THE FAERIE HILLS (A Muirteach MacPhee Mystery Book 2)

by Susan McDuffie

  “It’s grim you look, Muirteach,” said Mariota in a soft voice, coming to stand near me where I stared off into the horizon as if the approaching coast of Islay held the answer to my questions. “Sure it can not be as bad as all that.”

  “Well, one thing at least. It is better now that you are not with those sisters.” I had not yet had a chance to tell of all the things that had happened while she had been at Balnahard, and I did so now, curious to hear her thoughts on it all.

  “I had nearly forgotten about those bones,” mused Mariota.

  “Do you think it was a changeling? Are they faerie bones?”

  “I am thinking not. I am thinking it was some girl in trouble.”

  “Aye, but from where?”

  Mariota thought a moment. “Could it have been one of the sisters?”

  “A sister with child? And no one knowing?”

  Mariota shrugged and replied. “Stranger things have happened. Perhaps she concealed the pregnancy, and hid the baby when it was born.”

  “Or any girl on Colonsay could have done the same. It did not need to be one of the sisters.”

  “Perhaps not. But what of Gormal and her son? Their leaving does not mean he committed murder.”

  “No? Then why run away, if they had done nothing wrong?”

  A boat on the horizon interrupted my train of thought. It looked to be fishing, although the day was not fine for that. A small boat, curiously reminiscent of the boat I had seen beached on the cove below Gormal’s cave, although at this distance it was difficult to be sure. Then the boat started to move again. It looked to be heading away up the coastline of Jura from Islay. I pointed it out to Fergus.

  “Aye, it could well be that witch and her son. Well, let us follow them then,” agreed Fergus, and we turned the boat to pursue them.

  There was a fine wind that day, and the distance between the boats grew less.

  “There is one person only in the boat, a man,” pronounced Fergus, after squinting at the boat. “He does not seem to have seen us.”

  I also had been straining my eyes to see. “Let us get closer.”

  A squall had blown up, and Fergus looked doubtful.

  “Sailing could be dangerous in this weather. Perhaps we should make for Islay, although it would grieve me sorely to let that hag escape from us a second time.”

  I grinned at Fergus.

  “Well, let’s not let that happen. If it is her son, he will lead us to her. Can we get more speed out of the boat?”

  “If you will stop making sweet words with Mariota and set your back to the oars.”

  And so we commenced to rowing, with a cold sea spray mixed with some sleet and whipped by the winds blowing on us as our boat skimmed over the waves.

  “Look you,” cried Fergus, “The boat is turning into the grand loch.”

  The big loch, Loch Tarbert, almost cuts the island of Jura in half. “It will be easy enough to find them there,” I said. “There is no outlet.”

  Fergus was not so sanguine. “Perhaps, but I’m thinking there might be many wee coves where one could hide a boat if one knows the island. And the weather is none so good.”

  That was certainly true. The clouds had thickened. The waves had grown choppy and the wind blew cold. As we considered, the sleet changed to snow, an unseasonably early storm. I looked at Mariota, who sat shivering in the boat wrapped in her brat, snowflakes whitening the blue wool. I had nearly lost her life with my foolhardiness that last June.

  “Perhaps we had best turn back and get to Islay before the storm worsens. We know where to look for them now. And if there is snow, it will be all that easier to track them in it.”

  Fergus assented and we turned the boat towards Islay, reaching the harbor at Caol Ila just before the storm came down in earnest and the sun set dimly through the snow. The weather made it difficult to reach Finlaggan, and the short day had grown late. So we decided to stay at the little inn there for the night.

  * * * * *

  My frustration made me restless, and although the meal—oatcakes and roast goose washed down with ale—was tasty, I had little appetite. I left Mariota and Fergus sitting by the smoky hearth of the inn and took myself outside. The snow still fell steadily, and it seemed there would be some inches by tomorrow. I stood, looking at the dark of the sky, watching the snowflakes come swirling out of the darkness into the light cast by the inn’s doorway. Were I able to see through the glowering darkness of the sky and find some pattern in the endlessly falling snow, then I might be able to make some sense of all these tangled threads of mystery. I heard the inn door creak, and Mariota stepped outside.

  “Are you not frozen, Muirteach?” The light spilling from the open doorway framed her face.

  “I was wanting air,” I replied a little shortly, but Mariota seemed to sense what I had not said.

  “Come away in, Muirteach. The weather will be clearer in the morning.”

  “It is pleasant out here. It clears the head.”

  “Perhaps, but it is cold as well.”

  I turned to look her full in the face. She was shivering, biting her lower lip a little to stop its trembling, and when I drew her into my arms she did not pull away. We kissed, a long, slow kiss filled with my yearning for her, which grew fiercer as we clung together. The snow began to fall harder, but we paid it little heed.

  “My love—” I started to say, but Mariota shook her head.

  “Don’t speak, Muirteach. Just hold me.” I could feel her body tremble as she spoke.

  And so I did as she asked.

  After a time we began to feel the cold, despite holding each other so closely, and we entered the inn.

