The Harlot (Taskill Witches 1)

Gregor surveyed the crowd as he downed the rest of his ale. Eleven years he had been away from Scotland. He had traveled far and wide, and he’d come home three weeks ago to a country that had been unwillingly united with the English. The prevailing humor was bad because of the union. In many ways, however, it did not seem so very different from the place he remembered. The people of Dundee had survived decades of war and hard times, one and all. Yet still the city thrived around the harbor where the world’s ships came and went on the Tay, his vessel included. Eleven years earlier he’d left Fife a bitter lad without coin. His life as a mariner meant he was able to return with money aplenty. He now had a stake in the vessel he’d worked on.

A shriek went up from the skirmish at the center of the crowd. The onlookers jostled as if eager to back away. Gregor sought the cause of the shift in mood, his curiosity baited. Apparently he should have placed his bet, for Jessie stood triumphant, her opponent lying slumped at her feet.

Eliza was fast recovering, and cleverly saw a chance for a reprieve. Pointing with a suitably shaking hand, she cursed her opponent. “Witchcraft! She used witchcraft on me.”

“Hush, Eliza,” the accused woman declared, her cheeks flushing with anger. “I am the one who helped you through this winter last, and I won this fight fair and square. That is the truth of it.”

“Witchcraft, ’tis witchcraft,” Eliza spat. “She will poison us all with her strange brews and her foreign words.”

The atmosphere grew tense, the crowd whispering one to the other.

“I saw her,” an onlooker confirmed. “Her eyes rolled and then Eliza choked, as if on air.” Two men pounced and held the accused, one on each arm, and she twisted and turned in their grasp, spitting and cursing.

Gregor glanced back at the woman on the floor, Eliza, the redhead. She had her hand at her throat, as if she had been winded. If it was true, it had likely been a trick with a fine piece of thread or a hair. Gregor had seen clever tricks the world over, and it was his way to investigate how it might have been done.

Someone was already out on the street and calling for the bailie of the burgh to arrest the whore-witch, Jessica Taskill. Amused at the turn of events, Gregor leaned against the wooden counter and considered the black-haired vixen, who would soon have half the town gathering with torches, eager for a hanging and a burning. When he’d been a lad at home, the stories of witches and their sins reached them in Fife from time to time. The ministers would lecture the bairns about the evil ways of those in league with the devil, and then horrify them with tales of hanging and burning. Gregor did not believe a word of it, for he did not give credence to such ludicrous claims. Much had changed about his birth country and yet some things had not altered at all, for the accusation of “witch” could still bring about a violent reaction. If the bailie took the word of those who spoke out, this woman would be dead within the week.

She was attractive—a canny lass with a trick or two up her sleeve. It would be a shame to see such talent wasted to the noose and the flame. The idea of making her vanish from the baying crowd entertained him. He and his good friend and fellow mariner, Roderick Cameron, had once liberated a drunken shipman from a cell in Cadiz on a wager.

Gregor reminded himself that he should be on the road by now, back to Fife, where he had taken up lodgings. But the performance was not yet over. The woman called Jessica Taskill wriggled like an eel, cursing and glaring at her captors. Her plump breasts drew his eye, and her spirit entertained him. Once again Gregor considered her as a candidate for the task he had in mind. If he could get her out of her current situation she would be grateful to him—indebted, too. He would have to teach her some manners, but she would clean up well enough, and her aptitude for brazen behavior was unquestionable. There would be pleasure in grooming her for the task, especially if it heralded his enemy’s downfall.

The bailie arrived and quickly gathered the information he needed. “Take her to the tollbooth,” he instructed. When she argued, the official shook his head, though with a regretful glance at her bared breasts.

As they took her away Gregor observed her angry, flashing eyes and pictured her on her back. It was an image that pleased him. A pretty lure she would make for his enemy, indeed. If Gregor found a way to free her, she would be in his debt and glad of the work. It would be worth the risk.

Jessie Taskill rubbed her hands over her face and glared at the bars of her cell. It would be simple enough for her to undo the lock and slip away by means of an enchantment, but it was the accusation of magic that had landed her here. What annoyed her most was that she had not even used her magic, not this night. Foolishly, she had tended Eliza with a Betony brew to cure her ails when she was sick the winter before, and in doing so had made herself vulnerable. As Jessie had often found out, that was the way of it for her kind. “What use is this gift,” she muttered, “when it brings such a burden?”

