Read Online The Frost Maiden's Kiss by Claire Delacroix - Free Book Online Page B

her bearings, and Malcolm wondered if she had been in these lands before. “Are we at all near Huntlie bank, sir?”
    Malcolm understood her reference immediately. “Where True Thomas met the Fae queen?” he asked, recalling that this tale was one of Vivienne’s favorites. It appeared she had told it to her daughters, for their eyes lit. “Indeed. It is not far at all.” He stood and pointed south. “Just over the moor, past Kinfairlie.”
    “Then there is peril indeed,” Catriona concluded, her tone dark.
    Mairi began to sing, apparently not feeling imperiled at all.
     
    “True Thomas lay on Huntlie bank,
    when he espied a fairy lady;
    This lady she was brisk and bold,
    and she rode to the Eildon Tree.
    Her skirt was of the grass-green silk;
    her bridle of gold most fine;
    and woven into her horse’s mane,
    were fifty silver bells and nine.”
     
    Astrid seized Mairi’s hands and the girls danced in a circle as they sang the words together. Catherine smiled shyly, her fist coming out of her mouth again, and the boy clapped his hands.
     
    “True Thomas he took off his hat,
    and bowed him low down till his knee.
    ‘All hail, Mary, mighty Queen of Heaven!
    Your peer on earth I ne’er did see.’
    ‘Oh no, oh no, True Thomas,’ she said,
    ‘That name does not belong to me.
    I am the queen of the fairy realm,
    come to hunt with greyhounds three’.
     
    ‘Now you must ride with me,’ she said;
    True Thomas, you must come with me;
    For you must serve me seven years,
    through well or woe as chance to be.’
    She mounted then her milk-white steed,
    and took True Thomas up behind;
    With every ring of her bridle,
    her horse ran faster than the wind.”
     
    Catriona stepped forward, raising her own voice in the song. Malcolm found himself startled by the words, which he had long forgotten.
    He had seen this realm of the Fae on the night of his arrival at Ravensmuir, however.
     
    “It was a dark dark night, with no light;
    they waded through red blood to the knee:
    For all the blood that’s shed on earth;
    runs through the rivers of Fairie.”
     
    Malcolm started at that detail and realized that Catriona was watching him. It seemed she sang the next verse to him.
     
    “He saw the thorn upon the hill,
    and he did hear the sea.”
     
    The girls’ eyes rounded as Catriona pointed from the hedge of thorns to the sea beyond the cliffs. “They are here,” Catherine whispered, once again drawing closer to Catriona.
    “But in this part of the tale, she teaches him,” Mairi confided to her sisters, then sang the next verse.
     
    “‘Oh do you see yon narrow road,
    so thick beset with thorns and briars?
    That is the path of righteousness,
    though after it but few enquires.”
     
    That was true enough, in Malcolm’s experience of men, though he did not comment upon it. He was aware that Catriona sang directly to him, as if she guessed his thoughts.
    Did she have the Sight? Had she guessed the truth of his holding?
    Or did she simply tell a tale to keep the girls out of mischief?
    Once again, Astrid joined the song. She had a fine clear voice, higher than Mairi’s and one that reminded Malcolm a little too well of the sweet Fae voices he had heard at their revels.
     
    “And do you see that broad broad road,
    that lies across the little leven?
    That is the path of wickedness,
    though some call it the road to heaven.’”
     
    Catriona then sang again. Her voice was a rich contralto that Malcolm found wondrously feminine and surprisingly warm. She pointed to the ruins of the old keep and the path of beaten-down grass that the mason’s apprentices had created when retrieving stones.
     
    “‘And do you see that bonnie road,
    which winds about the ferny slope?
    That is the road to the Fairie court,
    where you and I this night will go.”
     
    Catriona shook her finger, even as Malcolm’s heart clenched.
     
    “But Thomas, you must hold your tongue,
    whatever you may hear or see;
    For if a word you should