Greyfriars House

by Emma Fraser

  Eager to re-explore the island, Olivia ran down the narrow, curling steps that led from the tower to the first floor, and along the corridor, passing her old nursery and the ballroom where the final dance of the summer would be held. She scooted down the next flight of stairs and into the morning room where Mother, Father and Edith were taking tea.

  ‘Might I go outside?’ she asked Mother.

  ‘As long as you are back in time for dinner.’ Mother barely glanced up from her conversation with Aunt Edith, but Father smiled at her and nodded. Mother and Father were different at Greyfriars. The London Father was usually sombre and distant but the Greyfriars Father laughed and swam with her and seemed to cast off his mournful air along with the smog they’d left behind in London, and usually, freed from her charitable obligations, Mother spent more time with Olivia.

  If only Aunt Edith hadn’t been there then Olivia would have had Mother and Father all to herself. Aunt Edith was nice enough, if a little bossy. She was always telling Olivia to tidy her hair or change her dress when it only had a tiny stain on it, but then Aunt Edith was a nurse and Mother said nurses had to be bossy.

  Grabbing a slice of cake, Olivia scooted back into the entrance hall, narrowly avoiding a servant carrying a tray, and let herself out into the bright sunshine – and freedom.

  Over the next few days, she would spring out of bed as soon as she heard the servants moving around the house, pull on her skirt and blouse, and, stopping just long enough to thrust her feet into wellington boots, would leave the house, returning only when she was hungry or when she’d had enough of her own company. But for most of the time the island was her kingdom.

  With no one else to play with she’d become adept at creating her own games. Last summer she’d imagined herself a member of the Jacobite army as they’d marched south towards England. Alternatively she’d been Flora MacDonald, hiding Prince Charles from would-be captors, at other times she was the Lady of the House, whose husband had gone off to fight alongside the Pretender and who would watch for him from her bedroom window. (The latter game had lasted only the tiniest part of an afternoon. There was little fun to be had staring out of a window, no matter how forlornly.)

  Today she’d gone down to the west side of the island. Here, although there were as many trees as on the other sides of the house, they grew oddly, not as strongly as the others and leaning in one direction as if they were a corps of ballet dancers bending at the waist. Donald, the ghillie, said they grew like that because of the prevailing wind coming from the direction of Balcreen, which was just across the water.

  On this side of the island, Kerista was quite wild; the sea always more turbulent and the shore barren, with fat, glistening rocks instead of sand. Olivia far preferred it to the other side.

  There was a small farm a little distance away, with a row of cottages where Donald lived with his wife. The other cottages were used by the extra staff who were employed for the summer. The miniature farm had a hen house and a couple of cows which one of the maids milked twice a day, sometimes letting Olivia help.

  The hens wandered freely down here and suddenly Olivia had an idea. What if she could teach them to swim? She caught one and waded out, laying her in the water. But she flapped her feathers in Olivia’s face and squawked back to the shore.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  Olivia looked up to find a girl, of about ten or eleven, with long curly hair and wide brown eyes looking down at her.

  ‘I’m teaching the hens to swim.’

  ‘Hens can’t swim,’ the girl scoffed. ‘Everyone knows that.’

  ‘Maybe because they haven’t been taught!’ Olivia fired back. She stood up. ‘I’m Olivia Friel. Who are you?’

  ‘Agnes MacKay. My mother’s your summer cook. Usually I stay with my grandmother in Balcreen when Mam’s working, but Granny’s not feeling well, so I’ve come here for the day.’

  ‘Do you want to play?’

  Agnes nodded.

  ‘Let’s pretend the hens are our navy. I’m the admiral and you are my sailor.’

  ‘I should be the admiral,’ Agnes protested. ‘I’m older than you.’

  Olivia thought about arguing but then Agnes might not play with her. ‘In that case,’ she said, ‘we’ll both be admirals.’

