still protectively clinging to it, and she found herself again seized by
an alarming surge of feeling for its owner. Och, the fair, sweet heart of
her....
Wee Mairi chose this instant to lean confidingly against Kelpie and peer
up with a beguiling smile. “_My_ Kelpie,” she repeated.
And Kelpie was swallowed in a tide of the first real love she had ever
known. She found it extremely upsetting. All her training and experience
warned her that it was dangerous to be trapped into this sort of feeling.
It left one vulnerable, could lead one into foolishness. And here she
was, bewitched, unable to help it! She scowled helplessly.
Lady Glenfern, seeing her distress, mercifully took her from the kitchen
for the rest of the day and set her to work at a simple bit of weaving.
For an hour or so Kelpie sat alone, brooding. Eithne came in for a while
to work at her own more complicated length of Cameron tartan, but Kelpie
was so unsociable that she left again.
And then the twins arrived, dark heads cocked to one side, eyes dancing
at her impishly. “We have found you,” they announced in triumph.
“Fine I know it,” growled Kelpie, refusing to look at them.
Undaunted, they seated themselves on two wee creepie-stools and regarded
her with affable curiosity. “There is a thing that we have in our minds,”
they told her.
“I am doubting that!” snapped Kelpie.
The twins digested this insult and then chuckled. “I am liking you fine,”
said Donald, “even though you are not a witch.”
Kelpie, touched again on that newly sensitive spot, shot the shuttle
through the warp with unnecessary violence and said nothing.
“Why were you saying you are a witch when you are not?” asked Ronald
with interest. “Why,” he continued, getting warmed up, “do Fiona and the
others think you are? Would you like to be? Are you truly Old Mina’s
girl? Is she your Grannie Witchie? If you were a witch, Kelpie, what
would you do first of all?”
“Put a spell of silence on the tongue of you,” retorted Kelpie and found
that her ill humor was beginning to evaporate. It was impossible not to
smile back at their cheeky grins, not to chuckle when they said that
Mother would probably approve such a spell. The atmosphere became quite
congenial.
“I thought you were going fishing,” observed Kelpie.
The twins looked depressed. “We were,” they agreed. “But Father is come
back from seeing Lochiel and told us to bide here for our lessons that we
missed this morning. I think ’twill take him a wee while to find us in
here, whatever,” added Ronald cheerfully, and Kelpie grinned again.
“We are learning about the war between King Charles and Parliament and
the Covenant,” volunteered Donald sadly, “and we could do fine _not_
knowing about it. Grownups are gey confusing, so they are, and sometimes
I think gey foolish besides, and we are not understanding it all very
well.”
“Are you loving King Charles?” demanded Ronald.
“Ou, aye,” murmured Kelpie vaguely and hastened to turn the question.
“Are you?” she countered.
“As ever was!” they chorused instantly. “Is he not our King, and a
Stewart, besides?”
Well, Kelpie had already known that Glenfern was pro-Royalist. “And so
the King is always right?” she pursued, trying to think what else to ask.
“Och, no!” said the twins in surprise. “No one is always right,” they
informed her gravely. “Except,” they added, “for Father.”
Kelpie put her shuttle through the wrong way and had to take it out
again, her lip twitching ever so slightly. The twins, having settled that
subject of conversation, looked at her hopefully. “Can you,” they asked,
“tell us a story?”
Now if there was one thing Kelpie could do better than any other,
it was to tell stories—pathetic tales to earn sympathy or a copper,
outrageous lies to escape impending trouble, embroidered yarns of her own
adventures, old gypsy stories, eerie folk tales of the wee people and
other uncanny beings, or fanciful bits and snatches that she wove for
herself among the hills or beside the campfire. Her eyes sparkled. “Fine
I can that!” she asserted and dropped her voice to an eerie pitch.
“Have you ever,” she whispered, “heard of the _uruisg_ of Glenlyon?”
They shook their heads and drew their stools nearer.
“Well, then.” Kelpie paused, shuttle in hand. “It was a farmer’s wife
who was making porridge for breakfast on a wet morning, when who should
come walking in but an _uruisg_. Och, a slippery, damp, uncouth monster
he was, half man and half goat; and wasn’t he just sitting himself down
at the fire to dry, and not so much as a wee greeting to her? Well, the
farmer’s wife was fair angered at his impertinence, and she having to
step over and around him every minute, so presently she just lifted a
ladle of the boiling porridge from the pot over the fire, and poured it
over him, just. Well, at that he leaped up, howling, and ran out the door
and never dared set foot in that house again....”
