Bitter Magic

by Nancy Kilgore

  “Och! The sprites, the elves, the fairies, who knows what mischief they be about this night?”

  “Mischief?” Now Isobel was beginning to sound like Bessie, and Margaret’s mind set to stubbornness. She tapped her foot. She would not be frightened.

  “Aye. But when we dance, they rejoice with us.”

  Margaret swallowed. “I would like to dance,” she whispered.

  “And the fairies will be pleased!” Isobel laughed and took her hand to lead her to the bonfire. “Everyone must dance to complete the circle.”

  The circle? What did that mean? Would she be entering into an evil pact?

  The crowd parted as they approached, and Isobel led her into their midst. People stopped dancing and murmured in low voices. The music stopped and the people stared, weathered faces glowering at Margaret, an intruder.

  She felt her face reddening; thankfully it was dark enough that they couldn’t see. “Why are they staring?” she whispered. She did look different from them, she supposed, with her silk-embroidered dress and velvet cape. They probably weren’t used to having someone from the castle at their gatherings.

  Isobel smiled a strange sort of smile and brushed her hand in the air. “No mind,” she said, taking Margaret’s hand and leading her closer to the fire.

  Isobel began to step and hop, step and hop, and a drum started to beat, brum, brum, brum, reverberating in a kind of throb with Isobel’s steps, like a heartbeat from within the earth and the distant stars.

  The pipe and the fiddle joined the music, and the people formed a circle, swaying and singing and stepping round and round in a ring. Margaret had never danced before, but now she found herself in step with the others, dancing round the fire, mesmerized by the flames and the music and this new way of being. As if her whole body was in the sound, and the sound in her body.

  Smells of roasted mutton, fish, and apples drifted in the smoke, and a man with one eye, blackened teeth, and a dirty jerkin grinned as he stepped up and teetered in towards her, blasting her with his ale breath. Jack the Smith, the man she’d seen carrying peat—the one who had leered at her. Isobel stepped back and shoved him. “Be gone, Jack the Smith.” Jack the Smith giggled and staggered away.

  “Come.” Isobel took Margaret’s hand and led her to the far side of the fire, where a plaid was laid on the ground. She indicated by gesture that Margaret should sit on the plaid, and Isobel sat on a small boulder beside it.

  The people moved around the fire as if in a trance, and Margaret felt herself being drawn into it. Entranced. She hummed and bobbed to the drumbeat.

  Off to the side, men were talking and shouting. They were dressed in ragged, dirty breeches, and some were barefoot like the women. Their voices were loud and boisterous, nothing like the men she was accustomed to: her father, Mister Harry, Uncle Alexander, and even her cousin James, who was off in the army. James had been rowdy as a child, but he spoke in polite, measured tones, especially when ladies were present.

  These men shouted, and much of it involved insulting one another—mostly good-natured insults, it seemed. They raised their flagons and laughed, caught up in the elation of the night. Several young men on the other side of the hill pushed and punched one another.

  There was someone she recognized: sitting by himself, staring into the fire, a dark-haired man, large and handsome, but with a sullen expression that lessened his attractiveness. Hugh Gilbert, the cottar, it must be—Mistress Gowdie’s husband. A little girl leaned against him, asleep with her head on his lap, one of the children she had seen in the hut.

  People came to sit on the ground around Isobel now. They adjusted their plaids, wrapping them around themselves like blankets, and looked at her expectantly.

  Margaret felt a warm presence beside her and looked up, puzzled, as Bessie sank down with her warm, comforting kitchen smell. Bessie took her hand.

  “Did you follow me?”

  Bessie bowed her head in assent, and Margaret breathed out in a whimper that came as a surprise. She hadn’t realized how fearful she had been. But now with Bessie here, she was safe. She whispered, “Why are they all gathering around Mistress Gowdie?”

  Bessie touched her lips with a finger, casting her eyes back toward the castle, and Margaret nodded. She understood that she was not to talk about this.

