From Inverlochy Castle they headed southeast, around the tip of Loch Leven and into the lands of the Stewarts of Glencoe. Now they definitely turned southward. Kelpie frowned.
“Will we be going into Campbell country, then?” she asked, faintly alarmed. For the last time they had ventured into Argyll’s lands there had been an all too exciting witch hunt from which they had barely escaped, so it must be an important matter indeed that would bring Mina and Bogle back again into danger.
Mina just grunted disagreeably, but by the next day Kelpie’s question was answered, for they reached Loch Etive, which was well into Campbell land. Mina glanced around nervously, and Kelpie again wondered where they were going, and why. Bogle stood for a moment, staring down the loch, then turned and purposefully led the wayto the precise spot where the River Etive entered the northernmost tip. Clearly he knew exactly where he was going. And then Kelpie saw what must be the reason for this journey. A man sat waiting for them in a copse of alder near the river, looking oddly out of place in the sober gray breeches of a Lowlander.
“Aweel,” he said and looked at them. Kelpie’s sharp eyes took in every detail of the stocky long-armed figure, with sandy hair cropped to its ears, and sandy eyebrows looking too thin for the broad face. She did not like what she saw, and even less what she felt. For there was no expression at all on the Lowlander’s face. His eyes were like cold pebbles, and there was a malignance about him that made her shrink inside.
Suddenly Kelpie knew that he must be a warlock. Mina and Bogle would not be merely working with him; they were under his orders. Probably it was he who was behind Mina’s interest in politics, Kelpie’s long stay at Glenfern, this hurried trip. Och, it was a powerful and evil man, this, and she would do well to fear him.
The small opaque eyes studied her for a moment and then turned to Mina, who looked small and shrunken before them. “Is yon the lass?” Their owner demanded in the burred English of Glasgow.
Mina nodded, and the eyes turned back to Kelpie. “Come here!” he commanded.
Kelpie had a passionate desire to assert her own willand refuse. But it would be daft to try to challenge his power now—and especially with Mina and Bogle watching her. Reluctantly, her own eyes smoldering with anger and foreboding, she went and stood before him, and he seemed to read her thoughts.
“So, ye’d like tae be a witch,” he said, his voice half a sneer, half a caress. “Tae hae sich power, ye maun learn tae obey. Obey! Ye didna ken that, eh? Weel—ailbins ye can prove yersel’ the noo, and earn the powers ye’re wanting.” He turned to Mina again. “Hae ye told her?”
Mina shook her head humbly. “Never a word.”
“Good. She’ll hear it the noo,” returned the Lowlander. He turned back to Kelpie, whose small face regarded him with wary intensity. His face became genial and fatherly. “Ye’re a lucky lass,” he began, “tae hae us a’ so concerned wi’ yer ain guid.”
Kelpie laughed aloud, and there was genuine amusement as well as derision in her laughter. Did they think her a bairn, and daft as well?
At once the Lowlander became brisk and businesslike. Very well, then, he conceded, perhaps it was not merely her own good they were after. But she would profit greatly. Who, he demanded, was her worst enemy?
Kelpie prudently did not name Mina and Bogle. Instead, she remembered Mina’s deep interest of late and made a shrewd guess at the answer he expected. “Mac Cailein Mor?”
“Aye, Argyll,” he said approvingly and went on to point out why. The Kirk of the Covenant was reaching farther and farther into the Highlands now, with its persecution of honest witches, and even of stupid old folk who were not witches at all, for that matter. And who was head of the Covenant? Who was spearhead of the persecutions, the pricking and torture and burnings? Argyll. If he was not stopped, there would be no safe place in all Scotland for such as they.
Kelpie nodded and found part of her mind thinking that on this one point only—Argyll and the Covenant—did her world and that of Glenfern agree.
Very well, then, the Lowlander continued. They must take steps to destroy Argyll. And what better thing than a hex? A wee image of him, in clay or wax, they would make. And then they would stick pins in it, roast it, freeze it, pour poison over it, and, by the black powers of witchcraft, all these things would happen to Mac Cailein Mor himself, until at last he would die in great pain.
Again Kelpie nodded warily. And how did she enter into all this, at all?
She found out soon enough. In order to make a really effective hex on Argyll, something from himself was needed to mold into the wax figure—hair or fingernail clippings, preferably. And who was to obtain them? Why, Kelpie, of course.
Now it was clear why she had been left at Glenfern tolearn the ways of gentry and how to be a servant. She would hire herself as housemaid at Inverary Castle and, as soon as she managed to get the hair or fingernail clippings, just come away back here with them. And as a reward she would be taught all she wished to know about spells, potions, curses—even the Evil Eye itself.
As easy as that!
They were making her their tool again, of course, to do what they dared not do themselves. If she were caught, her life would not be worth a farthing. Still—Kelpie thought quickly behind narrowed eyes and an impassive face. It was a chance to get away from Mina and Bogle and perhaps take a hand in managing her own life. Once away in Inverary, she could decide whether or not to carry out the errand. Perhaps she would prefer Mac Cailein Mor to Mina and just stay for a while. Or perhaps.... Well, she would see.
She listened with great docility as they explained how she could get in touch with them once she had completed her task. She even nodded when the Lowlander suggested blandly that it might just be safest to send the hair—or half of it—on to them by the messenger they would tell her of, and then she herself could be bringing the rest later. Kelpie kept a sneer from crossing her face. If they thought her so witless as that, let them, then! But if and when she came to them, it would be with the hair hiddenin a safe place, and they having to fulfill their part of the bargain before they saw it.
The Lowlander was very pleased with her, and Kelpie went to bed very pleased with herself. But she awoke near dawn with the sense of something bothering her.
The sky was a vast aching void, neither black nor light. The world was a great shadow. Kelpie crept silently away from the camp and over the crest of the nearest rise, still wrapped in the old woolen plaidie which served as cloak and blanket. She seated herself against the thickness of a rhododendron, so that she was lost in the black shadows of its great leaves and blossoms. Then she stared down along the long, steely sheet of Loch Etive and began to think.
Obey, the Lowlander had said—and clearly Mina and Bogle were obeying him. But Kelpie had thought that to be a witch was to be free, to have power to command others, never tobecommanded again by anyone.
Was it not so, after all? Did the Lowlander, in turn, obey someone—or Something? For an instant Kelpie sensed something infinitely dangerous and horrible. Was Satan merely another name for those ancient Dark Powers? And was the price for invoking them to be a slave to them? She shuddered, and cold droplets of sweat broke out on her short upper lip.
Then she pulled herself together. She must not give into foolish worries. The Lowlander was a fearsome man, but witchcraft was the only way to be free of Mina, and when she had learned it she need fear neither of them any longer.
All the same, the first seed of doubt had taken root, and it no longer seemed quite so easy to become the most powerful witch in Scotland. It was a rather subdued Kelpie who meekly cooked the fish and oatcakes for breakfast, bade the Lowlander farewell, and followed Bogle and Mina on to Loch Awe.
