leaned her head back on the pillow. It was such a relief to confide in someone. Someone who carried the same dark legacy in her blood. “Do you know of Mairi of Shiels, Mother?”
“Aye.” Janet’s lips trembled. She knew more than she wanted of Mairi Maxwell of Shiels.
“She married David Murray before Bannockburn,” Katrine continued. “But she loved King Edward of England. She was killed for giving him the Coronation Stone and cursed by David’s mother, Lady Douglas.” Her eyes were huge in her too-thin face. “The woman was a witch, Mother. Her curse haunts us still. It comes through the women of the Murray line.” In a hushed whisper she told of Mairi’s deception, of how she switched the stones, of the long, narrow passageway, the flickering candles, the netherworld-lit stone in the burial crypt, and the desperate, persuasive power of Mairi’s haunted eyes.
“You said there were two women,” Janet reminded her. “Who else did you see?”
Katrine took several deep breaths, willing her thundering heart to calm itself. “Every night I see it over and over again. There is a wide moor filled with horses and armor and stained with blood. The wounded cry out. ’Tis a horrible sight. It smells of death and rotting flesh. Mountains overlook the moor on three sides.” Katrine wrinkled her nose against the odor and swatted at imaginary flies.
Janet’s hand rose to her throat. Flodden Moor! She could almost see the terrifying images Katrine described.
“A woman, richly dressed, walks among the bodies,” said Katrine. “She searches the wounded on the field, turning them over, one after another, asking those who live, ‘Where is John Maxwell?’ Finally she finds the one she seeks. With a cry, she pulls his head into her lap. ‘You’re very pale, my love,’ he says. ‘You must eat. It isn’t wise for you to go without food. Don’t cry, Jeannie,’ he begs her. ‘Maxwells never cry.’”
Tears rolling down her cheeks, Katrine sat up and grasped her mother’s shoulders. “’Tis my own face I see,” she whispered. “Tell me why Mairi of Shiels and Jeanne Maxwell have my face.”
Janet’s eyes were wide with shock and startled recognition. “Of course,” she said, tracing the bones of her daughter’s cheeks with wondering fingers. “How could I not have seen it? Yet, it was so very long ago when they last came to me.”
“What are you saying?”
Katrine’s horrified whisper pulled Janet back into the present. She sighed and explained. “I, too, was afflicted with the nightmares. They first came when I carried you. After you were born, they disappeared forever. I believe ’tis the curse.”
“But you are a Douglas, not a Murray,” Katrine protested.
Janet shook her head. “I cannot explain everything, my love. Lady Douglas was a Murray and also a Douglas by marriage. She gave her husband three children. Our families have intermarried so often that it would be an amazing thing were we not all related.” Her hands clenched in her lap. “There was opposition when your father and I wanted to wed,” she confessed. “I carry Maxwell and Douglas blood. Your father is a Murray from the line of David and Mairi. Although no one admits to actually believing the power of the curse, they all step carefully around it.” She reached out and brushed the hair back from her daughter’s brow. “I believe there are many who have had the dreams. Otherwise the curse would have long since been forgotten. It is only dangerous when all the conditions are present.”
“What are the other conditions?”
“I’m not sure.”
Katrine’s forehead wrinkled in concentration. “There must be a reason we dream of only these two. Something about them was the same.” She gasped and clutched her mother’s sleeve as a thought occurred to her. Looking into Janet’s dark eyes, she realized her mother had come to the same conclusion. “They have my face,” she whispered. “They died horribly and they have my face.”
“It means nothing, nothing at all.” Janet was on the brink of hysteria. “When you have the bairn, this nonsense will stop just as it did for me.”
Katrine kicked away the confining bedcovers. Taking Janet’s hands in her own, she knelt beside her and spoke slowly and deliberately. “Don’t you see, Mother? I am the one. I must prove Mairi of Shiels did not betray Scotland. I must end the curse or I will not live to bear my child.”
Janet’s eyes burned with an eerie light. For a moment, Katrine thought she recognized the fanatical glow of Grizelle Douglas’s witchery in