Night Visitor

by Melanie Jackson

  Of course, what conversation she could lure them into was fascinating. Her mother had been born a MacLeod of Skye, but her northern accent had faded greatly after years in London, and it had never been as musical as this local dialect.

  Her father would have fits if he knew that she had been socializing unchaperoned, but the temptation to learn a bit of the Scot and Gaelic dialects had proven irresistible. She could now wish people a “madainn mhath” when she rode through the village in the morning, and she had collected a colorful store of Celtic curses, which she didn’t share with anyone.

  Taffy looked up sharply as the sound of pounding brogues approached her workplace.

  “Mistress Lytton!” A heavy fist landed upon the panel door. “It’s Jamesy, mistress. Your father said tae come away sharp. And tae bring your picture box! They’ve found the piper’s body up at Duntrune!”

  Taffy hastily put her plates aside in a leather satchel and opened the carriage door.

  “A body?” she asked with some surprise.

  “Aye! ‘Tis the ghost piper. The joiner’s son found him when they took up the dressing room floor.”

  “Oh, it’s a skeleton then?”

  “What? Oh! Aye, ‘tis just bones.” Jamesy grinned. “But he is missing his hands, so it’s the MacIntyre for certain. Your father was with the bishop when the great stone come up and he sent me tae fetch you and your picture box straight away. I have the pony trap waiting on the road.”

  “I’ll come at once.”

  Taffy, her mussed hair and rumpled dress forgotten, reached eagerly for her camera and tripod, and the box containing unexposed plates.

  A dead body would not have been a pleasant thing to photograph, but a skeleton! That was another matter altogether. She had seen any number of human bones during her years at home and, much to her father’s disapproval, was not distressed by them.

  She was also rather pleased to now discover that her father didn’t consider her such a blot on western civilization that he couldn’t present her to the bishop. She hadn’t precisely been pining for an introduction to the Mapletons, as her interest in religious things was tepid at best, but they were much respected in the neighborhood and a chance to expand her limited society was not to be lightly scorned.

  Jamesy helped her politely into the trap, seeming not one whit disturbed by her stained fingers. The afternoon had warmed up, but she was pleased to discover that there was a gentle breeze beginning to stir off of the loch, which helped cool her flushed cheeks.

  Taffy looked about eagerly as they headed for the large bay. There were some pretty fields on the way to the castle, small and studded with the odd white sheep, which would make for an easy hike if she could gain permission to walk there.

  A stray strand of hair blew across her eyes, reminding her of her slipping coiffure. She quickly set about tidying her locks over her deplorable ears so her father would not be ashamed to introduce her to the bishop.

  The land was not a heavily wooded country anymore and the outlines of Duntrune Castle soon came into view. It was a tall but narrow building of some three stories of piled ashlars, and quite ancient in style, though not a haunted-looking place like Dunnottar or Dunderave. There, the sad ghosts of long-past atrocities clung to the very stones that made up the castles’ walls. Duntrune was not as sad or frightening. Instead, it had about it an air of tired patience.

  After his initial burst of conversation, Jamesy had lapsed into his habitual amiable reserve, staring into the distance as Taffy fussed with her hair. Realizing suddenly that she was completely alone with one of the more colorful locals, and unable to resist the chance to advance her linguistic and folkloric education, Taffy lured him into further conversation by bringing up the subject of the newly discovered skeleton.

  “You said that these remains belong to a ghost piper? I didn’t know that they had any ghosts at the castle.”

  “Oh, aye! A piper he was, a MacIntyre of a MacLeod mother, they say, and a Papist. He was left at the keep with a small band of soldiers by the MacColla, them not knowing that the Campbells were near tae hand. Slaughtered to a man they were, poor lost souls.”

  “MacColla? That would be the one they call Colkitto?” Taffy asked with genuine interest. This MacDonnell was either a folk hero or the devil incarnate—depending upon who you spoke to. The Irishman had fought under Montrose along with Patrick Ruadh MacGregor in the rising of the 1640s called The Year of Miracles. Montrose and his generals had come out in support of King Charles I rather than Parliament, and, had they had a few more months before Charles’s surrender to Parliament, many felt that he would have carried Scotland for the Stuart king and changed British history forever. Sadly, he had died in an ambush less than a year after his return to Ireland.

