“They could do that now. He’s a wee round ball of a fellow, I’ve heard.” Dismissing the Duke and his physique, she asked whether I’d like to join her for an expedition to the nearby foothills.
“I’m needing a bit of moss,” she explained. She waved her long, boneless hands gracefully to and fro. “Makes a wonderful lotion for the hands, boiled in milk with a bit of sheep’s wool.”
I cast a look up at my slit window, where the dust motes were going mad in the golden light. A faint scent of ripe fruit and fresh-cut hay floated on the breeze.
“Why not?”
Waiting as I gathered my baskets and bottles together, Geilie strolled about my surgery, picking things up and putting them down at random. She stopped at a small table and picked up the object that lay there, frowning.
“What’s this?”
I stopped what I was doing, and came to stand beside her. She was holding a small bundle of dried plants, tied with three twisted threads; black, white, and red.
“Jamie says it’s an ill-wish.”
“He’s right. Where did ye come to get it?”
I told her about the finding of the small bundle in my bed.
“I went and found it under the window next day, where Jamie threw it. I meant to bring it round to your house and ask if you knew anything about it, but I forgot.”
She stood tapping a fingernail thoughtfully against her front teeth, shaking her head.
“No, I canna say that I do. But there might be a way of finding out who left it for ye.”
“Really?”
“Aye. Come to my house in the morning tomorrow, and I’ll tell ye then.”
Refusing to say more, she whirled about in a swirl of green cloak, leaving me to follow as I would.
She led me well up into the foothills, galloping when there was road enough to do so, walking when there wasn’t. An hour’s ride from the village, she stopped near a small brook, overhung by willows.
We forded the brook and wandered up into the foothills, gathering such late summer plants as still lingered, together with the ripening berries of early autumn and the thick yellow shelf fungus that sprouted from the trunks of trees in the small shady glens.
Geilie’s figure disappeared into the bracken above me, as I paused to scrape a bit of aspen bark into my basket. The globules of dried sap on the papery bark looked like frozen drops of blood, the deep crimson refulgent with trapped sunlight.
A sound startled me out of my reverie, and I looked up the hill, in the direction it seemed to come from.
I heard the sound again; a high-pitched, mewling cry. It seemed to come from above, from a rocky notch near the crest of the hill. I set my basket down and began to climb.
“Geilie!” I shouted. “Come up here! Someone’s left a baby!”
The sound of scrabbling and muttered imprecations preceded her up the hill, as she fought her way through the entangling bushes on the slope. Her fair face was flushed and cross and she had twigs in her hair.
“What in God’s name—” she began, and then darted forward. “Christ’s blood! Put it down!” She hastily snatched the baby from my arms, then laid it back where I had found it, in a small depression in the rock. The smooth, bowlshaped hollow was less than a yard across. At one side of the hollow was a shallow wooden bowl, half-full of fresh milk, and at the baby’s feet was a small bouquet of wildflowers, tied with a bit of red twine.
“But it’s sick!” I protested, stooping toward the child again. “Who would leave a sick child up here by itself?”
The baby was plainly very ill; the small pinched face was greenish, with dark hollows under the eyes, and the little fists waved weakly under the blanket. The child had hung slack in my arms when I picked it up; I wondered that it had had the strength to cry.
“Its parents,” Geilie said briefly, restraining me with a hand on my arm. “Leave it. Let’s get out of here.”
“Its parents?” I said indignantly. “But—”
“It’s a changeling,” she said impatiently. “Leave it and come. Now!”
Dragging me with her, she dodged back into the undergrowth. Protesting, I followed her down the slope until we arrived, breathless and red faced, at the bottom, where I forced her to stop.
“What is this?” I demanded. “We can’t just abandon a sick child, out in the open like that. And what do you mean, it’s a changeling?”
“A changeling,” she said impatiently. “Surely you know what a changeling is? When the fairies steal a human child away, they leave one of their own in its place. You know it’s a changeling because it cries and fusses all the time and doesn’t thrive or grow.”
“Of course I know what it is,” I said. “But you don’t believe that nonsense, do you?”
