He looked up at the smoked-stained rafters, as though the shadowed eaves might hold an answer to what troubled him. Unfortunately, none were there that evening. Perhaps they’d been banished by the great one’s presence. It seemed Malcolm had nowhere to look but inside himself for understanding, and he had not yet discovered any happy solutions waiting there.
The tangled politics of the highlands were but part of the larger concern of all the politics of humankind—there was certainly no escaping it in Scotland. Some covetous Englishman’s unremitting preoccupation with wealth and power was ever focused upon Scottish land, it seemed. Perhaps that would always be so. And the Scots who fought and died for their freedom, from Wallace on, would ever resist such occupation. Even when it meant killing other Scots.
The Lord of Heaven, avowedly all-merciful and forgiving, supposedly approved of such atrocities that had happened in this year past. However it didn’t seem to Malcolm to be the work of God, but rather of avaricious men.
Malcolm detested the Campbells, their brutality and ever-shifting loyalties. But he was not certain that he liked this self-appointed Hammer of the Lord either, aiding the MacIntyres though he was by rebuilding that damage the ravagers had wrought in the Glen. Not even Colkitto’s service under the charismatic and just Earl of Montrose against the clearly evil Parliament—and murderous convenanters who were determined to unseat their lawful king—was enough to cause great liking or trust in Malcolm’s breast.
Of course, in all fairness, he had to admit that little did these days. Malcolm was a man marked by the spirit world and awaited events in a state of emotional betweenity.
Still, had it been Patrick Ruadh and the MacGregors who had come among them, he would have rejoiced, for though they were Catholics, they were also highlanders and true, fighting for the return of their stolen lands. They were not this uneasy mix of Catholics from Ireland and the isles, and English Episcopals united more in political hatred of Puritans and the Covenant’s Solemn League than they were because of the king or family affairs.
The king. Malcolm could only think on him unhappily. Though Charles was an Anglican now, he had not forgotten his Catholic subjects. In the decade before, he had given a charter to a vast track of land in the New World where Catholics could go and worship unhindered.
But now, his Catholic subjects—those still alive—were asked to be grateful for his past tolerance and possible future benevolence, and to go defend him against the covenanters.
The Irish and Scots served their king, as poor men always had—not with patriotic words, but by watering the fields with their blood. And as all the English kings before him, Charles had accepted this as his due and without any thought for the widows and orphans left behind to die by enemy swords or starvation.
And it was all a great bloody waste!
Of course, Malcolm never said so. His kinsmen already thought he was quite odd. Had he not been their piper, doubtless they would have driven him away long ago, for they truly feared him now that he was grown—as they had his mother and two elder brothers. MacLeods, all of them, and reputedly tainted by faerie blood. Even his body, in the matter of his pointed ears and ambidextrous hands, lent fuel to their superstitions.
It was a dangerous thing to provoke fear in one’s kinsmen. Death from without was always a danger, but one for which a man might prepare. That same danger was rather more difficult to avert when it wore a familiar face. Confronted with such growing hostility, Malcolm’s own parents and siblings had gladly gone to Mary’s land when the Dove sailed a half-score years ago, and had he not been training to be the clan’s piper, he would have happily gone with them.
His father, Calum mor, was a simple man and did not believe all the talk of his wife’s second sight. Too, he thought that this habit of governments—and even chiefs—of forcing religious worship on its subjects by fire and sword raised a stink in God’s nostrils.
After the first atrocities done “for God” under the Act of Revocations, he had taken his family to live over the sea amongst the Quakers who did not compel uniformity of religion. In a letter sent home with the returning Dove, he had written to his son that the strange people of Mary’s land even believed in equality for women and allowed them to preach the Gospel there!
It had to be a wondrous place, Malcolm thought, that land where no one showed their love of God by slaughtering other men and where his mother could work as a healer. He would love to someday visit a place where the strength of one’s sword-arm and the ruthlessness of one’s nature were not the only measures of a man.
