The Devil's Promise

by Veronica Bennett

  Panic gripped me. “Jamie!” I screamed. “Come back! I will go with you to the pool!”

  Silence. But not quite silence. A faint swoosh, like the hem of a woman’s gown brushing a carpet, came to my ears. I put my hand over my mouth to stop myself from screaming again, and strained my ears. Any noise, however small, must come from the entrance to the cave, so I must follow it.

  Nothing happened for a moment. Then I heard the sound again. It was followed almost instantaneously by another sound: the plink-plink of dripping water. Relief rushed through me. I must be standing near the water at the bottom of the well. The pool I had refused to visit must be farther away, and water from it was intermittently falling over stone – swoosh – and splashing into the well water – plink-plink. Hoping that, since the well was open to the sky, enough light would filter down to allow me to see my surroundings, I groped my way along the wall in the direction of the sounds.

  I was right; the wall of the cave ended abruptly, and I came upon the well. The surface of the water was disturbed now and then by the influx of fresh water from the pool, which in turn was fed by the spring. Plink-plink, bubble-bubble. Comforted by the sound, I craned my neck to look up the stone-lined shaft to the round hole at the top, from where Jamie had gazed down at this very water. I was not so far from civilization, I told myself. I had no intention whatsoever of making my way back through the pitch-blackness of the caves, but if Jamie did not come back, and I could not make anyone hear my cries for help, I could climb up the iron ladder bolted to the side of the well.

  I called up the shaft. All I heard was the echo of my own voice, then the silence again descended. I waited for a few moments, in case Jamie came back. But my fear was increasing. I had to get out.

  I piled my skirt and petticoats untidily into the waistband of my drawers. It was fortuitous, after all, that I was not “got up smart”. Trying not to look into the black depths, I reached for the iron ladder and gave it a tug. It was secure. I stood on the first rung. It held my weight. I muttered words of encouragement to myself, trying to blot from my memory the moment when Jamie had smashed the lantern. Then I lifted my face towards the circle of daylight and began to climb.

  PART TWO

  THE

  CHANGELING

  A LEGEND AS OLD

  AS TIME

  “Good grief, Catriona, what has happened to you?”

  It was Mrs McAllister’s voice – Scottish, but without the softness of Bridie’s. Rather shrill, in fact. She was striding up the gravel path, her skirt held clear of a pair of stout boots, wearing a feather-trimmed hat and a determined look. Beside her was a kilted man, with a shapeless tam-o’-shanter on his head and a stick in his hand. His sturdy legs were encased in thick socks, and under his tweed coat he wore a woollen pullover. It might be a fine day in May, but he was dressed for an outdoors wilder than the castle gardens. His face was neither old nor young, reddish, with whiskers round the chin and a large nose. This must be MacGregor, the gillie.

  Mrs McAllister stopped in front of me, trying to shield my unconventional appearance from MacGregor. He hung back and had the tact to examine the horizon while she looked me up and down incredulously. “Where in heaven’s name have you been, to make yourself so dirty?”

  Clearly, she had not seen me emerge from the well. I wondered if the gillie had. “Jamie was showing me the caves under the castle,” I explained, pulling my skirts free of my drawers and shaking them out. “So I saved my dress by tucking it in.”

  “In front of my grandson?” she asked, horrified. “What were you thinking, child? What would your mother think?”

  “Jamie had gone by then,” I said lamely. Her expression demanded an explanation, so I pressed on. “He had to go somewhere, he didn’t say where, so I found my own way out.” I looked down at my dirt-smeared bodice. “It is damp down there. I must have brushed against a wall.”

  She drew herself up and studied me disapprovingly. “Hm. Well, MacGregor,” she said, half-turning to him, “this is Miss Graham.”

  He touched his hat. “Good day to ye, miss.”

  I scarcely had time to nod before Mrs McAllister addressed him again. “MacGregor, we really should see about getting a door put on the entrance to those caves and keeping it locked. I am sure they are dangerous, and have told the doctor so many times.”

  “Aye, I’ll speak to him about it,” said MacGregor. I suspected he would not.

