I pulled back its eyelid with my thumb to make sure, and then I laughed again, and let the forelock fall untidily back.
‘Where did you come from?’ I scratched its neck. ‘The lover? Have you been thirty years with her? Or was it your dam or your sire he gave her?’
The pony ripped up more grass and ignored me.
‘You, I think.’
Sagging as if worked to exhaustion, the beast sighed and rested a hind leg. I looked out across the rough ground to the walls and the yard behind the inn, and the fool William Beag who thought he was hiding.
‘You’re not daft,’ I said to the pony. ‘You know what needs doing.’
* * *
‘Ma,’ I said, knocking on the counter. ‘You’re needed.’
Irritably she turned from a customer. ‘Now, lad, what is it? I’m busy, can you not see?’
‘You’re needed,’ I said again. ‘You’re needed to come now. It’s the pony. The pony’s needing you.’
A bearded wonder glowered at me. ‘Ach, you wee feel, can you not leave her alone?’ Impatiently he rapped his tumbler on the counter.
Ma Sinclair had turned to me. Her look was long and solemn, and broke at last into a smile. Her teeth glinted.
‘There now, Donal, the lad’s come to help. And you are to help yourself now, till I get back.’
‘I am to help myself?’ Bearded Wonder needed no further invitation, and he wasn’t bothered with me any more. I slid a pewter jug off the counter and led the old woman out the back.
At the end of the dank passageway that led out to the yard, I stretched my arm across Ma Sinclair’s way and she came to a halt. Lifting the bag of clothing and money and meal that I’d thrown together from the few possessions in her hovel, I thrust it into her arms.
‘Do you have anything else you need to take?’
Briefly she peered into the bag. ‘Nothing more than what’s here. You’re a good lad. Is it so bad?’
‘It’s so bad. Shush, there’s one of them out the back.’
‘Who?’
‘William Beag.’
‘Oh, laddie. Little William? Name or no name, he’s a good bit bigger than you.’
‘I’ve got help.’ Putting my fingers to my lips, I eased open the plank door.
Bang on time, I heard the dull clop of hooves, and the pony turned into the yard and shook its mane. William Beag’s shadow, pressed back out of sight just to my left, detached itself from the wall and he took a step forward.
It wasn’t a water horse or anything like one, but maybe it had known one in a previous life. It certainly seemed to know the routine. Lifting its head, all shy and enticing, an uncertain whicker, the rap of a hoof on the stones when William Beag’s attention seemed to wander back to the inn door. Raddled old nag that it was, it arched its thick neck and plumed its scraggy tail and was, for an instant, beautiful.
‘Ah,’ crooned William Beag, ‘and where did you come from, my bonny boy?’
He stretched out a hand to the pony’s bridle, his fingers closing on its cheekpiece as mine tightened on the pewter jug. He did not look at its eye, and he did not look at the tilt of its head. He played true to form and forced its mouth open to look at its yellow teeth; and the pony, not liking his impudence, clamped them savagely on his fingers.
I hadn’t meant that to happen, and I hadn’t meant the fool to scream like a girl, but I cut off his noise fast enough with one strong blow of the jug. He buckled and his face hit the mud. Catching the pony before it could shy and bolt, I strapped the meagre bag of belongings to its saddle.
No untimely modesty from Ma Sinclair: she hitched up her skirts, and I caught a flash of her voluminous underwear as I gave her a leg up. I passed her a flask of water and one of whisky, and she stuffed them into the folds of her skirts.
‘Come on,’ I said, and I grabbed the pony’s bridle and dragged it into a shambling trot.
* * *
When I left her, the sun was low in the sky and we were high enough above the glen to see the curve of the ocean, shimmering silver at the horizon.
‘Well,’ she said, ‘I’ll never be seeing my whisky stores again, but I thank you. Will you be fine yourself?’
I turned to look back down the glen. ‘He never saw me.’
‘Donal did.’
‘Well, but I’m a fool. They’ll think you hit William yourself,’ I said with a shrug.
‘Aye. Well, it’s true that I could and it’s true that I would.’