  Bessie had warned Margaret about Isobel Gowdie, but now, away from the castle, she seemed less wary. “Mistress Gowdie is the cunning woman,” she said in a low voice.

  The cunning woman. “Because she has the second sight? And she knows the charms?”

  “Yes, but she has the stories, too. And the stories have magic.”

  “Stories have magic? What does that mean?”

  Isobel raised her chest and straightened her back, and her voice came loud and deep. “A story of Donald and the fairies.”

  “As young Donald was going betwixt the towns—he had been sent to borrow a sieve—he passed the Downie Hill.” Isobel’s eyes glittered as she addressed the crowd, commanding full attention. “And there, he met a woman—small and round and grinning from ear to ear.” She hunched over, making herself small, pushed her hands down, and grinned. “And she stood in front of the Black Door. ‘Will ye come into the Brugh, lad?’ she asked.”

  Margaret leaned close to hear Bessie’s whisper. “A brugh is a fairy house.”

  “He entered and found two women baking, and others dancing.” Isobel used her hands and face in a lively pantomime of her story. “‘Donald MacNeill, be seated,’ said the one baker. ‘And think you to have a reel with the dancers before you leave.’ Donald joined the dance, and immediately, he forgot about the sieve, and all else, and he lost the time.”

  “Aye,” sighed one of the women in the audience. “Tis the fairies.”

  “And ’twere not ’til a year later that he remembered himself and sought to find his family again.”

  Jack the Smith nodded his head and lifted his flagon.

  Isobel’s eyes widened as she leaned in towards the audience. “So, Donald went to search, and, coming upon a thatching house, he inquired of an old man, ‘Do ye know where my family be?’ The old man knew nothing, he said, but perhaps his father did. Donald was amazed. ‘Is yer father alive?’ he asked. The old man nodded and pointed to the house, whence Donald entered. And there he found a very wise old man sitting by the fire and twisting a straw-rope for the thatching. This man too knew nothing of Donald’s people. But perhaps his father did, he said.”

  Isobel looked around and winked. A man shouted, “Ahoo!” and the women laughed. “This father was lying in bed, a little shrunken man, and he, in like manner, referred to his father. Donald looked about and found this ancestor, a wizened creature, in a purse hanging at the foot of the bed. Donald took him out and questioned him, and the creature declared, ‘I did not know the people myself, but I often heard my father speaking of them.’ On hearing this, poor Donald crumbled into pieces and fell down a bundle of bones.”

  For a long moment, the people stayed hushed. And then the laughter and shouting broke out again.

  Isobel came and sat on the blanket beside Bessie and Margaret.

  “What does it mean?” Margaret asked. “The man having all these fathers and grandfathers?”

  Bessie shook her head and Isobel laughed, a low, throaty sound. “Tis fair Elfane,” she said, “and when you go there, you have no more understanding of time. The fairies live for a long time, and when you come back, if you can, it may be six years later, or it may be fifty, but to you, it was an instant.”

  Margaret frowned and shook her head. “I’m not sure I believe in the fairies.” Covenanter women did not believe these fairy tales, she thought, sighing and wanting more than anything for it to be true.

  “Ah, don’t say that so loud,” Bessie whispered, her eyes jumping back and forth and her finger to he
r lips. “You don’t want them to hear you.”

  Isobel nodded. “They are here tonight.”

  “Where?” Margaret looked around.

  “There, and there, and there.” Isobel pointed to the flames. “The fairies love Là Bealltainn.”

  Margaret looked, but saw only the fiery sparks leaping into the sky. Or was there something shimmering, something like wings or spirits dancing in those flames? She blinked.

  “If they catch you,” Bessie said, “they’ll take you to their home, and they won’t let you go.”

  Margaret threw a stick into the fire and watched. The flames licked the night sky with ever-changing movement and power. This element, so necessary to our lives . . . it keeps us warm, and yet can also harm. In that other world, where the fairies existed, was fire a part of it in a different way? Since they were spirits, human-like but without human bodies, that must mean they could move in and out of the fire as they moved in and out of time.

