"Well, well, is that so.... Indeed... indeed... indeed." Macglennie said after listening to what his bird companion whispered in his ear.
A new hardness had come to the hirsute features, a new and alarming brilliance to the eyes.
"Let her ladyship be coming to the hall," Macglennie growled. A messenger scurried off. "Is it not the strange thing that the lady of the castle would not hurry to greet her man and him returning with the spoils of the Macphersons," the chief added to no one in particular.
"She has not been well. She has been in her bedroom much," a voice offered.
"I was hearing so," Macglennie tickled the raven under the beak. "Aye, I was hearing so."
At the lower end of the table Duncan Og Maeglennie grew pale, bit at his nails.
He was less than twenty, a beardless youth with long golden hair. He was a cousin of the chieftain, a scholar who had been to the new University in Glasgow. But education had not dispelled all the awe in which he held Macglennie.
Fiona Macglennie came slowly into the hall, her face pale and her dark hair floating like a cloud about her. She was slim and beautiful, born a Maclean of Mull and married as the chieftain's second wife after the first had died in childbirth. Macglennie had then been seeking an alliance with the Macleans to strike at the Campbells of Argyll. In the event the attack had never taken place.
"God has spared my lord to return," she greeted him with downcast eyes.
"Or the Devil has guarded me. Whichever way you like." He rose suddenly from his carved, high-backed chair others sat on backless benches. He towered over the shrinking woman.
"No kiss for your returning lord?" he demanded.
He stooped on her, tilted her face up to his with a hand beneath her chin. He felt the instinctive revulsion, the attempt to turn her head aside. But he forced his lips onto hers, felt in cold and unresponsive. His suspicions, then, were true.
"There's little warmth in your greeting," he said in a soft, menacing voice.
"It is not fitting ... before the people. In the privacy of our own room, I've heard."
"Aye. Our own room. Our own room... But there's more than we two using that room, I've heard."
The raven on his shoulder croaked throatily, beady eyes bright with expectation.
Abruptly the chieftain turned from her.
"Out," he cried. "Out... All of you. All but you, Duncan Og. I'd have a word with you... Fergus, you will stay also and Big Angus.... Now out, I say, out."
The hall emptied swiftly, leaving only Macglennies two principal henchmen, the one-eyed Fergus and Big Angus who reached almost the chieftain's height.
"Come Duncan Og, you will join us."
It was an order, not an invitation. The young scholar was weak at the knees as he walked towards the head of the table and the terrible figure of his cousin.
There was an insane light in Macglennie's pale eyes as he stared at Duncan Og, glowered down at the youth from his full, overpowering height.
So, you were in my wife's room," Rory mused.
Duncan Og shivered uncontrollably. What was to come he did not know. But it would be strange and evil, and he knew he would never see his own parents again.
"No, my lord, no," Fiona's voice was almost a scream. "He came but to read to me when I was ill. There was nothing between us, nothing."
"If you expect that tale will dupe me, you give me little credit, madam. He was in your room and that is enough. No man alive would accept such infamy."
Fiona's breasts heaved with the violence of her emotions. She felt no hope and yet she must make some effort to save the young scholar's life.
"I swear to you, on everything that's sacred..."
"Silence, woman!" the laird thundered, raising his silver cup to his lips. He filled his mouth with the burning whiskey and spat it in her face.
"As she stood there, still frozen in shock, he drew the Skean Dubh (sword) from its sheath. The blade glinted red in the flickering firelight.
Duncan Og was paralyzed with fear. "You dared to approach my wife!" MacGlennie bellowed. "To feast your eyes on her white body! Now, you'll get to gaze upon it once more!"
"The atmosphere was charged with tension and menace, as MacGlennie's anger and jealousy boil over into violence. Fiona tries to intervene, but her efforts are brutally rebuffed. The situation looks increasingly dire for Duncan Og."