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Witch of the Glens

<h2 id="Chapter_8">8. A Task for Kelpie</h2> From Inverlochy Castle they headed southeast, around the tip of Loch Leven and into the lands of the Stewarts of Glencoe. Now they definitely turned southward. Kelpie frowned. “Will we be going into Campbell country, then?” she asked, faintly alarmed. For the last time they had ventured into Argyll’s lands there had been an all too exciting witch hunt from which they had barely escaped, so it must be an important matter indeed that would bring Mina and Bogle back again into danger. Mina just grunted disagreeably, but by the next day Kelpie’s question was answered, for they reached Loch Etive, which was well into Campbell land. Mina glanced around nervously, and Kelpie again wondered where they were going, and why. Bogle stood for a moment, staring down the loch, then turned and purposefully led the way[103] to the precise spot where the River Etive entered the northernmost tip. Clearly he knew exactly where he was going. And then Kelpie saw what must be the reason for this journey. A man sat waiting for them in a copse of alder near the river, looking oddly out of place in the sober gray breeches of a Lowlander. “Aweel,” he said and looked at them. Kelpie’s sharp eyes took in every detail of the stocky long-armed figure, with sandy hair cropped to its ears, and sandy eyebrows looking too thin for the broad face. She did not like what she saw, and even less what she felt. For there was no expression at all on the Lowlander’s face. His eyes were like cold pebbles, and there was a malignance about him that made her shrink inside. Suddenly Kelpie knew that he must be a warlock. Mina and Bogle would not be merely working with him; they were under his orders. Probably it was he who was behind Mina’s interest in politics, Kelpie’s long stay at Glenfern, this hurried trip. Och, it was a powerful and evil man, this, and she would do well to fear him. The small opaque eyes studied her for a moment and then turned to Mina, who looked small and shrunken before them. “Is yon the lass?” Their owner demanded in the burred English of Glasgow. Mina nodded, and the eyes turned back to Kelpie. “Come here!” he commanded. Kelpie had a passionate desire to assert her own will[104] and refuse. But it would be daft to try to challenge his power now—and especially with Mina and Bogle watching her. Reluctantly, her own eyes smoldering with anger and foreboding, she went and stood before him, and he seemed to read her thoughts. “So, ye’d like tae be a witch,” he said, his voice half a sneer, half a caress. “Tae hae sich power, ye maun learn tae obey. Obey! Ye didna ken that, eh? Weel—ailbins ye can prove yersel’ the noo, and earn the powers ye’re wanting.” He turned to Mina again. “Hae ye told her?” Mina shook her head humbly. “Never a word.” “Good. She’ll hear it the noo,” returned the Lowlander. He turned back to Kelpie, whose small face regarded him with wary intensity. His face became genial and fatherly. “Ye’re a lucky lass,” he began, “tae hae us a’ so concerned wi’ yer ain guid.” Kelpie laughed aloud, and there was genuine amusement as well as derision in her laughter. Did they think her a bairn, and daft as well? At once the Lowlander became brisk and businesslike. Very well, then, he conceded, perhaps it was not merely her own good they were after. But she would profit greatly. Who, he demanded, was her worst enemy? Kelpie prudently did not name Mina and Bogle. Instead, she remembered Mina’s deep interest of late and made a shrewd guess at the answer he expected. “Mac Cailein Mor?” [105] “Aye, Argyll,” he said approvingly and went on to point out why. The Kirk of the Covenant was reaching farther and farther into the Highlands now, with its persecution of honest witches, and even of stupid old folk who were not witches at all, for that matter. And who was head of the Covenant? Who was spearhead of the persecutions, the pricking and torture and burnings? Argyll. If he was not stopped, there would be no safe place in all Scotland for such as they. Kelpie nodded and found part of her mind thinking that on this one point only—Argyll and the Covenant—did her world and that of Glenfern agree. Very well, then, the Lowlander continued. They must take steps to destroy Argyll. And what better thing than a hex? A wee image of him, in clay or wax, they would make. And then they would stick pins in it, roast it, freeze it, pour poison over it, and, by the black powers of witchcraft, all these things would happen to Mac Cailein Mor himself, until at last he would die in great pain. Again Kelpie nodded warily. And how did she enter into all this, at all? She found out soon enough. In order to make a really effective hex on Argyll, something from himself was needed to mold into the wax figure—hair or fingernail clippings, preferably. And who was to obtain them? Why, Kelpie, of course. Now it was clear why she had been left at Glenfern to[106] learn the ways of gentry and how to be a servant. She would hire herself as housemaid at Inverary Castle and, as soon as she managed to get the hair or fingernail clippings, just come away back here with them. And as a reward she would be taught all she wished to know about spells, potions, curses—even the Evil Eye itself. As easy as that! They were making her their tool again, of course, to do what they dared not do themselves. If