When Glenfern finally tracked down his elusive twins some time later,
Kelpie had got very little weaving done, but she had made a place for
herself forever in the hearts of Ronald and Donald.
6. The Picture in the Loch
“’Tis a terrible complicated matter, the war,” objected Eithne doubtfully
as she began basting a sleeve into what was to be a fine linen shirt for
Ian’s birthday. “I fear I’d only be confusing you.”
Kelpie surveyed the four or five yards of red and green tartan wool which
constituted a kilt for a small lad, and wondered how even Donald could
have managed to tear such stout weave. “I could not be more confused than
I am,” she pointed out, “for I am knowing nothing at all. Tell me at
least a little.”
Eithne sighed and obeyed. “Well,” she began hesitantly, “you know that
King Charles is King of England and Scotland both?” Kelpie nodded. “But
in both countries are representative bodies of men called Parliaments,
and they help to rule. They are supposed to agree with the things the
King does, and it is the English parliament who must vote to give him
things like extra money when he needs it—which he usually does.”
She paused to squint critically at her basting, and Kelpie waited.
Somehow she had developed a great eagerness to learn about the matters
which had thrown England and Scotland into civil war. “Aye, go on,” she
murmured.
“Well, so. Neither King Charles nor his father before him has got along
well with Parliament. King and Parliament each said the other will be
trying to take more rights and power than they should have, and they
became angry. Parliament would refuse to vote money for the King, so the
King would dissolve Parliament, which meant that they could not meet any
more to vote on anything at all until King Charles called them back, and
so everyone was unhappy.”
She bit off her thread and held the shirt closer to the dim light
which filtered through the thick diamond-shaped mullion panes of the
casement window. “And then”—she sighed—“religion came into it. Father,”
she remarked severely, “says that religion should never be mixed with
politics, but they do not listen to wise people like Father, and so there
is trouble.”
“What has religion to do with it?” asked Kelpie curiously. She had never
known anything of religion for herself, only that the stern Kirk of the
Lowlands had severe views on all other faiths, on fun and laughter, and
most particularly on witches. But the Anglican services here at Glenfern
seemed peaceful and vaguely pleasant, even though she did not understand
them.
“Och!” protested Eithne, but Kelpie’s face was implacable, so she went
on. “Well, the Catholics and Protestants do not like each other, and
especially the Protestants of the new Reformed Church, like the Puritans
in England and the Calvinist Covenanters in Scotland—and we Anglicans
caught in the middle. King Charles is Anglican, but the Parliament is
mostly Puritan, I think. At any rate, they were very angry when the King
married Queen Henrietta, who is a Roman Catholic and said she would turn
the country all Catholic and burn Protestants at the stake. And the
Catholics said the Protestants were trying to rule the country and force
their religion on everyone, and so it was a fine braw quarrel for years,
with religion and politics all mixed together.”
Kelpie carefully selected a strand of wool to match the soft, dull red of
the Cameron tartan. This was the most difficult bit of mending she had
yet been trusted with. “Mmm,” she murmured after a minute, turning her
mind back to the conversation. “And then?”
It was Eithne’s turn to pause, while the rain beat against the casement
windows. Wee Mairi turned from her doll to lift a merry smile in the
direction of “her Kelpie,” who felt a new pang of affection. Och, the
bonnie wee thing!
Eithne scowled at the shirt and then glanced up at Kelpie with a rueful
shrug. “Ou, I cannot mind me of all the details.” She sighed again. “But
the quarrel turned into fighting.”
“But what of Scotland?” demanded Kelpie. “What had it to do with us at
all?”
“Why,” interrupted the dry voice of Alex, “King Charles himself must be
bringing that on!” They looked up to see him standing in the doorway, a
shirt in his hand and a wry grin on his angular face. “Scotland might
have been loyal to him, even though all the Lowlands are Calvinist, and
even more rigid than the Puritans, but he had the bright idea of forcing
the Anglican prayer book on Scotland. And the next thing he knew, there
was a Solemn League and Covenant formed against him, and Scotland divided
as England was, with Lowlands against the King, and most of the Highlands
loyal to him.”
Eithne looked both relieved and worried, while Kelpie studied Alex’s
expression in the dim light, not quite certain if he were teasing or not.
She decided not—for once. There was a faint note of bitterness in his
voice. “I thought you were a King’s man!” she challenged him.
“I am so,” he returned promptly and unpropped himself from the doorway.
“Look you, Eithne,” he went on, crossing the room to her. “I have ripped
my shirt sorely and am needing a bonnie sweet lass to mend it for me.”
