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Witch of the Glens

<h2 id="Chapter_13">13. The Hexing of Alex</h2> The immediate effect of Montrose’s arrival was that of a most powerful magic charm. It could not have been more telling had he come with a full army at his back instead of just one man, his cousin Patrick. The King’s standard was raised then and there on the hillside and saluted with a flourish of trumpets, and cheers, and triumphantly skirling bagpipes. And some of the clans who had been hovering about waiting to attack the Irish Highlander Antrim now came to join the King’s Lieutenant, Montrose—including Stewart of Atholl. Kelpie decided to stay for a while. Things looked interesting. She was safer here than wandering alone. Besides, she liked Ian’s company, even if it meant putting up with Alex. She even thought that she just might persuade Ian to guard himself against his precious foster brother, though she had not much hope of this, Ian being so stubbornly[160] trustful. Besides, since she had “seen” the thing in the loch, it would surely happen, and there was nothing she could do to stop it. For a while, staying with the army meant simply staying right there where it was. Nothing much seemed to be happening. Clans—or, more often, bits of them—drifted in. Kelpie roamed where she liked, usually with the lads and their watchful ghillie, Lachlan, exchanging insults with Alex and hostile silence with Lachlan and his wife Maeve, who had no use for her whatever and made no secret of it. She also spent some of her time gazing speculatively at the tall, gaunt woman whom she had noticed the first day she arrived. The woman would stare for hours into space, a black, brooding look on her face, her hands twisting together as if she were wringing someone’s neck—or perhaps casting a new kind of spell. A bulky Gordon plaidie covered her broad shoulders, and, though she was not old, there was the beginning of gray at her dark temples, and there were strong, grim lines along her mouth. Her eyes were deep-set and a little alarming, and Kelpie wondered whether she might be a witch. She looked it. Perhaps she had been tortured by witch-hunters and had somehow escaped? Kelpie considered approaching her about learning the Evil Eye, but the woman’s fierceness made her hesitate. She might get a curse put on herself for her boldness, and she could do fine without that. [161] The coppery hills began to turn purple with the blooming of the heather. It rained. No more was heard of Argyll, but there were rumors that the enemy commander, Lord Elcho, was in Perth with an army of seven thousand and looking with considerable interest toward Blair Atholl. “And we with only two thousand men,” commented Alex cheerfully. “Ou, aye,” agreed Ian with a grin. “But just think of our fine store of weapons!” Lachlan looked sour, and Kelpie raised a derisive eyebrow. “Artillery?” mused Alex. “None.” “Cavalry—three old horses, one of them lame,” chanted Ian. “Guns—some old-fashioned matchlocks, and all the ammunition we could be needing to shoot a third of them for one round each.” “And then,” finished Ian in triumph, “just in case we’re needing them, there’s a few swords, claymores, and battleaxes—not to mention the sgian dhu” he added, reaching down to tap the wee dirk where it nestled in his stocking, just on the outside of his right knee. “And”—Alex chuckled with ironic optimism—“Montrose has been saying that the enemy has plenty of weapons, and those of us without can just help ourselves once the fighting has started.” Kelpie looked at them. There was, she felt, a definite limit to the things a body should be joking about. She said[162] so. And Lachlan, who felt personally responsible for the safety of Ian and Alex, for once agreed with her. And now came Maeve, whose loyalty was all toward Mac ’ic Ian, heir to Glenfern (for Master Alex, although a foster son, was not actually a Cameron at all). Her orange hair gleamed even in the cloud-filtered sun, and she addressed herself to Ian. “Food will be ready,” she said and crossed herself as she looked at Kelpie. As they all started toward the rowan tree they called home, she added, half under her breath, “Herself eats enough, whatever, but will never be doing any cooking.” “You were not liking my cooking,” observed Kelpie complacently. It was no accident that the one meal she had produced, at Alex’ insistence, had been perfectly awful. “Dhé, no!” Ian agreed, laughing. “You said she was trying to poison us, Maeve. You’d not be wanting to try that again, would you?” “’Tis gey queer,” retorted Maeve, “for a gypsy not to be able to cook over an open fire.” Ian looked at Kelpie, his keen mind as usual fighting with his desire to believe the best of people. Alex began to laugh. “Och!” he exclaimed ruefully. “And I the one who was never going to be fooled by her again!” Kelpie saw an opening. “Gypsy taste will be different