by Wendy Holden
But there was no going back. Not least because the train would not come past again for twenty-four hours. Laura squared her shoulders and stiffened her sinews, although they were pretty stiff already after nine hours of near-immobility. She searched for her phone in her pocket and switched on the light.
The front gate, as before, was locked. Laura stared through the twisting decorative metalwork in despair. Clearly Lulu had received none of her texts; the reception at Glenravish was as hopeless as ever. The landline was also down; she had tried that too. So Lulu had no idea she was coming.
It seemed she would have to shin over the side gate again. As before, this was locked as well. But now, at least, she knew the form. Laura climbed carefully up it, swung her leg over, and climbed down the other side as silently as a cat. No tumbles and torn trousers this time.
The night pressed in and the silence boomed in her ears. She moved carefully through the grass, her bag slung over her shoulder, feeling her way ahead with her hands in best Resistance fashion.
Mimi had showed her how, on sunny afternoons in the Jardins de Luxembourg. While other families had picnics or sailed toy boats on the lake, Laura’s formidable grandmother had demonstrated how to escape through enemy territory.
It had seemed like a game at the time and Laura had never imagined ever using it seriously. But never, either, had she ever imagined Glenravish. She wondered if Koji was still patrolling the grounds. He had not reappeared during her short stay with Sandy. That he was, after all, one of the resident spooks seemed more than likely.
She pressed on. The invisible leaves and grass felt cool beneath her touch. From time to time she sensed a tree looming up and stretched out her arms to avoid crashing into it. In the distance, in the depths of the woods, she could hear the unearthly keening of nocturnal animals; they sounded, she thought, like lost souls. The hooting of a solitary owl didn’t much help matters. Laura felt the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end. The night seemed alive, somehow.
It was drizzling now. The rain hissed softly on the leaves, adding another unsettling strand to the evening symphony. She took a deep, ragged breath to calm her rioting nerves and pressed on in what she guessed was the direction of the castle. There were no lights at all; everything was black. Another of Glenravish’s famous power cuts, Laura supposed.
Suddenly, the veins in her eyes exploded in a flash of painful light. A torch was shining in her face, held by someone she could not see. She reeled; her bag slipped off her arm and tumbled into the undergrowth. She tried to bend to find it, but an iron grip had seized her wrist. She gasped and wriggled, but the grip held tight.
‘Let me go!’ Laura gasped. Was it Struan the murderous stalker?
‘Is you again, huh?’ The torch beam disappeared and a friendly Japanese face looked down at her. Laura saw epaulettes, the flash of a uniform. A huge, meaningful-looking gun.
‘Koji!’ So he was real, after all. But even if he had been a ghost she would have preferred him to Struan.
She hastened to explain herself. ‘I’m here to see Lulu. She owns this place now. She bought it off Sandy.’
‘Lulu not here at moment.’
‘Not here?’ gasped Laura. She wanted to cry. After all she had endured. The endless train journey, Fraser’s loco-powered hunter-gathering, the scrabbling through dark, slippy undergrowth, all made bearable only by the prospect of seeing her friend.
‘Where is she?’ Laura demanded.
Koji did not reply. Instead, he had hurried her through the garden to the front door.
‘I’ll leave you with Mrs MacRae,’ he finally said as he yanked hard on the bell.
The vast medieval portal now creaked open and the pleasant, apple-cheeked face of the housekeeper, illuminated by the familiar candle, peered smilingly out into the drizzling darkness. The housekeeper married to a murderer, Laura reminded herself crossly.
‘Well, if it isn’t Miss Laura!’ exclaimed Mrs MacRae, with every appearance of delight. ‘You look all in, my dear. Come in, come in, we’ll run you a bath in no time. Then I’ll see about some supper.’
Laura turned to Koji, but, as before, he had disappeared. She rubbed her eyes. Was he real, or wasn’t he? His grip had felt real enough.
‘We’re having a wee bit o’ bother with the ghosties again,’ Mrs MacRae said comfortably as she led the way through the hall with the candle. Her dark dress blended with the shadows so it was like following a disembodied head.
