“Certainly not. It would ruin my work. It is only a little warm inside and I have not been using any dangerous chemicals. Was there something else you needed? I am in the middle of working on—” Taffy tried to think of some plausible project, but her mind was fixated by the ululations of the wailing music and was unable to formulate a lie.
Fortunately, Davis was not interested enough to spare the time for any explanations.
“Yes, I can see that you are busy. Don’t strain yourself. No one expects the delicately nurtured to labor as diligently as a male when it is so warm.” On his lips, the term delicately nurtured sounded like a disease, making her wish to deny her gentility.
It was an irrational reaction, so she put it aside, just as she had with all the other self-doubts and unhappiness his disparaging comments awoke.
“I shall be done before noon,” she lied.
Aye, lie. Anything to get rid of him!
“Very well then.”
“I shall see you this evening,” she answered, shutting the door on her last syllables.
“Shhh!” she scolded the song in her head. Immediately, the crescendoing music ceased, but there was a soft rumble of laughter.
She waited patiently for her father’s footsteps to fade away before opening one of the workshop’s carriage shutters and retrieving her plate from its satchel.
Nothing had changed. It was him. The ancient plaid, the brogues, the pipes…the ears.
“Ar dheas De go raibh a anam,” she muttered, then frowned. May his soul be on the right hand of God! Where had she learned that bit of Gaelic? Mostly she had only greetings and curses in her repertoire, not blessings!
Carefully, because her hands were shaking, she secured the photographic plate she held between thin boards and left her darkroom to return to the inn. She would hide her photograph in her portmanteau until she decided what to do with it.
“I’m leaving now, Malcolm,” she whispered bravely. “Follow me, please.”
Again, she had the sensation that she was not alone on her ride to the inn. It was unnerving, but somehow not unpleasant to think that Malcolm might be with her. Indeed, the notion of riding through the country with a ghost up on the cruppers was exhilarating. It was possible that no one—in the entirety of history—had ever done so.
Ah! But was this notion true? Was this ancient Scot following her back to her accommodations? She frowned. This all might just be her wild imagination. Perhaps she had spent too many hours in the heat and chemical fumes with only herself for company.
Scientific experimentation—that was the key, she decided, dismounting her velocipede in the innyard and leaning it against a shady wall. A strange phenomenon, if real rather than imaginary, should be capable of repetition under like circumstances.
She plucked her precious satchel out of the panier and held it tightly to her breast. Her camera was within reach if she found need.
She had seen this “Malcolm” best when she was asleep. But for the moment, short of laudanum, there was no possibility that she could rest this early in the day.
But there was still meditation. Mystics had used that for centuries to contact the spirit world. Of course, she didn’t have any rituals to aid her, but a closed shutter and a quiet room would surely be all she needed to concentrate. After all, the ghostly presence seemed very near.
Hopeful that the piper would follow her inside, she went into the inn. Taffy climbed the narrow stairs, grateful that the Mistress MacIntyre was busy elsewhere. She was fairly certain that meditating people did not speak about mundane matters—like linens—when they were preparing to visit the spirit world.
Taffy soon reached her room, which was shaded against the bright sky. A candle would have been nice, if she had one nearby, but rather than waste time hunting for one, she made do with an oil lamp, its flame turned low. She propped her astounding picture against the wall where she might study it while she attempted a meditative trance.
She had a momentary pang of regret that she hadn’t attended a seance when the opportunity was offered. It would have been useful to have some firsthand experience of how this ritual was done.
Feeling a little awkward, she stretched out on her cot and tried to relax. At first, she was nearly as rigid as hardwood, but soon her limbs unknotted and she allowed her eyes to lose their focus. Her breaths were slow and deep. She felt as if a part of her was floating—
Malcolm played as the Irish mercenaries came flying off the ship and fell upon the keep. Their fury allowed no acknowledgment of minor wounds, and the Campbell guards, slow and careless in their duties, were quickly annihilated. The flagstones of Duntrune were soon covered with the Campbell dead.
