by Susan Cooper
“Well, well,” said Robert. “See how useful a creep can be?”
THREE
IT WAS ONLY as the big plane rose into the air that Jessup really believed what was happening to him. He felt his body tilted upward, pressed back against the seat by acceleration; he felt a pain in his ears as air hissed into the cabin to balance the thinner outside atmosphere into which they were climbing.
“Swallow,” said his father in his ear, and Jessup swallowed and the pain went away. Outside the window he saw the shoreline of Lake Ontario tilting crazily as the plane banked away from Toronto. He peeked back through the gap between his seat and the window, and caught a glimpse of Emily’s face pressed intent against the glass. “Pssst!” he said softly, joyously. “We’re going to Scotland!”
“Pssst yourself,” said Emily calmly. “Of course we are.”
But later, hours later, forty thousand feet over the Atlantic Ocean, she changed places with Robert so that children and grown-ups could each sit with their own kind, and she gazed past Jessup out of the window and whispered, “Look! They’re like mountains!” And Jessup too looked at the limitless world of mounded cloud tops below them, glimmering in the last light from the sunset they had left behind, and he knew she was as deeply excited as he was himself. He poked her in the ribs with his elbow, and they grinned at each other.
The half-buried feeling of wonder lasted for a long time, through the airline dinners of which they ate every scrap of their own, and their parents’ desserts as well; through a film which they had seen before but laughed at all over again; through sleep broken by an airline hostess offering them orange juice and breakfast far sooner than they wanted them. But they ate and drank just the same, and soon found themselves looking down at a dim-lit layer of cloud dappling the misty green floor that was morning Britain.
Mist was their main impression for quite a while after that. They had dropped into a grey, damp world. A fine rain was falling on Heathrow Airport, where they waited sleepily in line with hundreds of other Canadians and Americans to show their passports at the immigration desk. At length they were beckoned forward as a family group, by an immigration officer with bright red hair and freckles. Jessup felt restive. We’re not just tourists, he thought, we’re different! He stood on tiptoe, straining to see over the desk, as the officer surveyed them all.
“What’s the purpose of your visit — business or pleasure?” said the officer, to Robert.
“Pleasure, I hope,” said Robert.
“We’re going to take over our castle in Scotland,” Jessup said proudly. Emily kicked him, and he kicked back at her without looking, and missed.
The immigration officer looked down at him gravely. “Are you now? Well, just remember that if you take it home you’ll need an export license.” He stamped their passports and waved them through.
“He didn’t believe me,” said Jessup bitterly, as they went down the stairs to wait for their luggage.
“Didn’t you hear his accent?” said Emily. “You dummy — he was Scottish!”
IT WAS a day and a night before they heard other Scottish voices. Following a plan which Maggie had devised with the help of a Toronto travel agent, they piled their suitcases into a rented car at the airport and drove to a small hotel in London. There, after breakneck visits to the zoo, Queen Mary’s Rose Garden and the Royal National Theatre, they spent the night. Next morning they watched the Changing of the Guard, with the shade of Christopher Robin hovering over them, and tried to concentrate on sightseeing, in the old grey city which seemed to have almost as many trees and tall new buildings as Toronto. But all four of them knew that London was only a way station; that their adventure would not really begin until they reached Scotland. Nobody was sorry when in their second afternoon they filled the car with luggage once more and drove to a huge, bustling, echoing railroad station called Euston, where their car was swallowed up inside a railroad car with one end gaping open, like a huge hungry mouth.
Emily and Jessup spent their second British night in a private space which they found entrancing: a sleeping compartment, opening off the corridor which ran along one side of the train. It was a tiny rocking room with a door, a window, a table which folded up to reveal a very small washbasin with hot and cold water, and two bunk beds neatly made up with sheets, blankets and pillows. After a picnic supper in their parents’ identical compartment next-door, they tossed to see who got the upper bunk, and Jessup won. Emily didn’t mind: it was easier to see out of the window from the lower bunk. She fell asleep very soon, rocked by the rhythm of the moving train and lulled by the traveling song of its wheels. Once, in the middle of the night, she woke up and found the train standing still. Peeking under the blind, she saw the empty, brightly lit platform of a station, with no sign to show her where she was. Emily felt wonderfully detached; the train had taken over her life, whisking her from strange place to strange place in this foreign country. She fell asleep again, and dreamed that she was a bird, flying over cities and rivers and mountains. In her dream she could see the train moving along the ground far below her, like a tiny slow-moving snake, and the sound of the wind rushing by her as she flew was like the song of the traveling wheels. She woke, and found that she was smiling.
