gave up, and with her decision, all emotion seemed to leave her. She walked and talked and slept and ate with a curious detachment that terrified everyone around her.
A fortnight later they came for her, a company of men mounted on horses and dressed in full mail. Bonnets hid their faces, and she didn’t recognize their voices. With trembling lips, Flora announced their arrival, and Jeanne went out to meet them.
“Lady Jeanne Maxwell.” A man in gray armor seated on a dancing brown stallion spoke. “You are under arrest.”
“On what charge?”
“Witchcraft.”
The word hung, suspended on the air between them.
“I am no witch,” Jeanne said at last.
“Do you deny that Grania Douglas was your teacher?”
Jeanne lifted her chin. “Grania was my friend. She was no witch.”
“Do you deny that she claimed to have the sight?”
“Every woman in the Highlands claims it,” said Jeanne contemptuously.
“Do you have it, Lady Maxwell?”
Instant denial sprang to her lips, but the words were never spoken. Images of Flodden Moor filled her mind. Her hesitation sealed her fate.
“Seize her,” the man ordered.
Two men dismounted and held her arms. Jeanne did not struggle. “Where will I be tried?” she asked their leader.
The man looked at her for a long time. The hard-bitten brown of his eyes glittered through the slit in his bonnet. The stallion fidgeted and pawed at the ground. With a harsh command and a swift jerk of the reins, the man brought him under control.
“You’ve already been tried,” he said shortly.
“By what law?”
“Mine.”
“Why do you do this?” she whispered.
He didn’t answer. She saw his eyes move over the walls and gables of Traquair House. “Prepare the scaffold,” he ordered.
Within moments a rope was twisted and thrown over the oak tree she and John had climbed as children. There was no platform, no keening of the pipes, no jeering crowds. The face of her accuser was unknown. Jeanne looked upon the proceedings as a curious observer with the same cloudy detachment that had governed her actions for the last several weeks. Even when she was lifted to the saddle of the brown stallion and the rope was placed around her neck and tightened, she did not protest.
The brown-eyed man shouted the command and flung her from his saddle. The rope was pulled taut. Searing pain closed around her throat, her neck snapped, and there was no more pain, only darkness. Jeanne Maxwell was dead.
Twenty-Two
TRAQUAIR HOUSE
1993
I walked Ian to his car, conscious of the possessive curve of his hand under my elbow.
“Are you going to tell me what happened in there?” he asked.
“Maybe you’d better tell me,” I said, looking at my watch. An hour and a half had passed while I had watched Scotland fall to her knees.
He frowned and leaned against the car. “You were unusually quiet when your parents first came down,” he told me. “Do you remember that?”
I shook my head. “The last thing I remember is your face after you finished stoking the fire. You looked as if you were in shock.”
The look on his face told me he knew much more than he was saying. “You’re tired,” he said, kissing me on the forehead. “This business about your mother must have affected you more than you realize. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
His back was toward me as he opened the door of his car.
“Jeanne Maxwell is dead, Ian.” My words stopped him cold. There was no need for further explanation.
The silence stretched out between us. “I know,” he said at last, his voice low.
“What are we going to do?”
He must have sensed my desperation because he turned back to me and took me in his arms. “We’ll work it out, Christina,” he said. “Somehow we’ll get to the bottom of this.”
“Jeanne found the stone,” I whispered into his shirt. “But it wasn’t there when she looked for it again. Why wasn’t it there?”
“I don’t know,” he confessed. “Maybe the timing was wrong for her. Maybe it was already too late.”
“How will we know when it’s too late for us?”
“It won’t be,” he said fiercely. “Trust me. It won’t be. I’ll come back tomorrow, and we’ll look together. Do you remember enough to recognize familiar landmarks?”
“I think so.”
“Good.” He squeezed my hand and released me. “Get some rest. I’ll be here early. Ask Kate to fix her famous scones but tell her—”
“What?”
He shook his head. “Never mind. I’ll tell her myself.”
I wasn’t sure that I wanted to tell Kate anything, but since I really had nothing but intuition on which to base my