Malcolm ceased playing as soon as the last enemy had fallen. The sudden silence after the din of his war pipes seemed even more appalling.
Colkitto turned to Malcolm as the piper joined the men in the courtyard. The bloodlust was still upon him and the MacColla’s face was as hard and merciless as an animal’s. He ripped the Campbells’ banner down from the wall, crushing the boar’s face in his iron fist.
“You had the right of it, piper. The keep is ours. I wish the black bitch herself was here. I’d like Lady Dunstaffnage and her bastard cleric to be my guests of honor. But it seems we will have to wait for that pleasure.”
“Is she so very evil?” Malcolm asked.
Hearing his voice plainly for the first time, Taffy stirred restlessly upon her cot. She was aware of her true surroundings, the wool blanket at her back, the linen coverpane beneath her head, and the scent from the low-burning lantern, but she was unable to shake off the other bloody images that had her mind in their clutches. The history of this place surrounded her.
The piper’s voice was low-pitched, beautifully timbred, and rich with the musical rhythm of the Gaels. Terrified as she was, she still longed to hear more of it.
“Aye. That she is, evil and more. A more heartless—” A low moan sounded from one of the men lying at Colkitto’s feet. Without expression, he lifted his broadsword and—
“No!” a strange woman’s voice cried out, causing Malcolm to look around.
“Lass?”
Their eyes met and he started in her direction.
“No!” Taffy jerked upright, her heart pounding. The room heaved as though passing under an ocean wave, and it took a moment for the chamber to resettle itself in its proper place.
She looked about wildly, and in spite of what she half-believed, she was still shocked to discover that she was not alone in the small room.
“Dear Lord in Heaven!” She drew her knees up to her chest and stared round-eyed at the figure who gazed upon her intently from across the tiny chamber.
The outline of his shape was hazy, as if a veil of fog had been flung over him, but there was no mistaking her guest’s identity.
“Are ye coming soon, lass?” His lips didn’t move, but she heard the question in her mind.
Vapor rose between them like mist off of a lake and a salt tang filled the air. She could see Malcolm’s pupils expanding until the black all but overran the pale gray of the irises. There were reflections moving in those eyes, but they weren’t of the inn’s plain room.
He leaned forward, parting the hazy veil with his broad shoulders. Bits of vapor clung to his dark locks as he thrust his way through the fog that divided them.
He reached out an insubstantial finger to touch her cheek, and a shiver at the feathery touch of something half-recognizable rippled down her skin. It was like velvet, only softer, and scorching to the touch.
She could see more clearly now, the images moving in his eyes. There were trees and an altar with two figures embracing upon it; one small and golden, the other taller and dark.
“Are ye coming tae me, lass?” The voice asked again, demanding an affirmative answer.
“Yes,” another voice answered. She dimly recognized it as her own.
“That is well.” He smiled gently. So beautiful did he appear that he did not
seem human.
The impatient mist stirred again, surging up in a wave from the shaking floor, making her feel disoriented and slightly sick to her stomach.
“Make haste. Ye’ve little time!” he said, imparting a sense of the terrible urgency with his demand for her speedy arrival.
“Wait,” she whispered, but already the veil was pulling closed. In another moment, he was gone, swallowed by the thinning mist, which disappeared into the cracks of the ceiling and floor. In two moments, not even the smell of fog remained as proof of her vision.
“Bless Saint Columba and all of the Gaels!” she whispered, laying a hand to her tingling cheek and then over her forehead to check for fever.
Was he a human ghost? Or something more? Could he truly be one of the legendary creatures she had heard about? Homo arcanus, the Gaelic daoine shi?
“Rubbish,” she assured herself, unable to accept any other spiritual revelations. “He is just a ghost.”
Then, hearing her words, she fell back upon the cot and laid an arm over her eyes.
Just a ghost? What on earth was she going to do?
