Testament of a Witch

by Douglas Watt

  CHAPTER 2 - A Round on Leith Links

  SCOUGALL WAS SUFFERING from a cold. As he lowered his head to address the ball, his nose dripped onto the ground between his feet. He sniffed loudly before swinging the club. The ball shot off at a terrific speed, but was sliced. Following it in the air, he watched it bounce on the fairway about two hundred yards away, move violently to the right and come to rest in the rough.

  ‘Confound this cold!’ He had almost cursed. He chided himself. It was only a game, after all, the pursuit of leisure. It should not be taken too seriously, unlike work. He asked God for forgiveness. But he did love golf so much, the feeling he got from striking a good shot. Despite his diminutive stature, he could drive further than most men. He loved the sense of satisfaction it gave him, similar to completing a long instrument in the office. But, although he found it hard to admit, it was even more enjoyable to win.

  Scougall was dressed in black breeches and jacket. The short white periwig on his head was a fashion accessory he had only recently added to his wardrobe and to which he was not yet accustomed. His pale face looked disconcerted as he stood back to let his partner play.

  MacKenzie was a foot taller and a generation older than Scougall. Bending over to tee up his ball on the best spot, he smiled. ‘I may have a chance today, Davie. Only a slight one, but a chance.’ As he straightened his back, he groaned. An image of himself lying flat, unable to walk for a week, flashed through his mind. Like most tall men he suffered from bouts of back pain. He must try not to hit the ball too hard.

  As he concentrated, his expression became deeply serious. Touching his periwig with his right hand, a golfing mannerism, he placed it beside his left on the handle. At the apex, the club stopped for just too long to give the swing fluency; it presented a staccato appearance which lacked the natural elegance of his young companion’s. MacKenzie was not a natural golfer like Scougall. Despite having played the game for fifty years he had never managed to improve a swing moulded as a child. Indeed he often joked that he had played his best golf as a twelve-year-old student in Aberdeen in 1643, the year the Scots signed the National League and Covenant, a foolish document if there ever was one. Interfering in the affairs of another nation was always a bad idea, leading to nothing but trouble.

  The result on this occasion was a pleasing one. He made sound contact, launching the ball into a perfect parabola. It landed about a hundred and eighty yards away in the middle of the fairway.

  The two men gathered their clubs. The weather was fine, the day possessing the freshness of autumn, the sky a glorious blue, the grass of Leith Links a lush green.

  ‘Is this not a day to treasure, Davie?’

  ‘It is a grand one, sir. I might appreciate it better if this cold would lift.’

  ‘Now, before I forget. I have been asked by Sir John Foulis of Ravelston and the Lord Clerk Register to make up a party,’ said MacKenzie. ‘I have told Sir John that I will bring a partner. I mentioned your name.’

  ‘I would be most honoured, sir.’ Scougall was thrilled to hear of an opportunity to show off his golfing skills in such exalted company.

  ‘Excellent. I may wager a pound or two on the result.’

  ‘I do not gamble, sir,’ Scougall said seriously.

  ‘I did not expect that you would, Davie. But you would not deny another man his pleasure?’

  The conversation stopped when they reached MacKenzie’s ball. He addressed it with an iron, swung inelegantly and threw a large divot into the air. The ball came to rest about thirty yards away.

  He swore angrily in Gaelic, before continuing in English: ‘The frustrations of golf! Always raising expectations only to crush them the next moment!’ He walked forward to play his third shot. ‘Have you received your invitation?’ he asked casually.

  MacKenzie’s question lowered Scougall’s flagging spirits further. It was three months since he had heard the news of Elizabeth’s engagement to Seaforth’s brother, but it still caused a sinking feeling. He knew he had no right to feel jealous. After all, he was only her father’s clerk and of lower standing in society. She was the great-grand-daughter of MacKenzie of Kintail. But he had fantasised about a future with her.

  ‘I am most honoured, sir. I look forward to it very much,’ he lied. ‘How do preparations proceed?’

  ‘They go well, Davie. Of course Elizabeth takes great care with everything. The Earl and I are still negotiating about the tocher.’

