But it was too late. With a final lingering gaze, Cael turned away from her. Then he disappeared.
“Cael?” Emmie called, a new kind of panic spreading through her.
Her legs started to move. With halting, stumbling steps, she began to run into the mist without any idea of where she was going.
“Cael.”
The halting steps moved faster, sped up, and then she was running. Running as fast as she could, and as far as she could, until she felt like her lungs were going to burst. She stumbled and fell several times, scraping her palms and ripping a hole in her jeans. He Uggs grew soaked with dew, and the cold autumn air stung at her cheeks, nose and neck.
She ran until her legs ached. Until she thought she was going to die of exhaustion.
She ran until… she saw a light.
In the distance. Was it a light? Yes, it was. Firelight. A campfire.
Cael! A burst of adrenaline fuelled by hope propelled her those last few metres.
It was Cael, she saw as she drew near. Splendid and alive, he sat on the ground, holding his hands to the low, orange flames of a fire pit. Around him were more men—Emmie counted nine. Some were sitting like he was, some had settled down for the night, with their plaids wrapped tightly around their shoulders and heads. Two were finishing a meal of some sort.
She gave these men only a cursory glance. It was Cael she wanted, Cael who made her chest swell with joy. He stared blankly into the fire, which cast dancing shadows over his face and hair. His fingers, which not so long ago had tightened over hers and threaded into her hair and cupped her neck so gently, now idly folded and unfolded a long blade of grass.
Emmie approached, certain that now everything would be all right. She would tell him she made a mistake. And he would listen, and he would hold out his hand to her once more. This time, she would take it. She would not let the voice of her cursed, rational brain win this time.
“I’ve changed my mind,” she told him. “I’ll come with you. Tell me how to save you and I’ll do it.”
The brief surge of relief died. He wasn’t listening; he didn’t see her. Looking at him, she saw that this was not even her Cael. It was just another memory, a replaying of the past, of which she was not a part.
Still, she had to try. She had to find a way to tell him what she knew. She got down on the ground, on her knees, and pressed her hands into her thighs. Looking into his eyes, she prepared to speak.
A shadow moved behind him. Emmie had only a second to look up before there was another shadow, then another. A group of men, larger than the group around the campfire, slipped silently from the background, swords raised.
“No,” Emmie screamed. “Cael, behind you!”
It did no good. She was not a part of this memory, her voice had no place in it.
Reacting on instinct, Emmie pitched forward, and threw herself in front of Cael to protect him. But he was not solid—or she was not. She fell through the remembered images and hit the ground with a painful thud, striking her head on the ground. Her vision jarred, and her head exploded with pain. Wincing, she rolled over in time to see the hilt of a knife—a sgian dubh or a dirk of some sort—crash into Cael’s temple.
Cael tumbled to the ground, landing beside where Emmie had fallen. A stream of blood trickled down from his temples, and his eyelids fluttered. The man who had hit him stood over him, spat grotesquely, and smirked.
It was the man she had seen from the countess’s vision, the small mean one with the dark, greasy hair. The one who had argued for Cael’s death. His smirk spoke of victory, of evil.
You bastard. Emmie thought the words, unable to speak them because she was crying—open mouthed, gasping and heaving.
She reached for Cael. Her hand found nothing but air.
The horrible little man grabbed a handful of Cael’s hair and wrenched him so that Cael was spun onto his stomach. Cael fought uselessly, stunned by the blow to his temple. Under the brute force of his foe, he was rendered helpless.
Around them, the invaders had swarmed in, double the number of the poor wretches whom they were intent on killing. They overwhelmed Cael’s companions. Steel on steel rang out into the night, unsettlingly like the sounds she heard from the practice swords of Cael’s boyhood memory. These men had been caught unaware. The clashing metal did not last long.
By the time Emmie was able to gain control of her frozen limbs, they were all dead.
Still dizzy from her fall, Emmie scrambled in the dirt to put herself in front of Cael, who was now facing the other way. She needed him to hear her. She needed someone to hear her.
