Poor man. My presence must have shocked him every bit as much as his had startled me, hence the sharp questions in Gaelic. It was still the preferred language of the nearby villages.
That didn’t explain why he’d taken the book, however. Unless it had been his to begin with? I had assumed the journal had belonged to Fergus Culbin, but maybe not. Perhaps this man had simply retrieved his own property. That might even have been the purpose of his visit.
And the lack of water on his clothes and hair? A trick of the light, I decided. The lamp had been turned low and flickering even inside the chimney because of the wind. My eyes, abetted by panic brought on by the vivid entries in the journal, had deceived me. And anyway, he might have just removed his coat, which perhaps had a hood that kept his hair dry. And as for that tiny bit of blood on his head, perhaps he had tripped in the dark and hurt himself.
Feeling much better—and completely scornful of the villagers and their silly exorcism—I started back for the cottage, determined to finally make a start of organizing the local tall tales into some kind of manuscript. I wanted to get down the words of the exorcism while they were fresh in my mind. If I had to live in a cursed village full of superstitious peasants, then I thought that I might as well profit from it. I would write a book.
Chapter Four
Roar ye torrents down the steep, Roll ye mists on Morven.
—“The Maiden of Morven”
Back at the cottage—which was happily empty of all life save Herman—I made a fresh pot of tea and stirred up the ash on the hearth so that I could build another fire. The villagers would sneer at my weakness, but I was from a warmer clime and didn’t like the cold. This task took me a while because, unlike my unwanted guest, I hadn’t the knack of building a peat fire and had to use some coal to get the blaze started.
I brought a cup with me and set it on the hearth, where I could sip as I battled with the stubborn, smoking fire. The smell of tea would hardly terrorize any uncanny visitors, but it subdued the worst of my nervousness with its familiar calming scent. As was bound to happen when wrestling two-handed with a job that needed at least three or maybe four, I upset the cup, which was unsteady on the uneven shell surface and spilled tea over the mosaic. The browned water spread quickly into the grout and in only a moment I found myself staring into a familiar face. It was the stranger.
Of course, it wasn’t really the stranger, just a being with long black hair and dark eyes who seemed to be floating on ocean waves, surrounded by tentacled and finned monsters. I knew that I should blot up the mess immediately, lest the stain be permanent, but I found myself unable to touch it or even look away. Fear can make wild thoughts cohere in odd and unreasonable patterns. My new, or I should say returning, suppositions were frightening, and quite ruined my tenuous sense of comfort, yet I found myself unable to dismiss them completely, no matter how irrational they sounded.
“This is insane,” I said to the cat, who was also staring intently at the mosaic. But I had to know, one way or the other, who the night visitor was; I would have no peace until then. I needed more information, and my only real hope of getting it was if Fergus had left some other journals or letters behind: Surely if this stranger had been a friend, Fergus would make some mention of him. And if he wasn’t a friend…? Well, he would probably mention that too.
My Aunt Sophie—acquired through marriage and thought of without affection—was originally from Texas. She always said to my mother that I had a lot of quit in me. The stupid woman didn’t know me very well. What I had had were a lot of good manners drilled into me, and that kept me from contradicting her even when what she said was idiotic, self-serving or vicious, which was most of the time. I also did not waste energy fighting hopeless battles such as changing someone’s long-held prejudices. Though Mother never said a word against her sister-in-law, I believe she considered Sophie a blight on her brother’s happiness and once said to my father that Thomas would regret spending his “sinister years” with his chosen helpmate. I had a different B-word for her.
It was probably just as well that Mother never got to know my own husband. She would not have liked him either.
In point of fact, I can do “stubborn and secretive” with the best of them; it is just that I smile while I go about it. It was this stubbornness that had gotten me on a boat to Scotland, though the faraway world across the ocean was terra incognita to me then. And the fact that I had ended up in a place far stranger than I had ever imagined—and perhaps more unpleasant than I actually deserved—didn’t change facts one bit. This was my home and I wasn’t leaving now that I had clawed out a small space of contentment. This meant I needed to know how to make myself safe here.
Mother had been a firm believer in the idea that some people were just not meant to be happy. She never said why, and I didn’t think to ask until it was too late. Given my recent history I was almost willing to believe that I was one of these fated people, but if God were merciful, and if she and I were both wrong, then knowledge might save me and give me the opportunity to be free of my devils. Particularly the tall, dark and handsome one.
Lamp in hand, I checked the desk again and actually found another hidden compartment. This one held a small leather bag of coins. Gold coins. Spanish coins. I put them back hastily, in that moment no longer completely confident that the relics were not haunted by the ghosts of drowned sailors, and unwilling to tempt fate by handling them.
A frustrating hour later, I was certain the desk held no more secrets, but, not yet discouraged from the task of discovery, I started on the cottage’s other pieces of furniture. There weren’t many, but I was thorough and it took some time. I was storm-stayed anyway, since the rain had returned, so I made a full-frontal assault on all of the cottage’s secret places and its dust; I have always felt that dust is inimical to one’s health, a household equivalent of the coal dust that gives miners black lung. The activity took me through to dinnertime, and I stopped for some bread and jam and to light the lamp as it began to get dark and the rain grew stronger.
