The Night Side

by Melanie Jackson

  “Nothing! Have I not said so repeatedly?” Frances asked, stomping up the narrow cliff trail, her tiny feet sinking deeply into the loose shale. “If a ghost took away his manhood then he must ask the ghost to bring it back!”

  “Ghost?” Colin knew he sounded startled.

  “The matter is a little unusual,” George explained, breathing heavily as he toiled upward after his cousin. “Now that Tearlach cannot be with a woman anymore, he likes to talk about…things. This kind of speech used to aid him in…well…things. He thinks that maybe speaking with Frances will help him to become himself again and then he can lie with a woman.”

  “I see.” Colin had to admit that if anything could reanimate wilted flesh it would be Frances Balfour. “But the ghost—”

  “But Frances does not care for it, as it is disrespectful,” George went on. “And I do not care for his music. It hurts my ears until I cannot think. That is probably what chased the ghost away.”

  “What ghost?” Colin demanded for a third time.

  “Oh, the one that appeared after my father died. It blamed Tearlach for being alive when my father was dead. Since then he hasn’t been able to um…do things.”

  “What idiocy!” But was it? The pipes squealed again, causing a shooting pain in Colin’s skull. “Why has no one thrashed this creature and taken his pipes away?” Colin demanded.

  “It’s bad luck to hurt a piper,” George explained as they topped the rise. “And we have no other to replace him. Ranald used to be our piper, but he is dead. And frankly, no one wants to risk any more bad luck. Besides, I don’t know who could kill him, as all the men are—”

  “Ah, merciful Virgin!” Frances swore, a hand laid against the shapely bosom that jutted beneath her silken leine. “He comes!”

  “Aye, but he has his plaid on,” George reminded her. “And he has not said anything to you. Yet.”

  “If he speaks to me of pudendum, notches, ruts, heaping, coiting—”

  “Quite!” Colin interrupted, horrified at the list of indelicate words tripping off Mistress Balfour’s delicate tongue.

  “You are to beat him,” Frances instructed. “I insist upon it.”

  “Certainly.” And he would, too. It occurred to Colin that his original thought that this poor creature might be suffering from more than lameness of staff could be correct, for this belief in impotence-causing ghosts sounded like an extreme weakness of the mind. Still, even the stupidest of creatures could be taught to avoid certain things if the right techniques were applied.

  MacJannet coughed again, warning them that Tearlach was upon them.

  “Leave us,” Frances said imperiously. Her tiny foot tapped impatiently. “I do not want you here.”

  “Now, mistress! Ye ken that a cannae leave ye alone wi’ strange men.”

  “I am not alone. My cousin is here, and these are not strange men. This is Monsieur Colin Mortlock, my Master of the Gowff, and his servant, MacJannet.”

  “A sassun! Clasped at yer bosom?” Tearlach gasped. “Well, most surely I cannae leave ye now. We know wha manner o’ people these sassuns are.”

  “No one is clasped at my bosom. Nor shall they be,” Frances Balfour said stonily. “My bosom is quite alone and contentedly so.”

  “And what manner of person is that, ancient one?” Colin asked, more amused than offended. While the old man searched his memory for more insulting words, he hurried on, “Any road, I am only part sassun. I am of clan MacLeod on my mother’s side.”

  “And mair the shame for it! A MacLeod! As well to hae a starving wolf in our midst.”

  Colin was inclined to agree but could hardly say so with Frances and George standing about. “Be that as it may, if you are to remain with us, I must insist upon silence while I instruct my students. If you cause them to miss a shot I shall have to throw you into the sea to collect their balls,” he explained pleasantly, earning a look of approval from his new mistress.

  “Aye! You and wha’ army, ye fiery pimpled pillico—Ack!” The old man got no further before Colin picked him up and hove him over the side of the short cliff.

  It was not a long drop and there were no boulders below; still, Colin watched attentively to see that the oldster did in fact emerge from the surf with limbs unbroken. His present goal was to instruct, not maim.

