Aidan Read Free Page B

arrows. We have no way te protect ourselves from these bluidy bastards.”
    “Coira, watch yer words, as they arena thet o’ a proper lassie.”
    “Ye canna tell me thet when I learned e’ery foul word I ken from ye, big sister.”
    Effie knew this was the truth. She’d learned to fight to protect them, and had hardened her heart the day she lost her mother. But her mother had warned her that the English would find them some day. And though they were MacDuffs, they were also descendents of a woman who angered the English years ago, and now they were the ones who were going to pay for it.
    “Where are we?” Effie called down to the guards.
    “You’re in Liddel Castle,” the guard told her.
    “But . . . thet’s a Scottish c astle,” she said, knowing of its whereabouts just north of the English border.
    “Not anymore it’s not. Lord Ralston the Bold has seized it, and I assure you he is English, not a wretched Scot.”
    “What do ye want from us?” she called down to the guards. Her heart thumped in her chest and she knew it didn’t look good for either her or her sister. If she couldn’t strike up some kind of bargain, they would most likely die in these cages. She only hoped they wouldn’t be tortured, or perhaps kept in a cage for four years the way the English had done to her grandmother, Isabel MacDuff. “What did ye do with the rest o’ our clan?”
    “ What clan?” asked one of the guards. “You mean that band of gypsies you travel with? Hah! That’s no clan, they were nothing but common thieves and swindlers.”
    If she weren’t in such a dire situation, she’d almost find that amusing, since that’s exactly what she’d been thinking about the English. “They are our family. Now let me loose, I demand you.” She pulled on the grates again, causing the cage to rattle. A crow settled itself atop her sister’s cage, reaching its beak through the bars, just waiting to be able to peck their eyes from their bodies as soon as they were dead and shriveled from the sun. Her sister screamed and hid her face in her hands.
    “You have no gypsy family any more,” the guard relayed. “They tried to attack us when we came for you and your sister, and we had to kill them all.”
    “Nay!” she cried, the anguish inside her starting to boil over. Her heart felt hollow, and she mourned for the lives of the gypsies that were taken, because they did naught but protect Effie and her sister since the death of her mother. “I’ll kill ye bastards, e’ery one o’ ye, I swear. Ye willna get away with this.”
    “Effie?” She looked over to see her sister crying, and she wanted nothing more than to gather her in to her arms and comfort her the way she’d always done through the years. But she couldn’t. She tried to reach through the grates, and her sister reached for her as well, but while their hands were close, they could not touch each other. “They’re goin’ te kill us, arena they?”
    Effie’s heart broke to see the fear in her sister’s eyes. Though the girl was already four and ten years of age, she’d been weak and sickly most her life, and her heart was not strong. She often fell victim to fevers. She could already see her sister’s frail body shaking. And though it was summer, she knew come nightfall her sister would be cold.
    “Nay, stay strong,” she told Coira . “They canna win unless we give in te them, and lose our will te live.”
    “Why are they doin’ this?” she asked again. “What did we do te deserve this kind o’ treatment?”
    “We did nothin’ ,” she explained. “’Twas an act o’ our grandmathair thet has them so roiled.”
    “ I kennawhat ye mean.”
    “I’ll take care o’ it, now jest get some sleep.”
    She saw her sister’s eyes closing, and she knew the girl was exhausted. Effie swore she’d do whatever it took to right this situation. No more MacDuffs would live in a cage in front of the publi c eye the way her grandmother had. Her mother