she were caught, her life would not be worth a farthing. Still—Kelpie thought quickly behind narrowed eyes and an impassive face. It was a chance to get away from Mina and Bogle and perhaps take a hand in managing her own life. Once away in Inverary, she could decide whether or not to carry out the errand. Perhaps she would prefer Mac Cailein Mor to Mina and just stay for a while. Or perhaps.... Well, she would see. She listened with great docility as they explained how she could get in touch with them once she had completed her task. She even nodded when the Lowlander suggested blandly that it might just be safest to send the hair—or half of it—on to them by the messenger they would tell her of, and then she herself could be bringing the rest later. Kelpie kept a sneer from crossing her face. If they thought her so witless as that, let them, then! But if and when she came to them, it would be with the hair hidden[107] in a safe place, and they having to fulfill their part of the bargain before they saw it. The Lowlander was very pleased with her, and Kelpie went to bed very pleased with herself. But she awoke near dawn with the sense of something bothering her. The sky was a vast aching void, neither black nor light. The world was a great shadow. Kelpie crept silently away from the camp and over the crest of the nearest rise, still wrapped in the old woolen plaidie which served as cloak and blanket. She seated herself against the thickness of a rhododendron, so that she was lost in the black shadows of its great leaves and blossoms. Then she stared down along the long, steely sheet of Loch Etive and began to think. Obey, the Lowlander had said—and clearly Mina and Bogle were obeying him. But Kelpie had thought that to be a witch was to be free, to have power to command others, never to be commanded again by anyone. Was it not so, after all? Did the Lowlander, in turn, obey someone—or Something? For an instant Kelpie sensed something infinitely dangerous and horrible. Was Satan merely another name for those ancient Dark Powers? And was the price for invoking them to be a slave to them? She shuddered, and cold droplets of sweat broke out on her short upper lip. Then she pulled herself together. She must not give in[108] to foolish worries. The Lowlander was a fearsome man, but witchcraft was the only way to be free of Mina, and when she had learned it she need fear neither of them any longer. All the same, the first seed of doubt had taken root, and it no longer seemed quite so easy to become the most powerful witch in Scotland. It was a rather subdued Kelpie who meekly cooked the fish and oatcakes for breakfast, bade the Lowlander farewell, and followed Bogle and Mina on to Loch Awe. At a ruined old shieling hut by the loch they stopped and waited for a day, until there came a round-faced young woman with a wealth of brown hair and a slate-colored dress kilted up over a striped petticoat. She seemed an unlikely person to be working with witches and warlocks, for her bright-cheeked smile was quite artless. “Dhia dhuit!” She beamed. “Is this the lass who will be fetching the hair to hex Mac Cailein Mor, may the demons fly away with him? I am Janet Campbell, who will take you to Inverary. I will call you Sheena at once,” she added chattily, “so you can get used to it, for Mrs. MacKellar would never be hiring a lass named for a kelpie.” She chuckled cheerfully. Kelpie gave her an appraising look from under her thick black lashes, but Janet didn’t seem in the least put out. “I could not be doing the task myself,” she explained, “for I have my work, and no reason to be going into the castle.[109] And,” she added forthrightly, “I am not brave or clever enough. But I will be your messenger, Sheena, when you need me.” Kelpie, more and more resentful of being used by others, nodded sullenly. But Janet’s next words cheered her considerably. “She cannot be asking for work in such rags,” pointed out that young woman matter-of-factly. “They would know her for a gypsy at once, and Mac Cailein Mor has a fearful hatred of such. Best be giving her your blue dress to wear, Mina.” Bogle chuckled, and Kelpie hid her satisfaction behind a blank face. Mina snarled and gave in. The string of epithets she flung at Kelpie along with the dress hardly amounted to an objection at all, and Kelpie’s earlier misgivings rose again briefly. If even the formidable Mina was so meekly obeying, then what power this Lowlander must have! She was still brooding on this as she and Janet set out on the last bit of the journey, her cheek still stinging from Mina’s farewell cuff. On down Loch Awe, and to the wild steepness of Glen Aray, and along that gash in the hills toward Loch Fyne, Janet led the way sturdily enough, although Kelpie’s wiry legs could have gone much faster. Part of the time Janet left the thin path altogether and threaded her way along the slopes, among great clumps of brilliant pink rhododendron, groves of oak and hazel[110] and rowan, patches of lavender-blooming heath and the mystic white bog-cotton. “Best not to risk meeting anyone,” she remarked with a trace of nervousness. “I dare not be seen with you, in case....” She left the sentence unfinished and went on in a new and brisk voice. “Now I will be giving you your story to tell the housekeeper when you ask for work. You are Sheena Campbell, daughter to Sorcha and Seumas, who lived in the old shieling hut where we met on