  The Campbells she’d met called Colkitto a ravaging butcher. There were others, however, mainly MacDonalds and MacGregors, who felt that if anyone deserved to be ravaged and butchered it was the merciless Campbells. They celebrated the Irishman’s brave memory.

  The warrior had lived nearly two hundred and fifty years ago, but Taffy had long ago discovered that the bloody history of the highlands was not relegated to seldom-read books, but lived clearly in the descendants’ memories, and in fable and song.

  “But this piper was a MacIntyre, you said, not a MacDonnell?” she questioned, seeking clarification. The pedigrees of the clans and their constantly changing loyalties were often confusing.

  “Aye. His chief, the MacIntyre of Glen Noe, had sent him with the MacColla tae help with the battle. The soldiers needed a piper, you ken? And he was the best, being half of MacLeod blood as well.” Jamesy cast a quick look at Taffy’s poorly concealed ears. “But when the Campbells retook the keep, all the MacDonnells were put tae the sword. The piper had his hands struck off with an axe for playing a warning to MacColla’s ship and sending him away from the trap they’d laid. But they had no bubbling pitch laid on and they couldna stop the bleeding. Very bad luck that is, killing a piper. Since then, he comes on stormy nights tae play his pipes upon the wall.”

  Taffy shivered, in spite of the sun.

  “My! What an extraordinary tale!”

  “That it is, and you’ll see his mortal bones afore long,” Jamesy said enviously.

  The trap lurched onto the narrow road leading to Duntrune, which was rather smoother than the track they had just abandoned. Closer now, she could see that there was a pair of dignified elk guarding the entrance to the castle, which was itself a relatively small affair, perched upon the rock promontory of the north side of Loch Crinan on the Sound of Jura. Like many of the medieval keeps in Scotland and Ireland, Duntrune had a slightly wild look in spite of being inhabited and well-kept.

  There was a curtain wall of what was called random rubble construction, a postern—though the seagate no longer seemed to be in use—and crow-stepped gables over the walls, which were made of peculiar green sandstone that gave the whole building an aspect of being underwater. It also had the feel of great age. The stones actually seemed weathered, like old brass verdigrised by the sea.

  As they passed by one of the outside cottages made of smaller ashlars, Taffy noticed another set of stag horns embedded in the wall over the door, which had been painted a faded robin’s-egg blue that harmonized nicely with the green-and-gray stone from which the croft was built.

  Taffy looked about in pleasurable anticipation. She had never been to Duntrune Castle and was thrilled to have the opportunity to photograph it, however odd the circumstances. She was gaining a nice collection of castle photos and secretly hoped to exhibit them one day—perhaps in America whose citizens had a great curiosity about British castles and manors. The fact that this keep had a ghost as well was simply added fortune, as castles with ghosts were by far and away the most popular of attractions.

  As they passed beneath the shadow of the battlements, feeling herself to be under friendly observation, Taffy looked up at the tower window with a warm smile of greeting. The impression of
someone waiting for her there was so strong that she had actually lifted her hand to wave before noticing that the castle’s tall walls were, in fact, empty of life.

  “A bheil thu tighinn?” the wind whispered. Are you coming?

  Feeling suddenly fey, Taffy tried to shake off the notion that she and Jamesy were being carefully observed by hidden eyes. What an inopportune time for the legendary MacLeod second-sight to kick in!

  Her father was waiting for her in the courtyard, but though accompanied by many workers, there was no sign of anyone who might be Bishop Mapleton. Taffy was keenly disappointed, but reflected—after seeing her father’s horrified glance rake over her from rough boots to combs—that perhaps this was not the ideal social situation in which to be making new acquaintances.

  “Tafaline—”

  “Taffy,” she corrected automatically. He usually remembered her preference, but lapsed when he was angry or agitated.

