Verse of the Vampyre

by Diana Killian

  “True,” Calum said, “but in rural areas you will find higher concentrations of families who have historically lived there.”

  …ossachs read one of the scraps of burned paper Grace had found at the Monkton estate. Not too many possible words ending in ‘ossachs.’ Trossachs? That was a place in Perthshire.

  “I think the name Ruthven is genuine,” Grace said at last. “Peter said something about it being her maiden name.”

  “That still doesn’t mean they’re in Perthshire. Or even Scotland.”

  This was true. Grace was not deducing, she was guessing based on some scraps of burned newspaper and a chance encounter on a rainy night. She was speculating that Peter was going to meet with Catriona, but she had no reason to think so—except that she knew of no other reason for him to travel to Scotland.

  Her only clue was the name Ruthven, and she had to investigate it as thoroughly as she knew how. She knew the name Ruthven was genuine because Peter had said so, and the fact that he knew there was technically no Lord Ruthven indicated he had some familiarity with the family lineage.

  “I guess we’ll start with Perthshire,” she said.

  Calum said dryly, “Keep in mind they don’t call it the ’big country’ for nothing.”

  “This is hopeless,” Grace said, as she and Chaz walked back to their car following their tour of Huntingtower Castle.

  “I’m glad you said it first,” Chaz returned. “The ceiling paintings were nice anyway.”

  “Yes, the bright spot is you’re getting to see quite a bit of the country.”

  Grace knew they needed a better plan. They could not simply go from castle to castle and ask if anyone knew Catriona Ruthven, although this was what they had done so far.

  Huntingtower, originally called Ruthven Castle, had been held by the Ruthvens since the twelfth century. It was there that the clan had made a fatal mistake when the earl of Gowrie kidnapped James VI. In the resulting fallout, the earl and his brother had lost their heads, and the clan had lost everything else.

  In a way it made sense to start their quest there, although it was highly unlikely that Catriona would be lurking around that particular tourist trap.

  Grace thumbed through the guidebook they had purchased in the wee hours of the morning when they first set out upon their journey.

  “According to this the Gowrie Conspiracy was nothing more than James VI trying to get out of paying back the young earl the eighty thousand pounds he owed him. This says the family honor was restored in the twentieth century and the earldom of Gowrie reinstated.”

  Chaz exhaled long and loudly.

  Grace hastily turned the page. “The next castle would probably be Dirleton. Except…” She skimmed the entry. “Oh.”

  “Oh, what?”

  “Well, Dirleton changed hands a lot of times. The Ruthvens haven’t been active in the area since the sixteen hundreds. The Nisbets held it last, but it was allowed to fall into ruin. The gardens are supposed to be nice, though.” She read, “Today the Arts and Crafts North Garden is listed in the Guinness Book of Records as the longest herbaceous border in the world. It is 215 meters long and contains over three hundred different types of plants.”

  She showed Chaz a color photo of a pile of ruins on a hillside. “This is what’s left of the castle. It’s used mostly as a quarry to supply stone for local cottages.”

  “Sounds like a good hiding place to me. Where is it?”

  “East Lothian.”

  “Where’s that?”

  “Back the way we came.”

  They reached Dirleton Castle before lunch.

  After wandering the gardens, they came upon the castle, looking very much like an incredible garden ornament, one of those “follies” the Victorians were so fond of.

  Grace consulted the guidebook. “There are the Ruthven Barracks, and I suppose they could be hiding out at a national monument, but it seems unlikely.”

  “This entire trip seems unlikely,” Chaz groused.

  “The Ruthven clan motto is ‘Died schaw.’ Deeds show. Someone was being ironic.” She read further, and said, “Scratch Ruthven Barracks. They were captured and burned by Prince Charles Edward Stuart’s army in 1746.”

  “That’s Bonnie Prince Charlie?”

  “The same.”

  She stared out the window at the shaggy red Highland cattle grazing. “What am I missing? It’s right under my nose and I can’t see it.”

