“Good grief, Catriona, what has happened to you?”
It was Mrs McAllister’s voice – Scottish, but without the softness of Bridie’s. Rather shrill, in fact. She was striding up the gravel path, her skirt held clear of a pair of stout boots, wearing a feather-trimmed hat and a determined look. Beside her was a kilted man, with a shapeless tam-o’-shanter on his head and a stick in his hand. His sturdy legs were encased in thick socks, and under his tweed coat he wore a woollen pullover. It might be a fine day in May, but he was dressed for an outdoors wilder than the castle gardens. His face was neither old nor young, reddish, with whiskers round the chin and a large nose. This must be MacGregor, the gillie.
Mrs McAllister stopped in front of me, trying to shield my unconventional appearance from MacGregor. He hung back and had the tact to examine the horizon while she looked me up and down incredulously. “Where in heaven’s name have you been, to make yourself so dirty?”
Clearly, she had not seen me emerge from the well. I wondered if the gillie had. “Jamie was showing me the caves under the castle,” I explained, pulling my skirts free of my drawers and shaking them out. “So I saved my dress by tucking it in.”
“In front of my grandson?” she asked, horrified. “What were you thinking, child? What would your mother think?”
“Jamie had gone by then,” I said lamely. Her expression demanded an explanation, so I pressed on. “He had to go somewhere, he didn’t say where, so I found my own way out.” I looked down at my dirt-smeared bodice. “It is damp down there. I must have brushed against a wall.”
She drew herself up and studied me disapprovingly. “Hm. Well, MacGregor,” she said, half-turning to him, “this is Miss Graham.”
He touched his hat. “Good day to ye, miss.”
I scarcely had time to nod before Mrs McAllister addressed him again. “MacGregor, we really should see about getting a door put on the entrance to those caves and keeping it locked. I am sure they are dangerous, and have told the doctor so many times.”
“Aye, I’ll speak to him about it,” said MacGregor. I suspected he would not.
“Now,” said Mrs McAllister to me, “I am come to luncheon. You cannot present yourself in the dining room in that state, so you had better go and change.”
I resisted the temptation to say, “Yes, miss,” as if she were one of my teachers. She seemed to assume that she was responsible for my behaviour in the absence of my mother. I wondered what sort of life her own daughter had led before her marriage. “Very well,” I said, coolly enough to indicate my resentment but politely enough not to offend her. “May I ask, what time is luncheon?”
“We gather in the Great Hall at one o’clock.”
MacGregor had disappeared around the corner of the house and Mrs McAllister fell into step with me as we approached the front door. “Doctor Hamish always comes in to luncheon if he has not been called away elsewhere, and I have a standing invitation,” she added.
I digested this news. “So you do not live here at the castle?”
“I live at the Lodge,” she informed me stiffly. The plumage on her hat caught the breeze as she nodded in the direction of the driveway that led down the hill. “Down there, beside the main gate. I attribute my good health to the walk between my wee house and the castle, which I take almost daily. Even in winter.”
As we walked, she explained further. “My late husband was the vicar of St Matthew’s in Stirling. After he died, when the new vicar needed the vicarage, Anne and I moved to a cottage in Drumwithie, because I had spent holidays in this part of Scotland as a girl, and was fond of it. When Anne and Hamish married, Hamish kindly invited me to move into the Lodge.”
We had reached the vestibule. With a nod to me, Mrs McAllister entered the Great Hall, and I set off up the stone stairs. I had no wish to meet anyone on the way to the tower room, so I hurried all the way there, taking the curving stairs two at a time and arriving at the top breathless. When I opened the door to my bedroom I almost cried out with shock. Jamie was sprawled on my bed, smoking.
An avalanche of indignation tore over me. “What are you doing here?” I demanded. “How can you show your face after what you did to me? Get off my bed and out of my sight!”
He did not move. On his face was an expression between bewilderment and contrition, as hungry for forgiveness as a child.
“Did you hear me?” Furious, I took hold of his ankle and tried to pull him off the bed. But he clamped his cigarette between his lips and clung to the bedstead with both hands.
“Look at me!” I persisted. “My dress is ruined, my boots are filthy and I was scared almost to death down there!” I let go of his ankle; it was fruitless to think I could manhandle him. I felt defeated. “Why did you leave me alone? And why did you smash the lantern? I couldn’t find my way out of the caves – you knew I couldn’t – so I ended up having to climb the ladder in that dirty, disgusting well! Do you wonder I am angry with you?”
