And suddenly, I saw it. Not a vision, or a memory, or something imagined, but a revelation. It tumbled down on me, as unexpected as a cloudburst, with such force that I gasped.
When a human child was taken, every seven years a payment had to be made to the devil. The teind, Mrs McAllister had called it.
When Jamie was seven years old, his mother had suffered a nervous breakdown.
When he was fourteen, she had tried to kill herself.
Now, when he was twenty-one, she had died.
What had happened in the missing seventh year, the year Jamie, a fair-haired faerie child, perhaps the secret son of a fair-haired lover, was born?
Who had suffered for the devil’s promise?
I scrambled up the hillside, the gorse bushes scratching my neck and arms. Letting myself in by the back door, I hurried through the darkness to the kitchen yard. In the corner, the stone staircase that led to the servants’ quarters bit deep into the tower, winding through the thick stone so that servants could get to the guest bedroom unobtrusively. I sometimes used this back staircase when I had no wish to meet anyone between the garden and my room – Mrs McAllister in particular. Tonight, I had a different reason to use it.
The staircase was dark. This older wing behind the kitchen was still lit only by candles and oil lamps. No one had ever installed lights on the walls; Bridie and MacGregor carried candles to their quarters, hers on this uncarpeted landing, his above the stable yard, as servants had done for hundreds of years. I made my way cautiously, feeling for the rope banister. The stairs were not only dark, they were narrow, and colder even than the rest of the house. I had not stopped to put my shawl around my shoulders; goosebumps raised the hairs on my arms, and I had to clamp my teeth together to stop my jaw trembling. I was cold, but I was also consumed by some other sensation. Not fear exactly, but fearful expectation.
A faint light came from under Bridie’s door. I hesitated a moment, then knocked. The door opened a little, and half of Bridie’s face appeared. Her one visible eye looked swollen with crying. “Aye, miss?”
“I am sorry to disturb you, Bridie, but may I have a word with you?”
She opened the door wider; I saw she was carrying a candle in a brass holder. I entered the room and she shut the door silently after me. Then she gestured to a wicker chair beside the narrow bed. I seated myself, and she climbed onto the bed, sitting with her back against the wall, her knees drawn up under her skirt. She had taken off her apron and loosened her hair. The candlelight threw her face into relief; I saw shadows in it I had not noticed before. She looked older than her forty or so years, and her eyes were blank with uncomprehending misery. My presence seemed to summon further grief. She began to cry quietly into an already sodden handkerchief.
“Bridie,” I began awkwardly, “I must ask you something.”
She wiped her eyes ineffectually and raised her head, but said nothing.
“It is about Mr Jamie,” I told her.
“Aye,” she whispered. She crumpled the handkerchief into a damp ball, so tightly that her fingers showed white, and brought it to her lips. “I ken what ye’re wanting to say, miss.”
How could she know? My heart murmured as I spoke. “You have known him all his life, have you not?”
She nodded.
“Then perhaps you can help me understand why Mr Jamie sometimes does things that are … impulsive, and says strange things. He seems at odds with the world.”
She gazed at me steadily. Her eyes were bright with tears. “Ye canna leave him, miss!” She drew a shaky breath and released it with a shudder. “It’s yersel’, and only yersel’, that’ll be the one for him. Now his mother’s gone, he must have yersel’, or nobody!”
I stared at her, my brain numb with astonishment.
“Ye’ll no tell what I said, will ye, if ye please, miss?” she pleaded.
“I will not tell.” I leant towards her. “But I do not understand what you mean. Why do you say that now his mother has died Mr Jamie needs me?”
She dropped her gaze. I could not tell if she was embarrassed, or ashamed, or fearful that I would scold her. I summoned my courage. “Bridie, are you aware that he and I have formed an attachment?”
“Aye, miss. It’s been as plain as plain from the day ye arrived.”
“But … whether I wish to or not, I will have to leave Drumwithie when Mr Jamie goes off to Edinburgh in the autumn.”
Her face took on an anguished look, as if I had suggested something so intolerable it caused her physical pain. “But there’s nobody else can free him, miss! Ye mustna’ leave him, ever !”