And outside the window, the world had changed entirely. The train was carrying them now through dark looming hills, ancient smooth slopes with the glint of water beyond, and the sky behind them brightening. As she watched from her swaying bed, the sun rose, and magically color came into the land, showing her purple-brown hillsides and green fields against a blue-white sky. Emily felt suddenly very excited, as if amazing things were about to happen, and she wanted to wake Jessup and tell him. But instead she was wrapped again by drowsiness, and in the moment that her eyes closed, she heard music. It was the lilt of a single Scottish bagpipe, faraway, plaintive and beautiful, but before Emily could fix it in her memory she had dropped into sleep.
THE TRAIN stood hissing in Fort William Station, in the Western Highlands of Scotland, and they could see nothing for the rain. Water streamed down the windows, and blew all over them as they opened the door, and they scurried along the cold windy platform toward shelter, clutching their overnight bags.
“Welcome to Scotland!” said Maggie, gasping, as they reached the station buildings. “Oh — excuse me —!” She had almost knocked down a small man in railway uniform; he put a polite hand under her arm to steady her.
“It is a wet morning,” said the small man rather unnecessarily, in the soft musical lilt of the Highlands. “Do you have a motorcar on this train?”
“Yes!” said Jessup eagerly. “We’re driving to Port Appin!” He shook his wet head, like a puppy.
“Over the other side,” the man said amiably, pointing. “But they will be a little while getting them off. You’d maybe like some breakfast in the refreshment room.”
“Great!” said Emily, and she dragged her brother away before he could begin to tell the man about their castle. She was learning to recognize the signs: the possessive light in Jessup’s eye, the breath taken before launching into proud explanation. She felt that if he wasn’t careful, a band of jealous Scots, hearing about their bequest, would rise up and throw the whole invading Volnik family out of the country.
“You’ve got to stop bragging to people about the castle!” she said, as they reached the warm, food-smelling refuge of a cafeteria.
“I never said a word!” Jessup said, injured.
“You were just going to.”
“How do you know?”
“Enough!” said Robert imperiously. He bought them bacon sandwiches and Coke, and coffee for Maggie, and with a noble self-sacrificing sigh he turned up the collar of his windbreaker and went out into the driving rain to rescue their car.
Emily looked out through the wet window at Fort William. It seemed a grey town, bleak and deserted. She said, “Mom, d’you think we should take some sandwiches with us?”
“Oh no, darling,” said her mother confidently. “After al
l, we’re going to our house!”
“Our castle,” Jessup said.
IT WAS one of those journeys that are taken over by the weather. They were vaguely aware that they were driving beside water, and among mountains, and that the countryside would have been beautiful if only they had been able to see it. But all they could properly see was the rain, running in sheets down the windows of the car, so that the windshield wipers had to flicker furiously to and fro like runners who couldn’t quite keep up. Even when the downpour slackened to a drizzle, the clouds hung low and ragged, masking the hills with mist. Robert was hunched over the steering-wheel, concentrating on his left-hand-side driving, and beside him Maggie was intent on the map.
“Through North Ballachulish, and over Loch Leven to Portnacroish — and then you turn left at Appin —”
The names were magical, Emily thought: a different language, a different world. But what a pity it had to be such a wet world. They drove for a long time. Her spirits were beginning to droop in the grey mistiness, and beside her Jessup was very silent.
They were driving along a narrower road now, between hedges and green banks, no longer meeting many other cars. The mist was patchier, more ragged. Sometimes it vanished altogether, and they had a clear sight of water glimmering nearby, with dark mountains beyond.
