Upon the Solstice

by Cathryn Ramsay

  ‘I’m sure it is,’ replied Bella. ‘I amused myself by searching through some of Uncle’s old books when you were asleep. I think I might take one or two into my bedroom and rest myself.’ She yawned and stretched like a pampered, beribboned kitten. ‘Will someone be in to set our fires in the morning and prepare breakfast? It’s rather deserted behind the baize door at the minute.’

  Bella always referred to the servants’ quarters as “behind the baize door”. It was rather a pretentious thing to say, in my opinion, but it was her prerogative.

  ‘If I’m to be here for any length of time,’ she told me, ‘I think it’s only fair that I engage some more servants. We can manage ourselves in the short term, but...’ She shrugged her shoulders prettily.

  ‘Ceit looks after me,’ I said. ‘I want for nothing.’

  Bella paused, as if she was calculating what to say; but in the end, she simply nodded and came over to my bed.

  She leaned over and kissed me gently on the cheek. ‘Goodnight, my dearest brother. We shall talk properly in the morning.’

  ‘Goodnight Bella-Beautiful,’ I said, using the old pet-name my uncle had given her. I had to ensure she felt as if all was normal and natural and I was simply her tired elder brother, grateful she had come to rescue him from overwork and understaffing.

  I kept the smile on my lips as she blushed prettily and giggled, then hurried away to the door. It shut softy behind her.

  Ceit was there in an instant, turning the key in the lock.

  ‘My darling, sweetest girl,’ I murmured, inviting her back into the bed. She glided over, the most conspiratorial of smiles on her enchanting face and slipped in beside me again. ‘Where did you spring from so artfully?’ I asked gathering her to me and stroking the hair back from her face. ‘Never mind. You don’t need to answer – you just simply need to listen to my plan as best you are able – it’s a very good plan. And I shall guide you every step of the way, I promise.’

  And as she turned her face towards me and stroked my hair back from my face, I began to outline the details as the sun sunk lower in the sky beyond Howard House.

  ***

  Chapter Twenty Six

  My plan had, indeed, been ingenuous.

  Ceit and I slipped out of my room via the balcony. Weak as I had been before, with Ceit beside me I felt invincible. I vaulted over the balcony and hung down by my arms. I dropped onto the gravel a few feet below me, landing as elegantly as an acrobat.

  Ceit leaned over the balcony, clutching onto the stone handrail clearly delighted. When the amusement threatened to explode, she clapped her hands over her mouth as if she would give away our plans with laughter.

  I held my hands up to her and it was only a matter of seconds before she had followed my lead and flung herself over the balcony, and I caught her. I held her close to me for a moment, before setting her down on her feet. Taking my hand, she ran towards the stables, dragging me in her wake. Hushing each other theatrically, we opened the door and released one of the horses from his stable. I quickly put his bridle on and set the reins loosely over his neck. I didn’t bother with a saddle.

  Instead, I lifted Ceit onto the beast and swung myself up behind her. Making sure she was settled, I took the reins and, with a smart crack we were off. My uncle had taught us to ride bare-backed and it was not a skill I thought I should ever have to use. But now it served me well.

  It was almost ten o’clock and the sun had long set but the sky was velvet and the stars lit our way. Ceit looked up at the dark-blue and gracefully waved her arm. Any clouds that had been blotting the moon out parted and we were moonlit and unassailable. I threw back my head and laughed, enjoying the freedom and the motion of the horse beneath us as he dropped his head and flew across the country lanes towards Tarbert.

  Ceit leaned over and grabbed the reins, making the horse swerve onto the fields and we were rushing across the moorland, the mountains purple on the horizon. I shouted for joy and for the sheer elation of our journey.

  ‘It is Beltane!’ I shouted into the wind. ‘A time for new beginnings!’

  All around us, fires glowed on the hillsides as the country folk upheld tradition. I knew there would be dancing and feasting around those fires, small portions set aside for the fae-folk who would be visiting them on this special evening. ‘I’m not afeared of you, you damned Unseelie Court!’ I yelled into the night. ‘Do your worst! I won’t be beaten!’ I was half-convinced Ceit froze a little, but I pulled her closer to me and burrowed my face in her neck, and she reached behind her and wound her arm around my head, yanking me down towards her, tilting her own face upwards to the night sky.

