And then she was screaming. On and on she screamed, pouring her despair into the empty valley and the bare rock under the sky.
“Mama! Mama!”
The child’s cry entered her hearing, but she did not understand where it had come from. Then she felt his small hand touch hers, and his knees dig into her thigh as he climbed onto the sofa beside her. “Mama, you are crying!”
She sat up, coughing, and caught him in her arms. She stroked the white-gold hair she could not bear to cut, even though the boy had passed his fourth birthday. “Mama is well, darling,” she reassured him. “I was dreaming, that is all.”
He gazed up at her, his cheeks streaked with tears. “Not-nice dream,” he said gravely.
“You are quite right,” she said, embracing him once more. “It was one of Mama’s not-nice dreams. Now, will you let me rest a little longer? Bridie will take care of you.”
IT HAS BEGUN
Jamie was sitting on the window seat, reading a book. I hesitated in the doorway, having opened a door at random with no idea that it led to the library. “Oh, I’m sorry. I’m disturbing you.”
I began to shut the door, but he closed his book with a loud thud. “Stay there!”
“Aren’t you reading?”
“Who would want to read, when he could indulge in conversation with a beautiful cat?” He approached me, leaving his book on the window seat. His uncombed hair covered one eye, and he was wearing an extraordinary mixture of garments: yellowish linen trousers, a loose shirt and a waistcoat embroidered with serpents and flowers in the Chinese style. His feet were bare. “Did you sleep well? Cats usually do.”
“Jamie…” I gathered my courage. “May I ask you again to call me Catriona? I do not understand why you have named me ‘Cat’.”
“Then I must tell you about the Cait Sìth.” He plumped down in an armchair, put his feet on the fender and pointed to the other armchair. “Sit there and you will hear all. Oh, and did you count the beams?”
I had not yet decided whether to tell him what had happened last night. “No,” I said coolly.
“Ach!” He clapped his hand to his head. “And now you’ve missed your chance! You have to do it only on the first night you spend in a place or it doesn’t work. Now we will have to change your bedroom!”
I sat down. “Jamie, you will not have to change my bedroom. It is a story, a superstition. Bridie says you have got these stories from your grandmother. Is that true?”
“Quite true. My family adores superstitions!” He swept his arm round theatrically. “See all these books? Collected by my grandfather Buchanan, who had a great interest in Scottish myths and legends.”
“And did your grandfather Buchanan believe in them?”
He gazed at me, green eyes alert for mockery. “No. His interest was scholarly. But I sometimes think my grandmother believes them.”
“Because it is she who likes to tell the stories?”
He nodded, his eyes remaining on my face. “She is absolutely unshakeable in her belief that Scottish legends and folklore must be preserved. Before you have been here one more day, she will corner you and lecture you about the committee she sits on in Edinburgh, and how important its work is.” He smiled suddenly, transforming his face into that of a delighted child. “And you will be too polite to escape! I wish you luck, bonny Cat!”
I sighed. “You were about to tell me about a legend yourself, were you not? What is this Cait Sìth? Something to do with a cat, by any chance?”
He swung his feet off the fender and sat forward eagerly. “A cat, yes, but a special cat. A faerie cat.”
I almost laughed. “A fairy cat?”
“Not an English fairy such as you are envisaging,” he said, no longer smiling. “The faerie folk are not tiny, winged things who live at the bottom of the garden. They are … a presence. The Gaelic word for them is the sìth.” He was looking intently into my face. “They do things that would otherwise be unexplained, and they appear in various forms. The Cait Sìth, which means ‘Faerie Cat’, is a large black cat, too large to be a domestic cat, encountered all over Scotland on heaths and moors and mountains. No one has ever caught it, or photographed it, so its existence has passed into legend. In people’s minds, you see, if it isn’t a real cat, it must be a supernatural one, sent by the faerie folk.”
“Do they really call them that?” I asked doubtfully. “The faerie folk?”
“In Scots, yes. The word is spelled f-a-e-r-i-e.”
“It sounds most unlikely.”
“It is only unlikely, my dear English girl, to those who have the luxury of education and scepticism. Scotland is a harsh place for poor people, cold and mountainous. Daily survival is governed by the landscape, the tides, the weather, animals, fish, birds – did you know that on some islands the inhabitants actually eat seabirds? So it isn’t surprising that superstitions grow up about unexplained things.”
I said nothing. Despite my scepticism, which he had pointed out, and my impatience with his “Cat” joke, which I had pointed out, I was interested.
“You are like a cat, you see,” he said unexpectedly. “You are dark like the Cait Sìth, and your brow is smooth and pale like the white patch it has on its face. Your eyes are as black as your hair, and with every look they say to the world, I am clever, I am disdainful, I am myself. ” He leaned nearer me, apparently unaware of my pink cheeks. “The Cait Sìth is mysterious, an interloper, an unknown. It is magnificent to look at, but if approached, it will attack. It has determination, and strength. And yet it blends into its surroundings so well that no one would notice it, unless they were looking for it.”