Feeling less enthused but still determined, I added more peat to the fire and then began to examine the wainscoting and baseboards—a strange addition to a stone cottage whose exterior walls would not readily accept nails, I then realized. I found one section that was loose and managed to pry it from the wall. The thin piece of paneling had had its back inscribed with runes written in reddish brown…ink? Again, disturbed and more than a little baffled, I pushed the board back into place and went on with my search. The cottage was soon rid—at least from my hips downward—of dust and the cobwebs that bred with such speed, but of hidden documents I found no sign. There had to be more books. More letters. There were people who possessed only one book, but that was usually a family Bible. If a man were interested enough to be collecting stories of deadly faeries, then he was bound to collect other materials.
The privy was the sole location left to search. It isn’t a warm place. Built on an old design, a slice of stream runs through it, under the wooden seat, carrying waste away to what I liked to imagine was a leach field. The water is sometimes pungent with the smell of hawthorn, though how this could be I do not know, since no hawthorn blooms nearby. In a poplar trunk at the back of the small addition where ancient and brittle linens were kept, I found beneath the yellowed fabric a set of shackles made of what my brain insisted was cold iron. There was also a kind of carpet beater, which I was willing to bet was made of yew.
I recalled from Fergus’s journal that both yew and cold iron were considered effective weapons against the sleagh maith and other faeries. What was odder still, my late husband had also had a set of these shackles and a yew switch, which he’d kept in his private desk. Duncan had once sneeringly intimated that they were for sexual purposes. I had believed him then, since his tastes were so depraved. Now I was not so certain, and the idea that my husband might have been keeping still other secrets from me was saddening as well as disturbing.
I caught a glimps
e of myself in the small mirror I had hung on the wall; vanity should be hidden away, and this was as “away” as it could get. The eyes that looked back at me were filled up with anxiety and perhaps a bit more whisky than they should be. I would have to watch that. I didn’t want to be too at home with either of those things.
“Herman, I wish you had hands instead of paws, because I could use another pair,” I said to the cat, who had followed me through the cottage, watching intently as I pushed the furniture about. “Better yet, I wish you could just tell me where to find out more about our strange visitor. Did you know him?”
The cat looked from me to the front door. The gesture was so deliberate that I found myself expecting to see someone in the doorway.
My mother always warned me to be careful what I wished for, because often the heart’s desires are overheard by the mind…and sometimes by someone or something else. The brisk but light knock on the door brought both dread and relief. I piled the stale linens on top of the shackles and beater; then, closing the lid of the trunk, I shoved it to the back wall of the privy and dusted my hands as best I could on a scrap of towel. But the effort was wasted. Nothing was going to disguise the fact that I had been cleaning. I just had to hope that whoever was visiting would not find my seeming mania for housework at such a late hour to be too odd.
Chapter Five
Preternatural: differing from what is natural.
Irregular: in a manner different from the common order of nature.
Supernatural: being above the cause, order or power of nature.
“Good morrow, mistress,” the ill-dressed but familiar stranger said pleasantly enough. This time he spoke in the heavily accented Scots you hear near the Borders.
There is a mistaken impression among some Americans and especially Englishmen that use of Scots connotes a lack of, if not refinement, then of education. This isn’t necessarily true. Proper English was passed along north of the border along with the new tax system hundreds of years ago. The use of Scots dialect in the modern era is a matter of comfort, and to a great degree, defiance. More complete defiance for a Celt is to use Gaelic, which was certainly true in my grandparents’ case. Scots, after all, is a form of old English, and Gaelic was the native language of the Gaels thousands of years before the Sassenach usurpers wandered over the border and smashed their culture.
“I am glad tae see ye have suffered no ill effects from my last visit,” he went on. “I have returned as hastily as I may tae see tae yer…state of health.”
I wasn’t sure what he classified as an ill effect, but was willing to bet the list didn’t include a perturbed mind. The naked intensity of the stranger’s gaze as he examined me was startling, and I realized how much I counted on unfamiliar persons to disguise their feelings in the proper way and avert their eyes after a second or two of inspection. Surprise kept me silent and I hoped undemonstrative of my mild alarm, which manifested itself in a quickening of my pulse, which I could feel in my neck and behind my eyes.
“Ye may call me…Lachlan. I have always liked that name.” The man I might call Lachlan went suddenly to one knee and inhaled deeply. His dark hair fell forward, hiding his face, and I was glad of the veil between my body and his gaze. “So, they’ve sown the nearby sands with salt. It may keep out their devil, but it has no effect on my kind. Or the other. Silly humans, sae slow to learn. Sae swift at forgetting. Was not the burial of this village lesson enough?”
The visitor’s voice was soft, and I wasn’t certain if I was supposed to hear. Demosthenes might have expressed himself more eloquently, and without the thick accent, but these words were plenty direct and frightening, delivered though they were in a pleasant burr. Leaving aside the implication that there had indeed been something supernatural about the sandstorm that buried Findloss—a large matter to set casually aside, at least for me—the people of this village were so hostile against this stranger that they had performed an exorcism against him, apparently in my own yard, and he showed not the slightest concern at their antagonism. This meant he was either very foolish or so very dangerous that he didn’t need to care. Or perhaps both. Certainly he wasn’t human. I could only wonder that I had ever thought him so.