“Cael, you have to listen to me,” she sobbed. “I know who did it. I know who betrayed you. Please, let me fix this.”
Her plea went unheard. In a last ditch effort, she raised her eyes to the sky, begging the God whom, only minutes ago, she had sworn to hate forever.
“Please. I’m sorry. I made a mistake. Please, let me fix this.”
God, it seemed, wasn’t listening either. The evil little man who had conspired against Cael ran his tongue over his teeth, revelling in his victory. Then he grabbed Cael beneath the chin and wrenched his head backwards. The soft, vulnerable flesh of Cael’s neck was exposed.
The cold steel of the man’s knife glinted in the firelight. It moved in front of Cael to his left ear. Emmie knew that the blade would slice to the right, and she was powerless to stop it.
In the instant before the inevitable happened, Cael’s eyes slid in her direction.
At her.
Cael looked at her.
Across time, their eyes met and he saw her. It lasted for only a fraction of a second, but to Emmie it was an eternity. In that time, the enormity of her mistake engulfed her, knocking her down and carrying her away like a tsunami. She could have changed the outcome of this massacre, could have stopped it from happening. Cael was about to be murdered, and it had suddenly, agonizingly become her fault.
As they looked at one another, they both knew she’d failed him.
A flick of the wrist, a flash of the knife, and the blade dragged left to right. Its razor sharp edge sliced Cael’s windpipe, scraping the bones of the jaw just below the ears—marks that, hundreds of years later, would retell this horrifying moment to archaeologists in a manner that was far too academic to do it justice.
Cael’s eyes closed. His mouth fought to drag air into his lungs. Blood, hot and red and thick, streamed from the neat, straight gash in his neck.
Cael’s head lowered to the dirt. He died.
Cael died, and Emmie felt like she was dying with him.
She sobbed so hard that no sound escaped her lips. Her chest threatened to implode with the force of her grief. She reached out, reached for Cael’s hand.
Her fingers slid over his warm, solid flesh. Blindly, she pulled his body to her and cradled him, rocking him and weeping.
Around them, the campfire died. The dead men faded, and the night turned to twilight. It was only she and Cael, his body. They were alone.
Emmie was alone.
When Lamb woke up the next morning, he found Emmie’s powder blue Fiat Panda parked in front of the house, with the driver’s side door thrown wide open.
“Mother, is she here?” he demanded. “Where is she?”
Mrs. Lamb only shook her head.
He wasted no time in calling the police, who determined the occasion to be serious enough that both the Scottish Mountain Rescue and the Search and Rescue Dog Association of Scotland were brought in. Within an hour of the search having gotten underway, a three-year-old border collie named Jessie scented her path and discovered her.
Emmeline Tunstall was a mile away from the estate, wandering and incoherent.
She was raced to the Ian Charles Community Hospital in Grantown-on-Spey, slightly northwest of Aviemore, where she was admitted and treated for hypothermia, dehydration and exhaustion. A small piece appeared in the local paper about the incident, but it was not enough to make the headline news. Hik
ers went missing all the time in the Highlands. Most were found.
Within forty-eight hours, the lost curator from Tullybrae House recovered from her ordeal.
Physically, at least.
Mentally, though, the hospital staff couldn’t account for why the young lady wouldn’t eat. Why she wouldn’t talk, and why she would do nothing but stare out the window and, on occasion, weep silently.
Lady Rotherham visited Emmie often, as did her friends from the dig crew. Lamb, who had refused to leave her hospital bedside since she was admitted, had called her parents in Corner Brook, Newfoundland. Beside themselves with worry, Ron and Grace Tunstall were on the next flight out, arriving at the hospital two days, two layovers and very little sleep later.
Emmie remained oblivious to it all. She did not seem to care that her friends, family and loved ones had been driven mad with terror over nearly losing her.
She did not even seem to care that her life had been saved out there in those hills.
“HERE’S THE LAST of it, sweetheart.”
