I glowered as the workhorses turned and dragged the sledges back to the farmyard and onto the road. The men gave not a backward glance.
As they rounded the bend, I raised my fist and cried, “Marasg ort!” Go to hell!
But I could do better than that.
Chapter 38
I walked across the fields and under the clouds of white and gray that filled the sky and dipped below the horizon, darkening in the north and obscuring the light over the sea. The sun peered from behind their great white shapes, piles of new wool dropped into sky. Over the hillocks and dunes and under the sky I walked. No trees here . . . all were long gone, used years ago to build the houses, all except in the Lochloy Wood, the laird’s own wood.
The laird, John Hay . . . so “kind” he was. Such fame for generosity and protection. But we who lived in the farmtown, with barely a scrap from the fields, we tilled and plowed and planted and harvested. He’d taken it—almost all of it now—leaving a pittance so the bairns would barely survive. The one baby dead this past year, and Maria needing the meat and cheese and fruit that graced the laird’s table.
I climbed the great Nachran, the last dune before the sea, and stood on top. The ocean was mighty and wild today, with waves swelling far out on the horizon. They crashed together, sending sprays of white this way and that. Gulls screeched and dived, pushed and pulled hither and yon by the wind.
The wind knocked and grabbed me, flapping my plaid and bonnet, whipping my face with sand and salt so that I could barely stand. If I could lay the wind to rest, I would. But my power was to raise the wind, not lay it.
The fairies were dancing ’round, agitated and thrilled in the tumult, and I was called to a song for dawn:
Who brought’st me up from last night,
To the gladsome light of this day,
To win everlasting life for my soul,
All to the end and three times ending with Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.
Today, the fairies’ color was blue. Blue and purple and green and shades between, these wind-tossed beings that flitted in the tall grass, flitted and laughed and teased and hid.
And here was my own, my William, with the wicked grin and the pointy cap and ears, beckoning with a finger.
I would go with William. I’d punish the laird as he had punished my people.
William would give me gowns of silk and velvet, shoes, and feasts of cakes and wine and meat . . . all I could eat. And power.
He beckoned again to me, to me alone, and I leapt onto my steed, Red Reiver beside me. With a “Horse and hattock, ho!” we flew, into the sky and over the sleeping lands below until we arrived at the Downie Hill. In front of it stooped a tiny man all in green, and behind him an open door. He ushered us into the room beneath the mound, where crouched fifteen elf-lads, hollow and hump-backed. They hammered and chiseled, bent over their tasks with industry.
They were whyting and dighting the elf-arrows, just as I’d told Lady Margaret. William picked up two of the finished arrows and gave them to me. “And when you shoot them at someone just so,” he said, flicking his finger and thumbnail, and repeating the command I already knew, “you say, ‘I shoot you in the devil’s name,’ and the person shall not go home that night. There will be not one bit of him left alive. And when you make your covenant with me, I will give you greater power.”
Now I knew for sure that William was the devil and ’twas wrong to go with him, but the laird had to be punished for his evil deeds, and Mister Harry, too. How else could that happen? I had no other power, no troops at my command, no way to avenge the wrongs that had been done to me, to my mother, and to all who lived in the farmtown.
I would go with William.
We flew east and into the night, above the fields and cattle, over the firth and the farmtown, over Inshoch Castle, and toward the Auldearn kirk.
In a field, a farmer was laboring at his plow. I flicked an arrow at him, but it fell short and missed the target. There another man. I aimed and flicked again, with a snap of finger to thumb. “I shoot you in the devil’s name,” I cried. The arrow hit home, and immediately the man fell down dead beside his plow.
“Oh!” I gasped, for this was William Bower, a kind man who had given a toy to wee Maria. But my William laughed and cheered me on, and immediately, I forgot my remorse in the thrill of being with this brave and mighty being.
I did not pause to wonder why now twas night nor why farmers were out in the night but followed William.
“Tis the wild hunt!” he cried, “And you, the huntress!”
I swelled with pride . . . a huntress in the night, as I followed him under the stars and clouds, and we alit beside the Auldearn kirk.
The kirk stood dark and cold, a ghostly gray in the light of the stars. William was now clad all in black. His feet were cloven hooves. He had a tail, and he was black all over . . . black as night. “Now you are my lady,” he said, “and I will give you all your heart’s desires when you make your covenant with me.”
Inside the kirk was a bitter chill, and a sour smell lingered in the air. The light of one candle showed several faces around the altar: Elspeth and Agnes and Lilias, and even some men among them. This was the coven, and these were the people who knew the charms and the stories, who fed the fairies and said the rhymes.
“I am the devil,” said William, leading me to the altar. “And now, you must renounce your baptism.” Around me, solemn faces, watching and waiting as if they, too, had undergone this ritual and were expecting me to join them.
By now I was sore affrighted, for the devil had grown larger and larger, and he emitted such great power. Would he do me harm?
Lilias stood with her head bowed, bruises and scratches all over her body. I knew, without a word being said, that the devil had done it. He was a hard taskmaster and demanded obedience and submission. Lilias was a rebellious sort, and not inclined to submit.