At a ruined old shieling hut by the loch they stopped and waited for a day, until there came a round-faced young woman with a wealth of brown hair and a slate-colored dress kilted up over a striped petticoat. She seemed an unlikely person to be working with witches and warlocks, for her bright-cheeked smile was quite artless.
“Dhia dhuit!” She beamed. “Is this the lass who will be fetching the hair to hex Mac Cailein Mor, may the demons fly away with him? I am Janet Campbell, who will take you to Inverary. I will call you Sheena at once,” she added chattily, “so you can get used to it, for Mrs. MacKellar would never be hiring a lass named for a kelpie.” She chuckled cheerfully.
Kelpie gave her an appraising look from under her thick black lashes, but Janet didn’t seem in the least put out. “I could not be doing the task myself,” she explained, “for I have my work, and no reason to be going into the castle.And,” she added forthrightly, “I am not brave or clever enough. But I will be your messenger, Sheena, when you need me.”
Kelpie, more and more resentful of being used by others, nodded sullenly. But Janet’s next words cheered her considerably.
“She cannot be asking for work in such rags,” pointed out that young woman matter-of-factly. “They would know her for a gypsy at once, and Mac Cailein Mor has a fearful hatred of such. Best be giving her your blue dress to wear, Mina.”
Bogle chuckled, and Kelpie hid her satisfaction behind a blank face. Mina snarled and gave in. The string of epithets she flung at Kelpie along with the dress hardly amounted to an objection at all, and Kelpie’s earlier misgivings rose again briefly. If even the formidable Mina was so meekly obeying, then what power this Lowlander must have!
She was still brooding on this as she and Janet set out on the last bit of the journey, her cheek still stinging from Mina’s farewell cuff. On down Loch Awe, and to the wild steepness of Glen Aray, and along that gash in the hills toward Loch Fyne, Janet led the way sturdily enough, although Kelpie’s wiry legs could have gone much faster. Part of the time Janet left the thin path altogether and threaded her way along the slopes, among great clumps of brilliant pink rhododendron, groves of oak and hazeland rowan, patches of lavender-blooming heath and the mystic white bog-cotton.
“Best not to risk meeting anyone,” she remarked with a trace of nervousness. “I dare not be seen with you, in case....”
She left the sentence unfinished and went on in a new and brisk voice. “Now I will be giving you your story to tell the housekeeper when you ask for work. You are Sheena Campbell, daughter to Sorcha and Seumas, who lived in the old shieling hut where we met on Loch Awe. When they died, you went in service with MacIntyre of Craignish, but now, with their daughter wedded and away, there is no need for you. So you have come to Inverary, to your own clan chief, to see is there a place for you.”
For the next two hours she fed Kelpie the details of her fictional life and made her repeat them over and over, until Kelpie almost felt that she was two people at once.
“Och, you’re glib, just!” said Janet at last, her round face admiring. “I’m almost believing you myself. ’Tis a clever mind you have, and a canny tongue.” She stopped and turned around to survey Kelpie’s face searchingly. “Aye,” she went on, “and your face, though it is not bonnie, just, is a face to beguile the lads. Have you a braw laddie who loves you, Sheena?”
Four months ago Kelpie would have jeered at her inwonder and scorn. What had the lass of Mina and Bogle to do with love, or lads either—save to sell love-charms to the foolish? But though there had been no talk or thought of romance at Glenfern (except on one teasing afternoon), some sleeping thing in Kelpie had, perhaps, begun to stir. The face of Ian leaped into her mind, with the fine dark eyes of him, and the sensitive mouth curving downward and then up; and then she felt the strange, warm-faced sensation of her first blush—and she felt again the pain of her departure from Glenfern.
“No!” She spat so violently that Janet raised her eyebrows and gave Kelpie another sharp glance before she turned to walk on.
“A pity, that,” she observed mildly. “And a great waste,” she added presently, with a catch to her voice. “Had I your face and tongue, I would not be in the service of witchcraft, perhaps.”
Kelpie kilted up her blue dress a bit higher and came even with Janet so that she could see her face. “Why are you?” she demanded curiously. “I think you could never be a witch.”
“Och, no!” agreed Janet instantly. “At first I was only wanting a wee bit of a love potion to win the heart of the lad I loved. But before it could start to work at all, Mac Cailein Mor took him into the army and off to raid the MacDonalds. Och, my braw Angus.” She whimpered.
“He was killed?” Kelpie asked, and tried to push down the sympathy in her voice. She had promised herself not to care for anyone again, but only for herself.
“It was Mac Cailein Mor had him shot,” said Janet tonelessly. “He tried to save an old woman from the house they were burning. And for that I will help the Devil himself to destroy Mac Cailein Mor, my chief though he be. I am afraid of yon Lowlander, for he is evil, but I hate Mac Cailein Mor more than I fear the Lowlander.
“You must be very canny, Sheena! If you are caught—” She shuddered. “Have you asgian dhu?”
Kelpie nodded and drew the small sheathed knife from inside her dress. Janet looked at it somberly. “If you’re caught, you’d do well to use it on yourself. ’Twould save you torment and burning, more than likely, and keep you from betraying the rest of us. You’ll say no word, ever, about me, Sheena? Pretend you have never seen or heard of me! Promise, Sheena!”
Kelpie looked at her, and Janet’s eyes were humble and pleading. “I know I am a coward,” Janet whispered, “but I cannot help it. I could not bear the pain, and I would not dare to kill myself—but you would, for you are brave.”
Kelpie looked at hersgian dhureflectively. It was the finest one she had ever had, the one stolen last spring in Inverness. The wee flat scabbard was darkly carved, and the four-inch blade, when she drew it out, winked sharplyin the sun. Would she use it on herself? she wondered. Did she dare?
The beauty of the Highlands shimmered around her in pure, clear colors never quite the same from one instant to the next. The sky was infinite and tender; the sun beat warmly on her head; the air was delight to breathe. The world was good—except for the people in it, defiling it with hate and greed. It would be a pity to die, a waste of living. She found it very difficult to imagine.
She looked again at the gleaming edge of thesgian dhu, frowning a little. Dare? Yes, she thought she would dare, if it was to escape torture and burning. That would not take much courage. On the contrary, it would be the easy way—and she found that she did not like the taste of the idea. A feeling within her protested that suicide was shabby, debasing, a cheating of oneself. But Kelpie, who had never been taught such things as morals and integrity, could find no words and no reasons for this feeling. She shrugged and put thesgian dhuback. Time enough to think about it if the occasion came up.
Janet had been watching her with round eyes, guessing a little of her thought. She shivered slightly. “You are very brave,” and said again. “I think you will be getting away with the hair. And I am sure that whatever is happening at all, you will not speak any names.”
