Concern painted Graham’s face, but he gave no response except to fold his meaty arms across his chest and grunt.
She turned to Thomas Stevenson. “Do you object as well?” she asked. She regretted the bite in her voice, but it was Stevenson who’d hired Jack Canonbie to protect her person without her consent.
Stevenson’s shoulders pulled back. His chin rose to meet her gaze. “Nay lass. I am proud of who you have become. Do what is right. You always have.”
The words melted her. The last echoes of doubt fled. They would all do their part, and she would trust in them as they trusted in her. A fire roared from the center of her chest to the tips of her fingers and toes. Its warmth felt both familiar and comfortable. It felt like the love of family.
21
Black smoke plumed from the stone walls of Hermitage Castle. The proud fortress stood alone in a field near the banks of a trickling water. Its owners had left it to ruin some centuries earlier, but its strength had held firm in neglect. The giant gatehouse rose like a mountain. The keep it protected huddled in its shadow. Yet signs of the castle’s abandonment were also apparent. Green moss and creeping vines covered the crevices in the stone. The old curtain wall no longer ringed the bailey. Of the chapel at the edge of the grounds, only a low foundation remained. The arrow-loops high on the tower walls served only to house a murder of hooded crows.
The birds squawked and took wing as Effie slopped through the muddy field toward the castle’s gate. She was thankful for the high boots she wore, and even more so for the wool trousers and morning coat she had borrowed from one of Thomas Stevenson’s valets. The clothing splattered with muck with every step, despite using Jack Canonbie’s cane for balance, but she enjoyed the freedom of movement they provided.
“We’ll enter and clear the keep, if it please you, Miss Effie,” said the sergeant tromping next to her. Of middling age, with a broad mustache and somewhat puckered countenance, Hugh McGrady seemed a capable fellow, if not a little hesitant around her. At least he hadn’t asked her to wait by the carriageway with the horses. That detail had gone to a young lad from Huddersfield called Sweet Tom Reedling.
The rest of the soldiers who accompanied her marched in a column two abreast and three deep behind the sergeant. The sucking of their boots in the muck sounded a rhythmic cadence. Their rifles remained at their shoulders, but their cheery banter had ended at sight of the smoke puffing from the castle. They had not expected to find anything, Effie thought. Or perhaps that was just a soldier’s way, this duality of disposition that could be flipped with a lever.
It had taken her most of the day to hunt down Lieutenant Walford in Edinburgh, and several hours of riding to reach the castle. The sun hung low over the hills. Dark clouds swirled overhead and threatened rain.
The lieutenant hadn’t questioned her decision. He’d kept his face devoid of emotion and immediately barked for McGrady to attend him. He was used to taking orders from fools, she reminded herself. That brought on a snort of laughter she could not contain. Her foot slipped, and she barely caught herself from flopping into the mud.
McGrady eyed her. She waved him off, feeling color rise to her cheeks. Focusing on the castle, she scoured the ruins one last time for signs of Gaelyph. But she did not sense the warden’s aura, nor any other’s save the crows and the mice they had yet to find.
Smoke where there should be none, and a lack of life where there should be one. If not two. She bit her lip. She sensed an obvious trap, but for whom had it been laid? She had certainly not expected to come to Hermitage this day, nor had any of the men with her.
“Be wary,” she told the sergeant. Her gaze lifted to the arrow-loops. She scanned each one but saw no movement.
She had only taken a few steps farther when the stench reached her. Under the scent of wet grass set alight and wood smoke came the hint of something foul. Effie recognized it. She had smelled it at Caldwell House, and again in the chambers of Les Revinirs. Her gut tightened. It smelled of death.
Sergeant McGrady caught the scent too. His mustache twitched as he sniffed. Stopping abruptly, he raised a hand and gestured for her to halt. Drawing his pistol from the holster at his hip, he barked over his shoulder. The men broke formation without pausing a step. They fanned out, their rifles swinging back and forth as they raced for positions against the castle wall.
A pair of the men motioned to the sergeant. He nodded, and they charged into the gatehouse. No gate or door remained to bar their way. Their footsteps slapped against stone and faded away as they disappeared from sight. The other men waited only a moment before following in pairs.
Effie sensed them all scurrying about like night birds pecking through the hedges. She found herself leaning onto her toes, as if pulled toward the castle by a hidden gravity. The seconds passed like ages. As each one ticked by, the cold of the afternoon bit deeper into her flesh. She yearned to dash inside, to see what transpired, to know what they saw, to not risk their lives when she could do anything to aid them.
Yet she waited. She held her breath. Next to her, Sergeant McGrady peered at the stone walls as if trying to see through them. He shuffled forward, seemingly without thought, as he craned his neck.
One of the men hollered. “Sergeant!” The tone gave no hint as to tidings good or ill, but Effie sensed the soldiers all gathered in the same area.
She forced herself to walk, albeit at a brisk pace. The sergeant matched her stride, and together they passed under the looming high arch of the gatehouse. Murder holes smiled down on them as they did. Moss coated the openings and clung to the dank corners of stone that were protected from the wind.
The ground turned from muck and grass to hard-packed earth and scattered pebbles. The gatehouse led to a small and narrow courtyard protected by the high walls of the keep. The wall on one side had dissolved into a shattered heap, exposing what was once the great hall. The soldiers gathered there. They encircled four bodies that lay broken and strewn among the rubble. Some stared at the bodies in silence, absently touching at their own faces and chests. Others studied the black smoke rising from a pile of charred wood and smoldering grass. It rested at the base of one of the corner towers atop a mound of stone.
Sergeant McGrady offered Effie a handkerchief, but she declined it. Despite the awful stench, she wanted both hands free to wield her cane if need arose. The fire had to be recently set. No later than midday, she judged, from the size of it and how well it still smoked.
The bodies had lain there for perhaps a couple of days. One appeared to be a shepherd, from his shirt and trousers. Another, a scullery maid. A tradesman in trews and coat, and a gentleman dressed in a fine dinner jacket rounded out the group. The oddness of the quartet made Effie wonder whether they had known each other at all. She squatted by the maid, using her cane to balance herself.
“Careful, miss,” said one of the soldiers. “The dead left to rot carry disease.”
“They ain’t the dead,” said another. “The way their faces are drained and hollow, they look like the barrow wights me nan used to say haunt the Lowland hills.”
The first soldier’s face scrunched in disbelief. “Blimey, Griggs, you see any barrows around here?” He threw a thumb toward the other man. “His nan, he says.”
“They aren’t right, though,” said a third solider. Brandon, Effie thought he was called, though she didn’t know if it was his family name or his Christian. “In my village they used to keep the winter dead wrapped in a cellar until the ground thawed enough to bury them proper. Us lads would dare each other to sneak in and uncover them.” He circled a hand over the bodies. “Takes a while to look like this.”