‘Now MacBeth’s right hand man, his most feared warrior, was Cathan. Cathan was not only a great warrior in Moray but he had sprung from a line of men who believed in the ancient religion — in the worship of Bel the creator who had been god of the Celts while Rome was just a marshland. Cathan rejected the usurping authority of the Christian missionaries and priesthood — the prattling talk of the Irish monks who swamped the country. Cathan was a druid and descended from a line of druids, masters and keepers of the innermost secrets of the old faith.
‘Cathan knew that Duncan, unable to rely on the loyalty of his angered Scottish clansmen, had sent to the High King of Ireland for Irish mercenaries to help him subdue his own people. Cathan knew the Irish were strong and feared warriors. Had they not turned back the Viking battle hordes at the battle of Clontarf a brief generation before? Had they not smashed Norse power in one mighty blow? What, then, might they do with Scotland torn in civil strife?
‘Cathan told MacBeth his fears and MacBeth urged him to use his druidic skills to bring about the victory, to ensure Duncan’s downfall and death. If he did this then MacBeth would grant to him and his descendants the great clan lands of Strath Errick, the lands of Balmacaan for ever.’
Jeannie yawned in boredom.
‘And Cathan used his skills and MacBeth became king, is that it?’ she sneered. ‘And what did Cathan do … summon up an army or something?’
Telstan looked at her seriously.
‘What did he do? Why, Cathan summoned up the great beast from the depths of Loch Ness to aid him and so Duncan was defeated.’
Jeannie suddenly remembered.
‘Oh yes,’ she grinned. ‘Colonel Maitland did tell me that quaint little legend.’
Telstan sprang to his feet, eyes blazing.
‘I should wait a while before you laugh, Miss Millbuie.’
There was something in his face which caused Jeannie to pause in her mirth.
‘Rather than listen to ancient history,’ she began, ‘I would like to know what I am doing here. Why did you and Mrs Murdo pretend you disliked each other so intensely when you were really scheming behind my back?’
Telstan, recovering his humour, waved a dismissing hand.
‘That is not important. A mere subterfuge. We felt that if we pretended to be enemies and you became suspicious of one or other of us, you would confide to the other and we would thus know what was going on in your mind.’
Jeannie stared at him in amazement.
‘And why?’ she pressed.
Telstan reseated himself.
‘Let me continue with the story of Cathan,’ he said.
Jeannie sighed.
‘Must we go on with this fairy tale?’
This time Telstan did not flinch.
‘Fairy tale?’ he smiled gently. ‘Well … History records the slaughter of the Irish mercenaries at the battle in which Duncan was finally overcome and slain. It was in 1040 AD at a spot near Burghead near Elgin. MacBeth assumed the High Kingship and ruled wisely and well for seventeen years. And history also knows that Cathan of the Yellow Honey, Cathan Millbuie, was granted the clan lands in Strath Errick as MacBeth had promised him. It was here, on this very spot, that Cathan built his great dun or fortress. Yet it was his sons who eventually raised the first lasting castle built entirely of stone and also the adjacent settlement. So it was named after them — the homestead of Cathan’s sons or, in the ancient language, Baile Mac Cathain. Balmacaan has stood for generations, ever since Cathan used his druidic skills to help MacBeth win the throne!’
‘It is a fascinating tale, Mr Telstan. But I still fail to see what pertinence it has for me apart from an interest in my family history.’
Telstan looked at her gently and shook his head.
‘Surely, the good colonel, such an expert on history, told you how the druid Cathan summoned the great beast of Loch Ness to his aid?’
‘As a matter of fact, he did. He told me that stories of the monster in Loch Ness have been current right through Scottish history.’
‘The monster is a reality. The Loch Ness Monster, Nessie, the each uisge or water horse, the Kelpie and the Silkie, they are all one and the same creature.’
Jeannie looked at the chubby-faced man to see if he were joking. His face was deadly serious and Jeannie felt a quiver of apprehension go through her frame. The man was obviously mad.
‘Yes, Miss Millbuie. The so-called monster exists and has existed for thousands of years.’
