Voice in the Mist

by Nigel Cubbage

  She slipped quickly out and took the path up the glen into the hills. The going was not easy. The path wound up quite steeply through the wooded estate, with its huge rhododendron bushes and assorted pines. After about twenty-five minutes, she came to a wooden fence that led out onto open moorland, with the green foothills of Ladhar Bheinn and its surrounding purple peaks in the distance. She stopped to catch her breath, as the gradient had become even steeper. The mountains were indeed beautiful, although it would need something more than scenery to keep her occupied for the whole summer.

  She left the estate gardens behind her. A breeze rustled the trees as she crawled under the high wooden fence and left the shelter of the woods above the castle. She was hot from the climb and was now into open wilderness.

  After a series of gullies and wooded copses, Rebecca crested a rise by some grey, granite boulders and found herself at the edge of a beautiful small loch. It was less than a hundred metres long and not more than fifty metres at its widest. At its far end the land rose through a series of ridges, right up to the jagged summit of Ladhar Bheinn, a huge U-shape dominating the northern skyline. She looked back. Far below, the castle turrets were just visible through the trees. The deep blue waters of the loch sparkled beyond.

  Rebecca decided this tranquil place was perfect for a rest, to sit and contemplate the world. She sat down on a flattish, chair-shaped piece of rock by the edge of the water.

  She was not used to such strenuous climbing and felt quite tired. She was not unfit and was a strong runner who competed for her school back home. Nevertheless, her thigh muscles already felt tight. She wished she had remembered to bring something to drink. The water in the small loch looked very clear and clean. She took a mouthful. It was cold and surprisingly good. Just like on the shelves in the supermarket back home, she thought – fresh from the mountain streams of Scotland!

  Lying back to catch her breath and close her eyes for a few moments, she turned her face up towards the warm sunshine.

  It was short while after this that Rebecca became aware of something stirring nearby. Somewhere away down the small loch, vaguely muffled, there was a noise which she had never heard before: a long, mournful howl. At first, unconcerned, she did not open her eyes. She thought she could also make out a gentle splashing. She imagined it was a bird of some sort. After a few moments, she realised it was becoming louder.

  “Becca! Becca!” A man’s voice.

  That was what her brother called her! Rebecca opened her eyes and jumped to her feet. Instantly, she felt a chill and was amazed to see that the loch where she had been sitting in the bright warm sunshine was now completely enshrouded by mist. She could barely see ten metres across the water.

  “Becca! Becca!” The voice was calling from somewhere out on the water. It did not sound like Alistair. There was a definite accent too, not Scottish but European.

  “Hallo?” She heard her own voice, tentative and strangely unfamiliar. Standing at the edge of the water, she strained her eyes into the mist to try and make out where the voice was coming from. The splashing was much closer now. It sounded like oars.

  Rebecca’s heart beat quite fast. She felt a surge of fear. The weather had changed so quickly and she had been certain there had been no boat on the loch anywhere when she had first arrived. The sudden cold brought out goosebumps all over her arms. She rubbed herself to try and keep warm, aware she was trembling.

  “Becca! Becca!”

  Suddenly, she thought she saw a shape in the swirling mist, moving towards her. It was a boat, with a shadowy figure at the bow. She squinted, straining to see more but, just as quickly, the mist swallowed it up and it vanished. Shaking, she waited for the voice to call. No sound came.

  A minute or so passed and she realised she could no longer hear the oars. Silence followed before a ghastly howl rent the air. It was the same as before, only this time much closer and far more terrible. It sounded like the howl of a wolf.

  Fear gripped her. Unable to move, her heart pounded in her chest.

  But the sound did not come again. Everything fell still and silent.

  Rebecca’s legs were shaky. She turned to steady herself against the rock.

  Behind her, the sun was now out again. She lowered herself and sat down. When she turned back towards the water, she saw the small loch shimmering under the blue sky.