  “He fell in the water,” Frances said on a note of disappointment, watching as the bedraggled man toiled back up the cliff face.

  “Aye, but it is very cold water,” Colin answered consolingly. “And now he shall have to go and find dry clothing. So we will be left in peace.”

  However, Tearlach did not follow this sensible course. It took him a few moments to regain the cliff top, but when he did, he turned immediately in their direction. His expression was dogged.

  “So, it is as I feared. The man is daft,” Colin said softly to MacJannet.

  “So it would appear.”

  “This may prove fatiguing.” Colin selected a club at random and handed it to Frances Balfour. “I should like to see your form with my stick in hand,” he said blandly.

  She did not react to his leading remark, suggesting to Colin that in spite of her horrifying vocabulary she truly was an innocent.

  “As you wish.” Frances’s face and voice were both dubious, but she calmly set about addressing the ball. Her swing was clean and forceful, and it sent the leather pouch straight into the air, where it fell to earth only a few feet away.

  “Mon Dieu!” she breathed, dismayed.

  “Not at all, mistress,” Colin said quickly. “That is the design of this club. I thought we should see how they all performed before resuming the game.”

  “Ah! That is sensible,” she said, relaxing. “George, you must try this one. It will be good for sand.”

  The dripping Tearlach rejoined them. “You must be one for coo-kissing,” he said, squinting at Colin through dripping gray locks.

  “He means that you are rough, sir,” MacJannet translated, sotto voce. He added, before Colin could react violently: “Coo-kissing is a mild vulgarism but not actually indecent speech.”

  “I shall be rougher still if you use impolite language in front of your mistress again,” Colin said sternly, handing the club to George. He instructed the lad: “Move up a wee bit and try to keep your head down.”

  Tearlach searched Colin’s expression, and finding strict purpose there, wisely waited to speak until George had finished his swing and the ball landed back in the same place it began.

  “How should I ken yer intentions tae the mistress? There were a sassun here once what went after a lass, and before he went away she was left in full disgrace and broken-kneed.”

  “What? He broke her knees?” Colin asked, distracted in spite of himself. “Try again, George.”

  “The saying is actually ‘she hath broken her leg above the knee,’” MacJannet explained.

  “Aye—and so she had been! Hit on master vein, she was by this sassun fancier of the kirtles! And he didnae do right by her.”

  “He means that this unfortunate maid had a child filiated upon her by a dissolute person from England who fled before a marriage could be arranged,” MacJannet reported, clearly warming to his role as Tearlach’s interpreter.

  “Thank you, MacJannet, I followed that much. Hush now, both of you. George, try that swing again. You are still throwing your head up. I may have to tie a heavy stone to your neck to help you recall the need to keep your head still.”

  “Does that work?” the boy asked hopefully.

  “Aye, but it is best used only as a last resort. ‘Tis too easy to lose one’s teeth when the stone flies up.”

  “Oh.”

  George looked down with determination. This time the ball managed to travel a couple of feet. Deciding not to press his luck, Colin urged them to move on.

  Below he could hear the bellowing cattle coming up onto land. They sounded no happier than the sheep, but at least they were alive.

  Tearlach followed them d
eterminedly, though he was plainly interested in the cows milling upon the beach. “They’re aboot as restful as a nose full o’ wasps,” he observed. “They took tae that ocean wi’ as much pleasure as the Devil takes tae holy water.”

  Colin handed Frances a different club and stood back smartly. It took her only a moment to let fly with a mighty swing. The leather ball sailed into the sky and seemed to disappear into the clouds.

  “Bien Dieu!” she breathed happily if irreverently. Her smile was ecstatic.

  “That one’s away wi’ the angles.” Tearlach exhaled through his teeth in veneration. “Who’d have thought that some wee lassie could hit a baw sae far?”

  “Frances, that was amazing!” George congratulated. “You’ve never hit one so long.”

  Colin was astounded, too, but did not permit himself to gasp.

  “Very nice,” he said cautiously. “We shall have to see where it landed, of course, but excellently done.”