  They got to work. Agnes was quick on her feet, stronger than Olivia, and more used to catching hens. Agnes showed Olivia how to tuck her dress into her knickers and persuaded her to take off her shoes, telling Olivia that her bare feet would grip the rocks better. They did but not much. The girls kept slipping on the seaweed-covered rocks and soon they were both drenched. Neither of them cared. Olivia couldn’t remember the last time she’d had so much fun, although sadly Agnes was no more successful than Olivia at creating a navy out of the hens.

  They had been chasing after a hen that would not, no matter how hard they tried to persuade her, stay in the sea, when Olivia felt a shadow fall over her. She looked up, shading her eyes against the sun, to find Donald, his gun cracked open and over his arm, towering over her. Surprised, her grip on the hen slackened and her reluctant sailor flapped away, squawking with indignation.

  ‘What are you doing, miss? Agnes?’ The ghillie had a furrow between his brows Olivia could have slipped a pencil between.

  She stood up, and, although she only reached as far as his hip, decided to brazen it out. She stared up at him, doing her best to mimic the haughty look she imagined a lady would give her subject – the same one Mother gave her whenever she was in the wrong.

  ‘We are trying to teach the hens to swim, but they are being very disobedient.’

  His mouth turned up at the corners. ‘It’s clear you’ve spent too much time in the city, Miss Olivia. Hens can’t swim. Never have been able to and never will. It’s lucky for them you never drowned them. Best to leave them be.’

  ‘They are our subjects and our navy,’ Olivia insisted. ‘We are their commanders. How will they go into battle if they can’t swim?’

  Donald laughed and to her annoyance ruffled her hair. When he turned to Agnes he looked much more disapproving. ‘Agnes! You should know better. The last place the pair of you should be is down at the shore on this side. There is a nasty riptide and you could drown, just like the little girl, and then what will your mothers do? They’ll mourn you forever and into eternity. Is that what you want?’

  ‘What little girl?’ Olivia asked.

  ‘Why, the little girl who drowned in this very spot a good many years ago. Some folk believe that she’s lonely and wants company so whenever someone comes down to these rocks she reaches out her arms and tries to pull them in so they will stay with her. I imagine that the company she’d like best would be another little girl around her age. So, mark my words, stay away from this bit of the island. If you want to play in the water, go down to where the ladies and gents swim. There’s a nice slope to the shore there.’

  When he started back towards Greyfriars Olivia and Agnes scurried after him and fell into step beside him, Olivia doing a little hop skip and jump to keep up.

  ‘Tell me about the little girl,’ Olivia demanded. ‘What was her name? Did she live here all the time or did she only come in the summer like me? Does she come into the house? Her ghost, I mean? Or does she stay in the water? Is she a mermaid now?’

  Donald rubbed a hand across the greying stubble on his chin. ‘All right then, I’ll tell you, but don’t go repeating what I say to anyone else – especially the grown-ups.’

  Agnes nodded so energetically Olivia thought her head might come loose from her neck.

  ‘We promise.’ Olivia spoke for them both.

  Donald waited until they were all perched on rocks before he began.

  ‘It was many, many years ago, long before I was born or even my father or his grandfather. The house as you see it wasn’t built yet. There was only the tower. It was in 1745 – the family were supporters of Prince Charlie. Do you know who he was?’

  ‘Of course. He was the righ
tful King of Scotland – or so many people believed. My governess told me about him. She said he was called the Young Pretender because he had no right to the throne,’ Olivia said.

  ‘Aye, well, all that is in the past. All that matters is that the family who lived here supported him. But to do so was against the law. Even worse it was treason!’ He smacked his lips together as if the very thought of treason thrilled him. ‘Any how, that doesn’t have much to do with my story except to say, the family was hiding out here. The clan chief who owned Stryker Castle over on the mainland supported the Jacobite cause as did many of the highland Scots. Now Lord Farquhar’s estates were in the borders but Lord Farquhar thought it unwise to leave his wife, Lady Elizabeth, and their daughter, Lady Sarah – they only had one child – there alone while he went off to fight alongside Prince Charlie. All this happened just before the battle of Culloden.’