‘So why isn’t it in a zoo of circus?’ sneered Jeannie. If Telstan was trying to frighten her he was succeeding and she was determined not to show she cared.
‘Miss Millbuie, we are talking about a creature who is the survivor of a race who is as superior to the human species as we are to the monkeys.’
‘Sometimes there isn’t as much difference between certain humans and monkeys as men appear to think,’ retorted Jeannie spiritedly.
Telstan’s face quivered for a moment in anger. But he controlled himself again.
‘I am sorry that you are taking this so flippantly, young lady. I wanted you to learn something of your situation.’
‘I am doing my best to learn that, Mr Telstan, but I am afraid you are not making much sense to me.’
‘I am trying to tell you that there is in Loch Ness a creature, an intelligent being from another race.’
Jeannie sighed.
‘Why tell me? Wasn’t it Bertram Mills Circus who offered £20,000 for the capture of the Loch Ness Monster?’
Telstan ignored her.
‘This creature is called a Saurian, the last of its race to survive from a period when its kind dominated the earth. Yes, young lady, a race that existed many millions of years ago.’
‘As far as I know,’ replied Jeannie, ‘a Saurian is a species of reptile, from the Greek word sauros meaning a lizard … brontosaurus, dinosaurs, ichthyosaurs, stegosaurs, tyrannosaurus … they were just a lot of overgrown lizards without brains and they all died out.’
‘No, no, no,’ interrupted an exasperated Telstan. ‘There was another branch of the species, a branch that mankind does not generally know of. True they were part of the Saurian species but as distant from the brontosaurs and dinosaurs as we are from the baboons and gorillas. This race of Saurians were, as I have said, intelligent and civilised.’
‘Then what happened to them?’ demanded Jeannie in amusement.
‘Exactly the same as is happening to the human race,’ said Telstan. ‘They became jealous of each other, jealousy turned to fear, fear to hatred. They warred with each other. They changed the climatic conditions of the earth. It grew too cold for them. All their great advances into the natural sciences and philosophies were lost as each group of Saurians, one by one, destroyed themselves.’
‘So,’ interposed Jeannie, ‘they weren’t that intelligent.’
She wished Telstan would stop this ridiculous lecturing and go. She felt that she would rather be on her own than listening to his insane ramblings.
‘Yet the Saurians,’ Telstan was saying with emphasis, ‘survived on the earth as the dominant life form for near two hundred million years before they succumbed to their own self destruction. And what of man? What of homo sapiens? Here we are, just a short step from Armageddon, when we will either blow ourselves up or poison ourselves with our own pollution. Can we compare ourselves to the Saurians? We have achieved our self-destruction in a few thousand years compared to the Saurians’ hundreds of millions years.’
‘And who told you all about the Saurians?’ asked Jeannie, in an attempt to irritate him.
Telstan’s eyes shone.
‘It did. The creature. The last of the Saurian race.’
Jeannie suppressed a shudder and told herself that the man was harmless. But, she suddenly thought about Lachlan MacVey’s dead body. And of Rhona, his poor mute daughter who suddenly found the power of speech.
‘Why was Lachlan MacVey killed?’ she suddenly changed the subject.
/> Telstan frowned.
‘He tried to go against the order. He was an outsider anyway. His parents were born in Balmacaan but left. MacVey was born outside the village. But he came back a few years ago with his daughter. He tried to join the order, he offered his daughter. The experiment was unsuccessful and the girl fell into a state of shock from which she never spoke again. We were not to blame. It was MacVey. He wanted so much the power; to join the order. But he tried to harm us. He had to be destroyed.’
Jeannie stared at the minister on the verge of panic.
Were they all mad? Telstan obviously was. But Mrs Murdo and Miss Struan? What incredible fantasy were they weaving? Monsters in Loch Ness? Ancient Scottish history? Murder? What did it all mean? She drew herself back from the edge of hysteria and tried to collect herself.
‘Do not think that I am mad, Miss Millbuie,’ Telstan’s voice cut sharply through her thoughts. ‘It is a lot for an outsider to accept, I know, but then you are a Millbuie.’
‘Well? And if I accept that there is a creature called a Saurian in Loch Ness and that a remote ancestor of mine controlled it? What then?’