I was not sure if it was Jamie’s intention to flatter me. My experience of young men was limited. The few boys of my own age I had been introduced to, usually sons of my parents’ acquaintances, or brothers of schoolfriends, had been more interested in beating me at tennis than flirting with me. I resented Jamie’s words – what right did they have to cause such an unbecoming flush? – and yet his seriousness and eloquence had touched me, and I could not voice my resentment.
“Do you really think these things apply to me?” I asked instead.
He sat back and contemplated me solemnly. “Yes, indeed. It is the faerie folk who have sent you, and your supernatural ways, to our little household here at Drumwithie.”
I digested this, my thoughts racing again to the tower room. Perhaps the cries I had heard were from a supernatural source – something ghostly, like the Cait Sìth, spoken of but not seen. But I was not yet ready to surrender to this notion. It still sounded preposterous.
“Really?” I said drily. “I was under the impression that it was your father who brought me to Drumwithie.”
“He did,” he agreed, still watching my face. “But I must tell you, when he read the notice in The Times that morning, there was a look on his face I’d never seen before. It was as if he had been released from a heavy burden.”
My interest increased, and I sat forward. “What did he say?”
“He told us his cousin, David Graham, had died, and he felt bound to pay his respects despite a long estrangement. He wrote to the funeral director and went down south for the funeral. Then we received a telegram telling us he would be bringing David Graham’s daughter back with him to spend the summer at Drumwithie. After she had read it, Grandmother said, ‘Hamish’s intention in bringing this young woman here is clear. The time has come for him to heal a deep wound.’”
I remembered Doctor Hamish’s words to my mother about the estrangement: it concerned a personal matter which he would not wish me to disclose, even now. “Jamie,” I began carefully, “do you know what happened between our fathers, to cause this wound your grandmother spoke of?”
He shrugged, fixing me with a calm gaze. “I am as much in the dark as you. But whatever it was, it meant I grew up never hearing of Miss Catriona Graham, and you grew up never hearing of Mr James Buchanan.”
I willed myself to go on looking at him, t
hough another flush threatened. “Your grandmother is correct,” I told him. “Your father is trying to heal a wound, in bringing me to a place my father was once fond of, but was banished from for many years. Also, he very kindly seeks to give me a holiday, after the many months of illness and now the, um, passing of my father, which is like a cloud Mother and I have been living under. If she had not had so much to deal with at our factory, he would have brought her too.”
Jamie nodded, unable to argue with this.
“And there is one more thing he said,” I continued before I lost courage. “He told us you consider Drumwithie a little restricted and would enjoy having some company for the summer.”
“Ah!” He smiled with a sort of relieved satisfaction. “Of course. To entertain me during my last summer at home, I suppose he said?”
“He said you are to enter the Medical School at Edinburgh in the autumn.”
“Hm.” His face straightened, and he stared moodily at the floor. His forelock had fallen over his eyes; I could not interpret his expression. He took a deep breath, as if nerve were needed to speak his next words. “The only person who thinks I am ever going to be a doctor is my father.” He looked up at me through the curtain of golden hair. “You see, Cat, I am a poet.”
The thought of Jamie as a poet made me smile, though I should have suspected such a thing. Unkempt hair, strange attire and stranger behaviour were the hallmarks of a romantic.
“Of course you are a poet!” I said delightedly. “Will you show me your work?”
“No. At least, not yet. I am not satisfied with any of it, and I will not allow you, especially you, to read second-rate rubbish.”
“Then tell me what you are reading,” I said, glancing at the book he had left on the window seat. “If I am to be your company for the whole summer I had better find out if we have any interests in common. Though personally, I doubt it.”
“There you are, you see!” He leapt out of his chair – did he ever move carefully or slowly?
His face was alive again, smiling, his hair bouncing as he lunged for the book. “The cat sits there as quiet as you like, then out of the blue, it bares its claws!”
He tossed the book onto the table. It was a book of poetry. I picked it up and read the title aloud. “Poems, by W. B. Yeats.”
“It’s pronounced ‘Yates’,” said Jamie, impatiently enough for me to feel my ignorance. “He’s Irish. A wonderful, mystical poet.”
I could not resist. “You mean, he writes about f-a-e-r-i-e folk and so on?”
“I suppose so,” sighed Jamie. “But if you actually read it, you will see that it is sublime.”
I put the book down unopened. “I am sure it is. And one day, so will your poetry be.”
“Do not patronize me, Cat.”
The library was utterly silent. It was a large, square room with a prominent window at the front of the house. It did not overlook the courtyard where the kitchen and stables were, and Drumwithie’s thick walls prevented any sounds made by the servants from reaching us. At breakfast Doctor Hamish had told me he was going to his surgery in Drumwithie, on the back, I supposed, of a younger horse than Kelpie. Jamie had apparently already finished breakfast and Mrs McAllister had not appeared at all.
A log on the fire shifted, throwing out sparks. I could not think what to say; there seemed no sensible observation to make. Doctor Hamish’s hesitation when the subject of Jamie came up, the examinations that had required “a few attempts”, my mother’s crass comment about getting there in the end – I remembered it all very clearly. And now the cause of the frostiness between Jamie and his father was clear.
