Chapter 1

Maggie straightened up and wiped droplets of sweat off her forehead with her arm. She looked down at Mr. Beaton, the experienced castle healer slowly dying under her—she was sure—far less capable care. He was finally asleep but still not quite at rest, his head rolling back and forth and his mouth emitting occasional moans. His face was gray and clammy but he was no longer sweating. This was likely a bad sign.

"Miss," a voice called to her from the doorway. "Miss, you're needed elsewhere. A man's been injured."

Turning toward the voice, Maggie began to protest. "I—" But there was nothing left for her to do for Mr. Beaton. "Yes, fine," she said. "But someone needs to stay with him. Broden, he's been helping me. The little boy from the kitchen. Please, if you could fetch him and get him to stay with him. Or, maybe an older girl. Just, someone should be here."

"Yes, of course. Please, follow me."

Maggie followed the young man out into the narrow hallway.

"Aren't you going to—" she began.

"I will send for the boy as soon as I can." The man was impatient. "I must bring you to his room first."

As they passed through a series of dark passageways, Maggie worried about leaving Mr. Beaton alone and hoped that the man would finish with her soon and go off to get Broden. Still, part of her was grateful for the guide. She had arrived at the castle just weeks prior and was still confused by all its rooms and halls. In fact, her first night there she had gotten so lost on her way back to her room that she had eventually given up and slept in the hallway, only to be found the next morning by a surprised but sympathetic Mrs. Fitz, the castle's cook and general runner of the servants.

After at least five minutes, they arrived at a closed door which the man tentatively opened to reveal a room full of men clustered around a large canopy bed upon which a large man lay face down, his blood soaked shirt exposed.

The man who had led her here knocked on the opened door. He looked nervous and in the increased light of the fire, Maggie could see he was young, seventeen or eighteen, around her age.

"Yes?" a man from the group turned to look at them. He was also tall and mostly bald with a gray mustache and beard that obscured the bottom half of his face. Maggie recognized him as Dougal MacKenzie, the laird's brother.

The young man began. "Sir, this is Miss…"

"Ó Broin, sir." Maggie stepped forward.

"Where's Beaton?"

"He's taken ill," said the young man. "Miss Ó Broin has been tending to him. She knows some things about healing. That's why I brought her here."

"Ó Broin," Dougal repeated. "You're Irish, then?"

"Yes, Sir. From Donegal."

"Donegal. That's good. I can never understand those southern bastards. Can you speak any English?"

"Not much."

"Well, it's a good thing your Gaelic's not perverted then."

"Yes, sir."

"Where'd you learn healing?"

"From my mother."

"What's your Christian name, girl?"

"Mairead. Or Maggie, really."

"I thought you didn't speak English."

"It's what I've always been called."

"Well, Maggie, let's see what you can do with our young Jamie here."

Maggie approached the bed slowly and bent over to look at the man on the bed. She gently touched his hand to get his attention. When he looked up from the bed, his face was white and waxy and his eyes looked scared.

"My name is Maggie and I'm going to see what I can do here."

"Jamie," said the man, nodding. "Thank you."

"All right, Jamie. If you could just take your shirt off—or maybe I could take it off for you…" Maggie trailed off. She still wasn't sure exactly what was wrong with him but knew she needed to get a closer look at whatever had stained his shirt.

Jamie moved to take his shirt off, then let out a short gasp. From up close, Maggie could see how thick the layer of blood was. As it dried, it had adhered to the shirt and the skin, gluing them together. Maggie instinctively reached for the knife she stored in a pouch by her ankle but then stopped, not sure she wanted these men to know she had such a thing.

"May I borrow a knife?" she asked.

A short man with matted brown hair and a face like a crab apple handed her his knife, eyeing her suspiciously as if afraid she wouldn't know what to do with it once she got it.

"I'm going to cut it off, all right? I won't stick you," Maggie said to reassure Jamie, as well as herself and the cluster of men watching her.

While this helped, she still had to peel parts of the shirt off his back and she could hear him breathing in raspy bursts of air.

"Almost done."

When she finally removed the last bits of fabric, it was like nothing she had ever seen before. Deep gashes were carved into his back from someone lashing him repeatedly and precisely. Entire strips of skin hung loose, attached by sinewy threads. His skin was raw and tough-looking, like a pig she had once seen hanging in a butcher's shop, and all of it was covered in a brown-black layer of blood, trapping dirt and grass inside of the cuts. Maggie let out an involuntary, strangled "oh" and pressed her hand to her mouth.

She heard Dougal MacKenzie say, "The girl can't handle it."

"Who did this?" she asked.

"The English."