Kelpie fell back a step or two. She looked thoughtfullyon a golden patch of gorse blanketing the hillside ahead, and her smile was very pointed. No, she would not betray Janet—not, she reminded herself, because she was softhearted, but only because it would not help herself. But—if she was so unlucky as to be caught, which she did not at all intend to be—she would be very happy indeed to tell Mac Cailein Mor all about Mina, Bogle, and the Lowlander.
Loch Fyne stretched long and narrow between its hills—as what Highland loch did not? Glen Aray opened out into a meadow there, where the river entered the loch, and from the top of her hill Kelpie had a fine and leisurely view. There was the town of Inverary on the far side, nestled right on the loch. And on this side, almost below her, rose the massive stone bulk and towers of Inverary Castle, home of Mac Cailein Mor.
Kelpie wriggled a little deeper into her nest of tall harebells and broom and stared down at it with interest. She had time to wait and think. Janet had braided the black hair neatly for her, used the hem of her own dress to wash Kelpie’s grimy pointed face, and then hurried on to the head of the loch. From there she would return to the village as if from her own home. And Kelpie was to bide here, out of sight, until the next day, and then come down from the glen. Kelpie had agreed willingly enough,not for Janet’s sake, but for one more night under the free sky.
She glowered at the brooding gray castle, for it was just occurring to her that it would be much more like a prison than Glenfern. And would they allow her to be out and away in the hills when her tasks were done, as she had done at Glenfern? She doubted it. Och, it was a great sacrifice she was making for those who had sent her, and she must see that her reward was as great. And then.... She drifted into her favorite daydream.
In the long white twilight she backed down the hill until she found a tarn sheltered by birch, and settled herself for the night. The Dancers were absent tonight, and the sky a pale shadowed silver in which only the largest stars flickered feebly, for it was midsummer. Then the moon came over the crest of the hill, and there were no more stars, and the tarn became a pool of cold light. Deliberately Kelpie leaned over the bank and stared into the tarn.
The reflected brilliance of moonlight glowed, closed in upon itself, became a silver point, and then in its place there was a strange land—a place with giant forests, dark and wild, and a crude house made of logs in a rough clearing. She tossed her head with annoyance. What was this to her? What of her future, her career as a witch? What of destruction of those she hated? What of her enemies?
The tarn obeyed, as if with a malicious will of its own, and she saw Argyll’s face, the eyes coldly burning, the mouth twisted in anger, staring straight at her, and in her mind’s ear Kelpie heard the word “witch.”
She threw herself backward and sat with beating heart for several moments after the water stood clear and blank. Was she fey, then? Was it her own doom she was seeing? Och, no, perhaps not. For she had not seen herself, and surely Mac Cailein Mor had looked so to many a person accused of witchcraft. She had asked to see her enemy, and the picture was telling her, just, that here was a dangerous enemy—a warning to be canny, that was all. She curled up comfortably in a patch of rank grass free of nettles, and slept.
In the thin light of morning she smoothed back her hair and washed her face in the cold, peaty water of the tarn. Then, wary but confident, she made her way back to the glen and along the river to the castle.
As she approached the massive stone gateway, Kelpie put on the proper face and attitude for this occasion as easily as Eithne might have put on a different frock. The task was not so easy, really, for there was little that could be done about the long slanted eyes and brows or the pointed jaw. But the severely braided hair helped, and by tucking in her lower lip and drooping the corners she added a helpless and wistful note. She pulled her chindown and back and pressed her elbows to her sides for a look of brave apprehension, and then she changed her free, fawnlike walk for a most sober one.
Through the gate she stepped into a subdued world of drab colors. Her blue dress looked insolently bright beside the grays and blacks of the other women in the courtyard. Only the tartan—that proud symbol of the Highlander—had failed to be extinguished by the decree of the Covenant and Kirk. And even the tartans, being colored with vegetable dye, were of muted shades.
A man leading a horse stopped and regarded her with little approval. “What is it that you are wanting?” he asked.
“Could I be seeing Mrs. MacKellar, the housekeeper?” asked Kelpie, her eyes lowered modestly.
He looked at her for a moment and then called over his shoulder, “Siubhan, the lass is wanting Mrs. MacKellar. Take her away up to the door.” And he went on about his business.
A sad-faced woman put down her basket of laundry, regarded Kelpie without curiosity, and jerked her head. Kelpie followed with great meekness and waited obediently at the castle door until Siubhan had gone inside and reappeared with a tall, gaunt woman in black.
Once again there was the disapproving look. “And who may you be?”
“I be Sheena Campbell.” Kelpie launched into her story,not too glibly, with downcast eyes and humble voice. “And it’s hoping I am to serve Mac Cailein Mor,” she finished earnestly.
“Mmmm,” commented Mrs. MacKellar. “We’ve lasses aplenty in Inverary Village.”
“Och,” protested Kelpie, “but ’tis experience I’ve had! And,” she added pitifully, “they will be having homes, and I with nowhere to turn.”
Mrs. MacKellar softened, but only slightly. “To tell the truth,” she said bluntly, “there is something—I’m not altogether liking the look of you! How am I knowing you are what you say?”
“But and whyever else would I be coming to Mac Cailein Mor?” demanded Kelpie artlessly.
“Mmmm, that will be the question,” retorted Mrs. MacKellar. “No, now, I’m thinking—”
What she thought was never said, for from the corner of her eye Kelpie saw a tall figure just passing the foot of the stairs—not Argyll, but his tallness, his long face, red hair, and manner of dress suggested that he must be Argyll’s son. Kelpie took a chance.
She turned away blindly from the imminent refusal, carefully stumbled a bit, and tumbled herself neatly down the steps to land in a pathetic heap in front of the startled young man.
“My sorrow!” he ejaculated.
Kelpie swiftly decided against being injured, as thismight prove inconvenient. So she gave a small scared glance upward at the faint frown above her and shrank back against the wall. “Och, your pardon!” she whispered. “Please do not be beating me!”
The young man—she was quite sure now that he must be Lord Lorne, son of Argyll—gave a short laugh. “Whatever you may have heard, I am no beater of bairns.”
Kelpie drooped her lip at him. “Sir, I would not mind a beating, if only I could be staying here to work for Mac Cailein Mor.”
“What is this? Who is she?” Lord Lorne switched to English, and Mrs. MacKellar replied in the same tongue.
“She iss saying her name iss Sheena Campbell from Loch Awe, and that she iss an orphan who hass peen working in the home of MacIntyre of Craignish who iss not needing her any more.” Mrs. MacKellar’s English, sibilant with the soft Gaelic sounds, was really not nearly as good as Kelpie’s—but Kelpie was careful to keep her face blank, as if she did not understand. “But sir,” went on the housekeeper, “I am not liking the look of her whateffer. Her eyes—”
Lord Lorne bent and looked at them. Kelpie tried to make them wide and pleading.
“Oddly ringed, aren’t they?” he observed. “Well, she can’t help that. You could use her, I think. Why not try her out?” And he went on to wherever he had been going.
