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Witch of the Glens

<h2 id="Chapter_15">15. Witch Hunt</h2> An uneasy peace brooded over the whole of Perth the next day. Not only the citizens but also their Gaelic conquerors tended to feel slightly abused, and they spent the morning glooming at one another. By noon the high Celtic spirits had risen again in the conquerors, and a spirit of mischief took over. They released prisoners from stocks and jails (most of them guilty of such crimes as failing to attend kirk), and some of the Irish MacDonalds began preaching back at the dour, hell-spouting Calvinist preachers. But this palled too, and presently a group of young and adventurous Highlanders decided just to go out and have a wee look round the neighboring countryside. Archie and Ranald came hunting Alex and Ian, who were delighted. Lachlan firmly attached himself to the party, with strict[183] orders from Maeve not to be letting Mac ’ic Ian do anything to start his cut bleeding afresh. At this point Kelpie announced that she would just go too. Ranald looked at her dubiously, but Archie laughed. “And why ever not?” he demanded. “The women do full share of work, what with cooking and nursing, and should have a bit of fun when they can. Will you come too, Maeve?” Maeve hesitated, glared at Kelpie, and declined. And the party, some dozen or fifteen altogether, set off. “Is Kelpie your true name?” demanded Archie as they started west across the sweep of moor. He grinned at her engagingly. “It wouldn’t be every day a body could have a kelpie as mascot. Tell me,” he asked, “have I seen you turn a soft eye upon Ian? Could you not be giving him a wee love potion?” Kelpie smiled enigmatically and declined to answer. But she turned the idea over in her mind. It was a lovely day, this second of September. The birches were beginning to yellow and the bracken to turn rusty underneath. Rowan trees flaunted clumps of brilliant red-orange berries in the sun; and only now and again did a cloud shadow glide silently over the rosy-heathered swelling ground, patching it with somber purple. Kelpie tied her plaidie around her waist, for she would not be needing it until the chill of evening. They walked on, with the long, tireless Highland stride,[184] chattering and laughing with the upsurge of spirits that was a normal reaction from the fear and triumph of yesterday. “And did you get your dozen men, Alex?” inquired the fair-haired Ranald. “I saw you once cutting down an armored musketeer twice your size, and glad I was to be fighting with and not against you.” Alex’s red brows slanted upward. “Dhé!” he said. “I was so frighted I just held out my sword, and it seems the enemy was obliging enough to run into it. ’Twas Ian was the braw fighter, and none better in Scotland. It was he saved me more than once.” “Only so that you could be saving me, Alex avic,” retorted Ian, “and Lachlan saving the both of us,” he added. “Besides, it was I was so scared I could only think to run away.” “And since you were headed for Perth, already, the only thing to do was just cut your way through the face of the enemy,” finished Archie with bland seriousness. Ian nodded gravely. “That was the way of it. I was too frightened to think of turning around.” And so they went on, with the same old bantering Kelpie had heard so often at Glenfern, and each of them claiming to have been more frightened than any of the rest. Kelpie listened with an odd feeling of contentment. This brotherhood, this easy straight-faced teasing which was an unspoken love between friends, was a warm and[185] joyous thing to hear—for all that it was dangerous to have it. There was wistfulness in her heart as she walked silently among the cheerful group, and a shadow on her face. Presently they came to a river and a small gray town on the near side. “I doubt they’ll love us there,” predicted a tall lad in Duncan kilt, “but perhaps their good Lowland sense of business will make them willing to sell us a pint or two of ale—or even good uisghebaugh, if there is such a thing outside of the Highlands.” It was a popular suggestion, and the long Highland strides became even longer, so that Kelpie—though she denied it—had to stretch her own to keep up. As they drew near the cluster of stone houses with the somber square kirk in the center, she frowned a little. A dour, gloomy place it was! Not that it looked different, really, from other towns, but there was a bad feel to it. None of the others seemed to notice, but Kelpie’s bones were wary. There seemed to be very few people about. Perhaps most of them had seen the Highlanders coming and gone inside. The few folk they did meet cast looks of hate at the kilted barbarians—which the barbarians, secure in the safety of numbers and reputation, found rather amusing. An innkeeper sourly sold them ale, with black looks thrown in for good measure. “Och, wouldn’t he like to poison it, just!” said Alex in Gaelic as Kelpie refused the ale Ian offered her. It might not actually be poisoned, but[186] it could have an evil spell on it, all the same. She said so. “If your spells haven’t worked, I doubt anyone’s could!” Alex taunted her. “For you’ve tried hard enough, haven’t you?” Kelpie glowered from under her thick lashes. Had he seen her, then, all that while at Blair Atholl? Or was it just his evil way of always knowing what she was thinking? She had begun to feel a trifle more friendly since learning that he had saved Ian yesterday instead of cutting him down. But once