By These Ten Bones by Clare B. Dunkle

Author:Clare B. Dunkle
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Henry Holt and Co. (BYR)
Published: 2005-11-26T05:00:00+00:00

10

Maddie went home to find Fair Sarah building up the cooking fire and Paul fetching in peats. He dropped them by the hearth and came over to the girl. “Madeleine, what was it about?” he asked quietly.

Terribly discouraged and frightened at the transformation of her neighbors, Maddie wasn’t ready to answer him. She gathered comfort from the familiar sights of her own house: the milk sheep lying in the corner, the chickens murmuring quietly to themselves as they roosted for the night. Then she looked at Paul, and her feeling of comfort evaporated. She knew just how the faces of the townspeople would look when they threw him onto the fire.

“Tell the truth, I don’t know what it was about,” she said, kneeling by her mother’s side to help her pat out oatcakes. “Black Ewan says Lady Mary’s a witch because of the smith’s baby and because of the—the Water Horse that attacked you. But because of lots of other things, too, things that go back years and years. People were thinking them up all day.”

“Well, I know what it was about, if you don’t,” sighed Fair Sarah. “Black Ewan’s never forgiven that woman because Kathleen wouldn’t marry him. Lady Mary had no kin to stand by her, and the people are afraid. They’re looking for someone to blame right now. Strange things have been happening lately.”

James Weaver and Father Mac had been watching over Lady Mary in the Hole until Black Ewan brought the padlock and secured the trapdoor. Then they had stayed by the castle to make sure that the crowd worked out its anger and no harm came to the prisoner. The two men ducked under the doorway now, and Father Mac bent to warm his hands.

“Is she really a witch?” asked the wood-carver, looking at Maddie.

“No!” she burst out in response. “She’s a sharp-tongued, proud old woman, and that’s all she is.”

“But she’ll die as a witch,” growled Father Mac. “Of that I have no doubt. I can’t just sit by while an innocent woman is hanged out of revenge and fear. I can’t watch my parish commit murder.”

“Do you have a choice, Father?” asked James Weaver. “You’ll not find a way into the Hole, and Black Ewan will take his farmhands with him to escort her to the new lord. The padlock’s on the grate over Lady Mary, and Black Ewan always has the key.”

“It isn’t right, what’s happening to her,” Maddie said in a pleading tone, and her eyes told Paul that she didn’t know what to do. Would it save Lady Mary if she gave away his secret, or would it just mean another death?

A gloomy silence settled over the room. The young man sat down and took up his carving, frowning as he thought.

“I can make a key,” he announced. They all stared blankly at him. “I can study Black Ewan’s key,” he explained, “and I can carve you a copy.”

“A wooden key would break in the lock, son,” observed Father Mac kindly.

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