Heart of Stone by Rebecca Ruger
Chapter Fourteen
She hadn’t yet decidedthat she could be happy at Murkle, but she had resigned herself to the idea that she might be here for longer than anticipated. She couldn’t, or wouldn’t, return to Kinclaven. With her stepfather’s treachery known, and her sisters all gone from the keep, Julianna had no desire to reclaim that home. It wasn’t an easy truth to comprehend; Kinclaven was the only home she’d ever known, where her father and mother had lived and where the Elliot daughters had begun life with so much happiness and so much hope.
A lifetime ago, it seemed.
She was abed now, on this her seventh night at Murkle, reviewing the week in her head. The bed was naught but ropes across a wooden frame, covered with a thin blanket that one needed to decide might lie below or atop themselves, as it wasn’t large enough to serve both purposes. Julianna had opted for the latter, hoping for warmth as the dormitory was possessed of no hearth to heat it.
She was too old to be friends with these novices, but she had managed to secure their affection nonetheless, and they hers. Possibly, without them, she might have lost her mind by now. She had not, though. And while she’d not embraced the role imposed upon her, she did actively participate in the prayers and chores and embroidering of church cloths and transcribing of the sacred texts, all of it made so much more palatable with Brida, Helen, Barbara, and Marta at her side.
And she did all of this, for seven days in a row, without giving one thought to Calum MacKinnon.
Rolling her eyes at being caught in a lie, Julianna lifted her gaze heavenward, her hands folded demurely over the thin blanket covering her chest. Fine. I only thought of him at night, in those rare hours we are allowed to sleep. This too was a lie, and she mouthed an apology to God, staring at the timber ceiling above. Very well, as You already know, I cannot stop thinking about him. But maybe You should be singing in his ear, giving him grief for what he has done to me. And then, beseechingly, Can You not send him back to me? Can You not tell him that I... I what?
Oh, dear Lord.
Sorry.
Oh, my.
It cannot be!
She frowned upward, waiting for that voice in her head to throw truths at her as it was wont to do.
No, she argued when it did come, I cannot be in love with Calum MacKinnon.
“I watched out the window as you came to Murkle,” said Brida, lying closest to her.
Startled from her astonishing reverie, Julianna turned her face upon the spare bunk to face the lass.
“I saw that man kiss you,” Brida revealed.
A head popped up beyond Brida, showing the shadows of Helen’s face and the scruff of her shorn hair. “I saw as well. I was standing next to Brida at the window,” said Helen, her whisper as soft as Brida’s.
While Julianna wondered what her response was expected to be, Brida went on, her voice more animated than normal. “Why did he bring you here? How could he let you go?”
“Didn’t seem like he wanted to,” said another voice—Barbara—on Julianna’s other side. “He was trying to hold your arm when you walked away.”
“What does a kiss feel like?” Brida wanted to know.
Julianna sighed and stared straight above until she closed her eyes. She could still feel him, still taste him, still remember the warmth of his fingers. But for how long? How long would she be able to hold onto those sweet memories?
“It is...it is magical,” she finally answered, her voice whisper soft, “as if a fire were lit inside you. It turns your limbs to pudding and your heart thuds dangerously and your stomach churns...and as awful as that sounds, it is not.”
“That’s why you want his plaid back, isn’t it?” Marta asked in her small voice, having left her bunk to climb onto the end of Brida’s.
Julianna could only nod, choked with tears.
“Then what are we waiting for?” Brida asked. “Let’s do it tonight. We can hide it under the floorboards. That one under Helen’s bed is loose.”
Oh, how she wanted Calum’s plaid in her arms. But, “We shouldn’t. I do not want to bring trouble to you.”
Brida shrugged, flipping back her blanket. “Only trouble if we’re caught.”
“Even then, what?” Helen whispered defiantly. “Privy duty? Nothing we dinna ken.”
So it was decided then, Julianna supposed, as the girls rose and began to dress in their gray habits.
“If we are discovered,” Brida explained, “we can pretend we were on our way to matins.”
Julianna nodded, not about to argue. The light cotton nightrails they were provided for sleeping would prove little defense against the dank cold of the nighttime abbey if they were to be traipsing around.
“We’ll wait in the shadows of the night stair,” Brida advised, “and no’ move until all the sisters go down.”
Possibly several of the other novices, tucked in their beds but not asleep, might have been privy to their creeping departure, but no sounds were made but the soft press of their feet to the floor and the bare swish of their gray tunics.
