“Perhaps I could slip upstairs and help Geilie with her hair or something,” I suggested. “I’ve brought her a new ribbon.” Foreseeing the possible need of an excuse for talking to Geilie alone, I had brought a small package with me. Producing it as an excuse, I was through the door and up the stairs before Arthur could protest.
She was ready for me.
“Come on,” she said, “we’ll go up to my private room for this. We’ll have to hurry, but it won’t take too long.”
I followed Geilie up the narrow, twisting stair. The steps were irregular heights; some of the risers were so high I had to lift my skirts to avoid tripping on the way up. I concluded that seventeenth-century carpenters either had faulty methods of measuring or rich senses of humor.
Geilie’s private sanctum was at the top of the house, in one of the remote attics above the servants’ quarters. It was guarded by a locked door, opened by a truly formidable key which Geilie produced from her apron pocket; it must have been at least six inches long, with a broad fretwork head ornamented with a vine-and-flower pattern. The key must have weighed nearly a pound; held by the barrel, it would have made a good weapon. Both lock and hinges were well oiled, and the thick door swung inward silently.
The attic room was small, cramped by the gabled dormers that cut across the front of the house. Shelves lined every inch of wall space, holding jars, bottles, flasks, vials, and beakers. Bunches of drying herbs, carefully tied with threads of different colors, hung neatly in rows from the rafters overhead, brushing my hair with a fragrant dust as we passed beneath.
This was nothing like the clean, businesslike order of the herb room downstairs, though. It was crowded, almost cluttered, and dark in spite of the dormer windows.
One shelf held books, mostly old and crumbling, the spines unmarked. I ran a curious finger over the row of leather bindings. Most were calf, but there were two or three bound in something different; something soft, but unpleasantly oily to the touch. And one that to all appearances was bound in fish skin. I pulled a volume out and opened it gingerly. It was handwritten in a mixture of archaic French, and even more obsolete Latin, but I could make out the title. L’Grimoire d’le Comte St. Germain.
I closed the book and set it back on the shelf, feeling a slight shock. A grimoire. A handbook of magic. I could feel Geilie’s gaze boring into my back, and turned to meet a mixture of mischief and wary speculation. What would I do, now that I knew?
“So it isn’t a rumor, then, is it?” I said, smiling. “You really are a witch.” I wondered just how far it went, and whether she believed it herself, or whether these were merely the trappings of an elaborate make-believe that she used to alleviate the boredom of marriage to Arthur. I also wondered just what sort of magic she practiced—or thought she practiced.
“Oh, white,” she said, grinning. “Definitely white magic.”
I thought ruefully that Jamie must be right about my face—everyone seemed to be able to tell what I was thinking.
“Well, that’s good,” I said. “I’m really not much of a one for dancing round bonfires at midnight and riding brooms, let alone kissing the Devil’s arse.”
Geilie tossed back her hair and laughed delightedly.
“Ye don’t kiss anyone’s much, that I can see,” she said. “Nor do I. Though if I had a sweet fiery devil like yours in my bed, I’ll not say I might not come to it in time.”
“That reminds me—” I began, but she had already turned away, and was about her preparations, murmuring to herself.
Checking first to see that the door was securely locked behind us, Geilie crossed to the gabled window and rummaged in a chest built into the window seat. She pulled out a large, shallow pan and a tall white candle stuck in a pottery holder. A further foray produced a worn quilt, which she spread on the floor as protection against dust and splinters.
“What exactly is it you’re planning to do, Geilie?” I asked, examining the preparations suspiciously. Off-hand, I couldn’t see much sinister intent in a pan, a candle, and a quilt, but then I was a novice magician, to say the least.
“Summoning,” she said, tugging the corners of the quilt around so that the sides lay straight with the boards of the floor.
“Summoning whom?” I asked. Or what.
She stood and brushed her hair back. Baby-fine and slippery, it was coming down from its fastenings. Muttering, she yanked the pins from her hair and let it fall down in a straight, shiny curtain, the color of heavy cream.