Then the men began to whisper amongst themselves, phrases such as "what are we going to do with him?" and "was it safe to bring him here?" escaping periodically.

"Maggie?" Jamie whispered. "Can you make them leave? Please."

"Yes of course." Maggie cleared her throat. "Um, I have to ask you all to leave because—"

Then men kept talking, unfazed.

"Pardon me, sirs," Maggie practically yelled. "I have to ask you to leave so that… I can have more space to work and more air can get in the room."

"I'll not be having some girl tell me where I can or cannot be," said Dougal.

"Yes, sir, I'm sorry. I understand but I'm the only healer you have at the moment and this is what I need to work so you really must leave—all of you—if you want me to attend to him."

Dougal pursed his lips together until they disappeared. He looked like a fitting toddler but Maggie knew he was far more dangerous than that. Then he walked out the door, the rest of the men following behind him. The young man who had come to get her left last.

"Could you also bring some cloth and a water basin and whiskey? And do get Broden, please."

The young man nodded and left.

"Thank you," Jamie said.

When the man returned a few minutes later, Maggie set her materials out on the window sill by the bed, organizing them as her mother had taught her. She encouraged Jamie to have some whiskey before they got to the painful task at hand. As she excavated the first gash, finding she needed to apply considerable pressure in order to pull out the blood and dirt, Jamie let out several muffled moans.

"I'm sorry. I know this hurts. Why don't you talk to me? Tell me about your home."

Jamie moaned again.

"Don't ask me about my home."

"Oh, I'm sorry."

Maggie continued working, feeling Jamie pull away from her slightly with each swipe of her cloth.

"Please," he said. "Keep talking. Tell me about your home."

Maggie was taken aback, no more eager to talk about her home than Jamie was. Nonetheless, she soon heard herself describing her home in great detail, almost mechanically, as she focused the rest of her energy on Jamie's lacerated back.

"It's in Donegal," she said. "But I haven't been back there in years. It was nice, though. We lived just outside of town in a small house—nothing like this—and we had sheep and a few cows. There was a little dirt road that led up to our house and the rest of it was all green, both sides of the road. And that's where our sheep and cows would graze and the grass would start out really high and then be cut right down to the ground by the end of autumn. And we kept a small garden that never really produced anything so we mostly traded milk and cheese and those sorts of things for potatoes and grain. And, uh, what else? It was just my mother and father and me and they uh… Well, actually what you really need to know about the house is the way it smelled. It was stone and turf and then we'd burn the turf too to keep us warm and—you must do this too but in a grand house like this, it wouldn't be the same—it smelled almost like the house was on fire but of course it wasn't. And being inside smelled like falling asleep outside on a sunny day, when you roll in the grass and your nose catches the warm dirt. I miss that the most, other than, of course, my—well, all the people there."

She paused and looked up at the room's high ceilings. They would never trap that warm peaty smell—or its heat for that matter—the way her low, earthen ceiling had. They were the ceilings of a rich man, or an idiot, or both. They were the ceilings of a man who never had to worry about the fire going out, who knew he could start it up the next day, even use wood if he had to. Maggie would never get used to this way of thinking. To her, the extra space was frightening. The cold air between her head and the ceiling felt precarious, as if nothing were holding the roof up and it would all come crashing down on her, crushing her as she slept. The warm, cramped air of her old home was more substantial. It could be trusted to keep the house upright.

She let out a sigh and looked at her work. She had cleaned the cuts, the bulk of the job, and then wrapped Jamie's back with a cloth, tight enough to keep any dirt from getting in but loose enough so as not to hurt too much. She began to tell Jamie she was done but then realized that he had fallen asleep, no doubt aided by the whiskey and the setting sun. She pulled up the furs on his bed so that they covered him up to the waist and then exited, closing the door behind her gently.

She turned around and jumped at the sight of a shadowy figure sitting on a bench outside the door. As he stood up, his face was illuminated by the torches along the wall and Maggie recognized Dougal Mackenzie, the harshness of his face tempered slightly by a look of concern.

"Will he live?" he asked.

"Yes, sir. I'm sure of it."

Dougal's body visibly relaxed but his face remained stone.

"When will he be strong enough for us to tell him his father has died?"

"Oh God. Not now. Perhaps in a week."

Dougal nodded. Maggie felt tears start to form in her eyes and hoped that Dougal wouldn't notice. She would never wish the death of a father on anyone but she didn't even know this young man. She cleared her throat.

"Sir, I should be getting back to Mr. Beaton."

"No need. He died an hour ago."

"Oh God," Maggie repeated.

"Get some sleep," Dougal said. "We'll be needing you tomorrow."