by Allie Mackay
“The ruin across the Kyle, perched on a cliff edge?” Cilla’s interest perked. “I saw it last night. Is it said to be haunted by Vikings?”
“Not that I’ve ever heard, but I’m certain I sensed a Norsewoman there once.” Aunt Birdie’s tone turned wistful. “I was there very late one night, well after midnight. You know summer nights here never get truly dark. I saw her for just an instant. She was standing with her back to me, her long blond braid hanging well below her hips, as she gazed out to sea. Even though I couldn’t see her face, I knew it’d be tracked with tears.”
Aunt Birdie glanced aside for a moment, her own eyes suspiciously bright. “I knew here” – she touched a hand to her heart – “that she was pining for a lover who’d gone to sea and would never return.”
“Then she was gone.” Cilla guessed.
“If she’d even been there. Your uncle said she was moon glow reflecting on the stones.” Aunt Birdie looked back at her, blinking. “I believe otherwise. I even sensed her name. Gudrid. If she was there, I like to think my sympathy was a comfort to her.”
“So Castle Varrich was Viking?” Cilla could see the ruined tower’s crumbling, V-shaped walls in her mind. “I thought it looked medieval.”
“The ruins are medieval.” Aunt Birdie dabbed at her eyes with a napkin. “The castle belonged to Clan Mackay and dates back to the fourteenth century. Local tradition claims a Norse stronghold stood on the site long before the Mackays set the first foundation stone.”
Cilla shivered. “I’d like to see it.”
“You should.” Aunt Birdie looked determined. “If you don’t mind riding in a lorry, Robbie and Roddie can drop you off in Tongue later today. They’ll pass through the village with our peat and can leave you at the Ben Loyal Hotel. The path up to the ruin starts near there, just beside the bank.”
Cilla’s heart gave a little flip. “Can I walk back?”
“You could.” Aunt Birdie considered. “But that would mean walking clear through Tongue, not that it’s more than a blip in the road, then you’d pass some sheep fields before heading back across the Kyle causeway. Once on our side again, you’d turn right at the cemetery and then face an even longer trek back here.”
“That’s quite a hike.”
“It is.” Aunt Birdie tapped her chin with a long, red-lacquered fingernail. “Much too far. I’ll drive over to the Ben Loyal and wait for you in their Bistro Bar or restaurant, An Garbh.”
“An Garbh?” Cilla lifted a brow.
“It’s Gaelic for ‘hilly place.’ The restaurant has huge picture windows with views of Ben Loyal and Ben Hope and even your castle ruin. If the scenery isn’t enough, they play classical music as you dine.” Aunt Birdie sat back, looking pleased. “Maybe we’ll grab dinner there. They have the most divine menu.”
“Well…”
“You’d love their hand-cut chips.” Aunt Birdie pulled out the big guns. “They really are the best.”
Cilla swallowed.
Her mouth watered. Excitement beat inside her. The day, as her aunt painted it, did sound like a lovely and enjoyable outing. Who could resist a cliff-top castle ruin?
Especially when followed by the promise of delicious hand-cut French fries?
As a lover of atmospheric old places and a dedicated, card-carrying potato zealot, she couldn’t think of a better way to spend the afternoon.
She also loved classical music.
Still…
“Will I find my way up the ruin and back okay?” That was her only consideration. “The cliff looked pretty steep and wooded from my window.”
“The path is well marked.” Aunt Birdie dismissed her concern. “It isn’t all that steep. I haven’t been up there in a while, but I don’t recall it being too difficult a climb.”
“If you’re sure.” Cilla didn’t want to admit she wasn’t in the best shape.
If only she was one of those lucky women who lost their appetite when things went wrong.
Unfortunately, getting ditched by Grant and then seeing her business crumble had increased her passion for food and decreased her desire to exercise.
“Of course, I’m sure.” Aunt Birdie smiled in satisfaction. “The fresh air will do you good and-”
“Eeeeee!” A woman’s high-pitched cry rose from somewhere else in the castle, accompanied by a loud, clattering crash and a dog’s wild barking.