  Rebecca was baffled. There was no remnant of the mist that had been there just a few seconds ago, nor a boat, a man, a wolf. Not even a disturbance in the surface of the water. Had she dreamt it? She had not fallen asleep, she was certain. Leaping to her feet again, she stared but saw only tufts of grass and heather, rustling gently in the breeze.

  You are not going mad, she told herself. There must be a rational explanation for this. Slowly and deliberately, she walked a full circuit of the small loch, seeking any sort of clue to what she had just seen and heard.

  Had she imagined the whole thing?

  No, it had been too real. And the voice had been calling her name.

  CHAPTER 4 – The Attic

  Several hours had elapsed since the strange episode on the mountain. Rebecca sat in the window seat of the library looking out over the loch, where rain was now falling heavily. Returning from her walk, she had picked at a light lunch, prepared by a monosyllabic McHarg. She was not really hungry. She had not been able to concentrate on anything, her mind still racing after the weird encounter by the small loch.

  Rebecca considered herself a down-to-earth, level-headed person. Although she was known among her friends for a mischievous sense of humour and lively imagination, they usually relied upon her to bring a sense of perspective and reality when others were losing theirs. She was not easily spooked.

  Alistair, her brother, had commented how she had more courage than most of his friends put together, when she had completed a parachute jump on her fourteenth birthday.

  So she was perplexed rather than unnerved by the events high on the mountain.

  The rain seemed to have set in. Heavy black clouds were rolling in off the sea. Uncle Henry had not yet returned and, through McHarg, had left a message that he was taking Mr Sibley via Arisaig to Morar Hall, where there were several McOwan artefacts which Sibley wanted to see. They would not return to Rahsaig until supper time.

  This left Rebecca to her own devices for the afternoon and, in the light of the adverse weather, restricted her to the castle and its immediate surroundings.

  Since she had only moved between her room and the ground floor so far, she decided to explore. She had already noticed many doors, corridors and staircases leading off landings, which she was keen to investigate.

  Leaving the library, she went up the main stairway from the Great Hall to the first landing. To one side was the East wing, where she had her room. To the other was the less visited West wing. When she had asked Uncle Henry what was here, he had mentioned more guest rooms and a music room. There was also the gun room, situated in a turret at the corner, although Henry had stressed there were no guns any more. Rebecca decided to start her investigations in the West Wing.

  The first few doors revealed little of interest. Simple bedrooms: a bed, chair, wardrobe, fireplace and a dressing table. At the end of the corridor by a large leaded window, was a bathroom dominated by a huge cast iron bath. The sides were unusually high, set up off the ground by large feet shaped like animals’ paws. There was a stool beside it, which seemed essential to enable people to climb in. Rebecca knelt on it to peer over the edge at the shiny white enamel and ancient iron taps.

  It was so big it might take half the water in the loch to fill it.

  Next door was a low opening through to the rear turret. Ducking down, Rebecca passed through into a small, musty antechamber. The floorboards creaked loudly under her feet, before another door took her into the gun room. Uncle Henry had been telling the truth; not a gun in sight.

  A few old oil paintings hung on the walls, one of which caught Rebecca’s eye because it was distu
rbing. A young woman in a crimson dress, with wild eyes and a stricken expression, was tearing at her hair. There was no hint as to why. One hand was stretched out beseechingly towards the person looking at the painting.

  Rebecca was transfixed. It was as if whatever the woman was experiencing somehow involved her too. That dress was very like the one she had seen on the woman in the castle. And there was something in the woman’s face which seemed familiar.

  She could not put her finger on what.

  This remarkable exception apart, the room was plain and disappointing.

  She did not therefore linger long and turned around.

  As she returned through the little antechamber, Rebecca noticed a small door in the corner which she had not seen on the way in. A large iron latch started to give with an alarming screech as she pulled on it. It had obviously not been opened for some time. Applying all her strength, she forced the latch up and pushed the door open.