  “Now,” said Mrs McAllister to me, “I am come to luncheon. You cannot present yourself in the dining room in that state, so you had better go and change.”

  I resisted the temptation to say, “Yes, miss,” as if she were one of my teachers. She seemed to assume that she was responsible for my behaviour in the absence of my mother. I wondered what sort of life her own daughter had led before her marriage. “Very well,” I said, coolly enough to indicate my resentment but politely enough not to offend her. “May I ask, what time is luncheon?”

  “We gather in the Great Hall at one o’clock.”

  MacGregor had disappeared around the corner of the house and Mrs McAllister fell into step with me as we approached the front door. “Doctor Hamish always comes in to luncheon if he has not been called away elsewhere, and I have a standing invitation,” she added.

  I digested this news. “So you do not live here at the castle?”

  “I live at the Lodge,” she informed me stiffly. The plumage on her hat caught the breeze as she nodded in the direction of the driveway that led down the hill. “Down there, beside the main gate. I attribute my good health to the walk between my wee house and the castle, which I take almost daily. Even in winter.”

  As we walked, she explained further. “My late husband was the vicar of St Matthew’s in Stirling. After he died, when the new vicar needed the vicarage, Anne and I moved to a cottage in Drumwithie, because I had spent holidays in this part of Scotland as a girl, and was fond of it. When Anne and Hamish married, Hamish kindly invited me to move into the Lodge.”

  We had reached the vestibule. With a nod to me, Mrs McAllister entered the Great Hall, and I set off up the stone stairs. I had no wish to meet anyone on the way to the tower room, so I hurried all the way there, taking the curving stairs two at a time and arriving at the top breathless. When I opened the door to my bedroom I almost cried out with shock. Jamie was sprawled on my bed, smoking.

  An avalanche of indignation tore over me. “What are you doing here?” I demanded. “How can you show your face after what you did to me? Get off my bed and out of my sight!”

  He did not move. On his face was an expression between bewilderment and contrition, as hungry for forgiveness as a child.

  “Did you hear me?” Furious, I took hold of his ankle and tried to pull him off the bed. But he clamped his cigarette between his lips and clung to the bedstead with both hands.

  “Look at me!” I persisted. “My dress is ruined, my boots are filthy and I was scared almost to death down there!” I let go of his ankle; it was fruitless to think I could manhandle him. I felt defeated. “Why did you leave me alone? And why did you smash the lantern? I couldn’t find my way out of the caves – you knew I couldn’t – so I ended up having to climb the ladder in that dirty, disgusting well! Do you wonder I am angry with you?”

  His eyes glinted. There might have been tears in them or it might have been the reflection of the midday light from the tower windows. He took the cigarette out of his mouth. “I was cruel, wasn’t I?”

  “Yes, you were.” I sat down on the dressing-stool and regarded him, my indignation evaporating. I felt relieved that he understood how much he had frightened me, and I also felt compassion, which was more difficult to explain. Surely he should be feeling compassion for me?

  “I am very sorry, Cat,” he said. “I do things like that sometimes. I am …” – he sought a suitable word – “impulsive. My grandmother says my mother was the same at my age.”

  “I see.” There was no time to ask him to explain further. I h
ad to change my clothes and our elders awaited us downstairs. “Let us speak of it later. I have already encountered MacGregor, and Mrs McAllister, who scolded me for my appearance.”

  He still did not move. He lay there, the fingers of his left hand still curled around the bars of the bedstead, his hair as unruly as ever, his eyes fixed upon my face. “Do you forgive me?”

  I tried to disguise my mixed feelings by shaking my head and sighing, in imitation of those very schoolteachers I despised. “We will speak of it later,” I repeated.

  He let go of the bedstead and sat up. Half-obscured by strands of golden hair, his eyes were wide. “I labour under an intolerable weight, knowing that a lifetime of unhappiness awaits me. If I do not do as my father wishes, I will lose Drumwithie. Can you wonder I am ill-tempered?”

  I was surprised. “Surely your father has not threatened you with disinheritance?”

