soothing his burns but not drowning his pain.
Nothing could do that.
Between the black storm clouds and the dim interior of the tower cell where Rane was chained, 'twas impossible to tell the time of day. Chill air whistled through the tiny slit in the outer wall, bringing with it slashes of wind-whipped rain. It must have been a squall like this that had extinguished the fire and saved his life two—or was it three—days ago. If only it had come an hour earlier… If only…
He squeezed his eyes shut and bowed his head over his bent knees. 'Twas pointless wondering what might have been. He'd already spent hours racked by remorse. Remorse for not letting Florie go while she had the chance. For persuading the Father to come back to a church that was, Rane was convinced now, indeed cursed. For being unable to save them from a fiery death.
He'd go willingly to the gallows, for 'twas the only way to unburden himself of his torturous guilt.
A rattle at the door made him lift his head. The captain of the guard stepped in, his jaw set in bitter disapproval even as he let Lady Mavis into the cell.
Though every bone ached with the effort, Rane struggled to his feet. He might be chained to the wall, but he'd be damned if he'd let Mavis play lord over him.
Indeed, to his satisfaction, her smug countenance faltered perceptibly as he towered above her, looking down his nose with loathing and silent domination.
"He can't get loose?" she asked uncertainly, and Rane relished the note of fear in her tremulous voice.
The captain yanked on the chains to assure they were secure. "Nae, my lady."
Her lips curved then into a tenuous smile he supposed she thought was alluring. But he knew a whore's bait when he saw it.
"I've decided to forgive ye," she said, indicating her throat with trembling fingers, "for that bit of knavery ye engaged in."
Bit of knavery? If the men-at-arms hadn't prevented him, he would have strangled her with one fist.
"I think we can be civilized about this, now that ye've had a few days to think it over," she said, pacing back and forth in the tight space, her heels clacking on the wooden floor. "Ye have somethin' I want. And I have somethin' ye want."
He looked at her sharply. Something he wanted? Against his better judgment, a hopeful thud started in his chest. Florie? Had she captured Florie? Was she yet alive?
Shite, he couldn't breathe.
"Ye know where that girdle's hidden," Mavis purred, "and if ye give it to me, I'll grant ye your life."
His hopes crumbled. His life? What did his life mean without Florie?
Mavis stopped pacing and waited expectantly.
"Nae," he said under his breath.
She blinked. "What? What's that? I didn't quite—"
"Nae," he stated clearly.
He saw the temper simmering just behind the thin slash of her tightly compressed lips. But he didn't care. He had nothing to lose by angering her.
Somehow she reined in her anger and began pacing again. She flashed another smile. "Ye don't seem to understand. Maybe the smoke or hunger has fogged your brain."
"Why do ye want it so badly?" he blurted, startling her to a halt.
He could see her itching to backhand him for his impertinence. But she dared not. For one thing, that would put her dangerously within his reach. For another, she was still counting on striking a bargain with him.
She gave him a fleeting, insincere smile. "I owe ye no explanation. However, if 'twill make our negotiations more palatable, I'll tell ye." She glanced briefly at the captain of the guard, as if committing his face to memory, and 'twas then Rane realized that whatever she was about to reveal, she intended to leave behind no witnesses. "I was wed to your lord for practical reasons—he needed an heir and a dowry, and I needed a place to live." She made a moue of disgust. "But I find the poverty here insufferable. Selkirk is drainin' my coffers at an alarmin' rate." She twisted the ring upon her finger. "I simply won't have it. I was in the queen's court. I'm accustomed to livin' with certain comforts, and I intend to have them always." When she turned to him, her fists were clenched like an overindulged child's. "I want that girdle. And when I want a thing, I get it."
"Even if it comes to murder?" he said quietly.
Mavis looked away. "The waif was a thief. She should have surrendered herself. 'Tis her own fault if she was cowerin' in a church when God decided to let lightnin' strike—"
"God!" Rane shouted, rattling his chains with his vehemence. "God had nothin' to do with it, and well ye know it. Who set the fire? Who did ye get to do your biddin'? 'Twasn't the Fraser men. And it sure as hell wasn't the burghers."