  A rush of colder air hit her face. Through the low doorway, Rebecca emerged into a gloomy stairwell, with a worn stone staircase leading up into the gloom. Grasping a fraying rope handrail, she climbed the steep stairs and stopped in front of a door. It opened without any resistance, into a long, dusty attic, into which shafts of light fell at intervals through narrow windows. Old boxes and suitcases were stacked up, along with discarded possessions. Thick cobwebs hung from the rafters in ghostly veils.

  Rebecca progressed slowly, peering closely at everything, lifting the lids of interesting-looking boxes. There were old dolls, pictures, wooden toys and soldiers, tennis rackets, balls of various sizes and even an old skeleton hanging up.

  Beneath one window was a bulky shape covered by a coarse grey blanket. Rebecca started to pull it, but stopped abruptly as a great cloud of dust flew up. She shut her eyes, covered her mouth and swiped the blanket away, turning her back to avoid the rest of the dust. After a few moments, the cloud subsided and she could examine what lay beneath.

  It was a wooden chest, from the look of it, very, very old. There were three carved panels along the front. Iron straps were nailed across the lid and down the sides and a large black iron lock hung at the front.

  On the lid, two letters were carved. She rubbed them clean of accumulated dust.

  ‘R.M.’ Her own initials!

  Rebecca searched for a key but could find nothing. Peeved, she sat down on top of the chest and sighed. She looked up and down at the old crates and assorted bric-a-brac piled up everywhere. If the key was here, it might take her a hundred years to find it.

  With a sudden start, she remembered the key she had discovered in her room. Might it belong to the chest? It had certainly looked old enough. It was a long shot but, not hesitating, Rebecca flew back downstairs and headed for her room.

  She returned with the key and a torch she had found and knelt down in front of the chest, panting from running. Her first attempt to put the key in failed because she was trembling from her excitement. Calm down, she muttered. Breathing slowly, she slipped the key into the lock and turned.

  It opened!

  In the midst of her excitement, Rebecca paused and studied the key. Strange. How had it come to be in her room? Had somebody put it there deliberately?

  The lid was very heavy and required both hands to lift it. Rebecca pushed it back until it rested against the wall and grabbed the torch, eager to see what might be inside.

  The contents seemed to be the belongings of a girl. There was an old silk dress, books, a purse with a silver clip fastening, brooches and a hairbrush and mirror. Everything was very old indeed. The books were leather-bound and dusty, with thick parchment pages, browned at the edges. Rebecca sifted through the entire box, pulling everything out onto the floor next to her, determined to miss nothing.

  The silk dress was crimson and quite faded but must once have been very grand.

  A book caught her eye. It had the same initials, R.M., on a beautiful, embossed leather cover. Intrigued, Rebecca opened it. What she read made her stop in her tracks in astonishment.

  ‘The Personal Journal of Rebecca McOwan’, said the words in beautiful flowing, handwritten script. The ink was black, only slightly faded. She turned the page quickly, ever more surprised as she read on. An inscription read

  ‘This is the personal journal of Rebecca McOwan, in the year 1746, my fifteenth year and a time of great pain and sadness.’

  Rebecca was spellbound. She had discovered the diary of someone not only from centuries ago, but her namesake, presumably an ancestor, and practically her own age! But why such “pain and sadness”?

  It was too dark and gloomy to read in the attic, so she decided to go back to her room. Impatiently, she replaced all the items and closed the heavy lid, locked it and replaced the blanket so that nobody else might discover her secret. Satisfied she had covered her tracks, she hurried downstairs.

  ***

  Rebecca put the mysterious key in her bedside drawer, picked up the book, tucked up her feet and settled down in the window seat to read.

  The author had been born and lived all her life in this very castle. She was indeed her ancestor. Her father was Donald McOwan, Laird of Rahsaig – the man who had painted the picture in the Great Hall, said Rebecca to herself – her mother was Mary and she had four brothers, Robert, Davie, Andrew and young Donald. She was the second youngest, known as Becca and the room Rebecca was now occupying had also been hers.

