|
The Wedding Wake
By I.A.
Watson and Sarah Shepherdson
Jamie McDermott died on his wedding day. Alerted by a jealous housemaid, the Clans McDonald and Damforth
laid an ambush on the groom’s path to the kirk, swarming down from the hills
and attacking the wedding party as the groom was escorted by his kinsmen to
the alliance with the Clan MacKie. Jamie and his brothers were but lightly
armed on such a festive day, and no-one could have anticipated so daring a
raid so far into MacKie territory. Jamie and two of his kin were dead by the
time the defenders could rally, and the raiders were riding away into the
hills by the time any proper defence could be mustered. Kirsty MacKie heard the news at the kirk door as she stood with
her father waiting for the groom’s arrival. She fell down weeping at the news
of Jamie’s death, and some thought she might die then and there with sorrow
at her love’s brutal murder. The wedding party became a war band. Holiday finery was
replaced by steel plate and chainmail, and the Clans McDermott and MacKie
rode out that night intent upon bloody vengeance on the men who had
slaughtered James McDermott. Kirsty and the women were left safe in the keep of MacKie
Castle, defended by old and trusted retainers, and Kirsty retired to her
marriage bed alone and desolate. “Kirsty?” The voice was a whisper and the weeping girl barely heard it
over her sobbing. She raised her head from her tear-soaked pillow to listen
again. “Kirsty?” It was a familiar voice, an impossible voice. He was dead,
murdered, laid out on a bier in the darkened hall below. “Kirsty?” “Jamie?” Kirsty MacKie rose from her bridal bed and padded over to the
full-length drapes which hid the window alcove. With trembling hand she drew
aside the curtain to find who was speaking. Jamie McDermott stood waiting for her behind the curtain,
dressed in the same wedding finery he had been slaughtered in. There was no
blood, no gashed head, no severed limbs. Kirsty MacKie took a step backwards. “Not afraid of me, Kirsty m’love?” Jamie asked. “You… you’re dead.” “Nothing on Earth could keep me from you tonight, Kirsty. We
were pledged to be together, and here I am.” “A ghost?” Jamie McDermott reached out and seized her to him with strong,
tender hands. They were cold but corporeal. “Don’t you want me, Kirsty?
Aren’t you my bride? My love?” he challenged. And his hands were working at
her bodice, and then at her bare breasts. She trembled at his caress but not
with fear. When had his fingernails become so sharp as the shred the
fabric of her wedding gown, stripping her bare to stand before him? When had
his lips become so cold, yet gained such power to overrule all judgement, all
sense, in her aroused fervour? Kirsty cried out once, as he broke her maidenhead, but
otherwise the only sounds were the gasps of passion as the bride surrendered
herself to her dead husband’s will, a night-long tangle of limbs and bodies
that she never wanted to end. ------ They said Kirsty was pining. She spoke little, ate less. Each
day she seemed to drift further and further into a dreamy half-slumber. The
old women shook their heads and worried about her mind, for she seemed often
distracted, easily exhausted. Only as darkness fell and she brushed her hair
and retired to her room would she seem to come alive, and she tripped to her
chamber with an eager gait like a maiden racing to meet her lover. Kirsty lived for Jamie. Each night he came to her, taught her
more of the ways of love. His taste was on her lips, his hands ruled her
body, she surrendered to his every dark desire and was eager for more. It was
her secret, her shame, her addiction. ------ Michael McReady was one of the wedding party who had survived
the massacre. It was his ready wit and keen mind that exposed the serving
wench who had betrayed Jamie McDermott to his death. Moira Keegan was a
bitter girl who had little in life and had seized a chance to hurt her better
simply because she could. The meagre reward in coin she had received from the
clan McDonald was little compared to the satisfaction in seeing the perfect
Miss MacKie brought low by tragedy and mourning. When Michael McReady exposed Moira’s treachery the kitchen
wench admitted it freely, almost boastfully. She had nothing to lose.
Kirsty’s father had the wench flayed in the castle courtyard, and she was
hung at sunset from the battlements. Michael McReady spent some time with Kirsty, explaining what
had happened, trying to help her come to terms with her loss, trying to draw
her back to life. He thought her too beautiful to be sad forever, and already
he had hopes that he might lead her through her grief and win her to himself.
------ The night Moira Keegan died, Kirsty padded with naked feet to
draw aside the curtain only to find two figures awaiting her. The traitor
servant-girl stood beside the man she had betrayed, the both of them pale and
waiting for the grieving bride. Kirsty screamed as Moira reached out for her, but Jamie
commanded her be still. He held her tight while the kitchen wench bared and
touched her body. “Must I?” Kirsty shuddered at the serving girl’s caress. “You gave yourself to me,” her lover told her, “And I bestow
you as it pleases me.” That night James McDermott bestowed his bride upon the dead
Moira, and the three of them shared the marriage bed until the first crow of
the cock. Kirsty awoke late into the morning, scratched and bleeding from
Moira’s malice, but she knew that she would be waiting for darkness to fall
so her two dead lovers could take and abuse her again. ------ Michael McReady visited Kirsty every day, and pressed his suit
as delicately and sensitively as he could. Sometimes he thought he was
getting through to the girl, when her face took on a far-away look as if she
was remembering something good. Other times she sat disconsolate and endured
his chatter. She knew McReady to be a good-hearted man, and a good match. He
mother and father had hopes that she might find in him a substitute for the
childhood sweetheart she had lost. But she spoke no word, and Michael did not
press his suit for fear of abusing one who had endured so much. ------ Sometimes, as Jamie and Moira used her through the night,
Kirsty dared to imagine that it was Michael who was thrusting into her. ------ Somehow they knew. Jamie McDermott seemed to know all that
Kirsty was thinking. That was how he knew what aroused her, what humiliated
her, what hurt and what pleasured her. Now he knew of the tiny seed of
affection that she nurtured for Michael McReady, and he knew that Michael
McReady must die. ------ Kirsty twisted beneath her lover as her body betrayed her again
into servitude. “Soon,” Jamie McDermott promised, “Soon you will have a new
bedmate to enjoy.” “I… I don’t understand, Jamie. This is so wrong. Wrong. Evil.