“Malcolm!” the chief called. “Hoots awa’ wi’ ye, lad. Come away now!”
Malcolm sighed and stepped out of his dark corner. Once again, distasteful duty called him from his thoughts before he was ready to leave them.
“Welcome, piper! You’ve the highest of gifts,”
MacColla praised him as he joined the two men seated by the fire. The Irishman nodded over his tankard but did not rise to his feet.
Malcolm looked calmly into his watchful gaze, appraising what he saw by the flickering firelight. The Irishman’s young face was stern, even when the lips tried to smile, and the eyes were cold and wary enough to disconcert even a man already marked by the spirits for some unearthly fate. If their illustrious guest was drinking whiskey from his cup, he was not plunging deep into it.
“I thank ye for yer praise. I had a good master in Black Anndra,” Malcolm replied formally, but made no effort to curb his accent as many of the lairds did in august company.
“That is so. I had the pleasure of hearing him play that very song some years past. He taught you well. Most men cannot manage so flawless a passage. Perhaps it is because their poor hands are too small and cannot be used interchangeably.”
“Mayhap.”
“Or perhaps it is because they are not of the MacLeods gifted with special talents. I have heard some astonishing tales of one particular line of MacLeods.”
Malcolm did not answer.
The MacIntyre cleared his throat and joined the conversation for the first time. The chief looked rather ill at ease. It could have been because MacColla mentioned Malcolm’s mixed blood, but he suspected that there was some other, more sinister cause.
“Malcolm, a great honor has come tae ye. Ye’ve been asked tae go wi’ the MacDonnell and his men. They’ve need of a piper tae play them intae battle when they go tae take Duntrune.”
“We need some music to drown out the arrows whistling past our heads,” MacColla added with an unpleasant smile. “I’ve had a sudden vision of you playing upon the castle walls. With your presence, we shall be victorious, I have no doubt. And I always make every effort to ensure victory.”
So, too, did Malcolm have this very same vision every night when he dreamt, and it left him mightily uneased that Colkitto had chosen those particular words to express his expectations of victory. It suggested that there was some deeper purpose at work in this meeting. Deeper purposes could not be ignored.
“Malcolm, lad. Ye’ve been asked tae play the king’s men tae glory.”
“Aye. I heard.”
Asked, the MacIntyre had said, not ordered. Still, he knew his chief well, knew what was required of him in this time of war. Such obedience was the backbone of a chief’s power and the safety of the clan.
Still, Malcolm hesitated to volunteer. What if his fate was to overtake him on this journey to Duntrune and endangered the other men? What if he left the glen and Fate couldn’t find him?
“Malcolm,” the chief prompted again, likely fearing that his increasingly fey piper would seem to MacColla to have lost his nerve and turned coward.
That wasn’t the difficulty, Malcolm knew, but how to explain about the new portents he’d seen—the silvered reed left beside his pipes, and the wraith? He was nominally a Catholic, as was his chief. He knew the way such religions minds as Colkitto’s worked. They would not understand that he still kept some of the old ways and knew the customs. They would not d
iscern what the reed signified. And if they did, they would likely seek his death for being bewitched.
But he knew. After all, he was partly a MacLeod, and though he had tried to reject that part of his nature and live as his father did, he had always been aware that there were other, older beings that lived among them in this world of men. Most people never saw the old ones—his father never had! But Malcolm did see them. They were in the sly shadows that crept about in the darkened corners of certain glades, and behind the careless shiver of leaves when there was no wind to stir them. These things also influenced men’s lives and had to be carefully considered and sometimes appeased.
If he hunted when it rained and killed a stag, he always left a portion of venison for the faeries. At other times, he left milk on the flags by the fire, but on rainy days, he knew that the still-folk ate venison.
And the still-folk were grateful. Where others might find magic barriers stretched across certain hidden ways in the woods, no bar to passage was ever raised against him. Malcolm always returned with game before other hunters. He could always find his way through the woods on even the darkest night.
