The Ghosts of Tullybrae House

by Veronica Bale

  By the end of her monologue, her voice had raised substantially in pitch, and her cheeks had grown pink.

  The woman nodded knowingly. “Oh, yes. That would be Annette. Well, I don’t know what you’re hoping to find, and I’m sorry that Annette has misled you, but we have no records here that are not contemporary and confidential. Everything that was taken from the castle before it fell into ruin was moved to the parish kirk. But that was over a century ago.”

  “So some records have survived, but I can’t see them.”

  Oh, God. Her lip was wobbling. She was going to cry.

  Don’t cry, don’t cry, don’t cry!

  The woman gazed at her for a moment, sympathy creasing her brow.

  “Look, love,” she said. “Here’s what you do. Go up to the kirk. Tell Father White that you’d like to see the boxes from Stowe, and tell him that Betsy Druce said you can. He can call me if he’d like to make sure. But I warn you, whatever is there is likely in rough shape, and I’m not at all convinced you’ll find anything of use.”

  A spark of hope, doused by the high-and-mighty Annette, sizzled to life. “Oh, thank you!” Emmie exhaled, beaming. “Thank you, thank you, thank you!”

  She was in her car and on her way to the kirk in no time. As it was just up the road from the manor, she arrived a total of three minutes later.

  The priest accepted her story at the mention of Betsy Druce’s name, and he decided that no call was required. A small, gentle man with gray hair and fashionable spectacles, Father White brought her down to a dusty cellar room and set her up with a chair, a lamp, and a small folding table.

  “I’m sorry for the damp and filth,” he apologized. “But these boxes are rather heavy, and I don’t think we two could easily lift them if we were to try and bring them into the sanctuary for you.”

  “This is fine,” Emmie assured him. “After the last few days, I’m just happy to be able to see them.”

  “Would you like a cup of tea?”

  “That would be wonderful.”

  Father White smiled benevolently, and turned to go. At the foot of the stairs he paused and turned back. “Do watch for rats and mice. These cellars are full of them, I’m afraid. They normally stay away when a light is on, but you never know. Those wee beasties grow bold of a time.”

  Emmie glanced uncomfortably over her shoulders and around the room as the father’s footsteps thumped up the stairs to the safety of ground level.

  Within minutes, however, any unseen rodents were forgotten as she immersed herself in the contents of the boxes.

  Unfortunately, Betsy Druce was right. There did not seem to be much here that was relevant. Many of the documents were recorded on paper, instead of the more durable parchment used for official communication, and these were crumbling to nothing. Record after record she examined. Of those that were whole and still legible, each one was meaningless to her search. By minute degrees, the spark of hope that had rekindled upon meeting Mrs. Betsy Druce dimmed.

  She was about to give up, when her fingers brushed against the next document in the box. It was a folded piece of parchment, not unlike many she’d already uncovered and subsequently discarded. A wax seal had once been on it, but all that was left of its existence was a discoloured stain about the size of a silver dollar. The parchment was severely yellowed, and thickened to rawhide at the creases where it had likely been exposed to water at some point. But the second her fingertips came into contact with the document, a shiver skittered up her spine.

  Her hands shaking, she unfolded the piece of parchment. The warped and thickened edges cracked as she opened it, but the document remained intact. It was a letter, and miraculously, the script was legible—the blotchy patches, typical of quill and ink, had not run and smeared with time.

  The letter—damn it all!—was written in French. In that respect, it was no different than most of its contemporaries, since French was the commonly accepted language of communication among nobility. To Emmie’s misfortune, her grade school French was murky at best. She’d quit after the ninth grade, as soon as the education system lifted the mandate to continue.

  Thank Google she lived in the age of the smartphone!

  Digging in her purse for a notepad and pen, she copied the ancient script. Then, taking the notepad, pen and her phone, she left everything else behind and went up to the sanctuary where there was a signal and daylight, there to begin the painstaking process of transcription.

  The letter, when she had deciphered it, proved to be astonishing…

  My dearest Margaret,

  To begin, I must beg your forgiveness for not having contacted you these many years, though such actions are, I am sure, unforgivable. You were as a mother to me, more so than my own mother, I regret to say. I therefore have no reasonable explanation for why I have not written to you sooner.

  I have but one purpose in seeking you out now, when I am in the winter of my life, and you so many years older than I. But I feel I must do this, while there is still time. I am writing to you because I must assuage my guilt over the death of your son, my brother, Cael.

  I write the name now, having not spoken it aloud for longer than I can recall. Yet I remember him as if we were still young and he were still by my side, laughing and lively in his way. Indeed, he will always remain a young man, while I have grown old. But such rosy sentiment does not account for why death came for him at so young an age.

  It is a death for which I know you have never stopped trying to find a reason, and until more recently, it was a death for which I, myself, did not have an answer. But upon the passing of my father, I learned the reason for certain.