“Seadh.” Mrs. MacKellar shrugged and washed herhands of the decision. “You can be staying a bit, then, until I see can you do the work. We will see does Peigi have an old dress you can be wearing, of a proper color. You’re of the Kirk, are you no?” she demanded suddenly, turning to cast a suspicious eye on the blue of Kelpie’s dress.
Kelpie wasn’t quite sure what that meant, and, even with Janet’s tutoring, she dared not bluff too far. She took an instant to think as she rose slowly to her feet. “I am wanting to be a better Christian,” she said, temporizing, with an earnest face. “And that is one reason I was coming here, for the house of Mac Cailein Mor is surely the most godly of all.”
“Well—” Mrs. MacKellar looked somewhat appeased. “Come away in, then.” And Kelpie came.
Life in Inverary Castle was quite different from life at Glenfern, even though Kelpie’s duties were similar. There was a coldness here—and not only physical, although the castle was chill enough, with draughts constantly blowing down the halls and pushing out against the wall tapestries. But the chill of spirit was even more depressing. Laughter was near sacrilege, and a smile darkly suspect. Dancing simply didn’t exist, and singing was confined to dour hymns regarding hellfire and damnation. If Kelpie had ever chafed at the restrictions of Glenfern, she now realized what a free and happy life that had been. Och, thatpeople could live like this! Worse, that they seemed to approve it! One could hardly say theylikedanything.
And here Kelpie heard the other viewpoint regarding Mac Cailein Mor. Everyone seemed to fear him, even his rather mousy wife and sullen son. But they also saw him (except possibly Lord Lorne) as the Right Hand of God, fighting the battles of righteousness against such enemies of Heaven as witches, King Charles, Papists, Anglicans, everyone else who was not of the Covenant, and, most particularly, Lord Graham of Montrose, who was supposedly leading the King’s army in Scotland. But no one seemed to know where Montrose was now, at all. He had started north to raise an army for the king and then vanished altogether, and it was to be fondly hoped that the Devil had snatched him away to Hell where he belonged.
Kelpie listened and said nothing. She didn’t like what she heard and began to hate Argyll on her own account. Indeed and it was true that he would take all freedom from all people if he could. Kelpie cared little enough about anyone else, she told herself, but her own freedom mattered more than anything at all, and she began to feel a personal enthusiasm for her task here. A hex was what he deserved, and she hoped that the Lowlander would make it a fine horrible one indeed.
It was lucky, she discovered, that himself was home at all now, for he spent much of his time these days heading his Covenant army, raiding the Highlands, and occasionallydaring a small skirmish with other enemies. (Kelpie received the impression that he was not, perhaps, the boldest and most audacious leader when it came to fighting.) But now he was home, as no doubt the Lowlander had known.
Still, three bleak weeks had passed, and she still had never had a chance to lay her hands on any bit of his person or even come near his private rooms. Mrs. MacKellar kept a watchful eye out, and Kelpie’s duties were confined to all wings of the castle but that of Mac Cailein Mor. And so she watched and waited through June, tense, wary, inwardly chafing.
It was an impossible errand they had sent her on! Kelpie realized it slowly, angrily. A bit of Argyll’s hair, indeed and indeed! Nobody at all would be so feckless as to leave a bit of his hair lying about, convenient to the hand of any witch who happened to be passing. And how much less Mac Cailein Mor, who was thrice as crafty, ten times as suspicious, and a thousand times more hated than most folk? Och, no; for him such carelessness would be altogether impossible. It was certain that he would stand over his barber while every last hair or fingernail clipping was safely burned. The best she could hope for was a bit of his personal belongings, which would be much less effective; and whatever Mina and the Lowlander would say she did not know. No doubt they would make an excuse to refuse to teach her spells, after all.
And so she seethed under the joyless Covenant maskwhich was becoming harder and harder to wear. How she longed for the freedom of the open! Her legs ached with the longing to run and leap and dance upon the hills, and her face ached with the need to laugh. And yet she stayed on, hoping for some miracle, reflecting sourly that Mrs. MacKellar and Argyll were very little improvement over Mina and Bogle.
It was in mid-July that it happened, during morning prayer.
Kelpie knelt with the rest of the household on the cold stone floor in grim endurance, for this long, twice-daily torment was nearly unbearable for an active young gypsy.
Her place was in the very back, among the meanest of the servants. Ahead, the bowed backs graduated in rank, with Mrs. MacKellar far up front, just behind meek Lady Argyll, Lord Lorne, and Ewen Cameron, whose red kilt blazed sharply alien amid all the blue and green of the Campbell tartan. And before them all stood Mac Cailein Mor’s long, stooped figure, telling of the anger, jealousy, cruelty of a God who could surely have nothing to do with the opal world outside. With cold satisfaction and in grim detail he described God’s will (which seemed indistinguishable from Argyll’s will); and his pale eyes were most disconcerting, for if one seemed fixed upon Siubhan or Peigi, the other seemed to stare straight at Kelpie, and who was to know what himself was really looking at, whatever?
“Behold, the day of Jehovah cometh, cruel, with wrath and fierce anger; to make the land a desolation, and to destroy the sinners thereof out of it,” said Argyll. “He shall destroy the minions of Satan, those evildoers who are not of the Kirk, who blasphemously question the Covenant. For all those who are not with the Covenant are against the Lord and vile in His sight. They shall burn forever in Hell, and above all shall burn all witches and that servant of the Devil, Montrose. They shall be tormented—”
Kelpie felt the presence of the messenger in the open door behind her, but dared not turn to look. She saw Argyll’s eye flicker briefly in that direction and noticed the slight pause before he went coldly on with his orders to and from God. And something inside Kelpie stirred, and she knew that something was about to happen which would be important to her.
Dropping her dark head over clasped hands in an attitude of great reverence, she tried to think what it could be. There was nothing she had done. Unless—Had Ewen Cameron said something about yesterday?
For yesterday Kelpie had found her first opportunity to get away over to the wing which held the chambers of Mac Cailein Mor and his family. She had actually reached his door, and as she hesitated there, heart beating quickly, another door nearby had opened, and through it came a lad of about fifteen.
Kelpie had not needed to look at the oddness of a Camerontartan in the Campbell stronghold to know that this was Ewen, the grandson of Lochiel. Ian had told her about him, and she had seen him now and again about the castle. And Peigi had told her proudly how fine it was that Mac Cailein Mor was taking on himself the education of his nephew, for fear it should be neglected or his own family should teach him to believe the wrong things.
Kelpie had hidden a cynical smile at the time, but now, when the grave, clear-eyed lad stood regarding her in the hall, she wondered briefly how much this “education” would really mean. For he had about him the air of one with a mind of his own.
“You’ll be Sheena, will you not?” he asked as Kelpie belatedly made a stiff bob. She nodded. “Best not to linger here,” he went on. “If my uncle should see you—”
“Aye,” Kelpie had murmured, and slipped away back to her own territory with the odd feeling that he had seen through her mask—not, perhaps, that he knew exactly what was under it, but that he knew she was alien to this world of Inverary.
