by Ken Hood
Surprisingly, there was a fourth: the peg-legged Kenneth Tanner, leaning on his cane. Nobody thought much of that souse, so why was he here?
Toby pulled up his knees and dragged his plaid over his shoulder again, resisting the temptation to stand. He was taller than any of them. They were armed; down on the floor he was less likely to provoke violence.
"What's happened?" he demanded sharply. "Where's Granny Nan?"
"Suppose you tell us," Iain Miller said.
Toby raised his hands to show the manacles. "I don't know! I escaped. I just got back here."
"The Sassenachs did not take her?"
"Of course not! Even English must know better than to meddle with a witchwife."
"Then where is she?"
"I don't know. She was here when I left. She said she was going away, that someone was coming to fetch her." With rising panic, Toby stared at the blankly accusing faces. "She knew I would have to leave the glen. I thought someone in the village…"
"News to me," the miller said.
Fear touched Toby with icy fingers. If there was to be a change of witchwife in the glen, these men would know of it. He began to rise, and again decided to stay where he was. They did not trust him any more than he trusted them. "Tell me what happened!"
Fat Iain glanced uncertainly at his companions, but none of them offered any help. "We came looking for you, but we were too late. We saw the horses' tracks. We decided to talk with the witchwife. She wasn't here. We've been waiting, looking…" He wasn't close to the fire, yet his fat face was moist. Iain Miller was worried half out of his wits.
"She'll be with the hob!"
"She's a long time about it."
"Did you go to the grotto?" It was a foolish question. They would not have dared. That was what witchwives were for. Hobs were touchy and unpredictable.
"We called out," the smith muttered. "She didn't answer."
"I'll go see, then," Toby said. Granny Nan took him to visit the hob sometimes — or she had when he was a child. He could assume that he was in its favor since it had saved him from Lady Valda's demon. He must go and thank it for its help anyway.
"Just tell us how you came back," the miller demanded suspiciously.
Toby scrambled to his feet and the men backed away from his fury. Right there by the fire, the roof was just high enough to let him stand upright. Groggy with fatigue, he leaned a hand against the chimney to steady himself and glared down at them all.
"I told you!" he shouted. "I escaped! They accused me of killing a soldier. I admitted it. They locked me up. I broke out. Are you suggesting I did something to Granny Nan? That's crazy! No one can have hurt her!"
He saw the answer in their eyes. No one could harm the witchwife — not here, so near to the hob — except perhaps Toby himself. He, too, lived close to the hob's grotto. Perhaps in their minds he had taken on some of the uncanniness that hung around those who consorted with elementals. In the last few years the orphan bastard had shot up to become the biggest man in the glen. Today he had killed a soldier, and yet here he was, home again.
Swords or not, they were frightened of him.
He gripped hard on his temper. "Well? If you're accusing me of something, say so. Yes, I killed a Sassenach tonight, and I don't care overmuch. What else is bothering you?"
The men exchanged unsure glances, like children in school when the teacher behaves unpredictably. Toby waited for one of them to ask about the blood on his chest, but he had so many other scrapes that the smears escaped notice.
"I think he's telling the truth," Rae Butcher announced loudly.
Smith and miller nodded with less confidence.
Tanner scowled. "I want to know how a man escapes from Lochy Castle." His voice was slurred.
Toby could not, must not, tell them how he had escaped. If they even suspected he was possessed, they would run a sword through his heart instantly, probably three swords. He tried to invent a plausible explanation and realized that there wasn't one. "I stole a horse." That was the best he could do.
Pause… Then the smith chuckled. "Before that? Rusty chains and the second best shoulders in the glen, I'm thinking." He was trying to break the tension.
"What do you mean second best?" asked the butcher. "I know quality beef when I see it."
The smith and the miller laughed very heartily. They all sheathed their swords. Toby Strangerson had been found not guilty in his second trial of the night — for the time being, at least — and now everyone was friends and everything was sweet and beautiful… for the time being.