  “Not directly,” he admitted. “But he says he will not allow a man with no profession – no profession, Cat! – to live in idleness – idleness! He has never tried to write a poem! – in a place the family has maintained for generations. He is fond of asking me if I think Drumwithie pays for itself. He is so intolerant.”

  I was unmoved. “His intolerance, as you call it, does not explain why you behaved so badly today.”

  He laughed, blowing out a great cloud of cigarette smoke. “I was incensed by your insistence we leave the caves, when I did not want to,” he said good-naturedly, waving at the smoke. “I believe it is called being spoilt.”

  This, at least, was honest. “So you consider yourself spoilt, then?”

  “I consider myself spoilt beyond repair.”

  Being spoilt was one of the detestable shortcomings on my mother’s long, and rather inconsistent, list. “You spoil that child, David!” she would cry if my father let me ride on his shoulders, or gave me a chocolate. But I was not spoilt; my lack of brothers and sisters never resulted in either of my parents over-indulging me. How different it had been for Jamie, though. Growing up in a castle, never going to school, petted by women, and all the time knowing he was heir to one of the most beautiful estates in Scotland.

  “Your father treats you very sensibly,” I said. “If you are spoilt, others are to blame.”

  He smoked in silence for a little while. I could see in the expression of his eyes that scenes from the past were revisiting him. I said nothing and waited.

  “I loved her to distraction. Mother, I mean. I still do. She was very beautiful. Here.” He thrust his hand into his pocket and withdrew a small leather wallet, which he tossed onto the bed within my reach. “I have a photograph. It was taken before her illness became what it is today. She did not like the library or the Great Hall. This photograph was taken in the small drawing room, where she preferred to sit. Have you seen the portrait of her in there? My father commissioned it when they were first married.”

  I opened the wallet. The photograph showed a woman, past girlhood but not yet middle-aged, posed at the window of a room I had not yet seen. The dark foliage of a vase of peonies beside her contrasted with her white gown – an evening gown, the bodice and sleeves trimmed with lace, the skirt elaborately draped. Her dark hair was arranged in the style made popular by the late king’s wife, Queen Alexandra, swept up at the back into an ornament and a “front” of curls above her brow. It was old-fashioned now, but it did not detract from the striking exquisiteness of her face. Light-eyed, with shapely brows and fine cheekbones, she gazed at the camera with the smallest of smiles on her lips. There was something of Mrs McAllister in the shape of her chin, but she had none of her mother’s aloofness. She looked amiable, ready for conversation and hungry for friendship. The picture I had conjured of a tortured Ophelia could not have been more inaccurate.

  I gazed at the photograph for a long time. Jamie had finished his cigarette and stubbed it out, and still I was looking at his mother. “She is certainly a beauty,” I said at last. “And quite unlike how I imagined her. She is not like my mother at all, who is sort of pink and white, like a doll. Your mother is not doll-like at all. She is elegant and very lovely.”

  I stopped, aware that I had “rattled on” – another listed misdemeanour. “Forgive me,” I said, looking up from the picture. “I was entranced.”

  “So was I, and remain so,” he said. His tone was level, without emotion. “But the woman in this photograph has gone. She would not entrance anyone she met for the first time now.” He looked at me sorrowfully. “You will not meet her, though. My father and grandmother sometimes visit her, but I have not been for a long time. I cannot bear the place she is in.” His voice took on a plaintive tone. “And I am not convinced… I think visits do more harm than good. It is another thing Father and I argue about.”

  I handed him the wallet. As he put it in his pocket, his gaze dropped. “She will never come back,” he whispered.

  I did not do him the disservice of plying him with platitudes. Anne Buchanan was evidently seriously disturbed in her mind, and was in the best place, distressing though Jamie found it. “Now,” I told him gently, “you must go, and I must change before I can face your father.”

  He stood up and crossed the room so quickly I hardly saw him move. “Will you allow me to watch with you tonight?” he asked from the door. “In case the ghost returns? I have thought of nothing else since you told me.”