I was aware that I felt chillier than I had before. Bridie’s fire had burnt down and my blouse was thin. A deep cold spread throughout my body and tingled in my limbs. “Free him?” I repeated. “Bridie, from what must Mr Jamie be freed?”
Her brown eyes, usually so patient, flashed with emotion. Again, she drew a faltering breath. “Miss, d’ye ken the teind?”
I kept my voice steady, though my temples throbbed suddenly with painful stabs. “I have heard it mentioned,” I told her. “I believe it is a kind of tithe, as farmers pay to the parish, but it is paid to someone else.”
“Aye. The deil.” She lowered her voice, as if speaking such words above a whisper would conjure the Dark Lord himself. “He has Mr Jamie by the throat and willna’ leave him be until he goes with his true love. And that be yersel’, miss.”
There was a constriction in my chest; I could scarcely breathe. Trying to ignore my pounding head, I spoke again. “This payment must be made every seven years, is that correct?”
She nodded gravely.
“It is fourteen years since Mrs Buchanan suffered a severe illness, is it not?”
“Aye, miss.”
“And seven years ago, she became so ill she had to leave the castle?”
“He made her try to drown hersel’.”
“Who did?
“The deil, miss.”
“And it is the deil, the devil, who has taken her away now. Is that what you mean?”
“Aye.”
I laid my hand on her arm. My breath was so short I could hardly speak. I knew of the second, third and fourth teind. The question I longed to ask would wait no longer. “Bridie, what happened twenty-one years ago?”
Her watery gaze landed full my face. “Oh, miss, I promised the master I wouldna’ tell anyone about it, ever. But I must tell ye, I must, for Mr Jamie’s sake!”
She began to cry softly. Her handkerchief useless, her hands remained at her sides while tears slid down her cheeks and dripped off her chin “Miss Lucy was Mrs Buchanan’s sister,” she whispered. “She died, here at Drumwithie, and so did her wee baby. Now, the deil has taken them all.”
So the devil had exacted a double tithe. Jamie’s assumption had been correct. Lucy had been “ruined” and had given birth to her Frenchman’s baby in the tower, where both she and the child died. How terrible for poor Anne, to have to mourn such a loss at a time when she should have been full of joy!
I rose and, sitting beside her on the bed, embraced her. I held her tightly, full of compassion for the loyal servant who had carried this secret knowledge until Anne’s death, the latest teind, had released her from it.
“I was here,” she said, dabbing again at her eyes as we drew apart. “When Miss Lucy and the babe died. It was such a bonny babe. I canna tell ye more.”
I wondered why Lucy had returned to Drumwithie. Had she, like any young girl in the final stages of pregnancy, needed her mother?
“Was Mrs McAllister here too?” I asked.
To my surprise, Bridie’s eyes widened and she gripped my arm. “No, miss! Dinna mention anything of it to her!”
“Why not?”
“Please, ye promised ye’d no tell anyone.” She was near tears again. “Mrs McAllister doesna’ ken there ever was a babe!”
Astonished, I could not summon any words. Bridie’s imploring look increased in intensity. “And thin
k o’ Mr Jamie, will ye, miss? Promise ye’ll no leave him!”
I could not make such a promise. To do so and have to go back on my word would be worse than refusing to give it in the first place. “I cannot tell the future, Bridie…” I began, but she interrupted me.
“’Tis in your hands!” she urged. “The spell is wound and only ye can break it!”
I paused, struck by the memory of Jamie’s words, that day when I had first told him about the ghost. The winding of the spell has begun, he had said, now you have come. “And if I do not break the spell?” I asked. “What will happen, Bridie?”
She was agitated enough to grasp both my hands. “The teinds will go on, miss. In another seven years, and seven years after that. Nothing else can break the promise made by the faeries to the deil. Ye must help us or we’ll none of us ever be free of it.”
THE HOUR
When I heard the trap pull up the next morning, I rushed downstairs. Bridie, avoiding my eyes, arrived in the hall at the same time.