Eithne tilted her chestnut curls at him and wrinkled up her nose in an
impish grin. “If I do,” she said, bargaining, “will you be explaining the
rest of the war to Kelpie?”
“_Dhé!_” said Alex and raised both eyebrows at Kelpie.
“She is truly wanting to know,” said Eithne sternly, “so do not be
teasing her, Alex. And I am gey muddled about it, and you knowing so much
more, with having been at Oxford and even seeing the King and his family
yourself. Will you?”
“’Tis a hard bargain,” complained Alex, “and I am thinking I pity the
man who will one day marry you, Eithne _m’eudail_.” He perched on the
corner of the massive table, his kilt falling in heavy folds about his
lean knees. “Well, then, and what bit of my great knowledge should I be
sharing with you first?”
Kelpie gave him a wicked pointed smile. “Tell me,” she said softly, “in
one word, just, _what are they fighting for?_”
“My sorrow!” exclaimed Alex, straightening up as if he had sat on a
thistle. “Is that all?”
“Don’t you know?” asked Kelpie tauntingly. “I will tell you, then.
They’re fighting for power. Is it not so?”
Alex resumed his perch and surveyed her ruefully. “Och, and are you
not the young cynic!” he observed. “And you have shocked my foster
sister, too.” For Eithne was looking both dismayed and indignant. Both
girls had forgotten their sewing for the moment and sat staring at Alex
challengingly, waiting for his opinion.
He laughed. “I fear me I shall anger you both,” he remarked, “and go
through the rest of my life with an evil spell on my head and a tom
sleeve in my shirt.”
“Well?” demanded Kelpie.
Alex gave her a crooked grin. “Sorry I am to agree with you even in
part,” he confessed, “but no doubt some men are fighting for power.
No, no, Eithne,” he added as she opened her mouth. “Do not deny it too
quickly. What about Argyll?”
Eithne subsided.
“On the other hand, Alex _avic_, there is Montrose.” It was Ian. He
pulled up a hassock and ranged himself quietly but firmly on Eithne’s
side.
“Montrose?” asked Kelpie.
“Aye,” said Ian, turning his warm smile upon her. “James Graham of
Montrose, and he one of the finest, truest men under the sun. He it is
who is named to fight for the King’s cause in Scotland, even to form and
organize the army. And he is fighting for no selfish reason whatever, but
only for what he believes to be right. Alex cannot deny it, for we both
met and talked to him last winter in Oxford.”
“Indeed and I’ll not deny it,” agreed Alex amiably, “though Kelpie might.
My point was just that all men are not like Montrose, and my proof of
it is still Argyll. Och, and have you done, my sonsie Eithne?” he added
as she held up the mended shirt. “Come away, then, Ian, and let’s be
outside. I believe the sun is going to come out.”
And they were gone before Kelpie could ask about Argyll. Perhaps it was
as well, she decided, going back to her mending. For she really thought
she had heard quite as much as she could absorb all in one lump.
Eithne flickered a mischievous sideways glance at her. “And wasn’t I
warning you ’twas complicated?” she murmured.
* * * * *
As if by tacit agreement, no one brought up matters like war and politics
for some time. After all, it was easy enough, in that peaceful, secluded
glen, to put such things far out of mind. Kelpie’s free hours were full
enough, as spring days became longer, with other things. Wee Mairi
tagged along with her, a self-appointed guardian, and the glenspeople
had learned to hide their hostility when Mairi was there. The twins were
insatiably hungry for more stories—and so, for that matter, were the
older young people. Books were rare and precious, and mostly devoted to
serious and difficult subjects. And, as Ian generously remarked on a
sunny afternoon by the loch, Kelpie was a master at telling tales.
Alex grinned impishly. “She is that!” he agreed with a wicked twinkle in
his eye and a double meaning to his voice which Kelpie chose to ignore.
“Next time I will tell you about the _sithiche_ (fairies) of Loch
Maree—_if_ you are all very kind to me,” she said blandly and glanced
impudently at Alex.
She sat on alone by the loch for a little while after the others had
left, thinking about things. How Alex had changed since she first met
him! He was much nicer than she had thought. And she had begun to like
his teasing and mockery, for it was all good-humored.... Or was it
perhaps herself had changed? And if so—She rolled over to lie full-length
on her face in the fragrant long grasses and pondered. Then, lazily, she
stretched until her head was over the edge of the loch.
What was her real self like? Had that changed? Could it?
