Greer MacLaren

Greer realized that being led to the gallows instead of the pyre was a form of kindness that she should've thanked the MacGregors for.  She now shivered against the crisp breeze that blew through the Strath Fillan glen that she, and a group of men, now walked through. No one had broken the damp silence that clung in the air around them. They had collected her from the village long before the sun would even break through the A' Bheinn Mhòr and so Greer had spent the first hour of the walk unaware of who was leading her to her death. They were now about three miles out of Strathyre before the sun began to rise, revealing familiar faces.

There were seven men total that were stationed on horseback around her. Greer knew the men in front well enough to recognize that they were Callan's cousins. Their names weren't rememberable nor important to Greer, but she knew them to be quite nasty and forked tongued.

True MacGregor's, she thought to herself.

Beside her were two older men she recognized from her wedding ceremony, and when she turned her head to see the set of men behind her one of the cousins jerked the noose that was around her neck and sent her face first into the grass and into a coughing fit. When she was finally able to breathe and get her legs beneath her, she lifted her face and noticed that the seventh man, the one leading the party, had stopped his horse and was now watching her through his lowered hood. She couldn't see his face, but she still felt naked under his gaze. He wore no tartan or pin that could hint at his clan, and so Greer deduced that he was the hangman.

No, she told herself, almost happily. Not my husband.

They were taking her into the Trossachs. Greer knew she should have been trialed at the court in Stirling—or in Edinburgh for that matter—but it had been decided that her life was to be put into the hands of the MacGregor clan. She knew why they hadn't brought her case to the mercy and minds of the Stuarts of Stirling, or any Stuart clan. They were her most powerful ally and every clan in Perthshire knew it. She also knew that if the court caught wind of rising witchcraft amongst the clans, allies or not, every highlander would suffer. And so, Greer would be hanged and forgotten in the Trossachs, left to rot in its dark, quiet trees.

She had never liked the quiet.

It was something she had never grown accustomed to, even after the death of her family. Growing up, Ma had made music and dance a requirement within the halls of their estate. Ma, who had come from a long line of royal bailees, a few lairds, and a Duke—or so she's claimed—had been breed for such arts. And so Greer and her sisters had vocal and dance lessons with her while Leith, her only brother, learned the pipes from Da. Greer had learned patience from those breathless lessons, as well as how to cure a splitting headache from Leith's heinous attempts with the squealing instrument.

With these lessons, weekly performances had started coming after dinner. The performances were Greer's favorite because she loved the way Ma would look at them all while they sang and reeled to whatever tune Leith had learned that week. At the end of each performance her parents would eventually join in, their experienced feet bringing awe and laughter to her and her siblings as they danced to silly drinking songs they'd bellow together. Da would tell anyone who would listen that he had fallen in love with ma the moment he heard her sing at the gathering of the MacLaren's and Stuarts. The MacLaren clan had been loyal to the Stuarts for over a century now; actively fighting for and supporting their crown. We had fought alongside James III and James IV, and most recently with Mary I at Pinkie. They had become further allies when a daughter of the MacLaren family married a Stuart Lord almost a hundred years ago. We were fated to be, Da had told her at one of the gatherings. He had been gazing softly at the spot Ma took up with her sister at the end of the table and—