  Scougall was now addressing his ball, which was snugly encased in thick grass. It would be a challenging shot. He put Elizabeth to the back of his mind. After a couple of practice swings he played, but made heavy contact. The ball landed on the fairway a dozen yards away. He closed his eyes. This was most unlike him. He had not played so badly in years.

  Before MacKenzie could return to the subject of his daughter’s marriage, Scougall moved the conversation in another direction. ‘I hear the execution is to take place tomorrow, sir.’

  ‘Poor creature,’ replied MacKenzie.

  ‘But she is a witch. She has confessed to her crimes.’

  ‘She is just an ignorant woman, Davie.’

  ‘She has sold herself to Satan!’ Scougall grew animated, forgetting his cold. ‘Three confessing witches saw her at meetings with the Devil. Her magic caused the deaths of two women and a child. And…’ he hesitated as his face reddened, ‘she confessed to copulation with Satan.’

  ‘Copulation with Satan!’ MacKenzie replied mockingly. ‘Well, well. I do not believe she is a witch, Davie.’

  ‘But Satan, sir…’

  ‘I have grave doubts about the crime of witchcraft. I believe it is nothing more than superstition. There are also a number of legal concerns. I assume you have read Rosehaugh’s Criminal Law on the subject.’

  ‘I have not, sir.’

  ‘The Lord Advocate, or should I say ex-Lord Advocate, may be of a gloomy disposition, but he is a perceptive lawyer…’

  ‘These are dangerous times for Scotland,’ Scougall interrupted. ‘The Devil is amongst us. He seeks to lead us astray.’

  Noticing Scougall’s morose mood, MacKenzie decided to say no more on the subject for the moment. The young lawyer’s words had brought back dark memories. He saw himself standing at the edge of a crowd in Edinburgh in 1658, almost thirty years before. He could still hear the screams as she was dragged to the stake, recanting her sins, begging to be saved. For the alleged crime of changing herself into a great dog, meeting with the Devil and fornicating with him, she was burned to ashes. MacKenzie shook his head. That same year a hermaphrodite had been executed for lying with a mare, and two young boys burnt on the Castle Hill for buggery. The superstitious nonsense that was believed in Scotland! The witch-hunt following the Restoration of Charles in 1660 had been, if anything, even more vicious. The words of Cicero came to him, as they often did: ‘Nam, ut vere loquamur, superstitio fusa per gentis oppressit omnium fere animos atque hominum imbecillitatem occupavit.’ He looked at Scougall and shook his head. The young man had much to learn.

  CHAPTER 3 - The Devil’s Pool

  THE YOUNG BOY smashed a clump of nettles with a stick as he reached the pool. It was a place he visited often. The other children were too scared. They believed that it was where the Devil washed his feet. They believed that it was his pool and the woods were haunted by fairies. But he liked the place. It was a world away from his dominie’s dreary Latin and sharp tawse, from his father’s moods and his mother’s sadness. Here he could play with toads, fish with his line or watch the birds.

  He made for a huge boulder which stood over the pool like a squat tower. It was a base from which to fish for minnows, or defend against the English army. In summer it was where he lay, letting the sun caress his face, enjoying the wanderings of clouds. Today he realised that it was no longer summer. There was a sharpness in the air, a different odour, the smell of change. His eyes followed a murder of crows in a sky pregnant with rain. The birds knew when the seasons changed.

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nbsp; It was only when he sat on the rock, dangled his legs over the edge, boots an inch or two above the surface, taken an apple from a pocket and bitten into it, that he saw the shape under a large birch tree about thirty yards across the still water. The realisation that there was something different came as a shock. He had been to the pool most days during the summer, sometimes in the afternoon, but more often in the gloaming when the place came alive with insects, black flecks of life, wee beasties, as he called them. He loved the birds that haunted the pool at that time, mesmerising him with their acrobatic flight.