His eyes glinted. There might have been tears in them or it might have been the reflection of the midday light from the tower windows. He took the cigarette out of his mouth. “I was cruel, wasn’t I?”
“Yes, you were.” I sat down on the dressing-stool and regarded him, my indignation evaporating. I felt relieved that he understood how much he had frightened me, and I also felt compassion, which was more difficult to explain. Surely he should be feeling compassion for me?
“I am very sorry, Cat,” he said. “I do things like that sometimes. I am …” – he sought a suitable word – “impulsive. My grandmother says my mother was the same at my age.”
“I see.” There was no time to ask him to explain further. I had to change my clothes and our elders awaited us downstairs. “Let us speak of it later. I have already encountered MacGregor, and Mrs McAllister, who scolded me for my appearance.”
He still did not move. He lay there, the fingers of his left hand still curled around the bars of the bedstead, his hair as unruly as ever, his eyes fixed upon my face. “Do you forgive me?”
I tried to disguise my mixed feelings by shaking my head and sighing, in imitation of those very schoolteachers I despised. “We will speak of it later,” I repeated.
He let go of the bedstead and sat up. Half-obscured by strands of golden hair, his eyes were wide. “I labour under an intolerable weight, knowing that a lifetime of unhappiness awaits me. If I do not do as my father wishes, I will lose Drumwithie. Can you wonder I am ill-tempered?”
I was surprised. “Surely your father has not threatened you with disinheritance?”
“Not directly,” he admitted. “But he says he will not allow a man with no profession – no profession, Cat! – to live in idleness – idleness! He has never tried to write a poem! – in a place the family has maintained for generations. He is fond of asking me if I think Drumwithie pays for itself. He is so intolerant.”
I was unmoved. “His intolerance, as you call it, does not explain why you behaved so badly today.”
He laughed, blowing out a great cloud of cigarette smoke. “I was incensed by your insistence we leave the caves, when I did not want to,” he said good-naturedly, waving at the smoke. “I believe it is called being spoilt.”
This, at least, was honest. “So you consider yourself spoilt, then?”
“I consider myself spoilt beyond repair.”
Being spoilt was one of the detestable shortcomings on my mother’s long, and rather inconsistent, list. “You spoil that child, David!” she would cry if my father let me ride on his shoulders, or gave me a chocolate. But I was not spoilt; my lack of brothers and sisters never resulted in either of my parents over-indulging me. How different it had been for Jamie, though. Growing up in a castle, never going to school, petted by women, and all the time knowing he was heir to one of the most beautiful estates in Scotland.
“Your father treats you very sensibly,” I said. “If you are spoilt, others are to blame.”
He smoked in silence for a little while. I could see in the expression of his eyes that scenes from the past were revisiting him. I said nothing and waited.
“I loved her to distraction. Mother, I mean. I still do. She was very beautiful. Here.” He thrust his hand into his pocket and withdrew a small leather wallet, which he tossed onto the bed within my reach. “I have a photograph. It was taken before her illness became what it is today. She did not like the library or the Great Hall. This photograph was taken in the small drawing room, where she preferred to sit. Have you seen the portrait of her in there? My father commissioned it when they were first married.”
I opened the wallet. The photograph showed a woman, past girlhood but not yet middle-aged, posed at the window of a room I had not yet seen. The dark foliage of a vase of peonies beside her contrasted with her white gown – an evening gown, the bodice and sleeves trimmed with lace, the skirt elaborately draped. Her dark hair was arranged in the style made popular by the late king’s wife, Queen Alexandra, swept up at the back into an ornament and a “front” of curls above her brow. It was old-fashioned now, but it did not detract from the striking exquisiteness of her face. Light-eyed, with shapely brows and fine cheekbones, she gazed at the camera with the smallest of smiles on her lips. There was something of Mrs McAllister in the shape of her chin, but she had none of her mother’s aloofness. She looked amiable, ready for conversation and hungry for friendship. The picture I had conjured of a tortured Ophelia could not have been more inaccurate.
I gazed at the photograph for a long time. Jamie had finished his cigarette and stubbed it out, and still I was looking at his mother. “She is certainly a beauty,” I said at last. “And quite unlike how I imagined her. She is not like my mother at all, who is sort of pink and white, like a doll. Your mother is not doll-like at all. She is elegant and very lovely.”
I stopped, aware that I had “rattled on” – another listed misdemeanour. “Forgive me,” I said, looking up from the picture. “I was entranced.”