The doctor had aged in the twenty-four hours since I had last seen him. His pleasant air, which on our first meeting I had taken as his “bedside” manner, and the genial look in his eyes, had gone. He was grey-faced, with a hollow, unseeing expression. Mrs McAllister followed him. She too looked diminished. Her coat and skirt were pulled awkwardly in places; they had been put on without the aid of a lady’s maid. Her face was pale and crumpled, and she leaned heavily upon Jamie’s arm. Relief flooded through me. The sudden death of his adored mother had not, as I had feared, driven him to collapse.
He shortened his steps to his grandmother’s, keeping his eyes down. But his blond lashes flickered minutely as they entered the hall, and I knew he had seen me standing there.
“Catriona, my dear,” said the doctor, giving Bridie his hat and stick. He extended his hand to me. “What a neglectful host I have been! But we are home now.”
I grasped his hand. “You are very kind, but do not trouble yourself about me. My thoughts are only with you and Jamie and Mrs McAllister. I am so very sorry.” I glanced at Bridie, who was gathering Mrs McAllister’s cape and Jamie’s mackintosh into her arms. “Everyone here is sorry.”
“Thank you,” said Doctor Hamish. He did not withdraw his hand, but grasped mine tighter and drew it into the crook of his elbow. “Let us go into the Great Hall, where we can talk properly. Could we have some tea, Bridie? I will come to the kitchen and speak to you and MacGregor about Mrs Buchanan later.”
Bridie, her face tight with emotion, nodded and curtseyed, and our small procession made its way through the wide doorway into the Great Hall, where Bridie had built an enormous fire. I was grateful that the doctor had not suggested we go into the drawing room, where, however cheerful the fire, Anne Buchanan’s portrait would chill the atmosphere. I was sure no one would enter that room for a long time.
Jamie settled Mrs McAllister in her usual fireside chair and his father sat down heavily in the other one, immediately reaching for his silver cigarette case and offering it to Jamie. Surprisingly, Jamie refused. “She always hated people smoking, Father,” he said expressionlessly. “I think I’ll give it up.”
Doctor Hamish struck a match. “Giving it up will be easier for you than for me. Smoking has been my habit for twenty-five years. I doubt if I could ever give it up.”
“And why should you?” put in Mrs McAllister. It was a typical interjection, but delivered with more kindness than imperiousness. “If it brings you comfort.”
We all fell silent. The doctor smoked thoughtfully, looking into the fire. I was sitting as usual on the footstool, a good position from which to slide a surreptitious glance at Jamie. He had folded himself into the corner of the sofa, his knees, showing bony though the thin material of his trousers, drawn up to his chest. His clothes were those that he had worn while we sorted through the papers from the travelling box, before his father’s sudden entrance had changed everything. I had joked that he must have put on whatever garments he had happened to find on the floor of his bedroom that morning: odd socks, the trousers belonging to an old linen suit, the peasant smock I had worn to climb down the glenside.
That flippant remark seemed a long time ago now. Since then, Jamie had worn this hotch-potch of clothes to the hospital, to a smart hotel and, under his mackintosh, on stations and in railway carriages. I imagined the amused comments of passers-by: “Dear me, young people these days!”
I watched him flick his hair back, lean his elbow on the sofa arm and rest his forehead on his hand in the classic pose of the troubled poet. I felt profoundly sorry for him. For the loss of his mother, for the feud with his father, for his uncertain future, and for our imminent parting. Tomorrow I would be on the train south and his grandmother would ensure that we never met again.
“Cat, she killed herself,” he said suddenly. He did not change his position, and he was trying to speak without emotion. But his body was tense. I saw the tremor pass through his limbs. “In case you’re wondering.”
“Oh! Well,” I uttered aimlessly. “I—”
“It was that quack’s fault!” blurted Jamie, his eyes on his father. “And that horrible hospital! How could they be unaware that she was only taking half her pills, and hiding the others in the mattress?”
My heart lurched. Many years ago, Lucy had instructed her sister to hide Matthieu’s letters under her mattress. It must have been only a small step from that to finding a weak spot in the seam, ripping it stealthily over several weeks so that the nursing staff did not notice, and secreting pills within the stuffing.