again Alex was taking the offensive. Alex had known what she was about at Blair Atholl, and it had amused him, in a way—once he was sure her spells were impotent. But just now, for some reason, all her hatred for him was rankling, and he was in the mood to goad her a bit for her irritating ways—although he was not at all sure why she got under his skin so easily. So he deliberately treated her to his most satirical grin. “And didn’t your hex work at all, poor lass?” he inquired sympathetically. Kelpie started to hiss at him, but Ian was looking at her oddly. He would not take it kindly that she had tried to hex his foster brother, even though it was himself she was trying to protect. And she wanted to keep Ian’s good will. Her lip drooped. “Always and always you will be thinking evil of me, Alex MacDonald!” she lamented. “You will be trying to make everyone hate me, and never giving me[187] the chance at all to be better, no matter how I might try.” The other lads were listening to all this with great interest, and they now regarded Alex with severity, and Kelpie with sympathy. But it was Ian’s sympathy she wanted—and got. “’Tis true enough, Alex,” he said accusingly. “You’ve ever thought the worst of the poor lass, and her only sin is in being what she was taught to be. How could she ever change with you condemning her in advance?” A rare blaze of rage swept over Alex. “Dhiaoul! ’Tis a fool you are, Ian!” And suddenly he was quarreling—it was incredible—with his foster brother, dearer than kin, and over a young rogue of a gypsy lass not worth a hair on Ian’s head! And yet the quarrel went on and on. Kelpie had never seen them angry at each other before, and she was frightened. It was the town had done it! The town was filled with hate and malice and had put a spell on them all! And she, who should be pleased at seeing Ian turn from Alex, found that she couldn’t enjoy it. She couldn’t even bear to listen. She slipped out of the tavern with their angry words drifting after her. The streets were no longer empty. A crowd was streaming out of the four-square meeting house and along toward the town square, and it was the sort of crowd she knew all too well. Their faces held a savage and bloodthirsty fanaticism, and this was not a mob looking for a victim, but one which had found one. It was someone, no doubt,[188] who had committed the sin of breaking the Sabbath, or dancing, or perhaps chancing to glance at a neighbor’s cow before it fell ill. Och, it was a witch trial they had been having! No knowing was it a real witch or not, nor would it matter; for to be accused was to be condemned. “Burn them!” the crowd growled as it surged past the tavern. Kelpie should have ducked back inside, but her curiosity was too great. And despite her vow to be hard-hearted there was a flicker in her of pity. The victims were coming now, being roughly hustled along toward the square. The crowd swept Kelpie along, not noticing one more gray gown among so many others. Kelpie squeezed through a gap between a stout man and a bony woman, and as it closed behind her she found herself almost pushed against the victims, her eyes staring straight into theirs—and their eyes were as filled with hatred as those of the crowd. Mina and Bogle! Panic gripped her heart. Frantically she tried to back up, to melt back into the crowd. But there was no gap now, only a wall of townsmen at her back. And it was too late. Mina’s shrill screech cut the other sounds. “There she is! The kelpie who led us into witchcraft! In the gray dress! There! Look at the ringed eyes of her!” “She’ll be putting the Evil Eye on ye all” croaked Bogle venomously. Sick fear and revulsion were in Kelpie as her quick eyes[189] swept around—vainly—for an avenue of escape. They were not accusing her to save themselves, which would have been logical, but in sheer malice. That she might have done the same didn’t occur to her, for there was no time for thinking. The crowd was responding with a new roar, seeking more blood, turning to find its new victim. Kelpie looked instinctively for a scapegoat, another gray dress to point out—but again, too late. Hands grabbed her. She wrenched free with a twist, only to be grasped by more hands, caught beyond hope of escape. “Alex!” screamed Kelpie. “Ian! Help!” And she lifted her voice in the Cameron war rant, hoping that the familiar words might reach Ian. “Chlanna non can, thigibh a so—” A blow on the head cut it short, and she thought with bitterness that it could not matter. How could they hear her so far away, and over the crowd, and when they were themselves quarreling in the tavern, and herself being carried farther away every minute? “Ye’ll not be taking a witch’s word!” she cried out. “I am of the Kirk, and have been servant to Argyll himself!” One or two of the nearest people hesitated doubtfully, for Argyll was a name to conjure with. But Mina dashed Kelpie’s faint chance. “Aye!” she shrieked. “To be getting a bit of his hair for a hex! Look at her eyes, just!” She was doomed, then. “Sons of the dogs!” she yelled once more, with despair in voice and heart. And then she was being shoved along with Mina and Bogle. [190] “Chlanna non can, thigibh a so’s gheibh sibh feoil!” It was Ian’s voice. A wedge began to cut itself into the crowd from behind, a bright blade gleaming, and Ian’s wild face at the back of the sword. And then another voice, that of Alex. “Ian!” it roared, and another wedge appeared behind the first. And now figures in MacDonald and Duncan