Leila’s Legacy Read online

  Leila’s Legacy

  Madeline Martin

  Copyright 2019 © Madeline Martin

  LEILA’S LEGACY © 2019 Madeline Martin. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. No part or the whole of this book may be reproduced, distributed, transmitted or utilized (other than for reading by the intended reader) in ANY form (now known or hereafter invented) without prior written permission by the author. The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal, and punishable by law.

  * * *

  LEILA’S LEGACY is a work of fiction. The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional and or are used fictitiously and solely the product of the author’s imagination. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, places, businesses, events or locales is purely coincidental.

  Cover Design by Teresa Sprecklemeyer @ The Midnight Muse Designs.

  To My Readers

  * * *

  Thank you so much for joining me on this journey with the Borderland Ladies. I hope you’ve felt like part of the family as you’ve read these books as I know I certainly have in writing them. Thank you for the hours you spend reading my stories and for all the wonderful reviews and letters you send me telling me how much you love my characters and how much they mean to you.

  * * *

  I am grateful every day for each one of you.

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Epilogue

  Author’s Note

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Also by Madeline Martin

  1

  January 1349

  Brampton, England

  * * *

  The great pestilence had come.

  Lady Leila Barrington, youngest daughter to the Earl of Werrick, had seen it in her visions for as long as she could remember. Lingering on the horizon like a patient beast stalking its prey, growing hungrier, stronger, and more desperate.

  She’d told no one of the things she’d seen in her mind. Not when the visions were so horrible, not when she’d hoped so fervently that time might cause them to change.

  But the future had not altered. It had pressed upon Leila throughout her life until the visions came daily, and she knew the beast was about to pounce upon the unsuspecting people of Christendom.

  And it did.

  Leila tied the handkerchief filled with herbs around her face. The sage, lavender and mint crinkled as she secured the handkerchief, the dried bits of leaves and stems poking at her cheeks. Once the combination of such scents had reminded her of all things clean; now, the scent recalled illness and death. Isla, the healer at Werrick Castle, had wanted to soak it all in heifer’s piss for good measure, but Leila had refused.

  The older woman waited for her presently by the entrance to the castle with a similar handkerchief tied to her withered face, and a basket slung over either arm. She handed one to Leila as she approached, her sharp amber eyes narrowing from over the top of her makeshift mask.

  “Are ye certain ye want to venture out today?” Isla asked.

  It was the same question she asked every day.

  Leila took the basket and replied as she always did. “There are people in need.”

  The basket tipped precariously, but Leila quickly steadied it. The flagon of water weighted one side more heavily, but it was by far the most important of the items they carried with them. Through all of Isla’s and Leila’s knowledge of healing, neither had found a way to heal the illness. No one had.

  There was no cure for the great pestilence.

  Outside of the people who sustained a random injury or non-pestilence illness, Isla and Leila had become little more than easers of suffering, bringing water and comfort to the dying.

  “Ye shouldna be going out there.” Even as she offered the protest, Isla turned toward the doorway to lead the way to the village. “Ye’re lady of the castle.”

  “All the more reason to be there for my people.” Leila followed her outside where the otherwise sunny sky was hazy with brown-gray smoke. It stung at her eyes and its acrid odor penetrated the sweetness of the herbs about her face. Ash floated in the air like light snow and sifted silently around them.

  The ground was sodden, the dirt churned into a sludge that was as slippery as it was thick. Even with conditions such as these, they left the horses safe in their stalls. It was more than the fear of them falling ill that encouraged the ladies to keep them stabled. It was the very real concern that a villager so eager to try to escape the grasp of the pestilence would steal their lord’s horse.

  Sadly, a large number of people left their families. Wives were abandoned by husbands, aging parents were deserted by their grown children, mothers fled their sick children. The latter was the most difficult to happen upon. Dirty-faced children whose eyes were bright with fever, screaming in pain and fear, with no one to care for them. Those were the ones that most broke Leila’s heart.

  Such was the terror of the great pestilence: it overtook even a mother’s love for her children. Extreme measures of escape, however, had been for naught, for the great mortality lay its shroud over the whole of Christendom.

  There was no escape.

  They neared the village with smoke rising from within, where pyres had been lit to burn the dead and their belongings.

  “I dinna like ye doing this,” Isla muttered from beneath her mask of herbs.

  Many did not like Leila going out into the danger of the pestilence to aid others. They did not understand what it meant to her, how it helped heal the hurt within.

  For all of her life, she had felt very much outside her family. It was not only her looks that set her apart from her sisters, her dark hair or the narrowness of her face. The sense of not belonging even went beyond her visions.