I took a step. William the Devil smiled, a broad and handsome smile, the smile that had won my heart—though this time, his eyes shot fiery sparks. He reached for my hand.
I took another step. What did it mean? His promises of meat and wine and all sorts of food to fill the belly—and more, much more. If I refused now, it would all stop: the night flying, the dancing and feasting with the fairies, the powers he had given, and more he had yet to give. Besides, and this I knew in my depths—I had no choice.
It was sinful to traffic with the devil, but what had the minister promised? No food for the starving, no magic to heal or strength to fight those who wronged us. Rewards only after death—and, in the meantime, the judgment of God.
I had to survive. I needed the magic, the power to heal the sick, to garner the best fruits of corn and cow and sea, to live, to thrive, both I and my family, in this life. I needed power to get back at that sniveling snake of a man, Harry Forbes. And the laird, as well.
Perhaps my mother had not gone this far, but I would, and I would avenge her cruel murder at the hands of Mister Harry.
I took the devil’s hand.
I rose up from the bed, Hugh Gilbert still snoring loudly beside me, removed the besom with its rough wooden handle, and placed it back in the corner.
The devil. I had made a covenant with the devil. Had I done wrong?
When I took his hand, it was cold as ice, and the freezing coursed within me and all through my body as I walked with him to the altar. Everyone stood solemnly round the altar. The devil appeared huge and black and cold, looming in the reader’s desk, a black book in his hand.
I did as he said, for I’d seen the welts on Lilias. “Yes, I renounce my baptism,” I said, and “I covenant with thee, and all betwixt the sole of my foot and the crown of my head, I give freely up and over to thee.”
He marked me on the shoulder, and with his mouth, he sucked out my blood, spat it into his hand
, and sprinkled it upon my head and face, saying, “I baptize ye, Janet, to myself, in my own name.” A new name. Now, in this other realm, I was Janet.
“Janet, we seal this pledge with our bodies,” he said and shed his clothes in a flash. There he stood, mickle black and large, his member exceedingly great and long. He came into me like a horse to a mare, filling me with delight and dread, and cold as ice. All the people ’round in the circle . . . and I had no shame. “And ye shall have no other gods but me,” he bellowed, and I cowered and bowed before him.
And then he went into the shape of a mighty deer, and, like the steed, he flew.
My mother had told me about the devil and the black mass, but she had not believed it. Twas all the invention of ministers, she said. Cunning women were healers, not devil worshippers. She’d been firm on this point: no self-respecting cunning woman would go in for that.
Chapter 39
I did go in for it. I made my covenant, and now I would have more power: power to punish those who thought themselves invincible. I could shoot them with elf-arrows, stick them with pins, roast them, and do all manner of evil to them. I had no guilt, no shame. The devil had given me power, and I would use it.
I hummed and sang and greeted my neighbors as I walked through the village. Here came Lilias with her basket of yarns, but no red marks from the devil on her cheek. Why not? Ah, ’twas only in that other realm that these things could be seen.
Here was Jack the Smith with a load of nails. He waylaid me to examine his sore. “The sore is almost healed,” I said, and he smiled his one-eyed smile as he resumed his journey.
Now came Elspeth walking a goat to market, and we exchanged a look. “Tonight,” I said. The devil had given me power, and I would use it.
Hugh Gilbert was snoring in one corner, and his mother lay sleeping with the children in the other. I had said the charm for sleep and given them ale with valerian and hyssop.
Elspeth and I chanted together as Jane Martin, all pink and dewy, stood watching. “In the devil’s name, we pour in this water among this meal, for long duyning and ill heal. We put it in the fire, that it may be burnt both stick and stour. It shall be burnt with our will. As any stickle upon a kill.”
“We must repeat it thrice o’er, as the devil has taught me,” I said.
“But,” Jane winced, “the devil?”
“The devil has taught me this.”
“But is it not a sinful thing?”
“This is a sacred trust, and with this, we have power. We have no money, we have no troops, our grain and cattle have been taken, and we could starve. What do we have to fight back with except the power of the devil?”
Jane stood up and gave a little hop from one foot to the other, wiping her hands on her apron. “Would we not come before the kirk and such?”
I glared at Jane. “If anyone tells.”
“Not I!” Jane exclaimed.
“Mister Harry called the fairies devils, so William the Fairy Man took heed and became the devil.”
Jane shuddered. “Then the devil can save us from the laird?”
“He will punish the laird.”
“Now we must sit and say the charm,” Elspeth commanded.
Jane sat, and we repeated the charm three times as I poured water from the jar and Elspeth stirred the clay that had been sifted into meal.
Jane looked around the hut towards Hugh, his mother, and the bairns. “What if they wake up?”
“Isobel has assured us that they will not,” Elspeth said, exchanging a glance with me.
When the clay began to congeal, I scooped up a lump in my hands and worked it into a ball, then began to shape it. I chanted, “Little hands, little lips, little arms folded at his side.”
Elspeth stood straight and tall, her face stern. “It will lack no part of the child.”
“This is the corp creadh,” I sang triumphantly as I finished the figure of the child. “The image of all the male children of the Laird of Park.”