At the end of the large open room that was the dorter where they slept, Brida pulled open a creaky door and they slipped quietly through it, Helen pulling it closed behind her. The night stair was the staircase used by all the sisters and novices to attain the chapel for late night and early morning services. Thus, it could be accessed from each floor. On the half floor, there were anterooms, one used as a storage closet. They tucked themselves in there, squeezed themselves actually, as the chamber was tiny and crammed already that the five of them only just fit. They stood in complete and utter darkness, while Brida kept a hand on the door, waiting to spy on the sisters as they moved past.
They didn’t have long to wait. Brida kept the door closed tight while the light footfalls were heard, people turning around the corner of the staircase to gain the lower floor. When it seemed all had passed, she only pulled it wide enough to peek out into the night stair. She said nothing but declared it clear by swinging the door open and dashing down the damp stone steps. Julianna and the others followed, stepping onto the second floor through another door. Brida scampered down the corridor here, as rooms seemed to sprout from the left and right. Julianna wasn’t sure why Brida and the others ducked as they ran, as it concealed them not at all, though she supposed it gave them a better sense of stealth and found herself rather hunkering as she ran as well.
They rather crashed into Brida’s back when she stopped at a door toward the far end of the hallway. She couldn’t simply barge in, however, needed to crank the door ever-so-slightly to be sure the chamber was vacant. Only then did she swing it wide and hold it open until all had followed. She pushed it closed softly and leaned her back against it.
Julianna looked around. “This is the abbess’s private chamber?”
“Aye,” said Brida, pushing away from the door, scrounging through a stack of neatly folded garments set upon a sumptuous side chair.
Like the dormitory, the chamber was unlit that the glow of the moon spilling through a narrow, glass-filled window was the only illumination, casting the chamber into a blue-gray light. The lasses went off in different directions, exploring each corner of Lady Agnes’s room. It was filled with many pieces of furniture and several tapestries and paintings and elegant bed-hangings.
Julianna opened a trunk at the foot of the platform bed, rifling carefully through the woman’s linens.
“Smells like an old hag in here,” Helen commented.
“No’ a speck of dust,” Barbara noted, “but I’ve no’ ever cleaned in here.”
“Aye, probably the harridan Cecily skinnies her eye at the grime and it dashes out of sight,” suggested Bridie.
“Shh,” cautioned Marta, crawling on the floor along the bed.
“I dinna see the tartan anywhere,” Helen bemoaned.
“We’d best get back,” Julianna proposed, having searched the lady’s desk, opening all the drawers though none were large enough to hold Calum’s plaid.
“Christ,” Brida blasphemed, drawing Julianna’s attention.
She spun around, horrified to find Lady Agnes standing in the wide open door. Sister Cecily and Sister Bridget peered over her shoulder, their countenances grim.
Bluidy hell.
“Little thieves, I see,” Lady Agnes said, her hands crossed demurely in front of her, sent outward by the girth of her belly.
“Lady Agnes, I can explain,” Julianna was quick to plead, stepping in front of the other girls, pushing little Marta behind her.
“And you will, Julianna Elliot,” the abbess allowed. “You will.”
Five minutes later saw the four younger novices sent back to the dorter, with the promise of a punishment to come on the morrow. Julianna had not been allowed to escape with them, but was held back, the thick arched door closed between Marta, the last fleeing figure and Julianna, trying to abscond with them. Lady Agnes’s obedientiaries, Bridget and the hatchet-faced Cecily, stood between her and freedom.
“Take a seat, my dear,” Lady Agnes said, her voice as sugary as it had been with the first words she’d given to Julianna a week ago.
Swallowing past the lump in her throat, Julianna did so, sitting down upon another gorgeous arm chair, this one with an embroidered cushion and curved legs. She expected a stern lecture, and perhaps more of that nonsense the abbess had spewed last week, about her depraved soul.
Bridget and Cecily moved around the chair so that all three woman were in front of Julianna, whose back was now to the door. Cecily turned away, reaching into an ornate cupboard behind the abbess.
Julianna met the abbess’s neutral expression and opened her mouth to make an apology, as contrite as she could manage. Lady Agnes lifted a brow and held up her finger, that Julianna closed her mouth.