  “Bring that contraption of yours and let’s finish this task. A waste of time,” he muttered. “The bones aren’t more than two hundred—possibly three hundred years old. I don’t know why they summoned me.”

  “Yes, but they are rather famous bones” she pointed out, accepting her equipment from a suddenly smiling Jamesy.

  “Gaoth deas ort,” he whispered. A south wind on you.

  “Tapadh leibh.” Thank you. Feeling bold, she dropped one eyelid in a wink. She raised her voice. “They belonged to Colkitto’s piper. A MacIntyre by the name of—”

  Malcolm.

  “—Malcolm.”

  Davis Lytton turned to stare at her.

  “I didn’t realize that you were conversant with this legend, Tafaline.”

  “Isn’t everyone? This was a rather pivotal moment in recent Scottish history.”

  Jamesy coughed suddenly into a neckerchief.

  “Very true,” Davis looked at her thoughtfully, approval beginning to form on his stern face. “I am glad that you have not completely abandoned your studies in favor of frivolous pursuits.”

  “Certainly not. Where are the skeletal remains?”

  The space was a small one, and the flagstone taken up an uneven one. The bones were resting on their side as though shoved carelessly into the hole.

  The lower forearms and hands were indeed missing and the grossly foreshortened ulna and radii were terminated in shattered stubs.

  Unable to help herself, Taffy knelt by the open grave and reached in to touch the mutilated bones. A tiny pinprick from a razor-tipped shard lanced the end of her index finger.

  “Definitely an axe wound,” Davis said impersonally, apparently not feeling any of the horror—and rage, she realized with a shock—that she was experiencing while looking at the grave.

  Feeling slightly lightheaded, Taffy rose to her feet. She quickly sucked away the single drop of welling blood.

  Out of habit, she looked next at the feet. The toe bones that were in place suggested that all the digits had been of the same length rather than tapering from the big toe down. They were also long and narrow without the heavy growth of bone at the heel, which she’d seen usually anchored the ancient Saxons’ more pronounced heel tendon.

  “Yes, I checked the feet. He was a Celt,” Davis admitted impatiently. “Let’s get this over with. Mapleton wants to move the bones as soon as possible.”

  “But—”

  It doesn’t matter. Let them be moved.

  “As you wish,” she murmured in absent-minded agreement. Then louder: “I shall place the camera here. Perhaps later, I might climb up to the battlements and try for an overview.”

  She took the measuring rod held out by Davis and placed it beside the grave. She was careful not to touch the shattered bones again.

  “You are very thorough,” Davis said, grudgingly. “I’m glad that some of my training took.”

  Taffy didn’t answer, but set about arranging her equipment.

  “Step back, please, Father. Your shadow is in the way.”

  Just as she squeezed the bladder to burn the plate, a stray sunbeam shifted to the flags and reflected directly into her eyes. Swallowing an unlady-like curse, Taffy unhurriedly loaded another plate into the camera. She would have to assume that the first had been ruined by the flash of blinding light.

  Once prepared, she looked around to be certain that there was no one nearby who might be carrying a reflective object that would spoil her work with a redirected beam.

  Taffy didn’t see anyone, but the feeling that she was being observed persisted, and she began to wonder if there was some disapproving prankster hanging about, waiting to play a trick on her.

  Her second plate was exposed without difficulty, and her father kindly acted as guide and porter as they climbed up the sea wall so she could take an exposure from above. The feeling of being watched presently faded, but it might have been because she was growing accustomed to the sensation.

  When her assigned task was done, Davis sent her away. Swallowing her annoyance at his cavalier dismissal, Taffy managed a polite farewell from the back of Jamesy’s pony trap. She promised to have the plates developed the following morning.

  And she had every intention of delivering the photographs to Bishop Mapleton herself. She would wear her navy dress—and gloves, she decided with a guilty glance at her begrimed hands.

  It would probably annoy her father, but she could claim to have misunderstood his intentions and point out the fact that he was always complaining about being taken away from his work by frivolous socializing with amateur historians.

  “And what did you think of the piper, mistress?” Jamesy asked curiously.