  She had never felt as though she was worthy of the love her family offered. How could she, when she knew the truth? She was not a child of Lord Werrick’s loins, but that of a marauding Graham reiver. The attack had nearly killed Lady Werrick, but it was Leila’s birth that finally snuffed out her life.

  It was why Leila had turned to healing. In giving others life, she was repaying the one she had taken. It gave her purpose; an action she could perform in a situation she was otherwise helpless to change. As though her support for others might put the violence of her making to peace.

  “You put yourself at risk every day too,” Leila reminded the old healer.

  Isla snorted. “Death wants nothing to do with me, or I’d have been dead several dozen times over.”

  “Death will not come for me.” There was confidence behind Leila’s words, the same as there had been when she finally made the declaration of the incoming arrival of the pestilence to her family. “Not until I meet the Lion.”

  Isla slid her a wary look. The older woman didn’t like when Leila brought up her visions of him. For it would not be the pestilence that took Leila’s life, but the man with golden hair, bronzed skin and hazel eyes. A man who was as ferocious as he was beautiful. A man who would first steal her heart, then her life.

  It was
preposterous, the idea that she would love a man she knew would kill her. But was it not equally as preposterous that illness would consume the population of the world as readily as a spark set to dry tinder?

  Leila shuddered as they stepped into the empty village. Under normal circumstances, it would have been a market day. But now where once there had been the bustle of people, there was emptiness; save for several bodies strewn out for collection. Where once people called out to bring shoppers to their wares, now cries of anguish and mourning pitched through the chilly air.

  A woman moved on the ground as they passed, lifting her hand to them. “Water,” she groaned.

  It was not an uncommon sight, seeing those who dragged themselves to the filthy streets in search of water as Death reached for them. Before Leila could bring the flagon to her, Isla was at her side crouching with knees that popped in protest.

  The woman’s breath huffed in white puffs in the icy air. Her skeletal fingers clutched the flagon to her lips, drinking greedily then releasing it with a gasping breath.

  “Thank you.” The woman struggled to sit up. “My neighbors. We must go to them.”

  Isla assisted her so that her back rested against the wall of the hut they stood near. “Is it the swelling?”

  From what Leila and Isla had gleaned from tales of travelers, there were two sorts of pestilence. One which caused swelling in the form of knobs of darkened skin that rose at the neck, armpit or groin, and one which covered the sufferer in a rash and made them vomit blood. Of the two, the latter was almost always fatal.

  “’Tis the swelling.” The woman brushed aside her tangled red hair and touched the side of her neck where the skin remained flushed with infection beneath a bump that appeared to be diminishing.

  Leila breathed a sigh of relief. Thus far, they had only seen the swelling in the village. At least it was possible to survive that, even if the chances were higher for death.

  “Ye shouldna be outside,” Isla chastised gently. “’Tis colder than a witch’s soul.”

  The woman’s cheeks were sunken from her illness, and her pale blue eyes were bright with the effects of her fever. She had not been outside long for if she had been, she would not have survived. Not in the bitterness of the winter.

  “There are children nearby.” She pushed up as though she intended to walk. “I could hear them crying.” She gazed out desperately to the small home beside hers. “I was trying to go to them.”

  That was all Leila needed to hear. She left Isla and the woman behind and hastened into the small cottage. The putrid odor of sickness within was like a slap, even with the facecloth of herbs covering her nose. Two skinny children lay side-by-side on the cot, their hands clasped together. Their wails did not cease as she entered, but instead continued even as they stared up at her with large, dry eyes.

  They were emaciated, filthy, and obviously had gone too long without water if they were devoid of even tears. Leila rushed to them with her flagon of water. Fleas darted over the bedding, but she ignored them as she settled beside the children.

  She called out to Isla and bent to offer the children water. They parted their cracked lips and drank with a thirst that hurt Leila’s heart.

  Isla appeared immediately and together they were able to get the woman, a widow named Rose, as well as the children, to the large hut that had been erected to assist those who had fallen ill with the plague. It was a way of containing the illness, not that it had done much good. But also, it was a means of having all assembled to offer the most care.

  While the swelling pestilence had some survivors, there was an alarming number of people who entered the structure and did not emerge alive. Rose, who had insisted on walking without help, appeared to be in the healing stage of the illness and would doubtless be one of those who lived.

  Once she and the children were tucked into pallets near one another within the pestilence hut, Leila and Isla returned to the village in search of more souls to aid. Every day it seemed there were more in need. As well as more stacks of dead.

  An old woman scurried by them, her haste indicative of good health. “They’re here,” she hissed. “Hide yourselves.”

