“I was always one of the different ones here,” he continued. “I was born…” He shrugged. “I guess that doesn’t matter now. Let’s just say that right from the start, I was considered different. So I guess I should have been more sensitive to your situation. It doesn’t take much to set off the locals. A dog howling late at night, chimney smoke that curls in the wrong direction, the size of a rising sun. They read signs here like people in other places read the newspaper. Druidheachd may look like a hundred other Highlands clachans, but underneath, it’s pure seventeenth century. Brigadoon risen from the mists.”
He faced her, and for the first time since she’d met him, his eyes were unveiled. She glimpsed the whole man, both the man he tried to be and the one who lived deep inside of him. There was understanding in his eyes, and even a reluctant compassion. She was stirred in a way she hadn’t been in years. And frightened.
Frightened. She looked away. Her hands began to tremble again. “Marjory has reason to be worried.”
“I guess I’ll find out tonight how much reason.”
Her voice trembled now. Her voice, her hands, even her heart seemed to tremble. “I tell you, she does.”
“What do you mean? Do you know something she doesn’t? Have you heard something?”
She raised her eyes to his. It was easier than imagining the worst. “Heard something? No. But Fergus Grant is dying. He’ll be dead in a fortnight, at the full of the moon. And there’s nowt any doctor in Glasgow or anywhere in the world will be able to do to prevent it.”
CHAPTER 4
“Did you know Fergus Grant died last night?”
Duncan looked up from his desk to find Andrew lounging in his office doorway. His mind was filled with figures confirming that the Sinclair Hotel had always been a losing proposition. “I’m sorry, what did you say?”
“Fergus Grant died last night. In hospital in Glasgow.”
Duncan stared at his friend. “He was doing better. They said he might even be able to come home after the weekend.”
“Aye, Fergus will be coming home, all right. In a kist.” Andrew’s expression was solemn, a rare event and a powerful thing to see.
“What happened?”
“A clot of some sort. Took him like that.” Andrew snapped his fingers.
Duncan felt more than sadness. It had been two weeks since Mara had predicted Fergus’s death. And last night the moon had been full. He knew because he had lain awake and stared at it through the sheer curtains of his bedroom.
“It’s a coincidence.” He stood and came around his desk.
“A coincidence?” Andrew shook his head. “It’s no’ a coincidence when any of us die, Dunc. We’re meant to. It’s inevitable. No’ even the Americans have figured out how to avoid it. It was Fergus’s time. That’s all.”
Duncan didn’t explain himself. He hadn’t told anyone about Mara’s prediction. It had been too bizarre to discuss, and he had been angry with himself for reaching out to her and provoking it. “Don’t tell me you believe in fate, Andrew. You think there’s somebody up in the clouds with a clock and a gong waiting for some prearranged moment to end our lives?”
“Well, put like that, it sounds a bit gyte.” Andrew clapped his hand on Duncan’s shoulder. “You’re taking it harder than I thought. You hardly knew old Fergus.”
“It’s a surprise, that’s all.”
“I’m just home for a few days. Do you have time for some snooker?” Andrew was an engineer on an oil rig in the North Sea. For most of the year he came and went according to his work schedule, but in the summer he remained in Druidheachd and took the few tourists who wandered into the little village out on Loch Ceo to look for the resident monster.
“Did you just get paid, by chance?” Duncan asked.
Andrew grinned. “What would make you think such a thing?”
Duncan smiled, too. Andrew had always been able to make him smile. “Sorry, but I don’t have an extra pound that doesn’t have to go into this slag heap. If I don’t have the plumbing fixed soon, I’ll have to build outhouses back behind the carriage house and advertise the hotel as an authentic bit of old Druidheachd.”
“I’ll play you for a wee dram and the sheer joy of beating you.”
Duncan looked at his watch. “I can’t. I promised April we’d have supper together up in our flat so we can discuss her birthday. She’s going to be seven this weekend.”