“Oh, ghosts, spirits, visions. Anything ye might have need of,” she said. “It starts the same in any case, but the herbs and the words are different for each thing. What we want now is a vision—to see who it is who’s ill-wished ye. Then we can turn the ill-wish back upon them.”
“Er, well …” I really had no wish to be vindictive, but I was curious—both to see what summoning was like, and to know who had left me the ill-wish.
Setting the pan in the middle of the quilt, she poured water into it from a jug, explaining, “You can use any vessel big enough to make a good reflection, though the grimoire says to use a silver bassin. Even a pond or a puddle of water outside will do for some kinds of summoning, though it must be secluded. Ye need peace and quiet to do this.”
She passed rapidly from window to window, drawing the heavy black curtains until virtually all the light in the room was extinguished. I could barely see Geilie’s slender form flitting through the gloom, until she lit the candle. The wavering flame lit her face as she carried it back to the quilt, throwing wedge-shaped shadows under the bold nose and chiseled jaw.
She set the candle next to the pan of water, on the side away from me. She filled the pan very carefully, so full that the water bulged slightly above the rim, kept from spilling by its surface tension. Leaning over, I could see that the surface of the water provided an excellent reflection, far better than that obtainable in any of the Castle’s looking glasses. As though mind reading again, Geilie explained that in addition to its use in summoning spirits, the reflecting pan was an excellent accessory for dressing the hair.
“Don’t bump into it, or you’ll get soaked,” she advised, frowning in concentration as she lit the candle. Something about the practical tone of the remark, so prosaic in the midst of these supernatural preparations, reminded me of someone. Looking up at the slender, pallid figure, stooping elegantly over the tinderbox, I couldn’t think at first of whom she reminded me. But of course. While no one could be less like that dowdy figure athwart the teapot in Reverend Wakefield’s study, the tone of voice had been that of Mrs. Graham, exactly.
Perhaps it was an attitude they shared, a pragmatism that regarded the occult as merely a collection of phenomena like the weather. Something to be approached with cautious respect, of course—much as one would take care in using a sharp kitchen knife—but certainly nothing to avoid or fear.
Or it might have been the smell of lavender water. Geilie’s loose, flowing gowns smelled always of the essences she distilled: marigold, chamomile, bay leaf, spikenard, mint, marjoram. Today, though, it was lavender that drifted from the folds of the white dress. The same scent that permeated Mrs. Graham’s practical blue cotton and wafted from the corrugations of her bony chest.
If Geilie’s chest was likewise underlaid by such skeletal supports, there was no hint of it visible, in spite of her robe’s low neckline. It was the first time I had seen Geilie Duncan en déshabille; customarily she wore the severe and voluminous gowns, buttoned high at the neck, that were suitable to the wife of a fiscal. The swelling opulence now revealed was a surprise, a creamy abundance almost the same shade as the dress she wore, and gave me some idea why a man like Arthur Duncan might have married a penniless girl of no family. My eye went involuntarily to the line of neatly labeled jars along the wall, looking for saltpeter.
Geilie selected three of the jars from the shelf, pouring a small quantity from each into the bowl of a tiny metal brazier. She lit the layer of charcoal underneath from the ca
ndle flame, and blew on the dawning flame to encourage it. A fragrant smoke began to rise as the spark took hold.
The air in the attic was so still that the greyish smoke rose straight up without diffusing, forming a column that echoed the shape of the tall white candle. Geilie sat between the two columns like a priestess in her temple, legs folded gracefully under her.
“Well then, that will do nicely, I think.” Briskly dusting crumbs of rosemary from her fingers, Geilie surveyed the scene with satisfaction. The black drapes, with their mystic symbols, shut out all intrusive beams of sunlight, and left the candle as the only source of direct illumination. The flame was reflected and diffused through the pan of still water, which seemed to glow as though it, too, were a source rather than a reflection of light.
“What now?” I inquired.
The large grey eyes glowed like the water, alight with anticipation. She waved her hands across the surface of the water, then folded them between her legs.