  When I moved away, I saw spots of yellow blooming along our path –all the golden blossoms she had gathered seemed to be scattered before us, creating a pathway for the horse to follow.

  Entranced, I watched as they sprang up before us and led us straight to Tarbert Castle.

  ***

  Chapter Twenty Seven

  ‘We are here! We are here!’ I cried. I leapt down from the horse.

  The horse stood, pawing the ground, steaming and snorting, his eyes rolling back in his head, as exhilarated by the exertion as we were. I thumped his flanks wildly and lifted Ceit down from his back. She was off, running ahead of me, up the hill to the castle.

  ‘Wait for me!’ I shouted, half-laughing. She turned and beckoned, still running backwards, it seemed. Then she spun and danced away into the night. I followed the well-worn track and was not surprised to see a fire already bursting into life at the top of the hill.

  I could make out shapes in front of it – dancing figures shadowed against it, golden flowers piled up around it. Tables laden with feasts and flagons glinting crystal-like stood sentry to the side, by the ruins of the old castle. I did not hesitate. This felt real – this was what was supposed to happen at Beltane. How come I had never experienced this before? I had spent one or two Beltanes with Ruairí in the past; but they had been tame affairs; a small fire in the gardens of Howard House, the servants drinking whisky and us sitting with fruit punch and a carefully prepared picnic between us.

  ‘Come on, Charles!’ I halted in my steps. Ceit was suddenly there, beside me, grabbing my hand and tugging on it.

  ‘Your voice!’ I said. The words came easily, but my mouth seemed to shape them all wrong again. I had a momentary panic where I wondered if she had played that same cruel trick on me and all would be silence when I returned to the village.

  But she laughed and shook her head, reading my mind. ‘No, dearest Charles. Don’t worry. This is my gift to you for bringing me here tonight. It’s the only way you can be one with my people. I can’t explain how wonderful these last few months with you have been in your world – but I can here. You see, part of our lore forces us to lose something when we live amongst humans. It is to offset what we gain. It is a complicated system and not so usual amongst other groups of us – but I am used to the silence. It is not so bad when I can make you understand me. And we do not always need words, do we? Your dreams are the perfect means of expression for me. Now; enough! I am not one to waste words, even when I have the benefit of them. Let us dance.’

  She led me to the edge of the pool of light that surrounded the fire and fitted herself into my arms. From somewhere I heard the sound of pipes and flutes and singing – the tune that I had heard that first time up here. As we dipped and turned in complicated patterns, I looked around me, but the shapes were indistinct as we whirled around, the music guiding our steps.

  Occasionally, someone would brush past me, real and solid yet with no more substance than starlight. I wanted to ask her what she was, what these people were, what she meant by their “lore”; but the words fled from my mind as soon as they formulated. All there was, was the here and now and a wonderful, glorious swirl of colour and ecstasy.

  ‘This is our evening, when we can all be together,’ Ceit shouted over the music, her hair flying free, her dress one I had never seen. I was certai
n we had left Howard House with her wearing her simple white muslin frock but now – now she was dressed in flowing silvery-white; the bodice laced tightly, the sleeves tiny puffs of baby’s-breath. Her skirt fell from her hips in strips of moonlight, flashing and shimmering in the firelight. Golden blossoms were wound into her hair, which in itself seemed longer and wavier. Her eyes were black and gold, flecked with light from the flames. Her cheekbones were contoured by the shadows, her face, pale as always was brushed with roses in her cheeks. Her feet were bare and hardly touched the ground as we danced.

  ‘My God, you are beautiful,’ I said, meaning the words more truly than I had ever done before. ‘I cannot express it – you are just...’

  The words fell away as she pulled me close to her and kissed me. ‘Tomorrow this will be as if you dreamed it,’ she whispered as she drew away. Her eye sparkled with merriment, the dimple in her cheek coming and going as she spoke. ‘We cannot waste one single moment. Tomorrow, you will wonder what happened. You will try to write it down or capture it in a painting. And you will become frustrated and fretful and think you lost your mind. I have seen it all before and am certain I will see it again. But remember I am yours until Midsummer. These last few precious weeks, Charles – they are all we have. You have to be your very best and your most brilliant and if you are, then I shall be grateful for evermore.’