from yours,” she announced blandly. “When I was first stolen, it was a dreadful time I had getting used to gypsy[163] food! It was nearly starving I was, for a while.” Her blue ringed eyes widened with the picture of a poor wee bairn pining away with hunger. Lachlan snorted. “Ou, the pity of it!” said Alex mournfully, his angular face looking almost tender. “And you used to royal food, and all. I’ve wondered, just, whether ’tis yourself was the princess stolen from our King and Queen all those long years ago when they visited the Highlands.” For a minute Kelpie was fooled. Her eyes were a smoky blue blaze as visions of royal grandeur hurtled through her mind. Of course! Why not? “For shame, Alex,” said Ian reproachfully. “She’s nearly believing it.” Kelpie jerked out of her dream and hissed venomously at Alex, who chuckled impenitently and wondered how she would try to get even this time. The next day Kelpie went down to the burn, where she had noticed that the soil had a sticky, claylike quality. There she sat for some time, screened by broom and high bracken, and slowly shaped a small clay figure—not that it looked much like Alex, she being no artist. In fact, she admitted, a body could barely tell that it was supposed to be human at all. But perhaps the intent was the main thing. If only she could get hold of a bit of his hair or a fingernail—but Kelpie had had enough of hair-stealing for a while, particularly red hair. Anyway, Alex was much[164] too canny. She had never yet managed to steal anything from him without being caught. No, she would just have to be trying her hex without it. There were brambles conveniently near. Kelpie picked a long thorn, regarded her clay figure thoughtfully, and then plunged the thorn deep into the area where the stomach might be expected to be. Then she wrapped up the hex figure, went back to the rowan tree, and began to watch Alex hopefully. Two days passed, but if he had any pains in his stomach, he concealed them very well. Kelpie added a second thorn to the figure, this time in the head, and again waited. By rights, his brains ought to start melting away, but she must not be doing it right, for Alex’s brains remained as uncomfortably keen as ever. He didn’t even get a headache. Kelpie began looking wistfully at the tall, gaunt woman again. If she was a witch, she could undoubtedly help. And yet—Kelpie noticed that the men of the army did not treat her at all as a witch. Far from shunning her, they went out of their way to be kind, to bring her choice bits of food, to talk to her. Once again Kelpie decided not to risk trouble. She would manage her own hex, impotent as it seemed to be. In disgust, she took it out again, plunged thorns all over it, rubbed it with nettles, burned it, and then watched again. After five days Alex did twist his wrist slightly, but somehow Kelpie failed to feel much satisfaction. She was[165] quite sure that she had never put a thorn in the left wrist. So she gave up trying to hex him. Either she didn’t have the power at all, or else—which seemed quite possible—Alex had a greater power. Lord Graham of Montrose had a great power too. Kelpie found herself more and more interested in him. The look of him was not that of a strong leader at all. Slight, he was, with gentle dark gray eyes and a quiet and courteous air that hardly seemed to belong in an army at all, much less at the head of one. Now, Antrim looked like a leader indeed, massive red giant that he was, with a great roar of a voice. Yet there was no doubt that Montrose was the heart and soul of the army. Everyone, even Antrim, listened to him with respect amounting almost to worship, and everyone said that he had a genius for warfare. Was it magic? Quite likely, Kelpie thought. She took to watching and listening whenever he was among the men. But she never saw him make any magic signs, and his words were about such things as honor and loyalty and why he was fighting for the King. Ian had said Montrose wanted no power for himself, but only for right to be done, but Ian was gullible. Skeptical, Kelpie kept her ears open. “Loyalty is the great thing,” Montrose remarked one day, sitting at ease in a misty drizzle, kilted Highlanders all around him. They listened with eagerness and respect, but Kelpie, at the edge of the group, narrowed her eyes mistrustfully. [166] “Loyalty to your clan and your King, to an ideal, to a friend, to a thing you believe,” he went on. “This is integrity; and it is loyalty also to yourself.” Kelpie frowned. It was only loyalty to oneself that paid. She had found that out. Montrose was like Ian, then, too generous and trusting. They would both suffer for it, no doubt, unless they learned to care only for their own welfare. “You see,” said Montrose, “King Charles is a Stewart, and so we have a double loyalty to him—as our King, and as a Stewart and a Highlander. The English Parliament and the