Could he have said anything, just? Kelpie wondered as she shifted her knees ever so slightly on the painfully hard stone. The thing inside said no. He was another of those strange people, like Ian and Eithne, who seemed not to hate anyone or even wish them ill.
But still, something was about to happen, and she must find out as soon as ever she could. When prayers were over,and the household rose and respectfully made way for himself to go out first, it was easy enough for her to slip nearest the door, for she had had a wealth of experience at picking pockets and melting through crowds. And so she saw the travel-weary messenger waiting outside, and heard the news when Argyll did.
“Antrim of Colonsay and his clan of Irish MacDonalds have landed at Ardnaburchen and taken the castle of Mingary, and will even now be taking the keep of Lochaline, your Lordship!”
The Marquis of Argyll said something under his breath, and the freckles suddenly stood out under the red hair that Kelpie coveted. “May the Devil take his impudence!” he said aloud, and there was no doubt that he meant it literally.
Kelpie tried to remember something she had heard at Glenfern. Antrim—Colkitto, they called him—was chief of a branch of MacDonalds that the Campbells had driven westward, over the islands, and at last to Ireland. And now, it seemed, he had decided to bring his clan back to Scotland to fight the Campbells and perhaps take back some land.
“Have messengers ready to ride,” Argyll said viciously to his son. “I’ll have the army up and wipe him out once and for all!” By this time the rest of the household had filtered out into the hall, and it didn’t seem to matter ifthey all heard or no. But then, there’d be no keeping this kind of news secret, whatever.
Kelpie clenched her fists. We? Then would Mac Cailein Mor be away with the army himself?
“Isn’t there an English Parliament garrison at Carlisle?” ventured Lord Lorne in English. “Why not send to them to take warships up the coast? If they captured Antrim’s ships, there’d be no retreat for him.”
Argyll nodded brusquely and strode off toward his chambers to write the necessary letters—taking his hair with him, of course. “Get my things ready to ride,” he ordered one of his retainers, thus destroying Kelpie’s last hope.
“Dhé!” she muttered, without changing the blank and sober expression considered suitable for God-fearing people. Whatever could she be doing now, at all, with him away?
Impulsively, she slipped out of the hall before Mrs. MacKellar or Peigi should see her, and made her way to the tower next to Argyll’s wing. There she hid her thin self partway up the steep, twisting stairs, where with one eye she could see his door, and waited. Not that he would be likely to be trimming his hair or fingernails now, but perhaps in the flurry of his leaving she could just slip in and lay hold of some wee personal item to be used instead, and it the best she could do.
It was a full half-hour before Argyll’s door opened. Kelpie glimpsed the full tartan folds of his belted plaid and then pressed herself out of sight as the halting steps assured her that it was indeed Mac Cailein Mor.
She waited until they had passed down the hall and out of hearing, and then slipped out of the tower and across to the massive oaken door. She paused an instant, hand lifted to open the door, but it was almost certain there could be no one else in there, for the entire household had been at morning prayer, and no one else had gone in. The door opened heavily, with never a creak, and closed firmly behind her.
Here must be his Lordship’s private withdrawing room. Kelpie had never seen such a room, and she glanced around with interest. The clan crest, a boar’s head, was carved over the large stone fireplace and on the back of the high oaken settle that stood at one wall. A bulky armchair with a triangular seat going to a point in back stood by a long table on which quills, ink, sand, and paper still stood. But there was nothing personal. His bedroom must be on through that other door.
She darted across the room silently, opened the door, and saw an enormous four-post bedstead of inlaid walnut—a fine piece indeed, she thought cynically, for an unworldly Covenanter! No less than three great-chests doubtless held his clothing and perhaps Lady Argyll’s—but clothing would be too bulky for Kelpie’s needs. A plaid-broochmight just do nicely, though, and they should be in a cupboard, perhaps, or a wee box somewhere.
Kelpie began investigating. And then she nearly yelped with triumph. A brush! A brush in which were tangled several long strands of red hair! Och, and hehadbeen careless, then, perhaps with being upset from the news of Antrim. Och, the fine luck of it! Chuckling, she pulled them loose, looked around for something to wrap them in—and saw the bedroom door swing inexorably open.
There he stood, Mac Cailein Mor, one eye regarding her balefully, the other apparently fixed on the wall behind; and the thin lips were pitiless. For once Kelpie’s quick mind and glib tongue failed her altogether, and she just stood there while he crossed the room in three strides and seized her wrist.
“A thief, is it?” he rasped.
Kelpie found her wits. “Och, no, your worship!” she cried. “I know it’s no right I have to be coming here, but it’s the fine and godly man you are, and leaving now, and I just wanting to see—”
He pried her hand roughly open, and the damning evidence of the hairs lay exposed on her palm.
“A witch!” he said with savage glee. “A witch in my own household. Ah, the Devil is trying hard to destroy me, for I do the work of the Lord. Blessed are those who are persecuted for Thy name’s sake. Spawn of Satan, do you know what we do with witches?”
“Witches?” faltered Kelpie with desperate innocence, though she knew by now that pretense was hopeless. Far less evidence than this would have been fatal, and even with a much less suspicious man than Mac Cailein Mor. Sudden hot anger almost drove out her terror for an instant—not so much at Argyll as at Mina and Bogle and the Lowlander, who had so callously sent her on this errand. They had surely known how slim her chances were, and that she would almost certainly be caught and burned. And they would never have taught her the Evil Eye, even had she been successful. She had been their tool and cat’s-paw, and she cursed herself for being such a fool. Och, she would see to it before she died that Argyll knew their names and the meeting place.
She didn’t once think of thesgian dhuthat rested within the bodice of her sober gray dress.
Mac Cailein Mor was dragging her out of the room, baying for his servants, the dangerous hairs safely in his own hand. Kelpie submitted passively because it would do no good at all to struggle. Her mind darted here and there, like a moth in a glass ball, finding no way out at all.
And now all the household was running, and two husky men took her from Argyll and hustled her brutally through the castle and out to the courtyard, while Argyll sputtered his tale to his son between bellows for Mrs. MacKellar.
“Was it you hired her?” he demanded ominously of thecringing housekeeper. “Could you not see the eyes of her, the teeth, the brows? Or was it yourself plotting against me too? Are the minions of Satan filling my own home?” He was working himself into a fine frenzy, and even through her terror Kelpie found time to wonder briefly at the idiotic honesty of Lorne, who spoke up then.
“’Twas my fault, Father. Mrs. MacKellar didn’t like the look of the lass when she came to ask for employment, and I was fool enough to feel sorry for her, and I said to take her in.” He met his sire’s black glare straight. “’Twas stupid,” he said firmly, “but no plot against you by any here.”
“The Devil addled your wits, then,” retorted Argyll, not to be deprived of his martyrdom. “Could you not see the ringed eyes of her? No, do not look into them! She’ll cast a spell!” He glared at Lorne, and then, dourly, at Ewen Cameron, who stood near with an expressionless face.
