“That would be good,” Nancy said quickly, drawing an amused look from Malcolm. “If you don’t mind, of course… there might be some clues or something that will help us figure out what’s going on.”
“Oh, aye. Well, I missed that bone, it stands to reason I’d have missed something else.” Marianne invited them into her little house. It was much tidier and less cluttered than Maggie’s, Nancy thought with some amusement — there was actually room to move in here. But that seemed to have been to Marianne’s detriment. Any creature trying to break into Maggie’s house would knock over something the minute it entered, waking the woman up… but the invaders here had been able to creep in without any trouble. They’d left a considerable mess — flour and oats strewn here and there, and a number of bags torn open.
“They chewed right through that bag over there,” Marianne pointed out, indicating the back corner of the larder. Nancy got a closer look, kneeling down in the spilled flour to see what the woman was talking about.
“Doesn’t look like chewing,” she said thoughtfully, examining the clean edges of the hessian-like material. “The damage is too sharp, too clean. It looks like it’s been cut… with a knife, or something.”
She lifted the bag and saw something strange underneath it — something that glinted strangely in the light with a bronze sheen to it. A long, slender thing — and when she reached down to touch it, she felt cool metal beneath her fingertips. She closed her fingers around one end and withdrew it, finding that she was holding a long, wickedly sharp knife with a narrow blade — more like a needle than a knife. It must have been dropped during the theft.
“Malcolm? Marianne? I’ve found something,” she called, rising to her feet and dusting her knees of flour with the hand that wasn’t holding the little knife. “Is this yours, Marianne?”
The woman peered closely at the bronze-colored knife, then shook her head firmly. “I’ve never had a blade that shape or color in my life. It looks nasty.”
“Aye, it does,” Malcolm said, frowning, his jaw tense. “May I?” Carefully, he took it from her, and held it up to the light, scrutinizing it. Nancy was no expert, but she couldn’t for the life of her figure out what kind of metal shone like that or had that particular color. Bronze? They didn’t make knives out of bronze, did they? No — it didn’t quite look like bronze. And it was wickedly sharp, too, as evidenced by the way Malcolm brushed a fingertip over one edge and cursed as a bead of blood welled up instantly on his fingertip.
“Interesting,” he said, shooting a glance at Marianne, and Nancy understood instinctively that he’d noticed something about the blade that he couldn’t say in front of the villager. “We should talk to Father Caleb, and the other villagers who’ve been attacked… thank you, Marianne.”
“Oh, thank you,” she said, waving a hand dismissively as she stared around at the wreckage of her larder. “I suppose I’d better start tidying all of this up. And sort my window out…”
“There are a few men at the castle who could repair that for you,” Malcolm said, looking at her. “I can have them sent down today, if you’d like.”
“Most appreciated, Malcolm, but we’ve handymen in the village too,” Marianne said with some amusement. “We’re not so helpless as all that.”
“Forgive me.” He smiled. “But do let us know if there’s any help at all we can offer you.”
“Catch the owner of that nasty little knife,” Marianne suggested, smiling a little sadly. “That’s all the help we need.”
Malcolm took long strides up the long road to the church at the top of the hill. Nancy kept pace with him with some difficulty, trying to read the closed expression on his face. Once they were well out of earshot of the villagers, many of whom were now standing in the street, locked in intense conversation with one another about the night’s thefts, she grabbed him by the arm.
“Malcolm? What’s going on? What’s up with that knife?”
“Fae made,” he said with gritted teeth. “I’d bet my life. I’ve seen knives just like that — we were raided by some redcaps a few years back and those were the kinds of weapons that some of them wielded. Careless of them, to leave them behind. They mustn’t think they’re in any danger of getting caught.” His breath hissed between his teeth. “This is bad, Nancy. The only remedy is cold iron… but I don’t want to start the argument about faeries all over again.”
