B eyond the castle windows, spring was taking hold of Drumwithie. It was the first week of April. The air was mild and sweetened by a soft breeze bearing the scent of flowers. Last year at this time she had walked in the grounds while the boy ran about, coming to her with treasures – a pine cone, a raven’s feather, a smooth pebble. She and her husband had made an excursion to Ben Nevis, the highest mountain in Scotland. But this year she could only imagine the breeze, and the boy’s delighted cries, and the scent of the flowers. She was too ill to go out.
She lay on the sofa in her favourite room, the small drawing room that led off the Great Hall. It had smaller windows than the library, where her husband liked to sit, but she preferred the view. It was Saturday and the boy was free from lessons, but she did not know where he was; he had not visited her this morning. His father had probably taken him to Drumwithie, where everyone knew him. According to her husband, the stonemason’s wife had whispered a warning on her recent visit to the surgery. “Ye’ll have to watch that boy, Doctor. He has the look of the faeries on him.”
Educated people had no time for such village superstition, of course. But the thought of the woman’s words troubled her. A golden-haired, green-eyed child. Sometimes, when the light caught the boy’s eyes in a certain way, they had the cast of other-worldliness on them. But a moment later, he would be her affectionate, seven-year-old darling again and she would shake such nonsense from her mind.
She glanced at the fire in the grate. It was no longer roaring as it had been when Bridie had lit it this morning, but it still glowed red. A wild thought came to her: could memories be burned? What would she have to burn, to free herself? With trembling fingers she tore a scrap of lace from the trimming of her sleeve – it came away easily; she had been meaning to ask Bridie to oversew the fraying seam – and tossed it onto the coals, where it immediately flared. Its ashes were an obliteration. If she burned not only the lace from her sleeve, but the sleeve itself, the house gown, everything in this room … would the memories they contained be obliterated too? Or would the whole exercise be futile? This poison was in her head, borne silently for so long, and would only be destroyed if she were to destroy herself.
Her eyes travelled to the portrait above the mantelpiece. A picture of her, yet not of her. Of a young woman who had married Hamish Buchanan and come to Drumwithie full of hope. Her mother had considered the match a triumph. What did she herself consider it? A prison sentence of the worst kind, when the prisoner does not know how many years she has left to serve?