‘I’ll be fine,’ I said again. ‘You’d best go. Go far away.’
She leaned down and I felt her dry lips kiss my cheek, her whisky breath on my skin. ‘And you go further, you and your brother. It’s time for you both to go, I’m thinking.’
‘Aye.’ I had a nasty feeling she was right. I squeezed her gnarled hand tighter on the pony’s rein. ‘Go, Ma.’
She turned once to look at me and smiled. ‘I told you,’ she called.
‘Told me what?’
‘I’d keep on your good side. I was right to be superstitious, aye?’
‘Aye,’ I muttered.
I watched her and her pony till they went over the brow of the hill, her skirts hitched up her raw bare legs, and the pony trudging stolidly down the whin-thick hillside, whisking midges with its ragged tail. She didn’t turn back again.
That was the last I saw of Ma Sinclair. I never found her alive anywhere, but nor did I see her in any stinking jail and I never saw her squeal in a fire, so I like to think she found another place to be. I hope she found some village that liked her whisky and didn’t mind her healing ways and her potions and her handsome crone-face. I like to think she survived that witch-terror, and all the others after, but I don’t know and I never will.
I turned back to the clachan, smoky and faint with distance, and I began to run.
16
SIXTEEN
I did not want to go through the clachan again, and I’d planned to give it a wide bodyswerve and take the long path home, but I couldn’t fail to see the knots of people hurrying towards it, surging into an already busy marketplace. Watching their urgency, hearing their voices high and drugged with the thrill of danger, I knew I had to take notice. I crept inside the low walls, slouched in the wake of the gossiping clusters, kept my head down.
Like always.
The priest was there, standing on a straw bale. He wasn’t waiting for the people to gather and fall silent, but berated them as they approached. His urgency made them hurry all the more, afraid to miss a word.
‘What are you waiting for?’ he cried, thumping his fist against his cracked old bible. ‘Are you waiting for them to come for your children in the night?’
I halted uneasily, edging under ratty overhanging heather-thatch. Just those few words had chilled my spine. Perhaps I knew what was coming.
‘Are you waiting for them to feed your babies to their wolf-familiars?’
A gasp of horror went round the crowd. ‘They have taken a baby already,’ shouted someone. ‘Isobel’s bairn!’
‘Aye! My poor sister! Her poor wean!’ The sobbing voice was Morag MacLeod’s. ‘Reverend Douglas it was who found her. He brought her for burial but she could not go in the holy ground. The Lord have mercy on her.’
‘Found her?’ snapped the miller. ‘It may be he was in league with the warlocks!’
I had to put my hand over my mouth to stop my gasp escaping. They’d all adored the old priest. But this was madness I could smell in the air.
A male voice interrupted. ‘I heard she could not feed it. The last thing she needed was another wean. She only left it near the smith’s because of her conscience.’
‘That is a lie!’ screamed Morag MacLeod.
‘It was a cold night. The bairn was not well. You cannot blame the smith.’
‘We can blame him for killing it!’ shouted the miller. ‘A sacrifice to his Master!’
The priest was holding out his hands, pleading for calm. ‘If your old minister had allied
himself with the Enemy, then he is answering for it before God, as we speak. Let us not concern ourselves with the dead.’ He paused, the wrinkles deepening on his pallid brow. ‘Though it’s true that his death was an unnatural one.’
‘Witchcraft,’ hissed someone.
How did I just know that word was going to come up?
The priest shook his head sadly. ‘If there is any truth in that accusation, Reverend Douglas must be exhumed and burned at the stake. It is prescribed.’
‘He should not be in holy ground!’ someone yelled. ‘Struck down by the Devil his Master. Did you see his staring eyes?’
‘Aye, and he wouldn’t close them! Something scared the man to death and Hell.’
Silence fell. ‘Aye, that’s right,’ muttered someone at last.
‘He could not close his eyes on a servant of the Devil!’
Remembering Conal, standing out there alone and helpless with the priest’s corpse, struggling to close those staring eyes, I wanted to be violently sick. But I couldn’t make a sound. I drew back into the shadows, and that was when the priest looked up and straight into my eyes.