Loch Awe. When they died, you went in service with MacIntyre of Craignish, but now, with their daughter wedded and away, there is no need for you. So you have come to Inverary, to your own clan chief, to see is there a place for you.” For the next two hours she fed Kelpie the details of her fictional life and made her repeat them over and over, until Kelpie almost felt that she was two people at once. “Och, you’re glib, just!” said Janet at last, her round face admiring. “I’m almost believing you myself. ’Tis a clever mind you have, and a canny tongue.” She stopped and turned around to survey Kelpie’s face searchingly. “Aye,” she went on, “and your face, though it is not bonnie, just, is a face to beguile the lads. Have you a braw laddie who loves you, Sheena?” Four months ago Kelpie would have jeered at her in[111] wonder and scorn. What had the lass of Mina and Bogle to do with love, or lads either—save to sell love-charms to the foolish? But though there had been no talk or thought of romance at Glenfern (except on one teasing afternoon), some sleeping thing in Kelpie had, perhaps, begun to stir. The face of Ian leaped into her mind, with the fine dark eyes of him, and the sensitive mouth curving downward and then up; and then she felt the strange, warm-faced sensation of her first blush—and she felt again the pain of her departure from Glenfern. “No!” She spat so violently that Janet raised her eyebrows and gave Kelpie another sharp glance before she turned to walk on. “A pity, that,” she observed mildly. “And a great waste,” she added presently, with a catch to her voice. “Had I your face and tongue, I would not be in the service of witchcraft, perhaps.” Kelpie kilted up her blue dress a bit higher and came even with Janet so that she could see her face. “Why are you?” she demanded curiously. “I think you could never be a witch.” “Och, no!” agreed Janet instantly. “At first I was only wanting a wee bit of a love potion to win the heart of the lad I loved. But before it could start to work at all, Mac Cailein Mor took him into the army and off to raid the MacDonalds. Och, my braw Angus.” She whimpered. [112] “He was killed?” Kelpie asked, and tried to push down the sympathy in her voice. She had promised herself not to care for anyone again, but only for herself. “It was Mac Cailein Mor had him shot,” said Janet tonelessly. “He tried to save an old woman from the house they were burning. And for that I will help the Devil himself to destroy Mac Cailein Mor, my chief though he be. I am afraid of yon Lowlander, for he is evil, but I hate Mac Cailein Mor more than I fear the Lowlander. “You must be very canny, Sheena! If you are caught—” She shuddered. “Have you a sgian dhu?” Kelpie nodded and drew the small sheathed knife from inside her dress. Janet looked at it somberly. “If you’re caught, you’d do well to use it on yourself. ’Twould save you torment and burning, more than likely, and keep you from betraying the rest of us. You’ll say no word, ever, about me, Sheena? Pretend you have never seen or heard of me! Promise, Sheena!” Kelpie looked at her, and Janet’s eyes were humble and pleading. “I know I am a coward,” Janet whispered, “but I cannot help it. I could not bear the pain, and I would not dare to kill myself—but you would, for you are brave.” Kelpie looked at her sgian dhu reflectively. It was the finest one she had ever had, the one stolen last spring in Inverness. The wee flat scabbard was darkly carved, and the four-inch blade, when she drew it out, winked sharply[113] in the sun. Would she use it on herself? she wondered. Did she dare? The beauty of the Highlands shimmered around her in pure, clear colors never quite the same from one instant to the next. The sky was infinite and tender; the sun beat warmly on her head; the air was delight to breathe. The world was good—except for the people in it, defiling it with hate and greed. It would be a pity to die, a waste of living. She found it very difficult to imagine. She looked again at the gleaming edge of the sgian dhu, frowning a little. Dare? Yes, she thought she would dare, if it was to escape torture and burning. That would not take much courage. On the contrary, it would be the easy way—and she found that she did not like the taste of the idea. A feeling within her protested that suicide was shabby, debasing, a cheating of oneself. But Kelpie, who had never been taught such things as morals and integrity, could find no words and no reasons for this feeling. She shrugged and put the sgian dhu back. Time enough to think about it if the occasion came up. Janet had been watching her with round eyes, guessing a little of her thought. She shivered slightly. “You are very brave,” and said again. “I think you will be getting away with the hair. And I am sure that whatever is happening at all, you will not speak any names.” Kelpie fell back a step or two. She looked thoughtfully[114] on a golden patch of gorse blanketing the hillside ahead, and her smile was very pointed. No, she would not betray Janet—not, she reminded herself, because she was softhearted, but only because it would not help herself. But—if she was so unlucky as to be caught, which she did not at all intend to be—she would be very happy indeed to tell Mac Cailein Mor all about Mina, Bogle, and the Lowlander. <hr /> [115] <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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