"Stole a horse?" The miller's lardy face rolled itself into a smile. "Good for you! We're not accusing you of anything, lad, except being a true Scotsman, and Sassenachs' horses are another fine tradition in the glen, I'm thinking. We're all proud of what you did tonight!"
Oh, really?
The fat man turned to the tanner. "Kenneth? You have something to say to this man?"
"Aye." The flabby tanner lurched forward on his wooden leg. He stuck his melancholy face up at Toby's. It needed shaving and it brought a strong odor of liquor. "Thank you," he said sourly. "We're real grateful, the wife and me. And Meg herself, of course." He thrust out a hand, which Toby stared at uncomprehendingly.
"It was a brave deed," Rae boomed, "worthy of a Campbell."
Oh, that? One of the better murders! Toby shook the tanner's hand without enthusiasm. "Any man would have done the same." Why should they expect him to be different?
"Not any man, only a very brave one."
Brave was stupid. He did not trust their sudden change of heart. What were they doing here anyway? Where was Granny Nan? "You said you came here looking for me? Why?"
He put the question to the miller, but with the swords out of the way, the slick-tongued butcher had taken over. He rubbed his gorse-bush mustache. "To help you, of course. To get you away before the Sassenachs catch you."
Or to hand him over before the English began reprisals for Forrester's death? Toby Strangerson was not fool enough to expect help from the glen. It had never shown him any affection in the past.
"And just how do you expect to achieve that? They'll take hostages."
Rae Butcher raised his thick brows. "Then they'll regret it! They're outnumbered twenty to one. We have friends we can call on. Don't worry about that, lad."
"They'll watch the roads, send word—"
"We've made arrangements," said the miller.
"I don't think I like the sound of that."
The men rolled eyes at one another.
"Annie Bridge," the butcher explained soothingly. "She'll put you up until dark. We'll have a guide to get you out by ways the English don't know." He smiled knowingly. "And there's a noble lord who can use good fighting men."
Toby took the statements one at a time. Annie had lost her husband at Leethoul and sons at both Norford Bridge and Parline. No one hated the Sassenachs more than Annie did. If he could trust anyone, he could trust Annie. Her croft stood near to the mouth of Glen Orchy, which was supposed to be blocked by impassable bog and implacable bogy. If there was a safe way through that, then the English were not the only ones who had never heard of it. The lord was Fergan, of course. Because the village bastard had killed an Englishman they assumed he wanted to join the rebels. He had not intended to kill Godwin. He had done what he did because of Meg, not for King Fergan. He had better not go into that.
They were the laird's men, but he would have to trust them, or at least pretend to trust them. He could not hope to escape from the glen if these men turned against him. They might support a Sassenach-killer, a potential rebel recruit, but by morning the details of his escape from the cell would be common knowledge. Their sudden enthusiasm for Toby Strangerson would not extend to a resident demon.
"Young Hamish's going, too," the butcher said. "He was with you when it happened, so the Sassenach bast — the Sassenach scum, I mean. They may pick on him."
Something nudged the back of Toby's mind until he
remembered young Hamish's bright-eyed appeal on the way to Bridge of Orchy: Take me with you. The boy might hang on the same gibbet yet.
"He's a good kid," he said, and realized that to these men he was only a kid himself.
"And Meg, too," Tanner mumbled. "The wife's having fits."
Considering the ordeal she had endured in her youth, Elly Tanner had every right to throw a few hysterics over her daughter's narrow escape, but even so… "You don't think they'll take it out on Meg?" Toby protested.
"It's a hard world, lad," the miller said cynically. "Not the laird, of course. But it's best for the lass to leave."
Not the laird, nor even Captain Tailor, but some of Godwin Forrester's friends might seek out the girl and see she got what she had missed.
"Elly has family over Oban way," Tanner stated, with the exaggerated precision of a drunk who had realized he was slurring his words. "Vik will see Meg there safely."
Fat Vik?
"Oh, no!" Toby straightened up and felt his hair brush the roof. "You let me near Vik Tanner and there'll be another murder in the glen."
