A Rush of Wings, page 22
“And the pair of you know each other how?” the warden pressed.
Rowenna bit at her lip. Liam could bring himself to bend the truth, but she’d never yet heard him tell a bald-faced lie.
“She’s my sister,” Liam said.
The warden stiffened. “I don’t know if that’s right, then. No one else gets to see family.”
“Curses,” Elspeth Crannach murmured from inside her cell, sparing Rowenna the need to threaten again.
The warden’s objections melted away.
“Very well,” he said. “You’ll have an hour between the two of them. But no more.”
Warily the warden approached Rowenna’s cell door.
“Hands to yourself,” he growled, and Rowenna gave him a narrow look.
“My hands are busy,” she shot back. “Don’t worry on that count.”
Disgust marked the warden’s face as he saw the damage Rowenna had done to herself over the course of her brief imprisonment. He fiddled with the heavy iron door and its ponderous key, until Rowenna heard the grating of the latch. Then Liam was ushered in, and the door locked behind him.
“Confessions are heard in private,” Liam said flatly when the guard moved to return to his post, within easy earshot.
Heaving a disgruntled sigh, the warden took a torch from the wall. “Very well. I’ll be in the storeroom. But I’ll have the door open, so if she makes trouble, you call me. Understand?”
“Perfectly.”
Then the warden was gone, retreating down the stone corridor. Liam’s composure fell from him, and when he turned back to Rowenna, confusion and fear and pity were all plain on his face.
“Dear God, Enna, what happened? How’d you end up here?”
Rowenna did not look up, still busy with the spindle. “I crossed Torr Pendragon. It was always going to come to this. They’ll burn me soon, as a witch or a rebel. But I want to see you and our brothers free first. I want to finish my work.”
She’d hoped her voice would stay steady as she spoke, but it came out ragged in spite of her best efforts.
“Did you bring what I asked for?” Rowenna said. There was no use focusing on her troubles, no matter how grim they might be, when she hadn’t yet broken the curse.
In answer, Liam slipped a satchel from his shoulder and took out the three shirts she’d completed, as well as the fourth, which Rowenna had only half finished. She looked from the poorly spun yarn at her feet to the final shirt and blinked back tears. For all the care she’d taken with the others, this one would be badly done, if she managed to finish at all. What that would mean for whoever wore it, and whether it would keep her from breaking the curse, Rowenna could not guess. But she knew it could only cause harm.
If it had been Duncan who’d come to her, she’d have been able to hide the truth from him—that perhaps she’d be unable to complete her task before going to the stake. Liam, however, saw straight to the heart of her.
“You’ll never finish it in time,” he said. The words came out low and toneless, and Rowenna glanced up at him, agony burning in her eyes.
“I tried, Liam. God knows I tried.”
The spindle dropped from Rowenna’s swollen hands, and she began to sob, laid utterly low by the thought that when it counted most, she might fail to save her brothers, as she’d been unable to save Mairead. In an instant Liam had his arms around Rowenna, her face pressed to his shoulder.
“Here now, mo laochain,” he said, his own voice unsteady. “We’ll find a way to get you out of this, I swear.”
“Don’t make promises you can’t keep,” Rowenna chided through her tears. “You know you’ll only feel guilty over it. But I wish I could fix things for you and the rest of the boys before the end. Can you come, in the morning? All of you? Not because I want you to see what happens, but because whether I’ve done the curse-breaking or not, I want to try to set things right.”
“Nothing could keep us away,” Liam said. “But I swear to you, Enna, we won’t let you burn. I know you and I haven’t always agreed, but we’re family. I can speak for every one of us when I say we’ll lie dead before they put a torch to you.”
Liam, normally the most circumspect of them all, had never looked or sounded more like a stubborn, ferociously loyal Winthrop than he did in that moment, but Rowenna stepped back and shook her head.
“Please don’t say such things,” she begged. “Just be there, so I have a chance to end this.”
He nodded, and Rowenna wiped at her eyes with one sleeve.
“Are you going to give me my last rites?” Rowenna asked. “I don’t care if you’re not truly a priest yet. None of that matters to me, and I won’t be shriven by anyone else.”