  “But if you place a nail in the doorframe before you go in,” said Isobel, “you can leave again by the door. Because they dinna like iron. And if you don’t eat their food, they won’t be able to keep you.” She laughed. “But they do have the most delicious food, and meat and drink, cakes and ale better than all the grand houses and castles.”

  “You have been there?”

  “Aye, lass, and they have taught me many things.”

  “What do they teach you?”

  Bessie stood and pulled Margaret up with her. “Now we’ll be off,” she said, raising an eyebrow at Isobel. “Your mother will be missing you, and we don’t want to meet with those lads who roam about in the moonlight.” Bessie steered Margaret away from Isobel, who watched them go. “You mustn’t ask any more about the fairies,” she said as they walked back down the hill. “Tis a treacherous path.”

  “But I would like to see one, and I never have.”

  “Aye, that is because I set out the milk to propitiate them.” Bessie turned to her, swiveling her head like an owl, her eyes as hard and unblinking as those of that feathered creature. “And if you ever do see one, you must sanctify yourself.”

  Margaret held her tongue. Bessie had said this before.

  “In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost!” Bessie proclaimed as she made the sign of the cross, raising her voice to the land around, protecting them from whatever evil spirits were abroad.

  The moon was full tonight, and the wind had died down. As they left the farmtown and walked up the next hill, the strains of the pipes and fiddles and Isobel’s voice rolled and waved like the fading wind behind them.

  Margaret turned to look back and groaned. Again, she’d forgotten to ask about Henrietta. Being with Isobel was being in a different world, and everything else had flown away.

  Chapter 14

  This time, Margaret went with some trepidation, but she was determined and told herself to remember that she was here for Henrietta, not to be drawn into Isobel’s magical world. Though of course she could ask a few questions.

  She had told Cook she was visiting a farmtown family with a sick child, and Cook, with her soft heart, had cut a very generous piece of meat with the injunction not to tell her parents.

  The mutton, rolled in salt and rosemary, was wrapped in a cloth, and Margaret hid it discreetly beneath another cloth in her basket. She walked softly through the hall, down the tower stairs, and into the courtyard, glancing around to make sure she was unobserved. Her mother had stayed abed this morning, and now Bessie and the other maids were scurrying about in a hectic manner. Perhaps it was Mother’s time, but if so, it would take some hours before the baby came. No one would be thinking of Margaret now.

  She crested the dyke and came down into the farmtown yard, head held high and trying to look confident. Now it felt like she knew the area well, even though this was only the second time she’d come. The farmtown had been there all her life, but she had always obeyed her father’s injunction not to go near it. Now that she was seventeen, surely, she could decide for herself.

  The air was still, which was unusual in this place, buffeted as it was by sea winds, day in and day out. Thick clouds hung low in the warm air, a sign of rain to come.

  The yard was almost deserted. Across the way, a person, Isobel, walked from the direction of the river with a load of peat on her back. The peat pile must have been almost as heavy as she, but Isobel lumbered steadily on, glancing briefly at Margaret before she heaved it down onto a pile in front of the hut. She straightened and smiled broadly. “Lady Margaret! Ye’ll be wanting to know about the fairies.”

  Margaret’s mouth fell open. How did Isobel know this half-thought of hers? She cleared her throat. “Well, I wanted to know if–”

  “Please, come in.” Isobel had a stately bearing in spite of her ragged dress and skirt stained brown with peat. No plaids were necessary on this warm day, and Margaret wore only a light cape over her cotton gown.

  Stooping, she followed Isobel under the door hole and into the dark room, filled with peat smoke and colder than outside. She handed Isobel the hunk of mutton and sat on the proffered chair.

  Isobel thanked her and held up the meat, saying, “In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.” Another use for these words. Of course, Isobel, like everyone in this land, was Christian. It was the law.

