by Jen McConnel
“The innkeeper found he couldna’ keep the peddler’s room rented for more than a night at a time. Countless guests left looking pale and ill but not speaking a word of their discontent. So finally, the innkeeper decided to investigate.
“He took that room for his own one night.”
Making sure he had his listeners’ full attention, the professor smiled and continued. “At first, the innkeeper slept a good bit. But then he was awakened by a horrible stench. The room was filled with it, and it seemed strongest in front of a large cupboard against the far wall. Well, the innkeeper opened the cupboard, and what do you suppose he found?”
“What?” Brian whispered, clearly engaged in the story.
“A severed head!”
Lou let out a little shriek of surprise. The professor smiled at her kindly.
“There, lass, it was naught but a ghost head! The real head was buried under the floorboards, which the innkeeper discovered the next day. It seems,” he paused dramatically, “that the poor peddler was murdered in his sleep on All Hallow’s, and his body was broken into bits and hid beneath the floor. And I’m told that if ye are brave enough to request the back room of the old inn in Dundee, chances are good that you’ll meet the same stench of decay that alerted the innkeeper all those years ago.”
Lou grimaced and Brian applauded. “Well done! I can definitely use that story on my tours.” He scribbled some notes in his notebook then set it aside. “Tell us another, professor.”
The old man thought for a moment before he snapped his fingers. “Aha, I have another one. You’ll be knowing that that time of year is one with many cracks in it? That is to say, that folks tend to slip through to the otherworld from the land of the living, or vice versa?” Brian nodded at this, but Lou shivered; she didn’t like to think of the dead mingling with the living. The professor did not seem to notice her shudder, but continued with his story.
“Well, now, on one Halloween, a long time ago, a man took for himself a second wife. The dark time of the year was generally not used for marriages, but Alexander Nairn was never much of one to believe in the old superstitions. I say he took a second wife, his first bride having died in childbed, and he wedded his second bride on All Hallow’s Eve. None knew where she had come from, and there was much whispering about Nairn’s foolishness, although the man claimed he put no stock in such superstitions. He flaunted his marriage to the spirits and the fey, neglected to leave out proper gifts to appease those critters, and doomed himself to an unhappy marriage and a brief time among the living.
“It seemed, at first, that he was right, that the old ways were simply superstitious nonsense, but the dead bide their time, patient since they have all of eternity to wait. Now, his second wife was soon pregnant, and when she was brought to the birthing bed, ‘twas a wise woman, some said a witch, in attendance. It was said that this witch had sold her soul to the devil, and was acting out his wishes, but whether the poor woman confessed to such a thing or not is no longer known. It is commonly believed, however, by the folk around here, that the witch was sent to exact the price of arrogance from Mr. Alexander Nairn, and none were shocked when the wife and babe were dead on the morrow. More strange than that, however, was the fact that the husband was also dead, strangled by some great force. The woman, the witch, was immediately blamed, but folks knew the truth of the grisly matter: that Alexander and his bride were as good as dead at his own hand, for the lack of care he had shown the creatures who walk the earth and shift between the worlds.” He ended his tale with a rather spooky chuckle, low and throaty, and both Brian and Lou shivered.
The professor looked first to Brian, then to Lou. “There’s a tale for you both, lass, since that one deals with one of St. Andrews’ own witches.”
“Do you know the name of the woman they accused, professor? Lou asked, staring at him expectantly.
“Her name was…let me think, now…her name was…ah yes, ‘twas Miss Isobel Key. I shouldn’t be forgettin’ her name!” He chuckled, not noticing the way Lou started at the name. Brian looked at her, bewildered.
“Here, now, Louisa, isn’t that the name of the witch you wrote down this morning in the library?” Lou nodded numbly, and the professor glanced at Brian, before turning back to stare at her with a deep look on his face, his brow furrowed.
