by Fran Stewart
“Thanks, K.”
“I’m going to clear up all these books. Why on earth are they lying around all over the place, and what’s with all the forks in the sink?”
“Long story. I’ll tell you later.”
A few minutes later, her voice was back. “Peggy?”
“Yeah?”
“Did you take that shawl into the bathroom with you?”
“No. It’s on the back of the couch. Why?”
“It’s not on the couch.”
I adjusted the bathrobe, took one more look in the mirror, decided to cut off the rest of my hair when I could lift my arms without pain, and stepped into the living room. Most of the books had been scooped into piles around the edge of the room. Dirk stood beside the bay window holding the shawl. “Don’t worry,” I told her. “It’ll show up.”
She cocked her head at me. “I know it was there.”
“Maybe it fell behind the couch.”
Dirk headed that way. By the time Karaline leaned over the back, the shawl lay innocently on the floor. Dirk gave me a bow worthy of Buckingham Palace, which probably didn’t even exist in the fourteenth century.
“Mystery solved. Let’s eat. I brought enough Cabin food for an army.”
“Fine with me.”
I took a detour by the sink on my way to the table. The African violets were thriving. I wouldn’t have to water them for a few more days. By then my arms should be less stiff.
Of course, Gilda, Sam, and Shoe all showed up within minutes of our sitting down. Karaline showed no surprise whatsoever. No wonder she’d brought so much food.
I was surprisingly hungry. For a few minutes we just fed our faces. I deflected questions about what had happened to me, and the talk turned to Shoe’s experiences in jail. “Not too bad,” he said. “The food was good.”
Karaline snorted. “That’s ’cause I fed you.”
“You fed him?”
“I have a contract with the police department to provide meals for the prisoners.” She pushed a bite of lasagna around on her plate. “Not that they have that many.”
“Mac questioned me two or three times a day for the first couple of days,” Shoe said, dragging the conversation back to himself. “Then I think he forgot about me.”
“From everything I’ve heard, you had it pretty easy.” I pointed my fork at him, even though I knew that wasn’t polite. “Especially if you had Karaline’s food. How was the bed? Comfortable?”
“Too hard.”
Karaline reached over and poked his arm. “When I was there, you said it was too soft.”
“Yeah. Whatever.”
“I smuggled him some books,” Gilda said.
Shoe guffawed. “Some smuggling. You just walked in and handed them to me.” He reached for another piece of garlic toast.
Gilda looked hurt, and Sam patted her hand. No wonder she’d picked Sam instead of Shoe.
“That was nice of you, Gilda,” Karaline said with a pointed look at Shoe. He was oblivious, shoveling in food as if his life depended on it. “Cleanup time,” she added. “Sam and Gilda, clear the table. Shoe, you’ve eaten enough to fell a horse. You load the dishwasher. I’ll put the food away. You”—she pointed at me—“head to the couch.”
“I’ll just sit here and keep you guys company.”
She glared.
“No, Karaline, the thought of moving is more than I can handle. Just let me sit. Please,” I added, and her face relaxed. I pushed the chair next to me away from the table so Dirk could sit down.
Karaline looked from me to the chair and back again. She threw her hands in the air and turned away. Dirk grinned. I leaned my elbows on the table and hid my face in my hands.
After the gang left, Karaline lingered at the front door. I noticed she hadn’t picked up her purse. “What on earth is going on with you? You talk to walls. You push out chairs when there’s no need to. Tell me. Now.”
I should have known she wouldn’t let me get away with it.
“Ye might as well tell her,” Dirk commented drily from behind my right shoulder. “Otherbye she’ll think ye daft.”
“She’ll think me daft if I do tell her,” I muttered.
“Huh?”
“Never mind.” I glanced back at Dirk. “You really think I should?”
“Peggy,” she growled.
“Aye. Now ye must, I think.”
I nodded and motioned my friend to the living room. I chose the wingback chair beside the bay window, and Karaline perched on one end of the couch.
Dirk, with the shawl under his arm, sat down on the other end and turned so he faced her.
“Remember that shawl I bought in Scotland?”
“Yeah. The hippie one. What about it?”
“It’s a lot older than you think. It had something . . . She’s never going to believe this.”
“Tell her any the way. Give her a chance. Mayhap she will surprise ye.”
Karaline raised both hands to her head, clutched her hair, and screeched. Then she smiled. “Tell me. Right now. Unless you want me to do that again.”
I took a deep breath. “The shawl has a ghost attached to it. He’s sitting right there beside you, on the couch.”
Karaline studied me, much the same way Sam had back in the ScotShop. “A ghost?” She slid her hand over the seat beside her, but Dirk stood before she touched him. “You’re telling me I’m sitting next to a ghost?”
Her incredulity pushed a button I didn’t know I had. “Dirk,” I said sweetly. “Would you drop the shawl on the floor and step away from it?”
She drummed her fingers on her leg.
“I wouldna throw my Peigi’s shawl on the floor,” he said, and laid the shawl gently on the cushion next to Karaline.
She was watching me, not him. I pointed to the shawl beside her hand.
This time, she screamed for real.