  Fergus had gone to his bed, which was merely a pallet on the floor in the loft above, which we all were to share. So we climbed up to the loft, and lay down to sleep next to each other on the piled bracken that served as a mattress. There was no solitude, and the loud drone of Fergus’s snores shook the rafters of the old inn. I lay stiffly next to Mariota and tried to close my eyes, acutely aware of Mariota lying next to me and every rustle of the straw as she moved, until her breathing softened and quieted and I could tell she slept. Myself, I slept but little that night, but it was not Fergus’s snores that kept me awake.

  * * * * *

  The next morning the sun rose on a clear, pale blue sky. The several inches of snow left by the storm had already begun to melt off the thatch of the inn. Some seabirds flew across the inlet, screeching loudly, and it looked to be a fine day despite the unseasonably early snow. I thought of Gormal and her son, who had eluded us the day before. Surely by now they might be thinking, as I was, that it was a fine day for traveling and their small boat would leave no tracks.

  Still, there was Mariota to consider. After the events of last summer, I felt responsible for getting her safely to her father at Finlaggan, although I was loath to take the time to get her there. But, to my surprise, I found she did not want to go.

  “Muirteach,” she asked, “are you not wanting to go back to Loch Tarbert to find that woman and her son?”

  My guilt and relief must have shown in my face. It took little urging on Mariota’s part to convince me to search for Gormal and her changeling. Fergus was awake by now and after a hurried breakfast of oat porridge we left the inn and the harbor of Caol Ila, then traveled up the Sound of Islay and set out again along the coast of Jura to Loch Tarbert.

  We were glad of the faint warmth of the sun, for the morning had a chill in it. We passed the three Paps of Jura, looming high above us inland on the island. All seemed peaceful enough as we sailed along the coast, with little signs of life except the odd coney and deer that bounded away from us on the shore as our little boat sailed past. It was soon enough that we rounded the rocks at Rubh´ á Bhaillein and sailed into the loch, passing a fair number of oddly raised beaches on the right of us.

  Fergus had hunted with my uncle on Jura often enough and knew the island well.

  “I’m thinking there is a vi
llage along the south side. We can stop and ask there if anyone has seen the two we seek.”

  As we continued into the loch, some plumes of white smoke rising into the air betrayed the presence of the village. We turned the boat towards the shore and pulled it up on the beach.

  The village—a few blackhouses only—showed little signs of life. The inhabitants seemed to be sleeping late on this cold morning. A dog finally barked as we approached the hamlet. The door flap of the closest cottage moved and an old woman emerged, blinking her pale and rheumy eyes against the brightness of the day.

  I greeted her. She appeared puzzled by our invasion.

  “And what would you folk be doing here, after such a snowfall as we were having the last night? For I am thinking it is not such a fine day to be travelling.”

  I explained that we had been headed towards Finlaggan but had seen the boat the afternoon before. “We were wondering, just, if you had seen it. A small boat with a carved stern, with two people in it. A man, sturdily built, and a woman, older.”

  “And what would you be wanting with them?”

  I thought, frantic. Gormal undoubtedly had friends on the island. “We were needing a remedy,” I floundered.

  “Needing it as bad as that?” asked the woman, unconvinced.

  Mariota interrupted. “It is just that my cousin’s bairn is sick with the falling sickness, and we are hearing of a woman on Jura who has a remedy.”

  “And where are you from?”

  “I am of Islay near Balinaby, but my cousin lives on Colonsay. As do these people.”

  The old woman looked as if she wondered what a woman from Islay was doing with two men from Colonsay, and on such a snowy day, but evidently she decided this would make a tidy tale to gossip over later with her neighbors.

  “Well, I was seeing a boat pass by yesterday just as the snow was falling. It might be the one you are speaking of. But there looked to be only one person in it. A man, I am thinking. It headed down that way,” she said, gesturing eastwards towards where the loch narrowed a bit.

  We thanked her and set off again. A brisk wind helped our boat skim along the waves, and I began to feel hopeful we would find our quarry. We sailed across the broadest section of the water without seeing any signs of the blue boat, and I began to despair of my overconfidence of the day before. Up ahead the loch seemed to end in a mass of rocky beach.

  “Have we lost them? Surely they would not have sailed out, in that storm last night?”

  “There is one more place we can be searching,” said Fergus. “I have hunted along here, and there is a wee cove at the east end. If I was going to ground anywhere, it would be over there.”

  Fergus steered the boat closer along the shoreline and then through a break in the rocky shore, along a narrow channel lined with black rocks. Unexpectedly, the waters widened out again into a small sheltered cove rimmed with white beaches. And there, bright blue against the snow-covered shore, was the small boat pulled up onto the beach. However, there were no signs of life, just some tracks in the snow leading from the boat, where Lulach had walked up into the hills.

  “Why would they leave their boat?”

  “Perhaps there is a cave or bothy up in the hills where they took shelter. I am not thinking they would abandon the boat so easily, not when we had ceased following them. It makes no sense. And they would likely know this island well and know of whatever shelter there is to be found.”

  “Why not just go back to their own home on the west of the island?”