  From his position he could not tell what it was. It looked as if a cloak had been thrown onto the water. He felt a pang of annoyance – he had thought that he was the only one brave enough to come here. The rock was his tower which he defended with his life. He grabbed a stone from a small hole where he stored them and rose to his feet. He had a good arm. It flew across the pool, hitting the cloak, making a dull thud like a chuckie striking a bag of corn.

  Clambering back the way he had come, he crossed the boulders in front of a small waterfall and made his way down the eastern side, moving northwards. Descending beyond a narrow channel where the burn left the pool, he was able to cross the dark brown water by jumping over a few smaller rocks. He knew the easiest way.

  Once over, he moved up the western fringe of the pool towards the woods, the large birch and the cloak. He passed through smaller trees, pushing pliant branches back to make his way, before jumping down onto a thin strand of sand.

  Only then, when he was a few feet away, did he see that it was a body, face-down in the water, floating in the shallows. He could make out a head with long tangled hair, a cloak, a dark skirt – a woman was drowned. Comprehending all this in a moment he looked around, fearing that he was being watched.

  Then a sound came from the woods which sent a pulse of fear through him, a pulse so strong that he had felt nothing like it before in his life. It was not like a whipping from his teacher. It was not a pain like that. It was a deep feeling of desolation. It was the presence of evil. He recalled the words of the minister in the kirk on Sunday.

  Glancing over his shoulder, he looked into the woods. They were full of swaying shadows.

  A figure appeared, a human shape, a black presence – like a man, but not a man – far back in the woods, its eyes on him. It raised a hand, palm towards him. He heard it speak his name. He heard his own name – his name! ‘Geordie, Geordie.’ He was being called into the woods, called into the shadows, to come quickly – to obey.

  He leapt along the edge of the pool and down to the crossing point. When he reached the other bank he had a compulsion to look back at the creature that was calling him. Something was telling him to stop, to turn. He heard a voice inside his head, whispering his name – ‘Geordie, Geordie. Come into the woods – come, boy. Come, join me in the woods, boy.’ But he resisted. He ran from the pool, away from the rock, away from the dead woman – away from the thing that called him.

  He knew who was beckoning him. He knew it in the pit of his stomach with the certainty of a knife. The minister’s words echoed in his head: ‘This parish is enthralled to the Devil. Satan walks amongst us.’ It was him. It was his pool. It was named after him. Satan had called him.

  CHAPTER 4 - A Letter in the Library

  23 October 1687

  MACKENZIE WAS ASLEEP in a chair by the fire in his library, snoring gently. On his lap was the first volume of Principia Mathematica by Isaac Newton. A dog lay at his feet in a similar state of slumber, the reverberations from the animal in perfect synchrony with his master’s. Rain lashed against the sash windows.

  There was a knock at the door. Elizabeth MacKenzie began to speak as she entered, not realising that her father was asleep: ‘Father, Archie has come with the mail.’

  MacKenzie woke with a startled look, his eyes bulging slightly as he took deep breaths, trying to remember if he was in Edinburgh or at The Hawthorns. Sadness enveloped him when he recalled where he was, who he was. He asked himself, as he had done countless times before, why the feeling always returned. He had a beautiful daughter, success in his profession, a fine house, a library full of books, friends. The same answer came back to him: because of the past. We can change the future, but the past is set in stone.

  ‘Father, I am sorry to have startled you.’ Elizabeth approached him with a worried expression.

  ‘It’s all right, my dear. As I grow older, my dreams become more vivid. The shock of returning to this body is great.’ He smiled at his daughter. ‘There is nothing to be concerned about. There, I am awake. Philosophers have commented on the halfway house between sleep and wakefulness. I am fine now.’

  Panic dissipated but melancholy remained. The feelings had been worse over the last few months, rising and falling like waves in the ocean. There for a couple of days, then gone for a week. He looked at his daughter standing before him. She was the image of her beautiful mother, the woman he had killed, or that was how he always felt. He tried to think of something else. But the mind was driven by its own master. It was only when fully distracted that such feelings were banished completely.

  The dog was also awake, sitting on its haunches, bending its head down to clean its tail, nibbling the end of it, before shaking and letting out a squealing yawn.