20
Revelations
“Would you like a glass of water?” I asked in as sugary a voice as I could muster. Served her right for doubting me.
“She could use a wee dram.”
Maybe he was right. I took a closer look at her. My friend. Shaking as if she’d seen a . . . I couldn’t help it. I burst out laughing.
That brought her around. “You have no right to laugh at me.”
“Sorry, K, but you were shaking like . . . you’d . . . seen a . . . ghost.” Her upper lip curled. “Sorry,” I said, curbing the giggles. “It was funny, that’s all.”
“You think giving me a heart attack is humorous?”
She sat there, elegant as always, glanced down at the shawl, and shuddered.
“Do ye think she might see me if she held the shawl?”
My shawl? “You want to give her my shawl?”
“There is nae need to ribbetysnippet so. I thought mayhap she might believe ye better if she could see me.”
“But you’re . . .” I stopped and closed my mouth. He was my ghost, and I felt singularly possessive. Singularly childish as well, but I didn’t have to admit that to anyone.
“Who are—” Karaline cut herself off. She knew who I was talking to. “Peg,” she said sounding half angry and half plaintive, “would you please explain all this to me?”
“Tell her the tale.” Dirk chuckled. “’Tis a good one.” He leaned against the window frame and crossed his arms.
I looked from him, my ghost, to her, my friend. He was right. She needed to hear it all.
I tightened the belt on my bathrobe again. It had a tendency to loosen, especially when my chest was heaving with indignation. “Karaline, promise me you’ll just listen while I explain this.”
She nodded, but I doubted she’d be able to keep her promise.
“I found this shop in Pitlochry, one I’d never seen before
and one that seems to have disappeared since I saw it.”
“That makes no sense, Peg.”
Ha! I was right. She couldn’t keep her mouth shut. “You’re right. None of this makes sense, but I did buy that shawl, and he”—I pointed—“he showed up when I put it on.”
“He? Who—what—where is he?”
Dirk bowed at her more politely, less flamboyantly, than he had bowed to me a few hours ago.
“She can’t see you. You might as well relax.”
“’Tis the intent that means something.”
“What the hell is going on?” Karaline was back to a screech.
“He just bowed to you, and I reminded him you couldn’t see him, and he said it was the thought that counts.”
“I didna say that.”
“Hush.”
“Why?” Karaline looked thoroughly bewildered.
No wonder. “Him,” I told her. “Not you.”
She raised a hand to the right side of her face, as if she were hiding her mouth from Dirk, and whispered, “What does he look like?”
Dirk stood a little straighter and eased his shoulders back. No, men hadn’t changed much. “He’s tall, has long black hair, a heavy five o’clock shadow, and wears a belted plaid.”
“What’s a played? What would be a five o the clock shadow?”
“An old-fashioned kilt. The kind you have to lie down on the ground and roll around yourself. And it means you haven’t shaved for a couple of days.”
Karaline looked dubious. Dirk looked indignant.
“He was born in . . . oh gosh, I don’t know when, but the last date he can remember is 1359.”
“I was born in the year of our Lord 1329.”
I calculated quickly. “You’re the same age as me?” It wasn’t grammatical, but I didn’t take the time to worry about it.
“Thirteen . . . Did you say thirteen something?”
“Uh-huh. Fifty-nine. I think that must be when he died. And he just said he was born in 1329, which makes him thirty years old. Plus the six or seven hundred years between then and now.” I looked over at Dirk. He certainly didn’t look dead. Except for the fact that I could sort of see the outline of a window in back of him. Through him.
“Is he wearing one of those poet shirts, the kind that makes him look like his shoulders are this wide?” She held her arms out at an angle.
I looked at Dirk. I already knew the answer, because I’d already noticed the way he’d filled up that porta potty, but I thought it might be a good idea to check just the same. He placed his fists on his hips and swaggered, I swear it, back and forth in front of the window. “Yes,” I said. “It’s a homespun shirt with long sleeves, and they’re sort of rolled up above his elb—” What was this, a Paris runway? “Stop parading, Dirk.”
I hauled myself, not too gracefully, to my feet and stretched my back.
“I bet he looks like Braveheart.”
“What would be this brave heart?”
“It was a movie about a Scottish hero.” I ignored his question about what would be a movie and Karaline’s comment, which she stifled when she realized I must be answering a question she hadn’t heard. “He married his childhood sweetheart and the English killed her and he attacked somebody or other and the English beheaded him. I’ll find the story in one of my history books so you can read it.”
“Would ye be meaning William Wallace?”
“You knew him?”
“Nae. He was executed four and twenty years before I was born, but my father, just a boy, carried water to him before his final battle.”
I sat down.
Karaline, oblivious to the fact that we had a living history lesson in front of us, touched the edge of the shawl with her index finger. “It sure does feel real. Why is it haunted, do you think?”
I shifted mental gears. “It was woven by his lady love, a woman named Peigi.”
“Peggy? Did they have people named Peggy back then?”
“Aye,” Dirk chimed in. “Peigi means ‘pearl.’”