  I am sorry to say that, what you and I both suspected all along was, in fact, correct. Cael’s murder was to silence him. The men who were with him that night on the raid, and who died with him, were sacrificed so that Cael could be killed without the intent being obvious. There were some of the clan who did not want to stand against the MacIntoshes alone, some who favoured seeking assistance from the MacDonalds of Clanranald. But my father was the ultimate authority, and he was with Cael. However, as you know my father all too well, he knew no loyalty to anything but the clan. Neither friendship nor kinship, nor the bonds of fatherhood went before the good of the clan. Such was the nature of the man we both knew.

  Though my brother had the support of most of our kinsmen, my father was persuaded in whispers and behind closed doors that seeking help from Clanranald was the surest way for Keppoch to remain safe. He was persuaded also that to deny Cael was to cause strife, for those who were with him would surely be unhappy with the decision. In the end, he was persuaded that Cael’s death was the only solution. So while he smiled to my brother’s face and praised him for his bravery and leadership, my father plotted to kill him.

  It is some small mercy that Cael never suspected his own father was the one who betrayed him.

  These lordly actions, as you know, my father always saw as his divine duty. He never regretted anything, though he should have regretted much, and I can only trust that God has judged him justly, whatever He in His all-powerful wisdom determines to be just. However, it was with immense surprise that I received my father’s confession only days before he took his last breath. He admitted also that he regretted his involvement in Cael’s death. I do believe him to have been genuine, at least in part—although, I do not know how much of that was because Cael’s death made no difference. The MacDonalds of Keppoch were destroyed anyway.

  It may sound as though I am defending him, but I promise you, my dear Margaret, that this is not so. In truth, I do not think I can ever forgive him for taking my brother from me. To Ennis and me, the bonds of blood were not weakened where Cael was concerned; we three were as full brothers, and loved each other as full brothers. The pain of Cael’s loss has not lessened in all this time, and I only pray that he and Ennis have found each other in His Holy Kingdom.

  I tell you this now because I can no longer bear the thought that you will one
day go to your grave never knowing what happened to your only son, and I will go to mine having kept my father’s secret from you. I sincerely hope that I have done God’s will in enlightening you, and that this knowledge may bring you a small measure of peace in understanding the reason for our beloved Cael’s death.

  I hope that you may one day forgive me, if not in this life, then perhaps in Heaven.

  Yours,

  Lawren MacDonald.

  THE DARK HIGHLAND roads, treacherously narrow and poorly paved for long stretches, sailed past the car windows as Emmie sped towards Tullybrae. Literally sped—she was driving too fast. Dangerously, foolishly fast. One stray sheep, one pot hole, and she would lose control, possibly to plummet down an unguarded incline. She was acutely aware of this, yet she couldn’t seem to wrench her lead foot off the gas pedal.

  She had to get to Cael. She had to make him understand what she’d learned.

  And how the hell was she going to do that when she wasn’t able to talk to him?

  Her foot nudged the pedal down another notch.

  It had been his father. His own father had betrayed him. The vileness of it all, the heartless cruelty.

  “His own goddamned father,” she expostulated at the windshield, smacking her palms on the steering wheel for emphasis.

  So much of what she’d seen made sense now. In Cael’s memories, his father had been nothing but proud of his son, illegitimate though he was. In the countess’s vision, where the two men were conspiring against Cael, the one had resolutely stated that he would not go against Angus MacDonald. I’ll no’ go against my laird. I’ll no’ defy Himself. Convincing the men that we must make the laird change his mind is one thing, but killing Cael is another. I’ll no’ defy my laird!

  She remembered the words so well that the man might as well have been there in the car with her, speaking them all over again.

  Well, he hadn’t gone against his laird, had he? By the admission of Lawren MacDonald, Angus MacDonald, second of Keppoch would do whatever it took to protect his clan, even if it included deceiving and sacrificing his own son. Angus MacDonald had given his blessing for his men to remove his illegitimate son in secret, so that none of Cael’s supporters would know why.

  Cael had been deceived. He’d been wronged, just as Lamb said.

  There had been a reason why Emmie found out what she knew. A reason for why Professor McCall had recommended her for the Tullybrae position, for why the dig crew had befriended her, and invited her to Dr. Iain Northcott’s party. A reason why she’d been connected with Paul Rotenfeld. Who just happened to have in his possession (or near enough) the one document that would give her the answer she was looking for. A document which, if the relatively scant size of the general historical record was any kind of benchmark, should not have survived. But it had, and it was all leading back to this. She had the answer to Cael’s mystery.

  The little old lady had told her on the night of the ghost hunt: We’re led to places, my dear. No one ever ends up anywhere by accident. You were led here. You’re meant to be here.

  Emmie was meant to be here. She was more certain of this than she’d ever been of anything in her life.

  The blue Fiat Panda—structure and driver and innocent sheep miraculously unharmed—screeched to a halt in front of Tullybrae, sending a spray of pebbles against the masonry.

  “Cael,” she called, shrill and breathless as she burst through the door. “Cael, where are you? This is important. Cael?”

  There was nothing. No sign of him.

  She ran up the stairs to her bedroom. “Cael?”

  Still nothing.

  Now what was she supposed to do? She’d solved the mystery, so didn’t she need to tell Cael? Put his soul to rest?

  Or (the thought occurred to her as she searched the house) was it possible that because she’d solved the mystery, she’d already put his soul to rest?

