“Find clothing for her,” someone said, “and bring her before the court.”
When they brought her before the court she could not stand. She should have been fighting, declaring her innocence, but she could not speak. Dimly she heard the matrons give testimony to her “devil’s mark.” From a different world of mist and blackness she heard Matthews tell of how she had murdered—in consort with the condemned witch, Pegeen MacCardle, and Satan—one Mary Corcoran of Glasgow.
They will not believe it, Brianna thought through the haze that surrounded her. Surely good people could not believe the things of which he accused her. Matthews continued to talk, his voice rising and falling, and with each word Brianna realized that he longed for her death with a passion. She opened her mouth to deny him, but blackness descended on her and she swayed to the floor. Someone held her up, and for a moment she could not even remember her name, or where she was.
Then it was over. She was condemned, sentenced to hang by the neck until dead.
She was taken to an empty cell to await her execution. It was then, pitifully, that she came to full consciousness again. Her merciful world of mist and gray left her. She was doomed to die totally aware—when she had not been so to fight for her defense.
In that little room she sank to her knees and folded her hands. She asked God’s forgiveness for those sins she had committed, but she could not, even in her prayers, accept defeat with true Christian fortitude. Over and over again she asked in silent supplication how God could allow Matthews to live.
She prayed for her family and for Sloan. She begged God not to allow Matthews to take Sloan. That he should die for having rescued her seemed entirely too great an injustice.
Time passed too quickly. Men came for her again, despite her protests, and dragged her along an arched hallway that led to a street on the common, where the townspeople were milling. They stared at her; some with curiosity, some in horror, some with indignation.
It was like the day her aunt had been killed. There were many who would have protested, but they feared for their own lives as this insanity surrounded them.
“I am not a witch!” she screamed. “This man is the creature of the devil! He is not a man of God. God does not condemn without trial! God does not torture innocents—”
Her arm was twisted so viciously that she broke off her speech with a cry. The assembled crowd began to murmur and shuffle about uneasily, but despite this she was dragged up the steps to the gallows. She noticed that the sky was a brilliant blue and that the air was crisp and cool and beautifully clean.
Her executioner jerked her hands behind her back and tied them despite her struggles. “Good people, don’t let them do this to me! You will be next! You—”
“In the name of His Royal Majesty, James II of England, Scotland, and Ireland, you are condemned to die for the ungodly crimes of witchcraft and murder!”
Matthews’s voice rose above hers. The noose was slipped over her neck and she felt the rough fiber of the rope against her throat.
She was about to die and all she could think of was the beauty that had been so briefly hers with Lord Sloan Treveryan. Life. It was so very, very wonderful. And she had only seen it so clearly when it was about to be taken …
“Recant to the people, witch! Confess before them your sins and die in the grace of God!”
“I am not guilty! You are guilty, Matthews, of the murder of countless innocents! Coldblooded murder—”
“Executioner!” Matthews ordered. “Pull the lever!”
“No!”
Fragments of her life flashed through her mind, but above it all desperation shrieked within her. No! This could not be the end. Not for her. She could not be about to die.
Not now! her soul cried out in terror. Not now, not when she had just learned what love was! Sloan! Tears stung her eyes. She had left him not knowing life was to be so short. If she had but an hour now … but the moment of death was at hand.
Her mind registered the sounds around her. She heard the crank of wood as the lever for the trap door was pulled, and vaguely heard a peculiar whistling through the air. Strange, but, she knew that whistling sound.
“Die, witch! To the devil goes your soul!”
Matthews’s voice rose high over the crowd, a chant that compelled and jerked at the emotions, calling on fear, on the terror that lurked within the souls of all men.
What did a whistling sound matter? she asked herself. Matthews had not heard it; his voice had risen above it. Perhaps she was only imagining she’d heard something.
“The trap!” he raged.
She thought she saw an object fly through the air.
The trap door beneath Brianna’s feet snapped open beneath her and gave way to the void of death. She was dying. She felt the coarse rasp of the rope against her neck and tensed instinctively with final, desperate horror, awaiting the merciless jerk of the noose.