  My mind whirred as I processed the information. Midsummer? Why did we only have until then? I clutched at her, terrified already at the prospect of losing her.

  ‘Don’t leave me,’ I begged. ‘This can’t be a dream. Look. Look at it all – it’s real.’

  ‘It is real, but you won’t remember it as such. That is why—’ a pause as she dragged a perfectly manicure nail gently down my cheek and onto my neck and felt her way under my collar, ‘I can tell you all this.’ She leaned towards me, her breath scented like a summer meadow. ‘I can tell you because you won’t remember it as real. I’ll be as I always was and I will refuse to tell you otherwise.’

  ‘But Ceit—’

  ‘Is this he, is this your lover?’ Voices interrupted us, teasing, amused. ‘Let me dance with him, let me show him what you have not dared to.’

  Ceit shook her head, delighted. ‘No. He is mine. He dances with me alone.’

  ‘Is this your poet? Your artist? Your genius?’

  ‘He is mine and mine alone!’ she cried, suddenly waltzing off with me.

  ‘Just a moment – please, just for a moment.’

  ‘Oh very well - just for a moment then,’ she said, laughing. She pushed me towards a group of shadows and they formed into figures. Stunning women surrounded me, their hair as abundant as Ceit’s; golden yellow, auburn, jet-black. Their tresses were adorned with wreaths of blossom and I felt the happiest man alive.

  ‘You have done well this time,’ they said approvingly. ‘Very well.’

  Their laughter was the tinkling of a brook, more beautiful in harmony then even Ceit’s.

  ‘I thank you, ladies, I thank you,’ I replied, dismissing Ceit’s cryptic conversation and intending to have as much fun as I could. If this is to be forgotten, I thought wildly, why not live it as fully as possible? Who will even berate me in the morning? I bowed low and the laugher became coy as I play-acted up to the females. I realised that I had fully taken on the role of a dashing hero – my own clothes were altered so that I wore a doublet shot through with silvery moonlight and a heavy golden dagger hung from a bejewelled scabbard at my waist.

  Soon, we were all dancing in reels and I lost track of who my partners were, so glorious was the freedom I experienced with the bobbing and twirling. We danced close to the edge of the cliff, laughing and pointing at the crashing waves beneath us. They could not harm us. They would not harm us. We were all invincible – we were all forces of nature.

  I was swinging back towards Ceit, my arm grasping for hers when the murmuring around us became louder, more agitated. Ceit froze, looking over my shoulder.

  ‘Ceit?’ I asked, disconcerted as she pulled her hand away and a murderous look overtook her beautiful features.

  ‘Charles!’

  It was not Ceit’s voice who responded to me. But Bella’s.

  ***

  Chapter Twenty Eight

  ‘Bella! What the hell are you doing here?’ I asked, spinning around to face her.

  I was aware of the voices behind me changing. It was as if they began to chant or intone something I did not understand. I did not know what it was they were saying, but it seemed ungodly and my skin began to prickle with uncertainty.

  ‘I might ask you the same thing!’ cried my sister. She stood before me, wringing her hands like a Penny Dreadful Lady Macbeth. ‘Have you any idea what you look like?’

  Her face in the moonlight looked wan and sickly. Her eyes were huge and she stared at me as if she didn’t know who I was.

  ‘Now without a mirror, my dear girl,’ I cried, the uncertainty suddenly vanishing, ‘how the hell would I know that?’

  I felt as if it was an excellent riposte and turned to face my new friends to witness their amusement and approval. The ladies of a moment ago had melted back into the shadows. I could see them seeping into the walls of the castle, soaking into the ground, disappearing from sight. Apart from one or two who remained and watched us aghast, their incredibly beautiful faces stunned.

  ‘You’re on a filthy, wet hillside next to a rotten pile of stones, talking to yourself and flinging yourself around like a madman in the middle of the night,’ said Bella in a shaking voice. ‘There’s nobody here.’

