Read Flame for Free Online Page A

cloud. The wind had picked up considerably, and Loch
Moray’s waters were now a churning mass of whitecaps.
    Gavin followed the little priest to a large
slab by the cliff.
    “Here, m’lord,” Father William said
brusquely. “We put them here. Close enough to Sir John’s brothers.
They lie over there.” The man pointed at two other slabs not far
away. Sir John meant to have his brothers moved inside the crypt.
As you can see, the good Lord didn’t see fit to give him time for
that.”
    Gavin looked back to the large slab before
his feet. “You say all three lie here?”
    The awkward pause in the priest’s response
was obvious, and the new laird turned his gaze on the man.
    “Do they lie here?” he repeated.
    “Aye, for all that we could tell.”
    “The bodies were burned?” Gavin asked.
    “Aye,” the priest replied with disgust. “Like
hell’s own demons, they were. All burnt. All lost...” The man’s
voice choked. “There were so many of them. The wing was filled with
Sir John’s servants and the ladies’ maids...”
    Father William faltered and came to a stop.
Gavin crouched before the slab and placed a hand on the tomb. It
felt strangely warm to his touch. In a moment the priest
continued.
    “We couldn’t tell one from the other. We
found no one in the laird’s chambers nor in Mistress Joanna’s room.
Most of the bodies lay in a heap at the stairwell. Some of the
maids, we think, may have tried to leap into the loch.” The priest
looked away at the turbulent waters. Drops of rain began to spatter
the stones around them. “We found traces of blood and torn linen on
the cliffs, but no bodies. It seems the rest all ran into the
corridors. That’s where we found them. All charred and heaped
together.”
    “Where you able to recognize them?” Gavin
came to his feet.
    The man slowly shook his head. “Nay. The
laird was a goodly sized man, though, so we could be fairly certain
of him, and his body lay apart, with two women by him. So we
wrapped those three and placed them here. The rest...the rest we
buried there.”
    Gavin looked in the direction that the priest
pointed. A dozen or so graves with new grass sprouting on the dirt
mounds could be seen in the corner of the kirkyard. The little man
walked unsteadily toward the graves and stared down at one set
slightly apart from the others. The rain was starting to fall
harder now, but neither man took notice of it.
    “Who is buried in that grave?” Gavin asked,
following the other man’s gaze. “The one away from the others?”
    “Who?” The priest’s head snapped around
toward the other graves, his eyes avoiding the laird’s gaze. “Why,
one of the servants.”
    “Why is it separated? If they all died
together, why bury this one apart?”
    “Because she did not burn like the others,”
William answered irritably. “She was one of Lady MacInnes’s serving
lasses, and she broke her neck leaping from a window in the
tower.”
    “Perhaps a better way to die,” Gavin said
quietly, looking intently at the carefully tended grave. “What was
her name?”
    “Her name?” The priest ran his hand over his
eyes. “I cannot remember.”
    A bolt of lightning lit the sky.
    “Iris!” he blurted quickly. “That’s it. Iris,
I believe ‘twas.”
    Thunder rumbled after the earlier flash. A
movement by the chapel drew Gavin’s attention. A woman stood
holding folded linens in her hands. Gavin recognized her as
Margaret, the mute sister of the steward.
    The little man mumbled something Gavin
thought must have been an apology and hurried over to the
woman.
    The Lowlander turned his attention back to
the graves at his feet. Death was something that he was no stranger
to. As the laird gazed at the earthen mounds, it occurred to him
that losing those he loved was something he’d been facing all his
life. Strange, he thought, that some pain never ends.
    He never knew his mother. She’d died bringing
him into this life. His father and two older