  “I think that King Charles needed more backbone,” she answered without thinking. “He could have won had he more resolution.”

  Jamesy grinned.

  “Aye, that he could have. Montrose would have rid us o’ the Campbells forever, had he another four months.”

  “It wouldn’t have mattered to Malcolm though, poor soul.”

  Jamesy swiveled about in his seat and stared at her.

  “Malcolm?”

  “Yes, didn’t you say that was his name?”

  “Nay, I did not know it. But whatever his name, he was surely past all care by then, poor laddie.” The man cleared his throat. “Mistress, your father, did he by any chance touch the MacIntyre’s bones?”

  “I don’t know. Perhaps. Why do you ask?”

  “ ’Tis nought of importance. Just an old legend.”

  “Well, let’s have it,” she said encouragingly, squinting against the glare of the afternoon sun so that she might better see her carter’s face. “I enjoy hearing the old stories.”

  “Aye, well. It is just a belief that when the spirit is in a state of betweenity, it happens that it might attach itself to the person who first lays his hands upon the bones.”

  A slow, involuntary shiver worked its way down Taffy’s uncorseted spine.

  “And what happens—” She swallowed and then tried again to ask the question sticking in her throat. “What happens to the person the ghost attaches itself to? They don’t die, do they?”

  “Ach! No! ‘Tis not some cursed Irish banshee after all.”

  “Oh.” She smiled, feeling both relieved and foolish for her momentary alarm. They were discussing a silly legend! “Then what happens? How does one know that the ghost is there?”

  “They dream, mistress.”

  “Dream?”

  “Aye. The dream o’ the ghost’s death, over and over ‘til they die or go mad.” He smiled suddenly. “Unless they’re a MacLeod.”

  Taffy cleared her throat, which had tightened again.

  “What happens to MacLeods? Why are they not haunted like other folk?”

  “Well, being that some of them are of faerie blood, they get called and go tae live wi’ the still-folk at Caislean na Nor, of course.”

  “Well.” Taffy swallowed again, then said lightly: “I hope the workmen were careful. We wouldn’t want anyone getting ‘called.
’ ”

  “They were careful, no doubt. They would know better than tae touch the piper’s bones.”

  Chapter Two

  Argyllshire, Scotland

  Early summer, 1964

  Malcolm stood quietly in the shadows of a tiny croft, disinclined to approach his chief, Mac an t-Saoir of Glen Noe. He was to be presented to their guest, MacColla of the Irish, son of the fanatical Colla Ciotach of the Isles, also known to the sassanach as Lieutenant General Sir Alistair MacDonald, and more commonly, as Colkitto.

  The light was dim, but plainly the visitor was a large man, fully the tallest being he’d ever seen. Taller even than Malcolm himself was, which was towering enough to draw comment among the MacIntyres, the MacColla had a black presence about him that spoke of great power. Such men influenced destinies, and Malcolm did not particularly want to be influenced just then.

  The piper shrugged uneasily, trying to dislodge his brooding mood so that he might look upon this man fairly. He had an unexplainable feeling, so strong that it might be called foreknowledge, that though they had never met, his and Colkitto’s lives and fates were now somehow intertwined.

  There remained to see in what manner they would mingle their mortality.

  Some things about the future, he could guess. There was no escaping the fact that just as his father before him, this MacColla was a hard man, as the enemy Campbells had already discovered. There was a tale at large in the glen that the MacColla had herded together all the people of Argyll—excepting not even women or babes—and once they were secured in the town’s great barn, had set it ablaze.

  The story might even be true, Malcolm admitted. The MacColla hadn’t been there in Argyll to pay social calls upon the Campbells, who had his father and brother held fast in some prison, and who were committing massive slaughters among his kin in Colonsay and Ireland.

  Too, this Colkitto came from a long line of men who had never been inclined to let mercy season their justice. So it followed that in any meeting with Colkitto there would likely be violence and bloodshed.

  However, in these times of unrest there was much violence and bloodshed everywhere. That fact alone should not have caused Malcolm to be so greatly disturbed by the man’s presence.