Liam pressed a hand to his mouth, and for a moment, Rowenna thought he might be sick. But he collected himself, squared his shoulders, and shook his head.
“I won’t,” Liam said, sharp enough to match Rowenna at her fiercest. “Perhaps I should, but I refuse, because you’re not going to die. We’re not going to lose someone again.”
Rowenna could not help but think of Gawen, who’d lost everyone, and wondered if her brothers would be able to find him before morning. Something in her ached terribly at the thought of her stray. Had she known this was where she was headed—a prison cell and a witch’s stake—she’d have kept him at arm’s length and spared him yet another loss.
“Are you nearly finished?” Elspeth called from behind the stone wall of the adjoining cell. “Only I don’t want to go to my grave without confessing.”
“Go on then,” Rowenna said, fighting back the fresh tears that brimmed in her eyes. “I’ll see you in the morning.”
But Liam stayed where he was, staring down at the pile of knit shirts and roughly made yarn on the stone floor. “Rowenna, promise me something.”
“What?”
Liam bent and picked up the shirt Rowenna had only half finished, and hadn’t a prayer of completing before dawn.
“This is mine,” he said. “Make sure you remember. I don’t want you to give it to any of the others.”
In her fog of weariness, focused on the task at hand, Rowenna hadn’t yet considered that she’d have to choose from among her brothers and Gawen. One of them would have to be given the worst of her work.
He handed her the bit of knitting, his shoulders tense. “Don’t forget, Enna. That’s for me, and no one else.”
Liam called for the warden, and by the time the door grated open and he stepped out, Rowenna had resumed her spinning, only one small bundle of fiber left before she could begin to knit.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Rowenna bent silently over her work as the prison guard changed once more. Not long after Liam’s departure, the iron band had closed around her throat, and she knew herself to be voiceless again.
But she did not need her voice for the task at hand. Only her nimble fingers and unflagging will. Before leaving, Liam had told the night warden sternly that Rowenna’s witchwork must be burned with her, or it would set a curse on all who touched it. He’d never told such a straightforward lie before and stumbled over his words once or twice, but the warden took it for fear.
The night warden repeated the story when the guard changed and told it with more conviction than Liam had. Rowenna stayed where she was, her cramped hands working clumsily, binding together a misshapen and ugly garment. She tried to compensate by putting the full force of her goodwill and affection into the simple stitches that were all she could manage.
At last, a commotion sounded at the top of the narrow stair that led out of the dungeon. A contingent of armed guards trooped down, leaving the door to the outside world open behind them. In a desperate rush, wind howled down the stairway and into Rowenna’s cell, where it tangled about her.
Rowenna, Rowenna, Rowenna, it wept. Our love, our light, our dark-hearted girl.
My dear, my own, my darling, Rowenna sorrowed back at the wind, even as it slipped images to her, of an open square at the heart of Inverness where two witch’s stakes stood waiting. Whatever lay ahead, though, it was a comfort to have the wind with her, twining about her ankles and wrists.
“Gather up your witchwork, then,” the day warden barked at Rowenna as the guards stepped forward to escort her up the stairs. Rowenna hastily stuffed her shirts and her yarn back into the satchel Liam had left and pulled the bundle over one shoulder. They were forcing Elspeth from her cell too, and the girls glanced at each other, a long, bleak look passing between them.
Then it was up the stairs and into the broad light of day. A wagon lined with benches and chains waited in the alleyway the prison entrance led out to. Elspeth and Rowenna sat and kept their eyes fixed on each other as guards lifted their skirts roughly and shackled each of them by the ankles. The moment the guard’s hands left her, Rowenna dug into the satchel and took out her work once more.
“No one has ever deserved to break a curse more than you do, Rowenna Winthrop,” Elspeth said quietly.
Rowenna nodded her thanks but could say nothing in reply.
With a jolt, the cart began to move, and they were off, headed toward the heart of Inverness and the waiting stakes. Elspeth sat pale and resolute, praying through the rosary with a crucifix and beads that Rowenna recognized with a small shock as Liam’s. Rowenna herself knit feverishly. All that was left to be done on her last shirt was the final sleeve, and though it looked a terrible mess, she hadn’t expected to get even that far.