Cilla’s heart slammed against her ribs. She whirled toward the door, her ears ringing.
Aunt Birdie leapt to her feet. Her teacup shattered on the tile floor.
“Aaaaaaaiiiiii!” The woman screamed again.
This time a low, heavy-sounding thud cut off her screech.
“That was Behag, the cook!” Aunt Birdie sprinted from the conservatory.
“Wait!” Cilla hurried around the table, her feet slipping in the spilled tea.
Colonel Darling and Violet Manyweathers were already out the door. They chased after Aunt Birdie, the three of them streaking down the corridor with incredible speed. Flora Duthie hobbled in their wake, the tap-tapping of her cane loud in the vaulted passage now that the echoes of the ruckus were fading.
Only Leo kept up the din.
His frantic yapping filled the corridor, the shrill barks cresting the ear-piercing level only achieved by the smallest of dogs.
Far ahead of Cilla, her aunt and the old dears disappeared around a curve in the passageway, leaving her to pull up the rear.
Heart in her throat, she ran ever faster until she barreled around a corner and nearly slammed into the colonel’s gray-suited back.
Fisted hands on his hips, he blocked the arched entry into the kitchen. “I’ve said for years that she dips into Mac’s spirit cabinet!” he scolded, sounding righteous. “Now we have the proof!”
“Proof schmoof.” That came from Honoria. “She was making your breakfast is what she was doing. Everyone else eats scrambled eggs. You order yours soft-cooked and not a jot over or under six minutes!”
The colonel's back stiffened. “Harridan.”
“Oh, stop, both of you!” Aunt Birdie pushed past him, her usual calm flown.
Colonel Darling moved then, and Cilla caught a glimpse of the housekeeper past his square-set shoulders. Kneeling, Honoria pressed a cloth to the forehead of a huge blond-haired woman, her entire apron-clad bulk lying prone on the kitchen’s stone-flagged floor.
Smashed crockery and a spreading puddle of steaming porridge lay beside her. A great wooden stirring spoon, Flora’s silver porringer, and an upturned basket of freshly-baked soda farls added to the chaos.
Leo ran in circles in front of the long work counter, his gaze repeatedly darting to the window above the large copper sink.
“Goodness me!” Aunt Birdie’s voice rose. “What happened here?”
“Did she have a … is she…?” Cilla clamped her mouth shut, realizing too late that the words heart attack and dead were best left unspoken in a place like Dunroamin.
“Nae, she isn’t deid.” Flora tottered forward to poke the cook with her cane. “This is the work of the Vikings, sure as I’m standing here! Behag Finney is one of them.” She touched the tip of her cane to the cook’s flaxen hair. “They’ve come to collect her. She just fainted before they could spirit her away.”
“This has nothing to do with Vikings.” Honoria dipped her cloth into a basin, then, after wringing it out, slapped it once more onto the cook’s forehead.
“‘Twas the devil, it was,” she insisted, splaying her fingers to better press the cooling rag against Behag’s pale skin.
“The devil?” Cilla’s stomach dropped.
Surely Hardwick wouldn’t stoop to frightening helpless old women? Overweight, middle-aged cooks in faded blue dresses and flour-stained aprons?
Honoria was nodding, her face grim.
“I saw him myself.” She flashed a look at the colonel, as if expecting him to deny it. “Bright red, horned, and big as the day, he was. Looking in through the window just there,�
� she said, flinging out an arm to indicate the sink. “I saw him when I came in here to fetch Flora’s wooden bowl.”
“Humph!” Colonel Darling snorted.
Aunt Birdie wrung her hands.
Cilla stared at them all, wondering.
What a pity she didn’t have any answers.
Chapter Seven
Several hours later, Cilla paused halfway up the steep and overgrown path to Castle Varrich. She’d never dreamed a hiking trail would be barely wide enough for her feet. This one was, and as she eyed the ever rising track, she considered defeat. Great was the temptation to return to the cozy, oh-so-level public rooms of the Ben Loyal Hotel.