Mavis retreated a step at his outburst. "Ye've no proof of anythin'," she said as fear flared momentarily in her eyes. "Tell me where the thing is hidden, and I promise ye a quick death."
The corners of Rane's mouth turned down. At least she was being honest now. She'd never intended to let him live. But she hadn't won. She'd never win.
"Ye crack-brained trull," he said with a wicked smile. "Ye probably destroyed it yourself in the fire."
He expected to be clouted for his insult. But the blow wasn't going to come from the captain of the guard, whose gaze was fixed upon the ceiling. And Mavis—her jaw clenched, her eyes full of sparks, her face purpling with slow building rage—fled the room, slamming the door before he could witness the full force of her temper.
It took a full hour of beating pillows for Mavis's fury to subside, and now feathers littered her solar like fallen snow. But at last she'd regained control, enough to command the English bastards who'd bungled the task in the first place to fix their mistake by day's end.
Why could nothing ever go according to her plans? She'd ordered the imbeciles to trap the wench, not in the blaze, but as she fled the blaze. Their stupidity meant that Mavis's only hope was to find evidence that the piece had truly been destroyed.
Now, watching the cloudy sky blacken like a bruise as the sun set, Mavis dug her nails into the stone sill. Surely she'd heard wrong.
"What did ye say?" Her voice faltered, and her blood chilled as she turned to face the monk who wasn't a monk at all.
He shrugged. "Didn't find nothin' in the ashes. Not a trace," the man repeated in his slow English drawl, perusing with suspicion the feathers strewn about the room. "No girdle. No pomander. No gold at all. Not even bones."
A laugh of hysteria escaped her, startling her visitor, who stepped back a pace. "Not even bones?" His words seemed like a cruel jest.
"Nay, my lady."
She nodded, feeling the ice in her veins slowly beginning to melt and boil.
He frowned. "Mind you, we still expect to get paid—if not from—"
Mavis screeched at him, her patience at an end, her fury returning in full force. She snagged her fists in the front of his cassock, hauling him roughly toward her. "Paid! Paid? I paid your masters when I told them where to find Princess Mary. And what did ye do for me? Nothin'!"
He straightened, indignant. "We set the fire just like you asked," he whined.
"Ye doddy-poll!" she spat in his face. "I wanted that girdle. I told ye that!"
Suddenly she felt the sharp point of a dagger beneath her chin, and the monk's dull eyes turned dangerously dark. "I told you we looked for the thing. We didn't find it. Now unhand me, and I'll be out of your way."
Mavis quivered with rage and fear. While King Henry was alive, no Englishman would dare speak to her like that. But things had changed. And now she had to choose her battles carefully.
Reluctantly, she released the man and stepped back. He gave her an insolent look, wrinkling his nose at the feathers strewn about, then wheeled and made his exit. Only when he was gone did she collapse in tears of frustration.
Dear God, what was she going to do? No gold in the ashes? No bones? Gilbert would return soon, and that cursed wench was apparently still out there somewhere with her prize. Mavis had to find the whelp before her husband did.
But how? She'd just alienated a valuable English ally, and his fellows were on their way to Musselburgh. Like one of Henry's mistresses, she'd been used and discarded. And now, when she needed aid the most, there was no one left to help her.
She pressed her fingertips to her aching brow and peered through her fingers and her tears past the shutters, toward the gathering clouds.
'Twas truly a miserable place—this patch of land with its stony fields and biting cold and sudden storms. And its people were no better. How could she hope to bend them to her will when they had such a bullheaded will of their own?
A flash of lightning pierced the clouds, casting harsh light across the stark knoll, startling a flock of crows and silhouetting the naked tree on Gallows Hill.
The rain began to pour from the sky like well water from a bucket, drowning the land. But Mavis paid no heed to the drops that drenched her sill, for inspiration had struck as abruptly as the bolt of lightning.
She sniffed back her tears.
She knew what to do now.
She might not be able to hunt down the slippery wench, but she knew how to lure the brat to her.
Night transformed into morning so subtly 'twas almost imperceptible. A faint gray bar of light from the window slit provided the only illumination to the bleak tower room. 'Twas as dark as the woods. As dark as the grave.
Rane would die today. He was sure of it.