“That’s Loch Linnhe,” Maggie said, checking with her map. “And somewhere in it there’s a long skinny island called Lismore.”
They rounded a bend, and came into low-lying land like the flats around the estuary of a river. And suddenly the mist was completely gone, as if it had rolled back toward the mountains across the water, and a few hundred yards away, rising from the glinting grey surface of the loch, they saw a tall square shape set on a lonely rock. It was like a squat grey stone tower, and yet it was not a tower, but had a round tower of its own built at one corner. It had windows like a house, but the windows were very few and very small. It was like nothing they had ever seen before, and though the rock on which it stood was undoubtedly an island, being completely surrounded by water, it was a very small island indeed.
“Is that Lismore Island?” Emily said doubtfully. Maggie’s voice was quivering a little with excitement. She said, “I think that must be Castle Keep.”
“INDEED YES, Mr. Maconochie left the key for you,” said Mrs. Cameron. “Though Tommy tells me the lock does not work very well, because it was never used when Mr. MacDevon was alive. Or ever before that, I dare say.”
Emily and Jessup looked at Tommy, who had himself been looking at them and now glanced hastily away. They were all three in that warily inquisitive stage after first meeting a stranger, when if people were dogs they would be walking around one another, sniffing. At the moment Emily and Jessup were mentally sniffing at the news that Tommy was an authority on the lock of Castle Keep. Their castle. They weren’t sure whether to be outraged or impressed.
Mr. Maconochie had instructed Robert to ask for the key at Mrs. Cameron’s shop, but he would have ended up there anyway, for there were only two shops in the whole of Port Appin and Mrs. Cameron’s was the only one that sold groceries. All the Volniks had instantly fallen in love with it; there was everything you could want in this shop, from bread to books, from fruit to flour, from nails to knitting needles. One corner of its counter even served as the local post office. It was small and very crowded, and through the window facing the loch you could look out past a neat array of fifteen different kinds of Scotch whisky bottles and see Castle Keep.
“Tommy will take you over in the boat,” Mrs. Cameron said. She was a short, precise woman, wearing an apron that was clearly newly ironed. Like her shop, she looked ferociously clean.
“That’s very kind,” Robert said.
“I guess I should do my shopping first,” Maggie said. “We’ll be here for five days. I have a list somewhere —” She began fumbling through her handbag.
“You are intending to stay in the castle?” Mrs. Cameron said. She seemed startled.
“You bet!” said Jessup.
Maggie paused. “Is there any reason why we shouldn’t?”
“Oh no, no!” said Mrs. Cameron, almost too quickly. “I am just not too sure what . . . I mean, there may not be beds enough. Mr. MacDevon lived there alone all his life.”
“We brought sleeping bags,” Jessup said. “We’re used to camping out.” He looked at Mrs. Cameron defensively, and so did Emily; no power in Scotland was going to stop them from sleeping in Castle Keep.
Mrs. Cameron said, as if it were an explanation, “He was a very old gentleman. Very old indeed.”
Tommy said abruptly, in a rather gruff voice, “He kept the place clean as a pin.”
“Oh yes,” said his mother. She patted him gently on the shoulder.
“It was only the dog that smelted,” Tommy said.
“Oh!” said Emily, pleased. “Is there a dog?”
“He died,” Mrs. Cameron said.
“Here’s my list!” said Maggie. She pulled a crumpled piece of paper triumphantly from her bag.
“I’ll go and get the boat,” said Tommy, and his mother nodded quickly. It was almost as if she wanted to get rid of him, Emily thought.
Jessup said, “Can we come too?”
There was a moment’s pause, while he and Emily stared hopefully at the other boy. They saw curly black hair and a sunburned nose, and very blue eyes.
“All right,” Tommy said.
He led them out of the shop, past the rack of bicycles and along a road of small quiet houses, with roses and hollyhocks bright in their gardens even in late August.
“I’m Emily” Emily said. “He’s Jessup.”
“Yes,” said Tommy. He walked in silence for a few moments. “When did you come from America?” he said.
Emily said, “Actually we came from Canada.”