“Now you, Mistress Silence, are another matter entirely.” He rose, and when I failed to say anything, brushed past me into the cottage.
Though he offered me no violence, I was still ill at ease and wondered wildly if threatening him with a lamp or knife would do any good. Then I recalled Fergus’s note saying to shed fey blood was to summon brutal tempests, so actions manslaughterous must be put on hold unless I was directly threatened. I was beginning to feel completely overwhelmed and helpless when I remembered the shackles in the trunk inside the privy. Perhaps there was something that could contain this creature if he got careless and let me leave the room unattended.
I glanced at my uninvited guest with some disfavor as he took up a place near the fire. I saw that he was studying the damp mosaic on the hearth. His fingers, which he drummed on the mantel, were exceptionally long and narrow, but in no way effete.
“So, not all of them had forgotten me,” he said softly. “I believe this was done in the year before the inundation.”
Little attention is paid to the regular calendar in Findloss; everything is calculated in years before and after the town’s burial and subsequent resurrection, so the manner of his marking time didn’t faze me. Lachlan’s faith and certainty that he was something not human was different, and it was stronger than my assumption that he must be a normal person because monsters and faeries don’t exist. My insufficient confidence in what I had previously known as reality kept me from arguing either with him or myself. And under the surface alarm, I was very curious. It took an effort to loosen my frozen tongue but I forced myself to speak.
“I’m sorry if I’ve been a bit impolite. It is just that my previous life was bereft of…preternatural beings. I am afraid that for a while I could not even admit your existence, and I found your inhuman presence on a particularly late and stormy night to be frankly menacing. My wits were temporarily addled by what I thought was a hallucination.”
Those dark eyes turned my way. “And now?”
I spread my filthy hands and then took a seat on the edge of a stiff-backed chair. I hid my soiled palms in my skirt, strangely annoyed at my lack of presentability. “I am attempting to keep an open mind. Perhaps you are not menacing. After all, what do I know of your customs? Perhaps by your standards you are being charming!” I made myself smile as I said this, and it seemed to strike him temporarily dumb: Perhaps few people were inclined to be friendly to his kind. “You did after all make tea for me. That is usually accounted a friendly gesture.” Unless it is poisoned, of course.
“And the people of this village?” he asked at last. “How do you find them?”
“Menacing,” I answered. “Xenophobic, ignorant and superstitious—though I shall have to rethink the ‘ignorant and superstitious’ part now that I know you are real. And obviously they are ill-informed as to the nature of their unwanted guest, since their exorcism did not work.”
“Nay, yer correct. The villagers are ignorant and superstitious. And one of them is allied with a very dangerous being. That is why I am here and…charming ye with tea and such.” He did not smile but the head tilted slightly. The action reminded me of something an animal might do.
“What sort of dangerous being?” I asked, though this wasn’t anything I actually wanted to hear about. I didn’t comment on his claim to charm, either. “I assume you are not speaking of yourself.”
Lachlan considered the question a moment before answering. “A rogue finman. A wizard, ye’d call him. A nasty, evil beastie wha can nevertheless pass for human when he chooses. I would be very careful aboot opening my door tae strangers in future. The finmen possess an absolutely devouring hatred of your kind.”
My kind? Did he mean humans? Or did he refer to the Culbins? Or to the MacCodrums. I should not forget that m
y grandparents’ clan had been mentioned in the missing journal.
“I see,” I said. I didn’t, but this didn’t seem the moment to encourage a lecture about supernatural beings that hadn’t actually visited me yet. I took a small steadying breath and pressed on to the matter that was more urgent. “And you are…?”
“My job is to discover who has been daft enough tae call this monster back tae the village.”
“I gathered that—but what are you?” I asked again.
“In what context?”
I hadn’t expected any show of humor, and I found a real smile tugging at my lips.
“In the context of your visiting me late at night, scaring me half to death and stealing the book I was reading.”
“Could ye read it?” he asked, avoiding the first half of my question.
“Parts of it, after a fashion. I have some Gaelic from my late husband and grandparents.” I leaned forward in my seat, hoping the gesture was inviting of confidences and not threatening or impolite. “So, are you a blue man perhaps?”
“Nay.”
“A fallen angel?”
“Certainly not!” The idea seemed to amuse him.
“A selkie?” I suggested, undeterred. I was willing to name the whole list, at least up to the water demon. If one of those were sitting in my parlor I preferred not to know it; that would be one straw too many for the poor camel in my brain that was in danger of running mad from the load of suppositions I was piling up. I was already feeling a bit mad, but only a bit. Some are born into a state of unreasonableness—poor mad souls—and some achieve unreason with the diligent application of alcohol or other stimulants. Some have unreason thrust upon them by outside sources, such as nonhuman visitors in the night. I am of the latter variety.
The Selkie Bride Page 4