  In her head Olivia was conjuring up images of a lady dressed in plaid – her long hair which, when worn loose, would come almost to her bottom. Just like the lady she’d pretended to be!

  ‘Lady Elizabeth would have gone with him if she could,’ Donald continued, ‘but she knew if her husband was captured the King’s army would ransack their home in the borders – perhaps even torch it and burn it to the ground – and she loved her little girl more than her own life and didn’t want to take the chance anything might happen to her. And her husband, Lord Farquhar, loved Lady Elizabeth above all else. So he was happy that she agreed to stay here until the battle was won and Charles took his rightful place on the throne.’

  Olivia was scared to speak, or even to nod, in case she broke the spell. Agnes was quiet too, although, until now, she’d chatted all the time.

  ‘Lady Elizabeth used to stand on the ramparts, at the top of the tower and watch for him coming back. Some say she loved her lord too much. That she spent so much time watching and waiting for him to return, she forgot to take care of her little girl. However then, like now, she had many servants and there should have been plenty of folk to keep an eye on little Sarah. But it’s a fact of life, the more people there are to do a thing, the more people think that someone else is doing that thing.

  ‘And this Sarah was a very curious girl, like the pair of you. She became bored with being in the turret, waiting for her mother to come down to keep her company, so she decided to go and play outside. Now she knew she wasn’t supposed to, not on her own, so she waited until her governess was having tea with Cook – they were great friends – before she sneaked outside.’

  A sense of dread wrapped itself around Olivia like a thick morning mist. She knew what was going to happen, yet she still hoped that in the telling, something would change and that little girl would still be all right.

  ‘Anyways,’ Donald went on, ‘she got outside and she came to that same place where I just found you. She could probably see it from the nursery window as the trees and bushes hadn’t been planted back then. Maybe it was a particularly hot day like today and she thought she might paddle. Certainly she had taken off her stockings – they were found on the rock, all neatly rolled up.

  ‘It was almost lunch time before anyone realised she was missing. Naturally they searched the house from top to bottom first, including the servants’ rooms, the turret and the cellars. Lady Elizabeth was beside herself with terror, as was the governess who well knew it had been her fault. Only once they were certain that Lady Sarah wasn’t in the house did they search outside. When they found Lady Sarah’s stockings on the rock they knew they would never find her, at least not alive. Two hooded crows – bigger and blacker than anyone had seen before – were circling over the house and everyone knows that they are announcers of death.’

  Olivia did her best to hide a shudder, but couldn’t help an involuntary look up at the sky. To her relief there were no crows, only seagulls. But the sky had darkened and the breeze had picked up, brushing across her arms like a giant’s fingertips.

  ‘Two days later Lady Sarah’s little broken body was washed up on the rocks. They picked her up and wrapped her in plaid and brought her back to the house. They laid the poor wee mite’s body in her bedroom and Lady Elizabeth stayed with her for seven days and seven nights. She might never have let them bury her only child if Lord Farquhar hadn’t returned from battle.

  ‘He was, as you can imagine, heartbroken to learn of the death of his only child, his precious Sarah. But he knew she had to be buried. And eventually after pleading and going down on his knees to his wife, she agreed. You’ll know that Prince Charles was defeated – but Lord Farquhar was fortunate in that he didn’t lose his lands. They’d taken pity on him and left his estates in the borders intact. With their daughter buried, he wanted Lady Elizabeth to go back with him to their estate in the Borders where they would live out the rest of their lives as best they could, but Lady Elizabeth wouldn’t go. Her mind had turned. She wouldn’t accept that it was her daughter they had buried, choosing instead to believe that someone had taken Lady Sarah and that one day she’d find her again.’ Donald lowered his voice to a whisper. ‘They say that at night, Lady Elizabeth still walks Greyfriars and the grounds looking for her daughter. And that Sarah does come back for a week or two every year and that mother and daughter are happy for that short while, until it is time for Sarah to return to the other world again. Others say that Lady Elizabeth believes that if she can find another little girl and drown her by the rocks, then her daughter will be restored to her and they can be together all the time.’

