Bitter Magic

by Nancy Kilgore

  Margaret sat down abruptly. “But how did you learn these charms? From the fairies?”

  “Nay, those my mother learned me.”

  Margaret looked over to the corner, where the old woman had been when she had visited last time. Again, that dark lump. “Is that your mother?”

  The lump snorted as Isobel, eyes flashing, quickly answered, “Nay.”

  Now there was a silence that felt prohibitive of any questions about her mother.

  Isobel puffed up her chest and said proudly, “I can fly where I will, as straws will fly upon a highway. Wild straws and corn straws are horse to me, and I put it betwixt my feet, and it becomes my steed. ‘Horse and hattock, ho!’ I say.”

  “You can fly like the fairies?”

  Isobel stood up and gestured. “Over dunes and machair and river and mountain. And I was in the Downie Hill, and got meat there from the Queen of Fairy, more than I could eat.”

  Margaret clapped her hands. “The Fairy Queen! Like Titania! Oh, what does she look like?”

  “The Queen of Fairy is heavily clothed in white linen, and in white and lemon clothes bedazzling.”

  “And where is this Downie Hill?”

  “Betwixt the towns of Nairn and Auldearn is where it be. The hill opens, and you come to a large, fair room, and there the queen doth dwell.”

  “Tis really true, then!” Margaret’s heart was beating fast and her face flushing. “Oh, that I could see that place, that I could see the fairy queen and fly above the world!”

  Isobel studied her with a sharp and ponderous look. “Perhaps you can.”

  “Oh, but how?”

  “That day ye came to me on the strand. Seen ye a crow then?”

  “A crow? Yes! And it brushed me with its wings.” That first day she’d met Isobel, when she’d hurried home across the machair. The graze of those mighty wings, the flapping, cawing creature rising to the treetops. “How did you know?”

  “I can go in the shape of a hare. I can go into a hare; I can go into a crow.”

  “You can?” Margaret looked around the hut, confused. Isobel was animated now and went on elaborating about her supernatural adventures. Margaret did now believe in the fairies, and perhaps she always had, like so many other people—most people, in fact. Even Mister Harry believed in them, though he thought they were evil. And she knew that a cunning woman could heal with her rhymes and charms. But change herself into an animal? “You can go into the body of a crow?”

  “Perhaps I were calling ye.”

  Margaret slumped in her seat, head falling down in her lap. Was this real? Could Isobel have been that crow? What would my parents say if they could see me now? And Mister Harry. Would he tie me to a stake? A silent wail rose up inside her. And Henrietta! She shuddered, her mind aflutter with so many thoughts, like a murder of crows in her head, flying in different directions, fighting and colliding, feathers bursting out. She sat up and muttered, “I did have a strange feeling about that crow.”

  “Perhaps ye, too, have the an da shealladh.”

  “But I have never seen the fairies, no matter how much I wished to.”

  “Have ye seen the dead?”

  Margaret bowed her head. “I sometimes see my brother who died in the war.” She’d tried not to talk about it, as it made her family angry to hear about Malcolm. But she knew it wasn’t imagination. And if it wasn’t imagination, what was it? Perhaps she had pushed that question out of her mind. Perhaps she hadn’t wanted to know what it meant.

  Isobel smiled a sudden wide, open smile. “Then you may see the fairies, as well. In that other world, the world where the fairies dwell, there is also the place of the dead.”

  Margaret’s whole body tensed against the tears that were pushing from inside. This was too much to comprehend. Malcolm, with the fairies? No, it couldn’t be possible. Malcolm was in heaven, as Mother had said, and what she’d seen must have been something out of the past, a glimpse of something that had already happened.

  Was she courting danger here, wanting to see the fairies?

  She shook herself to rid her mind of these thoughts. The fairies were beings of beauty and magic, and Isobel was a magical woman who could heal and help. Isobel’s smile spread a magical glow around her, a charmed circle that Margaret stepped back into.