And he owed his skilled playing not to Black Anndra, but to the blessing his mother’s kin had received in that long-ago cradle where the first half-human, half-faerie child was said to have been born.
And now, Malcolm had been left the silvered reed for his pipes. The gift of the moon-metal and the vision from the still-folk meant that he was chosen for some arcane task or sacrifice.
But this was not something that he could explain to others. Not ever. Nor could he tell them about the knowing that came now when he stood close to certain objects of power. Usually, it was a holy spring, or perhaps an ancient weapon, that brought forth his intuitions. This time, the object of power was a man: the MacColla. A man who, like Robert the Bruce—and himself—carried the trait of ambidexterity.
Yet now, when he needed the inner-guidance most, his instincts had gone quiet.
Aye or nay? Should he embrace this man and swear his loyalty, or refuse, and finally so anger the chief that he would be broken and sent away? Malcolm would not regret leaving the glen, but neither answer was a desired one until the spirits gave him some definite sign of what was to come. Danger was near, but from this world, or the other?
“Are ye drunk, man?” the chief demanded, frowning in earnest. “Speak up!”
Putting his unease aside, Malcolm prepared to answer the men of war who waited impatiently for his reply.
Then, just as he parted his lips to say he knew not what to do, from the corner of his eye he caught a glimpse of the wraith that had lately been haunting him. All unwilling, he turned his head to stare at her.
The apparition was a strange sight. Female, certainly, but dressed in a manner he had never seen on mortal women. She had honey-colored hair and eyes the deep shade of late blueberries with the bloom of dew upon them.
She was not, he felt certain, of the true Daoine Shi—the still-folk who lived under the ground in the turrets of Shian. Nor was she a terrible Irish banshee, nor a ghost, nor an elemental spirit. Yet something about her spoke of magic.
The coming of an apparition was always a sign of change—nearly always for the worse, and most often of imminent death. Yet, he could not believe that this shadowy girl he ofttimes saw from the corner of his eye was any portent of evil.
All she ever did was walk about, with a box mounted on sticks through which she peered from time to time before disappearing in a lightning flash. She had never spoken to him, never looked into his eyes, or given any sign that she knew he was there. Yet this time, when he needed to choose a path, she was staring in his direction, waving her arm in languid farewell.
Farewell Not greeting.
“Malcolm,” the chief prompted in a desperate voice. “Ye’ve returned no answer tae our guest.”
Malcolm reluctantly turned away from the apparition and found the MacColla watching him intently.
“Have you the sight, piper?” he asked softly in Gaelic, leaning forward, those cold eyes avid as he sent a quick glance to the empty air where the girl had stood. “Knowest thou the future? Hast thou seen the evil priest of the Campbells who is said to hunt thy kin? He is even now at Duntrune.”
“Nay,” he denied automatically. It was true that his mother had been a MacLeod, and from a family of wise women, but he had never had the true sight—didn’t want it! Yet…He had been born on the day of Saint Columba’s birth, and those born at the time of that holy saint were said to have the way of turning the riddle come upon them in later life.
And he had heard of this defrocked priest who hunted the still-folk. It was said that he used evil sorceries to find his prey.
Perhaps this wraith was his answer after all. Had she not first appeared at the same time the MacColla’s people had entered the MacIntyre lands? Perhaps she had been sent as a message that he would soon be traveling away from Glen Noe.
If that was the case, he realized with a pang, then she would depart this night and be seen nevermore. Odd that the thought of her leaving made him irritable and even a little sad.
“I am honored to go wi’ ye,” Malcolm said with a quick nod, wishing the conversation over. “Ye plan tae depart in the morn?”
“Aye, as soon after dawn as may be arranged.”
“Then I’ll go at once and see tae mine own preparations.”
“As you like.” MacColla nodded back, his eyes still speculative. “Perhaps there will be time for you to play for us again later.”
