Free The Burning Glass by Lillian Stewart Carl Page B

fanning the flames
and Mary in it to the starched ruff at her neck, but then,
Scotland’s always having times of grand confusion and
conflict.”
    “Let me guess. Isabel loved one man, but her
father wanted her to make a marriage of convenience. A guy twice
her age but filthy rich.” Jean gazed again around the room. No,
whatever was here earlier was gone. The room still seemed sad, but
it was the prosaic sorrow of dereliction.
    “Got it in one. What makes this tale a bit
different is that Isabel’s lover—figurative or literal, who
knows—was one of the monks serving at the hospice.”
    “So the relationship was doubly doomed.”
    “That it was. The laird, her father, locked
her away here, in her room, ’til the wedding day. And she pined,
playing sad songs on her clarsach.”
    “The Ferniebank Clarsach, the one dating back
to Robert the Bruce?”
    “Oh aye. The one Isabel herself played for
Mary during her visit to the hospice, landing herself a position as
lady-in-waiting. The one stolen from the village museum. Next
time,” added Alasdair, “they’d jolly well better be asking P and S
for assistance.”
    “No kidding. Have you heard anything more
about that? Is there a suspect? A trail? Clues?”
    “No clues. Or none for me, at the least. It’s
not my business.” His tone had an edge that made Jean glance around
sharply, but he was already going on with the story. “The monk—he
must have had a name, but that’s dropped out of the telling—he and
Isabel worked out a plan.”
    “They probably found a sympathetic servant to
exchange messages. Or he’d signal to her from the chapel—not as
many trees then, I bet.”
    “I’m not seeing them waving semaphores,” said
Alasdair. “However they managed, they agreed that on the day of the
wedding, midsummer’s morn, she’d set the keep afire. Everyone would
go running outside, bringing her along, and she’d make her escape
with the monk.”
    “Except, like so many best-laid plans, this
one went agley.”
    “Isabel used a burning-glass, a lens, to
focus the sunlight onto a bit of kindling . . .”
    “Well, this window faces east of north, sort
of.” Jean felt again the weight of time and grief oozing from her
neck down her back, and she stepped closer to Alasdair’s warmth,
bracing herself for the denouement of the story.
    He put his free arm around her. “Although
using the embers of her own fire seems much more likely,
considering the chance of cloud. In any event, the flames got away,
blocked her escape, and she died. Suffocated by the smoke before
she could burn, I’m thinking, if that’s any comfort to you. And the
monk died soon after of some foul disease he caught tending to the
sick.”
    “There’s not much comfort in that story,
Alasdair, typical or not. True or not.” Shuddering, Jean imagined
the suffocating pall of smoke, the door locked, the only window
high above the unforgiving ground. The shrieks, if not of Isabel
herself, then her family. The monk seeing the dark smoke spread
like a storm cloud before Death’s pale horse . . . The stones
behind the paneling were sooty not with age but with fire. She
coughed, her lungs turning themselves inside out, ridding
themselves of something that was no more than blistering
memory.
    Alasdair embraced her shoulders, holding her
close, head bowed as though he was feeling that weight in his own
gut. Then with a sharp intake of breath, he looked up.
    Jean listened. She heard again that faint
whispering or rustling, this time with what sounded like distant,
light steps. “That noise, that’s not a ghost.”
    “Not a bit of it. Someone’s in the building.
Come along, quick smart!”
     
     

Chapter Seven
     
     
    Alasdair seized Jean’s hand and pulled her
out of the room. Deliberate as a hunting cat, he paced down a
flight of stairs and along a corridor, then down another flight,
sweeping every room, every corner, with his light.
    She’d meant that the noise was caused by a
draft