Cecily pivoted, facing Julianna, whose eyes now widened with no small amount of horror for the long, sharp knife held in the woman’s hand. She handed this to Agnes and all three took a step closer.
“The problem with lasses like you,” Lady Agnes said, all saintly congeniality thrown to the wind, “is that you are too proud. You have no humility, haven’t any idea what it means to be humble and pitiable, completely without airs. But we shall remedy that now. You will learn that from your greatest forfeitures and your lowest consequence comes your finest chance at success.”
Julianna backed up as far as she could in the chair and opened her mouth to scream, even as she knew it would do her no good. The henchmen grabbed her flailing arms and Lady Agnes lifted a long section of her hair, aiming the knife close to her scalp. The scream died as reality overcame her and she keened softly into her chest while they hacked away at her hair.
***
CALUM LIFTED HIS HANDand pounded the side of his fist upon the door of Murkle Priory. He then looped his thumbs into his belt and waited. Pivoting, he determined that Finn and Artur and the lads were indeed not visible from this vantage point. They’d thought it best if he went alone, same as he’d done when he’d delivered Julianna to Murkle more than a week ago.
When the door was not pulled open, he lifted his hand and banged again. It was the middle of the day so he couldn’t imagine there would be none to receive his call.
Finally the thick portal was opened to him, showing the nearly bald head of a very small child, her slender and pale fingers curled around the wood near the ornate but rusty handle.
“I should like some of the Lady Agnes’s time,” he said simply to the child.
“Ye come for Julianna,” the girl said, slowly backing up, pulling the door with her.
Calum’s eyes widened, having no idea how the lass might have known. “Aye, I have. And I should like to see her as well.” He stepped through the widening space as the door was opened fully.
The girl’s bland expression did not change, though her mouth did open as if she might say more. She did not but stayed close to the door as she pushed it closed.
“How did you ken—”
“We saw ye out the window, when ye came the first time.” She turned, her back to the door, and tucked her hands behind her. “Ye shouldn’t have come. She’ll no’ want to....” She stopped, clamping her pallid lips.
His frown was instantaneous. “No’ what? Is Julianna all right?”
The child shook her head very slowly, the scruff of her sad hair scratching against the wood. Her blue eyes left him, looking off to his left.
Before Calum had even turned around, the child skittered away, her small feet silent upon the stone floor.
Concerned now, he met a middle-aged woman, red-faced and wearing ten pounds’ weight of kerchiefs on her head.
“I need a word with the Lady Agnes,” he informed her.
“Oh, sir,” she said, displaying little grief though she did twist her hands, “I’m afraid that will not be possible. The abbess has traveled to our sister house in Glasgow. But you might venture ’round again in a fortnight or so, as she’s expected back by then.”
“Nae, that’ll no’ do.” He waved a hand. He didn’t need anyone’s permission. “I’ve come to collect Julianna Elliot. Where is she?”
The sister put her hand to her chest, showing a significant amount of surprise. “Sir, our inmates cannot receive visitors, certainly not of the male variety.”
“Inmate? Jesu,” Calum seethed. “Julianna is no such thing. And she’s no’ a nun or going to be one. I’m here to take her away.”
“Were you not the gentleman who brought her to us?” This, asked so sweetly, that he had to assume the meaning behind the words was anything but.
His blood began to boil. “Sister, I’m no’ sure what you’re implying here, or why you’re trying to keep me from seeing Julianna, but make no mistake, I am going nowhere until she is presented to me, and ready to travel. Do we understand each other?”
“Sir, please do not point your finger at me or raise your voice to such devilry,” the woman said, her tone as calm as it was upon her greeting.
“Lady, you bring me Julianna Elliot, or you tell me where she is or you’re going to be very sorry that you did not.” Of course, it was an empty threat, but this possibility—that he might not be allowed to see Julianna had never crossed his mind. He’d supposed only that he’d have to deal with a wee bit of Julianna’s anger at him for bringing her here.
Still, the maddening woman maintained a serene façade. “Excuse me, sir, while I consult with the other sisters.”
“Consult all you want, but dinna return without Julianna,” he commanded, at the end of his patience, while the woman walked away.
He was left to stand in the wide foyer, glancing around the austere chamber and then up the wide staircase and onto the landing of the second floor. He spied two similarly shorn heads peeking around a corner, disappearing from sight when his eye had reached them.
With little hope, he called up to them, “Tell Julianna Elliot the MacKinnon has come for her.”