She could call Aunt Birdie and go back to Dunroamin. Sort through the packing crates of Uncle Mac’s broken china, organize her tools, and wait for her kiltie to make an appearance. Already, he loomed before her mind’s eye, his big strong hands hooked around his kilt belt, and looking ready to sate any woman’s hottest dreams.
Her heart began a slow, hard thumping.
She almost ached to feel his touch again. His rich, whisky-smooth voice played across her memory, the deep lilting tones strumming vulnerable places. How typical that she’d hoped to spend the afternoon not thinking about her sexy Highland ghost, yet she couldn’t keep him out of her mind.
She should be angry, not melting over his Scottish accent.
If her suspicions were true, he’d used a silly devil disguise to scare her and then did the same thing to the poor innocent cook. She didn’t want to believe he’d do such a thing, but she’d seen his conjuring skills. Any ghost who could appear so real and also make a solid-looking medieval shield pop in and out of thin air could surely whip up a devil face.
Hadn’t he flicked his fingers and created a wooden, water-filled bathing tub in the middle of her bedroom?
So, anything was possible.
She had good reason to suspect him.
Yet here she was – away from his ghostly reach – and just thinking about him made her heart do flip-flops.
He’d made it clear he wanted her gone. Even so, however she turned it, she wanted him.
No man had ever affected her so intensely.
A man who was a ghost!
Frustration biting hard, she glared at the trail rising in front of her. She had no business struggling up slippery, weed-infested footpaths. What she needed was an appointment with a shrink.
Instead, she bent down to plunge a finger beneath the top of her sock, fishing around until she located the tiny, impossible-to-identify beetle-like creature who’d decided to enjoy intimate terms with her ankle.
Pleased to end the association before it could get too serious, she placed the bug on one of the giant bracken fronds clogging the path. Then she shuddered.
Aunt Birdie had lied out her ears.
The only thing easy about reaching the ruined tower was finding the wooden ‘Footpath to Castle Varrich’ signpost next to the village bank.
After that, it’d been a nightmarish trek that had her huffing and puffing and growing hotter with each step along the almost vertical path. Her lungs burned, a nasty stitch jabbed her side, and the back of her shirt stuck to her skin. That last despite the shade of the dark, thick-growing trees and the earthy-damp chill of the air.
She shouldn’t be surprised.
Of course, the ancient Mackay castle builders or the Norsemen before them wouldn’t have built a defensive stronghold in an easily accessible place. She’d seen the height of the tower’s jutting headland from her window.
She should’ve known it wouldn’t be easy.
Or that piece-of-pie to her was a whole ‘nother animal to Aunt Birdie.
After all, her aunt had once spent six weeks backpacking through the wilds of Indonesia. Alone, save the company of an equally adventurous girlfriend and – gasp! – her friend’s nine year old daughter.
With the exception of a few close encounters with leeches while skinny dipping in a pond in a bamboo wood on Bali, and contracting food poisoning after dining with locals somewhere in the rain forest of Sulawesi, Aunt Birdie called the adventure a delight.
Cilla swiped her forehead with her shirtsleeve.
She had to be tougher.
But finding a bug in her sock wasn’t funny. In fact, it’d been the last straw.
So she considered her options. The footpath had shrunk to a muddy thread barely discernible beneath a sea of clinging, waist-high bracken. She suspected the beetle had innumerable friends and relatives lurking there. Each one eager to make her acquaintance the instant she plunged onward.
She eyed the bracken with renewed aversion.
A cool pint in the Ben Loyal’s Bistro Bar was sounding better by the moment.
Still, she really did want to see the tower ruin.
Besides, stomping up a mountain might just purge her of wicked, not-good-for-her mind wanderings. So she braced her hands on her thighs and breathed deep until she was no longer quite so winded.
She straightened, her mood lifting when she caught a glimpse of the tower through the trees. High above her, its stones beckoned, using lichen and age to lure her on.
“You’re hopeless,” she muttered, disgusted by the ease with which old stones won out over a pint of real ale in a pub that reeked of charm and coziness.
She was mad, for sure.
Quickly, before she could think too deeply on Mr. Beetle and his pals, she tossed back her hair and struck off through the bracken.