Her moods had swung wildly since she had been thrown into the tollbooth, from fury to misery and back again, and no amount of pacing the meager space of her new abode would help. There was no chair, not even a cot. The only light that reached her came from candles that were set in sconces farther down the passageway. Apart from the putrid pail in one corner, old straw filled the floor.

Wrapping her hands around the cold bars, she pressed her face between them and peered along the narrow passage to where the guard sat. He was chomping on a chicken leg, and when he saw her look out at him he licked his greasy lips, taunting her.

Her belly growled. If she used magic now, she could collect the remains of his chicken supper on the way. It was tempting, too tempting. Fighting the urge to use her secret talent was growing harder each day, but if one more person witnessed her making magic the bailie would have her strung up before dawn, without a trial. There was still hope, for she knew the man frequented the whorehouses, and he would not want that news passed about. She had to bide her time and be clever about

it. Dropping to a squat, she wondered if they had brought the straw here directly from the barn. The dismal hovel she shared with six other women was preferable to this place, and that was not something she had ever thought before.

Eliza was one of the women she lodged with. They had shared good times and bad, and yet Eliza had turned on her, calling her out for her craft. That saddened Jessie. They’d often argued, but not this way. They usually made friends again afterward. The customer had been Eliza’s, but he’d shown a liking for Jessie, as well, and Ranald had leaped at the chance to draw attention to his girls by means of a fight. Perhaps Eliza had taken it bad, and if that was so, Jessie wished she had noticed.

Something had distracted her. It was a man, she recalled. Someone she had not seen before—a stranger with a scarred face and dark, hooded eyes. He was tall and watchful, and she’d found herself distracted by him. Fool.

She scrubbed her hands over her face again. Ranald would not be pleased about this. She knew him well enough to guess that he would turn his back on her. He held her earnings, and if she did not return soon, they would be his.

It will not happen, she vowed. Even if she had to use her magic, she would not let go of her only hope, her dream. It was a long time since she had last used her secret talent, not since Eliza was sick, and that meant Jessie had begun to sleep better. Magic itself was not the enemy. It was the reaction it brought about in those around her, the trail of devastation that followed that she could not stomach. That went back years, too, for she had been shown how dangerous it was to be gifted when she was a bairn. And yet she had felt her magic burgeoning these past few months. It was as if her secret craft yearned to be nurtured and explored. The change was akin to that of a young girl becoming a woman.

Voices from the corridor caught her attention and she moved to her hands and knees, creeping toward the bars. Cautiously, she glanced along the corridor. There was another man with the guard now—a minister, judging from his garb. Jessie sank back onto her haunches and sighed. No doubt he was here to deliver a lesson in all that was pious and holy, serving it up for the good of her soul. She put her elbows on her knees and rested her chin on her hand. Her beliefs ran in an entirely different direction. Like all those in her mother’s line, her soul was attuned to nature, not the kirk.

Once she gathered a few more pennies she would be able to travel north to the Highlands, where her kind was not viewed quite so harshly. There she could let her craft blossom and grow as she longed to. Magic was rising within her, a powerful legacy she could not deny. Each day she had to rebuild the dam that held it back, lest it flood her. In the Highlands, she could live without fear. Home, she silently chanted, home and brethren. It was her dream.

Her eyes closed. Memories from her upbringing haunted and pained her. A dream it was, a dream that might never be fulfilled if the events of this day were any indication. She would meet the same fate as her mother if she did not escape, and that meant she had to take the risk. She had to use her magic once again.

Footsteps sounded in the corridor.

Once the minister was gone she would decide upon her course of action. Rising to her feet, she stalked into a corner, where she stood with her arms folded across her chest. When the guard rattled his key and shoved it into the lock, she looked at it longingly. She could easily make it drop from his belt as he walked away, but she could not take the risk right at that moment, especially not with two of them watching her.

“Luck is on your side, Jessica Taskill,” the guard said. “The minister has risen from his bed to pray with you awhile.”

Jessie pressed her lips together while she battled the urge to tell them her beliefs did not match theirs. She managed to resist sparring out of bad humor, because she knew if she kept quiet and acted penitent, he would be gone all the sooner.

The minister stepped into the cell and the guard locked the door behind him, then gestured with the candle he held aloft. “If she gives you any trouble you be sure to call out, Minister. I will hear you.”