He smiled. I thought he would give me away, but he didn’t.
I was close to yelling a protest; luckily someone got there before me. MacKinnon, the crofter, the stranger, the loner. ‘The smith is a good man,’ he shouted. ‘And all of you know it!’
‘Do you?’ asked the priest solemnly. ‘What do you all know of MacGregor?’
‘Nothing!’ yelled the miller, shooting a furious glare at MacKinnon.
‘A good man!’ he snapped. ‘The smith has cured your children! Aye, and yours, William Beag!’
The priest closed his eyes, as if in distress. ‘Ahhh…’
‘Was it cures? Or was it witchcraft?’ A shrill woman said it for him.
The priest turned to William Beag, who stood behind and a little to the right of him. There was an expression on the man’s face that combined wounded propriety with vicious hate, though it was half obscured by a length of bloodstained cloth wound round his head. His hand was bandaged too.
Obviously I didn’t hit him hard enough.
With one thin long-fingered hand, the priest gestured to him. ‘Here is a fine and a well-respected man,’ he said softly. ‘What is your story, William?’
‘We had determined to confront the witch who cast the charm on Roderick Mor,’ he said sourly. ‘Ale isn’t all she brews. I stood guard—’
‘You watched her while your mob assembled, you fat coward,’ called MacKinnon.
William Beag glowered. ‘You stay out of this, Malcolm MacKinnon. You are not from here. And you know nothing of witchcraft.’
‘Indeed I do not. And even if you call him a witch, there is a court. The laird must hear the accusations!’ MacKinnon was a persistent bastard. Poor devil.
The priest shook his head sadly, as if about to announce something that pained him. ‘The kirk session has jurisdiction in matters of heresy and witchcraft. The civil courts are subject to the justice of God. Besides, the MacLeod is raiding and burning in the north with his pack of mercenaries. When will he return?’ He paused for effect. ‘In time to save your children?’
‘No!’ screamed a woman.
‘He’s been gone too long!’ yelled another. ‘Too much harm can be done before he returns! I am with the minister. Who else?’
There was a chorus of enthusiasm, and the priest had to call for calm again. ‘We will have no mob justice. The judicial process will take its course,’ he said gravely. ‘I insist on it.’
There was much nodding of heads at that. ‘A fair man,’ called someone approvingly.
‘MacGregor the smith is a fair man!’ Malcolm MacKinnon was not giving up, bless him.
The priest gave a tiny shrug. ‘He has found himself…unable to cross the threshold of the Lord’s house. What does that tell us?’
‘He could not make the sign of the cross when Reverend Douglas died! Did you see?’
‘But none of us are supposed…’ someone began, but he was drowned out.
‘He brought the pestilence!’ They were getting more hysterical by the minute, dragging up every misfortune of the past year and longer.
‘He made the bere-crop fail on half the rigs.’
‘His brother plays the fiddle like the very devil. Such music is not natural! It is bought with the soul.’
‘They brought the plague!’
‘That was no plague,’ said MacKinnon in disgust. ‘It was a sickness from the grain, more like. If you were not so hidebound about your plantings the bere-crop would have been fine.’
‘Aye, and did he help any of us when the sickness struck us?’
You’d have included it in his witchcraft if he had, I thought bitterly, but there was no point joining the argument. They’d stopped making sense now. They were losing all their reason, scrabbling for excuses to replace it with mindless hate.
‘He is a good man, and no witch,’ grumbled MacKinnon. ‘And so was our minister! This witchcraft is nonsense. Childish superstition!’
The priest chilled visibly. His voice was like a glacier, grey and cold, when he said, ‘Denial of witchcraft is heresy, and it would do you good to remember it.’ His call grew louder, all strength and purity and determination. ‘Evil is the more sinuous and deadly when it appears as an angel of light! Did you think they seemed good men?’
‘Aye,’ interrupted MacKinnon acidly. ‘And no seemed about it.’