Barbed deer fencing soon blocked the way, but a tricky scramble up and over a rickety ladder-like stile brought her to a low hand-railed causeway across a bog and – lo – not far from the end of the wood-planked walk, the footpath rose in straight line to the ruin.
Unfortunately, the last stretch looked to be the steepest.
She took a deep breath and forged on. The mud was slippery, and once a scatter of pebbles almost sent her plunging down the grassy slope into the Kyle. But then she was at the top, picking her way over a small heap of tumbled masonry to reach a jagged opening in the tower wall.
Whether a door or just a gap caused by falling rubble, she clambered through it into the ruin’s interior.
Little more than a dim, earthy-smelling enclosure, small and circular, Castle Varrich’s roofless walls embraced her. Shadows shifted, then wrapped around her like a cloak, soft and beguiling. A slanting ray of sun picked out a drift of old leaves beneath the remains of a window embrasure.
Halfway up the wall, the gaping niche held a sense of poignancy as if the onetime window remembered sharing its views with long-ago souls and missed them.
Cilla's heart thumped.
She could easily imagine Aunt Birdie's Viking maid standing in the arched alcove. Or sitting on the embrasure’s stone bench, its hard contours softened by fur rugs and colorful pillows instead of blurred by smears of mold and dirt, the flotsam of ages.
Enchanted, Cilla took a few steps deeper into the tower, her pulse quickening.
Each muddied, moss-grown stone shimmered with the past. If only they could speak. Tell tales of all they’d seen and heard down the centuries.
She shivered, wishing it was so.
Aunt Birdie once said that every blade of grass in Scotland had a story clinging to it, each stone and clump of heather, its own mythic bit of legend and lore.
Now she believed it.
Castle Varrich was the stuff of dreams.
Scotland as she'd always imagined it.
To experience this kind of history live, she could handle a bug or two in her sock. Even tromping up a path that was so steep she could have bitten into the ground before her.
None of that mattered now.
She peered about, her shoulders relaxing and her tense, overexerted thigh muscles beginning to loosen. For the first time since passing the footpath sign, she smiled.
No, she grinned.
She was inside a genuine, honest-to-goodness castle ruin. The thrill was almost more than she could bear.
Carefully, with all the awe and reverence she knew she’d feel at such a moment, she placed her hands on the chill, damp stones. Ancient stones, worn smooth by countless raindrops, some cracked and broken by constant exposure to icy, northern wind.
She pressed her palms against the wall, letting her fingers explore the cold, uneven surface. She tried to breathe in their essence, almost expecting – no, hoping – to feel a slight pulse or vibration.
Nothing happened.
She did hear sheep bleating somewhere in the distance.
A soft sigh followed by a slight rustling.
She blinked as chill sped down her spine and the fine hairs on her nape lifted.
Such sounds could’ve been Gudrid. Aunt Birdie’s Norse maid at the window embrasure. More likely, it’d been the soughing of the wind through the ivy spilling down one side of the ruin.
Hoping to increase her chances of glimpsing the ghost – if indeed she’d made the noises – Cilla studied the stretch of wall rising up to the crumbling window alcove.
There were enough footholds to get her up there.
If she didn’t slip.
She glanced at the hard-packed earthen floor. Stones and fallen rubble were everywhere. Not to mention what she was sure must be stinging nettle growing around the wall edges. Whatever goo and what-not hid beneath the piles of old, dead leaves.
Falling wouldn’t be pretty.
A spill in the other direction, out the window, would be even worse. She’d tumble straight down the grassy slope, roll over the cliff-edge and land in the Kyle.
Where she’d promptly drown if she was still alive when her body hit the water.
She took a step closer to the wall, her mind working furiously.
Climbing up was dangerous. But the window was where the tower’s hall would have been. She could see the line of joist holes for the hall’s wooden floor. If she could make it that far, she could swing herself into the embrasure. Unfortunately, now that she was close, the alcove looked even higher. Peering up at it, she willed herself to be brave. After all, she was Aunt Birdie’s niece.