  Frances smiled at him, eyes shining. “Ah! Splendid! I wish that we might play all the day and on every day. It is of much good fortune that you have come to us, Monsieur Mortlock. It seems that I shall actually have to say sincere thanks to the laird of the Mac-Leods for his suggestion of a Master of Gowff.”

  Colin returned her smile but thought: Play golf all the day and on every day? He prayed that this would not be the case, or he, too, would have something to say to his cousin, and it would not be words of thanks.

  He made a mental note to instruct MacJannet to pray nightly for rain. He would do it himself, but he and the Lord had not been on the best of terms in recent years.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The twelvemonth and a day being up,

  The dead began to speak:

  ‘Oh who sits weeping on my grave,

  And will not let me sleep?’

  —“The Unquiet Grave”

  Eventually the game came to an end and Colin was finally allowed to enter the keep. It was a good thing that things had gone smoothly with his introduction to his employer, because the MacLeod’s ship had not waited for him. He was stranded with the Balfours until his cousin chose to rescue him.

  Noltland Castle came as rather a surprise. The first interesting feature was an iron yett that might be used to close upon hostile visitors. It had not the strength of some of the Norman fortifications, lacking a moat and bridge that might be drawn up, yet it was certainly something for which King James II should have been petitioned when it was installed in the last century. The castle was clearly a defensive fortification and could be used against the crown if taken by hostile forces.

  Also of interest were a conspicuous number of shot holes built into the walls, a feature rarer in castles built in the last century, when the perpendicular style had been waning. In all, the keep had been designed with one purpose, and that was to hinder intruders. It was not a pleasure palace where lords might play in between their hunts and carouses.

  Given that he liked his hosts, Colin tried to put aside his years as an intelligencer and to look at the castle and its inhabitants with the eye of a guest. But it was in his nature to evaluate every new situation for its potential danger to both his person and the crown. Seen with these experienced eyes, the second unwelcome thing that intruded upon his notice was the extreme stillness within the keep’s walls.

  Of course it was not completely noiseless. There was the eddying wind, which carried the familiar odors of fiery peat and sea. And there were the noises from fowl, which hunted grain in the courtyard while doing their best to avoid a group of children intent on playing some game that involved tossing pebbles at the birds and ominous chants of “Pullet gullet.” There were also the ripples of hushed female conversations that echoed softly off of the stone walls that sided the small yard.

  In the distance was the slow clanging of a smith at work, though the blows he struck sounded as lazy and weak as a child’s. All about Colin was the hushed quietude of a churchyard.

  A churchyard. Colin nodded at this description. It fit well. There were no horses about, and of the cattle and sheep that had come from the MacLeod, there was no sign. Colin assumed them to be grazing out on the heath—he hoped that they found something to eat out there. Belatedly it occurred to him that bringing animals to Noltland had been a mistake. If there was not enough grazing for them, they would have to be slaughtered immediately and that would be a waste.

  Colin frowned and exchanged a long look with MacJannet, who nodded slowly.

  It reassured Colin that MacJannet felt the strangeness as well. His bored brain was not imagining things. It was too calm. There was a sense of silence beyond the stillness of observation that followed the arrival of a stranger into a small and isolated community. Something was amiss at Noltland.

  Mayhap the silence was partly mourning for the dead laird and his sons, but still it seemed to him that there should have been the sound of men practicing their swordplay or shooting at butts, and there should have been laughter as they teased each other about their mistakes or praised one another’s prowess. However, the courtyard was bereft of any males save those who had been in Mistress Balfour’s retinue.

  Colin paused, watching and listening intently. There were a few small buildings standing against the walls, which might serve as stables, but they were stout and shallow, thatched with bracken and pegged with hazel sticks. They would shelter no beast larger than a pig or sheep.

  This was not the sort of place where men would spend their time. It belonged to the women and children. Yet, where could the men be if not in the vacant yard? There were no fields to tend and no sign of nearby crofts.