  I considered. “Do you do not think your presence may discourage it?”

  “Let me watch anyway!” he implored. “I am too curious to stay away!”

  I wondered whether allowing an evening visit by a young man to my private room was not a breach of propriety. I was sure it was, in fact. But Jamie’s father and grandmother did not need to know about it, and I could not refuse – I was far too curious myself. “Very well, we will watch together tonight. Come at nine o’clock,” I said, and closed the door after him.

  The slime-covered walls of the well had streaked the bodice of my grey dress. I took it off and examined the stains, hoping Bridie was a skilled washerwoman. When I had put on another dress and washed my face, there still remained five minutes before I had to present myself downstairs. I sat down at the open window before the view I had already appropriated as mine. This morning, when I had first opened the curtains, a mist had obscured the glen and the distant mountains had been garlanded by clouds. But the breezy sunshine had dispelled the haze and the scene below me spread in colours brighter than any painter’s brush could capture.

  Tourists on their return home often described views they had seen as breathtakingly beautiful. My view truly was. I simply could not breathe normally as I looked at it. The glittering greens and greys, the bright shoots on the trees where birds sang all day long, the purple chasm of the glen below, the shadow of the castle itself – these sights brought my heart into my throat. Their beauty made me think of Jamie’s poor mother, who could no longer live in the place which commanded such a view, though it was her home.

  The clock struck the hour. They would be waiting. Reluctantly I left the room. When I reached the Great Hall, I put my ear to the door. The murmur of voices told me everyone else was present and I would have to make an entrance. “Imagine you are the Princess of Belgravia,” Mother would tell me when I was younger, “who expects everyone to look at her. So, when everyone does look at you, you will not be surprised. And always pinch your cheeks before you turn the handle.”

  It was not until much later that I discovered the Princess of Belgravia was not a real person, but I invoked her memory now. I coughed by way of warning and opened the door.

  “Ah, Catriona!” Doctor Hamish stood when I entered. “I hear you and Jamie have been exploring our caves! They are very fine, do you not agree?”

  Jamie and his grandmother occupied the two fireside chairs, so I perched on the edge of a straight-backed chair. “Yes, indeed,” I concurred. “Very fine.”

  “And very dark and very wet, and Jamie left you alone there, the scoundrel,” said Jamie, who
had an open book on his lap and did not look up. “But I have made it clear, Father, that I had an emergency – I will not offend Grandmother’s sensibilities by detailing of what sort – and had to leave Cat. When I went back, she had found her own way out.”

  This was of course a lie, but I guiltily admired the ease with which Jamie told it. He had neither had an “emergency” nor returned to look for me. We both knew, however, that I would not contradict him.

  “Jamie,” said the doctor with a pained expression, “you must treat Catriona in a gentlemanly fashion. She is not a plaything provided for your entertainment.”

  Jamie’s head did not move, but his downcast gaze slid sideways towards me. “No, she is the Cait Sìth, come to cast her spell on us.”

  Mrs McAllister’s head came up. “Jamie!” She turned to me. “What has my grandson been telling you?”

  “Oh … I asked him why he called me a cat, apart from my name being Catriona, that is, and he told me about the Cait Sìth.” I glanced at Jamie. “He says I look like a cat and I have been sent from the supernatural world.”

  She stared at me blankly.

  “He has romantic notions, I think,” I added.

  “I wonder if ‘romantic’ is the correct word for his notions!” snorted Doctor Hamish.

  “The Cait Sìth is not a notion, romantic or otherwise,” declared Mrs McAllister. “Catriona, I must make you familiar with other tales from Scottish folklore. You will not describe them as romantic, I assure you!”

  There was a silence. Doctor Hamish took out his fob watch. “Where is Bridie? I have the devil of a hunger on me!”

  “Luncheon will be ten minutes or more yet, Hamish,” said Mrs McAllister. She turned again to me. For the first time since I had met her, there was a smile upon her lips. “Perhaps you would like to hear more about these tales? Though English people, having a folk culture considerably less rich than ours, usually dismiss Celtic beliefs as nonsense.”