But miraculously, the rope tightened for barely a second—then hardly at all. She did not choke, nor did she stop breathing. The rope broke—cleanly, completely. She kept falling and falling, until she lay sprawled on the dusty ground, stunned and incredulous.
A voice rang out from the crowd, loud, strong, and scornful, riddling the air with its forceful timbre.
Sloan’s voice!
“I charge you Matthews with crimes against God and humanity! And I promise you sir, that this will be your day to die!”
Sloan! Tears filled her eyes in gratitude and disbelief. Sloan was there for her again, when all had been lost, when she’d known no hope …
The whistle she had heard had been that of an arrow, sent soaring through the air with a cunning and uncanny marksmanship, severing the rope.
He, courageous as the wind, she thought with the greatest pride, had come to challenge the lethal shadows of injustice. To challenge the crown—and death itself.
Chapter Ten
The dirt, which created a gritty feeling within her mouth, assured Brianna that her rescue from the portals of death was not a dying dream, but incredible, wonderful fact.
She had little time for anything but that realization, for all hell was breaking loose upon the earth.
She scrambled to a crouch beneath the scaffolding of the gallows while the sharp whistle of flying arrows continued to sound as music to her ears and the cacophony of pistols fired at close range set her ears ringing. Before her, the man who would have been her executioner dropped to the dirt.
All about her the people were shouting and screaming. For several seconds Brianna held very still, wondering in awe how Sloan had managed such a swift and sure attack upon the witchfinder and the forces of James II.
At last she crept from beneath the gallows, ripping the noose of hemp from about her neck. She froze at the sight of a king’s man approaching her, then exhaled as a shot was fired and he spun about like a marionette jerked by strings, and fell. Brianna gazed at him for a second of horror as his eyes glazed not inches from her feet, then crawled again to rise outside the scaffolding.
She raised her eyes to see that Matthews alone remained alive, standing on the gallows. He shouted orders furiously, but already a good fraction of his men lay dead while the rest fought the crowd to find their attackers.
Only Sloan could be seen. Mounted atop a gleaming roan, he charged through the crowd, who cheered him on and eagerly made way for him.
Matthews drew a pistol as Sloan approached. But the witchfinder panicked at the cold relentlessness of the man bearing down on him, and his shot went harmlessly into the ground. He was shaking too badly to reload, and cast the pistol aside, drawing his saber instead.
“Captain! The girl!”
Brianna saw that the warning had been shouted from the roof of a nearby smithy by Robin, one of Sloan’s young crewman. And then she gasped, realizing the cause of his warning—more of Matthews’s men were barging their way to the gallows. One burly soldier was almost near her.
Sloan was at last upon them—but his
purpose changed radically when no other course was open to him. He had wanted to kill Matthews—God, how he had wanted to kill him—but Brianna was vulnerable. And the king’s forces were closing around her.
The roan pranced and shied to the steps of the gallows. Sloan kept one eye on Matthews and shouted. “Brianna! Run, girl, run to me!”
A soldier came toward her with his sword raised to strike her.
She ran to Sloan. He reached for her with one hand, commanding, “Jump, lass—now!”
She gripped his hand and leapt with all her strength and energy, throwing herself in front of his saddle. She felt the deadly tension of his arm as it swung, and his cutlass flashed in the air with deadly purpose. The soldier screamed and fell. “To the ship, lads! To the ship!” Sloan shouted.
Sloan’s arm came around her, securing her to the saddle with his vital strength and warmth. “Hold tight, lass!” he compelled her. The roan reared and bolted and took off in a mad, erratic gallop.
The crowd, now alive with excitement and frenzy, thundered out their cheers, parting to allow Sloan and the scattered sailors to escape. Matthews shouted orders in their wake, and as they clattered their way furiously down the cobblestoned streets, the soldiers were hard on their trail.