“So was I, and remain so,” he said. His tone was level, without emotion. “But the woman in this photograph has gone. She would not entrance anyone she met for the first time now.” He looked at me sorrowfully. “You will not meet her, though. My father and grandmother sometimes visit her, but I have not been for a long time. I cannot bear the place she is in.” His voice took on a plaintive tone. “And I am not convinced… I think visits do more harm than good. It is another thing Father and I argue about.”
I handed him the wallet. As he put it in his pocket, his gaze dropped. “She will never come back,” he whispered.
I did not do him the disservice of plying him with platitudes. Anne Buchanan was evidently seriously disturbed in her mind, and was in the best place, distressing though Jamie found it. “Now,” I told him gently, “you must go, and I must change before I can face your father.”
He stood up and crossed the room so quickly I hardly saw him move. “Will you allow me to watch with you tonight?” he asked from the door. “In case the ghost returns? I have thought of nothing else since you told me.”
I considered. “Do you do not think your presence may discourage it?”
“Let me watch anyway!” he implored. “I am too curious to stay away!”
I wondered whether allowing an evening visit by a young man to my private room was not a breach of propriety. I was sure it was, in fact. But Jamie’s father and grandmother did not need to know about it, and I could not refuse – I was far too curious myself. “Very well, we will watch together tonight. Come at nine o’clock,” I said, and closed the door after him.
The slime-covered walls of the well had streaked the bodice of my grey dress. I took it off and examined the stains, hoping Bridie was a skilled washerwoman. When I had put on another dress and washed my face, there still remained five minutes before I had to present myself downstairs. I sat down at the open window before the view I had already appropriated as mine. This morning, when I had first opened the curtains, a mist had obscured the glen and the distant mountains had been garlanded by clouds. But the breezy sunshine had dispelled the haze and the scene below me spread in colours brighter than any painter’s brush could capture.
Tourists on their return home often described views they had seen as breathtakingly beautiful. My view truly was. I simply could not breathe normally as I looked at it. The glittering greens and greys, the bright shoots on the trees where birds sang all day long, the purple chasm of the glen below, the shadow of the castle itself – these sights brought my heart into my throat. Their beauty made me think of Jamie’s poor mother, who could no longer live in the place which commanded such a view, though it was her home.
The clock struck the hour. They would be waiting. Reluctantly I left the room. When I reached the Great Hall, I put my ear to the door. The murmur of voices told me everyone else was present and I would have to make an entrance. “Imagine you are the Princess of Belgravia,” Mother would tell me when I was younger, “who expects everyone to look at her. So, when everyone does look at you, you will not be surprised. And always pinch your cheeks before you turn the handle.”
It was not until much later that I discovered the Princess of Belgravia was not a real person, but I invoked her memory now. I coughed by way of warning and opened the door.
“Ah, Catriona!” Doctor Hamish stood when I entered. “I hear you and Jamie have been exploring our caves! They are very fine, do you not agree?”
Jamie and his grandmother occupied the two fireside chairs, so I perched on the edge of a straight-backed chair. “Yes, indeed,” I concurred. “Very fine.”
“And very dark and very wet, and Jamie left you alone there, the scoundrel,” said Jamie, who had an open book on his lap and did not look up. “But I have made it clear, Father, that I had an emergency – I will not offend Grandmother’s sensibilities by detailing of what sort – and had to leave Cat. When I went back, she had found her own way out.”
This was of course a lie, but I guiltily admired the ease with which Jamie told it. He had neither had an “emergency” nor returned to look for me. We both knew, however, that I would not contradict him.
“Jamie,” said the doctor with a pained expression, “you must treat Catriona in a gentlemanly fashion. She is not a plaything provided for your entertainment.”
Jamie’s head did not move, but his downcast gaze slid sideways towards me. “No, she is the Cait Sìth, come to cast her spell on us.”
Mrs McAllister’s head came up. “Jamie!” She turned to me. “What has my grandson been telling you?”
“Oh … I asked him why he called me a cat, apart from my name being Catriona, that is, and he told me about the Cait Sìth.” I glanced at Jamie. “He says I look like a cat and I have been sent from the supernatural world.”
She stared at me blankly.
“He has romantic notions, I think,” I added.
“I wonder if ‘romantic’ is the correct word for his notions!” snorted Doctor Hamish.
“The Cait Sìth is not a notion, romantic or otherwise,” declared Mrs McAllister. “Catriona, I must make you familiar with other tales from Scottish folklore. You will not describe them as romantic, I assure you!”
There was a silence. Doctor Hamish took out his fob watch. “Where is Bridie? I have the devil of a hunger on me!”