Nancy slipped her hand into the pocket of her jacket and withdrew the piece of cold iron that the blacksmith had given her the day before. She showed it to him, and he nodded.
“That’s what they need. That’s what they need to decorate their houses with, to keep these creatures at bay…”
“Could we just sneak them in? Lay them around the perimeter of the homes, that kind of thing?”
“Father Caleb will have some useful advice,” he said decisively, gesturing at the Church. “The man’s been here over a year or so now, he knows the general temperament. We’ll ask him whether the villagers would be amenable to our so-called superstitions. God, this would be a great deal easier if these people weren’t so damned complacent.”
“We’re going to sort it out, okay?” Nancy tried to calm him with her voice. “I know it’s complicated and tricky, but we’re going to figure out how to proceed, and then we’re going to proceed. It’s that easy. You’re not alone in this, Malcolm. You’ve got the whole castle behind you — people who absolutely believe in faeries, people who’ve seen them with their own eyes.” She smiled, sensing he was starting to calm down as he listened to her. “And you’ve got me.”
“Aye, I do,” he said softly, looking down at her with a strange expression on his face… then he cleared his throat sharply, turning toward the church. “Thank you, Nancy. Now let’s see what this priest has got to say.”
Chapter 29
Father Caleb didn’t look like he’d slept in the last week. He had a sallow, mournful look at the best of times, but when he opened the door to the church to greet them the effect was even more intense than usual. Huge dark circles under his dark brown eyes made his narrow, pale face look even more pinched and wan. Nancy felt an unexpected surge of sympathy for the man. For all that he wasn’t much of a leader, it was clear that he cared very much for the people of this town — that the impact of the thefts on them was wearing heavily on him as well.
“Come in, come in,” he murmured distractedly, standing back to allow them entry. The door they’d knocked on was the main door to the church itself, and he led them down a little corridor that lead to a smaller sitting room. Nancy was grateful — she hadn’t been especially keen to sit under an enormous crucifix. Her family had never been particularly religious. Her father was a classic White Anglo-Saxon Protestant — he’d been raised going to church every Sunday and celebrating holidays in a suburban American kind of way, but it wasn’t something he chose to share with his daughter or his wife. Her mother had never really spoken about religion — she was so interested in spirituality and the paranormal that the idea of a God got crowded out by all the other things she believed in so passionately. As a result, Nancy had gotten more religious education from her school than she had from either of her parents… and if she was honest, that was the way she liked it. She tried to be a good person, and there were definitely some good parts in the Bible that she agreed with, but overall, she’d prefer to make her own decisions about what constituted a good life than to follow the teachings of an organization or an old book that had been translated by humans a dozen times. If there was a God — and she didn’t exactly disbelieve that there was one — she hoped He’d be happy with the choices she’d made without his explicit guidance.
Still, churches and the trappings of organized religion made her feel a little bit uncomfortable… like a child who’d been caught skipping school, or something. She felt odd pangs of guilt when she met people who dedicated so much of their lives to God. Malcolm, to her amusement, seemed to be feeling similarly shifty in the big old church. God, that wa
s an interesting question — how long had Christianity been around in this part of the world? It must have been here for some time, given that they’d had time to build a church, and Father Caleb was clearly a Catholic priest… but she didn’t know enough history to know how long this had been the case. Did the villagers believe in the Catholic God too, or were they still sworn to the old ways? And what were the old ways? And what did God have to say about faeries, for that matter?
It was all deeply fascinating, and on any other day Nancy would have had about a thousand questions for the priest. But on this day, there was no time for any of that. They needed to focus on the food thefts, on keeping the villagers safe, before they even began to discuss theology and cryptozoology. Has Father Caleb ever met the Monster? she wondered. Probably not, she thought, suppressing a smile. He seemed a nervous man — he may well pass right out if he looked the monster in its intelligent little eyes.
“Good of you to come back,” he was saying as he settled them down in two chairs. “Checking in on us. Most appreciated.”