Kelpie was again fervently wishing that shecouldcast a spell! Och, the plague she would be putting on the lot of them, and himself in particular! Since she couldn’t, she tucked in her lower lip, lowered the offensive eyes, hung meekly in the painful grip on her arms, and made one last hopeless try for her life.
“What was it I was doing wrong?” she whimpered. “It was nothing valuable I was taking, but only a wee bit token to protect me from the Devil whilst yourself was away.”
It was no use at all. Everyone knew what hairs were used for, even children.
“Shall we burn her now, Mac Cailein Mor?” asked one of the men. Kelpie’s heart thudded sickly. But Argyll brooded.
“No time now,” he said reluctantly. “I’ll be wanting to test her for witch marks and get a full confession and the names of her accomplices. And there’s Antrim to deal with first.” He looked frustrated at having to delay, and Kelpie realized that here was a man who enjoyed cruelty for its own sake. She shuddered.
“Put her in the dungeon,” ordered Argyll, “the wee cell at the bottom, and with no blanket. And let no one open the door or speak to her until I return. Put bread and water through the grate, but nothing else. Is everything ready, Buchanan? My horse, then.”
He turned away, and Kelpie drew a small shaky breath. A wee respite, then, and perhaps a chance to escape altogether from the torture and burning, if they didn’t search her and take away thesgian dhu—and if she made up her mind to use it.
The cell was tiny, damp, cold, and inconceivably black. Within ten minutes after the solid door thudded behind her, Kelpie was cowering on the floor. Even an ordinary roof was oppressive to her, and this—Ou, the dark and the smallness were almost tangible things that seemed to press down and in on her, smothering and squashing! It was even hard to breathe, just with the thinking of it.
By the time half an hour had passed, it was all she could do not to shriek wildly and beat her head against the stone. She gritted her teeth, sensing that self-control was her only hold on sanity. How could mere darkness hurt the eyes so? Kelpie began fingering hersgian dhulongingly. It was escape, escape from this torment and that to follow. She had no great fear of death, in spite of all she had heard of Hell, for at worst it was almost certain to be interesting.
And yet, the thing inside would not let her use the wee sharp dagger that nestled so temptingly in her hand. It gave no reason, except that this was a mean and shabby way to die.
For nearly the first time in her memory, Kelpie cried. On and on she sobbed, for as space was closing in on her, time was stretched into a long and empty void, and she was alone in chaos and terror.
Once she thought that perhaps if she did kill herself now, her Hell would be an eternity of this, and she shuddered at the thought. Argyll’s God might just do such a thing, and Satan’s fire was surely to be preferred—but which of them would be having the decision, at all? Her thoughts blurred off into confusion.
Some time later a grate in the door opened, a hand pushed a bit of bread through the pale oblong, and it clanged shut again. Kelpie roused herself to explore the spot with her long, sensitive fingers but found it small and solidly bolted. She took a few halfhearted bites of bread and lapsed again into a shivering huddle.
After more time she drifted up from a semi-sleep to hear another sound at the door. Was it the next day, then, and time for more bread?
Dhé!The door was opening, when Mac Cailein Mor had ordered against it! Was he back, then? She shrank against the wall as an oblong of gray spread like a shaft of light into the thick black of the cell.
“Sheena?”
It was Ewen Cameron! She knew the voice of him!
“Sheena, are you awake?”
With a small gasp, Kelpie was at the door. “Och, it’s near dead I am! Will you no let me free? You wouldn’t see me burned, an innocent wee lass, and put to torment before it? I’ll—”
“Hist!” There was a hint of strain in his voice, with a thread of humor around it. “And what were you thinking I came for? ’Tis quite likely youarea witch,” he added ruefully, “but for all that, I cannot abide cruelty. Come away, then, and like a mouse.”
Gasping with relief, Kelpie was out of the door before he had finished speaking. He groped to find her face in the dark that was to her almost light. “Wait, now. I must be bolting the door again. I cannot see.”
Kelpie moved beside him and helped. “Follow me,” he said when it was done. “I can put you outside the walls, and then ’tis up to you.”
It was all she asked. Scarcely able to believe her good fortune, she followed him through a dark, narrow labyrinth of stone corridors, most of them damp with being underground. Twice he unlocked doors for them to pass through, and finally they crept on hands and knees through a tunnel quite as black as her cell had been. It twisted on and on, and finally upward.
“’Tis an escape route in case of siege by an enemy,”Ewen explained over his shoulder. “None but the family is supposed to know of it, and even they have nearly forgotten it, because for the last hundred years Clan Campbell has been too strong to be attacked in its own stronghold. Instead, it is they who attack other clans.”
The narrow tunnel picked up the faint note of anger in his voice, magnified and echoed it. Kelpie, engrossed though she was in her own important affairs, suddenly wondered how it felt to be fostered by a wicked uncle who was, in addition, enemy to one’s own clan, and to know you were being used as a hostage to control the actions of your own grandfather, your own people. It was the first time Kelpie had seriously tried to put herself into the mind of another person, and it felt most peculiar and disturbing.
“What if real war is coming to the Highlands?” she demanded. “Will Lochiel dare call out the Camerons to fight against your uncle and the Covenant, or—”
There was a brief silence in which their small scufflings seemed to shout aloud. Then: “Grandfather will dare to do what is right,” said Ewen tersely.
Another silence, and then his low voice reached back to her again, strongly earnest. “There are things more important than safety, Sheena. I wonder if you know about them. Was it for a principle you were wanting to put a hex on my uncle, or for something else?”
Kelpie didn’t answer this, for the simple reason that shewas not at all sure what a principle was. Unless—Could it have anything to do with not using thesgian dhuon herself when it seemed much easier to do so? Or had she not used it because the thing inside her had known that she was going to be rescued? Och, it was much too confusing to bother with now, for she could at last see a pale blob of night sky ahead.
They emerged in a shallow cave on the hill above Inverary, not far from where Kelpie had first looked down upon the castle.
“Now,” said Ewen, “be away out of Campbell territory as quickly as ever you can! Away around the tip of Loch Fyne, and then east is best, but be canny. You’ll not be safe with the MacFarlanes, either, but the Stewarts of Balquidder are hostile to the Campbell, and the MacGregors and MacNabs, and they are past Loch Lomond. Best to skulk low during the day, for you’ll not get so far this night—though I’m hoping you’ll not be found missing until Uncle Archibald is returned and the cell door opened.”
Kelpie nodded. The weight of horror was lifting (though she would never quite forget it), and she began to feel quite cocky again. Fine she was now, for who knew more about skulking and wariness in the hills? And yet through her cockiness crept an odd curiosity.
“Willhebe finding out ’twas you who freed me?”