  Becca’s writing was beautiful, although her expressions seemed occasionally odd. Rebecca knew that common phrases would have changed since 1746, and Becca’s language was not so strange as to be incomprehensible. The main theme of the opening was the return of Bonnie Prince Charlie, who had landed in the July of the previous year and raised the clans to join his attempt to regain the throne of Scotland.

  Becca’s brothers, father and all the men from the estate had rallied to the cause of the young Prince and joined his army, the Jacobites. At first, they had enjoyed success at Edinburgh and the battle of Prestonpans and had even marched on England. However, the Prince was persuaded to return to Scotland by his generals. There was a battle at Falkirk in January 1746, at which Becca’s eldest brother Robert was wounded and returned home to be nursed by her and her mother. He had still been too ill to rejoin the army when it moved to Inverness, to meet the Hanoverian English army of King George, which, rumours had been saying for some weeks, was moving north for a showdown. The English were many, and in no mood to suffer further defeats.

  In these pages, Becca wrote little of life at Rahsaig, save to lament the cold, miserable winter and incessant rain. This brought a wry smile to Rebecca’s face. She seemed to have to work quite hard for a Laird’s daughter, thought Rebecca, noting passages about cooking, tending to the animals and looking after her brothers. She had imagined that the life of a Laird’s daughter involved comfort and privilege but that was not evident from Becca’s account. The women seemed to do all the work.

  There was the odd reference to a “ceilidh”, which Rebecca took to mean a party of some sort, since it involved music and dancing with either her brothers or a succession of what Becca described as “Father’s whiskery friends, with their mellifluous odour of tobacco and the dram”. Certainly, Becca did not seem to have a flourishing social life, or much access to people of her own age. Her only real friend seemed to be her maid, Siobhan, with whom she appeared to share thoughts and secrets.

  Imagine being stuck so far away from the rest of civilisation, thought Rebecca, with some horror and a growing sense of compassion for her ancestor. And having to dance not only with your brothers but also your father and his friends! It was not being disloyal to suggest that her own father did not cut a completely dashing figure on the dance floor.

  When she turned the page to arrive at 16 April, her jaw dropped.

  “April 16th – my birthday, dawns bright and clear, yet I am in no mind to celebrate since my heart is heavy with fear for Father, Davie and Andrew, awaiting the English guns at Culloden.
Robert paces all day in the grounds like a wild bear; he would be with them too, but for his wounds. Mother keeps to her room and will not come out until we hear word that they are safe.”

  They shared the same birthday!

  Rebecca paused. This was becoming spooky.

  Her heart beat suddenly a little faster in her chest. So many odd coincidences in one day, and the strange encounter on the hillside earlier. She wondered when her uncle would be home and briefly considered telling him everything and seeking his opinion. This idea did not last. Rebecca was proud and independent, preferring to believe she could handle most things by herself. Henry seemed a man given rather to practicality than imagination and she felt he would be certain to tell her she had dreamt it, that she should not be so silly. Why shouldn’t two people with the same name have the same birthday? What was so strange in that?

  “McHarg said I should find you here, though you take some finding, Rebecca McOwan.”

  Rebecca looked up with a start, shaken out of her thoughts by the arrival of a young lad at her door. He was dressed in a long waterproof jacket of the type she had seen the fishermen wearing on the pier at Mallaig. He was dripping with water, suggesting he had only very recently arrived in the castle. His accent was Scottish, his hair red and curly. He had no boots and stood in woolly grey socks. She guessed his age at about sixteen.

  “Who are you?” Rebecca stood up, closing her book and putting it down on the seat behind her as if to conceal it. She was aware her expression was probably one of horror.

  “And don’t you knock when you come into a room?”

  “Sorry, milady! Why, what was youz up to?” The amused expression on his face was something of a surprise to Rebecca and not the effect she had hoped for. She was momentarily flustered by his easy familiarity and light-hearted tone. She half-turned away in an attempt to conceal this.

  “That really isn’t any of your business. Look, just who are you and how dare you come barging into my room?” She recovered her composure and rediscovered her indignation. To her dismay, his smile did not disappear under her withering glare.