Cauldstane (11 page)

‘Och, you can do a lot of damage with a hat pin!’ said Zelda with relish. ‘In fact by 1910 some places were actually passing laws banning their use. So they’re an interesting thing to collect. They aren’t
quite
what they seem. Meredith loved all that. The idea of a secret weapon. It appealed to her childish side.’ Zelda sighed. ‘Poor Meredith… She
was
a child in many ways. She’d led a very sheltered life. She didn’t know much about anything other than music. I always thought it was a shame she never had a family. One of her own, I mean. A baby would have been good for her. Good for Sholto too. It might have made him act more… responsibly. But Meredith was so focused on her career.’

‘Did
she believe in the Cauldstane curse?’

‘I’m not sure
. She was very upset when Liz died and there was a lot of superstitious talk after the accident. Not within
our
family, but Meredith was probably aware of what was said. And she did mention the curse now and again, years later. In front of Coral, too, which was tactless of her, but that was Meredith for you. She always spoke her mind. She didn’t seem to realise that not everyone was as emotionally robust as she was.’

‘Do
you
believe in the curse, Zelda?’

She gave me one of her beady looks.
‘Will this be going into the book?’

‘Not if you don’t want it to. The
final content of the book will be up to Sholto not me. He’s already said he doesn’t believe in the curse.’

‘T
hat’s right, he doesn’t. But I think he wavers occasionally. Coral’s death was such a tragedy. We were all pole-axed by grief, but it almost destroyed Alec. It was a very dark time. He got through it by throwing himself into work, but he still seems… och, I don’t know –
haunted
is putting it too strongly, but I don’t think he’s himself, even now. But he certainly seems to have brightened up since
you
arrived, Jenny.’ Zelda’s smile was a little too knowing, so I looked down and studied the contents of my tea cup. She took the hint. ‘I think we’ve
all
benefited from having a fresh face around. Someone new to talk to. And talk about! It makes a pleasant change from dwelling on this ridiculous curse.’

‘So you think there’s nothing to it?’

‘I think there’s nothing to the curse, but I think the curse
itself
has poisoned our lives.’

‘Poisoned? How?’

‘MacNab lives have been tainted by fear. Tragedies occur in many families, misfortune affects most, but constant
fear
of tragedy and misfortune – that’s a hard cross to bear. None of the MacNab men lack courage. Even Torquil set about a burglar with the Cauldstane claymore. And he showed great fortitude at the end, poor man, dying a slow and miserable death. For all their faults, MacNabs have always had plenty of fighting spirit,’ Zelda said, looking and sounding the embodiment of fighting spirit herself. ‘But if you’re not careful, fear will weaken you and it can break you. That’s why I left Johnny.’

‘
Johnny? What happened – if you don’t mind my asking?’

‘Well, this
is definitely
not
going into the book, but between you, me and the gatepost…’ Zelda set down her cup and saucer and folded her hands in her lap. ‘Racing is a young man’s game, everybody knows that, and once Johnny was too old for it, he started to drink. That made him aggressive.’ Her hand fluttered to her throat where she smoothed her string of pearls. ‘We had terrible rows.
Terrible!
On one occasion he even struck me. Just the once, because I packed my bags and left. Now I’ll put up with a lot of things, Jenny – noise, silence, cold, solitude – but I’d had enough of living with fear. I’d spent years living with the fear of Johnny killing himself on the race-track. So when he hit me, that was the last straw. If years of living with the fear of losing him were to be followed by years spent fearing his foul temper and drunken outbursts – well, that was it as far as I was concerned. If you live in fear, you fear to live. And if you fear to live, you might as well be dead. I was only thirty-four. I still had a lot of living to do.’

‘Well, g
ood for you. How did Johnny cope?’

‘D
rank himself to death. But I suspect he’d have done that anyway, with or without me.’

‘
But you came home to help Sholto manage Cauldstane after Liz died?’

‘It was a terrible time.
They hadn’t been here all that long. Barely got their feet under the table when tragedy struck again. So I decided to quit France altogether. I was needed here.’

‘This poor family has endured so much
.’

‘Aye, we’ve surely had more than our fair share
of trouble… Now, will you have more tea, Jenny?’

‘No, thanks
, I’m fine. I think I’d like to go and make some notes now.’ I set down my tea cup, cast a last longing glance at the gingerbread and got to my feet. ‘Could I take some of the photo albums away with me?’

‘O
f course.’ Zelda picked up several leather-bound albums and handed them to me.