It sure would be easier if I didn’t have to translate. “It’s spelled P-e-i-g-i, and pronounced more like PAY-gee, but it’s essentially the same name, short for Margaret.”
“And it means ‘pearl,’” he prompted as he walked across the room between the two of us. He ended up in front of the overstuffed chair, examining Karaline from a new angle.
“Yeah, yeah,” I said, “it means ‘pearl.’”
“He’s stayed stuck to this shawl all that time just because of his love for her?” Karaline’s eyes went sort of fuzzy.
I rolled mine. “Never knew you were a romantic, K.”
She stiffened her back, lunged for the shawl, and pulled it close, clutching it to her chest. She looked wildly toward the window where he’d been the last time I had pointed, sure she’d see him. Her shoulders drooped. I waited a dramatic moment, cleared my throat, and pointed the other way, toward the big chair. Her eyes widened. “Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, oh . . .”
“You can stop anytime you want to, Karaline.”
Dirk smiled a smile of surpassing sweetness, clasped his hands behind his back, extended his right leg forward, and inclined his torso a few inches. Perfectly proper. Karaline was ecstatic for about half a second, until she fainted.
I never could have caught her in time if she’d keeled over onto her face, and Dirk would have been no help at all. Luckily, she slumped backward.
I picked up the shawl from the floor, where Karaline had dropped it. “Don’t worry. She just fainted. It happens when there’s not enough oxygen to the brain.”
“Oxeegen?”
Now I have to explain chemistry and biology? “Remember how women used to wear corsets so tight, they couldn’t get enough air and they used to faint a lot?”
“Korsets?”
I thought for a second as Karaline began to stir. “The seventeen hundreds. You wouldn’t know about those.” I was going to have to bone up on the history of fashion. “They wore very tight, uh, undergarments that laced around them to make their waists as small as possible. The result was that they looked dainty, but they couldn’t catch a deep breath.”
He looked at me as if he thought I’d gone positively nuts. “For the love of St. Michael, why?”
I could see it in his eyes: he was imagining his sensible Peigi, who must always have been swathed in a very comfortable chemise and arisaidh—probably with no undergarments at all, although he might not have known that—walking unencumbered, the way women ought to walk. I thought briefly of Scarlett O’Hara holding on to that bedpost yelling, “Tighter, tighter!” Stupid. Absolutely stupid. Of course, now women subjected themselves to stiletto heels and the resulting back problems when they reached their forties. I’d seen it in my own mother. Her heels had gotten a bit lower over the years, but she still wore the doggone things and complained about her back almost constantly.
Karaline’s eyes fluttered open. “Oh my God. . . .”
“Don’t start that again,” I snapped, and Dirk gave me a withering look as he bent solicitously over her.
“You’re real. You’re really real.” She rubbed her temples. “Absolutely real.”
“Stop, Karaline. We’ve established that he is real.”
“Does he have a name?”
“Dirk.”
“Dirk.” It sounded as soft as melted caramel.
Dirk glared pointedly at me and turned back to her with another flourish. “My name is Macbeath Donlevy Freusach Finlay Macearachar Macpheidiran of Clan Farquharson. My family call me Macbeath.”
“Mock-beh-ath? Do you mean like—”
“He’s never heard of Shakespeare,” I interrupted. “William wasn’t born for another two hundred years or so.”
“William? Who would that be?”
“Shakespe
are.” I pointed toward the piles of books. “Didn’t you start The Merchant of Venice?”
Karaline raised her hand like a fourth-grader. “What are you talking about?”
“I left all those books open for him to read. Harper closed some of them—so did you, for that matter.”
“Why leave them open?”
“He can’t turn the pages.”
At Karaline’s look of utter incredulity, Dirk spun on his heel, walked to the table in front of the bay window, and swept his arm—rather ostentatiously, I thought—over the length of the table. In one fluid motion he passed through the stacks of books, the jade plant, and the lamp. His plaid swirled as he turned back and spread his hands in mute appeal.
“How can you eat?” Leave it to Karaline to think of that.
“I canna,” he said simply. “Then again, I dinna ever feel hungry, so ’tis not so difficult.”
“Let me get this straight. You can’t turn pages, you can’t eat, and you’re usually invisible?”
Dirk nodded.
I nodded.
Karaline nodded. “So, what good are you?”
I bristled, and Dirk looked at the floor.
She must have realized how catty that sounded. “What I meant was, why are you here?”
Dirk’s head came up slowly. “I dinna know,” he said. “I dinna . . .”
“It’s not like he chose to come,” I said, grabbing the shawl away from Karaline. “This is the reason he’s here. He’s following the shawl.”
“I didna follow it for six hundred years. Other folk must have held it during that time. Why did I not awaken before this?”
“Maybe he did wake up before,” Karaline said, “but he just doesn’t remember those other times.”
Dirk rolled his shoulders back and lifted his chin. “I have a verra good memory.”
Karaline jumped to her feet. “No. Think about it. Maybe each time somebody owns the shawl, you get to wake up and enjoy living. . . .” Her voice trailed off. “It’s not much like living if you can’t eat,” she added, “but maybe there’s some sort of time warp or something and you can’t remember all those other times.”