“Two days ago,” said Jessup. “The plane was really cool, it had these little screens at every seat for the movie, like your own TV.”
“Like a computer screen,” Tommy said.
Emily said, and wished to die as she heard herself saying it, “You have computers?”
The blue eyes flicked to her for a cold instant. “This is Scotland you’re in, not the primeval swamp.”
“I’m sorry. It’s just that Jess is such a computer whiz, and I’m not, and I don’t expect anyone else to be either . . .” She thought: Shut up, you’re making it worse.
Jessup said, “What was Mr. MacDevon like?”
“Old,” Tommy said. “And quiet. As if he belonged to some other time. He was a very decent man.”
“Was he really a hundred years old?”
“So they said.”
Emily said, “He was our great-great-uncle, I guess.”
Tommy Cameron said calmly, “You are not like him at all.”
Emily was on the edge of feeling insulted when the houses gave way to a pebbly beach, and she found herself looking out at the whole glimmering expanse of the loch and the hills beyond. Mounded grey clouds filled the sky, and from behind one of them a watery ray of sunshine reached out to a chunky high-bowed boat, moving toward them with a rippling wake spreading behind it in a great V.
“Oh!” Emily said, enchanted.
Tommy said, more gently, “That is the ferry from Lismore.”
Jessup stuck doggedly to his subject, as usual. “What did Mr. MacDevon die of?”
“Old age, of course,” Tommy said, curt again. He strode out along a stone jetty, where a few people were waiting for the ferry, and reached down to untie the painter of a small dinghy with an outboard motor at its stern. “Here,” he said, and stood holding the line as Emily and Jessup scrambled down into the boat. “Jessup in front. You’ll have to jump out when we hit the beach.”
It was a noisy little engine, and they did not talk while the boat chugged around the rocky shore to the tiny beach which was the nearest point to the Camerons’ shop. Emily could not take her eyes off the silent grey shape of Castle Keep, out over the still w
ater. She turned, startled, as Tommy suddenly stopped the engine, tilted it forward, and in the same moment called to Jessup and came leaping lightly past her to jump out and guide the boat as it nosed into the beach. She scrambled after him, anxious to be helpful. Tommy was clearly about her own age, but in the boat he seemed like an adult, automatically taking charge. And there was something oddly serious about him, all the time.
They tugged the boat onto the beach. Up on the road they could see Robert coming toward them from the shop, carrying a box of groceries.
Tommy paused, looking out at Castle Keep. He said abruptly, “He died in his sleep. Just wore out, because he was so old. It was a Monday, and I took the boat over with his Sunday paper, like I always did. We had seen him two days before — he rowed over to do his shopping. But there was not a sound in the castle, so I went calling for him, and I found him sitting in his chair, with his dog lying across his feet. And they were both dead.”
“Wow!” said Jessup, big-eyed.
Emily said, “Weren’t you scared?”
Tommy looked at her, expressionless. He thought of the sounds he had heard that previous night from the castle, the heartrending sounds of the Boggart’s grief. He might have tried to explain how it was possible not to be afraid because you were too busy being sorry for someone. But there was no way he was going to tell these two foreigners about the Boggart.
He said, “I just felt there was a great sadness about the place.”
Robert dropped the box on the beach at their feet. He said, “There are four more of these — Maggie seems to think we’re staying for a month. Your mother feels you’ll need two trips, Tommy — maybe you should take the kids and me over first, and then come back for Mrs. Volnik and the rest of the stuff.”
“Okay,” Tommy said. “Jump in.”
He put Robert and the box in the middle of the boat, Jessup in the bow and Emily beside him in the stern, and the little dinghy rode low but steady in the water as he motored carefully off.
Jessup stared up at Castle Keep as it loomed up before them; he felt solitary and daring, like the hero of Kidnapped on his first visit to the sinister house of Shaws. But Castle Keep looked lonely and bereft, rather than sinister. As soon as the boat nosed up to its rocky shore, he seized the line and jumped out, finding an iron ring set into the rock that faced him. Jessup tied the line to it quickly as Robert and Emily came past him, and then looked up at Tommy.