As they rattled through the city, people leaned out of windows or stopped on the roadsides to watch their passing. Rowenna didn’t know what she’d expected, but it certainly wasn’t this. The Highlanders waited silently as the wagon went by, their faces by turns grieved or stoic. Occasionally, someone raised a hand, as if to honor their going. There was a sad resignation about them all, and Rowenna wondered how many times they’d seen wagons pass by in just this fashion, perhaps bearing their own family or friends.
At last the square came into view ahead. Rowenna’s sleeve was only half-done, but she hurried to cast off, not willing to risk the shirt beginning to unravel. She stuffed the garment back into her satchel and slung the whole thing over one shoulder, so that her hands were free.
“Are you afraid?” Elspeth asked faintly as the wagon jolted into the square and they caught a first glimpse of the murmuring crowd, and the stakes with dry wood piled high about their bases.
Rowenna nodded. She was sick with fear, though half of it was over her brothers and Gawen, and the thought that they might be left still cursed after her death.
The wagon drew to a halt, and Elspeth gave Rowenna a last desperate look as the guards who’d followed behind them approached.
“I wish you could speak to me once more before we burn,” she said. “It seems a shame to go to your death without a chance at having a last word. And I’m sorry that Gawen and I brought you into this. I’m sorry for so many things.”
But all Rowenna could do was smile sadly. Elspeth sighed, and there were tears glimmering in her wide, frightened eyes.
“I’ve held this off for so long,” she said. “For years, and yet it came at last.”
When the guards loosed the shackles at their ankles, Rowenna impulsively stepped forward and wrapped her arms around the other girl. Elspeth let out a stifled sob, and they clung to each other, until one of the guards prodded at them.
“Here now,” he muttered. “It’s time.”
Rowenna pulled away. With one blistered thumb, she wiped the tears from Elspeth’s face. She wished harder than ever that she could speak and remind both of them to be brave, and to hold their heads high.
But Elspeth spoke the words instead. She lifted Rowenna’s chin and squared her own shoulders.
“We’ve done nothing wrong. Nothing to be ashamed of,” Elspeth said. “We go to our deaths knowing that, at least. He can’t take that from us.”
Elspeth’s eyes cut to a place behind Rowenna, and she turned to find Torr Pendragon sitting on a carved wooden chair near the edge of the crowd. Guards surrounded him to keep the gathered Highlanders away. He watched the girls in the wagon dispassionately, as though he knew neither of them at all, and they were about to do no more than walk across the square.
Anger licked at Rowenna, burning through the fog of her fear. Perhaps it was a comfort to Elspeth to know she’d die blameless, but it was no comfort to Rowenna herself. She let fury at her own ill treatment build and build, even as the guards pushed her forward and she was forced to walk across the cobbles to the stake where she’d meet her end. But anger carried her, and she went dry-eyed and sure-footed across the empty space the crowd had left.
The gathered watchers were subdued as guards chained Rowenna and Elspeth to their stakes, fastening them by the ankles and the waist. The people of Inverness, it seemed, had no taste for burnings, having seen far too many of their own die in flames.
With the girls’ arms left free, Elspeth held tight to her rosary, endlessly whispering her prayers. Rowenna clutched the satchel full of her work and scanned the waiting crowd, desperate for any sign of white feathers, or an elegantly curved neck.
But there was no trace of her family, of her swans. Though Liam had promised, and it was their last best hope to be freed of the curse, it seemed her brothers had failed to find Gawen at the end, and so she would once more fail too.
Rowenna’s throat burned. She heard a sharp gasp from Elspeth as from somewhere within the crowd, the executioner appeared. He wore a black hood and carried a thick torch. Torr gestured to a brazier of hot coals that rested beside his chair, and the executioner approached.