  Olivia shivered. She exchanged a glance with Agnes who looked riveted and terrified in equal measure.

  Donald stood. ‘That’s why you must never play down at that shore. Not unless you want to join Lady Sarah’s ghost – or replace her. Now, Agnes, away you go back to the farm and dry off. I’ll be taking you back to Balcreen shortly. And, Miss Olivia, you’d better do the same.’

  That night alone in her room, her parents having kissed her goodnight and with the candle blown out, the story Donald had told her and Agnes played in Olivia’s mind. She imagined she could hear the doorknob turning, as Lady Elizabeth crept into her room to look for her daughter. No matter how hard she stared and tried to make out shapes in the darkness, or strained her ears for any sounds of ghostly footsteps, all she could hear was the sea and the wind. Did ghosts make a sound? Would the first she knew be when she felt an icy cold hand touch her face?

  Olivia burrowed deeper under the blankets, willing her eyes to stay open and alert but after a while her lids started getting heavier and heavier. And then she was wide awake, with the terrifying sensation she was not alone. She didn’t dare breathe, and her heart was hammering so loud she could no longer hear the sea. She tried to shout for her mother but no words would come.

  A woman stood only a couple of feet from her bed, her face, partly covered by the hood of her cloak, pale in the moonlight, her eyes two dark hollows. Behind her, Olivia’s rocking horse moved gently on its rockers.

  ‘Have you seen Lady Sarah?’ the woman asked.

  Olivia shook her head, too frightened to speak, knowing with a horrible but absolute certainty it was the ghost of Lady Elizabeth standing in front of her.

  ‘I don’t know where she can be! I heard her calling for me but I can’t find her!’ Lady Elizabeth held out a mottled blue hand. ‘Will you help me find her?’

  Olivia shook her head again. She didn’t want to go anywhere with Lady Elizabeth. But then – Olivia couldn’t think how – they were down at the shore, on the wild side where Donald had said they mustn’t play, surrounded by a thick mist that made the familiar unfamiliar. Lady Elizabeth was tugging at her hand, hauling her along, and Olivia was powerless to resist.

  When they reached the rocks Lady Elizabeth knelt by Olivia’s side, her dark eyes full of entreaty. ‘Lady Sarah will be so lonely. Won’t you play with her for a while? All you have to do is go into the water. She’ll come to you then.’

  ‘I don’t want to!’ Olivia finally found her voice but it so
unded small in the darkness and mist. ‘Please don’t make me.’ She tried to pull away but Lady Elizabeth’s grip was too strong and she was being dragged ever closer to the water.

  Then a little girl with strands of seaweed caught in her long blonde hair rose from the sea and waded ashore. Olivia thought her heart would stop. ‘No, Mother,’ the girl said, coming to stand next to them. ‘Leave her…. her mother would be too sad. And I have you to play with.’

  Suddenly Olivia was back in her bed, her heart banging so hard she thought it might jump out of her chest. She lay in the semi-darkness too petrified to move. A bad dream, it had only been a bad dream, she told herself. But there was a faint smell of wax from a candle that had recently been extinguished and overlaying that, a tang of damp and seaweed and Olivia was convinced if she looked hard she would see wet footprints on the floor. For once she wished she was back in the nursery, Nanny in the room next door.

  She thought of running along the corridors to Mother’s room. But that would mean venturing into the dark and the possibility of coming across Lady Elizabeth. It was only a nightmare, she repeated to herself over and over. She huddled deeper under her blankets and squeezed her eyes shut. It took a long time, but eventually she did fall asleep and this time her sleep was dreamless.