The McKinnon (2 page)

Morgan could feel her mother near as she folded herself up into a ball on the uncomfortable seat of that carriage and allowed her mind to go blank.

This would be the first of many times in the next seven years she would retreat into herself out of self-preservation.

To survive, one does what one has to.

For Morgan it was to become a way of life.

It had been over seven years since that fateful Christmas Eve. Morgan, now a young woman of twenty, stood taking a deep breath for courage.

“You can do this,” Morgan whispered, her words disappearing into the darkness of the hidden passageway.

“
You must do this, my child
.” Her mother’s voice came back, echoing softly on the drafty air.

In spite of the damp and chill lingering in the midnight air, Morgan found herself wiping away a bead of sweat inching its way down her temple. Escape was her focus, and having planned this moment of escape for years, she knew with utter certainty, it was now or never. She was not about to let a little thing like fear keep her from obtaining the one thing she had not had in seven years.

Freedom.

She could smell freedom. She tasted it on the stale and salty air as it bubbled up from the depths of the castle.

Her uncle, in deed, returned her to Seabridge after the death of her family. However, her uncle had seen that she remained here, too, locked away, tormented, and abused. His subjects were too afraid of him to help her. Morgan was held a virtual slave in a castle, simply too isolated for anyone to even realize she was a prisoner in her own home, beaten, starved, and alone in her torment.

“
You can do this, heart of my heart.
” The soft encouragement of her mother’s ghost answered her trepidation. She closed her eyes against the blackness that would lead her to the damp bowels of the castle. Plunging behind the secret door of the tower room, Morgan quickly felt for the lever.  To her way of thinking this door was a feat of engineering, as was the whole castle. The massive stone moved almost without a sound, the door closing behind. The stone upon stone was barely heard as the tattered tapestry she dropped back in front of the passage muffled the resonance.

Now committed, there was no going back.

Sheer willpower and determination propelled her through narrow passageways that some long ago ancestor had been insightful enough to build. It was a means of escape, hidden behind the walls of the room where she was a virtual prisoner. Over the years, she had discovered many such passages throughout the castle.

By sheer luck she found the doorway five years earlier when necessity had driven her to pull the tapestry off the wall to wrap around her for warmth. Remembering the day clearly, Morgan was shivering, huddled  against the opposite wall, and it had taken her several days to see the door. Hours each day, her total attention was transfixed on the bare stone. To her eyes, something did not seem quite right and then it had revealed itself. One moment she was looking at bare stone and then, almost as if by magic, it registered in her mind what she was seeing. Instantly, she sprang to her feet, flinging the moldy tapestry behind her. Hope spurred her to find the key to opening this hidden door to freedom. Fearing someone else would see it, she hung the tapestry back. She never removed it again, no matter how cold she had gotten.

In the years following that grand discovery, Morgan cleared the cobwebs, dust and remains of long dead rodents along its length. She needed a clear and unobstructed path between the two walls, which were so close, had she been a man she would have to turn sideways to traverse the path.

Picking up the items that she had managed to collect on her nightly excursions, she dug through the pack. Finding the trousers, shirt, and knife, she carefully placed each item soundlessly on the passage floor. Slipping off the ragged dress, Morgan quickly redressed, using the ragged scraps of her dress as under garments to bind her breasts.  With no one to care or help to tend her needs, there was no opportunity for a haircut. In seven years her hair had grown past her waist. She knew it had to go. It was crucial to her disguise as a poor stable boy.

The knife sliced freely through the long braid. The weight of it transferring from her head to her hand felt like freedom.

Placing the severed tresses into a sack once used for seed, she prayed the confinement would keep any of the long dark strands from inadvertently making their way under the opening and giving away the existence of the door. If she had to abort this escape attempt, she needed to ensure her secret was safe. Not that she had a reasonable explanation for how she cut her hair without having a weapon should she have to return unsuccessful in this attempt. Tying a knot in the top of the sack, she placed it to the side, leaving it behind, along with any remaining self-doubt.

From this point to the next, Morgan would be in complete darkness, knowing that each of the chambers had slits in the walls for secret viewing. She could not risk someone seeing a light source shining through the walls alerting someone to her presence.

It was neither here nor there, she thought. She did not need the light, knowing intimately every passageway with her eyes closed.

When she began to venture out over five years ago, there had been several narrow escapes. Almost immediately, tales began to circulate of certain parts of the castle being haunted with the spirit of her long-dead mother. Many servants came forward claiming to have seen the ghost of the Sixth Duchess wandering the castle at night searching for her dead children. Some had gone as far as to say the Duchess had spoken to them through the walls.

Her uncle had dismissed all this as the ranting of the ignorant. Morgan had taken full advantage. Knowing none of the superstitious folk would venture to the places they thought to be haunted bought her time to roam the castle freely. Morgan smiled at the thought giving her courage. The only ghost wandering the corridors of Seabridge was herself, and she had no intentions of dying anytime soon.

She moved slowly, feeling her way along the passage, careful not to give her presence away to the occupants in the chambers just inches away. Step by agonizing step, Morgan kept her breathing even and silent just as she had practiced.

Inching her way closer to her first destination, Morgan felt for the latch located at the top of the door. This passage exited into the study, opening less than two feet from the desk that had once belonged to her father.

Stopping at the panel, she placed her ear to the cool surface to listen for any evidence of anyone in the chamber. With her Uncle Lester still in London for the Easter celebration, she doubted there was any activity in this part of the castle, especially at this hour. Yet caution was still the rule. She had not survived this long by being reckless.