Grace pressed the scarred wooden door of the armoire closed, a pile of Emmie’s clothes draped over her left forearm. They were pants, slacks and blouses that Emmie had chosen with such care and attention in what seemed like a lifetime ago. They’d meant so much to her then, represented a life she’d wanted to live and a person she’d wanted to be. Now, they were just clothes. Fabric and thread and buttons and zippers. Nothing more.
Emmie sat on the antique brass bed, back in her room at Tullybrae House. She’d been released from the hospital the day before, medically recovered from her ordeal. Grace had wasted no time booking a return flight to Canada for the three of them.
Emmie was going home. It hadn’t taken much persuasion from her adoptive mother to convince her, though Grace had considered it a personal victory. Anyone could see just by looking at the once optimistic, bubbly young curator that something inside of her had died, had left her the sallow, quiet girl she was now, who looked as though her very will to live had been drained away.
For Emmie, the choice to go home had been simple. She could not bear to be in a house where the very essence of the place was so thoroughly tied to Cael. To know that he wasn’t here anymore, that she failed him. To know that she, too, had betrayed him—it was more than she could bear.
Everything that had happened since she arrived, things which, now that she looked back on them, were downright miraculous—their connection to one another, the countess’s intervention, the visions, the mystery, the final document that revealed Cael’s death—it had all been for nothing. It was not enough to say she’d fallen in love. That was too weak a word. Her soul had become inextricably entwined with his, her very life force linked with his.
In the end, it hadn’t made one bit of difference.
Grace sat down on the bed, in between Emmie at the foot and the open suitcase at the head. She began to fold the clothes over her arm, placing them on top of one another in the trunk with exaggerated care. Emmie watched Grace’s hands move, watched her fingers smooth and her dainty arms flit back and forth. Then she looked at Grace, gazed at her face. It was probably the first time that she’d ever really looked at the woman who had been a mother to her since she was that frightened, six-year-old child who had just lost her mother and her grandmother and everything she’d known.
She was a beautiful woman, Grace Everett Tunstall. Still trim and attractive in her late fifties, she had soft blonde hair that she wore in stylish, shaggy layers to her shoulders. Large blue eyes with dark, full lashes dominated a face that was remarkably smooth of wrinkles for her age. People who didn’t know the family often connected those eyes with the crystalline blue eyes of her brother, Chase. Grace always smiled and thanked people when this happened, despite the fundamentally incorrect assumption.
If Grace Everett had been able to have children of her own, surely they would have been blessed with those eyes. They were too beautiful not to pass on genetically. But such was fate—from her late teens, Grace Everett had known she could never have children of her own. She was cursed with weak kidneys. A pregnancy would put too much strain on her organs, a potentially fatal strain to herself, and certainly to any baby that she would be unlikely to carry to term.
Yet another disappointment in a long line of things that were never to be.
“I always liked this on you,” Grace said, holding up the gauzy white blouse Emmie had worn the first day she came to Tullybrae. “It makes you look like that Greek statue. You know, the lady with the arms. Miles something.”
“Venus de Milo.”
“Yeah, that one.”
“She was naked from the waist up.”
“Oh. Well, you know what I mean.”
When Emmie let the banter die, Grace gave her daughter a pitying smile. Her hand raised to Emmie’s cheek, cupping it in a mothering way. Emmie let Grace have this moment, even though it was uncomfortable for her. Whatever she might say about her, Grace was a natural mother. Far be it for Emmie to deny her that.
“Camille called again while you were asleep.”
Emmie’s gaze drifted back to the corner of the room, to the spot where the antique plaster was peeling away from the wall.
“I should call her back.”
“No need, sweetheart. She and I had a lovely conversation, and she understands that you need to go for your own reasons. I made her see that. She wants you to call when we get back to Corner Brook, to make sure you got home and settled okay. She understands that you have your reasons for leaving.” Her look turned even more pitying. “Oh, baby, I wish you would tell me what’s wrong.”
Emmie continued to stare at the crumbling wall.