The priest ignored him. He could afford to; the crowd was with him. ‘The Devil himself can recite a prayer! What do you think: that it would burn his forked tongue and shrivel his lips? No! Evil can masquerade as good, it can disguise itself; it is superstition to believe otherwise! God himself despised and rejected Les Mauvais Anges: Satan’s evil angels: the fallen ones!’
I slipped from my dingy corner and ran. Educated, and worse, clever with it. I wanted to cry, I wanted to scream; mostly I wanted to turn round and go back to the clachan and cut the priest’s throat. I couldn’t do any of those things. I kept running, though there was no chase. Yet.
The judicial process will take its course. I insist on it.
Oh, gods.
The day was threatening, the sky heavy and pressing above me. Grey and overcast with a monochrome layer of cloud. No sun. I tried to remember if there had been sunshine in the marketplace; I didn’t think so. I should have remembered to take note, but then I didn’t understand Conal’s obsession. Besides, I could hardly think straight back there.
The judicial process will take its course.
‘Conal!’ I screamed.
I insist on it. The judicial process…
‘Seth?’ He hacked his axe into the chopping block and left it there, dusting his hands as he came towards me. ‘Seth, what’s wrong?’
I didn’t waste time talking. I opened my mind and let him See it.
* * *
‘They’re right. The MacLeod has been away too long,’ said Conal, breaking abruptly away from me. He’d been holding my head in one hand, staring into my mind, and when he let me go I almost stumbled, dizzy with the dislocated memory and all its horror. Remorseful, he seized my arm and steadied me. ‘Oh, Seth. This is more trouble than we can handle.’
‘We’re always in trouble.’ It was myself I was trying to reassure.
‘No, this is different. We have to leave now, or we’ll die. Witchcraft and lycanthropy? There’s no defence.’
‘I’m sorry. About the old woman.’
‘Don’t be stupid. You did right.’ He gave me a fleeting grin that didn’t hide his fear. ‘They won’t take chances again, they’ll do it properly. They’ll be coming for us.’
‘What’ll we do?’
He shrugged. ‘We have to go back. I’ll throw myself on Kate’s mercy, but we can’t stay here.’
I felt cold. ‘But Kate…’
‘Can’t do us more harm than that minister. Let’s get out of here.’ He started throwing our few possessions i
nto a hessian bag while I hauled our swords and dirks out of the thatch, scattering mouldy straw and heather and mouse droppings.
‘Never mind that.’ He snatched up the sacking I was using to wrap them and took over the job himself. There was sweat on his temples. ‘Get Liath and Branndair. Make sure no one sees you, that’s all.’
I flung open the rickety blackhouse door, catching his fear, but he stopped me.
~ Block, Seth. From now till we get home. His eyes met mine, his own block came down like an iron yett; then he was parcelling up the weapons again, and I turned and ran.
The slope was treacherously steep, all clinging birks and jutting stone, thick with bracken, but I knew every inch of it. My thighs ached and my lungs stung, but I made it up to the sett in record time. Hauling away the branches, flinging small stones aside, I called to them.
~ Branndair. Lia…
Block, Conal had said. Remembering, I was angry with myself. I raised my block and knelt by the hidden entrance as a doubtful snuffling nose met my hand.
‘Branndair.’ I scratched his throat. ‘We have to leave, my love. Come.’
I wondered how the hell I was going to persuade them to travel in a knotted sack when I couldn’t even use my mind to reassure them. It was while I was pondering the logistics that Branndair’s hackles sprang erect, and he snarled.
The back of my neck prickled.
Liath forced her way impatiently through, scrabbling with her paws at the earthen entrance and nipping Branndair to get him moving. I laid a hand on her head.
‘Sh, earth-daughter. Sh.’
I turned, still on one knee, and stared down through the trees. I knew I’d heard sounds. The branches dipped and moved, rustling in a cool summer breeze. Above them the angular jigsaw of sky was murky with cloud, but there was no rain, no mist. There was no birdsong.
I shuddered. ‘Back in,’ I told the wolves. ‘Back in. Stay here.’
Liath gave a whining growl of irritation.
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