“It’s the role of the Sept to protect the people of the Loch,” Malcolm pointed out levelly, one eyebrow raised.
Father Caleb nodded worriedly, and Nancy remembered the story of how the young man had come here — that he’d fallen in with a group of witch hunters, the group that Anna had helped to defeat. No wonder he was so nervous around Malcolm and people from the Sept, if he’d been their enemy not so long ago. Still, it meant he’d been all the more keen to help them now.
“Well, as you may have gathered, the dogs weren’t quite enough to stop the thefts.”
“No,” Malcolm said, frowning. “Five attacks, we heard?”
“Yes, yes, and four of them houses with dogs…”
She realized with a start that Father Caleb’s accent wasn’t Scottish — she’d been able to tell there was something strange about it, but she’d only just realized that his vowels didn’t quite match up with Malcolm’s. He’s Irish, she realized, surprised. An Irish priest and ex-witch-hunter, living by Loch Ness. No wonder he seemed so out of place and nervous. But by the same token, it must have taken quite some courage to settle down here, despite everything that had happened. A less courageous man would have just run straight home. Nancy found herself looking at Father Caleb with a little more respect. He was a good ally to have.
“We think the dogs were bribed with food,” Nancy said now, warming to the man and wanting to let him in on their discoveries. “We found a gnawed bone with the one that was guarding Marianne’s house.”
“Food? But that means … well, it rules out rats, I suppose,” the priest said, frowning. “Could it be brigands? Thieves living in the woods, preying on the local community to survive?”
“Well, yes,” Malcolm said, “it’s certainly thieves. But I don’t think they’re human.”
Nancy glanced sideways at Malcolm, wondering how much he was going to say about faeries to this priest. Somehow, Nancy suspected that a man of God wouldn’t be particularly thrilled about the idea of supernatural creatures robbing his flock of food. But Father Caleb was nodding seriously.
He must have witnessed what had happened with the monster, Nancy thought to herself, trying to piece together the relationship here, the various moving pieces. He must know that on some level, faeries were real. She wondered how that fit in with his understanding of God and his faith? They weren’t mutually exclusive, surely. More complicated, yes, but not impossible to believe in both.
“Nancy found this knife in Marianne’s house after she noticed that the bags had been cut, not chewed on,” Malcolm continued, withdrawing the sharp bronze blade and handing it to Father Caleb for inspection. Caleb inspected it gingerly, as though it were tainted, then laid it carefully on the table in front of him.
“Miss Nancy, yes, hello. You’re assisting Malcolm in this investigation, then?”
“I am,” she said. “Anything I can do to help.”
“And where did you say you were from, again?”
Nancy glanced sideways at Malcolm, not sure what to say at this point. Did they persist with the lie? How much could Father Caleb be trusted?
“Nancy’s from a great distance away,” Malcolm said. “But she has a special kind of insight on these matters, and her help is much appreciated.”
“And you two, are…” Father Caleb trailed off, looking meaningfully at them both.
Nancy realized with a shock — and very nearly a laugh, which she stifled — that he wasn’t trying to figure out where Nancy was really from… he was trying to figure out if she and Malcolm were an item! That would have been funny if it weren’t a little embarrassing. After all, though she’d gotten plenty of positive vibes from Malcolm, she wasn’t sure herself whether they were courting or just good friends.
Malcolm was clearly thinking similar things — he’d flushed bright red and was clearing his throat hard. “Working together,” he said finally, in a tone that suggested he would not entertain any further conversation.
Father Caleb raised his hands in surrender. “It’s always good to have help. But anyway. What do you think is the origin of this blade?”
“It’s from the Fae,” Malcolm said bluntly. “From the Land of the Unaging, from beyond the burgh at the bottom of the lake. Now Father, I know you think all of this is superstition, but I can assure you it’s not.”