“Just sit quiet for a moment,” she said. “Listen to your heartbeat. Do you hear it? Breathe easy, slow and deep.” In spite of the liveliness of her expression, her voice was calm and slow, a distinct contrast to her usual sprightly conversation.
I obediently did as she instructed, feeling my heart slow as my breathing steadied to an even rhythm. I recognized the scent of rosemary in the smoke, but I wasn’t sure of the other two herbs; foxglove, perhaps, or cinquefoil? I had thought the purple flowers were those of nightshade, but surely that couldn’t be. Whatever they were, the slowness of my breathing did not seem to be attributable only to the power of Geilie’s suggestion. I felt as though a weight were pressing against my breastbone, slowing my breathing without my having to will it.
Geilie herself sat perfectly still, watching me with unblinking eyes. She nodded, once, and I looked down obediently into the still surface of the water.
She began to talk, in an even, conversational way that reminded me again of Mrs. Graham, calling down the sun in the circle of stones.
The words were not English, and yet not quite not English, either. It was a strange tongue, but one I felt that I should know, as though the words were spoken just below the level of my hearing.
I felt my hands begin to go numb, and wanted to move them from their folded position in my lap, but they wouldn’t move. Her even voice went on, soft and persuading. Now I knew that I understood what was being said, but still could not summon the words to the surface of my mind.
I realized dimly that I was either being hypnotized, or under the influence of some drug, and my mind took some last foothold on the edge of conscious thought, resisting the pull of the sweet-scented smoke. I could see my reflection in the water, pupils shrunk to pinpoints, eyes wide as a sun-blind owl’s. The word “opium” drifted through my fading thoughts.
“Who are you?” I couldn’t tell which of us had asked the question, but I felt my own throat move as I answered, “Claire.”
“Who sent you here?”
“I came.”
“Why did you come?”
“I can’t tell.”
“Why can’t you tell?”
“Because no one will believe me.”
The voice in my head grew still more soothing, friendly, beguiling.
“I will believe you. Believe me. Who are you?”
“Claire.”
A sudden loud noise broke the spell. Geilie started and her knee bumped the bassin, startling the reflection back into the water.
“Geillis? My dear?” A voice called through the door, tentative yet commanding. “We must be going, my dear. The horses are ready, and you’re not yet gowned.”
Muttering something rude under her breath, Geilie rose and flung open the window, so that the fresh air rushed into my face, making me blink and dispelling some of the fog in my head.
She stood looking down at me speculatively, then stooped to help me up.
“Come along, then,” she said. “Come over a bit queer, have you? Sometimes it takes folk that way. You’d best lie down on my bed while I dress.”
I lay flat on the coverlet in her bedroom below, eyes closed, listening to the small rustling noises Geilie made in her privy closet, wondering what the hell that had been all about. Nothing to do with the ill-wish or its sender, clearly. Only with my identity. With sharpness returning gradually to my wits, it occurred to me to wonder whether Geilie perhaps was a spy for Colum. Placed as she was, she heard the business and the secrets of the whole district. And who, other than Colum, would be so interested in my origins?
What would have happened, I wondered, had Arthur not interrupted the summoning? Would I have heard, somewhere in the scented fog, the standard hypnotist’s injunction, “When you wake, you will remember nothing”? But I did remember, and I wondered.
In the event, however, there was no chance to ask Geilie about it. The bedroom door flew open, and Arthur Duncan came in. Crossing to the door of the privy closet, he knocked once, hastily, and went in.
There was a small startled scream from within, and then dead silence.
Arthur Duncan reappeared in the door, eyes wide and staring-blind, face so white that I thought perhaps he was suffering an attack of some sort. I leaped to my feet and hurried toward him as he leaned heavily against the door jamb.
Before I reached him, though, he pushed himself away from the door and went out of the room, staggering slightly, pushing past me as though he didn’t see me.
I knocked on the door myself.
“Geilie! Are you all right?”
There was a moment’s silence, then a perfectly composed voice said, “Aye, of course. I’ll be out in a moment.”