bonnets cut a swathe, more swords gleamed, voices roared happily with the joy of battle. But Alex was coming after Ian, and a black rage on his face, and his voice bellowing Ian’s name. He was angry still, then, and the more so because Ian was trying to save her! Kelpie’s feet were set against the cobblestones of the street, her body twisted to see behind. And now the hold on her was loosening as the witch-burners began to take alarm. But oh, would Ian be in time? Would Alex stop him? Ian had nearly reached her. The crowd, mostly unarmed, swirled and shoved in disorganized fury. They turned from their victims now, and two or three dirks were flashed. The MacDonalds were gleefully wreaking havoc somewhere behind, but Alex had caught up with Ian now, and his face was fearful to look on. Ian’s back was to Alex, his attention on dealing with those dirks still separating him from Kelpie. Kelpie could not see his hands, for the shoulders and heads in the way, but his face was grim, intent. “Hold on, Kelpie!” he shouted. [191] “Ian!” roared Alex again, and his sword rose—rose and then fell with a furious slash. And Ian was down, and his dark head had vanished in the crowd. It was just as she had seen it in the loch! For an instant Kelpie felt nothing at all but a terrible cold emptiness, and then grief was in her very bones, and a small cry of anguish on her lips. She made a move toward the swarming, fighting spot where Ian had vanished. There was one brief glimpse of Alex, raging like one gone mad, and then the MacDonalds were there, making a havoc that sent townspeople screaming for safety. And somewhere, being trampled beneath, was the body of Ian, and perhaps she could reach him and help.... And then she hesitated. Alex would be wanting to kill her too! And now was her chance to be away and safe from him. And after all, what good could she be to Ian? For either he was dead and past help, or, if not, there were the MacDonalds to care for him, and Maeve back at Perth. Kelpie hesitated a moment longer, then she reverted to old habits and saved herself. She slipped like a hunted wildcat through the crowd, which now had other things on its mind than stopping her. She was out of it, around a corner, through the narrow streets in a swift streak of gray. The clamor grew muffled and scattered. She tore across the stone bridge and the moor and along a glen and over a hill. She ran until she could no longer breathe,[192] and then crawled into a thick patch of broom and lay gasping and sobbing. She must not think! She could not bear to think. Alex had really done it, then! The thing inside her had never really believed he would, and that was the thing now keening in black anguish that he could have done it. And Ian! Was he dead, then? Dead trying to save herself, who had then fled without a backward look? But it was only sense to have saved herself! It was what Ian had been trying to do, to save her, and wouldn’t he have wished it? Why should it be the weight of a stone on her? Ian would have wished it, she told herself. And then she rolled over on her face and was violently sick. How long had she been walking? And to where? It was just away from the town she had been going, and she was now far away, for she had spent more than one night in the heather. And yet she could not get away from the beating blackness in her mind. Kelpie sank down in the drenched heather and discovered with vague surprise that rain was pouring steadily from a dreary sky. She looked wearily around and saw nothing but hills and heath closed in mist. She was wet as a water horse, and when had she last eaten? What was she to do now? And where was she going? She didn’t care much. It would be nice just to lie down[193] and not be waking at all at all. But some inner vitality would never let her do that. She sighed. She must be finding food, then, and learning where she was. For all she knew, she might be back in Campbell country—and that thought roused her just a little. She dragged herself to her feet and tramped on again. The glen ended in a long loch, so large that both ends were out of sight around the curves of the hills. Kelpie sat down again and thought, slowly, because she could not seem to think very well. There were not so many lochs of this size. She did not think she could have got so far as Loch Rannoch, and this seemed too long for Loch Earn and not wide enough for Loch Lomond. It must be that it was Loch Tay, and if this were so, then she might well be in Campbell country. If only the sun would come out! If only there were some place that she could go and rest and hide away from the world and her thoughts.... And then she remembered the braes of Balquidder and two kind and lonely old folk who had said, “Haste ye back.” At this point Kelpie’s instinct and gypsy training took over. Without stopping to wonder was she right or no, she turned to the left and trudged along the southern bank of the loch. She found berries and roots to eat. She lay down in the wet heather and slept, her plaidie around[194] her, when she could go no farther. And then she awoke and went on. To the end of the loch she went, and down a glen, and around a mountain. And late on a drizzly afternoon old Alsoon MacNab heard a faint scratch at her door and opened it to find her own plaidie back—wrapped round a morsel of wretched humanity that for once was not shamming in the least. <hr /> [195] <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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