“Luncheon will be ten minutes or more yet, Hamish,” said Mrs McAllister. She turned again to me. For the first time since I had met her, there was a smile upon her lips. “Perhaps you would like to hear more about these tales? Though English people, having a folk culture considerably less rich than ours, usually dismiss Celtic beliefs as nonsense.”
Ignoring this barb and hoping to please her, I nodded. “Yes, of course. I am sure they are fascinating.”
“Then I will tell you of a legend as old as time itself. The deepest rooted and most persistent of all Scottish folklore. The story of the faerie child.” She took off her spectacles and sat back in her chair, her expression softer than I had yet seen it. “It is believed,” she began, “that some children, often oddly behaved ones, sickly ones, and so on, are not human at all, but faerie children, changelings, left by the faerie folk in exchange for the human child. In a household where a changeling has been left, a payment must be made by the fairies to the devil every seven years.”
“What sort of payment?” I asked.
“It usually takes the form of a death or tragic occurrence in the human world,” replied Mrs McAllister. “This sort of belief is present in folklore all over the world, as people seek a way to explain unhappy events. In Scotland it is known as the teind, Gaelic for “tithe”, meaning a tenth part.”
“I understand,” I said. “About tithes, I mean.” I had grown up in an agricultural area of midland England, surrounded by tenant farmers who followed the ancient practice of paying a tenth part of their profits to the parish. “And do people still believe this legend today?”
“Aye,” nodded Mrs McAllister. “You will still see precautions taken against the stealing of a child, especially in the Highlands. Folk will leave scissors open where the child sleeps, or put a coat upside down over the cradle, particularly if the child is fair.”
She paused and a silence fell. Jamie was deep in a book of poems and his father had the financial pages of The Times open; I was reluctant to break the spell Mrs McAllister’s words had cast upon me. But although I half knew the answer, I asked, “Is a fair-haired child more likely to be taken, then?”
“Oh, yes! It is well known that the faeries are attracted by beautiful infants with blond hair.”
She nodded towards her grandson. “Thank goodness, they have left ours alone, though Jamie’s hair was pure white when he was a wee one!”
Doctor Hamish made a sound like “Hrmph!” He threw open the door and marched towards the dining room. “Bridie!” he called. “I can wait no longer! Bring me my luncheon!”
Mrs McAllister and I followed, and Jamie brought up the rear of our little procession. I was sure he was looking at the nape of my neck, where I had placed a tortoiseshell comb when I had piled up my hair. Self-conscious, I did what the Princess of Belgravia would have done. I walked serenely, trying not to think about who might be scrutinizing me, and attending to Mrs McAllister’s small talk as if it were the most important thing in the world.
That evening I wrote to my mother. I asked her to send winter underwear and a woollen shawl. I had to reload my pen nib several times, as the ink kept drying while I tried to think of suitable words to describe Jamie. In the end I told her that he was striking-looking, intelligent and mercurial. I did not tell her, however, that he and his father were at loggerheads. I told her that Mrs McAllister was an enthusiastic regulator of my behaviour, but not that I resented this. I was perfectly truthful about the hospitality of Doctor Hamish and gave her brief descriptions of Bridie and MacGregor. I told her about my room in the tower, my glorious view and Anne’s Garden, but not about the caves or what had happened there. And I certainly did not mention the other-worldly screams and the girl in the ragged dress. When I could think of no more to write, I went downstairs and left the envelope on the table by the front door, where the doctor had told me to leave letters for MacGregor to post.
Dusk – the gloaming, as they call it in Scotland – was falling on Drumwithie. Clouds had gathered in the late afternoon and spots of rain had fallen on my window as I dressed for dinner. I had put on my only evening dress, of brown silk. It had a square neck, a straighter skirt than I wore in the daytime and a crêpe-de-Chine waistband that required stiffening with uncomfortable canvas stays. I had even made an attempt to curl my hair. But when I reached the dining room I realized I should not have bothered. Bridie had served the doctor, Jamie and me with cold venison sandwiches, pickled beetroot and a dish of lettuce and tomatoes. A bowl of fruit, from which both men helped themselves to apples and oranges, was the only dessert. Luncheon, evidently, was the main meal in this house. It was a long time since this traditional pattern of meals had been current at Chester House; we always ate sparingly at luncheon and “dressed” in the evening.
I was embarrassed, but not surprised. Doctor Hamish had had the tact not to mention my appearance and Jamie had produced a sound like “Hrrzzah!”, which could have meant anything, but I admonished myself for not predicting what Mrs McAllister’s regular presence at luncheon signified. The doctor, whose profession required early starts, late returns on horseback, and an active day’s work in between, needed a good meal at midday. Anticipating another meal in the evening, at luncheon I had not eaten as much as I wanted of the excellent leek soup and chicken pie. Tomorrow, I would know better.