“Well, in your own time, then. How about I go see if I can get Lamb to show me around the kitchen? There’s no problem too big that can’t be solved by a hot cup of tea and some homemade chocolate chip cookies.”
Patting Emmie’s sweatpants-clad thigh, Grace rose and left the room. Emmie listened to her light footsteps as they descended the staircase, counted each step and heard her reach the landing. The landing where Emmie and Cael had first encountered one another.
She did love Grace in her own way, truly she did. But the woman had an uncanny knack for making things worse when she was trying to make things better. The simplistic assertion that tea and cookies could make anything better only deepened Emmie’s despondency
Time did not cure her of the feeling. The later the hour, the stronger was her urge to close her eyes and sleep through eternity like Snow White. If only there was a witch’s poisoned apple she could eat to bring on eternal oblivion.
It occurred to her to wonder—if she were given such an apple, would she accept it? Had her mother’s descent into drug addiction not been the same thing, a self-imposed exile into oblivion to escape the burden of her mental illness?
The irony was not lost on Emmie. After all that happened, she really was like her mother deep down. Because right now, Emmie had no doubt that she would take that apple, take a huge bite, and fall asleep forever.
As night wore on and the house grew quiet, Emmie remained awake. Across the hall, Grace and Ron were in one of the empty rooms, tucked into their hastily assembled bed. It was another of the serviceable brass servants’ beds, mass-manufactured in a Victorian factory. Neither of her adoptive parents had admired it with the same reverent fascination she had upon first discovering it. Such things were beyond them. Ron had complained of the creak when he sat on the mattress, and Grace had noted in her passive-aggressive way that “Folks back then were just smaller people than we are now. It’s fascinating, really.”
Emmie could hear Ron’s soft snoring even now, long after the lights had gone out. What the time was, she didn’t know. She’d already unplugged her digital alarm clock and packed it away with the rest of her belongings. But it must have been hours that she’d lain awake, staring up at the ceiling. Sleep this night was as elusive as the Highland mist—no matter how far one walked into it, it was alw
ays ahead still. And behind. Never something one could grab hold of, command and control.
A sharp tug on the blankets at the edge of the bed brought Emmie back from the mire of her thoughts. Her head jerked up, and she peered into the dark room.
“Grace?” was the name she called out. Immediately, she felt silly. Why would Grace be pulling on the edge of her blankets?
As if to confirm Emmie’s silliness, Grace coughed in her sleep from across the hall. A dainty and very Grace-like cough.
Emmie propped herself up on her elbows. She hadn’t been imagining that tug, hadn’t been half asleep.
A giggle broke the silence. Light and cheerful, a child’s laugh. It was not the laughter she’d heard in her dreams, or muffled on the Highland air. This laugh was close.
“Clara?”
For several long, tense seconds, there was no movement in the room, the only light source coming from the moon that shone through the antique skylight. Then, slowly, the top of a head rose from the edge of the mattress, visible through the brass rails of the footboard. Wispy, child-like tangles of satiny hair, light in colour though not quite blonde, shimmered in the moonlight.
Next were a pair of dark, round eyes. Intelligent and intent, they beheld Emmie with the curiosity and fearlessness of youth.
Another giggle, and the figure at the end of the bed stood abruptly. She was small. Her stature might put her at five or six years old, but the wisdom in her eyes made her look nine or ten. A plain brown dress hugged her slight frame, tied with a sash high on the waist. The hair which, at the crown, was tangled, tumbled over small shoulders in stringy waves.
She was an urchin—utterly adorable in her unkempt way. The little girl smiled shyly. Emmie sat up fully, marvelling at the sight of her.
“Clara,” she said again. This time, it was not a question.
The girl held out a petite, dirt-smudged hand. She wanted Emmie to come with her. Without a second thought, Emmie rose from the bed, obliging the little girl. When she moved to stand in front of her, Clara slipped her hand into Emmie’s, looked up into her face, and gave her arm a gentle pull.
The Ghosts of Tullybrae House Page 25