“Ah, if she were only about twenty years older, I’d be knocking at her door.”
“And I’d be on the other side of it with a shotgun.”
The room seemed empty when Andrew left. He filled any space he wandered into with good humor and exuberance. From the moment of his birth he had drawn others to him. He had been a hearty, laughing baby and a child who could make anyone see the best side of life. Even Donald Sinclair, Duncan’s father, had been a different, warmer person when Andrew was around.
Duncan couldn’t remember a time when Andrew had brought him bad news. But he had today.
He found himself at the window, staring through the ancient, wavy glass at the street that ran beside the hotel. Fergus Grant was dead, and Mara MacTavish had foretold the hour of his death. Duncan knew it was a fluke; he wasted no time on wondering how it had happened. But the odd timing of Fergus’s death brought back the afternoon two weeks before at Mara’s.
He had been stunned at her prediction, so stunned that at first he had only stared at her. Then anger had gripped him.
“What in the hell are you trying to do?” he had demanded. “Are you trying to make me believe you’re as strange as they say you are?”
Her eyes had been fixed on some point in the distance. “I dinna care what you believe. I dinna care what anyone believes.”
“Well, if you don’t care what anyone believes, maybe you ought to give some thought to keeping quiet. Then maybe no one would pass judgment on you. But you’re inviting them with crazy talk like this.”
“Crazy?” She rose and faced him. “You think I’m no’ sane?”
“What else can I think? It’s not all that normal, is it, to announce the hour of somebody else’s death.” He stood, too. “At least you had the sense not to tell Mrs. Grant her son was going to die. We can be thankful for that.”
“There was nowt to be served by telling her.”
“And nothing to be served by telling me, except to convince me that my daughter really isn’t safe here. She’s had one unstable woman in her life. She sure as hell doesn’t need another.”
“Unstable?”
Duncan had a moment of regret, but just a moment. There was no point in beating around the bush. “April’s vulnerable right now. The last thing she needs is a role model who thinks she can see into the future. Just what do you get out of a stunt like this, Mara? It must have been clear to you that I wouldn’t be impressed.”
She didn’t look away. He saw pain in her eyes as deep as any he’d ever witnessed. “Aye. I knew better than to tell you. I dinna know why I did.” Then she slid past him. He watched as she disappeared into the trees beside the absurdly primitive thatched cottage that she called home.
And that had been the last time he’d seen her.
What was she thinking now? Did she know that Fergus Grant had died at the full moon, exactly as she’d predicted? Did she see the irony, or did she believe it was not a coincidence at all, but proof that she had that dubious gift the Highlanders called the sight?
He told himself he didn’t care, but he couldn’t get Mara out of his mind. He remembered the pain he’d seen in her eyes. And when he moved away from the window, he knew in his heart that she would feel nothing but sorrow that her words had come true.
* * *
“I can have anything I want for my birthday?”
Duncan smiled across the dinner table at his daughter. “Well, anything within reason. I don’t think I could afford a pair of dancing elephants or a tiger who nibbles on the hotel guests.”
April giggled. “What if
it was something that didn’t cost much?”
“Then I would be especially pleased to give it to you.”
“I want to go on a picnic.”
He cocked his head in question.
“A picnic with you…and Mara.”
She’d caught him by surprise. He didn’t know what to say.
“A picnic that lasts all day. In the mountains. And Guiser has to come, too.”
“I’m not sure we can do that.”
“You said anything.”
Just six months ago Duncan had prayed for the day when April would feel secure enough to assert herself. Six months ago, she wouldn’t have asked for a piece of bread. Now he knew he couldn’t say no. He had waited too long for this flash of independence. Going to Mara’s against his wishes had been a sign that April felt secure enough to reach for what she wanted. And now she was brave enough to ask for more.
“Mara may not want to go. She might be busy,” he warned.
“But you’ll ask her?”