“Is that so?” He questioned softly. “Lass, you should be knowin’ that we Scots don’t hold with coincidence; more often than not, coincidence is the mark of greater forces at work in your life.” He rose abruptly, and turned to the wall behind him. Lou noticed for the first time that the room was lined with countless books, most of them old and worn. The professor was intent on his search for something on the shelf, and it was as if he had forgotten his guests sitting in the room behind him, but his hand suddenly shot out toward a high shelf and pulled down a volume. He turned back toward Lou and Brian, smiling in triumph. “Knew I had it up there, ‘twas just a matter of finding it.” The volume in his hands was leather; the edges looked like they had been nibbled by wild animals, but the book itself seemed remarkably intact, despite the impression it gave of immense age.
The professor gallantly handed the book to Lou, and she touched the brittle leather with her fingertips, afraid to do damage to the book, whatever it was.
“That’s her herbal, it is.” The professor’s words supplied the answer to Lou’s unspoken question, and she looked up at him, startled. “The book of spells and secrets of one Isobel Key, lost to the annals of history but for the chance of her kin. Her niece, named Isobel for her, she went to her aunt’s cottage and cleared out some of her more prized possessions when her aunt was arrested as a witch, or so the family story goes. The niece was the child of that foolish man, Alexander. Little Isobel Nairn would have been my mother’s maternal grandmother’s great, great, great--”here he paused, counting on his fingers, pursing his lips in thought, “well, many times removed great, great grandmother.” He finished, smiling slightly. “That book came to me from my own mother, and while family lore has always held it as a spell book, it is nothing but an herbal, a list of recipes for tending every illness with the plants that grow here in Scotland. Isobel Key was a thorough scholar, and I’ve tested many of her recipes myself, with favorable results.” Lou was staring up at him, shock still written on her face.
“You can flip through that book this afternoon, if you like. Mind you be careful of the pages! That’s very precious to my family.” Lou detected a twinkle in the professor’s eyes, despite his gruff tone, and she smiled hesitantly
“Thank you, professor,” she murmured.
“Now, then,” the old man said gruffly as he settled himself once more in his chair, “there are many more tales and many more strange and mysterious disappearances. Will you be having time to listen more now?”
Brian glanced at Lou first, worried that she might be growing tired or bored, but she nodded at him absentmindedly, her fingers tracing the leather binding of the book in her lap. “Yes, professor, we’ll stay a bit longer.”
Brian’s answer pleased the professor, who immediately started in on another story, something about the fairy queen and her mortal lover. Brian listened, engrossed, but only half of Lou’s attention was on the old man and his marvelous tales. The rest of her mind was still lost in the tale of murder and witchcraft. Over and over again, Lou examined the details in her mind, her fingers idly stroking the book in her lap. Finally, she opened the cover.
A shiver ran up and down her spine as her eyes took in the words, written in precise, scrolling script, “This book belongs to one Isobel Key.” The pages were covered with the same neat handwriting; Isobel’s handwriting, Lou realized with a jolt. She had foolishly expected the book to be printed because of the beautiful binding. She wasn’t prepared for the intimate experience of seeing something written by a person long dead.
Struggling in some places where the ink had blurred with age, Lou began to read the herbal. She marveled at the precision of the notes, the
specificity of the measurements, the detail afforded to the sketches of the different plants and ingredients in question. The professor was right, Lou thought, the woman really had been a remarkable scholar. Many of the recipes and sketches seemed related in some way to pregnancy and female fertility: the forward-thinking Isobel included her own recipe for preventing conception on the same page as a mixture guaranteed to rid a woman of a child she was carrying.
Not all of the pages contained information related to motherhood, however, and Lou read cures for colds, headaches, and cramps. At one point she began to wonder if Isobel Key had in fact possessed some knowledge of witchcraft and spells, for a variety of recipes in the herbal were simply titled “for love”, and Lou recognized some of the key ingredients from modern love spells, including roses and vanilla.
Would Isobel have known all this just from the careful study of plants and their effects, Lou wondered, or had the woman received a more occult form of training?