‘While we’re on the subject of bother,’ Laura said sarcastically, ‘I had a bit of bother with your husband. When we were out on the hill, he tried to kill me.’
Instead, of evincing shock, guilt or anger, the housekeeper smiled indulgently. ‘No, no, dearie. You’re overtired. You’re imagining it. You gave poor Struan a terrible shock, falling in that bog like that. And before he could rescue you, down came Miss Lulu in her helicopter.’
Laura’s mouth fell open. She pulled it up hastily and was about to indignantly disagree when it struck her that discretion might be the better part of valour. Antagonising Mrs Struan could have bad results. Apparent acceptance might be safer. Until the morning, at least. Then she would consider her position.
But in the meantime she did have one burning query. ‘Where is Lulu?’ It occurred to her now that Koji had sidestepped the question.
Mrs MacRae did not answer either, but led on through Glenravish’s vast hall. Laura followed, wondering if Lulu had decided not to buy the castle after all, or whether the deal had fallen through at the last minute. While this would be a relief on the one hand, on the other it meant she had suffered the agony of the train journey for nothing.
On the ancient stone walls, their huge black shadows jerked alarmingly. The candle flame glinted menacingly off the elaborately arranged ordnance. The bollock-splitter was back in its old place, Laura noticed. She also noticed, or thought she noticed, that the guns had been moved around. They seemed to be in different patterns from before. Patterns, Laura now realised, she knew well.
On the great wall above the mantelpiece, pistols were arranged in two great interlocking Chanel ‘C’s. Next to them, a number of small daggers had been made into the Gucci ‘G’. ‘YSL’, meanwhile, had been achieved with bayonet rifles; a chain with a spiked mace on each end forming the ‘S’. More pistols formed the Louis Vuitton logo.
Oh yes, Laura thought. Lulu had bought the castle all right.
Mrs MacRae was also smiling fondly at the arrangements. ‘Miss Lulu will have her fun.’
Laura wanted to punch the air. Lulu had put her stamp on the place already. Glenravish was dancing to her tune. The only mystery was – where was she?
‘Och, she just slipped out. She’ll be back soon,’ Mrs MacRae assured her, comfortably.
Chapter Thirty
After a brown bath and a plateful of the inevitable venison stew, Laura lay in the small, cosy room she had previously occupied.
Her mind was rioting. Just what was going on in this place? For one thing, Lulu had not come back from wherever she had slipped off to. Mrs MacRae had been relaxed about it, saying that, now she came to think about it, Lulu might have gone on a trip Down Under.
‘You mean Australia?’ Laura had gasped. Her friend was prone to last-minute shopping-related long haul, but even for her this was impetuous. Especially as she had a whole new – or rather, old – castle to explore. Still, as Vlad was nowhere to be seen either, it seemed the only explanation.
Then there was the question of Struan.
Was it possible that she had imagined he was trying to kill her? But Mrs MacRae had received her so pleasantly and parried the idea so charmingly that Laura was no longer so certain. Why would he, after all? It made no sense. Much more likely it was an accident and he had been about to come to the rescue, as his wife had claimed.
Then there was the Flora MacDonald question; the ball at Glenravish that Sandy had told Lulu about. Had she really made it up to get the sale through? If so, she was a lesser wom
an than she had seemed. Laura felt disappointed in Sandy. Then again, the sale was doubtless the reason Mordor had not appeared at supper or anywhere else for that matter. Presumably Lulu, who for all her kindness could spot a sponger at a hundred paces, had given him his marching orders.
Laura burrowed her face further into the cool, lavender-scented pillow. All this thinking was making her tired. She began to drift gently off to sleep.
Suddenly she was wide awake again. Had she heard something? Laura stared up from the pillow into the thick dark. It was not morning yet, it must still be the middle of the night. Go back to sleep, she told herself, snuggling back down into the warm pillow.
There it was again! A noise. She had definitely heard it this time. Laura sat up, heart hammering. The bed creaked deafeningly as she reached for the bedside lamp; it did not work, unsurprisingly. Her fingers closed round her smartphone and switched it on.