  “That is a long way from here. They are doubtless thinking we are watching their home. As we should be,” muttered Fergus darkly.

  “Well, I am not thinking they will be so quick to abandon their boat. I am thinking we should just settle here and wait for them to return.”

  Mariota spoke up, “Surely they will see us when they return. And what’s to prevent them then from waiting until we are leaving? Two can play at that game easily enough.”

  “Aye. And there is a village about a mile away, near to the coast,” added Fergus. “Perhaps they sought shelter there.”

  “Well, let us follow them there,” I said with more confidence than I felt. Already the footprints we had seen disappeared in the rapidly melting snow.

  We followed the track a short distance, really, across the hills to the little village that sat near the eastern side of the island. A few houses surrounded the church, which was dedicated to the Virgin. Behind the churchyard, set a little apart, I saw an old standing stone.

  The village was quiet. Smoke curled from the smoke holes in the thatch of the cottages, but most people were inside. An old man sat outside his cottage, which faced the coast, mending a fishing net, but we saw no one else. He looked up at us curiously as we approached.

  “Dia dhuit. And it is a grand day for visitors here today, indeed it is. But a cold day, I am thinking, to be wandering about.”

  “Indeed,” I agreed. “We are Colonsay men and came here overland from the great loch.”

  “Overland?” The man’s eyes widened. “It is a cold day to be wandering about in the hills,” he repeated suspiciously. “What is it that is bringing you here, on such a day?”

  “We were seeking some people,” I explained.

  “And who would you be seeking?”

  “That healer, from the west side of the island. We were thinking we saw her boat on Loch Tarbert and followed the tracks here.”

  “I am not thinking she will be here,” he replied. “I am thinking she would be back at her home on a day like this. Although she will be coming here sometimes. She is saying that there are plants growing here that do not grow on the west coast where she is from. But there are no plants blooming now.”

  We agreed with him that there were not.

  “Perhaps it would be her son you were seeing. He comes here sometimes as well.”

  “A big man with red hair?” asked Mariota.

  “Och, yes. That would be him. And why are you wanting her at all? But shame be on my head. You are cold, and the day is not growing warmer.

  “Marsali,” he called into the cottage, “there are visitors here. And it is cold they are, as well.

  His wife bustled outside and immediately started clucking over Mariota. “Here, I will just be getting you some hot broth. It will warm you all. The poor chick looks fair frozen. What are you thinking, to be wandering about so in the cold?”

  She did not wait for an answer but disappeared inside again.

  “Come away in,” invited the man, whose name we discovered was Ian. And so it was soon enough that we were seated cozily inside, sipping some hot pottage from wooden bowls. I felt the warmth of it slowly settle in my stomach, while the fire warmed the rest of my body.

  “And what would you be searching for on such a day as this?” inquired Ian at length.

  I repeated our story about the sick child.

  “I have not been seeing them lately. She is living over on the far side of the island, but sometimes she comes here. There is a well,” he explained. “A healing well. It is Saint Columba’s well. That old one is coming here for the water sometimes, as well as for those plants.”

  “The leamhnach,” added his wife. “She will be coming over her to gather that little yellow flower. But it will not be growing now.”

  “So you haven’t been seeing her?”

  “No, but with the snow we stayed snug and warm inside. They might have passed this way. What was it you were wanting them for?”

  We repeated the story about needing the remedy for the falling sickness.

  “I am thinking you had better be looking for her where she bides, on the far side of the island.”

  “We followed their boat here.”

  “If they are needing the remedy so badly, perhaps they should look in that old cave before they are leaving. Perhaps she is staying there until the weather clears,” said Marsali.

  “What cave?” I asked.

  “There is an old cave near the w
ell and the standing stone. It is said the good saint himself stayed there long ago. After he was leaving Ireland, that was. Before he went to Iona”

  “We shall check there before we leave. But as you say, it would be better to find them at their house.” And after getting directions to the cave, we left.

  The track led away from the village, past the church, and up to the standing stone beyond. As we walked, I had the curious sensation we were watched, although no one stirred in the village and I could see no one. No footprints showed in the melting snow or the wet grass beneath it, now yellow from the cold of the season. After a short walk we found the well easily enough, a trickle of water coming out from a few rocks. The water tasted sweet. Despite the cold, we were thirsty and stopped a few minutes to drink. Then we began to search for the cave.

  Ian’s directions proved easy enough to follow, and we clambered up and around the hill a bit, to where the entrance of the cave lay hidden by some rocks.

  “Here it is,” I called out, and placed my hand on the black rock to steady myself as I bent down to enter. I felt a shaft of pain and looked down to see an arrow in my hand.

  Chapter 18

  I must have yelled for Mariota and Fergus were quickly by my side. The point, a flint one, had grazed my left hand, and blood flowed copiously from the wound. I observed it dispassionately, surprised at first at how little I felt it. But that instant passed and then I felt a burning pain set in.

  I pushed Mariota and Fergus into the cave, and quickly followed behind them. The arrow shot had not come from inside the cave, so I reasoned we would be safe in there.