Sue-Ellen Welfonder - [MacLean 02] by Master of The Highland (html) Read Free Book Online Page A

she’d reach him.

Chapter Three

A LMS! FOR THE SAKE OF good St. Kentigern, have mercy!”
The raised voices of the wretched grated on Iain’s ears as, a fortnight later, he swung down from his garron before the crowded steps of the west entrance to Glasgow Cathedral.
Scowling, he tossed his horse’s reins to one of the two young but well-muscled seamen his brother had deigned to send with him, and tried in vain to close his nose to the foul reek all around him.
Quarreling dogs and the cries of peddlers behind their market stalls added to the general confusion, while the smells of raw meat, ale, and new bread blended with the stench of the slow-moving torrent of humanity, the whole proving a malodorous blight against the day’s brilliant sunshine and cloudless skies.
A strong gust of wind whipped at his cloak, the brisk kind of wind that would have been clean and fresh if blowing across the rolling moorlands of his Hebridean home, but here . . .
Shuddering, he set his jaw and silently cursed the need to inhale. Ne’er had he seen such an assemblage of miserables. Naught he’d encountered thus far had prepared him for the teeming mass of the luckless pressing into the cathedral.
Each hapless soul, worthy or unworthy, crept, crawled, or limped forward, a motley gathering of cure seekers eager to perform devotions at the saint’s tomb.
All hoping for a miracle.
Or a dole.
An old man hobbling along on one leg blundered past him, a dark swarm of humming flies buzzing about open sores on the unfortunate’s arms and neck. Bile rising in his throat, Iain leapt out of the man’s way only to find himself jostled by filth-encrusted children and a gaggle of witless women. Mumbling disjointed prayers and nonsense, they trailed after a young lass with a withered arm and a face cruelly marred by the pox.
Half-afraid of losing what scant victuals he’d imbibed that morn, he scanned the full-packed closes and wynds opening off the crowded High Street, desperately searching for a swift escape route and finding none.
Lest he wished to scale the well-guarded walls of the nearby canons’ manses and risk a wild dash through their sequestered gardens. Frowning, Iain cast aside the notion as quickly as it had come.
Any such action would only give MacFie a new scandal to report to his brother.
Nay, flight would not prove easy.
Still, a fierce instinct for self-preservation drove him to dig in his heels and keep looking. Sadly, to his great regret, he saw only chaos.
Monks and friars milled about, selflessly lending what aid they could to the lame and the needy, their well-meant efforts repeatedly hindered by scamps and charlatans faking the direst ailments in hopes of an obol.
Some of these latter even writhed on the cobbled pavement, the bubbling foam on their lips smelling more like sharp-scented soap than the froth of the truly diseased.
Iain pressed the back of his hand against his mouth and nostrils. Very soon, he would be diseased—sorely afflicted of stark, raving madness—if he didn’t find an immediate way to procure himself out of this stinking sea of calamities and cutthroats.
“Nay, nay, nay. A thousand times nay.” Bracing his legs in a defiant posture, he folded his arms and leveled his most resolute stare—one of firm refusal—at Gavin MacFie. “A score of mean-tempered, whip-wielding fishwives couldn’t persuade me to take another step. And I care not a merry whit what you report to Donall, nor how blessed the good St. Kenti—”
“Your brother laid particular worth on your paying proper homage to St. Kentigern,” Gavin cut him off, his voice infuriatingly smooth. With a show of determination every bit as hard-bitten as Iain’s, he slanted a telling glance at the second young seaman . . . the one guarding the two sumpter beasts and their precious cargo.
The one who, though a mite lack-witted, stood a few inches taller than the good-sized MacFie himself—and packed more muscled might in his wee finger than Iain’s, Donall’s, and