We all fell silent as I gently laid the clay figure in the fire. Solemnly, I proclaimed, “In the devil’s name, it will roast ’til it be red as a coal.”
Jane shuddered.
Grim faces flushed, we leaned forward and watched the little body roast. I took two sticks and lifted it out of the fire. “Till it be broken,” I intoned, “twill be the death of all the male children that the Laird of Park will ever get.”
“But how might it be broken?” Jane asked.
“Cast it over a kirk, and it will not break, until it be broken with an axe or some such thing. And if it be not broken, it will last one hundred years.”
“Now we must roast it again every other day,” Elspeth said.
“That all the male bairns and the laird will sicken and die.”
“That never again will the lairds steal from their tenants and servants.”
“As there will be none left alive.”
Outside the hut, a figure turned from the window hole and crept away into the night. In the sand, her bare feet made no sound. It was almost midnight, and though the stars were multitudinous as the generations of Abraham, her dark clothes made her almost invisible. She had not been invited to the gathering. Isobel hardly looked at her when they washed their clothes at the river or passed in the village, and though she had asked and pleaded, Isobel wouldn’t tell her about magic or teach her the charms.
But now she knew.
MARGARET
Chapter 40
“The lad is of a stellar family.” Alexander Brodie had come at Lady Elizabeth’s request, and they sat in the drawing room.
Margaret smiled at her mother, silent thanks for her intervention. She still didn’t want to get married, though she knew she would have to sooner or later. At least Andrew was far better than the man Father had favored, William Gordon. The son of the duke, he was wealthy enough, but the one time Margaret had met him—when her family dined at the castle in Fochabers—William had spent almost an hour complaining about his sheep. A tiresome man.
“But English, Alexander, English!!” bellowed John Hay. “How could anything good come of this?”
“Not English in the way you imagine, John. His family is of the Covenanter persuasion. In fact, his uncle, Edward Massie, is one of the leaders of the Covenanter movement in England. Massie was with me at Breda and helped me escort King Charles back to the English shore.”
At this, Father was quiet.
And so, it happened that Alexander, Margaret’s great uncle, provided the impetus her father needed to allow the courtship. The Massies were a genteel family, Uncle said, long established in Chesire and staunch defenders of the Presbyterian cause. And it didn’t hurt, Mother emphasized, that the Massie family was quite wealthy, holding vast tracts of farmland in Chesire.
Father, who had been lamenting loud and long about his debt, was then persuaded to welcome Andrew as a suitor.
Andrew now came calling on a regular basis. Almost every Sunday after kirk, he appeared for the midday dinner. Margaret feared that he would view their diet as provincial, so she persuaded Aunt Grissel’s cook to teach the Hay Cook some recipes from London. With Grissel’s direction, Cook made two new recipes for mutton, a haddock with a sauce of cherries and onions, and a salmon with potatoes and kale, which, to everyone’s surprise, turned out to be delicious. Most people considered kale something only to be eaten when little else was available—and even then, only by the peasants or the animals—but now, Mother declared it suitable for the Hay family. And the new puddings were delightful, though Father bewailed the expense of so much sugar.
After dinner, Andrew and Margaret usually took a walk outside. Margaret loved to hear his deep voice with its soft English inflection, and see his face change from somber to merry in an instant. Andrew, in turn, paid her the utmost attention, holding out
his hand for her as she stepped over a rock, then gazing at her with an admiring smile that caused him to trip over that same rock, causing them both to laugh. By now, the insouciance Margaret had first observed in him had evaporated like the morning mist.
Andrew told her about his home in Chesire—a manor house rather than a castle, with thousands of acres, all varieties of dairy cows, and rolling farmlands that were not too different from the Morayshire terrain. The climate was milder and the growing season longer in Chesire, and it sounded to Margaret like a softer, more civilized place—like Andrew himself, whose gentle manner and ease of being had reshaped her image of a gentleman.
Margaret floated through the days. The joy in her heart lifted her into a new dimension, like the magic world she had imagined she would find with Isobel. She had been disturbed by Isobel’s use of charms calling on the devil and was troubled still when she looked at the “elf arrow” she kept hidden in a drawer. Could that little stone cause deadly harm? She didn’t really think so, but neither did she know what to do with it. Surely, Henrietta wouldn’t want it. Margaret didn’t want to think about it. Caught up in the whirl of courtship, she put it out of her mind.
With Andrew, even in winter, when the nights were long, the days were dark, and the fires never seemed warm enough, everything vibrated with life. Margaret woke in the morning, heard the birds, and felt the light from the window, which made everything sharper and clearer than ever before. She breathed in the air, new and clean and fragrant, the same air that Andrew breathed.
They sat by the fire or rode to visit Aunt Grissel at Brodie Castle, where they sang with her at the harpsichord and played blind man’s bluff and leapfrog with the lads, running around the castle grounds. Andrew taught the lads stoolball and other May games from England, and they all joined in. He talked of marriage, but Margaret put him off . . . for what could have been better than this world of laughter and joy? She wanted it never to end.
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