Two hours later, Taffy closed the book of local history upon the picture of the Campbells’ clan badge—the same evil boar’s head that was embroidered on the banner in Duntrune’s hall, and the same one she had seen in her vision of the taking of the keep.
Even allowing for familial sentiments for the author, one Iain Lorn, whose father had died at Campbell hands, the picture painted of life in the village in 1644 was an appalling one. The armies of occupation, masquerading as the bringers of enlightenment, had stripped the land like a particularly savage brood of locusts.
There had been unspeakable atrocities on both sides, but always, at the very front of the swarm, had been Lord Lorne and Lady Dunstaffnage with her band of treacherous Campbells. This evil creature had ridden out with her Mialchoins—her hunting hounds—and tracked down humans like any other prey.
Taffy shuddered as she returned the book to its shelf in the neat parlor. It was entirely still in the inn at this hour in the afternoon, but she could almost hear the sound of ancient baying as the deer hounds rampaged through the glens, their mistress and her ravening pack swarming after their tiring quarry, waiting for them to falter so they might rush forward and dip their forked tongues in the helpless kill.
It was this creature who had captured and mutilated the piper of Duntrune, Malcolm.
Are ye coming, lass? whispered the voice in her head.
Yes. Soon. And she was. But she needed more complete instruction. How was she to get there? What was she to do when she arrived?
She knew of only one way to ask.
Taffy glanced at the parlor clock. Three o’clock. There would be time for a nap before dinner.
Chapter Four
Duntrune, 1644
The dead stared at the sky with the blank, sunken eyes of men who had passed out of life unwilling to believe that the tide of treacherous Fate had overtaken them. Malcolm’s own short life flowed past for review before his mind’s eye. Like a blue river in spate, it was there from birth to approaching death. And like a mighty flood, death seemed impossible to seize, to stop, or to escape.
Around him, the Campbells rushed with a kind of wild gaiety as they rehung their singed and bloodied banner. They seemed not to realize that regaining the castle through lies and betrayal rather than skillful battle was not a thing of which to be proud.
The Campbells had reclaimed Duntrune the moment Colkitto had sailed off, quickly overcoming the contingent of men the Irish had left to defend it. King Charles’s vastly outnumbered men had surrendered upon promise of their lives—but the pledge of surrender was broken at the behest of the black bitch, Lady Dunstaffnage. A Groach by birth, she was, and as wicked as her ancestress, Lady MacBeth, had ever been, and as uncaring of the odium she incurred. Foolish Lord Dunstaffnage had married her, no doubt thinking that he could cure her nature with a whip. But such was not the case when wickedness was bred into the bones. As with religion, goodness could not be forced into the heart, not even at the end of the sharpest sword.
Of course, she was not alone in her perfidiousness. Her personal advisor was ever in attendance upon her. Markham, her newly swaddled Puritan minister from England, defrocked by the true church and branded with the M, sign of his evil crimes, burnt into the brawn of his thumb, was hard at her side when she had entered the castle to view the battered prisoners. Malcolm had never seen him but instantly knew him for what he was—one of the new Puritans with a taste for torture, gladly sworn to kill the Catholic anti-Christ. He was also the one the MacColla had mentioned: the man who for pleasure hunted both the still-folks and all mortals who bore their blood.
Together, their hands worked against all clans—even her own husband’s. The wicked creature had become a scarlet-handed reaper. A female version of the murderous Lord Lorne.
Malcolm watched, a bound captive, as the last of the Irish mercenaries left to defend Duntrune were dragged forward. Young Mudro was half-dead already from his wounds and in too much agony to know any more fear. He fell prostrate before his captress; his savaged legs pierced through with arrows were unable to hold him. It seemed impossible that any woman faced with such suffering in a boy of but fourteen years could still act the part of the butcher.
The lad looked up slowly. At the sight of his face, stained with welling blood, her lips curled up over her teeth as though she prepared to sink her fangs into the poor wretch’s throat and rip it from him. In that moment, she looked the embodiment of the tusked boar that was the symbol of the Campbell clan.