All this went through my mind as I returned to the tower room. My writing things lay scattered on the table; I tidied them away. The blouse I had taken off, but would wear again tomorrow, hung on the outside of the wardrobe; I put it inside. My boots, which I had forgotten to take to the boot room, were in two different parts of the room; I set them together by the hearth. I poked the fire. I went to draw the curtains, but when I saw the magnificent colours of the sky, I left them open. Then I turned up the lamp and set it in the middle of the table.
There was nothing left to do, so I sat down nervously in the armchair by the fire. I wished Jamie would come soon – it was five to nine, earlier than I had seen the vision last night, but darkness was falling quickly. I could see a clear reflection of the pool of lamplight in the window. I stared at it, my ears straining to hear either a woman’s voice or a knock at my door.
I heard neither. But I did hear something else. At first I was unsure what the soft whooshing could be. I sat forward, listening, growing more fearful as the sound gathered momentum. It came to me suddenly that it must be the whipping of a wind, the sort of deep-winter wind that sweeps the landscape at the beginning of a storm. But the curtains hung perfectly still at the open window. The wind was something unreal.
Then came another sound, layered within the storm. A sound as familiar to a girl from farming country as the wind-wail. It was the raucous, unearthly cackle of a pack of crows. I could hear the birds as plainly as if they were under my open window. Rising cautiously, I put my head out, expecting an increase in the birds’ sounds, to find them sitting on a nearby tree. But no trees grew near the tower.
Fear overcame me. Almost ready to faint, I collapsed again on the armchair and covered my face with my hands. “Stop!” I shouted, as loudly as I could. “Please, please, stop!” I had no regard for anyone who might hear me or what conclusion they might draw. My only thought was to obliterate the noise by making a louder noise myself. “Leave me alone!” I pleaded. “I beg you, leave me be!”
My ears were assailed for a few more moments. Then, suddenly, silence fell. I peeked between my fingers. I stood and turned full circle, alert for any noise or movement, but there was none. The room was empty. The circle of lamplight on the table, the boots by the fire, all was recognizable as ordinary, comforting real life. Yet I knew I had not been deceived, even though darkness and apprehension could play tricks on the nerves, and I had been nervous, up here in this oddly fashioned room, waiting for Jamie’s knock.
“Jamie!” I opened the door wide, and called down the passage. There was no reply. I ran to the top of the stairs and leaned over the banister. “Jamie! Jamie, are you there?”
I heard his footsteps on the landing and his yellow head appeared at the bottom of the spiral staircase, his face turned upwards in alarm. “What is it? What has happened? Are you all right?”
“Will you come up? There is something up here! Well, it has gone now, but I definitely heard something!”
While I was babbling he was bounding up the stairs. “The vision, you mean? Did you see the vision? Damn! I’ve missed it!”
He was babbling as much as I was. “Jamie, I did not see the vision,” I told him as we entered the tower room. “I heard the sound of a high wind, and then … it was so loud, it seems scarcely possible, but there was the noise of crows.”
He was so surprised, he had to steady himself by gripping the back of a chair. “What?”
“Crows. I know what they sound like because—”
“Cat, do you know what you are saying?” He looked at me with a mixture of fear, wonder and triumph. “A gathering of crows is a sign of death!”
I stared at him and he stared back at me, his eyes alight. “Do you not think I am right to be concerned?”
“I do not know what to think.” I tried to compose myself. “It is too strange to understand. Before I entered this room last night I would have dismissed stories of the faerie folk and the Cait Sìth as nonsense. But you are convinced that these weird noises and this phantom girl have been conjured by my presence. That is such a frightening thought! Do you think they mean to hurt me?”
Jamie sat down in the armchair. Careless of my best dress, I knelt on the hearthrug at his feet. Outside the still-open curtains, night had descended on the glen. I could hear the cooing of a wood pigeon, far away in some lofty tree. The world was silent, ready for sleep. But the world reflected in the window was not. The firelight cast weird shapes on the walls; the air felt smoky and close; my heart beat unsteadily in my breast.
“No, I do not,” said Jamie, looking into the fire. “I think they have come to you for help.”
“But what can I do?” I was bewildered. “If the girl is dead, what can anybody do?”
“We must wait and see. She will come again, but not when I am here.” He looked at me with his glittering look. “The crows must have been sent to warn me off. I think only you must watch, Cat. Every night, alone.”