‘Thanks
. And thank you for the tea and the lovely chat. Your collections are delightful.’

‘I’ll get Wilma to deliver
the rest of the albums to your room.’

The mention of my room jogged my memory. ‘
Oh, before I go… I’ve just remembered something I wanted to ask. It’s nothing important, but I wondered whether you could remember what was on the radio before I came in. What had they been playing?’

She looked surprised, then gazed at the radio for inspiration. ‘
Before you came in?... I think it was a piano concerto. Mozart, I believe.’

‘Piano? Not harpsichord?’

‘Did Mozart write a concerto for harpsichord?’

‘I don’t know. I just wondered if they’d been playing harpsichord music on the radio.’

Zelda looked puzzled. ‘When?’

‘Just before I came in. Well, a few minutes before, actually.’

‘No, it had been Mozart for a wee while. I remember now, there was a lovely slow movement.’

‘Oh. I see.’

‘But why d’you ask? Are you particularly interested in harpsichord music?’

‘No, i
t’s just that I thought I’d heard some. When I was in my room. And I knew no one in the family plays, so I assumed it must have been a CD. Or maybe the radio,’ I added lamely.

‘You heard harpsichord music?’

‘Yes. At least, I thought I did.’

‘Well
, that’s
very
odd.’

‘
Yes. I suppose I must have imagined it.’

‘Aye, maybe
. But if you did, that makes two of you.’

‘I’m sorry? Two of what?’

‘Two people who’ve heard a phantom harpsichord-player at Cauldstane. I’d forgotten all about it until you mentioned it just now, it was so long ago. No one’s mentioned it in years.’

‘Mentioned
what
?’

‘Hearing the harpsichord.
At odd times of the day and night. Just odd snatches. Almost like a conversation, she used to say.’

I took a deep breath and tried to keep i
mpatience out of my voice. ‘
Who
, Zelda?’

‘Why, Coral, of course.’

‘Coral used to hear the harpsichord?’

‘A
ye, she did. Did I not explain? No one took much notice because Coral was… well, she was impressionable. Easily upset. Alec was always very protective, but I thought she needed to toughen up a bit.’

‘
Coral heard music no one else could hear?’

‘Well, no one else ever
said
they heard it. That’s why it had slipped my mind. Until you mentioned it just now.’

‘Did Coral say anything about the music? What it was like?’

‘No. Just that when she heard it, poor wee thing, it frightened her half to death.’

CHAPTER ELEVEN

There was apparently no explanation for the sudden bursts of music.
Zelda seemed to think they were all part of the general oddness of Cauldstane. I would have been quite happy to dismiss them as some sort of auditory hallucination, were it not for the fact that I seemed to have shared the experience with Coral. But she was beginning to sound fragile, verging on unstable and I had no wish to align myself with any kind of mental instability, so I dismissed the strange music and resolved not to mention it again.

Apart from the occasional odd and
unsettling experience, my early days at Cauldstane were very pleasant. I enjoyed the company of all the MacNabs and I loved my work. Despite the sad history with which I gradually became acquainted, I was quite happy. There was a lot of laughter and kindness and the bright autumn days were mostly cloudless.

But i
t was just the lull before the storm.

~

After tea with Zelda, I took the family photo albums to the music room where I did most of my work. It could not have been a greater contrast to the Cauldstane armoury, but despite the dust and heat, the bare light bulbs and the mouse droppings, I found I felt more at home in the armoury than the music room.

It was situated o
n the second floor and compared to some of the dark rooms at Cauldstane, it was airy and attractive, but dominated by the presence of a seventeenth-century Flemish harpsichord, its wood painted ox-blood red. Although no one played it any more, Mrs Guthrie took a certain pride in the instrument, which she dusted every week. She’d lifted the lid carefully to show me the Latin inscription inside:

Viva fui in sylvis sum dura occisa securi

Dum vixi tacui mortua dulce cano.

She hadn’t known what it meant, so I googled it and came up with
a sort of riddle:

I was alive in the woods. I was cut down by a hard axe.

While I lived I was silent. Now dead I sing sweetly.

It took me a moment to realise it was a tree speaking, the tree from which the wooden case of the harpsichord had been made. The quotation delighted me, as did the or
nate interior of the instrument. The fact it was never played now saddened me a little, so occasionally I’d prop the lid open so I could see inside. As the dull red box spread its wings and became a giant wooden butterfly, it was as if I’d liberated the instrument. I would sit and contemplate its angular beauty and even though it remained silent, the harpsichord was a palpable presence in the room.