  “What?”

  “The thing I can’t see.” She sighed. “I give up. Let’s find a place to have lunch.”

  They stopped for lunch at the Castle Inn, a nineteenth-century coaching inn overlooking the village green of Dirleton. The public and lounge bars had been painstakingly restored to their original glory.

  Chaz was in good spirits upon learning that they were only minutes away from Cramond. Their quest was successfully concluded in his opinion.

  Grace was less buoyant, eating her steak-and-mushroom pie, lost in thought.

  After a time her mood affected Chaz. He studied her gravely. “What happened to us, Grace?”

  Peter, thought Grace. But was that the whole truth? Peter was part of the change, but the change in herself was what made having Peter in her life possible.

  “I’ve changed,” she said at last.

  Chaz’s brown eyes looked more soulful than ever. “We all change. Change is part of life. Why did you have to change toward me?”

  She covered his hand with hers, hating to hurt him.

  “I don’t know how to explain it. I feel like my life, my real life, began when I came to Innisdale.” It would sound too silly to say, “I went on an adventure and learned that it was possible to live your dreams if you were brave and determined enough.”

  Chaz was shaking his head, refuting both what she said and what she didn’t say. Chaz was an empiricist, and Grace was…probably out of her mind.

  As they were leaving she asked the whereabouts of the nearest used-book store, and was directed down the street to a small shop where the towering bookshelves formed a twisty maze that one could barely squeeze through. Layers of dust blanketed the very top shelves, and gossamer spiderwebs floated lazily from the ceiling like leftover Halloween decorations.

  Grace found the clan history book wedged in between a book on learning to speak Gaelic and a Touring Scotland from the 1930s.

  “That’s going to be completely out-of-date,” Chaz objected, when she checked the copyright date.

  “That’s the idea. According to what Calum read us, there is no direct male descendant of the Ruthvens, which implies there are still female descendants. My clan book says that they were a prolific race. Families of ten and twelve children were common; so isn’t it reasonable that all those offspring must have gone somewhere?”

  “America,” Chaz said. “That’s where everybody goes.”

  Grace shook her head. “No, according to the Huntingtower guidebook there were still Ruthvens in Scotland because they were rewarded for service in World War II.”

  “So?”

  “So traditionally in Scotland when people were outlawed they fled to the Highlands. Didn’t you ever read Kidnapped? The Highlands and Islands were like our own Wild West. In fact, parts are still fairly remote—and they still speak Gaelic in some places.”

  “What does Gaelic have to do with it?”

  Grace did not answer for a moment, thumbing through the yellowed pages of the clan book.

  So many of the old place names mentioned in the proscription against the Ruthvens were no longer in use…

  Chaz’s words registered, and she glanced up. “Supposedly one of the Ruthven servants spoke in a foreign language. Local opinion was German, but Gaelic is a guttural language, too, and Catriona being Scottish, it seems likely he was speaking Gaelic. I think Catriona may speak it as well.” She told him about the phone call she had picked up at the Monkton estate.

  “I’m not sure where this is heading.”

  It wasn’t fai
r, but Grace couldn’t help comparing how different this quest was with Chaz as her companion, versus last time with Peter. Peter might disagree with her conclusions, but he always knew where she was headed.

  “It’s a long shot, but I’m looking for a place…” She ran her finger along the page, then turned to the back to look at the maps.

  “My gosh the light is dim in here.” She held the book up, squinting at the tiny print, then handed the book to Chaz. “What does that say?”

  “It’s in Gaelic. I mean, what maniac came up with a language that puts ’B’ and ‘H’ next to each other in one word? How the heck are you supposed to pronounce that?”

  “We don’t need to pronounce it. Just spell it out for me.”

  Chaz obliged, peering at the type. “A’…M…h…e…i…r…”

  Grace thumbed through the browned pages of the Gaelic dictionary until she could string the words together.

  A’ Mheirlich Saobhaidh. Den of the Thieves. It sounded like the right place to Grace.