The bank at this point rose abruptly about two feet above the glassy
surface of the water, with tough curling roots of heather overhanging
the edge. Kelpie reached down skillfully, scooped up a handful of the
cold water, and drank it from her palm before it could run through
her fingers. The surface rippled slightly and returned to its mirror
stillness, with sky, hills, and trees reflected so clearly that it would
be hard to tell the reflection from the real. Or was one, perhaps, as
real as the other?
She stared down at her own face, still looking indecently bare with all
the thick dark hair pulled back into plaits. Was that any less real—or
more—than the scenes she saw in Mina’s crystal?
And then it was no longer her own face she was seeing, but a town
street and an ugly-tempered crowd surging down it. Not merely annoyed,
that crowd, but murderous. Kelpie shivered a little, for she knew too
well how bestial a mob could be. And this one had a victim, for there
was savage satisfaction in the grim Lowland faces above their sober
Covenanter garments, pressing closer and closer.... And there was Ian!
Whatever could he be doing in the Lowlands? Pushing through the crowd, he
was; and Alex came after, shouting at him, his angular face all twisted
with fury. And now they were closer, and Alex was catching up to Ian....
Alex was lifting his sword, and through the crowd Kelpie could see him
bring it down savagely.... _Dhé!_ Ian had fallen, his dark head vanished
in the throng! And Alex’s sword with blood on it!
Kelpie jerked with horror, and a bit of dry heather plopped into the
water—and the picture was gone. Nor did it return, though she waited,
staring at the still water and brooding bitterly.
_Dhé!_ That serpent Alex! She had never liked him from the beginning!
And now he was going to turn on his foster brother, strike him down from
behind, perhaps kill him—for the Sight never lied.
She tried to tell herself that it didn’t matter to her, but it was too
late. Ian had crept into her heart, and Wee Mairi, and the rest of them.
Even Alex, deceitful scoundrel that he was, had somehow tricked her into
liking him—for a while, anyway. But now she knew better. Och, she must
try to warn Ian! Even if he could not prevent it, perhaps he could be on
his guard, could put off the evil day of it, could duck in time to save
his life.
Dismayed, angry, resolute, Kelpie got to her feet, smoothed down the full
folds of her blue dress, and started back up the loch.
* * * * *
Now what, wondered Alex, had got under the skin of their wolf cub lately?
For there was a new venom toward himself—and after he had been thinking
her nearly tamed, too. Aye, a wolf cub: belligerent, cunning, snarling,
biting, thieving, destructive—and yet innocent, as a wolf cub is innocent
because it knows nothing else.
But she had been changing. She had been learning trust and affection,
even to play and tease. And now, suddenly, there was a new and deadly
hatred smoldering at him from those ringed eyes. It was puzzling, it
was, and rather less amusing than her old spitting indignation had
been; and even though it could hardly be a tragedy to him, still it was
disconcerting. Alex kept a wary eye on her, lest she should decide to
take her _sgian dhu_ to his back.
As for Kelpie, she found the business of warning Ian a bit harder than
it had seemed. For one thing, it was none so easy to find him alone, for
he and Alex were usually together and about their own affairs, while
Kelpie had her tasks in the house. In the evenings the family sat
together in the withdrawing room, which was not Kelpie’s place. The big
warm kitchen, or her wee cot in Marsali’s room, was where she belonged,
or—more often—away by herself outside, in the pale half-light of the long
northern gloaming. For summer was drawing near, and darkness now merely
brushed down late upon the world and, like a gull’s wing, quickly lifted.
So she glared at Alex and did her tasks and kept her eyes and ears open
and bided her time. And at last Alex went off for a few days to visit his
brother in Ardochy. And the next evening Kelpie, on one of her rambles,
saw Ian on the hill above her, quietly looking down over the glen.
Kelpie drew near, and then paused. Och, a braw lad he was! But how might
she be approaching him best? It might be he wanted to be alone. Before
she could decide, Ian saw her, smiled, beckoned, his face oddly blurred
in the half-light that turned all things gray. She sat beside him and for
a minute followed his gaze over the long shadowed cup of the glen, lit by
the silver gleam of Loch nan Eilean.
Finally Ian stirred and spoke. “I wish I might never need to leave it
again,” he said wistfully.
Did he love it so? Kelpie dimly sensed that he did; but she did not
understand, for she herself had no roots to her heart, but only a
wanderlust to her feet. “And must you, then?” she asked. Why could Ian
not be doing as he pleased, since he was the heir to Glenfern?