Briefly a wild impulse rose up in Rowenna. To use her craft and burst his lungs. What did it matter now, if she broke herself to pieces or drowned in that lightless inner sea, in an attempt to work violence? But it would prove her a witch and a murderer, and besides that, guards with crossbows stood watch in a dozen windows. Even she would not be able to put an end to them all. Instead she would wait till the very last, for a chance to save her swans.
As the executioner plunged his torch into the coals, the wind rose up without Rowenna’s bidding. Desperate and keening, it beat against the executioner and the torch in his hand. Three times the hooded man struggled to light the torch, and three times the wind snuffed it out. Tension rippled through the waiting crowd, and from somewhere hidden among the watchers, a man’s voice rose.
“For shame! God himself doesn’t want those girls to die.”
Torr Pendragon was on his feet in an instant, rage etched across his face.
“Fetch some pitch, and be quick about it,” he snarled at the nearest guard.
Though Rowenna’s hands shook so she could hardly hold the needles, she took her unfinished shirt out and carried on, haphazardly adding stitches to the last sleeve as best she could. It was habit now, and a lifeline. Even if her brothers didn’t appear, she’d at least end her life trying for them.
Between stitches, Rowenna couldn’t help but steal frantic glances at the crowd and the sky. But there were no swans, no gleam of white. As the wait dragged on and grew interminable, Elspeth’s voice rose, sweet and tremulous from the stake beside Rowenna. She recited the Our Father, over and over again, and Rowenna supposed it was the girl’s anchor, just as the curse breaking had become her own.
Angry murmurs rose from the crowd at the sound of Torr’s disgraced mistress praying. But before they could become more than baseless discontentment, the guard who’d been dispatched returned, bearing two buckets of pitch.
One he set down before the executioner, and the other he brought across the square, to where Elspeth and Rowenna waited. Without looking them in the eyes, he dumped the bucket’s contents over the dry wood piled at Rowenna’s feet.
So she would burn first, and Elspeth would be made to watch.
More scattered cries of “shame” rose from the crowd, but though the wind lashed at the executioner’s pitch-soaked torch, it could not extinguish the gout of flame that flared up. At last the hooded man took his place before Rowenna.
Elspeth fixed her eyes on the sky, as if she could see beyond it to heaven above. But Rowenna focused solely on binding off the ugly, knotted stitches she’d made, which had almost—but not quite—finished the sleeve of her final shirt.
“You see before you two young women accused of witchcraft and rebellion,” Torr Pendragon said, his voice ringing loud across the square. “And as we all know, it does not become us to suffer a witch to live. Accordingly, I consign these unholy creatures to fire, to be burned until they are dead.”
Rowenna could not breathe as the executioner stepped forward and lowered his torch to the dry wood stacked about her. Even at the last, the wind fought him, battering the man and quenching any new flames that tried to take hold of the dry wood. Its voice was a lament, a funeral dirge.
Rowenna, Rowenna, Rowenna. Our love, our light, our saltwater girl.
The torch caught a ribbon of pitch, and unquenchable fire sprang up. Immediately the wind died down, collapsing in on itself so as not to feed the flames. Acrid smoke rose around Rowenna, and though she could not yet feel the fire, she knew it was only a matter of moments before the first tongues of it licked at her skin.
Leaning her head back against the stake, she wept bitterly. Through the haze of grief and panic and smoke, she heard the sea, endlessly breaking against the cliffs of Neadeala. She smelled the briny wind that blew over the heath. And when she opened her bleary eyes, she thought she saw the froth of whitecaps as they shattered to pieces on the rocky coast.
But it was not the foam on gray waves that gathered about her, nor was that trumpeting din the sound of squabbling wyverns on the cliffs.
Rowenna’s swans had come.
Chapter Twenty-Six
In their wild, winged shapes, Rowenna’s brothers and Gawen landed all about her. With thick-skinned feet they scrabbled at the piled wood and scattered it across the cobbled square. Rowenna fought back panic as flames licked at them, but they were a flurry of feathers, never in one place long enough for the fire to do harm. At last they’d extinguished every one of the embers with their strong wings and broad feet, and they stood before her in a graceful crescent. The crowd had gone utterly silent, though tension and expectation hung so heavy on the air it felt as if a storm was brewing.