“Mayhap.”
Malcolm didn’t wait for his chief’s dismissal, but turned and hurried in the direction of the place where he had last seen the apparition walking. Perhaps he could catch a final glimpse of her before the moonrise. He never saw her later in the night, unless it was in his increasingly fevered dreams.
He traveled from Glen Noe with only his plaid, his pipes, and the sunshine as his load. He had a silver dirk and sghian dubh, but fortunately the MacColla had asked him to bear no other arms aboard the ship; his pipe song, the MacDonnell said, was his greatest weapon.
This was true, of course, but he had long made it a habit never to carry weapons made of cold iron because of the repugnance it held for the still-folk.
Though they were nearing Duntrune Castle where bloody battle would ensue, his thoughts were not upon the struggle ahead. Instead he contemplated the possible purpose of the golden-tressed apparition appearing in his life. By his estimation, she should have left him yestereve; yet though he had not found her in the dark of the night, she had again been out walking when dawn lit up the sky.
She had paced beside the MacColla’s men as they approached the loch, hair loose and sparkling as if under a noonday sun, though the sky above was cast over with grey. Malcolm had needed every fiber of will not to stare at her openly as she strolled with her magic box toward the softly frothing water’s edge.
He wondered if she would actually board their boat, but like all spirits, she seemed unable to cross over water. Instead, she had set her box upon its long-legged sticks and peered out over the shore as though enthralled with the wrack and spindthrift that gathered there. Soon, there had come the expected flash of light and then, to his great disappointment, she was gone.
Malcolm exhaled slowly. It was surely madness to think on her. If the MacColla knew of his distraction, he would likely order him bound to a holy stone until Saint Fillan saw to his release from delirium.
Ah! But what sweet madness had him in thrall! He closed his eyes and let the refreshing wind of the Loch Crinan blow over him, teasing his unbound locks and slipping beneath his belted plaid. It was more pleasant than contemplating what lay ahead. He did not doubt that the MacColla’s machinations would win them Duntrune Castle, but what should become of him after, he did not know, except that he sensed his days in Scotland were numbered at less than a score. The senses that showed him the quickest path on a moonless night told him that another road awaited him.
He hoped that it was a way to a new and better life in some other land far away, but if it was the “low road” for him, he supposed he could bear it if this golden wraith walked beside him. Strange as she was in her manner of dress, it seemed to him that she left nothing to be desired in a female companion.
Malcolm grinned suddenly.
What lunatic idiocy was this? Nothing to be desired? He had to be mad. Everything about her was eminently desirable! He’d cast off his plaid to make them a bed in an instant had she been anything but insubstantial dreams and shadow.
“You seem in good spirits,” MacColla said quietly, taking a seat on the deck beside him. The two of them were nearly a head taller than any of the men nearby.
“Aye.” Malcolm turned to look at the man who was so surely bound up in his approaching fate. He still did not know if he liked or hated him.
“Think you that we shall have success in today’s great venture?”
Malcolm shrugged, still smiling faintly.
“I believe ye’ll take the keep,” he said.
“Aye? Think you then that we shall rid Scotland of the bloody Campbells as well?”
Malcolm shook his head.
“The Campbells are like the poor; they shall be with us always.”
“You are indifferent to them?”
“Nay. ‘Tis just that I shall not be here tae see them feasting on our bones.”
MacColla was finally disconcerted.
“You are leaving us?” he asked softly in Gaelic. One did not speak of dying in the lowland tongue. Nor did the Irishman likely want to speak of death before battle when it might vex the men. “You are called to travel, MacLeod?”
“Aye. Before the next full moon.” Malcolm’s voice was equally soft as he told his unwanted spirit-brother the truth.
“And for this you smile?” MacColla was evidently part-fascinated and part-disturbed.
“Nay. I smile because I am for the first time—and certainly the last—in love.” Malcolm laughed and gave the man a look.
Night Visitor Page 3