She did not move, though, but simply gave an order. Like the other dead and wounded, Mudro was stripped of his meager clothing, usable arrows pulled from his flesh, and then dragged to the rubble wall where he was flung over to crash onto the boulders below.
His screams were agony to hear, but the Campbells near Lady Dunstaffnage went about unaffected, snuffling and snorting happily as they rooted through the possessions of the slain. Horrible to think on it, but perhaps they were inured to such acts of brutality.
After a moment, Lady Dunstaffnage turned from her contemplation of the mound of death growing at the base of the wall and stalked Malcolm’s way. Her skirts rustled like dead leaves as she moved. She seemed a man’s worst nightmare given life.
“So, piper.” Black eyes, hard as stones and as lifeless, looked into his own. In her ominous pupils, he could see his death; not that day or the next, but very soon. “What am I to do with you?”
Knowing his duty to Colkitto required that he sup with the devil swine, at least for a time, Malcolm made an astonishing suggestion.
The barrow’s passage was narrow, darker than the night outside, and the floor treacherously uneven. But the air, uncommon for an ancient grave, was fresh and slightly chilled. Taffy found herself grateful for the lantern’s warmth on her fingers. Without this small point of hopeful light, her mood would have been as black as a shroud. This trek into a burial mound was in its own way terrifying, but her dream had been very clear. This was the way to the piper.
Navigating the tunnel was difficult, laden as she was, but Taffy needed everything she was carrying. The lantern was critical, as were her rifle and ammunition belts, which she wore criss-crossed on her chest in the style of the Texas banditos. Nor could she visit another century and not take her camera and a supply of plates! Unthinkable!
“Bloody hell,” she muttered as she again found herself wedged in the tight passage.
And then there were her bulky satchels divided between bandages, photographic plates, and sandwiches, fruit, chocolates—and a purloined flask of whisky.
Many women had a casual attitude about meals, but Taffy was not one of them. Hiking always left her ravenous, and assuming that she survived this rescue attempt, she suspected that fortifications of both solid and liquid varieties would be needed soon after.
There was one last item tucked down in a pocket: a small weapon she had pi
cked up on a lark from a street vendor in New York. It was actually a piece of heavy jewelry worn over the four fingers of the right hand. The item was sometimes called brass knuckles by the brawling underclasses, but the ones in her pocket were an exceptionally pretty set, made of silver with a carving of a mermaid on the front. The part of the jewelry that rested against her palm bore the amusing inscription: Savage-Trainer.
At the time she had purchased them, they had been a curiosity; the notion of ever having occasion to use them had been a ridiculous one. After all, Taffy had always assumed that she would run a mile in a corset and high heels to avoid any violent situations where she would be called upon to defend herself in some physical manner.
The knuckles were less amusing now. There were places in the world where women had need of such weapons, or they would never have been made. And it seemed she was being called to one of them.
Taffy didn’t feel much like the feast for the eyes she wished she might be upon the occasion of meeting the famous piper of Duntrune. She wore her dark jean dress and hiking boots because they were the practical choice, though under other circumstances, she would not choose to play ambassador to Malcolm and the seventeenth century wearing such undignified clothing.
She supposed that her attire was a minor consideration when weighed against the fact that she was either completely mad, or truly following an inhuman omen brought in a dream that she might travel to the long-dead past. Still, it bothered her that she was dressed so unbecomingly for the trip.
Two hundred and forty-four years! Could she really get there—and back—on the low road of ancient legend? Her father would give everything he owned—probably even his life—to have these questions answered. If such travel was possible, he could go and see his precious Picts and live among the ancient Gaels.
But she hadn’t told him a thing. Not a word, because without more evidence than her dreams and a lone bizarre photograph, there was nothing to convince him of the truth. And she felt, also, that while the way was temporarily open to her because of some magical dispensation of Malcolm’s, her father would never be allowed to pass through. Not while he still lived, at least.
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