She shot me a sudden strange look, full of wary suspicion. Then the lines of her face relaxed into their normal expression of half-amused cynicism.
“No, I don’t,” she admitted. “But the folk here do.” She glanced nervously up the slope, but no further sound came from the rocky notch. “The family will be somewhere near about. Let’s go.”
Reluctantly, I allowed her to tow me away in the direction of the village.
“Why did they put it up there?” I asked, sitting on a rock to remove my stockings before wading across a small stream. “Do they hope the Wee Folk will come and cure it?” I was still bothered about the child; it seemed desperately ill. I didn’t know what was wrong with it, but perhaps I could help.
Maybe I could leave Geilie in the village, then come back for the child. It would have to be soon, though; I glanced up at the eastern sky, where soft grey rain clouds were swiftly darkening into purple dusk. A pink glow still showed to the west, but there could be no more than half an hour’s light left.
Geilie looped the twisted withy handle of her basket over her neck, picked up her skirt and stepped into the stream, shivering at the cold water.
“No,” she said. “Or rather, yes. That’s one of the fairies’ hills, and it’s dangerous to sleep there. If ye leave a changeling out overnight in such a place, the Folk will come and take it back, and leave the human child they’ve stolen in its place.”
“But they won’t, because it isn’t a changeling,” I said, sucking in my breath at the touch of the melted snow water. “It’s only a sick child. It might very well not survive a night in the open!”
“It won’t,” she said briefly. “It will be dead by morning. And I hope to God no one saw us near it.”
I stopped abruptly in the midst of putting on my shoes.
“Dead! Geilie, I’m going back for it. I can’t leave it there.” I turned and started back across the stream.
She caught me from behind and pushed me flat on my face into the shallow water. Floundering and gasping, I managed to rise to my knees, sloshing water in all directions. Geilie stood calf-deep in the stream, skirts soaked, glaring down at me.
“You bloody pig-headed English ass!” she shouted at me. “There’s nothing ye can do! Do ye hear me? Nothing! That child’s as good as dead! I’ll not stand here and let ye risk your own life and mine for some crack-brained notion of yours!” Snorting and grumbling under her breath, she reached down and got me under the arms with both hands, lugging me to my feet.
“Claire,” she said urgently, shaking me by the arms. “Listen to me. If ye go near that child and it dies—and it will, believe me, I’ve seen them like that—then the family will blame you for it. Do ye no see the danger of it? Don’t ye know what they say about you in the village?”
I stood shivering in the cold breeze of sunset, torn between her obvious panic for my safety, and the thought of a helpless child, slowly dying alone in the dark, with wildflowers at its feet.
“No,” I said, shaking the wet hair out of my face. “Geilie, no, I can’t. I’ll be careful, I promise, but I have to go.” I pulled myself out of her grasp and turned toward the far bank, stumbling and splashing in the uncertain shadows of the streambed.
There was
a muffled cry of exasperation from behind me, then a frenzied sploshing in the opposite direction. Well, at least she wouldn’t hamper me further.
It was growing dark fast, and I pushed through the bushes and weeds as quickly as I could. I wasn’t sure that I could find the right hill if it grew dark before I reached it; there were several nearby, all about the same height. And fairies or not, the thought of wandering about alone out here in the dark was not one I cared for. The question of how I was going to make it back to the Castle with a sick baby was something I would deal with when the time came.
I found the hill, finally, by spotting the stand of young larches I remembered at the base. It was nearly full dark by this time, a moonless night, and I stumbled and fell frequently. The larches stood huddled together, talking quietly in the evening breeze with clicks and creaks and rustling sighs.
Bloody place is haunted, I thought, listening to the leafy conversation overhead as I threaded my way through the slender trunks. I wouldn’t be surprised to meet a ghost behind the next tree.
I was surprised, though. Actually, I was scared out of my wits when the shadowy figure slid out and grabbed me. I let out a piercing shriek and struck at it.
“Jesus Christ,” I said, “what are you doing here?” I crumpled for a moment against Jamie’s chest, relieved to see him, in spite of the fright he had given me.
