“Do you think she is dying, Ranald?” I asked.
“Deith is written all ower her face, lass. But no the right kind o’ deith, no the deith that brings life.”
I thought a few minutes.
“I can’t turn my back on her, Ranald,” I said. “I just can’t. If she will come, bring her home.”
Chapter Fifty-six
Guest from Aberdeen
Let worldly worms their minds oppress
Wi’ fears o’ want and double cess,
And sullen sots themsel’s distress
Wi’ keeping up decorum.
But for the discontented fool,
Wha wants to be oppression’s tool
May envy gnaw his rotten soul,
And discontent devour him.
—Rev. John Skinner, “Tullochgorum”
When Ranald arrived back in Port Scarnose two days later, the shrunken, weak, feeble lady beside him with thinning white hair and stooped shoulders, a mere forty-nine alongside Ranald’s seventy-three, was recognized by no one as he helped her off the bus. What might have been going through the woman’s mind as her eyes fell upon the village over which, in a manner of speaking, she had once ruled, both as a girl and, for a season, as the presumed duchess? Now she was being helped off the bus by the very hand of a man she had despised all her life, a man whose wife, and maybe whose daughter she had also killed if Maggie’s dying words were right, yet who had never brought charges against her, and who was now doing his best to minister the compassion of mutual humanity to her. Is such a one even capable of grasping the first elemental principles of such a forgiveness as had been sitting at her side for the past two hours?
Ranald had telephoned ahead. Iain and I were there to meet them and take Olivia directly to the castle. Nicholls and Tavia, Alicia and Cora, and most of the day staff were on hand, standing in the entryway to welcome her, if not with open arms, certainly with smiles and greetings and handshakes and well-wishes.
I had moved out of my apartment so that Olivia could be in as familiar surroundings as possible. A banner proclaiming “Welcome Back to Castle Buchan” stood above the door as Alicia and I escorted her down the corridor. Flowers and a bowl of fruit sat on the table as we entered.
Up till then, Sarah Duff had continued as a day maid, though she had been on the castle’s full-time staff for a year prior to Alasdair’s death. She was twenty-three now and had been a particular favorite of Olivia’s. I made Sarah Olivia’s personal attendant and offered to have her come live at the castle for a substantial increase in pay, and occupy a room of her own across the hall from the entrance to Olivia’s new apartment and adjacent to Cora. She’d had nursing training when she worked at Leith Home as a caregiver for dementia and terminal patients. She was not intimidated by the more difficult aspects of extreme care. Her only assignment would be to see to Olivia’s every need, and to summon me if those needs were beyond her.
I made arrangements for a specialist from Dr. Gray’s Hospital in Elgin to come to the castle to evaluate her, give me a thorough assessment of her condition and prospects, and to take over her treatment and medications from the clinic in Aberdeen.
All this—from the greeting, banner and fruit, to a personal attendant, to the medical care—Olivia took in stride as if it were expected.
Not a word of gratitude once passed her lips.
You would think that having one more person in a castle as large as Buchan, with as many people as were coming and going, and as much activity as was constantly about the place, would not make a great difference. But when that person is a malcontent, a divider, a spreader of division, never was a truer word spoken than “A little leaven leavens the whole lump.” The effect of Olivia’s presence was noticeable immediately. An invisible cloud settled over the castle. Tiny grumblings could be heard. A different spirit was about the place. I even noticed it in my harp students, who knew nothing of what was going on. Their usual exuberance was subdued. They were uncharacteristically snippy at one another, occasionally irritable toward me.
I must say I was gratified that not a single person on the staff, to my knowledge, succumbed to any of Olivia’s subtle divisiveness. Even her former favorites—from Sarah, her attendant, to Farquharson, who had now become my indispensable and loyal handyman—found themselves repulsed by her negativity, grouchiness, and spirit of constant complaint. They say old age and sickness bring out the traits a person has been invisibly building into the soil of his or her character all their lives. Those lifelong flowers at last blossom—either into the beautiful and fragrant petals of a sweet and humble spirit of grace, or into the bitter weeds of rancor, regret, and complaint. We are all preparing throughout our lives for the character that will emerge during our gray-haired years. In Olivia’s case, though it came earlier than expected, for she was not yet fifty, that character garden bore the foul aroma of selfishness. No one found any joy being near her. A seventeenth-century monk once said that a sour old person is one of the crowning works of the devil. That there was no change in Olivia was certainly clear evidence of that truth.
Olivia rarely went out in the first week, but gradually could be seen around the castle or out on the grounds with Sarah. She had a wheelchair, a walker, and canes all at her disposal, but was not reduced to quite such a level of infirmity yet. Though she occasionally allowed herself to be wheeled from her room and down the elevator to the ground floor, she was still able to walk about and get outside when it was warm. I thought I saw signs of a slight improvement in her condition, a strengthening of her walk, slightly less pallor in her cheeks. We were feeding her well, though she did not take meals with those of us who usually ate together—Cora and I and Nicholls and Farquharson and whatever of the staff were on duty at mealtime. She showed no interest in going into the village.