  Isobel laid the meat on her kist in the corner and squatted down by the fire, poking at it and throwing on another square of peat. “I’ll learn ye of the fairies and elves and the magic they bring,” she said, looking up with a raised eyebrow.

  Margaret hesitated. This seemed a bit abrupt. Of course, she did want to learn these things, but she hadn’t planned to bring it up right away. The plight of Henrietta was the most important thing. She’d imagined the subject of magic coming in sideways, slipping in so she could learn it without acknowledging it to herself. She shook her shoulders. “My family doesn’t believe in magic.”

  “Ah, like Mister Forbes, they think ’tis evil?”

  “Yes. But I am not sure what I think.” Margaret fidgeted with the edge of her cape.

  “The magic has been here since the world began, so it matters not whither ye believe in it. The fairies are here, though most people canna’ see them. They dwell in the other world, their world, the place of spirits.”

  Margaret looked up. “The place of spirits. Another world. Please tell me, what is it like, that spirit place?”

  “Tis the world between people and angels, where the fairies dance and fly.”

  Margaret closed her eyes and lifted her chin. “Is it like a dream? Or like a vision that comes out of the fog? Little wispy lights and tinkly music and such? And do they appear and disappear in the trees like in Shakespeare?”

  “Aye. But they have a home they go to and from. Their home is under the Downie Hill.”

  “Downie Hill?”

  “A smooth green hill between Lochloy and Brodie.”

  “Can I see them if I go there?”

  “Only if they choose.” Isobel pulled off her kerchief, picked up a bundle of wool and a teazing comb, and began to draw the comb through the stiff, dirty bundle. “If you can see beyond sight, you may see your own sprite, he who is always with you—to help you and teach you. He will take you there.”

  “And what does he look like, this sprite?”

  “Ah, the sprite of each person is different, just as we are all different. Mine is so high,” she said, reaching her hand out to knee height, “and he is called the Red Reiver. He is all red, lively and dancing, and he always comes with me when I ride in the night and see the fairies.”

  “Ride in the night?”

  “Aye.” Isobel clapped her hand to her mouth, clearly not willing to say more.

  Margaret clutched her chest. “If I had a sprite, what would it look like?”

 
“Tis part of your essence, something only you can see, though I can sometimes see those of others. Perhaps I can see yours.” She stared at Margaret with a cloudy look, as if with a film over her eyes. “You must sit still as a rock.”

  Margaret adjusted her posture and sat very still while Isobel stared.

  “She may be a little woman, blue and yellow-like.”

  “A little woman, blue and yellow? I used to have a doll of those colors. What else do you see? Is she young or old?”

  “I don’t know, and I don’t know her name. Only when I am with my fairy man and the Red Reiver can I see these more clearly.”

  In the Bible, Jesus said he would send the Holy Spirit to be with us, and that had always been a comfort to Margaret. But a little blue and yellow woman? That could not be what he meant. She pursed her lips and frowned. This must be heresy. And it would remain a secret.

  “The fairies are made of air and spirit,” Isobel said, “and they live like we do, in some ways. They come in the night and eat of the milk and cheese and meat, whatever is in the larder. But you never know they’ve come, because they take only the essence, the invisible substance that be the heart of the food and leave the rest.”

  “But if the essence is gone out of the food, what is left?”

  “The food is still there and looks the same, but the nourishment is gone out of it, and the people who eat it become pale and sickly.”

  “Is that why Bessie puts out the milk for them—so they take that instead, and will not take the essence of the food?”

  Isobel nodded. “Then they leave off your larder and go elsewhere. And ye must say the rhyming charm, too. That way, they will be your friends, and help you when you say the healing charms.”

  Margaret jumped up. “And I would learn these charms! For the food and for the healing!”

  Isobel laughed, leapt up beside her, and led her in a little jig around the fire, singing, “Charms and potions, fairies and elves, I’ll learn ye all the beautiful magic.” They both laughed and danced.