“I think not,” said Ewen, and there was laughter in thelilt of his voice. “No one is thinking I know about the secret tunnel, and they will probably believe you escaped by witchcraft. Be careful, Sheena, the next time you’re wanting to hex someone,” he added and vanished back into the tunnel.
Kelpie stared down the blackness after him and shook her head wonderingly. He was another daft one, to take a risk for someone else, and with no profit to himself whatever! But she was grateful, for all that. She owed much to his daftness.
She left the cave, lifted her face to the infinite space of the open sky, and breathed deeply of the free air. The moonlit side of the hill was ghostlike, a pale glow without depth. The dark side was a soft, deep purple-black. Patches of glimmering mist rose from the loch, and there was a line of it behind the western hills. Kelpie laughed aloud and headed northeast.
Thick gray mist poured over the hills from the west, covering the world with a layer of wetness. A curlew gave its eerie call, the whaups shrilled, and presently it began to rain. Kelpie shivered a little, even though the gray wool dress was the warmest she had ever owned. She had got soft, then, living in houses. She must steal a plaidie somewhere—preferably one of plain color, or a black and white shepherd’s tartan. Wearing the tartan of a clan could get her into trouble.
By the time it was really light, she had passed the tip of Loch Fyne. She rested for a while, but it was cold sitting still, she was getting more and more hungry, and as there was little enough chance of being seen through the thickness of the mist she went on again. Once out of Campbell country she might risk stealing as well as begging, but she must be careful about telling fortunes or selling charms, for she would be getting near the Lowlands, where the arm of the Kirk was long and strong and people were narrow-minded about such activities. And Kelpie very much wanted to avoid any more trouble of that sort.
She waded through the dripping tangle of heather and bracken and wondered what to do next. She was free of Mina and Bogle—unless they found her again. Did she dare return to Glenfern, having left the way she had? No, for they no longer trusted her, and Alex was now her enemy. Moreover, if Mina ever found out, she would put a curse on Wee Mairi. It seemed she must give up her hopes of learning witchcraft from Mina, and any other witches who still lived in Covenant territory would be very canny and quiet indeed. She might try the Highlands, but there was a problem too, for in order to get there without recrossing Campbell territory, she must go far east and then north and through another danger zone, where there had been fighting and trouble since spring. And even in the Highlands there was danger of meeting Mina and Bogle, and further danger that Alex might have set all the Cameronsand MacDonalds against her, as he had threatened.
Dhé!Indeed and it was a braw mess she had got herself into! She cursed the Lowlander, Mina, Bogle, Mac Cailein Mor, the Kirk, and Alex, with fine impartial vigor and in two languages. Then, for good measure, she added Antrim (for forcing her hand too soon), the King (for his general fecklessness), all religious bodies, God, the Devil, and people in general.
When she had finished she felt no better, either mentally or physically. She had now traveled some twenty miles over thickly brushed and wooded hills, on an empty stomach, after a shattering experience, and even Kelpie’s wiry toughness had its limits. Had she reached friendly territory yet? How was she to know without seeing a clan tartan that would tell her? Well, surely she was for the moment way ahead of any possible alarm out for her. She must have food, and there was a shieling hut below.
She sat down in the drenched heather and absently regarded a small twig of ling, already in bloom a month ahead of the ordinary heather. The tiny lantern-shaped blossoms were larger and pinker than heather too, not quite as charming, perhaps, but still tiny perfect things. Plants were nicer than people, if less exciting. She stared at it while she thought up two stories; one to use on a Campbell or a MacFarlane, the other for Stewart or MacNab. Then she stood up, brushed the wet from her skirts, and started slowly down the hill.
An old woman stepped out of the low hut to empty a pail of water, and there was no mistaking the light and dark reds crossed with green on her plaidie. It was MacNab. Her husband, no doubt, would be out in the hills with the sheep or cattle. Fine, that. Women living alone in the hills were rather more likely to be sympathetic and motherly toward a forlorn wee lass than men. (On the other hand, women of the Kirk towns were like to be dourly suspicious and hating.)
The old woman started to go back inside and then caught a glimpse of Kelpie, who stumbled a bit because she was hungry and tired—and because it was her general policy.
“Whoever is it, then?” The Highland lilt of the Gaelic was less marked here, near the Lowlands, and the voice cracked slightly with age—and yet there was in it a note like a bell.
“Och, forgive me, just.” Kelpie’s voice was faint, and she swayed slightly. “I am weary and hungry, and could you be sparing just a crust?”
“Seadh, the little love!” Mrs. MacNab was all sympathy. “Come away in, then, and I’ve a fine pot of oatmeal on the fire. Whatever will you be doing all alone and in the hills?” She looked at Kelpie with wise old eyes as they entered the dark shieling, and frowned in puzzlement. “From your dress you would be a lass from a Covenant home, but your face is giving it the lie.”
Kelpie instantly revised her story in the brief time it took to step through the low doorway under its bristling roof of rye thatch. She stood meekly on the earthen floor under the smoke-blackened rafters and noted at a glance that these folk were better off than some, for there was a real bedstead in the corner instead of a pile of heather and bracken, and four three-legged creepie-stools.
“Eat now,” invited her hostess, handing her a big bowl of oatmeal from the iron pot over the fire. “And there are bannocks here, and milk. And then perhaps you will tell me about yourself, little one, for I confess I’ve a fine curiosity, and strangers are none so common here.”
Kelpie made use of the respite to ask some questions and get her bearings, in between ravenous mouthfuls of food. “Be ye Covenant here?” she ventured around half a bannock.
“Och, and can you no see my tartan?” demanded Mrs. MacNab. “We MacNabs are loyal to our own Stewart King, foolish darling. Why, then, are you of the Kirk?”
Kelpie shook her head vigorously. “Not I! ’Tis a prisoner of the Campbells I’ve been. They wanted me to be of the Covenant and refused to tell me who my parents are, at all. And so I have run away—”
“Dhé!” interrupted Mrs. MacNab with wide eyes. This was the most exciting thing that had happened in the braes of Balquidder this many a year. She was ready to believe anything of the hated Campbells. “Oh, my dear!Is it that they were stealing you, then? Tell me all about it, heart’s love, every bit!”
And so, replete and comfortable, warm and very nearly dry, Kelpie spun a wonderful long tale of truth and fiction mixed. The lonely old woman eagerly drank it in, with exclamations of indignation and sympathy. When Callum MacNab, looking like a twisted and weatherworn pine, came in at dusk, he had to hear it all over again, and by this time Kelpie had thought up a few more interesting details. She fairly basked in their attention and tenderness, while the old couple glowed with kindness and the rare treat of company and news. And so, with one thing and another, Kelpie spent the night and the next day with them.
“’Tis sorry I am to see you away, wee dark love, but you must be putting more distance between yourself and the Campbells. And you must be searching for your own true family. To think of it! And you say Mac Cailein Mor was telling you himself that ’twas from a chief he stole you?”