  MacKenzie pulled himself up in his chair and patted it on the head. ‘There, Macrae. What thoughts drift through your mind as you awake?’ He often reflected on the canine life. It was interesting how often dogs appeared in the sayings of his people – Cho leisg ri seana chù – As lazy as an old dog. He chuckled to himself. The proverbs that he had learned in his youth still brought him amusement.

  Elizabeth was standing over him. She kissed him on the forehead. ‘Too much work, Father. You need some rest.’

  ‘Perhaps we should visit London before your marriage,’ he suggested.

  Her young face brightened. ‘Really, do you mean it? It would bring me great happiness. We could visit the shops and go to the theatre. Order silk for my wedding gown.’

  ‘I will think about it, my dear. New scenes might rouse me from my lethargy.’

  He took his daughter’s hand and kissed it.

  ‘Here is your mail.’

  Handing him a leather pouch, she withdrew from the room, the old dog following, hindquarters waddling. MacKenzie emptied the contents onto his lap – a collection of documents and letters. A bundle of instruments from Scougall were tied together by a white ribbon. He placed them on the table beside the chair, putting other legal documents on top.

  Two letters remained. He recognised the writing on one. It was from his old friend Archibald Stirling, the Crown Officer. He broke the seal. Stirling was writing to remind him that he had promised to provide his recollections of Montrose’s arrival at Inverness in May 1650. MacKenzie smiled. Stirling was still labouring over his history of the Great Rebellion and the nation at the time of the Covenant; an attempt to explain how a country at peace under a lawful king fell into discord and how the Scots, in opposing their king, brought disaster on Scotland, England and Ireland. It was a mighty task to put so much into words. He recalled their conversation by the fireside in Glenshieldaig Castle the previous year at the time of the affair of Sir Lachlan MacLean. As far as history was concerned, Stirling never forgot.

  He must write those recollections down for him. There was no excuse. Perhaps it was time to compose an account of his own life. He had witnessed many important events. He was in Edinburgh in the aftermath of the Battle of Dunbar in 1650 and in London for the Restoration of King Charles in 1660. He was present there in the year of the great fire. He had known many of the outstanding figures of his time – Argyll, Lauderdale and Monck. He had spoken with Cromwell and kissed the hand of King Charles himself. A full memoir might be of interest to his grandchildren or generations to come. He could employ Scougall on the research. It would be excellent training and might induce in him a love of history, or at least deflect him from the religious
works that he studied so assiduously.

  The thought lifted MacKenzie’s mood. It would be a new project, perhaps for his retirement. He would begin with the description Stirling requested. He closed his eyes and tried to recall the scene – the colour, smells and noise of the past – the town of Inverness thirty-seven years before, at a vitally important moment in the history of Scotland. Montrose, on his way to be executed in Edinburgh. How was he to convey in words what it felt like to be there? Phrases came to him first in Gaelic, his native tongue. He would have to translate them into English for Stirling.

  Paradoxically, MacKenzie remembered the 1650s as a happy time, despite the bloody war which had ripped the heart out of the Highlands, devastating his clan. The signs were not good for the present time. He was a loyal supporter of the King, although James was an open Catholic. But the King’s recent policies were misguided and would only cause trouble, despite their intention of toleration. The conversions of Perth and Melfort were fodder for the extremists, as was giving command of Edinburgh Castle to the Papist Duke of Gordon. The King was bent on promoting Popery in a land which had no appetite for it. It was a policy of the utmost folly. Better to be canny in politics, to promise little and do less.

  MacKenzie opened his eyes. The past had a strange flavour. You could have a longing for it, a bitter-sweet feeling, almost a pain for its passing. He could not recall the word in Gaelic to describe it. He did not know an English one that was quite right.

  Putting Stirling’s letter down, he took up the other. He did not recognise the graceful hand.

  To Mr John MacKenzie

  Clerk of the Session

  Libberton’s Wynd

  Edinburgh

  Peering closely at the small red wax seal, he identified the coat of arms of the Hays of Lammersheugh, an East Lothian family who were clients.

  Lammersheugh House

  20 October 1687

  Dear John,