1663
When the news reached Isobel that her sister had died in labor, she was overcome with grief. She refused to eat and barely slept, weeping and mourning for her beloved sister. No one ever said it aloud, but Isobel was certain that her sister would have been alive and delivered of a healthy child if she and not that fool doctor had been called to attend the birth.
Isobel went almost mad in her grief, and for months no one saw her. She ceased tending patients, and many of the folk around the village who had been loyal to her began to seek out the doctor when they were plagued by aches and pains.
Michaelmas passed, and still no one saw Isobel. When All Hallow’s came and went, the people of St. Andrews were quite certain that the poor woman was dead. But one day in late November, she emerged from her cottage, for she had decided to call upon her brother-in-law and offer to raise her namesake, for surely a man who had just lost his beloved wife had no way to raise a little daughter. Isobel thought that perhaps little Nan would heal the gaping hole left in heart by her sister’s death, and despite her less than amiable relationship with her brother-in-law, she was determined to plead with him. She was prepared to beg humbly, if she had to: the child was the only family Isobel had left.
The signs of her grief were written plainly on her face: her eyes were sunken and dark in her pale skin, and where she had once been a healthy, robust looking woman, now her clothing hung off her like oversized drapery. There were new lines carved around her mouth, lines which gave her once joyous face the appearance of frowning constantly. She passed a few people as she made her journey, but they could not bear to look at her more than once, for her grief seemed so raw and powerful that many who saw her fancied they would begin to weep if they gazed upon her long.
None who saw her that day could bring themselves to warn of what she would find at the Nairn home, and they turned away from her in shame. When Isobel knocked smartly on the familiar blue door, she was startled to see a woman standing on the other side of the threshold. They stared at each other for a moment, and Isobel collected her wits and announced that she was the sister of the wife of Alexander Nairn, and she would like to speak to her brother-in-law at once. The woman, standing like a statue before her, made no move to invite Isobel in, but rather gaped at her, dumbfounded. When Isobel repeated her request, louder this time, for it occurred to her that the serving woman might be hard of hearing, the woman shook her head and started to close the door in her face. Isobel pushed herself inside, and the woman began to yell at her to leave her home, at once, before she called the town watch. Isobel was struck dumb when the women proceeded to tell her quite grandly that she was the wife of Mr. Alexander Nairn, and she had never had a sister a day in her life. With those words, she managed to shove Isobel out the door, which she slammed behind her with a resounding crash.
In a daze, Isobel turned from the house and headed back to her cottage. When before she had looked like a figure straight from the grave, her eyes now burned with a dull rage, and children who had known her all their lives crossed the street before her so that her gaze would not fall upon them like a curse.
A kindly woman whom Isobel had helped through four pregnancies saw her and coaxed her inside to take some tea and bread. While Isobel sat, silently sipping the steaming tea, the goodwife regaled her of the scandal of Alexander Nairn’s recent marriage. His wife had scarce been in the ground a month, the woman said, before Miss Janet appeared at his side.
They were wed with unseemly haste, and what was worse, the woman continued in a lowered voice, they wed on All Hallow’s, a time all know belongs to the dead and not the living. He had cursed his second marriage, sure enough, the goodwife was certain, and no one in the town was quite certain where this bride, this Janet, had come from in the first place.
Perhaps she was the devil in the guise of a flesh and blood woman, the goodwife mused, for what living woman would ever consent to be wed on the night which belonged to the dead? To Isobel it did not matter if Janet were the daughter of the king himself. All that mattered was the grievous wrong that had been done her sister. Her husband had not even taken the proper mourning time before remarrying, and Isobel would never forgive him for that. Alexander Nairn had taken her sister from her once in childhood, a second time in childbirth, and now he had the nerve to defile her memory in death. Isobel wanted to see justice served against this man who had broken her family and thereby broken her heart. She was not sure which of the two things was more unforgivable.