He took me by the arm and turned to lead me out of the wood.
“Came for you,” he said, low voiced. “I was coming to meet you because night was comin’ on; I met Geillis Duncan near St. John’s brook and she told me where you were.”
“But the baby—” I began, turning back toward the hill.
“The child’s dead,” he said briefly, tugging me back. “I went up there first, to see.”
I followed him then without demur, distressed over the child’s death, but relieved that I would not, after all, have to face the climb to the fairies’ crest or the long journey back alone. Oppressed by the dark and the whispering trees, I didn’t speak until we had crossed the brook again. Still damp from the previous immersion, I didn’t bother removing my stockings, but sloshed across regardless. Jamie, still dry, stayed that way by leaping from the bank to a central boulder that stood above the current, then vaulted to my bank like a broad-jumper.
“Have ye any idea how dangerous it is to be out alone at night like that, Sassenach?” he inquired. He didn’t seem angry, just curious.
“No … I mean yes. I’m sorry if I worried you. But I couldn’t leave a child out there, I just couldn’t.”
“Aye, I know.” He hugged me briefly. “You’ve a kind heart, Sassenach. But you’ve no idea what you’re dealing with, here.”
“Fairies, hm?” I was tired, and disturbed over the incident, but covered it with flippancy. “I’m not afraid of superstitions.” A thought struck me. “Do you believe in fairies, and changelings, and all that?”
He hesitated for a moment before answering.
“No. No, I dinna believe in such things, though damned if I’d care to sleep all night on a fairies’ hill, for a’ that. But I’m an educated man, Sassenach. I had a German tutor at Dougal’s house, a good one, who taught me Latin and Greek and such, and later when I went to France at eighteen—well, I studied history and philosophy and I saw that there was a good deal more to the world than the glens and the moors, and the waterhorses in the lochs. But these people …” He waved an arm, taking in the darkness behind us.
“They’ve ne’er been more than a day’s walk from the place they were born, except for a great thing like a clan Gathering, and that might happen twice in a lifetime. They live among the glens and the lochs, and they hear no more of the world than what Father Bain tells them in kirk of a Sunday. That and the old stories.”
He held aside an alder branch and I stooped under it. We were on the deer trail Geilie and I had followed earlier, and I was heartened by this fresh evidence that he could find his way, even in the dark. Away from the fairies’ hill, he spoke in his normal voice, only pausing occasionally to brush away some tangling growth from his path.
“Those tales are naught but entertainment in Gwyllyn’s hands, when ye sit in the Hall drinking Rhenish wine.” He preceded me down the path, and his voice floated back to me, soft and emphatic in the cool night air.
“Out here, though, and even in the village—nay, that’s something else. Folk live by them. I suppose there’s some truth behind some of them.”
I thought of the amber eyes of the waterhorse, and wondered which others were true.
“And others … well,” his voice grew softer, and I had to strain to hear him. “For the parents of that child, maybe it will ease them a bit to believe it is the changeling who died, and think of their own child, healthy and well, living forever with the fairies.”
We reached the horses then, and within half an hour the lights of Castle Leoch shone through the darkness to welcome us. I had never thought I would consider that bleak edifice an outpost of advanced civilization, but just now the lights seemed those of a beacon of enlightenment.
It was not until we drew closer that I realized the impression of light was due to the string of lanterns blazing along the parapet of the bridge.
“Something’s happened,” I said, turning to Jamie. And seeing him for the first time in the light, I realized that he was not wearing his usual worn shirt and grubby kilt. His snowy linen shone in the lantern light, and his best—his only—velvet coat lay across his saddle.
“Aye,” he nodded. “That’s why I came to get you. The Duke’s come at last.”
* * *
The Duke was something of a surprise. I don’t know quite what I had been expecting, but it wasn’t the bluff, hearty, red-faced sportsman I met in Leoch’s hall. He had a pleasantly blunt, weatherbeaten face, with light blue eyes that always squinted slightly, as though looking into the sun after the flight of a pheasant.