‘He did not control it. He summoned its help. But let me finish my story. As I said, the Saurians turned on each other and eventually destroyed themselves. New life forms, mutations and evolutionary species, began to develop again and homo sapiens appeared. But here and there, even though the climate of the earth was changing, there were some small pockets of Saurians who survived the conflict. Their life spans were far longer than anything that we can encompass. The average Saurian age, I believe, was a space of nearly three thousand years.
‘It came about that some of these surviving Saurians established homes in the great lakes and fjords of Scotland and around their isolated existence there grew up in the mythology of man tales of sea monsters, of Kelpies, of Silkies and of perhaps the greatest water monster of them all … the Loch Ness Monster.
‘Aye, it was in Loch Ness that, finally, the last of the Saurians made its home. A great intelligence whose knowledge of natural science and philosophy, with his cultural backing of millions of years, would make a modern human scientist today into a mere witch doctor. But the creature was the last of its race … the very last Saurian.
‘Two thousand years ago it had a mate and an offspring by that mate to perpetuate the line. But when Colm Cille, or St Columba as he has become known, came from Iona and preached Christianity to the Celts, he encountered the Saurian. In that encounter, Colm Cille set off some underwater subsidence which led to the destruction of the Saurian’s mate. Just before that, some ignorant hunters had destroyed the egg that contained the Saurian offspring. So from that day, the creature has been alone. Entirely alone.’
Jeannie said nothing. She just wished that this madman would go away and leave her alone.
‘Quite rightly, the Saurian blamed the followers of Colm Cille for the death of its mate and its offspring and it hates all followers of the Cross.’
Telstan paused and looked at Jeannie sharply.
‘You know the pact that Cathan of the Yellow Honey made to the creature? You know what he promised the creature in return for his aid?’
Jeannie sighed.
‘Yes. Colonel Maitland told me. He promised to supply him with a kinswoman to bear him an offspring.’
Telstan smiled.
‘Yes. A kinswoman. And if she failed to supply that offspring Cathan’s descendants would supply a further mate for the Saurian. Every fifth generation, at the time of the Saurian mating cycle, a woman of the Millbuie clan would be given as a mate for the Saurian.’
Jeannie, her mind dulled by the recital, did not take in what Telstan was saying.
‘If you say so, Mr Telstan. But what has all this to do with me?’
‘Don’t you see, Miss Millbuie. Don’t you see?’
Telstan’s voice was excited.
Dumbly, Jeannie shook her head.
‘We, Mrs Murdo, Miss Struan and I, we are the survivors of the village of Balmacaan, of the clansmen of Cathan. When Cathan made his pledge to the Saurian, he swore those of his druidic circle into the pact as well lest his line die out and there be no one to fulfil his obligation to the Saurian. The ancient knowledge descended from father to son, from mother to daughter, all these many years … from generation unto the next generation, from the sturdy warrior clansmen who built Balmacaan to those poor few of us who are left here today. The knowledge survived; the druidic order of Cathan survived.
‘Aye, in recent times things have gone ill for Balmacaan. In the First Great War many young men of the village gave their lives. The few who survived emigrated — mostly to England but some to Australia and America, some even to Glasgow. But those who were sworn to the ancient circle kept to this decaying spot in that knowledge that if we fulfilled our pledge to the Saurian it would, with its powerful intellect, raise a great city where Balmacaan now stands in ruins. Instead of our poverty it would provide great riches. Instead of a dead village, it would give us the world!’
A mad exultant light shone in his eyes.
‘Through the years we have clung fiercely to our hope, waiting and working for the Saurian mating cycle to come. But we had not counted on the old laird, old Donald Millbuie. We thought he was one of our order. We did not, of course, know that your father Dougal Millbuie had survived the wars and brought up a family in London. It was commonly thought that old Donald was the last of the Millbuies. By right of birth, his place was high in the order and it was his responsibility to provide a mate for the Saurian.
‘Aye, we of the order of the third cycle of Bel had not counted on the weakness of old Donald Millbuie.’
Telstan paused.
‘What weakness?’ whispered Jeannie bemused by this recital.