“What sort of place fails to properly search the rooms of suicidal patients?” demanded Jamie. “I told you they could not take care of her and that we should have kept her at home! I told you, Father!”
No one spoke. I suspected that Doctor Hamish and Mrs McAllister had already heard Jamie’s bewildered protests, perhaps many times.
“Jamie…” I began, “she was grievously ill. And nothing can be done now, after all. The best way to show your love for her is to mourn her, and leave her in the peace she evidently sought.”
This did not come out exactly the way I might have wished, but Jamie did not turn on me in anger. He took his hand away from his forehead and looked at me, his eyes fully open and his face in repose. “Well said,” he murmured. “But what of my peace?”
I returned his look. Both of us knew that Jamie could have no peace until the mystery of Lucy McAllister was solved. I longed to tell him what Bridie had said, and my own conclusions about the teind his family had been compelled to pay for so many years. But I could do no more than I had already done; the path to the truth lay in other hands. “You must achieve it as best you can,” I said gently, hoping he understood my message. “It is up to you.”
Mrs McAllister raised her head. “What are you muttering, you two? And where is that tea? Hamish, ring the bell.”
“There is no need,” the doctor assured her. “Bridie will not neglect her duties, though the house is in mourning. Which reminds me, we must all change before luncheon. Jamie, will you put on your best suit for now? We shall go to the tailor’s next week and get you some proper mourning.” He threw his cigarette butt into the fire. “There can be no funeral until the procurator has made his ruling, which may be two weeks or more. The inquest will almost certainly find that she took her own life while in unsound mind, and we may bury her in the Buchanan grave in Drumwithie churchyard. Until then, and for a few weeks afterwards, we must dress in deep mourning.”
So Anne’s resting place would be here at Drumwithie. Where, I wondered, did her sister’s body lie?
Bridie brought the tea while Doctor Hamish was speaking. She had resumed the invisibility of a servant, but I noticed the smudges of sleeplessness under her eyes. Looking at no one, she closed the door silently behind her and we busied ourselves with tea.
Unexpectedly, Mrs McAllister addressed me. “Well, Catriona, what are we to do with you? Hamish will write and tell your mother of ou
r bereavement. I am sure she would like to attend Mrs Buchanan’s funeral, as Hamish attended her husband’s. And so will you, of course. But meanwhile, perhaps you would be better off at home?”
“No!” exclaimed Jamie, with such vigour he almost upset his tea. “She is staying here, with me!” He put down the cup and saucer with a gesture of irritation, and, sliding forward on the sofa cushion, reached out for my hand. “What is the point of Cat going back to Oxfordshire or Warwickshire or wherever it is, only to come all the way back with her mother for the funeral? And anyway, I need her beside me. We have things to do, have we not, Cat?”
Mrs McAllister took in breath to speak, but was prevented by Doctor Hamish, who was looking curiously from Jamie to me and back again. It was a relief to see the return of the usual intelligent expression in his eyes. “What things?” he asked. “Are you two plotting something?”
I hesitated and glanced at Jamie. Fired with sudden energy, he sprang up and pulled me with him. “We are not plotting anything, Father,” he declared, “but someone is!”
Everyone stared at him. “Jamie!” I warned. “Take care!”
But his eyes were alight. “It is here, Cat!” he cried. “The hour is come!”
He was right. There was no more need for concealment. Anne Buchanan was beyond the reach of earthly sorrow, and Lucy’s desire for the truth to be revealed could not be clearer. “Say it, then,” I told him. “Ask your questions. She is listening.”
“Who is listening?” asked Mrs McAllister, her teacup cradled in her gloved hands, her eyes full of distrust.
Jamie turned to his grandmother. She was sitting, he was standing; her head in its wide-brimmed hat was tilted towards his face. In that moment, I thought how alike they looked, and how alike they were. Uncompromising in their opinions, fierce in their loyalty, passionate in their enthusiasms. “Lucy is listening,” said Jamie.
His words fell into silence and lay there like stones. Jamie’s fingers entwined themselves with mine, our knuckles pressing against each other. Knowing he sought my support, I returned his grip.
The Devil's Promise Page 17