Iain came to the castle more regularly after Olivia’s arrival. He seemed watchful and anxious.
“Iain, what is it?” I finally asked one day.
“What’s what?”
“You are different, quieter. You seem…I don’t know, a little on edge.”
“You noticed. Sorry.”
“What is it, then?”
“I am concerned about Olivia.”
“In what way—about her health, you mean?”
“Her spiritual health, not the cancer,” he replied. “I don’t altogether care for the look in her eyes. I have not spoken with her. But even from a distance I catch a glint that makes me nervous. I am concerned that we may have opened the door to something I am not sure I like—the prodigal coming home before repentance has taken place, before he is ready to say, ‘I will arise and go to my father.’”
“What harm can she do now? She is dying of cancer.”
“Being an unrepentant prodigal whose stock in trade is division, who derived her power from a satanic stronghold of matriarchy and control, without a change, she will be able to work evil literally until the day of her death.”
“Do you think it is that serious? None of the staff but Sarah will have a thing to do with her.”
“I do think it is serious, though I have no idea how it will manifest itself.”
“Actually, I think she is regaining a little strength.”
“That may be. Yet it might also increase the danger. Be wary, Marie. I do not think her fangs have yet been drawn. I do not say it was a mistake to bring her into your home because it was done in love and out of a heart of service. We all participated in that decision. But having a contrary spirit under your roof is a matter of grave spiritual concern. Something is wrong. I can feel it. All I say is, remain wary. Remember the Lord’s words, ‘Be watchful and on guard.’ I do not believe the demon has been thoroughly exorcised.”
Chapter Fifty-seven
Bumps in the Night
Fearfu’ soughs the boortree bank,
the rifted wood roars wild and drearie;
Loud the iron yet does clank,
and cry o’ howlets makes me eerie.
; —“O! Are Ye Sleeping, Maggie?”
Iain’s words chilled me.
It probably didn’t help that since Olivia’s coming I was occupying a little-used set of rooms on the third floor of the east wing. Not knowing how long she might be with us, I wanted to relocate myself into quarters where I could be comfortable and carry on my affairs and conduct my business, along with my continued use of Alasdair’s office between the library and the Great Room, for an extended period of time.
The apartment was one that had been used by the dowager countess of Buchan a century earlier after the death of her husband. She had been a great local favorite during her life, but in her final years, so the legends said, had gone mad. I thought little of it, knowing that today’s dementia was the so-called madness of a century before. The countess’s apartment was spacious, actually more luxurious than the apartment Alasdair and I had considered our home and retreat within the huge expanse of the castle. It had a private staircase leading to the ground floor easily connecting to the labyrinth of corridors binding the rest of the great house together like an internal spider’s web, and also an outside door at the base of this staircase leading into the central courtyard. It seemed like an ideal place for me—far enough from Olivia that my presence would not be an annoyance to her, but still accessible if I happened to be needed.
Thus far, however, Olivia had shown not the slightest inclination of needing me! After two weeks, Olivia had still not spoken a word to me.
At first it was fine. Moving into new quarters is always fun, even if just a hotel or B-and-B room for one night, and I enjoyed myself for the first couple of weeks.
But then a misty wind blew in from the east—an “eastern haar,” as it’s called. Then the skies cleared, but the wind was bitterly cold and blew every wisp of smoke from every chimney on the coast of the Moray Firth straight over at ninety degrees. To try to walk while the gale lasted took maximum effort. Great blasts attacked the trees of the castle grounds as if they would whip the tops right off them. Their trunks swayed and creaked. With an occasional loud crack a branch tumbled to the ground now and then. It was an exciting, wild, frightful display of the power of the elements.
The night the haar hit was the first time in my new quarters so far from everyone else, and I found myself jittery with sleeplessness. I heard the wind whistling and howling through every crevice and tile and around every chimney stack and corner of the castle. I imagined no end of banging about outside. The frenetic east wind brought with it dozens of strange sounds I did not like.
It was at such times I really missed having a husband!
Alasdair would have simply said, “It’s nothing, go back to sleep.” That would have been enough.
Or he might have said, “It’s only the Buchan ghosts…they won’t bother us.” Or even, “It’s just the green lady roaming about. She’s harmless.” With him beside me, I would have been fine.
Reassuring myself with such palliatives, however, only made matters worse. The very act of telling myself the Buchan ghosts and the green lady wouldn’t bother me heightened my own terror that maybe they were lurking in the darkness after all! Remembering my strange dream with the flakes of straw on my bed the next morning didn’t help either.
I imagined all sorts of things going on—from assorted Buchan ghosts to the green lady coming to haunt my room, to Viking marauders fooling about in hidden passageways trying to sneak in and whisk me away and hold me for ransom. I tried to keep a fire going in the fireplace, but it was so windy the smoke kept blowing into the room.
But the fireplace, even cold, continued to whistle and moan, as if the wind were blowing down and up from the basement regions out into the wild and tumultuous night sky.
Morning eventually came. Everyone else had experienced their own battles with the imaginary wind-ghosts of the night. Sarah said Olivia had been awake and restless, adding that she had followed her up and down several corridors convinced she was sleepwalking before she eventually returned to her room and settled down without knowing Sarah was watching her.