He had said some hard, cruel things to Mara, and he was ashamed. Fergus’s death didn’t change his feelings about her prediction, but it did remind him that he was fast becoming a man more comfortable with condemning others than trying to understand them. And he suspected that Mara needed understanding now, more than she had two weeks ago.
He poured himself a cup of coffee. “I’ll ask her.” Mara would refuse, he was sure. She would have no reason to want to spend time with him. But if she agreed to come, it would give him a chance to observe her up close with April. He could discount most of what she’d said to him, but one thing she’d said was true. April obviously did need something that Mara offered her. And he needed to find out what it was.
By the time April was sleeping, he had decided that nothing would be gained by waiting to ask Mara if she would picnic with them on Saturday. April had talked about nothing else as she’d gotten ready for bed, and Duncan was afraid that if he waited too long, April would be profoundly disappointed when Mara refused.
He asked one of the chambermaids if she would stay with April while he went out for a while, and she settled in with a thick murder mystery and a plate of Mrs. Gunn’s shortbread. Before he left he played a fast game of snooker with Andrew, lost immediately and grudgingly told Brian to give Andrew free drinks that night.
Outside, a soft, chill mist filtered through his raincoat and made him nostalgic for California sunshine. But the air had never smelled this way in Pasadena. There was a sweetness here that defied his attempts to name any particular plant that produced it. It was the smell of a Highland spring, green and fertile and tinged with the promise of new life. A snatch of music, the piercing laughter of a child, the tinkle of a shop door. All the sounds of Druidheachd drifted around him like the mist.
The mist thickened as he drove, and as the road beside Loch Ceo wove back and forth through neat stands of Forestry Commission pines, he slowed his pace. There was an eerie beauty here. He could almost understand the Highlanders’ preoccupation with the unknown. The landscape promoted it. It was easy to imagine ghosts rising from these mists, witches in stone cottages set between desolate, craggy mountains, fairies in tiny underground villages roofed with purple heather. Druidheachd was a Gaelic word meaning magic, and at moments like this, he could understand why the name had been chosen.
His car climbed steadily until it was time to turn off the main road to the single lane track that zigzagged up Bein Domhain to Mara’s cottage. He couldn’t fathom why a young woman had chosen to live so far from civilization. After their last encounter, he’d made a few inquiries. Mara’s nearest neighbor, Marjory Grant, was more than a quarter of a mile as the crow flew, and a human would need wings to travel that route, since a wide creek, or what the Scots called a burn, flowed between their properties.
If Mara wanted to reach a neighbor by foot, she would have to walk nearly half a mile around the mouth of the burn and over a rocky, inhospitable landscape, or along the single lane track for more than half a mile. The journey would be relatively short by car, of course, but he had seen the ancient Morris Minor parked behind her cottage, and he doubted it was reliable. In the worst weather she was probably trapped at home for weeks.
She obviously didn’t mind. Iain said that Mara had bought her land from him. Duncan couldn’t imagine it had cost her much, since it had little to offer. The house was worth nothing, and the land was steep and unproductive. But if she could afford a large plot in the mountains, surely she could have afforded something smaller and closer to town. Instead, she had chosen isolation.
He felt that isolation as his car climbed along the track. The mist had deepened into fog now, and it grew denser as he climbed. The sky was dark, and his headlights illuminated only a short stretch of road.
He slowed even more. If he crept along he would be safe, he knew, at least as far as his own driving was concerned. He could see enough of the road not to miss a twist or turn. The real danger lay in cars coming down the mountain. Even with good visibility, the road was treacherous. One car could be on top of another with no warning. There were frequent passing places, small clearings beside the road so that one car could get out of the way to let another pass. But with the fog, there were even fewer signals than usual that it was time to find one.
Another five minutes went by, and he began to curse himself for choosing tonight to talk to Mara. He wasn’t a complete stranger to these mountains. He should have known thick fog was inevitable. Now he had ignored it until it was too late to turn back. He had no choice but to continue, and the wind was steadily growing stronger. His car windows rattled in protest.