I wondered for a moment whether that earlier bit of theatrics regarding the Duke might have been overstated. Looking around the hall, though, I noticed that every boy under eighteen wore a slightly wary expression, keeping his eyes fixed on the Duke as he laughed and talked animatedly with Colum and Dougal. Not merely theatrics, then; they had been warned.
When I was presented to the Duke, I had some difficulty in keeping a straight face. He was a big man, fit and solid, the sort you so often see booming out their opinions in pubs, bearing down the opposition by dint of loudness and repetition. I had been warned, of course, by Jamie’s story, but the physical impression was so overwhelming that when the Duke bowed low over my hand and said, “But how charming to find a countrywoman in this remote spot, Mistress,” in a voice like an overwrought mouse, I had to bite the inside of my cheek to keep from disgracing myself in public.
Worn out from travel, the Duke and his party retired early to bed. The next night, though, there was music and conversation after dinner, and Jamie and I joined Colum, Dougal, and the Duke. Sandringham grew expansive over Colum’s Rhenish wine, and talked volubly, expounding equally upon the horrors of travel in the Highlands and the beauties of the countryside. We listened politely, and I tried not to catch Jamie’s eye as the Duke squeaked out the story of his travails.
“Broke an axle-tree outside of Stirling, and we were becalmed three days—in the pouring rain, mind you—before my footman could find a blacksmith to come and repair the blasted thing. And not half a day later, we bounced into the most tremendous pothole I’ve ever seen and broke the damn thing again! And then one horse threw a shoe, and we had to unload the coach and walk beside it—in the mud—leading the lame nag. And then…” As the tale went on, from misfortune to misfortune, I felt an increasing urge to giggle, and attempted to drown it with more wine—possibly an error in judgment.
“But the game, MacKenzie, the game!” the Duke exclaimed at one point, rolling his eyes in ecstasy. “I could scarce believe it. No wonder you set such a table.” He gently patted his large, solid stomach. “
I swear I’d give my eyeteeth for a try at a stag like the one we saw two days ago; splendid beast, simply splendid. Leapt out of the brush right in front of the coach, m’dear,” he confided to me. “Startled the horses so we near as a toucher went off the road again!”
Colum raised the bell-shaped decanter, with an inquiring cock of one dark brow. As he poured to the proffered glasses, he said, “Well, perhaps we might arrange a hunt for ye, your Grace. My nephew’s a bonny huntsman.” He glanced sharply from under his brows at Jamie; there was a scarcely perceptible nod in response.
Colum sat back, replacing the decanter, and said casually, “Aye, that’ll do well, then. Perhaps early next week. It’s too early for pheasant, but the stag hunting will be fine.” He turned to Dougal, lounging in a padded chair to one side. “My brother might go along; if you have it in mind to travel northwards, he can show ye the lands we were discussing earlier.”
“Capital, capital!” The Duke was delighted. He patted Jamie on the leg; I saw the muscles tighten, but Jamie didn’t move. He smiled tranquilly, and the Duke let his hand linger just a moment too long. Then His Grace caught my eye on him, and smiled jovially at me, his expression saying “Worth a try, eh?” Despite myself, I smiled back. Much to my surprise, I quite liked the man.
* * *
In the excitement of the Duke’s arrival, I had forgotten Geilie’s offer to help me discover the sender of the ill-wish. And after the unpleasant scene with the changeling child on the fairies’ hill, I wasn’t sure that I wanted to try anything she might suggest.
Still, curiosity overcame suspicion, and when Colum asked Jamie to ride down and escort the Duncans to the castle for the Duke’s banquet two days later, I went with him.
Thus it was that Thursday found me and Jamie in the Duncans’ parlor, being entertained with a sort of awkward friendliness by the fiscal, while his wife finished her dressing upstairs. Largely recovered from the effects of his last gastric attack, Arthur still did not look terribly healthy. Like many fat men who lose too much weight abruptly, the weight had gone from his face, rather than his stomach. His paunch still swelled the green silk of his waistcoat, while the skin of his face drooped in flabby folds.
The Outlander Series 7-Book Bundle Page 53
