The Jezebel (Taskill Witches 3)

Maisie took a deep breath. She did not sing often, but she was well trained in protecting herself by any means necessary. Master Cyrus had taught her she should fear for her life on such occasions and do whatever necessary to avert suspicion.

She cast her mind back. Their mother would sing to them about their birthplace in the Highlands whenever they were unsettled and afraid, and her voice had made the three Taskill children calm and happy. Maisie didn’t know if she could sing that way, but she thought of her mother—of the time before her life was so cruelly ended—and she heard her mother’s voice in her mind. It wasn’t often that Maisie went back there in her memories, but when she did they were so vivid. She saw her mother’s face as she had been—hopeful in her quest to find her errant husband, the man who had left them because he didn’t understand his wife’s witchcraft and could not come to terms with magical bairns. Their mother’s love for him still thrived, and it drew the family in his wake to the Lowlands, where they were torn apart by the death and destruction that followed.

“Hush now,” her mother’s voice said in her mind, “never fear. We must be what we are, come what may, and not be ashamed.”

Maisie smarted with pain. She had been taught to live differently since her mother was put to death. She’d been taught to hide and be afraid.

But now she heard her mother’s voice raised in song, proudly singing a song of the Highlands, and breath surged in Maisie’s lungs.

CHAPTER NINE

“My love, I could sing of the whispering sea,

In the calm of a winter’s night,

My love, I could sing of the trembling stars,

And the flickering northern light,

And the moon, and the winds, and the barren isles,

With the clinging mists of rain,

But my soul doth flee, over the moaning sea,

To a lovely Highland glen.”

* * *

Roderick stared across the deck at his unexpected passenger and found himself utterly entranced.

Her voice was the sweetest sound he had ever heard. The very air seemed to be shot through with it, making every one of the shipmen cease work and turn her way.

Roderick could not bring himself to order them back to their tasks, for the words she sang touched him deeply, and he strained against the elements to hear every one.

“My love, the restless surges moan

In the gloom of the ocean caves,

My love, fast falls the waning moon

Beneath the glittering waves.

I could dream of isles in the tropic seas,

Where Winter’s ire is vain,

But my soul doth flee, o’er the moaning sea,

To a lovely Highland glen.”

Roderick glanced at the men around him and saw that they were as moved as he was, seafaring men one and all, but they kept the memory of their homeland—whether it be Scotland or Holland—close to their hearts, and the song made them think of the place they carried in their own hearts.

“Oh, give me the breath of the moorland wide,

On the breast of the azure ben,

Oh, give me the boundless sky above,