He must have looked as if he meant it, because the men made shocked noises and began to protest. He didn't hear. He was remembering what had started all the trouble and his blood froze in his veins. Where was Granny Nan? It wasn't possible, was it? The hob would have protected her?
Apparently they were waiting for him to put it into words.
"That lout gave Crazy Colin a knife — on the night of the full moon, too! He set him onto killing me."
Vik's father yelled, "No! That's not true!" The accusation had not surprised him, though, and the other men shrugged. Why had they brought him here? How likely was it that the tanner would limp all this distance just to shake Toby's hand?
"It is true. That's what your daughter came to tell me. That's why she came to the castle — because of your precious son! And where is Granny Nan all this time? Out of my way!" He pushed past them to look in Granny Nan's sewing bag, where he might find a spare pin for his plaid.
"Kenneth," said the smith, "the fewer people who go, the better. You could trust Strangerson to see your girl safely to her cousins in Oban, yes?"
Silence. Toby had tipped the bag out on the clay floor, but now he looked up. The men were waiting on the tanner, and even in the shadows, he seemed to have been shocked sober.
"You'd take good care of her, lad?" he said uncertainly.
The night grew madder and madder. Yes, it would be a good idea for Meg to disappear until the affair blew over and that no-good half-brother of hers would be worse than useless anyway. But to trust her to a murderer and a hunted outlaw… Of course, if they were asking whether he would take advantage of the child, then the answer was easy. "I'd guard her like a sister, but…"
The tanner nodded and looked away.
"That's arranged, then?" the miller said.
"Aye." Tanner nodded. Then he added, apparently more to himself than anyone else, "I'm thinking I got the wrong one."
The smith grinned at the butcher and the miller smiled knowingly. If that was a joke, Toby had missed the point completely: wrong what?
He found the pin and rose to adjust his plaid. Again he pushed by the visitors — the cottage was cramped when there was only him in it. He knelt to unpack the bundle Granny Nan had made up for him, wrapped in a square of tartan. He found his razor in there, his tinderbox, a metal pan, a knife, a new bonnet that she'd promised to make for him, a pair of gloves he had not seen before, a bag of meal, a lump of salt — and her little leather purse. It was fatter than he remembered, surprisingly heavy. He pulled the drawstring and took a look. He had given her what he'd been earning in the castle all summer, but he'd had to buy a new belt, and the rest could not amount to this much. Here was Bossie, and the poultry, and a lifetime's savings. Some of it was his, though, and probably all of it, because she wanted him to have it, because she had no use for money and he was going to. He slipped the two shiniest coppers into his sporran, then rolled the bag up in the cloth with the other treasures.
"Come on!" he said, and ducked out the door ahead of the village elders.
CHAPTER SEVEN
He was stiff and his feet still hurt from his walk to Bridge of Orchy. He limped slowly along the path, letting his eyes adjust to the darkness, letting the other men keep up. The moon was low in the west, still encircled by her misty wreath. His breath smoked in the cold.
He had never visited the hob by night. He could have brought a torch, of course, but fire would get the hob excited. The hob was excited easily, especially by thunderstorms. Any storm that visited Strath Fillan inevitably spent most of its time there directly over Lightning Rock, blasting trees and the rock itself in a continuous orgy of fire and sound, rolling echoes off the hills. For days afterward, milk would sour all over the glen, calves be stillborn, children fall sick, until the witchwife could get the hob calmed down again. A few weeks later, it would become annoyed at the blackened trunks disfiguring its grove; then it would let Granny Nan have them for firewood and she would send Toby to chop them down.
One of the men coughed nervously. Toby realized that they were at the copse itself.
"Why don't you wait here?" That was what he was supposed to say.
"Well… If you don't need us?" Miller said, feigning reluctance.
"Just one of us might be best. Don't want to make it snarly."
They all agreed it would not do to make the hob snarly.