  Colin looked next at the battlements where he expected to see guards posted, and exhaled in shock. There were no men on the ramparts, only some pikes leaned against the wall and a woman seated on a threelegged stool, winding yarn into balls. Occasionally she would look up from her work and cast an eye over the landscape, but she seemed to be the only lookout facing south.

  Colin turned about slowly. There was another woman seated on the wall that overlooked the sea, but she was occupied with dipping stripped rushes into fat and not paying attention to the MacLeod’s retreating galley.

  To the east and west, the battlements were bare of all but pikes.

  “’Tis a shame,” Tearlach commented, and for one moment Colin wondered if the man had actually perceived his thoughts. But then the oldster went on with an apparent non sequitur: “The master and the Keith were brother starlings. She were a MacKay—and a faithless notch. She betrayed them both wi’ a buckface cuckholder in clan Gunn. She said she were seduced by the master, but I say that nae woman but a halfwit is ever seduced against her will.”

  For the moment, Colin was too distracted to reprimand Tearlach for his conversation, and MacJannet too busy to translate the more unsavory parts.

  Emboldened by Colin’s silence, Tearlach went on. “Master and I used tae gae holing. Had meself a fair horn-colic in them days. The master did envy me that when it came tae wenching. Mayhap he envies me still and that’s why he haunts me.”

  MacJannet finally turned to stare. It was plain to Colin that he understood what the old man said, and equally apparent that MacJannet had no wish to render the words in an understandable vernacular. Colin prayed that the oldster’s conversation was equally incomprehensible to Mistress Balfour, or she would likely renew her demand that the obscene creature be beaten and castrated. That would be a pity, as he seemed the only remaining adult male in the castle, and his information—however garbled—could be of use. Unless it truly was the fallacia consequentis it first appeared to be.

  “Now there is just the laddie.” Tearlach went to clap a hand on George’s back, but the boy skittered away with an expression of distaste. “And how am I tae teach him the proper way fer a man tae drain his juices? We’ve nae agreeable ruts of life aen this castle, saving the mistress. But she’ll nae be coited until after marriage. Though I offered her an herbal pessarie an she wished to lay wi’ a man and n
ot get herself wi’ child.”

  Colin stared in disbelief. “Good God!”

  “Wha?” the old man asked.

  Colin decided that he was unprepared to comment on Tearlach’s offer of birth control, though he was feeling hourly more sympathetic to Frances’s expressed desire to have the old man’s tongue removed. This castle was no place for a lady—and apparently it never had been. The dead Balfour had obviously been diligent about practicing his seigneurial rights among the female inhabitants. How else would he have come to have thirty sons under one roof? Colin found himself moved to pity for the former mistress of Noltland and prayed that he would not meet her ghost.

  “George will learn about these things in the fullness of time—and without your assistance!” Colin said adamantly.

  At least he hoped this was so. This old satyr was not a proper person to see to the morals and education of a youth. There had to be someone else more fitting of guardianship. “Now, we will have no more talk about this. And, if I were you, I would never speak of these things to the lady again. Your mistress is quite capable of knocking your head across the heath any time she chooses. She has already mentioned that you need castrating.”

  Tearlach turned and eyed Mistress Balfour with new caution. Her swing with these newer, heavier clubs was indeed formidable, and there could be no denying that she—most inexplicably—did not care for his presence. At the moment she was engaged in conversation with an elderly woman who was busy drying fish on polished Ballachulish slates, and not paying him any heed, yet she retained her hold on one of the thicker clubs from MacJannet’s basket and was only a few paces distant. That club could do great damage to either his head or his other, more valued, organ.

  “And another word of advice,” Colin added. “Do not play those pipes before dawn or I will hunt you down and throw them into the sea.”

  “Ach! That willnae hurt them. Many a time it is that they have fallen in the brine.”

  Colin could well believe it. He had never heard pipes sound so ill. They were some horrid degeneration of sound that was closer to screaming than music. Nevertheless, he felt he had to make his threat formidable.