  Leila met Isla’s gaze, but the old healer merely shrugged with equal confusion. The villager stopped and glared irritably at them. “Reivers.” And with that, she was gone.

  A hot wind of anger blasted through Leila. In this time of death and suffering, when all were losing so many souls, the marauders still thought only to take what belonged to others. She handed her basket to Isla and slid a pair of daggers from her belt. This was why she wore trews, instead of a kirtle, when she attended the ill, and why she was never without her weapons.

  Whoever sought to take advantage of those within the village would not leave unscathed.

  Niall Douglas cursed the day the Keeper of Liddesdale made him his deputy. Granted, it was a position Niall had coveted, but he hadn’t thought his duties would someday include stomping through a pestilence-ridden village in search of a witch.

  And it had been a witch responsible for the illness, of that Niall was certain. There was no better explanation for the disease that had ravaged their land. He brought only five men with him, men who joined him at the risk of death and disease solely because of his reputation.

  The Lion. Fierce and brave, honest and loyal, all things Niall had spent his adult life working toward. And it had led him to this stinking lot of land outside the opulence of Werrick Castle. The massive structure stood safe behind its protective curtain wall where the English West March Border Warden lived without fear of illness, with his witch of a daughter who nine years before had cursed the Armstrongs.

  Niall put his arm to his nose to prevent the foul-smelling miasmas from transferring contagion to him. He had no dried herbs with him, or even a sponge of vinegar to protect himself from inhaling the illness. He would ensure he had at least that much next time. If there was a next time. If he survived this fool’s errand for information.

  He pushed his nose into the crook of his gambeson sleeve and breathed in the musty smells of worn leather and dirt. The five men following did likewise. Mayhap it would save them.

  He stepped around a body with a painful looking lump thrusting out from the skin of their neck and shuddered. Mayhap it would not.

  There was naught within the village but death. Prior to their arrival, he’d been so certain of his purpose: seek out information on the dark-haired daughter of the Earl of Werrick. There would be many dark-haired lasses in the village.

  “Water.” A croaking voice pulled Niall’s attention to an old man sagging on a bench, wavering forward.

  Good sense told Niall to keep walking, but there was a deeper part of him, a thread of genuine kindness from his father that stilled his steps. He pulled the stopper of his flagon free. “’Tis ale.”

  The man’s thin lips curled into a smile under the wispy strands of his beard. “All the better.”

  Niall handed the skin to the man who accepted it and drank in great gulping swallows. The villager sighed in satisfaction and held it out to Niall with a shaking hand.

  “Ye can keep it.” Niall stepped back from the flagon and the man, both likely contaminated with pestilence now. But he did not leave. Not when the villager might be good for information.

  The five reivers with Niall held back, fear passing between them in side glances.

  Niall wouldn’t be cowed thus. Instead, he regarded the villager. “I hear ye had warning of the plague. Is it true?”

  The man’s gaze turned suspicious. “Ye want to steal our food stores?” He tightened his grasp on the ale.

  Niall shook his head. “Nay, we’ve plenty of food. We’re searching for the reason why the pestilence has swept upon us.” And they did have plenty of food. For the first time in decades, no one complained of an empty belly. There was more food than they could possibly consume, for there were too many people dying.

  “Tell me about the warden’s daughter,” Niall said.
“Yer lord.”

  The villager blinked slowly, as though on the edge of sleep. “He’s got several daughters.”

  “Ye know which one I mean.” Niall spoke loudly this time in an effort to wake the villager.

  The man’s eyes blinked open. “Lady Leila.”

  “The one with dark hair?”

  The villager nodded slowly.

  Leila. Such a benign name for one who had sent the pestilence streaking through Scotland. But Niall knew better than to trust benign.

  “’Tis rumored that she warned the castle, as well as the rest of her family, of the pestilence before anyone fell ill,” Niall said. “’Tis said she knew it all, for she brought it. Is she a witch?”

  The man’s mouth curled up in a smile, revealing yellow teeth. A low whimper sounded in his chest and grew into a chuckle.

  Niall folded his arms over his chest. “Ye think I jest?”

  The man tipped the flagon to his mouth and drained the ale as he slowly dipped to the side of the bench.

  Niall took a cautious step back, lest the man fall forward and touch him. Something flew in front of Niall’s face. Exactly where his head had been. It slammed into the wall at his right with a hollow thunk.

  A dagger jutted from the white-washed surface. A dagger?

  Niall darted behind a cottage and pulled his dagger free. His body acted before his mind fully wrapped around the idea that someone in this death-ridden village was healthy enough to fight them. He peered out in the direction the dagger had come from. A tingle at the back of his neck alerted him to danger, and he jerked back as the next blade sailed past him.