Father Caleb looked pained. “You understand I can’t… the doctrine of my faith doesn’t allow for faeries. It’s simply not … there are human beings, there are angels, and there are demons, broadly speaking. And whatever the creatures you speak of are, the creatures who emerge from the lake… they’re not angels.”
“They’re not demons, either,” Malcolm said through gritted teeth. “You’re going to need to widen your worldview eventually, Father, if you’ve any hope of living here happily.”
“Well, that’s as may be,” the priest said irritably. “But for now… alright, suppose I entertain the notion that these demons are what are emerging from the lake and stealing food from the villagers. What do we do about it?”
“Cold iron,” Malcolm said bluntly. “We lay cold iron on every doorstep and windowsill in town. John’s already hard at work producing enough bars to go around. The Fae hate iron. It burns them, does terrible damage to them. So if we distribute it through the town, that ought to be enough to keep them safe.”
“These demons,” Father Caleb stressed the word, “won’t be driven off by superstition. I’ll need to bless each and every home in town.”
“You do that,” Malcolm said through gritted teeth. “It won’t make a lick of difference, but you feel free. Meanwhile, Nancy and I are going to distribute iron, which will actually do something.”
“I’m not in favor of resorting to superstition,” Caleb said firmly. “The villagers are already wary of witchcraft, if we begin performing magic spells to protect them there’ll be uproar —”
“And you blessing each house isn’t a magic spell?”
“Performing the work of the Lord is not witchcraft!” Father Caleb sounded outraged.
Nancy could sense Malcolm beginning to get angry, despite his calm exterior, and she gritted her teeth. The last thing they needed here was a fight. Father Caleb, for all his foibles, was a useful ally — he knew everyone in the village and seemed to have their trust. They needed him on their side, not angry and hostile.
“I have an idea,” she said suddenly, a revelation coming to her. “An idea that will cover both bases.”
“And what’s that?” Father Caleb enquired, clearly glad to disengage from his staring contest with Malcolm. Fair enough, too — there was a vein twitching in Malcolm’s eye that was making him look rather unhinged. Nancy wouldn’t have wanted a staring contest with him either.
“We can get iron in every house and bless it, too. That way, if they’re demons they’ll be put off by the holy — whatever, and if they’re faeries, the iron will drive them away.”
“If —” Ma
lcolm started angrily, and Nancy put a steadying hand on his knee, giving him a meaningful look.
“Nobody actually knows what these creatures are, right? So let’s cover both bases. John’s making a huge pile of iron bars like these, right?” She pulled the bar he’d given her out of her pocket. “It’ll be easy enough to attach another piece of metal here. They’ll be iron crosses. How does that sound?”
“That would serve to dissuade demons,” Father Caleb murmured primly. “I’ll have to bless them, of course.”
“How long will that take?” Malcolm asked, clearly still irritated about the inconvenience but willing enough to entertain it if it meant getting iron into each house.
“Not long. But the work of the Lord can’t be rushed —”
“So long as it’s done before nightfall,” Malcolm warned him, getting to his feet. “That’s all I’m worried about. God is all very well, but God won’t help anyone if they starve halfway through the winter because the harvest gets stolen…”
“God will always help,” Father Caleb said forcefully, but the effect was somewhat damaged by the way his voice squeaked.
Malcolm rose abruptly to his feet, clearly still working on containing his frustration with the priest.
“Right, well, we’d better get over to the blacksmith to warn him he’s got to modify all the iron bars he’s made. Give him a few hours to get a few made then head down there, will you, Father? In the meantime you could go and tell the people of the town what the plan is. A cross above every door and window, you hear?”
“Understood,” Father Caleb said, rising to show them out. “Thank you for your… diplomacy, on this matter, Malcolm. Nancy,” he added, giving her a little nod.
A little irritated by that, Nancy gave him a thin smile. The whole compromise had been her idea — it felt a little galling to hear Malcolm thanked for it before she was.
Stranded By The Highlander: A Scottish Time Travel Romance-Highlander Forever Book 2 Page 18