“And I but a bairn,” agreed Kelpie firmly. Having Callum and Alsoon believe her tale so readily almost made her believe it herself—and, after all, might not some of it be true? She tucked the little bundle of oatmeal and scones into her belt, and hugged the rough warmth of her new plaidie about her shoulders, pleased that it was the neutral black and white of the shepherd’s tartan and would not associate her with any particular clan.
Luck was with her again, she reflected, that she had found these kind and simple people, willing to give her the food from their mouths and the clothes from theirbacks—much simpler, if less exciting, than stealing. It made her feel odd to begiventhings this way. Perhaps if all folk were like these, or like Ian and his family, there would be no need to steal. Warm with a novel sense of gratitude, she was careful not to take anything from Callum and Alsoon that they had not given her.
They stood just outside the low doorway in the brightness of the summer evening. The rain had become mere clouds glowing to the northwest, where the sun would soon dip briefly below the hills. The old couple regarded her anxiously, not at all happy to see her set off in the white gloaming.
“Look you, now,” repeated Callum, “you must be going south and east for a bit, through Drummond and Stewart country, and then north through Murrays and Menzies, and when you reach Pitlochry, just be finding the home of my daughter Meg, at the tanning shop next the Tey River, and tell them I sent you, and they will care for you until you are away again.”
“Aye, then,” murmured Kelpie, anxious to be gone. She had heard these directions at least twice before, and in any case she knew the country far better than she dared to let Callum know.
“Haste ye back,” they said, and this Highland phrase was never used unless truly meant. No one had ever said it to Kelpie before. She caught her breath, turned her head away, and hurried off.
Traveling, she found, was easier without Mina and Bogle than with them, in one way. For folks had only to take one look at those two to know the worst. But Kelpie, as long as she kept her eyes lowered and her lip tucked demurely in, looked quite innocent, so that, even on the edge of the thrifty and Kirk-trained Lowlands, people were usually willing to give her food—and when they didn’t, Kelpie simply helped herself.
Now and then she picked up rumors about what was going on in the Highlands, particularly concerning Argyll, who was, it appeared, still away in the west, chasing an elusive Antrim.
As nearly as Kelpie could make out from bits here and there, Argyll had chased Antrim back to Ardnamurchen, where the latter had left his ships. But the ships had been spirited away by the English, just as Lorne had suggested, and since then the two forces had been playing catch-me-if-you-can all over the Highlands, with Antrim trying to rouse the clans against Argyll, the clans either afraid or quarreling among themselves, while Argyll tried to catch Antrim’s small army before it should become a larger army.
“Aye,” said an old man, chuckling, in a voice not meant to be overheard. “Argyll will never be fighting a battle against more than half his number if he can avoid it.”
“Dinna mock him!” whispered another. “Ye’ll no be wanting yon wild foreign Hielanders crossing the mountainswi’ their wicked screechin’ pipes and attacking us, will ye?”
“Dinna fret, they’ll no come. ’Tis too busy they are wi’ their own heathen fighting; Papists, the lot o’ them.”
“They might, if Montrose could stir them up tae fight for the King against the Covenant.”
“They would never do that. He’s a Graham from the East Coast, and those savages in the West would never stir a foot for any but their own chiefs. Anyway, they say Montrose is vanished altogether, and no doubt dead.”
They both bent lowering gray brows when they saw the shamelessly eavesdropping Kelpie. She scurried away hastily, lest they think her a spy.
She wandered on, begging, stealing, and listening, until she came at last to Pitlochry.
There seemed a braw lot of people in the narrow streets of the town, and, surprisingly, many of them seemed to be wearing Gordon or MacDonald tartans. Whatever were those clans doing here? And those two young men striding along the street toward her.... “Dhé!” said Kelpie, and they all stopped short.
They stared at one another with mixed feelings. “Why, whatever will ye be doing here, at all?” demanded Kelpie with astonishment.
Alex recovered his wits first. “Why,” he said with the old mocking grin, “we were missing you and your bonnie friends so badly that we had to come away to look for ye.”
“Sssss!” remarked Kelpie, concealing her pleasure at the old bantering and reminding herself that Alex was a treacherous enemy. Moreover, she was never again going to permit herself the dangerous luxury of caring for anyone at all. Having told herself this, she turned to look at Ian with delight. A braw lad! Did he carry a grudge against her? she wondered anxiously.
“And are you all right, Kelpie?” he asked kindly. “Mina and Bogle are treating you well?”
“Sssss,” she said again. “They are wickeduruisgean, and I have left them this long time ago. I did not want to be leaving Glenfern whatever,” she added hopefully.
Ian looked pleased, but Alex laughed. “Aye, it was a good enough life you were leading there, after all. But you seem to be doing well enough for yourself the now. Where were you stealing the gey sober gown and plaidie?”
“I was not stealing them whatever!” Kelpie was outraged more by his manner than by his words.
“But you would be saying the same thing even if you had,” encouraged Alex with a straight face.
Kelpie’s lips began to curve upward as she remembered the teasing at the loch-side at Glenfern. She tried to frown, for it was not right to be teasing with Alex when they were no longer friends. But she could not help it. “Of course,” she agreed cheekily and grinned.
“Och, the wicked wee lass!” Alex chuckled. “She’ll never change!”
“No, now, but she has changed!” Ian objected. “She could not laugh at herself when first she came to Glenfern.”
“Are you sure ’tis herself she’s laughing at?” gibed Alex. “Or is it ourselves, just, for being ready to forgive her so easily—and after she was breaking the ancient code of hospitality.”
“It was not my fault!” protested Kelpie. “Mina was threatening to put a curse on you all if I did not come with them.”
“Och, how tender you are of our welfare!” said Alex derisively. “And that, I suppose, is why you were so quick to tell her all about how Ian and I met the King and Montrose in Oxford?”
There was no use trying to explain, for he would never believe her—not that she cared a groat what Alex MacDonald thought, anyway. Perhaps she would be able to tell Ian about it some day, with Alex not around. An idea was growing in her mind. After glowering at Alex, she turned to Ian and looked up at him meltingly through long lashes. She had never before set out to beguile a lad, but Janet had put the thought in her head, and she might as well try now and see could she do it. Some deep instinct awoke, so that she seemed to know just how to go about it. “And what is it you are doing so far from Glenfern?” she asked softly.
Was it her fancy that Ian’s smile seemed a wee bitwarmer than usual? “Why,” he said, “we are with Colkitto’s army, up at Blair Atholl, and—”
Kelpie forgot about beguiling him. “Colkitto!” she yelped. “You mean Antrim?”
“Aye, ’tis what we call him; Alistair MacDonald, Earl of Antrim, who has—”
“Fine I know that!” interrupted Kelpie. “But where will Mac Cailein Mor be, then? On your tail?” There was alarm in her voice, and both lads regarded her curiously.
“Na, na,” Ian said soothingly. “He’s away back to his own country, raising a larger army, no doubt, since some five hundred Gordons have joined us. Are you afraid of him, Kelpie? And what are you doing here, and where are you living?”