Merchants’ stands of fruits and vegetables crashed and careened around them as the sailors raced their way to the Sea Hawk. Several of the horses were forced to leap a hay wagon, yet they continued on. The streets swept dizzily by until they reached the dock—and the berth of the Sea Hawk where the horses snorted and shrieked in protest as they were jerked to rearing halts.
Brianna found herself thrust into Robin’s arms from her seat atop the roan. “Take her below!” Sloan ordered, sliding the mount himself and swatting the animal’s rear to send it skittishly racing away.
“Come!” Robin urged her.
His arm was about her and she followed his lead to the gangplank, but twisted to look behind her. Sloan was hurrying his men along, and shouting orders. “Slash her ties, men! Raise the sails!”
And beyond him the king’s troops were coming, Matthews at the lead.
“Robin!” Brianna shrieked as she saw an arrow sail through the air. She dragged him down with her, in time to save them each from a mortal blow, but too late to avoid a hit, as evidenced by Robin’s agonized screech as the arrow tore into his thigh.
“Leave me!” he commanded Brianna, gritting out his words painfully between clenched teeth.
“Nay, I cannot!” she cried in horror, locking her jaw together for strength as, placing her hands beneath his arms, she dragged along. The task was almost beyond her and she was moving terribly slowly.
“Brianna!” Robin hissed. “Go—seek shelter.”
Salt sweat fell from her forehead in slender rivulets into her eyes, and she gasped for breath and tensed again to pull his weight along. “We shall make it, Robin.”
But they wouldn’t. The king’s men were almost upon the Sea Hawk. A cannon suddenly boomed from the deck of the ship, slowing the tide that swarmed upon them, but not ceasing it. There were still more men.
The thundering repercussion sent Brianna sprawling to the gangplank, coughing and choking from the powder that filled the air. She struggled to her feet, tears falling as she reached desperately for Robin’s arms again. She would not make it. Already soldiers were engaging in hand-to-hand combat with the sailors upon the gangplank. They drew nearer. And nearer. She stared with horror, then screamed aloud as a bearded soldier bore down upon them, his sword gleaming as it caught the golden rays of the brilliant sun.
“This way, gent!”
It was Sloan’s voice, and his cutlass teased the steel armor upon the man’s back and forced him to turn with a growl. “Soldiers should fight armed men, not defenseless girls and wounded boys!”
The soldier bellowed and charged at Sloan, who sidestepped him with agility, swiftly parrying the assault with a slash of his cutlass. The man let out a hideous shriek and careened over the plank to the water below.
Then Sloan was sheathing his bloodied cutlass and hunching down beside Brianna. “Get aboard!” he ordered her, ducking to take Robin himself. He grunted, and hefted the heavy seaman over his shoulder. Brianna coughed and whirled to obey Sloan. He followed behind her, shouting as they leapt to the deck, “The gangplank—drop the gangplank!” The men were all aboard, but so were more than two score of the soldiers. The bow of the Sea Hawk was alive with the curses and screams of battle, the clash of swords, the thud of steel.
Sloan propelled Brianna before him as he hurriedly carried Robin to the shelter of the forward companionway and deposited him there.
“How is it, lad?”
Robin grinned through his pain. “Not so bad, Captain. Not so bad.”
Sloan nodded grimly and patted Robin on the shoulder. He glanced briefly at Brianna. “Get yourself to safety, girl! Into the cabin, now!” he railed.
She could not seek out the cabin—not with Robin upon the stairs and the men who had so valiantly fought to save her locked in mortal combat. Sloan, assuming she would obey him under the circumstances, had already turned from them to join the fighting.
If he dies I shall not be able to bear it, she thought.
A groan from Robin reminded her of his presence—and of the tearing wound within his thigh. She dropped down beside him, ripping shreds of material from her dress. “Robin!” she whispered to him. “I’m going to take the arrow out.”
“No.” He groaned. “The blood …”
“I can stanch it,” she assured him, trying to smile her assurance even as she heard the groans of the men fighting just feet away. “Trust me, Robin,” she encouraged him. “I swear I’ll not let you die.”