  “Oh!” How could she have forgotten her real purpose in coming here? She stood up and coughed in the sudden onslaught of bitter smoke. “But Mistress Gowdie,” she exclaimed, struggling through another cough. “I must ask again. With your second sight, have you seen my friend Henrietta?”

  Isobel’s face took on that dreamy look again, and she stared off into space. “I have seen the MacDonalds’ camp, and a lass with red hair.”

  “Oh, yes, that is Henrietta! Where is the camp?”

  “Tis on Ben Rinnes.”

  Margaret jumped up. Ben Rinnes was a mountain this side of the Cairngorm Mountains. “Thank you, thank you, Mistress Gowdie!” Margaret called as she ran out of the hut and away from the magic.

  Chapter 15

  A red-haired lass with the MacDonalds. It had to be Henrietta. It must be Henrietta. Margaret walked with a skip and a hop, then lifted her skirts and began to run. Though the sky had clouded over and the air had grown cooler, there was a lightness in her body and a new brightness in her mind. She would find the young lieutenant and tell him about Ben Rinnes, and he would bring back her friend.

  She had no doubt about Isobel’s vision, because when Isobel had described the camp, she, too, had sensed something: moss-covered boulders around a dingle, or hollow, on the mountainside. A hidden area, but big enough for a troop of men to sit at campfires with their horses secured behind them. To one side, a sheiling, or shepherd’s hut, cradled into the rock face. And Henrietta, surrounded by several of those fierce-looking MacDonald men. There was the wild blond hair and dark beard–the brute who had been holding her on his horse–and the others, the black hair and beards smeared with grease from the mutton they were roasting. Mutton, no doubt, from the sheep they’d stolen from Inshoch.

  She stopped in midstride. This was not Isobel’s description she was recalling, but a memory. Her own memory. I saw the place. I saw it plain as a pikestaff.

  Quick upon this realization came images, vague but insistent, things she’d attributed to her wild imagination, as her mother called it: the vision of Malcolm and the soldiers, Bessie’s altercation in the village with the button peddler she had punched in the arm. When Bessie got home, Margaret had shocked her with a detailed description of the incident. And the emerald necklace that Father had bought in Edinburgh for Mother. Margaret had seen it clearly before he’d brought it home.

  This must be what Bessie had meant when she’d said Margaret had had other visions.

  I must have the second sight, the an da shealladh. And what did that mean? Could she be a cunning woman, too?

  As she stepped through the gate to the courtyard, she gazed up at the castle, the sturdy stone house where she’d grown up. This was her foundation. She was a Christian woman, a Covenanter. She loved the Bible stories with which she’d first learned to read: Moses leading the Israelites through the Red Sea, Jesus feeding the multitudes with a few fish, Jesus walking on water. So many miracles.

  But the miracles in the Bible had occurred in the past, and Isobel’s miracles were happening now: dolphins bringing in more fish, Isobel flying through the sky with the fairies and seeing Henrietta, turning herself into an animal.

  Margaret twisted the cloth in the basket. There was, most likely, something wrong with this reasoning, and Father would know it. He would say that Isobel’s miracles were imaginary, or that they were works of the devil. But how else could Margaret explain the crow? Or the dolphins? And everyone knew that the fairies were real, though not everyone could see them. Perhaps now, with Isobel’s hel
p, Margaret would be able to see them too.

  She placed her hand on her heart. The magical little people who appeared in the air and the wood, like in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the fairy queen in her sparkling lemon-colored robes. She could almost see them now.

  The courtyard was quiet. No doves cooing, no grooms or cottars or servants or animals about. All was still. And a strange silence seemed to emanate from the house itself. Was something amiss? Margaret walked up to the door, into the tower, and up the stone stairs. No movement, no sound. The great hall was empty.

  She tiptoed into the drawing room where Mistress Collace sat with a book, and Lucy was working on a sampler. They both started and looked up with alarm when she came in. “Oh!” Lucy uttered.

  Mistress Collace stood immediately and came toward her. “Lady Margaret . . .” she began, then stopped. This was odd, as Mistress seldom addressed her as Lady Margaret.