‘Years ago, when he was a young man, old Donald was pledged to wed a beautiful young girl from Aberdeen but when, before his marriage, his father imparted to him the knowledge of the Saurian and the pact the Millbuie family had with it, Donald broke off his engagement. He became a recluse, he saw no one and refused time and again to attend the obligatory ceremonies of the druidic calendar. But we, who had also kept the secret, and the faith, maintained our hope that his blood, the blood of the Millbuies, would finally strengthen him. That he would in some way fulfil the pact.
‘Then last year, last May, we entered into the fifth generation cycle, the Saurian mating cycle. The Saurian demanded fulfilment of the pact. But old Donald rejected the pledge. He was the last of the Millbuie family, he said. The Saurian was a curse which had hung over the family generation after generation, destroying not only the family but the people who had once inhabited Balmacaan. The time had come to end it all. He had ended it. There would be no more Millbuie women to satisfy the Saurian’s lust. And so the Saurian turned on the old laird in fury and old Donald’s heart gave out.
‘For a while we of the third cycle of the order of Bel did not know what to do. The Millbuies were gone, so we thought. Were we now doomed?’
He smiled broadly.
‘But then we heard that a Millbuie had inherited Balmacaan … a Millbuie woman. We have been redeemed in the eyes of the Saurian. Redeemed by your timely appearance. This time we shall be successful.’
Jeannie shrank back on the bed.
‘Successful?’ she whispered, a nameless terror welling within her.
‘Oh yes. Unfortunately the previous attempts to provide a mate for the Saurian have failed. Either the offspring dies or the woman dies. But no matter. We have learnt a lot during the past generations. All will be well this time. Mrs Murdo and Miss Struan will attend the birth.
‘Do not worry. Mating between a human and a Saurian has been done before. In Scottish legend there is an account of it. It is told how another Saurian, who was known as the Great Silkie of Sule Skerry, a superhuman denizen of the great depths, begat a child of a human woman and after the offspring was born, the Silkie came to reclaim it and together they swam off into the sea. But t
he legend also says that the husband of the woman who had borne the Silkie’s offspring, took bow and arrows and went and shot the Silkie and the creature that was his offspring.’
Jeannie suddenly found herself babbling in her terror.
Was she really understanding correctly what this chubby-faced man was saying?
‘What do you mean … ?’ she managed to sob.
‘Why, Miss Millbuie. I am sorry the matter so distresses you. But how can I make it plainer? We have entered the period of the fifth generation since the last offering was made to the Saurian of a mate. And you are the last of the Millbuies, not to mention the fact you are a Millbuie woman. How can you ask such questions after my tedious explanation?’
Jeannie felt a chilling sickness.
‘Tell me, tell me what you mean?’ she gasped hysterically. ‘You are to mate with the Saurian. That is why I have come to tell you to prepare yourself.’
It seemed as if Jeannie heard someone screaming hysterically from a long, long way away. She remembered feeling mildly surprised when she realised that it was herself, then she plunged into a deep velvet blackness.
INTERLUDE
There was ane monstrous fish seen in the Loch Ness; this creature had a great heid and at times waed stand aboon the waters as high as the mast o’ a ship; and the monster had upon the heid o’ it thereof twa croons …
Note in the margin of
Leabhar Mor na Moireabh
The Great Book of Moray
and dated 1865.
The intelligence gazed, at the alien creature which lay prone before it without compassion. Compassion was a luxury. Besides, it was not a feeling that could enter its mind for it had no wish to relieve the suffering of the puny man-thing which lay unconscious — supine — before it. It had no regret for that which was about to happen.
No regret; only hope.
If it were not for that hope the intelligence would have ceased to be a long time before. Hope was its best, its only possession. Hope was necessary to its condition; the misery of its loneliness could not have endured these countless centuries without the thought, the urge, the desire, the hope that it would soon be the progenitor of another link in the chain of Saurian evolution, the forger of another link, another expansion of the collective consciousness of all that had gone before; generation after generation of Saurians, their hopes, fears, desires, their learning and, their wisdom. The hope that it could, through this means, survive for just one more generation; that was the driving force of its long, lonely life.
The Curse of Loch Ness Page 18