Toby went on alone, climbing the narrow path. He wondered if the hob would be more or less visible by night than it was by day. The most he had ever seen of it was a faint silver shimmer, a sort of glow in the trees, as if all the leaves were twinkling and the air was sweeter. Usually it stayed in its grotto, but sometimes it would come and watch him chop wood. Very rarely, he had detected it elsewhere in the glen. It never spoke to him, only to the witchwife. He was not at all sure that it could speak to anyone else, or that anyone would understand it if it did. He suspected that it had very little intelligence in any human sense. Granny Nan rarely talked about the hob, even to him. She sang to it, and gave it pretty things, and kept it happy.
The path ended abruptly. Granny Nan was quite obviously not there. Directly ahead, a shaft of moonlight illuminated the side of Lightning Rock and the little open crack that was the hob's grotto.
Toby knelt down on the moss. He bent his head, glancing around surreptitiously. He saw nothing, except bright things twinkling inside the hole — offerings of pretty stones, mostly. People with troubles would bring little offerings to Granny Nan and she would take them to the hob and pass on the requests: Gerda Murray's cow is drying up… the pain in Lachlan Field's back keeps him from earning his bread…
He decided to begin by introducing himself, just in case it did not remember him. "I am Toby Strangerson, the boy from the cottage, the witchwife's boy." He felt oddly stupid, as if he were talking to himself. "I am very grateful to you for saving me from the demon tonight, and bringing me home safely." Almost safely — no bones broken, anyway.
He fumbled for the two coins, and found something small and sharp also. He remembered that Granny Nan had given him a pretty stone. He left the pebble in his sporran and brought out the money.
"I brought these for you. I hope you like them." He tossed them into the grotto. They clinked on the gravel.
Silence. No sound, no wind. Nothing.
He was suddenly quite certain that the hob was not there. He was talking to himself.
Somewhere a twig cracked.
His heart jumped madly. He peered around, waited, heard nothing.
"We can't find Granny Nan." He spoke faster. "We are worried about her, because she is frail and the night is cold. Will you lead me to her, please? Or send her home?"
Behind him, somebody chuckled.
He was on his feet in an instant, staring into the darkness, aware that he must be visible against the patch of moonlight. His heart thumped in his chest… Dum… Dum… Somebody sn
iggered, giggled.
Crazy Colin!
Crazy Colin Campbell was here in the grove, and he would still have the knife.
Shift…
The trunks of the trees gleamed with a frosty light, every leaf and twig clearly visible. The mad drum beat steady time. Off to the left, Granny Nan's body was a tiny crumpled heap in the shrubbery. A man was creeping up the path, knife glittering, teeth bared in an ecstasy of blood lust. He could not hear the drummer, could not see the eerie blue glow.
The husky boy stepped into shade, out of the moonlight. While he watched the killer come, he gripped the rusty bangle on his left wrist, pulled at it until the lock snapped. He tossed it away.
The man jumped and peered around to see where the sound had come from.
The boy worked on the right cuff. That was harder. Blood oozed from his wrist before the foul thing yielded. This time the madman heard the breaking and located the noise. He started forward again, panting with excitement and making little circles in the air with the point of his knife.
When he was within reach, the waiting boy shot out a hand to grip the knife arm; he took the man by the throat with the other. He squeezed until the arm bones crumbled and the blade fell to the ground. Then he crushed the lunatic's throat as a man might crack a flea, watching him die — eyes bulging, mouth open, making no sound audible through the relentless, all-pervading rhythm: Dum… Dum… Later he tossed the twitching corpse away like an empty eggshell.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Granny Nan had been dead for hours. Her body was cold and stiff, and it weighed no more than a bundle of branches. Toby cradled it in his arms as he strode down the path, trying not to see the loathsome gash across her throat, black with dried blood.
He went by the waiting men without pause, heading for the cottage, hearing them muttering angrily among themselves as they followed. Quick though he was, they would have seen the tears coursing down his cheeks. It was shameful for a grown man to weep, but he hardly cared.