  The village was called Eacharnach, which Grace could not find in her Gaelic-English dictionary. It was nestled in between golden hills and purple shadows.

  The castle ruins stood on a small island in the loch, black pine trees concealing it from curious eyes.

  “That’s it. I know that’s it,” Grace said quietly, as she and Chaz stood by the pink car, staring out across the water at the island fortress. Smoke rose in wisps from the distant tower.

  It was late afternoon by the time they located someone willing to row them across.

  Donald MacLeod was as old and decrepit as his boat, though hopefully less leaky. Nevertheless, he skimmed them across the loch with powerful strokes. The water slapped against the hull of the boat. The drops from the oars sparkled in the late afternoon.

  A whirring sound overhead caused Grace to instinctively duck as something winged past. She had a glimpse of a fierce-looking copper brown bird with a yellow warlike eye, and what appeared to be an eight-foot wingspan.

  “Was that an eagle?” exclaimed Chaz.

  “Iolair-bhuib. Golden eagle. She’s wondering what it is you are up to.”

  The loch reached like the shadow of a hand down the length of the glen, shimmering like smoky glass in the burnished light. They watched the eagle skim across the water and disappear into the golden woods.

  “How deep is the water here?” Chaz asked.

  “Two hundred and fifty meters.” The old man smiled a black-toothed smile. “They say an each uisage used to live in these waters.”

  “A what?”

  “Aye.”

  “What’s an agh iski?”

  “A water spirit. Sometimes he would appear as a bonny horse, but if anyone tried to mount him, the each uisage would race into the loch and devour his victim beneath the water. Only the liver, heart and organs would be left uneaten to float to the shore.”

  “Good God,” Chaz said, revolted. “What is it with you people and internal organs. I mean, what is that haggis thing about?”

  The old man laughed soundlessly. “Sometimes the each uisage would appear as a handsome lad and suck the life from the bonny lasses he bedded.” The old man nodded at Grace as though she looked like a prime candidate for snuggling up with an each uisage.

  Vampires, Grace thought. More vamps. Even in Scotland.

  The old man rambled on. “But he hasnae been seen in these parts for a century or so.” MacLeod sounded like it was in recent memory, and perhaps for him it was. He bent over his oars again.

  The closer they drew, the more the castle looked like one of those old Hammer Film Productions sets. Grace wouldn’t have been surprised to find Frankenstein’s monster waving from the battlements. Or what remained of the battlements. The place truly was a ruin.

  Someone was moving around on the taller of the two towers. The skirl of bagpipes floated over the loch, a mournful, lonely sound.

  “ ‘Flowers of the Forest,’ ” the boatman commented.

  “It’s pretty,” Grace said.

  “It’s a lament.”

  They moored the boat in a stone slip that looked new compared to the rest of the island. Centuries of storms and wars had reduced most of the original structures to rubble.

  The main building seemed to be a fourteenth-century keep or tower house scarred by ancient sieges. There were other smaller outlying buildings, but the smoke drifting from the foremost tower seemed the most promising indication of life.

  “So what’s the plan?” Chaz queried doubtfully.

  “If I’m not back in half an hour, come get me.”

  Donald MacLeod, hands cupped around his pipe, cackled with laughter.

  Grace walked up from the wharf, following a path that led between a pair of stone gateposts, winding around at last to a vine-covered and surprisingly unassuming front entrance. The door was constructed of thick weathered timber marked with scrapes and gouges that looked like the result of anything from arrows to werewolf claws. She pulled what appeared to be a bell rope.

  She could hear a kind of gonging sound rolling through the belly of the castle, echoing within the stone walls. At last the door opened.

  Peter stood in the wedge of light cast from the torchère on the wall behind him.

  “Be careful your face doesn’t freeze like that,” he said.