He estimated he was only a few minutes from the turnoff to Mara’s cottage when he saw the light. He was approaching a particularly wicked curve, and he had taken his eyes off the road for the briefest moment to gaze down. Something glinted just beyond the next passing place. It was little more than a twinkle, an earthborn star winking along the fog-enshrouded mountainside. He caught just a glance, but it was enough to intrigue him. By the time he had reached the passing place, he had made up his mind. He pulled over and got out of his car. Then, with a flashlight in his hand, he walked as close to the edge as he dared.
At first he could see little. There was a sharp but short drop-off that culminated in a wide ledge. Beyond that ledge was infinity, a sheer drop of hundreds of yards to the glen below that spelled instant extinction for anyone unlucky enough to step over the side. He turned off his flashlight and peered into the darkness. He could see next to nothing now, just fog, shifting and whirling with each gust of wind.
He was almost ready to turn back to the car when he saw the light again. It was just below him, a tremulous fountain of green that blinked for an instant and then disappeared.
“What the hell?”
He wasn’t anxious to get too close to the edge. If he fell, he might miss the ledge altogether and end his life in some Druidheachd garden, planted head first among an old lady’s poppies and bluebells. But he was more than curious now. He was determined to find out where the light was coming from. He’d only seen light this color once before. And Geordie Smith was alive because of it.
He lowered himself to his hands and knees and felt his way to the drop off. He was afraid his flashlight would ruin his view, so he kept it off. The ground fell away just in front of him, and he dropped to his belly, sliding close enough that his chin hung over the side.
For a minute or more nothing appeared. Then, just as he was beginning to wonder if he had imagined it, a light formed, a pale green light the color of Mara MacTavish’s eyes. As he watched, transfixed, the light seemed to coalesce into human form.
He told himself it was the moonlit residue of some mysterious gas seeping through the rocks and the age-old deposits of carbonized plants. But even as he told himself that the light was completely natural, it formed into the shape of a woman in a long, flowing gown. She lifted her arms in entreaty.
He could no more have moved at that momen
t than if he had been chained to the ground.
He had no idea how long he stared at the light; time seemed suspended. He was only aware of its passing when a roar sounded on the road behind him. He pushed himself away from the ledge, cold and surprisingly stiff from his sojourn on the wet ground, and sat up. He turned just in time to see a truck with its headlights blinking crazily swoop by at a tremendous speed, barely negotiate the next curve, then, with tires squealing in protest, careen down the mountain track.
If he had been on the road, as he should have been, he would have been directly in the truck’s path. And his small sedan would have been no match for the forces of gravity and several tons of solid steel.
If he had been on the road.
He was chilled inside and out. His hands began to shake. He rarely played the game of “what if.” But he played it now, and the answer was simple. If he had been on the road, he would be a dead man.
He peered over the side of the cliff again. There was no light now, not even moonlight tracing the ledge below. He got to his feet and realized his knees were weak. He stared over the cliff, but nothing appeared, not light, not a woman, not a sign of anything out of the ordinary.
He stared at nothing for a long, long time.
* * *
Mara was fond of her sheep, particularly the lambs. But even she had to admit that more foolish creatures didn’t exist anywhere on the food chain. As she and Guiser were penning the sheep for the night, she had realized that one of her ewes and the ewe’s two lambs were missing. She was exhausted, and she hadn’t liked the idea of going out to look for them. She had been up early to work with the shearer who had come to finish her sheep. She had paid close attention to everything he’d taught her and attempted to shear the last sheep with his help.
There were some things, she’d discovered, that not even the most self-sufficient crofter should do herself.
Ordinarily she wouldn’t have worried about the missing sheep. But the ewe was a first-time mother and not suited for the role. She was completely capable of leading her lambs into danger. Several days before, Mara had found one wedged between two rocks while the mother grazed contentedly some distance away and ignored the lamb’s pitiful bleating.
Men of Midnight Complete Collection Page 5