  ‘There are hundreds of us here!’ I cried, gesturing wildly behind me. ‘Look! See the Beltane fire? And the dancers? And the musicians. There are musicians somewhere, I know it, because we have been dancing to something.’ I paused again waiting for my acolytes to giggle at my wit, but the murmuring and whispering just increased in volume. I strained my ears but I could not understand them. ‘Oh!’ I continued, suddenly remembering. I turned and gestured to Ceit who stood highlighted in a shaft of moonlight. ‘And this is Ceit. You’ve seen her before – at Christmas. I’m going to marry her. She is wonderful, is she not? She’s been my inspiration since she got here. She—’

  ‘Oh God!’ Bella rammed her fist into her mouth, the same shaft of moonlight seeming to move and highlight her. ‘Oh Charles!’ She moved towards me, but I sidestepped her.

  I noticed for the first time that Bella was wearing her olive-green travelling jacket over her nightgown, and the serviceable white garment was muddied about the hemline. Bella’s hair was undone and sticking to her cheeks, all the little ringlets she so carefully teased into it on a daily basis springing about her face in the damp, misty air. For damp and misty it was now, and I shivered. But we had been dancing in the warmth of a bonfire, had we not? And the ground had been firm beneath our feet.

  ‘Has the weather changed?’ I asked, conversationally.

  I was genuinely interested, but Bella just shook her head.

  ‘Charles, none of this is real!’ she said, her voice catching. ‘Nothing you imagine to be happening here – is happening.’

  ‘Ridiculous woman!’ I shouted. Bella cringed, whimpering as I leaned in towards her, furious at her stupidity. ‘Of course it’s real. What are you suggesting?’

  ‘I don’t know!’ she cried. ‘Perhaps you have lost your mind!’

  For the second time in our lives, I slapped her. This time, however, she slapped me back.

  My cheek stung where she had hit it and I raised my hand to retaliate, but she was quicker and raised her riding crop, pointing it at me like a sword. ‘One more step,’ she hissed. ‘Take one more step towards me and God forgive me, Brother, I will not answer for my actions.’

  ‘You are the one who has lost their mind!’ I yelled. ‘You followed me out here, I assume, out of jealousy. You heard Ceit and I discussing the evening and came along to spoil it.’

  ‘Please stop talking about this Ceit!’ screeched Bella. ‘Th
ere is no such person. Believe me, you are alone up here. I followed you because I saw you running across the grounds and taking off on a horse! I’ve been worried sick about you and I see now I had a good right to be. God, if we’d only come to see Ruairí when he lost his mind, perhaps we could have saved him.’

  ‘This has nothing to do with Ruairí!’ I responded.

  ‘It has everything to do with him. Charles, you’re repeating his life! Can’t you see it?’ She was pleading now. ‘Howard House, and your success and your imaginary friends—’ She waved her riding crop in the general direction of the castle ruins. I heard a hissing sound as Ceit’s people clearly took umbrage to Bella’s accusations.

  ‘Bella, I think you are the one who has lost your mind,’ I said, trying to be more rational than she. ‘Ruairí had no imaginary friends. And neither do I.’

  ‘He did, he did!’ she cried. ‘There’s a book—’

  A roar from Ceit as she flew at my sister.

  Swiftly, I turned and grabbed hold of her arm, pulling her back. ‘No, Ceit!’ I said. ‘She’s deluded, she really is.’

  ‘Charles!’ Bella was shaking now. ‘There’s nobody there. There’s nobody with you. I’ve told you. None of what you are thinking is real.’

  ‘Ceit said it wouldn’t seem real in the morning,’ I said, ‘but it’s real now. I think you are the one with the problem, Bella. Wouldn’t you agree, Ceit?’

  ‘For God’s sake, Charles!’ Bella was very close to the edge of the cliff now. I was afraid that if Ceit should fly at her, one of them might slip. I pulled Ceit away and tried to tuck her behind me, out of harm’s way.

  A rumble of thunder sounded over the sea and I looked up. A jagged flash of lightning burst out over the mountains and I sensed a squall coming in from the West.