When we at length descended the stairs, we found Arthur, apparently somewhat recovered, sipping brandy with Jamie. He seemed a bit abstracted, as though he were thinking of something, but greeted his wife with a mild compliment on her appearance, before sending the groom for the horses.
The banquet was just beginning as we arrived, and the fiscal and his wife were shown to their places of honor at the head table. Jamie and I, somewhat lower in status, took our places at a table with Rupert and Ned Gowan.
Mrs. Fitz had excelled herself, and beamed in gratification at the compliments heaped upon the food, the drink, and other preparations.
It was in fact delicious. I had never tasted roast pheasant stuffed with honeyed chestnuts, and was helping myself to a third slice, when Ned Gowan, watching in some amusement at my appetite, asked whether I had yet tried the suckling pig.
My reply was interrupted by a stir at the far end of the Hall. Colum had risen from his table, and was headed toward me, accompanied by Old Alec MacMahon.
“I see there is no end to your talents, Mistress Fraser,” Colum remarked, bowing slightly. A broad smile marked the arresting features.
“From dressing wounds and healing the sick to delivering foals. We shall be calling upon you to raise the dead before long, I suppose.” There was a general chuckle at this, though I noticed one or two men glancing nervously in the direction of Father Bain, in attendance this evening, who was methodically stuffing himself with roast mutton in the corner.
“In any case,” Colum continued, reaching into his coat pocket, “you must allow me to present you with a small token of my gratitude.” He handed me a small wooden box, lid carved with the MacKenzie badge. I hadn’t realized just how valuable a horse Losgann was, and mentally thanked whatever benign spirits presided over such events that nothing had gone wrong.
“Nonsense,” I said, trying to give it back. “I didn’t do anything out of the way. It was only luck that I have small hands.”
“Nevertheless.” Colum was firm. “If you prefer, consider it a small wedding gift, but I wish you to have it.”
At a nod from Jamie, I reluctantly accepted the box and opened it. It contained a beautiful rosary of jet, each bead intricately carved, and the crucifix inlaid with silver.
“It’s lovely,” I said sincerely. And it was, though I had
no notion what I might do with it. Though nominally a Catholic, I had been raised by Uncle Lamb, the completest of agnostics, and had only the vaguest idea of the significance of a rosary. Nonetheless, I thanked Colum warmly, and gave the rosary to Jamie to keep for me in his sporran.
I curtsied to Colum, gratified to find that I was mastering the art of doing so without falling on my face. He opened his mouth to take a gracious leave, but was interrupted by a sudden crash that came from behind me. Turning, I could see nothing but backs and heads, as people leapt from their benches to gather round whatever had caused the uproar. Colum made his way with some difficulty around the table, clearing aside the crowd with an impatient wave of the hand. As people stepped respectfully out of his way, I could see the rotund form of Arthur Duncan on the floor, limbs flailing convulsively, batting away the helpful hands of would-be assistants. His wife pushed her way through the muttering throng, dropped to the floor beside him, and made a vain attempt to cradle his head in her lap. The stricken man dug his heels into the floor and arched his back, making gargling, choking noises.
Glancing up, Geilie’s green eyes anxiously scanned the crowd as though looking for someone. Assuming that I was the one she was looking for, I took the path of least resistance, dodging under the table and crawling across on hands and knees.
Reaching Geilie’s side, I grabbed her husband’s face between my hands and tried to pry his jaws open. I thought, from the sounds he was making, that he had perhaps choked on a piece of meat, which might still be lodged in his windpipe.
His jaws were clamped and rigid, though, lips blue and flecked with a foamy spittle that didn’t seem consistent with choking. Choking he surely was, though; the plump chest heaved vainly, fighting for breath.
“Quickly, turn him on his side,” I said. Several hands reached out at once to help, and the heavy body was deftly turned, broad black-serge back toward me. I drove the heel of my hand hard between the shoulder-blades, smacking him repeatedly with a dull thumping noise. The massive back quivered slightly with the blows, but there was no answering jerk as of an obstruction suddenly released.
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