Scottish Covenant wish to rule the King and all of us as well. I think I need not tell you that.” There was a growl from the group. “Aye, Mac Cailein Mor would be King Campbell with the help of the Covenanters!” “A plague on the lot of them!” “And so,” urged Montrose, “we must put aside lesser loyalties and quarrels amongst our own clans, and stand together.” “Aye!” shouted the men, but Kelpie privately thought that Montrose’s magic would fail at this point. Who ever knew a Highlander to give up his clan feuds for anything at all—except a greater clan feud? She did learn one thing about Montrose. He used different words with different kinds of people—just as she herself did, in a way. She was eavesdropping one evening as he sat by his campfire with Antrim and Patrick Graham[167] of Inchbrakie, and his words to them were less simple and certain than those to the untaught clansmen. “No,” he said, “I do not fight for what people call the Divine Right of Kings. I don’t believe there is such a thing, Alistair. A king must be subject to the laws of God, nature, and the country that he rules. But as long as he stays within those laws, then he should be the ruler.” “And if he doesn’t?” It was Patrick Graham, called “Black Pate.” The youthful face looked troubled in the firelight. “It’s true King Charles hasn’t always obeyed the rules,” murmured Montrose. “That is why I supported the Covenant at first. But then I saw the greater danger we courted. If a group of subjects takes over the king’s power, they may become a far worse tyrant than ever a king could be, and that is what happened. You see yourselves how the Covenant oppresses the people; and I think those who are fighting for the Parliament in this war may find that they’ve used their own blood and their own fortunes to buy vultures and tigers to rule over them. To tell you the truth, my friends, I don’t know the right way to handle a king who abuses his power, but I do know that this is the wrong way. Perhaps there should be some limit set to the amount of power that one man or group can have.” Kelpie chewed her lip thoughtfully. Och, now, and there was a good idea. She could think of several such[168] whose power should be limited to nothing at all. She would begin with Argyll and the Covenant, and go on to the Lowlander and Mina and Bogle. But how would one set about arranging this? In her preoccupation, Kelpie forgot that she was hiding and carelessly shifted her position so that a twig cracked. A small twig it was, and most folk would never have noticed, but these men were well schooled in danger. Three heads turned as one, and an instant later Antrim’s huge hand was plucking her from her hiding place as he would a puppy. “Dhé!” He chortled, holding her up in the orange light of the fire and looking her over with interest. “Here’s a fine dangerous enemy in our midst.” “Och, indeed and I am not!” protested Kelpie as well as she could. She tucked in her lip and looked pathetically at Montrose. “Do not be letting him hurt me, your Lordship!” she begged in English. “’Tis only a poor, wee, harmless—” “Let her down, Alistair,” suggested Montrose gently, “and perhaps she can tell us what she was doing there.” “Spying for Argyll, perhaps?” suggested Patrick narrowly, looking at her gray dress. Kelpie’s indignation was genuine. “That nathrach!” She sputtered earnestly and went on to curse him vigorously. “He is a droch-inntinneach uruisg and a red-haired devil with a black heart in him!” [169] Montrose, who knew little Gaelic, looked interested. “What was that?” he inquired, and Antrim chuckled. “She called him a serpent and an evil-minded monster,” he translated. “And I’m thinking she meant it, too! Well, then, why were you skulking there, lass?” Once again Kelpie found semi-truth to be the most effective answer. “Och,” she whispered, ducking her head shyly. “I was wanting to see himself, and to be hearing him talk, for the singing tongue in his mouth.” From beneath lowered lids she observed that their faces were amused and tolerant. “Well, and so you’ve heard him,” said Antrim, not unkindly. “Away with you, then, and don’t be doing it again. Next time you might just be getting a claymore instead of a question.” Kelpie left meekly enough, relieved to get off so easily. But none of her questions was really answered. She had wanted to learn the source of Montrose’s power, and whether or no it was from magic, and if and how she could learn it. For although it was just possible that Montrose could destroy his archenemy, Argyll, which would be a fine thing indeed, Kelpie felt that Mina and Bogle and the Lowlander were another matter, and up to her. For sooner or later she was almost sure to run into them again, and when that day came she was going to need a great deal of magic power indeed! <hr /> [170] <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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