'Twould be ugly. He didn't delude himself. After the insults he'd handed out, Mavis would spare no instrument of torture, he was certain, to make his dying a most slow and painful ordeal.
But he consoled himself with the fact that at the end of it, when his body was broken and he gasped out his last earthly breath, he'd be reunited with his beloved Florie.
He smiled ruefully. She'd told him that she loved him, that she wanted to marry him. And he'd been too afraid to answer her. Too afraid to lose her to another. Now he'd lost her to death. In heaven, he vowed, he'd tell her he loved her with every breath.
When the executioner came for him, the skies were raging with unseasonable wind and biting rain. The distant trees thrashed beneath the onslaught, and the ground, already drenched from a spate of spring storms, seemed to bleed the excess water. 'Twas as if Thor himself, angered by the unjust execution of one of his sons, had unleashed the furious maelstrom.
Six men-at-arms, their gold tabards turned the color of clay, slogged across the spongy sod, escorting the blackened cart that would convey Rane to Gallows Hill. Beside the road huddled at least twoscore lasses from the burgh, shivering and sobbing in the rain.
He knew them all by name. 'Twas strange to think he'd never see them again, never kiss them upon the cheeks, never wrap an arm companionably about their shoulders.
An ornate, heavily draped litter borne by eight squires accompanied the procession, and Rane didn't have to look to know that Mavis sat within it, warm and dry and no doubt contemplating inventive ways to extend his suffering.
When they stopped at the crest of Gallows Hill, Mavis's beringed hand reached out from the heavily embroidered curtain to summon the executioner. The hooded man hastened to her, listened to her request, and bowed over her hand, then returned to Rane.
"Ye're to be disgraced," he grumbled, likely annoyed at anything that made him spend more time in the pouring rain.
Stepping forward, the executioner took hold of the top of Rane's shirt and tore it down the middle, wrenching the fabric down off his shoulders and arms, baring him to the waist.
If 'twas Mavis's hope to humiliate him before the lasses of the burgh, she failed. Most of the maidens had glimpsed his naked body at one time or another. Nae, if anything, she invited their sympathy. They wept and moaned as he was lifted into the cart, and as he scanned the faces he saw wee Josselin Ancrum in her guardian's arms, her wooden claymore drooping in her hand, her sweet child's face twisted into a mask of uncomprehending sadness.
He frowned. He didn't want Jossy to see him like this. He didn't want any of them as witness. 'Twas not a pretty thing, to watch a man die. And they were too kind, too innocent to sully their eyes on such ugliness.
He wanted to send them home, to tell them to remember him as he was. But Mavis had something else in mind.
"Do ye wish to see him live?" she called from within the litter.
The ladies stilled, then answered with a chorus of ayes.
"I'll spare him on one condition. Surrender the wench with the gold pomander. I know one o' ye must be harborin' her."
Rane knew then that the lady was mad. Florie hadn't survived the fire. And he'd told Mavis the pomander was destroyed. Yet she still sought it, like a hunter obsessed with a mythical beast.
"Tell her I'm about to hang her lover," Mavis continued, "and she'll come to me of her own accord to bargain for his life."
The ladies of the burgh murmured among themselves in despair, but of course, none of them could do Mavis's bidding. They knew nothing about the pomander. Most of them had never seen it. And they didn't know what had become of Florie.
"Nae?" Mavis barked in a fit of pique. "Well, perhaps watchin' him suffer a bit will change your minds!"
The ladies gasped, and Jossy began to wail.
"Take her away, Will, please," Rane bade Jossy's guardian.
"Nae!" Mavis shrieked. "She'll stay until I get that pomander. All o' ye will stay."
Rane compressed his lips. While the rain dripped off of his nose and made icy rivulets down his chest, he gazed up at the ominous black oak, leafless and solitary and stark against the pale clouds. Few corpses had twisted from its great limb in the last few years. Gilbert ruled with an iron fist, and his reputation for harsh justice had kept most lawbreakers at bay.
He glanced up at the dreary sky. No birds dared fly in such miserable weather. He prayed the storm would pass and the crows would find his body quickly. He didn't wish to frighten the lasses with his grisly remains.