She clenched her teeth and studied the arrow. Fortunately, the shaft had not fully penetrated the flesh. Brianna breathed a sigh of relief. No major blood vessels had been severed, she was certain. She placed her left hand upon his thigh and her right upon the arrow shaft, tensing with her determined effort to bring forth all her strength. The arrow stubbornly refused to give; she just as stubbornly refused to allow it to remain.
It gave so suddenly that she keeled backward. Robin screamed, and she scrambled back to her knees swiftly to wrap the wound in the fabric from her dress, pressing upon his thigh firmly and pulling her bandage tight to stanch the flow of blood.
Robin opened his pain-glazed eyes. “I’m the one who called you ‘whore’ ” he confessed with whispered shame.
Crimson splashed over her cheeks and she lowered her eyes, then raised them quickly to smile at him. “It does not matter,” she said softly, “and you must not try to talk.”
He gripped her fingers with hot, dry hands. “It does matter,” he whispered. “It matters, for I wronged you. You are not a whore, but an angel.”
She was stunned. Witch, whore—and now angel. The pity of it was that she was just a woman, a terrified woman now as the hand-to-hand combat continued just steps away upon the deck.
A scream caught in her throat at the sight of Sloan. As he engaged in swordplay with a soldier, a black-clad figure was creeping toward his unwary back.
“Sloan!”
Her horrified scream rose above the din of steel and men.
Sloan ducked and spun just in time to allow Matthews’s blade to find its mark in one of his own men. With a stunned gurgle the soldier gasped, gripped his gut, and fell to the deck. Matthews’s eyes lifted from the dead man he had accidentally killed, and fell upon Brianna, who hovered within the shelter of the companionway. She returned his stare with wide, mesmerized eyes. She saw the mad hate in his eyes and she knew he would readily sacrifice his own life to take hers.
Sloan shouted the witchfinder’s name from his perch upon the boom of the mainmast. “If you would face me, witchfinder, do so now!”
Matthews’s eyes turned to the man who hovered near him with catlike agility, ready to pounce between him and his intended victim. “Son of Satan!” Matthews raged. But he spoke no mo
re, for Sloan Treveryan bounded from the rigging to land before him, his deadly cutlass raised.
Transfixed, Brianna watched the swordplay. Her heart seemed to rise to her throat and constrict her breath as the two men parried one another again … and again.
And then she saw that Sloan’s grim features held a lethal grin. His eyes were narrowed and hard … glittering with deadly vengeance. He had been playing with the man all along.
The cutlass made a high sweep into the air—and then descended.
Matthews—the witchfinder—stood still for an instant. An instant in which he stared incredulously at Sloan, and at the stream of blood that stained the white of his shirt beneath his black coat. Again his eyes fell upon Sloan.
And then he fell to the deck.
Brianna let out a shriek. Forgetting Robin, she stumbled to the deck. He was dead. She felt waves of heat engulf her, then a rampaging cold that tore like ragged ice against her spine. By God’s grace, was it decent to feel such a joy at a man’s death? No longer could he hunt her; no more could he aim a finger at the innocent and bring down agony and death. He was dead—and with or without God’s forgiveness, Brianna was so grateful and glad that she felt she could die herself with the shuddering power of her relief.
And Sloan … Sloan was still alive!
There truly was a God. Justice had come at last.
But the battle was not yet over. Even as Brianna stood at the top of the stairs, she heard a whoosh of sound, and instinctively ducked. A sword, caked with blood, had swerved unnervingly near her throat. With glazed eyes she looked around her. Sloan was engaged in a deadly duel again, and right next to her George was fencing with a very young, frightened soldier. Both of them, so young, the fear of death in their eyes.
She thought that she would scream again. Scream and scream and scream because she was the cause of it. So much bloodshed!
“Surrender, Darton!” Sloan shouted, and the king’s man paused. She thought she had seen him before, but she was too dazed to remember when.
All action aboard the ship ceased. There were no more sounds of the clash of steel. Only the ocean could be heard, the waves lapping peacefully, lullingly, against the hull. All the men stood still, breathlessly waiting as Sloan and Darton stared at each other.