Armed, now, with some light at least, Laura sat on the edge of the bed and listened. She hoped desperately that she was mistaken. The very last thing she wanted to do was leave the room and investigate. Fearless journalist though she was, there were limits, especially in a place like Glenravish. Hopefully it was nothing.
No, it was definitely something. A faint sequence of sounds, coming from some distance away. For a second she wondered if she had left the radio on in the bathroom before remembering that there was no radio at Glenravish. Laura thought of Mrs MacRae. Had she known where she was, she would have shot to her room and hurled herself into the housekeeper’s arms, all forgiven. She had no idea where the woman slept though, or whether she even lived in the fortress. For all Laura knew, she was entirely alone. Her insides went liquid with terror at the thought.
‘Fierté. Espoir. Courage.’ She could almost hear her indomitable grandmother’s voice. Perhaps, too, she could feel her father’s fearless spirit urging her on. With a heartfelt groan, Laura pushed back the warm, comforting bedclothes, placed her shrinking soles on the cold varnish of the floorboards and stood up.
Laura habitually slept naked. She shuddered as the chilly air now seized her bed-warm body. She fumbled in the dark for her jeans, which had stiffened in the freezing air. Against her bare breasts, her shirt was so cold it felt hot. She buttoned it hastily, felt for her boots and slunk reluctantly to the door.
Any frail hope that the noise would stop, or prove to be non-existent, now conclusively faded. Laura’s room was at the end of a landing at the other end of which were stairs. They led down to the Great Hall, and it was from here that the disturbance seemed to originate. Laura could hear music, the sound of bagpipes, of voices and laughter, the clap and stamp of people dancing.
She froze to the spot, clutching the door, swallowing hard. Fear juddered painfully down her nerves. Was this some ghostly gathering from the distant past? Almost certainly it was.
Laura had never seen an actual ghost before. The thought of actually encountering one – or several, by the sound of it – made her veins freeze and her stomach churn with nausea. She thought of her precarious position, alone in the isolated midnight castle, slap bang in the middle of nowhere, and wanted to weep. What was she doing here? Why did she always get herself into these situations? What was wrong with her?
A glow was coming from the hall, as of unearthly light. It was just enough to see without her phone torch, and so she switched it off. Bad things, Laura now vaguely remembered, happened to those who attracted the attention of ghosts. Even ones who seemed to be having as good a time as these ones evidently were. She could hear cheering, clapping, whoops. She hesitated, then moved tremblingly forward.
Laura had noticed during her earlier visit that the great hall of Glenravish had a minstrel’s gallery at one end, providing a view of the room below. It could be accessed from the top of the stairs, and it was here that the terrified reporter now slipped, pressing back into the shadows so as not to be seen.
What she saw below, in the hall, took what remained of her breath away.
The huge old room, pitch-dark before, now blazed with the light of many candles. It was full of dancing people, all dressed in the fashion of two hundred and fifty years ago; the men in ponytailed wigs with sausage curls at the sides, the women with hair drawn back in masses of ringlets, their pale bosoms almost exposed in daringly low-cut bodices. There was a lot of tartan, Laura noticed; the men wore kilts and the women big-skirted plaid silk dresses. Tartan cloaks were thrown over shoulders. Swords flashed on the sides of belts and dirks glinted from the depths of stockings. A proper Highland gathering, Laura thought. Of proper Highland ghosts. The kind of ball that must have been held at Glenravish, back in the day.
It looked fun, it had to be said. Such fun that Laura almost forgot to be frightened. It had a very real quality to it, as if she were watching an actual event. The music swelled in her ears; inviting, gay and infectious. Laura’s foot tapped happily in time as she watched the dancers swirling about each other, the men bowing and the women curtseying at the end of each number. The pipers, whose red faces looked particularly sweaty and real, blew mightily away on their instruments, accompanied by fleet-fingered fiddlers. Now the men were twirling with their arms in the air, kilts swirling and sporrans swinging as the women clapped and the bagpipes skirled.