  “What is it?” she asked. “What is the matter?”

  “It’s Mother,” Lucy blurted out as if aggrieved at someone or something.

  “Please sit, my dear,” Mistress Collace said as she herself sat down, patting the chair beside her.

  Mistress Collace began in a calm, pleasant voice. “Yes, ’tis your mother, I’m afraid.”

  “The baby,” Margaret whispered.

  “Yes, the baby. I am sorry to report that all is not well with the baby.”

  “He died!” Lucy shouted.

  Sounds of scurrying came from the hall, and Margaret glimpsed Bessie and several of the other servants whispering and hurrying toward the stair to the front door.

  “It was a boy, then.”

  “Yes.” Mistress Collace sighed. “A very difficult birth, and he lived for but an hour.”

  “And Mother? Is she . . . ?”

  “Your mother needs to stay abed. With much quiet and rest.”

  Margaret jumped up and ran from the room. “Mother!” she called, racing through the hall and up the stairs to her mother’s chamber.

  “Mother.” She sat down on the bed. Her mother looked pale and weak under the bedclothes. The bed was so smooth and neat—as if it, too, were bereft and empty. Mother took her hand but didn’t smile. It was as though Margaret had been hit with a heavy boulder, even a cannonball. She felt knocked down and emptied out at the same time. What could she say? She opened her mouth, but her eyes opened instead into an outpouring of tears. “Mother! Mother!” she pleaded. “Please get better!”

  Lady Elizabeth’s skin had turned a waxy white, almost gray, and she turned her head away. What had happened to Margaret’s strong-willed, strong-backed mother? Was this what childbirth did to women? Never, she thought, never will I marry and undergo such suffering.

  “Why?” Margaret asked Mistress Collace when she came back to the drawing room. “Why does God take so many? First Malcolm, then my grandmother, and now this baby. Grandmother was part of the world my whole life, and then she was gone.”

  Mistress Collace didn’t answer but took her hand.

  Margaret furrowed her brows. “Perhaps they are still here, in a place nearby? A place between earth and heaven, like the land of the fairies? It’s what Isobel Gowdie believes.”

  “I see that this might be a comfort to believe,” said Mistress, who thankfully did not preach against the fairies again. “But this belief comes from the Catholics. They call it purgatory. We do not believe in such a place. And, truly, to know that our loved ones are with God should be more of a comfort.”

  “And your babies? Does it comfort you?”

  “Indeed, it does. It is hard, but we have to accept that life is temporary. All of us will die. Like the grass of the field, we are here for but a day, and then gone. That is the nature of life. We are born, like the sprout that comes out of the seed. We live for a short time, and flower so beautifully—like you right now, in the flower of youth—but then the flower creates seeds that drop into the ground and begin new life. You will marry and have your children. Some of the seeds grow into new flowers, and some of them do not. My bairns were not meant to grow and flower again. It’s a hard lesson, and only the Lord knows why. Our task is simply to trust in Him.”

  Margaret did believe that that other world existed, in spite of Mistress Collace’s beautiful words. She had seen it. And she was now convinced that she did have the second sight. How else could she have seen Henrietta in the mountains? Or Malcolm and the bloody soldiers . . . seen their wounds and the fires of battle burning behind them?

  And Grandmother. When Grandmother died, Margaret had been seven. She had left Margaret her pearl necklace, but where was she? Margaret couldn’t understand, and she kept looking for her. “She is with God, she is in Heaven,” Mother had said, but that didn’t make the greatest sense. Grandmother was the smell of lavender in her sitting room, the soft lap to sit on, the quiet humming when Margaret sat on the floor and played with her doll. Grandmother was a warm presence Margaret could feel. She couldn’t just disappear.

  After she died, Margaret took her doll into Grandmother’s chamber and waited. One day, two days, a week. She was punctual and went at the same time she always had. And then, one day, it happened. She smelled the lavender, and she felt the warmth. She heard the voice: “Margaret.”

  And now this baby, the baby boy they had all been so hopeful for. They had hoped and waited, and he had been on the way. Now he was gone even before she could see him.