“Go away,” a small voice called back.
What the—?
“She’ll no’ ever forgive you,” a different voice whispered only loud enough to reach him, though the owner was unseen beyond that corner, but for a small part of her gray habit close to the floor.
Shite.
In another minute, his attention was drawn to the ground floor and toward the darkened corridor down which that red-faced woman had disappeared. He recognized the height and width of the woman walking toward him now before she’d come into the bare light of foyer.
And since he was done with politeness, he said with ill-concealed hostility to Lady Agnes as she drew nearer, “Sister house in Glasgow, aye?”
“Pardon my secretary,” the woman replied, sounding not at all put out either by being caught in the lie or by Calum’s rudeness. “She did not lie, only predated my departure. I am to leave shortly.”
“Aye, then, I’ll no’ keep you, ma’am. I’ve only come for Julianna Elliot.”
“Let us remove to my office, sir,” she offered with a stiff smile.
“Ma’am, I’m struggling here to hold my temper. I dinna want to sit in your office. I dinna want to sip tea or wine or whiskey. I want her returned to me now.”
Drawing an aggrieved breath and standing a bit taller, the good abbess said to Calum, “You may not have the lass returned, sir.” Her tone was no more ambivalent. “Her name has been added to the registry, the addition sent to the bishop. She will be the Bride of Christ now, and not,” she said, arching one brow pointedly, “any mortal man.”
Later, he would wonder why—how!—he was not roaring at this moment. In a dangerously low growl, in a tone that had brought greater persons than she to their knees, Calum asked, “You are telling me I canna see her or take her, though we both ken she did no’ choose to be here?”
“Her fate was decided—likely by our dear Lord savior even as he worked through you—the moment you brought her to us.”
“Is it more coin that you’re after? Name your price, Sister,” he demanded through gritted teeth, leaving off finishing with, you soulless shrew.
“You cannot buy her, sir,” she informed him acidly, “not so easily as you sold her.”
He could simply storm up that grand staircase, shout her name, claim her hand, and be on his way. Who would stop him? His fingers found and tightened on the hilt of his sword.
As if only imparting trivial information, the abbess said, “You know we keep three bailiffs in our employ? I doubt you’d make the second floor before you were set upon.”
As threats went, that one was ineffectual, and while it did rile Calum further that he’d never in his life wanted so badly to strike a woman, he refrained from doing so and pivoted to swing open the door. Standing upon the threshold, he gave a loud whistle through his teeth. He was done playing games, done with this sanctimonious hag telling him what he could or could not do.
His whistling hadn’t alarmed her, he saw, turning to skewer the abbess with a ferocious glare, but the sound of pounding hooves a moment later sure did. With a deviant satisfaction, he watched as color drained from her face as she looked beyond him to where his men came charging up the lane. Calum stood close, towering over her, letting her see all the derision in his face, and daring her, “Call those factors ma’am. I’m just pissed enough I’ll be wanting a swing at something.”
Lady Agnes’s mouth fell open but she said nothing.
The riders reined in very close, and feet hit the ground with terrific thuds before the house was rushed, and the dimly lit foyer was filled with the great size of the MacKinnons.
Calum kept his harsh gaze on the miserable woman even as he said to the men behind him, “Lady Agnes here says Julianna can no’ be returned to us.”
Quite amiably, Artur said, “Well, that’s no’ true.”
“Aye, it is no’,” Calum agreed, taking one step forward that the woman was forced to step back. “Now, where might I find Julianna Elliot?”
She wasn’t trembling, but she definitely felt the threat of their menacing presence. Still, she gave them no answer but a vow. “The bishop will hear about this, sir.”
Calum sneered at her, “You tell the Bishop of Moray that Calum MacKinnon sends his regards.”
He brushed passed her then, the severity of his step jostling her out of his way, and took the stairs three at a time, calling over his shoulder, “Two by two, cover all three floors.”
At the top of the stairs, he turned around that corner the lasses had been peeking from earlier, and just in time to see the tail of a habit disappearing through a door further down the corridor.
He gave chase, barging into the chamber, Artur on his heels. The lass who’d first opened the door to him belowstairs ducked under a long table in the middle of the room. Calum didn’t want to frighten her. He sent his glance swiftly over the tabletop, covered in thick manuscripts, some actually chained to the table. He spied the tops of not one, but two heads beyond that table.
“Where is she?”