“Aye so,” he said, a bit more briskly. “For I must finish my schooling
if I am to be a fit chieftain and leader to my people. However”—he
brightened considerably—“I think we’ll not be able to return to Oxford
for some time, with the war moving northward and becoming more serious,
and Argyll endangering all the Highlands.”
Now was the moment for her to warn him about Alex. But it was also a
chance to ask about Argyll and put off the more difficult thing. “Tell me
about Argyll!” she urged.
Ian turned to look at her with friendly interest. “You’ve a good head on
you, haven’t you, Kelpie? Mother says you’re quick to learn and that you
speak English as well as Gaelic. Are you truly interested in national
affairs, then?” Kelpie nodded.
“Well, then,” began Ian, “you know who Argyll is, do you not? Mac Cailein
Mor, Chief of Clan Campbell in the Highlands, and also head of the
Covenant Army of the Lowlands. So he has that power added to the power
of his own clan, and he uses it ill, Kelpie. He is a vicious man, cruel,
ambitious, and vindictive.”
Kelpie could not resist a gibe. “And is he not also a Campbell, and his
clan at feud with yours?” she remarked.
Ian flushed. Even in the dusk she could see it. “’Tis not that!” he
protested. “I am not one to hate a man for his name, Kelpie! And in any
case, my own uncle married a Campbell lass; and the son of Lochiel, our
own clan chief, married Argyll’s sister, and we are anxious to be at
peace. But Argyll, devil that he is, wishes to dictate his own terms
entirely. Do you know what he has done, Kelpie? He has taken his nephew
Ewen—Lochiel’s own grandson, who will be chief of the Camerons some
day—and is keeping him at his own castle of Inverary. He says he wishes
to see to his education—and I can guess what kind of education ’twill
be—but do you see that Ewen is hostage for Lochiel’s actions? And if
Lochiel dares to take the side of the King against Argyll—”
“Mmmm,” said Kelpie, seeing.
“Nor is it just our clan,” Ian went on, deep anger in his voice. “He
was commissioned to secure the Highlands for the Covenant, which is bad
enough, for we have not tried to inflict our politics or religion on
them. But Argyll has used his commission and the Lowland army to settle
his private grudges. He burned the great house of Airly, with no enemy
there but a helpless woman. And he burned and ravaged the lands of
MacDonald of Keppoch, and is even now laying waste the lands of Gordon of
Huntly. They say he would make himself King Campbell, and a black day for
Scotland if he should.”
Kelpie remembered the face she had seen once in the crystal, which Mina
had called Mac Cailein Mor, Marquis of Argyll. A cold, cruel face it
had been, with twisted sneering mouth, a heavy and pendulous nose, and a
squint in the crafty eyes of him, so that one couldn’t be just sure what
he was looking at.
“Aye,” she agreed suddenly. “He is a red-haired _uruisg_. I have been
seeing him helping with his own hands to fire the homes and burn people
too.” She didn’t add that the people burned were accused of witchcraft,
as this might not be a tactful thing to mention.
“You’ve seen that?” exclaimed Ian.
“In the crystal, only,” confessed Kelpie. “I was also seeing him mounting
the scaffold to be hanged,” she remembered with relish. “But,” she added
regretfully, “he was looking much older then.”
“_Dhé!_” exclaimed Ian, deeply impressed. “I did not know you were having
the Second Sight, Kelpie.”
“Aye,” said Kelpie. And here was her opening. “Ian!” she blurted, quite
forgetting to give him a respectful title. “You must not be trusting Alex
MacDonald.”
“Not trust Alex?” Ian turned a dumfounded face to hers. And then he
laughed. “Och, Kelpie, there is no one in the world I trust better! We
are sworn brothers, and if my life were to rest in the two hands of him,
there is no place I would sooner have it.”
“And you would lose it, then,” said Kelpie flatly. “For I had a Seeing,
and his sword fell upon you from behind, and you fell. And there was
anger on his face and blood upon his sword.”
Ian’s face was a pale blob in the dusk, and she could not see it turn
white—and yet she knew, somehow, that it did. For the Second Sight never
lied.
And in spite of that, Ian shook his head. “I cannot believe it, Kelpie,”
he said quietly. “It is a mistake, for the sun would fall from the sky
before Alex could be untrue.”
Kelpie thrust an angry face, long eyes glittering, close to his. “You
think I am lying, but I am not. I would have been warning you, even
though it is of no profit to me, whatever. But it is a spell he has cast
upon you! And,” she added bitterly, “you will be discovering it too
late.”
7. The Return of Mina and Bogle