  But perhaps he was not completely gone. Perhaps he was in that place of spirits, where Malcolm was, and she would see him.

  She would talk more with Mistress Gowdie. She would learn from her. To see the fairies and their queen, and whatever else was in that netherworld. She had denied her visions, had tried to please her mother and father and teacher. Now she would let herself see.

  But first she had to find the young lieutenant.

  Chapter 16

  Mother was still abed, though it had been a week since the baby had come . . . born and died all in the same day. Margaret sank dejected in the pew, while Lucy, between Margaret and Father on the inside aisle, fidgeted and squirmed.

  Mister Harry was preaching about witches again, and Mistress Collace, on Margaret’s other side, sat straight and tall with her velvet cloak around her shoulders. She had told Margaret that this witch talk, this “obsession” of Mister Harry’s, was his superstition.

  Once, she recalled, her mother had voiced a similar complaint to Father, but Father had defended the minister. “There is evil in this land,” he’d said, “and these women plot and scheme to hurt the kirk as well as their natural masters, like your uncle and me.”

  “There is quite an abundance of plotting and scheming in this land,” Mother replied with bitterness.

  Father’s eyes flashed with ire, and he lifted his arm, but then saw Margaret watching and let it drop.

  Margaret turned her head. There sat Isobel in the back, with her husband and two little girls. Her pale eyes were cloudy, staring off into space as if she were watching something else entirely. All around her, the farm folk shuffled and rustled and muttered their disapproval of the minister.

  Mister Gordon, the precentor, led the congregation in a hymn from the psalmody, and as Margaret began to sing, she became aware that she was no longer so passionate about this kind of singing. At Beltane, with the bonfire and the lively fiddle tunes, and the drums and whistles and the dancing, she had been immersed in the music, and now this music paled in comparison.

  Mister Harry preached on and on, his voice rising and falling like a song, but one that repeated the same verse and the same three-note tune, over and over, until she thought she would die of tedium. Mistress Collace did not smile. Usually, her face lit up when she heard Mister Harry, but today, her eyes were downcast, and her shoulders sank down over her chest. Was she mourning the baby? Or was she as tired of this
sermon as Margaret? Mister Harry seemed to be seeking Mistress Collace out with his eyes, but she kept hers averted.

  Margaret looked around again. Two English officers stood at the back of the kirk, their red and white uniforms so neat and polished, they stood out like bright apples on a bed of brown leaves. The Covenanter soldiers had never looked so bright in their ordinary plaids and jerkins. One of the officers was the young lieutenant. But surely, these English were of the Episcopal faith. Why were they here, in the Presbyterian kirk?

  The young lieutenant caught Margaret’s eye and gave her a smile, as if they had a secret. She blushed and turned back around.

  After kirk, she walked outside with her family. Standing under the gray, gloomy sky, she shifted from foot to foot. She was embarrassed that he had caught her looking, but she needed to tell him about the MacDonalds. As she was pondering these contradictory feelings, she heard a voice behind her.

  “Good morning, Lady Margaret.” The lieutenant stood tall and handsome, holding his feathered hat in one hand, his blue-gray eyes smiling at her. “Andrew Massie,” he said, and bowed.

  Margaret cast her hands about as if to find someone to intervene, but then shook herself and straightened up to her full height, which was barely above his shoulder. She would not allow herself to act the shy blushing maiden. She would be a woman of dignity, like Mistress Collace. “Good morning, sir,” she said in a rich full voice. “I am gratified to see you here today, as I have some information. Tis regarding my friend Henrietta Rose.”

  “Oh? I regret we have not found her yet. We have pursued a thorough search of the region and made many inquiries.”

  Had the major then lied, or had this lad pursued the inquiries on his own?

  “I believe I know where she might be.”

  The lieutenant cast his eyes up slantwise as if he found that unlikely, but then those same eyes warmed into a smile. “And where would that be?”

  “Ben Rinnes.”

  “Ben Rinnes, one of the mountains to the south?”