“But should we?” said Donnan. “It’s their cottage.”
“What choice do you have?”
Kaetha followed the others back inside. No one said a word. Tam built up the dwindling fire. Kaetha slipped out of her wet outer clothes and laid them out to dry, wrapping herself in a blanket.
As she lay down, anger began to thaw the numb feeling of shock, burning and crackling within her. Why hadn’t she done something to help them? What was the point of having magic if she didn’t use it? But they’d have caught you, a sensible voice in her mind told her, then you’d never have had a chance of saving Pa.
“There was nothing we could have done,” said Mairi, lying beside her.
Sleep eventually took her away from what had just happened. She dreamed she was in a strange house of many rooms. The caw of a raven echoed coldly and then she saw it pecking at something. Then her heart lifted as she saw Kintail. He trotted along a corridor with his tail in the air. Somehow knowing that he was to take her to her mother, she felt comforted and followed him. She would be there in one of the rooms. But, before she could see her, dawn closed the door on her sleeping mind, bringing the cold reality of the waking world.
They left the turf house, stepping into a morning which shrouded earth and sky with pale grey like the ashes in the hearth. Onwards they walked, their faces grim.
“Do you think we should go through Creagairde?” asked Mairi. “After what happened?”
“It still leads to the quickest way south,” said Kaetha, pulling up her hood.
They reached a wooden palisade curved around the top of the hill and passed through an open gate which was guarded by a watchman. Tam remained hidden in mouse form in Kaetha’s bag. As they walked down a street lined with grey, stone houses, the town sloped ahead of them towards the loch, a stretch of silver above the crooked roofs and chimneys.
The clattering of carts and the sea of voices was jarring to Kaetha after days spent in the quiet, open spaces of Neul Carraig. The faces of the townsfolk were hard and cold, like the stone the town was built from and, though Kaetha kept her head down, she couldn’t help noticing eyes everywhere casting distrustful, furtive glances at them. It was clearly a place that didn’t like strangers.
The closer they got to the loch, the busier the street grew. People jostled ahead of them, a mass of jeering voices growing and surrounding them. Caught up in a sudden flow of people, Kaetha lost sight of her companions. Then Mairi reached towards her but stumbled as she was knocked by a woman yelling, “Hang them! Hang them!”, a chant that was picked up by others. Kaetha pushed her way towards Mairi.
“Where’s Donnan?” she asked.
He appeared at her side.
“We need to stay together,” said Mairi. “What is this madness?”
“I don’t kn— Ow! Watch it!” Kaetha shoved the young man who made the mistake of jabbing his elbow into her side.
They were carried along to a square which opened out before the largest building on the lochside, its wide doors fronted by imposing pillars. A scaffold stood proud before it and two women were marched up onto it. Not Margaret of Asrid, thought Kaetha, though guilt was tied to her feeling of relief as she took in the sick pallor and darting gaze of one woman and the expressionless resignation of the other. Kaetha froze. After the women, a crying child was dragged up the scaffold and then a man who tried, unsuccessfully, to by heard above the clamouring crowd. Each face bore a cut. Each was positioned beside a swinging noose.
With ear shattering cries, some in the crowd emerged around the scaffold with knives, sticks, stones, even cooking pans, lashing out at the guards and the executioner. Cries of ‘Let them go!’ and ‘Not guilty!’ fought against the thumping chant of ‘Hang them! Hang them! Hang them!’. Screams pierced through the shouts as the guards and executioners fought back. Boots of guards on the scaffold collided with faces of those attacking from the ground. Fists and blades were swung and those who had made it up to the gallows were flung back down into the jaws of the audience hungry for a hanging.
Kaetha looked across to the docks at the lochside, spotting figures on riverboats loading goods who cast nervous glances at what was going on in the square.
“First we punish the thief!” roared a man. Another wielded a heavy axe so that it made an arc around him. It was only then that Kaetha caught a view of the hunched figure on the platform beside the gallows, his hands locked in place in the pillory. Then the blade sliced down and, with a gush of blood, one hand was gone.
“Gilroy! Gilroy!” a young lass’s voice scraped through the rumble of voices, broken and desperate. She was thrown off the scaffold. “He’s innocent!” she screamed, getting to her feet again. The man called Gilroy was forced onto a stool, his head framed with the noose. “No!” the child shrieked.
With every step Kaetha took further away from the child, the heavier guilt sat upon her shoulders. She might have the power to attack those executioners, burn the ropes, to cause a diversion but she found herself walking away.
Kaetha was barely aware of the arrangements being made, the money changing hands. She stepped onto the boat with Mairi and Donnan and stared at the wide river ahead, as grey as the clouds above it. A bang sounded. Wood creaked. A fevered cheer burst from the crowd. However, it was the
