Beyond a Darkened Shore(59)

His gaze skittered away from mine, back toward the keep, the wall of which prevented much of my view, but I was suddenly desperate to see inside.

I grabbed his arm. “My sisters—where are Branna and Deidre?”

“Safe, milady. With your mother in the keep—”

I strode past him, Leif following close behind. I had to see them, had to see my father, who would shed light on what had transpired.

Once we had passed through the gates, the bailey was strangely absent of life. No animals bleated, no voices carried on the wind, no people hurried about their day. As I reached the bailey’s center, it became clear where the taste of ash was coming from.

The chapel was a blackened ruin. My first thought was a Northman raid, but there were no other signs. No bloodstains or other remnants of a battle. No other buildings had been damaged, only the church.

I ran to the broken door, my heart pounding. Chains lay in a pile on the steps, links severed as though cut. I hadn’t stepped through this doorway for so many years that, for a moment, I couldn’t move. My hand shook as I pulled open what was left of the door.

Leif kept me from falling as I let out a strangled cry.

So many bodies, all men, dressed for battle. Weapons littered the floor, or lay clutched in blackened, skeletal hands. The smell of charred flesh, wood smoke, and ash was so strong I leaned over and gagged. Most of the men had died near the door of the church, as though they had attempted to fight their way out.

Shaking, and with tears pricking my eyes from the remnants of smoke, I scanned the bodies for signs of Fergus or Conall.

I stumbled forward, tripping over blackened legs and grasping fingers. Furiously I searched through the ash until my hands were black as pitch. Tears mingled with the ash until fat black droplets tracked down my cheeks. Leif stood guard at the door, his expression grim.

I found what I had been seeking on the steps of the altar. With trembling fingers I retrieved it: my father’s golden circlet.

Nearby was a corpse who had fallen still grasping his sword, and I immediately recognized the jeweled hilt. Like the other bodies, the skin had burned away from his bones, but still I knew. Unlike the others, this body had been beheaded. I touched the skull as pieces of me broke away inside. My breaths were coming faster, mingling with my trapped sobs. I clutched the circlet so hard I felt the weakened metal begin to give way.

The anger was building within me, a fire feeding on my uncontained grief. I wanted to find whoever had done this, to tear them limb from limb. I wanted to burn their village to the ground.

A soft noise came from the entrance of the church, and I turned to find my mother standing next to Leif, her face pale and drawn.

“Máthair,” I said in a rush, hurrying to her side. “What has happened here? áthair . . .”

“He is dead,” my mother said, her voice raspy and devoid of emotion, as though she had spent weeks in the throes of grief and hadn’t quite emerged as the same person. “He is dead along with some two hundred of your clansmen.” Her eyes met mine, and I sucked in a breath in pain when I saw the loathing reflected there. “And you weren’t here to protect them thanks to your faithless attack on your own father.”

Burned alive. Two hundred men, including my father. The ground seemed to open up and swallow me whole. “Who set fire to the church?”

“King Sigtrygg’s men,” she said, and Leif’s head jerked up. “It happened only days after you were exiled. Sigtrygg was angry that his raid on the monastery had failed because of your father, so they retaliated. He came on a Sunday like the pagan Northman he is,” she said with a look of revulsion toward Leif, “and his men surrounded the church. They took the women and men who couldn’t fight as slaves, and the others—your father and his men—they slaughtered and locked them in the church to burn.”

A horrified silence descended upon me as I thought of what my clansmen and my father must have gone through—and the evidence was still at my feet. As I looked at the remains of what had once been living, breathing men, the number two hundred kept repeating itself in my mind. It couldn’t be a coincidence. The Morrigan had made it seem like the sacrifice of two hundred men would be something yet to come—something I would have to choose for myself—but I saw the truth now. The truth was that it had already happened.

Worse, Sigtrygg had come on the Lord’s day—just as the Northmen raiders had seven years ago. No doubt the only reason my mother and sisters had survived was because ever since that day, they had attended Mass at a different time from everyone else. In case the church was attacked again. I felt the anger continue to build. How could I have believed that duplicitous king when he told me he and áthair had come to a peaceful arrangement? My father never would have made a treaty with him.

“And Fergus and Conall?” I asked. “What of them?”

“They were among the two hundred,” she said. My stomach rolled. Sleipnir. áthair. Fergus and Conall. Was there no end to the horror? “As was Séamus.”

Her words bit into me, and I couldn’t help the flood of images of all the men I’d once loved. I thought of them fighting for their lives before finally being consumed by flames, and tears stung my eyes.

“I don’t understand,” I said with a desperate edge to my voice that even I could hear. “King Sigtrygg told me he and áthair had made peace—he said he’d dined with him in the hall.”