The Lady of Secrets Read Free

have no idea how much pleasure I will take in watching you burn, you loathsome crone. If you were not already bound for hell this day, I vow I’d snap your neck myself.”
    He meant it. Robbie’s arm felt like steel beneath Maidred’s grasp. The bitterness and anger in his face alarmed her. She would have never imagined her gentle brother capable of such hatred.
    “Robbie,” she pleaded, trying to draw him away from Tam.
    The old woman appeared unmoved by his fury or his threats. Tam got to her feet, shaking out her tangled mass of gray-white hair. She yawned, stretching her arms and arching her back like a scrawny cat.
    She smiled at Robbie. “Regretful as I am to disappoint you, laddie, I won’t be going anywhere. The devil will have to wait for me a bit longer. Nor will heaven be getting itself another angel in the form of your bonny sister. No one is going to die today.”
    “If you believe that, then your brain is as rotted as your soul. You have broken the sacred law against practicing witchcraft—”
    “Sacred law!” Tam cut him off with a contemptuous sniff. “That law has been writ down in the books since my grandmother’stime and how many witches have been burned? None, I’ll warrant you. Oh, I have been hauled up before the magistrate and condemned for sorcery before. I’ve been imprisoned, chained in the pillory. Once I was even flogged. But that is all that ever came of it.”
    She shrugged. “We are not like those barbaric English, hanging poor folk for a little magic. The Scots have a healthy respect for their cunning women.”
    “This time is different,” Robbie said. “The king himself is coming here today to witness the sentence being carried out.”
    “Aye, and that will be our salvation. King James will pardon us.”
    “Will he?” Maidred asked. Tam looked so confident, Maidred felt a flicker of hope, like glimpsing a far-off light in a night of unending darkness.
    Robbie pressed her hand. His face was still taut with anger, but his eyes gentled. “No, May, he won’t. This witch and her friends made a waxen image of the king to bring about his destruction. That is not just witchcraft. That is treason.
    “The king believes that when he sailed to Denmark to fetch home his new bride, the coven brewed up storms to prevent his ever returning to Scotland. Why would he pardon those he deems responsible?”
    “Because the king was present in the court the day I was examined.” Tam smiled slyly. “I whispered a few private words in his ear, showed him exactly how powerful a cunning woman I am.”
    “Then you sealed your own doom, you old fool.”
    “Nae, our king is a soft man, afeard of his own shadow. How many times have the great lairds of this land plotted and rebelled against the king? And how many of them have beenput to death by the king’s command? Very few. The king is always quick to forgive, eager for reconciliation.
    “That’s because our good king Jamey has no stomach for violence.” Tam grinned at Maidred. “So don’t you fret, lass. Just watch me and do as I do. When the king arrives, drop to your knees, fake a few tears and a little repentance. Cry out to His Majesty for his mercy and we’ll both come out of this all right. You’ll see.”
    Maidred trembled. Weep, beg, and appear contrite? She would have no difficulty with that because her tears would be genuine, her remorse sincere. But could the king be so easily moved?
    Maidred wanted to believe Tam, but she had placed too much faith in the old woman’s assurances before to be comforted.
    She looked instead at her brother and it was Robbie’s expression that heartened her. His face had gone still, but his eyes blazed with the same hunger that threatened to consume her.
    The hunger of hope.

    ROBERT BRODY SHOVED HIS WAY THROUGH THE CROWD MILLING in the streets. Jostled and pushed from all sides, Robert thrust back, jabbing his elbow sharply into the paunch of a burly merchant.
    “Oof! Easy there, lad,” the