Chapter Seventeen
That evening, back in the hostel room she and Tammy were sharing with two girls traveling from Germany, Lou couldn’t pull her thoughts away from the old book. She sat there, staring into space and seeing in her mind the plain leather cover of the witch’s herbal.
She was so wrapped up in the past that she didn’t notice their German roommates enter, nor did she hear Tammy come in until she poked her under the ribs, sending Lou nearly out of her skin.
“Brian told me you had some kind of luck today. Something about a book?” Lou nodded absentmindedly. “Girl, if I had a handsome, red blooded Scotsman waiting to take me to dinner, you wouldn’t find me daydreaming about ancient history!”
Lou jumped up, alarmed. “What time is it? Oh, shit, I told him to meet me here at seven, am I late?” Frantically, Lou tried to calm her hair at the same time as she tugged on her shoes, with little success. Her hair was crushed against her head where she had been leaning against the back of the chair, and her left heel hung off the back of her shoe, making her look like a child trying to cram her feet into her mother’s shoes.
Tammy just laughed. “Get going!” Tammy handed Lou her purse and gave her a gentle shove.
Thundering down the narrow stairs, Lou almost lost her left shoe in her rush to get to the lobby where Brian was, indeed, waiting for her. He smiled when he saw her, and she felt her feet begin to melt. She rushed forward, almost knocking a lamp over as she tripped on her loose shoe.
“Woops, steady there!” Brian’s arms shot out and cradled her, stopping her fall. The porcelain lamp teetered precariously on its stand, but Lou barely noticed; she was too aware of Brian’s strong arms wrapped around her. He coughed and helped her stand upright, and he allowed his hand to linger on her shoulder a moment more than was necessary. Lou fought back another blush. What was it about this guy? In less than a week, she was sure he had already seen her blush more than most people she had known for years.
“Sorry I’m late,” she spoke quickly, in an attempt to draw attention away from her less than graceful entrance. “I got so caught up in everything we learned this afternoon that I lost track of time.” Self consciously, she reached for her heel, trying to fit her shoe more firmly on her foot.
Brian laughed. “I figured that might be the case. You were so quiet on the walk back from the professor’s; I guessed you had a lot of things rollin’ around inside your mind.” She smiled up at him, pleased that he didn’t seem to mind her absentmindedness, or the fact that she had almost killed him with
a lamp.
“Come on, let’s eat.” He grabbed her hand and led her out the door of the hostel.
He didn’t let go of her hand until they were down the steps and in the street, and then Lou thought it must have been her imagination, but he seemed reluctant to drop her hand. He shoved his hands instead deep in his oversized coat pockets, looking like a serious child. Lou laughed, and Brian glanced at her, sheepishly.
“Well,” he said defensively, “I need to do something with my hands, otherwise I’ll keep trying to hold yours, and well, I don’t know if you would like that or not.” He sounded so shy that Lou felt herself growing confident.
“I think that I’d like that quite a lot,” she whispered, and held out her hand to him. He looked at it for a moment, then looked at her face and smiled. He took her hand again, and her heart started to race.
“So, where are you taking me for dinner?” She asked him eagerly as they walked along.
“That’s a secret.”
“There will be food, right?” Lou tried to joke, but her stomach grumbled right at that moment, and they both laughed.
“I promised ye’ dinner, and dinner there will be. Now, no more questions!” Brian shook his finger at her as he said this, mock stern, and they both burst out laughing again. It felt so easy to be with him; Lou wasn’t used to being comfortable with many people, but something about Brian just felt right.
They passed kilt shops and music shops, yarn shops and clothing shops. Out of the corner of her eye, Lou noticed a hand-lettered sign advertising fortune telling. Her skin prickled, and she made a mental note to come back.
As they turned a corner, Brian led her to a tiny restaurant with a menu that advertised pizza, calzones, and salads. There were three rickety little tables with folding chairs, and nothing resembling the romantic dinner she was hoping for. Brian ordered a huge pizza with everything on it, glancing at Lou, who nodded in resignation, but then he asked for it to go. Lou looked at him, surprised.