The walls
were decorated with scuffed
faux
-oriental wallpaper and framed programmes celebrating Meredith’s singing career in concert halls and opera houses. None of these was of the first rank, which perhaps explained why I’d never heard of her, even though Rupert was an opera buff and I’d lived for years, not altogether happily, with his extensive CD collection.

On the mantelpiece there were framed photos of
Meredith in costume. Her wigs and makeup were outlandish, but I supposed such exaggeration had once been deemed necessary for performances in opera houses. I certainly learned a lot about the use and abuse of eye-liner. But the absurd pantomime effect did Meredith no favours. She looked harsh or just plain tacky. A picture of her in a riding outfit, looking natural and girlish showed her to much better advantage. Peering at the other woman in the photo, I saw it was Liz MacNab. Meredith was on horseback and Liz, also dressed for riding, was standing on the ground beside her.

If
Meredith was already a friend of the family, I could see why Sholto might have married his mistress to provide his young sons with a replacement mother figure. I’d made a note to investigate – tactfully – the history of Sholto’s relationship with Meredith. I also needed to know why things had gone sour between Meredith and Alec, but even though Alec and I were getting along well, I didn’t yet feel I could ask him outright about the argument he’d had with his stepmother just before she died.

~

I’d got into a routine of listening to Sholto talk, then going for a walk while I thought myself into his mind, then I would go back to the music room and sit facing the wall, with my back to the log fire, laid for me every day by Mrs Guthrie. I’d noticed I had a tendency to gaze out the window, watching the comings and goings of various family members. Especially Alec. Such distractions were clearly not conducive to producing my best work, so I’d asked Mrs Guthrie to help me re-position the desk.

Once
settled in the music room, I would listen to my tape once or twice, after which I’d type up the episode on my laptop, in Sholto’s “voice”. I would try to condense his account into something that would read well, but still sound like Sholto, or what I thought readers expected him to sound like…

At Eton I developed an obsessive interest in sport. This was a vain attempt to equip myself with skills that would protect me from the attentions of bullies who tormented me on account of my two heinous crimes: I’d been born a Scot and I was the unfortunate possessor of strawberry-blond hair. This all too distinguishing characteristic made me easy to spot, so I fell prey to boys seeking primitive entertainment. Predators of another kind found my blond curls and blue eyes alluring. I considered my options and concluded survival at Eton might depend on my sporting prowess, to which end I made sprinting and boxing my educational priorities. If I couldn’t outrun my tormentors, I could at least bloody their noses.

It was a kind of impersonation, but one attempted in good faith, my object being to convey to a reader what it had been like to sit and listen to Sholto tell his stories. I was the channel through which the stories passed, but I had to be invisible and inaudible. If I did my job properly, no one would know I was there, standing between Sholto and his readers. The job fascinated me. It felt like a challenge, not a constraint, to keep myself out of the picture.

My current task was to edit my account of Coral’s death. Sholto had said that although the family believed her death was probably suicide, he would like to refer to it in print as an accident. Knowing Alec’s feelings on the matter, I was relieved to be able to present the tragedy
in this light, especially as we would never know what had actually happened that day. But I wasn’t happy with my draft and read it through again.

Coral was a keen photographer and the castle and grounds provided her with a great variety of subjects. With her eye for detail, she would record the first woodland violets or the texture of lichen on an old stone wall. One Christmas she presented me with an album of photographs taken at Cauldstane. They were a revelation to me. They made me see my home and family in a new light. They showed me how much I’d missed by spending so many months away from Cauldstane while I was on expeditions. These pictures reminded me how beautiful the Highlands are in every season.

Coral was taken from us at a cruelly young age. She was only thirty-three
when she drowned in the River Spey, which flows alongside the castle. Whether she’d waded in to take a picture and got into difficulties, or whether she fell from the river bank and was swept away, we shall never know, but she is daily missed by all of us.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve pitted my wits against Nature, knowing she holds all the cards. A veteran of catastrophic accidents, I have more than a nodding acquaintance with death. I’ve lost friends and team members to avalanches, frostbite and shipwrecks, but Coral’s death was particularly hard to bear. She hadn’t put herself in harm’s way, as I and my colleagues had. Her untimely death was just a random and inexplicable accident.