“My father seems to think that just because he is interested in medicine, then everyone must be,” he told me testily. “But I do not expect everyone to be a poet, merely because I am one, do I?”
“No, indeed,” I replied obediently.
“He cannot understand that poetry is just as important as healing sick people and delivering babies and all those things he does,” continued Jamie. He began to stride restlessly about the room, becoming more agitated as he spoke. “Art can heal, and inspire, and be a godly thing, as much as anything a doctor does, can it not? But he thinks the only thing in the world is science, science, science! He only respects people if they are scientists, or are in some other equally dull field such as the law, or the management of money, or the construction of buildings. He hangs on the every word of those quacks that treat my poor mother. But they are quacks, Cat, every one! My mother’s condition is pitiable, to be sure, but it is incurable, and I wish my father would admit it!”
I swallowed, trying to take in what he had said. But before I could reply, he threw himself down in the chair again and kicked the table. “Sometimes I hate him,” he said bitterly. “I absolutely hate him!”
My father’s love for me, and mine for him, was an immoveable truth that had supported me all my life. I could not imagine hating a father, let alone voicing my hatred to a virtual stranger. I was shocked, but Jamie’s frustration had also stirred my heart. I did not disapprove of his admission; I was sorry for it. “I believe,” I said guardedly, “your father is a good man.”
“Hmph!”
“Jamie, I do not think—”
He was not listening. “Do you know about my mother? What has he told you?”
I tried to remember Doctor Hamish’s words about his wife. “I believe he told us she is away at present. He did not mention that she was ill.”
Jamie gave an exaggerated sigh. “Well, she is. She lives in a hospital, and has done these last seven years. She always suffered from nerves, and I remember her having terrible nightmares. When I was a small boy she had some sort of collapse, and different doctors came to see her, and of course none of them could do anything. Then, when they finally took her to the hospital…” He sighed again. “Well, they tried to keep it from me, but I was fourteen then, and my grandmother knew I was old enough to hear the truth. She told me that they had taken my mother away because she tried to kill herself.”
I felt cold. The sound of a woman in distress. Cries of unbearable sorrow. I stared at him. “You are sure that your mother is in a hospital, are you not?” I asked.
Understandably, he was nonplussed at such an odd question. He stared back at me, his eyes dulled by incomprehension. “What in God’s name do you mean? Of course I am sure. How could I be mistaken about such a thing?”
“I’m sorry,” I said hurriedly. “But … have you read a book called Jane Eyre?”
“No. I have heard of it, though. It is so famous, I should think everyone has.”
“In it there is a woman whom they pretend is dead,” I told him, “but really she is locked in an attic. She cries in the night, and the heroine, Jane Eyre, hears her, and wonders what the sound is.”
Jamie rolled his eyes. “That sounds like the plot of every ghastly gothic novel my grandmother has ever left strewn about the place. Do you honestly read such rubbish?”
“Jane Eyre is not rubbish!” I leapt to defend the book that had made such a profound impression on me. “It is not a ghastly gothic novel. It is more … a romance. Anyway, the point is, my room is in the attic here – well, the tower. And something happened there last night.”
I hesitated while his contemptuous stare turned to one of interest.
“I heard something,” I told him. Now the confession was made, I felt less foolish than I had feared. “It was the sound of a woman crying, or more like shrieking, in desperation or agony. It was so loud! I looked out of the window, thinking it was the wind. I even opened the cupboard. But there was nothing. And when you told me about your mother, I just thought—”
“She is in a hospital in Edinburgh, I tell you!” he protested. “She has not been at Drumwithie these seven years, more’s the pity!”
“Very well. But when I tell you what happened next, perhaps you will be able to offer an explanation.”
Jamie was as still as a stone, his face a picture of bewil
derment. I paused, uncertain how to explain, afraid he would laugh. In daylight, here in the comfort of the library, I was no longer sure that my senses could be trusted. “Before I go on,” I said at last, “will you promise me that you will not think I am the sort of girl who makes up stories to get attention, or considers herself ‘sensitive’?”
His face relaxed, though he did not smile. “Of course. It is obvious you aren’t.”
“Very well, then. When the sound began to fade way, I saw what I must describe as a ghost. It was certainly not a real person, though it was in the form of a young girl. She appeared from nowhere, not through the door or a window. I was so frightened, I thought I would faint.”
“Good God!” Jamie’s expression had changed. He stood up, blinking rapidly, very agitated. “Are you sure you did not fall asleep and—”
“I am sure. She stood there as plainly as you are standing now.”
“You are sure?”
“I have just said I am.”
“And what did she do, this ghost? Did she speak?”
“No, she did not speak. She looked at me and I at her. Her face was full of such sorrow, I cannot describe it. It affected me greatly. I pitied her.”
“What did she look like? Her colouring, I mean? Was she fair?”
“No, dark. And she wore a pink dress, very dirty.” As I described her, I remembered more and more. “An old-fashioned dress, from twenty or more years ago.”
His eyes, fixed on my face, looked glassy. “And she was young, you say?”
The Devil's Promise Page 4