Oddly, I continued to hear sounds in the night long after the wind spent itself and moved across toward Iceland. That’s when I began to have second thoughts about my new accommodations in the dowager countess’s apartment. I wasn’t especially superstitious, but why torment myself listening to distant banging and clattering from the depths of the castle? Even when there wasn’t a breath of wind, I was certain I heard sounds coming from the fireplace. It was okay during the day, but it could be really unnerving at night. I told myself crows were scratching about on the chimney. But even crows I found a little creepy at two in the morning!
I certainly didn’t believe there was any green lady haunting Castle Buchan. But I didn’t want to meet her either!
Equally peculiar was the fact that the series of windstorms seemed to fill Olivia with more strength, almost as if the wind brought with it some otherworldly source of life that spoke to her depths. The more the wind blew, the more she seemed determined to go out in it, turning to face the gale, her white hair blowing wildly, occasionally shouting into the wind or raising her fist against it.
Observing such peculiarities, I heard Nicholls mutter more than once, “The loony woman’s madder than a March hare.”
According to Sarah, nighttime only made such behavior worse. Olivia became positively animated, awake half the night, rummaging about in her rooms, talking to herself and opening drawers, searching through closets, and taken to somnambulism on a more extensive scale. Sarah listened with her ear to the door, not knowing what Olivia was up to, afraid of disturbing her, but also more than a little anxious. She was enough a Scots lass, raised on tales of Highland superstitions and the second sight, and knew enough about what was whispered of Olivia among the staff, to find such nighttime peculiarities more than a little fearsome.
On one occasion Sarah followed Olivia down to the kitchen where she also rummaged about, apparently looking for something and muttering strange things to herself. Several nights later Sarah lost track of her wandering somewhere in the east wing for almost an hour. Beside herself and afraid for what I might say, she was about to rouse me, when suddenly she heard Olivia back in her own rooms.
This went on for some time. As Olivia grew more and more strange, Iain grew more and more concerned. I feared dementia or even the onset of Alzheimer’s, though neither had the least connection to the advance of her cancer. I also recalled Nigel’s conjecture that she was schizophrenic or delusional if not outright insane. If asked, I would have said I believed no such thing. I continued to convince myself that dementia met the case adequately. Yet Nigel’s diagnosis was not easily dismissed.
Neither Cora nor Alicia would have anything to do with her.
Chapter Fifty-eight
Soothing Dream
Hush ye, my bairnie, my bonnie wee dearie;
Sleep! come and close the een, heavy and wearie;
Closed are the wearie een, rest are ye takin’—
Soun’ be yer sleepin’, and bright be yer wakin’.
—“Hush Ye, My Bairnie”
Then came the strangest occurrence since Olivia’s arrival had begun to upset the peaceful equilibrium of life at Castle Buchan.
With the rising of the sun one day again came another terrific wind from the east. The crows and gulls flew overhead, squawking and shrieking in the tempest as if heralding the end of the world. Their frenzied tumult seemed to bring upon the castle a visitation of apprehension. Everyone was unaccountably on edge, nervous, jittery, as if a spiritual plague had blown in with the wind. I longed for Iain’s calming and strengthening presence. But he and I had had supper together the evening before and he was to work late on this day. I did not expect to see him for several days.
Sarah came to me frantically in the early afternoon.
“I canna find her, mum,” she said. The look on her face was one of terror that she was about to lose her job.
“Who, Sarah?”
�
�My mistress, mum…Mrs. Urquhart. She’s gone missing.”
“She must be around somewhere.”
“I’ve searched high and low, mum. ’Tis two hours now. I’m worried she might have fallen, mum, and it’ll be my fault.”
“Don’t worry, Sarah,” I said, following her from my studio where I was getting ready for my afternoon’s series of lessons. “I am sure we shall find her. Whatever happens, no one will blame you. My sister-in-law is lucky to have someone as devoted as you. I am very thankful, too.”
“’Tis kind of you to say, mum.”
Sarah and I went to Olivia’s rooms and conducted a quick search. Sarah was right. Olivia was not there.
We set everyone in the castle looking, but no one turned up a trace. At three I returned to my studio for my four students, leaving Nicholls and Farquharson to continue the search. By then the ladies were getting squeamish about what they might stumble onto if they did happen to find Olivia.
I finished lessons about five-thirty. By then the darkness of mid-October was setting in. Still Olivia had not turned up. If she was taking walks and getting lost, as now appeared the case, a diagnosis of Alzheimer’s began to loom as a real possibility. I notified the police in Buckie. They came, briefly interrogated Sarah, then drove all the castle entryways several times, looking into the surrounding woods and shrubbery as best they were able in the darkness.
By the time we retired for the night, worse than a harmless walk was on everyone’s mind. We all feared that Olivia was in genuine danger and, wherever she had got to, that she might not live through the night. Nicholls speculated that she might have wandered to the village or the sea. She was clearly not strong enough to walk the rocky coastline or keep her balance on the cliffs in the darkness.
Heather Song Page 38