I reached the end of my account and felt depressed, not so much by what I’d written, as my memory of Alec’s white face when he was talking about his dead wife. The music room seemed suddenly quite chilly, despite the logs burning in the grate, so I got up from my desk and went over to the window to stretch my legs and get my circulation going again.

As I looked out the window I saw a pleasant vista of rolling grass and woodland, trees that were possibly hundreds of years old, stones that were much older. The sight was timeless and calming. I didn’t actually utter the words, but they formed in my mind:
Rest in peace
.

After a few moments I felt able to return to my desk in a more professionally detached frame of mind, ready to edit my account which, to my mind, sounded a little too formal. I might have to listen to the tape once again to see if I could lift a few more of Sholto’s characteristic turns of phrase, though I was beginning to realise, when dealing with
grief and loss, his narrative style tended to be laconic. His stiff-upper-lip version of personal tragedy was going to disappoint readers avid for vicarious thrills.

There was a knock at the door. I looked at my watch and realised
the afternoon had almost gone.

Alec’s head appeared.
‘Am I disturbing you? I thought you might have knocked off for the day.’

‘
Oh, I haven’t achieved very much today. I had tea with Zelda and she talked a lot about Meredith, then she gave me these photo albums to look through.’ I indicated the pile on my desk. ‘But I was just trying to edit something when you knocked…’ I remembered exactly what I’d been trying to edit and quickly changed the subject. ‘But I think I’ve had enough for today. I feel rather tired.’

‘No doubt Zelda talked you into the ground.’

‘She has a lot of energy, doesn’t she?’ I said tactfully as I closed the laptop and tidied my desk.

Alec smil
ed. ‘I suppose you could say that.’

‘You all do, all you MacNabs. You’ve all done so much living.’

‘So have you, in your head. A writer must live many lives. Especially a ghost writer.’

‘I
t does sometimes feel like that. I’ve often wondered whether multiple personality disorder would be a good qualification for being a writer.’

‘Sounds like you need a break. I was wondering if
now would be a good time for me to show you the claymore?’

‘Oh, yes please! I’d love t
hat.’

‘Then follow me.’

Alec led the way along the corridor and into the very large room known as the Great Hall. I’d seen it before, but each time I entered I was struck by its scale. It was the largest room in the castle and was only used when entertaining on a grand scale, which effectively meant, as Sholto said, “when MacNabs were hatched, matched and despatched”.

It was now something between a gallery and a drawing room, with massive dark wooden furniture and panelling and equally dark portraits on the walls. The carved stone fireplace was literally monumental and the floor space so big
, there were no fewer than six large Persian rugs forming a faded patchwork on the floor.

Alec gestured towards
the fireplace and said, ‘The Cauldstane claymore,’ almost as if we were being introduced. The sword hung between two studded shields and beneath a portrait of a MacNab ancestor, swathed in a great quantity of tartan and brandishing the claymore in a fearsome manner. The theatricality of the painting served only to emphasise the stark and simple beauty of the ancient piece of metal beneath. Already I felt in awe, as if I’d been conducted into the presence of something very special.

Alec reached up above the mantelpiece with one hand and lifted the sword off the first of the small brackets that held it in place. Then he raised his other hand, took the weight of the blade and lifted it off the other bracket. Holding it with both hands now, one on the hilt and the other on the blade, he lowered the sword to waist height and walked towards me, presenting it.

He said nothing. This didn’t seem odd. I said nothing either. The silence wasn’t what you’d call companionable with a steel blade over a metre long between us, a blade that had been bathed in God knows how many men’s blood, but I felt we were sharing something. Something significant.

I was still staring at the blade when Alec said,
‘Would you like to hold it?’

‘May I?’

‘Of course.’

I thought at first that Alec was reluctant to let it out of his hands, then, as I took the sword from him, I realised he was taking the weight until I’d registered
just how heavy it was. If he hadn’t done that, I suspect I might have dropped it.

‘Good heavens! Men actually
fought
with these? Did they bludgeon each other to death?’

‘Aye, it seems heavy if you’re not used to it. It was used two-handed as a chopping weapon, not a piercing weapon like a rapier.’

‘So you hacked at your opponent?’

‘Aye. It’s a double-edged blade. Steel. Made in Germany.’ He pointed. ‘You see the maker’s mark there? That tells us it was made in Solingen.’

I peered at the engraving. ‘It looks like a wolf running.’

‘It is.’

I looked up from the blade. ‘You said you had a maker’s mark, didn’t you? What’s yours?’