The centre of the room’s attention, and towards whom everyone kept glancing, was a tall, handsome young man whose sporran was more imposing and whose wig was bigger and shinier than everyone else’s. Laura realised with a shock that this was not any old ghostly Highland ball she was witnessing, but a very particular one.
This must be Glenravish’s number one historic event, the red-letter day, or rather evening, to which Lulu had referred. The handsome young man must be the ghost of Bonnie Prince Charlie and the young woman with whom he was dancing, a pretty, diminutive brunette gazing at him with large, dark, adoring eyes, must be the shade of Flora MacDonald.
Laura raised a hand to her mouth, shocked, excited and terrified all at the same time. So Sandy had for some reason told her a lie, whilst telling Lulu the truth. One of history’s most dynamic duos, the darlings of the Jacobite cause, had visited Glenravish after all. Their spirits had remained here ever after, evoking the high days and happy optimism of the adventure that had gone so badly wrong.
Now that she knew his identity, Laura couldn’t stop looking at the Young Chevalier. History had not exaggerated the prince’s quite extraordinary charisma. It had not mentioned his teeth though, which seemed remarkably huge and white given the standards of the time. Maybe Lulu wasn’t wrong about the sex, either. Flora was pressing herself hard against her royal partner, pushing her bosoms upwards, and his eyes, as he watched her, seemed narrowed with desire. As the dance went on, the young couple were almost audibly panting with lust. When they turned towards each other, Flora slipped a small white hand inside the Prince’s breeches. When they turned away again, he returned the compliment by tweaking a semi-exposed pink nipple.
As the astonished Laura watched, the white-wigged head of Prince Charlie bent down to his partner’s and consumed her in a passionate kiss. The surrounding crowd kept right on dancing, however. No one seemed to turn a hair.
Flora and Charlie snogged throughout the number, parting only as the last bagpipe note died away. Flora then swept a demure curtsey, and Charlie a chaste bow. At the back of the room, the pipers and fiddlers wiped the sweat of their exertions from their foreheads.
It really was very hot, Laura thought. She could actually feel the heat, even though it had not existed for a quarter of a millennium. She smiled as she watched the pipers high-fiving each other and swigging from plastic bottles of water.
Hang on. Laura frowned. High fives? She went to the edge of the gallery and looked closer. Bottles of water?
Somewhere in the back of her mind, behind all the fear and surprise, Laura had registered that the room was very bright considering it was only lit by candles. She could now see why. Beneath the balcony, previously hidden from her view, was a ro
w of enormous arc lights on stands, and positioned among them were several large cameras with boom microphones attached. People dressed in jeans and hoodies rather than the Georgian garb of the dancers, were either standing beside them or operating them. One of them, a man with mad-professor hair and glasses on top of his head, now moved forward. ‘Cut! It’s a wrap, everyone.’
Laura gripped the edge of the gallery with her hands. So it wasn’t a haunting, it was a scene from a film.
She remembered Lulu’s comment. Glenravish location, hmmm? For Prince Charlie and Flora MacDoughnut dance, hmm?
Doh, thought Laura, smacking her forehead. Lulu had got it right; it was she, Laura, who had misunderstood everything.
She looked again at Bonnie Prince Charlie, now vaping copiously amid an admiring crowd of actresses and gofers in leggings. There was something familiar about him, despite the white make-up and beauty spots. That huge flash of teeth when he smiled reminded her of someone.
And then, as the Young Chevalier looked around, his casual glance grazing hers before passing heedlessly on, absolute certainty seized Laura. She knew this actor. Knew him better than she knew most people. There was no doubt about it. It was Caspar.
Chapter Thirty-one
Laura rushed along the balcony, down the stairs and among the thick wires and cables snaking over the hall’s stone floor. They had been invisible before, because of the dancing. She ran up to Caspar and flung her arms around him.
‘What the—?’ Caspar exclaimed, choking on his vape smoke. It had a powerful cherry flavour. ‘Oh, wait.’ Recognition dawned in the actor’s eyes. ‘Laura Lake!’
‘And who the eff is Laura Lake?’