No answer came. Slowly, as to be unthreatening, Calum rounded the table. Two sets of eyes lifted with no small amount of awe as he loomed so large above them.
“Lead the way, or point,” he begged, desperation seeping into his tone, “just tell me where she is.”
The one he’d met below stood and gave only a bare nod before darting out of the room. Calum and Artur stayed close, though the child was as a ghost, moving with an ethereal speed that belied her frail and colorless mien. She stopped at another door along the corridor, pointing to it from a foot or so away.
Glancing up at Calum, she said, “I ken you’d no’ leave her here forever.”
Calum frowned, wondering if the child was indeed as fey as she appeared. Without further ado, he quietly pushed open the door, unsure why he was so afraid what he might find within.
Three persons knelt just inside the door, and three sets of eyes lifted at his entrance.
His jaw gaped, the response coming as quick as his recognition of Julianna.
But this was not his Julianna, not the lass he’d delivered to Murkle nine days ago.
She was on her knees, with a young novice on each side of her. In each of their hands was clutched a wooden-handled and filthy-bristled brush. Julianna sat back onto her heels, the brush left on the timber floor at her knees and acknowledged his presence with dull eyes. As did so many of the nuns, she wore a gauzy linen wimple, wrapped in such a way that only the front of her face was visible to him, the flush of her cheeks the only color about her person. Calum couldn’t honestly say if she were surprised or not to see him. Her listless expression barely registered...anything. There was no smile, no anger, no anything. Just that pale and disembodied stare, her green eyes without their usual spark. The rest of her was clothed in a shapeless gray habit that rather billowed around her as she sat. Her hands were red and chapped, and likely not only from today’s undertaking.
Artur muttered a curse behind Calum, and she didn’t even blink. The fey creature who’d led him here moved around them and stood directly behind Julianna, all but glaring at Calum.
He lifted his hand and beckoned at Julianna. The words that accompanied the motion were slower in coming, his brain unscrambling from the shock of her ghostly appearance. “Come, Julianna. I’ve come to take you away.”
Her reception of this was no more than her reaction to his initial coming. She only stared at him. The next oldest lass nudged Julianna and whispered something at her. The fey creature standing behind removed her critical gaze from Calum to frown at whatever the lass had said.
And for just a moment, Julianna showed some animation, brief though it was. She tilted her head at him, but this was not done coquettishly, but more in resignation or enervation. She appeared wholly drained.
“To Caerhayes then, after all,” she assumed, her voice bringing another scowl to Calum, for the choked and brutal sound of it.
Calum shook his head, racked with sorrow, while Artur was quick to assure her, “Nae, lass. Nowhere near Caerhayes. Just away for now, from this place.”
“Thank you, but no.”
“No?” Calum repeated, stupefied.
“Och, now, c’mon then—” Artur began, but was interrupted by noises coming close.
Calum kept his regard on her, sure that Artur would handle come what may.
“Julianna,” Calum urged.
She ignored him, now in some whispered discussion with those three lasses, the tiny one bent over with her face at Julianna’s shoulder. Calum was quite sure he made out, “I would go, were I you,” from one lass, and was positive he heard Julianna respond, “I cannot leave you.”
Calum turned his head and saw that Finn and the others had come as well, were crowded into the doorway. He sought his captain’s eye, seeking guidance, but Finn only gaped slack-jawed at Julianna, his brows crunched drastically.
A wispy but urgent voice sounded at the open door behind the MacKinnons then. “Aggie has sent for the sheriff.” When they pivoted to see who’d given that warning, no one was seen or found in the doorway.
Finally Julianna stood, not without difficulty that Calum’s confusion and frown reached new depths. She said simply, “Very well,” and motioned for the younger girls to stand as well. “Let me collect my things. Come along, girls.”
She did not walk by Calum and his men to leave the room via the door through which they’d come but moved slowly toward the far end of the large room and opened another door. It dawned on Calum that he should not let her out of his sight, and he dashed toward that door, just as she disappeared through it, pulling it closed behind her.
It did not open at his persuasion. Calum stared at the handle. She’d locked him away from her.
“Son of a—”
“C’mon,” said Finn. “We’ll get her.”
They spent the next thirty minutes tearing apart Murkle, but never once saw any trace of Julianna or any of those lasses she’d taken away with her. Calum and his men escaped out the back door at the same time the sheriff and his officers were charging through the front.