Just a few days earlier, she had oiled the hinges with the goose fat she kept stashed away, a precaution she had taken routinely over the last five years. Silently the latch released, and holding the panel from springing open, she cracked it ever so slightly. Peering through the crack in the panel, Morgan could see there was no one in the study. Breathing a sigh of relief, the coast was clear.

Crouching down behind the desk, she silently closed the panel behind her, gently placing pressure until hearing the soft click of the latch. In the silence of the night it sounded very loud. No one came to investigate. She had cleared another hurdle.

This second escape hatch was a scuttle hole through the bottom of the stone floor to a landing for a set of very narrow stairs leading down into the maze of tunnels beneath the castle. Peeling back the rug just covering the outer edge, Morgan lifted the stone designed to move with ease. Again, an engineering wonder that a massive stone could be moved by a slip of a woman. She looked around the darkened room for what she hoped was the last and final time.

This was the same room she once played chess in with her father. That wonderful time seemed ages ago. It had been before the fire consumed her family at her Uncle Lester’s estate, leaving her sole heir to the fortune, the dukedom called Seabridge. She had become the Seventh Duchess that fateful night which claimed the lives of her father, mother, twin sister and brothers. To her knowledge, authorities never recovered her sister or baby brother’s bodies in the rubble of the aftermath, leaving a feeling of uncertainty lingering in her about the true fate of Baby John and Rhiannon. In a flash, she had become the ward of her father’s stepbrother, her only known living relation.

The man was sadistic, and over the seven years that she had been under his care, he had placed his share of emotional and physical scars upon her. With good reason, she had grown to suspect he had killed her family for his own personal gain. If she stayed, Morgan knew he would eventually kill her, too.

“No more. It ends tonight,” she vowed as she stared into the void left by the stone. Morgan inhaled the stale, cold air bubbling up from the frigid depths of the castle. She knew it was the smell of liberty.

Morgan stared into the gaping mouth of the dragon. This yawning darkness was the final barrier between her and freedom. Only three hundred yards of underground tunnel separated her from the edge of the paddocks, and her means of escape. She had spent years exploring the miles of labyrinth tunnels in hopes she would find the one tunnel that exited out past the castle walls. After years of searching, she had been victorious not only in finding the bolt hold but also finding the contract between her father and the King.

And none too soon, Morgan thought.

She was aware King Henry had refused Brentwood’s petition to marry her the previous summer. Lester argued unsuccessfully there was no blood relation between them. Her grandfather's second wife was Lester's mother and he was ten years old when they married. It had not mattered to the King. Henry really did not care if her father and Brentwood had shared neither the same father nor mother. Brentwood was not of noble blood. His mother only married it. Morgan by contrast was a distant relative to the King and royal family. The King had given him a royal sit-down and sent him packing. She overheard some of the house servants laughing at his ousting by the King feeling it was less then he actually deserved. Morgan agreed. 

At the time, her triumph had been very short-lived.

Brentwood must have vowed that if he could not marry her to secure the Dukedom and titles from himself, he would marry her to someone he could control. Consequently, he had paraded her in front of a score of potential husbands as if she were a piece of property to go to the highest bidder.

Wealthy and intelligent, she felt strongly she had no use for marriage being more than capable of making her own decision about her life. If she could only survive another couple of weeks until her birthday, she would then be truly free. She would never to have to answer to any man except for the King himself.

After years of searching through the cracks and crevices of the castle, she had finally found the contract her father had drawn up between the King and himself when she was a child. Her mother had shown it to her only days before the fire, reading it to her and explaining paragraph by paragraph how the agreement worked. The decree stated clearly that should she find herself in the hands of a guardian and not find a husband of her own choosing, and that was the key to the whole thing -
a husband of her own choice
then on her twenty-first birthday Seabridge would be hers to run as she saw fit without any outside interference.

It was unprecedented.

Furthermore, her father knew that it was unprecedented when he drafted the document at the insistence of her mother. Her father gave her mother everything her heart's desired, so there was not much pushing that her mother had to do to get her father to barter this agreement. Henry signed the agreement in September 1485  the first year of his rule and ascension to the throne.

Morgan was certain her Uncle Lester could not possibly know of the agreement’s existence. Otherwise, years ago the man would have had no qualms of forcing her post haste into marriage with a lackey of his own choosing before the King could object. It was certainly not to her Uncle's advantage for her to reach her birthday still unmarried.

However, in the meantime, Brentwood’s greedy nature was playing into her plans. Knowing Lester was in no hurry to see her placed into the care of any husband, Morgan felt certain her uncle would not release the reins of Seabridge quietly. She also had a gut check a few weeks back. Coming to terms with the fact that he would eventually reach the realization that she could not live if he was to keep Seabridge for himself, she knew that without hesitation the bastard would kill her. There was no one to stop him.

It was the catalyst she needed to bolster the courage to make her escape. 

Her Uncle was not going to control her any longer.

She would go to the King and beg his indulgence for an audience. Morgan was not quite sure how to go about that request, but she would figure it out. If he declined her audience or did grant the audience, but declined her request outright, she would use the document. However, she was also smart enough to know it was never wise to push a King into a corner. She would allow Henry to select her husband and pray for the best.

And in this instance, it was better to dance with the devil she did not know than for her to continue this serenade with the one she did.

She pushed down the fear. She pushed aside the uncertainty.

Tonight she was leaving it all behind, carrying nothing except her courage, a small sack of belongings, and the contract her mother had told her never to forget. That contract was between her father and the King.

It was a commitment that would truly set her free.

In the distance Lord Lester Brentwood saw Seabridge sitting on the jagged cliffs. It was his Seabridge, or it would be soon enough, and had been for the last seven years for all intents and purposes.