Why can’t I resist you?” “Why would you want to?” Jamie replied. “Why treasure the
pristine pure light of day when you can revel in the sinful secrets of the
night?” “What do you mean? Who do you mean?” “You wanted Michael, didn’t you? Wanted to give yourself to
him? Wanted him to plunge into you and take you as I take you now?” Despite all she had done, Kirsty MacKie blushed at her guilty
desire. Then a thought frightened her. “If he comes to me like you…
wouldn’t he have to be dead?” Her lover laughed and
pinned her harder to the bed. “Would you mind?” he insinuated. ------ McReady’s lodging was in one of the draughty towers of the
Castle MacKie. He knew he should have left for his home weeks ago, but he
stayed on, abusing his welcome, desperate for some word from Kirsty. The wind was howling like a banshee around his tower, rattling
the shutter, and making it hard to sleep. He rose and groped his way in the
darkness to wedge a cloth into the windowframe to quiet the noise. He heard the door open, although he would have sworn he had
drawn the bolt, and discerned the sound of a person stealthily crawling onto
his bed. The mattress creaked with the weight of a human body. “Who’s there?” he asked. “A friend,” came back the whisper, and it was in Kirsty’s
voice. “Kirsty?” “Who else. Come warm me, Michael.” The woman beneath the fleeces was naked, and cold to the touch,
but her kisses were hot. Her hands quickly raised Michael McReady’s ardour,
and he allowed himself license to rove his hands over the smooth perfection
he could touch but not see in the darkness of his tower room. “Take me, Michael,” the girl begged him. “Do what you have
dreamed of for so long. Do anything.” Michael felt his visitor lean back before him, willing and
waiting for his love. But something was wrong. He pressed back his favoured passion
for a moment and re-examined the sensations of his recent caress. “Michael… take me,” the girl pleaded. He returned his touch to her foot, her left foot. It felt
mis-shaped and hard, more like a cloven hoof than a human appendage. “Take me now,” his bedfellow demanded, wrapping her legs around
him to guide him to her, wrapping her arms around him to press her breasts to
his chest. Michael caught the gleaming dagger as she plunged it towards
his back. She wrestled him with demonic strength, flailing with nails like
talons, spitting and screaming like a wildcat. The struggle went on in the
darkness for a long time, until at last McReady managed a deft twist of her
wrist to plunge the weapon into her own chest. He felt the spray of cold blood and the death-rattle of a dying
woman. He groped in the darkness for tinder and lit the oil dish beside his
bed. Moira Keegan’s rotting corpse was sprawled across his pallet.
The flayed servant girl was maggoty with decay. ------ “The time has come,” James McDermott told his bride. “The time
for you to choose. I have to go. Back to where I came from. I can take you
with me if you beg it. We can be together forever.” “I don’t know,” Kirsty MacKie shuddered. “I’m frightened.” The dead man’s touch made her nipples harden, sent electric
shiver down to her groin. “You can be mine. Enjoy the revels of the dead, the
lusts of the damned. So many pleasures yet await you. You have so much
innocence yet to strip away. And we shall have eternity to play with you.” It was so tempting. Her body responded as it always did to his
advances. His left index finger traced a razor-sharp line across her breast,
drawing blood from the gash. “I… Jamie…” “You have to choose. Then you can join us. You can be one of
us.” “Jamie…” He licked the blood from her wound and drew a similar gash
across his own chest. “You are already my slave. Be my slave forever,” he
urged. She allowed herself to be pulled down to taste the crimson
ichor from his wound. A last vestige of restraint made her pause. Michael McReady kicked open the bedchamber door and burst
inside with a cutlass in his hand. “Let her go, damned and blackened fiend!”
he shouted. Jamie McDermott held the naked girl to him, and guided her head
to his chest. But Kirsty turned away in shame at being found thus by one
whose affection mattered to her. She saw herself as Michael must see her,
stained, sweat-soaked, debased, and debauched. She struggled to get away. “Kirsty…” Jamie McDowell said, as Michael McReady severed his
head with a single stoke of the cutlass. This time there was not even a rotted corpse remaining. Only a
weeping woman, her body latticed with old scars and purpled bruises, on a
soiled bed that had once been white and clean. ------ Michael McReady wedded Kirsty MacKie in the spring of the
following year. He was a kind man and a considerate lover. Kirsty had made
her choice. If she ever rose from her marriage bed and padded with naked
feet to draw back the curtain to the window alcove to see if anyone was there
she never admitted it to her husband or to any living soul. ----- Original
concepts, characters, and situations copyright © 2011 reserved by Ian Watson.
The right of Ian Watson to be identified as the author of this work has been
asserted by him in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs & Patents
Act 1988. All rights reserved. |
|
|
|
|
|