  He wasn’t gone, was he?

  But wasn’t what she wanted? And what Cael needed?

  Then why did she feel like she could hardly breathe at the thought that she’d never see him again?

  No. No! Emmie shook her head furiously, refusing to believe it. That wasn’t how it was supposed to be. She was supposed to have at least a small amount of time with him. If only to say goodbye. Determined to find him, Emmie took her search outside, into the cold night, where a mist had begun to gather. It was a thick mist, and high. It distorted the luminous moon which, until now, had shone without a wisp of cloud to block it out.

  She ran around the house, from the front to the rear. She ran over the gravel walkways among the hedges and flower beds of the gardens, and out to the silent, empty land beyond.

  “Cael!” She was crying now.

  There was not a trace of him. Nothing to suggest that he’d ever been here. She looked back over her shoulder at the dig site where her friends had been working for the past few months. The bones of the murder victims—ten in total, including Cael—had been removed. The excavation complete, those old bones had been taken to Edinburgh University for examination, recording and storage.

  Oh God—was this really it, then?

  Emmie’s chin dropped to her chest. Her shoulders sagged, and she sobbed helplessly.

  Cael. He was gone. And she was well and truly alone.

  What kind of cruel joke was this? What had all this been for? She’d done everything she could for Cael, had given up so much and driven herself half-mad in the process, and for what? So that she could learn some heartless life lesson—that in the end, she had no one?

  Well if that was it, then Emmie hated God. She hadn’t ever been convinced that a god existed before, but now she was. He did exist, and she hated Him.

  She was just about to tell Him this, to raise her head and declare it to the heavens, when a flicker through the mist halted the scream in her throat.

  Something was moving out there. The fog moved in eddies and swirls around a shape that was advancing on her.

  Cael.

  She cried out in relief. A wide, uninhibited smile broke across her face. Any minute, she would see his smiling face, too. But as Cael came close enough that she could see him in detail, she realized that he was not smiling. There was nothing of relief, or of happiness or of anything positive in his demeanour.

  “Cael,” she said, growing serious. “I know who betrayed you.”

  He said nothing. Either he couldn’t hear her, or he wasn’t listening. She tried again anyway.

  “It was your father, Cael. Your father betrayed you. He sacrificed you for what he thought was the good of the clan.”

  Still Cael made no response. By now, Emmie was becoming angry. She was here. Cael was here. She had the answer to his mystery, and she was supposed to tell him.

  So why didn’t he seem particularly concerned with the answer?

  Around them, the fog began to thin. Emmie scanned their immediate surroundings—the fog was only thinning around them. It was like an inverse halo, like being inside a bubble.

  “What’s going on?”

  The only answer Cael made was to raise his hand to her, holding it palm up.

  Save me, she heard, but not from his lips. It was a breath on the breeze, desperate and pleading. Save me.

  Cael’s eyes burned into hers, urging her to take his hand. Emmie looked at it, following the lines on his palm, the veins in his wrist. The mist that formed the convex walls of their bubble vibrated, alive with a life of its own.

  It was then that she realized what he wanted her to do. Without having to be told, without needing to have anyone lay it out for her, she instinctively knew. It was like the mist was telling her, infusing her with a higher understanding: To save him, Emmie had to go with him. Armed with her knowledge of the past, she needed to cross the divide between Cael’s world and hers. And this time, it would be the last time.

  If she took his hand now, she would not be coming back.

  Her mind warred with itself. Emotions, fears, questions and th
rills crashed into each other, rendering her incapable of sorting through the tangle and focusing on any one thing. Emmie looked at Cael. The faces of Grace and Ron danced in her brain. Of Chase. Of Lamb and Dean, Adam and Sophie, Famke and Ewan. Camille. Professor McCall. Her friends back home in Corner Brook. They were the only life she knew. She couldn’t leave them, could she?

  Emmie’s mind froze. She panicked. She shook her head before giving herself the time to think through what she was doing.

  “I can’t,” were the words that came out of her mouth.

  These words he did hear. His brows drew together, refusing to accept what she was saying. He shoved his hand an inch closer, his eyes begging her to take it.

  “Cael, I can’t,” she repeated frantically. “This… this is all too much. I mean, I went from feeling like I had my life together to feeling like it was falling apart, to finally feeling like it might have a purpose after all. I… Cael, please. Be reasonable.”

  She heard herself speak, heard herself saying those words. Inside, her mind was screaming, What are you doing, you fool? What are you saying?

  Two voices, two Emmies, neither one in control of the body that needed only to reach out and take Cael’s hand. And as the voices warred with each other, as her heart was finally beginning to win out over the protestations of her brain, Cael’s expression changed. His face turned from resolute and urgent… to horrified.

  Betrayed.

  Oh, no. Dear God, no. Wait. I want to change my mind.

  The words would not come.

  Cael took a step back. Then another. The look he gave her was one of complete and irreparable anguish, and Emmie knew she’d made the wrong choice.

  She’d made the wrong choice! She did want to go with him. She could turn her back on her friends and her family. If it all meant that she would be with him, she could do it.