The crowd swarmed, allowing Brother Gillespie to make his escape with help from Rorie and Dermid Moray.
“Witchcraft!” shouted one of the guards. “There’s a witch among us!”
Kaetha didn’t like the look that Murdo gave her then; it made her feel like a thousand knives were pointed at her. However, she knew there was no way he could know it was her.
“Who is responsible for this?” demanded the chieftain.
Dark clouds churned thunderously above them, echoing the fear that swelled through the crowd. Kaetha edged back a step, feeling an urge to run but Donnan clamped his hand on her arm.
“Stay,” he whispered in her ear. “You must stay.”
Rain pattered on stone, then burst in a fury from the clouds.
“It wasn’t witchcraft,” called someone from the crowd. “It was lightning. The heavens were protecting the monk.”
Kaetha wrapped a blanket around Donnan’s shoulders and returned to squeezing out the rainwater from her hair.
“I’ll light a fire,” she said. “Pa will be back soon.”
“That was lucky,” commented Donnan as he closed the shutters.
“What?”
“That storm coming so soon. And people not realising that real lightning would do far more damage.” He glanced up at her.
“How can we know it wasn’t’ real lightning?” She turned her back on him as she made a pile of kindling.
He gathered more sticks from the pile by the door, then came around the hearth to face her. “Why were you going to run?”
“I wasn’t.” She tried to look preoccupied by her task.
“You were,” he said, raising his voice.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
He let his bundle of kindling clatter to the floor. “For God’s sake, Kaetha, don’t pretend. Not to me.”
She finally looked up at him and saw the anguish contorting his face.
“You can trust me to keep your secret. I’ll do all I can to protect you. But you have to learn to control it. Particularly in front of Macomrags.” He gripped her hand. “Do not give them a reason to make you their enemy.”
That night, a gasp woke Kaetha with a jerk. She scanned the room, thinking of Murdo and his men coming for her. But no. That had only been a dream. The gasp had been real though, she was sure.
“No – no – no,” came a distressed whisper.
She went over to Donnan.
“Stop.” He was twitching in his bed.
“Shh,” she said, resting a hand on his clammy forehead.
“Stop,” he said, louder than before, waking himself up.
“What’s the matter?” came Aedan’s voice from across the room.
“It’s nothing,” said Donnan.
“It sounded like more than nothing,” said Kaetha.
“It was just a dream. Sorry I woke you. You should go back to bed.” But before she got up, he grasped her hand. “Be careful,” he whispered before letting her go.
TEN
Nannie Hattock
Nannie sat on a three legged stool, stirring the contents of a large earthenware pot set above the fire. The smell of kale, onions, turnip and chicken broth mingled with the drying bay, thyme and seaweed hanging from her cottage ceiling, making Kaetha’s mouth water. Being here felt to Kaetha like retreating to a sanctuary. It had the feel of a cave, its single room surrounded by curved walls, sunlight peeking in through one small window. A scattering of metal objects – pans, knives, a shovel, a poker and the tiny clasps of dozens of wooden boxes on shelves around the room – all gleamed in the firelight like chinks of metal ore in a mine, and water glinted in buckets like underground pools.
“So, you’ve decided what to use for Jean’s pain reliever?” said Nannie as she added barley to her pottage, impressing Kaetha once again by the amount she could do without the use of sight.
“Oh, I finished that. I mixed a little opean into a powder of red dulse seaweed. It’s in a pot on the shelf with the other pain relievers. I marked it for you with a limpet shell and an opean leaf.”
“You only put in a pinch of opean? It’s potent stuff.”
“I didn’t use much,” said Kaetha. “There wasn’t much to use anyway, the powder barely covered the base of little storage box.”
“Really? I was sure I had more,” said Nannie.
“Why do they call opean ‘tears of battle’?” Cailean asked as he selected sprigs of dried figwort and speedwell to grind for the salve he was working on.
“The opean flower grows best in freshly turned soil,” said Nannie. “Earth churned up by plough and by army mean that the red and white flowers spring from crop fields and battlefields alike. Opean liquor leaks from the cut seedpods like tears, though we dry it to a powder. The tears are said to be the flowers weeping for fallen warriors.”
“It’s expensive though, isn’t it?” asked Cailean.
“Aye,” said Nannie. “But I managed to get my last batch from a monk physician from Calamor who traded it for some of my own remedies.” She grinned. “Anyway, lass, what is it you’re making now?”
Kaetha had prepared her story and only hoped that it would convince Nannie as it had Cailean, though she hated lying to either of them. “I overheard a woman from Kaernock village talking to her friend about her husband whom she suspects has a mistress. I asked her what she would pay for a potion which made her husband tell the truth and she said one silcwen. But if it was good, she’d pay a goldkin for another.”
“That is much more than just healing magic, and you know that, Kaetha,” said Nannie, pointing her finger at her.
“But imagine all the supplies we could get for that kind of
