A cold breeze whipped against his face. What are you doing, he thought? You are a boy, for heaven’s sake.
No, I am a man, he corrected himself.
I am Ravenheart.
CHAPTER SEVEN
LUSS CAMPION CLOSED HIS EYES TIGHTLY, BUT HE COULD STILL SEE THE dead face of Chara Ward, the eyes staring sightlessly up at him. The horse stumbled beneath him and he almost fell from the saddle. ‘Hell’s bells, boy,’ said Jek Bindoe, ‘get a grip.’
‘I can’t stop thinking about her, Uncle,’ said Luss. ‘We did a terrible thing.’
‘She asked for it. Look at my face!’
Luss did not want to look at Bindoe, but he did, seeing the four angry gashes starting under his right eye, and slicing down across his lip. Luss had gashes of his own. But they were on his soul, and he feared they would never heal.
‘I don’t see why I have to come with you, Uncle Jek,’ he said. ‘Nobody saw me with . . . her.’ He could not bear to say her name.
‘No, but someone would have seen you when you fetched the rope. I told you to put it under your coat. Didn’t I say that? Should have listened to your uncle Jek, boy. We’ll get some coin in Scardyke, then head south. Maybe the capital. I’ve friends there. They’ll find us a berth. Truth to tell I was getting tired of the highlands anyway.’
He seemed untouched by the horror of the night, and Luss Campion felt as if he’d wandered into a crazed nightmare. ‘You shouldn’t have done it,’ he said, before he could stop the words.
Jek Bindoe drew rein. ‘We shouldn’t have done it. You stuck your meat in her too, boy.’
‘I didn’t kill her.’
‘Oh, really?’ answered Bindoe, with a cruel smile. ‘You think she was dead before we hoisted her up?’
Luss remembered his hands on the rope. His eyes had been closed but he had felt the weight as they hauled her body up. Tears fell from his eyes. ‘We are going to burn in hell,’ he said, and felt Jek Bindoe’s hand slash across his cheek.
‘You can shut up with that,’ he said harshly. ‘There ain’t no hell. She was just a tart. Now she’s a dead tart. Not a great loss to the world. There’s plenty of tarts. Always has been, always will be. One or two less don’t make no difference to nothing.’
They rode on in silence, Luss remembering the walk to the feast, an