  16

  The room appeared to have been decorated by a Great White Hunter on a drinking binge. Animal hides covered stone floors. African shields and spears covered stone walls. Assorted animal heads stared blankly down from strategic positions. Tribal masks glowered from corners. The place seemed to be made up of corners. There was an odd smoky smell. Brimstone?

  As Grace crossed the threshold something white and enormous rose from the floor. She blinked, thinking for a split second that it was one of the stuffed animals come back to life in all its dermatitis-ridden glory, but as the creature attempted to sniff her impolitely, Grace realized it was a Scottish deerhound.

  Catriona was curled on a red velvet sofa in front of the enormous fireplace.

  “This is a surprise,” she said lazily. “To what do we owe this honor?”

  Grace sat down in a large chair and sank about two feet farther into a quicksand of bad springs and plush. She glanced at the low table beside the chair, where a stuffed mongoose and cobra were frozen in eternal combat. They reminded her vaguely of Roy Blade and Lady Vee.

  Controlling her expression, Grace responded, “I happened to be visiting friends in the area, and I learned you were staying locally.” It sounded as though she had been practicing it, and of course she had.

  Peter restlessly circled the room. The dog wagged its tail, watching him.

  She had been so intent on finding Peter that she hadn’t given enough thought to what she would do when she found him. Was it just Peter and Catriona hiding out? But no, Grace had seen the piper and knew that there must be others. Perhaps an entire gang.

  She made herself look away from Peter and found Catriona studying her with those strange gold eyes. “That’s quite a coincidence.”

  “You’re visiting Calum and Monica?” Peter inquired.

  It was almost physically painful to look at him in these circumstances, but she made herself hold his gaze. She realized with a shock that this was the first time she had actually ever seen him and Catriona together.

  They were both tall, lithe, with smooth hard muscles. There was no wasted movement, no wandering attention, although they seemed to watch each other out of the corners of their eyes. It was like observing two panthers at home.

  “Right.”

  “The trip’s been planned for over a month,” he remarked to the room at large.

  Catriona considered this, then smiled.

  A bald man with a cauliflower ear, who looked like Mr. Clean’s evil twin, entered the room. Seeing Grace, he checked.

  “Ah, tea,” Catriona announced.

  The man looked down at his nonexistent tea tray and backed out of the room.
>
  Now Grace was certain she was on the right track. She was almost positive the man was the same man she had nearly skidded into that rainy night in Innisdale Wood not so long ago—although it felt like a lifetime.

  “This is such an interesting room,” she commented politely to fill the strange lull. “Your family is devoted to hunting?”

  “My family, or rather my great-grandfather, was devoted to wholesale slaughter. His particular playing field was the African continent. This was his lair.”

  “Lair” seemed like the right word. Grace did feel as though she had wandered into some beast of prey’s lair—or perhaps the spider’s web. There was a dangerous tension in the air.

  The bald man returned, and this time he did bear a heavy tray with a silver tea service complete with spooner, spoons, strainer and heavy teapot. Grace wondered if the tea service was inherited or stolen.

  The man lowered the trembling tray to the nearest table. “Peter, you be mother,” Catriona invited.

  He came and joined her on the sofa, pouring without comment.

  “Thank you, I’ve lunched,” Grace declined, as he passed cup and saucer her way.

  Clearly reading her mind, he grinned and sipped the tea, then offered the cup again to Grace.

  She ignored it.

  Catriona fed part of a buttered scone to the dog, who snapped up the food in one gulp.

  “Is Lord Ruthven here?”

  “He is,” Catriona said. “Unfortunately, he’s indisposed. He’ll be heartbroken to have missed you.” Her gaze held Grace’s in open challenge.

  Grace had traveled too far to back down.

  “We had plans to meet in Innisdale, you know. Perhaps I could see him for a moment?”

  Catriona’s eyes met Peter’s, and she said, “No, I don’t suppose it would be wise. What he has might be catching.” Grace did not care for her smile. “Perhaps another time.”

  She could hardly insist. In fact, her safety rested primarily on this polite charade they played. “Perhaps I could come back tomorrow?”