Dragonfly in Amber (107 page)

Most of the Lowland Scots had gone over to Presbyterianism in the two centuries before. Some of the Highland clans had gone with them, but others, like the Frasers and MacKenzies, had kept their Catholic faith. Especially the Frasers, with their strong family ties to Catholic France.

There was a small chapel in Beaufort Castle, to serve the devotional uses of the Earl and his family, but Beauly Priory, ruined as it was, remained the burying place of the Lovats, and the floor of the open-roofed chancel was paved thick with the flat tombstones of those who lay under them.

It was a peaceful place, and I walked there sometimes, in spite of the cold, blustery weather. I had no idea whether Old Simon had meant his threat against me, or whether Jamie's comparing me to Dame Aliset—who turned out to be a legendary "white woman" or healer, the Scottish equivalent of La Dame Blanche—was sufficient to put a stop to that threat. But I thought that no one was likely to accost me among the tombs of extinct Frasers.

One afternoon, a few days after the scene in the study, I walked through a gap in the ruined Priory wall and found that for once, I didn't have it to myself. The tall woman I had seen outside Lovat's study was there, leaning against one of the red-stone tombs, arms folded about her for warmth, long legs thrust out like a stork.

I made to turn aside, but she saw me, and motioned me to join her.

"You'll be my lady Broch Tuarach?" she said, though there was no more than a hint of question in her soft Highland voice.

"I am. And you're…Maisri?"

A small smile lit her face. She had a most intriguing face, slightly asymmetrical, like a Modigliani painting, and long black hair that flowed loose around her shoulders, streaked with white, though she was plainly still young. A seer, hm? I thought she looked the part.

"Aye, I have the Sight," she said, the smile widening a bit on her lopsided mouth.

"Do mind-reading, too, do you?" I asked.

She laughed, the sound vanishing on the wind that moaned through the ruined walls.

"No, lady. But I do read faces, and…"

"And mine's an open book. I know," I said, resigned.

We stood side by side for a time then, watching tiny spatters of fine sleet dashing against the sandstone and the thick brown grass that overgrew the kirkyard.

"They do say as you're a white lady," Maisri observed suddenly. I could feel her watching me intently, but with none of the nervousness that seemed common to such an observation.

"They do say that," I agreed.

"Ah." She didn't speak again, just stared down at her feet, long and elegant, stockinged in wool and clad in leather sandals. My own toes, rather more sheltered, were growing numb, and I thought hers must be frozen solid, if she'd been here any time.

"What are you doing up here?" I asked. The Priory was a beautiful, peaceful place in good weather, but not much of a roost in the cold winter sleet.

"I come here to think," she said. She gave me a slight smile, but was plainly preoccupied. Whatever she was thinking, her thoughts weren't overly pleasant.

"To think about what?" I asked, hoisting myself up to sit on the tomb beside her. The worn figure of a knight lay on the lid, his claymore clasped to his bosom, the hilt forming a cross over his heart.

"I want to know why!" she burst out. Her thin face was suddenly alight with indignation.

"Why what?"

"Why! Why can I see what will happen, when there's no mortal thing I can be doin' to change it or stop it? What's the good of a gift like that? It's no a gift, come to that—it's a damn curse, though I havena done anything to be cursed like this!"

She turned and glared balefully at Thomas Fraser, serene under his helm, with the hilt of his sword clasped under crossed hands.

"Aye, and maybe it's your curse, ye auld gomerel! You and the rest o' your damned family. Did ye ever think that?" she asked suddenly, turning to me. Her brows arched high over brown eyes that sparked with furious intelligence.

"Did ye ever think perhaps that it's no your own fate at all that makes you what ye are? That maybe ye have the Sight or the power only because it's necessary to someone else, and it's nothing to do wi' you at all—except that it's you has it, and has to suffer the having of it. Have you?"

"I don't know," I said slowly. "Or yes, since you say it, I have wondered. Why me? You ask that all the time, of course. But I've never come up with a satisfactory answer. You think perhaps you have the Sight because it's a curse on the Frasers—to know their deaths ahead of time? That's a hell of an idea."

"A hell is right," she agreed bitterly. She leaned back against the sarcophagus of red stone, staring out at the sleet that sprayed across the top of the broken wall.

"What d'ye think?" she asked suddenly. "Do I tell him?"

I was startled.

"Who? Lord Lovat?"

"Aye, his lordship. He asks what I see, and beats me when I tell him there's naught to see. He knows, ye ken; he sees it in my face when I've had the Sight. But that's the only power I've got; the power not to say." The long white fingers snaked out from her cloak, playing nervously with the folds of soaked cloth.

"There's always the chance of it, isn't there?" she said. Her head was bent so that the hood of her cloak shielded her face from my gaze. "There's a chance that my telling would make a difference. It has, now and then, ye know. I told Lachlan Gibbons when I saw his son-in-law wrapped in seaweed, and the eels stirring beneath his shirt. Lachlan listened; he went out straightaway and stove a hole in his son-in-law's boat." She laughed, remembering. "Lord, there was the kebbie-lebbie to do! But when the great storm came the next week, three men were drowned, and Lachlan's son-in-law was safe at hame, still mending his boat. And when I saw him next, his shirt hung dry on him, and the seaweed was gone from his hair."

"So it can happen," I said softly. "Sometimes."

"Sometimes," she said, nodding, still staring at the ground. Lady Sarah Fraser lay at her feet, the lady's stone surmounted with a skull atop crossed bones. Hodie mihi cras tibi, said the inscription. Sic transit gloria mundi. My turn today, yours tomorrow. And thus passes away the glory of the world.

"Sometimes not. When I see a man wrapped in his winding sheet, the illness follows—and there's naught to be done about that."

"Perhaps," I said. I looked at my own hands, spread on the stone beside me. Without medicine, without instruments, without knowledge—yes, then illness was fate, and naught to be done. But if a healer was near, and had the things to heal with…was it possible that Maisri saw the shadow of a coming illness, as a real—if usually invisible—symptom, much like a fever or a rash? And then only the lack of medical facilities made the reading of such symptoms a sentence of death? I would never know.

"We aren't ever going to know," I said, turning to her. "We can't say. We know things that other people don't know, and we can't say why or how. But we have got it—and you're right, it's a curse. But if you have knowledge, and it may prevent harm…do you think it could cause harm?"

She shook her head.

"I canna say. If you knew ye were to die soon, are there things you'd do? And would they be good things only that ye'd do, or would ye take the last chance ye might have to do harm to your enemies—harm that might otherwise be left alone?"

"Damned if I know." We were quiet for a time, watching the sleet turn to snow, and the blowing flakes whirl up in gusts through the ruined tracery of the Priory wall.

"Sometimes I know there's something there, like," Maisri said suddenly, "but I can block it out of my mind, not look. 'Twas like that with his lordship; I knew there was something, but I'd managed not to see it. But then he bade me look, and say the divining spell to make the vision come clear. And I did." The hood of her cloak slipped back as she tilted her head, looking up at the wall of the Priory as it soared above us, ochre and white and red, with the mortar crumbling between its stones. White-streaked black hair spilled down her back, free in the wind.

"He was standing there before the fire, but it was daylight, and clear to see. A man stood behind him, still as a tree, and his face covered in black. And across his lordship's face there fell the shadow of an ax."

She spoke matter-of-factly, but the shiver ran up my spine nonetheless. She sighed at last, and turned to me.

"Weel, I will tell him, then, and let him do what he will. Doom him or save him, that I canna do. It's his choice—and the Lord Jesus help him."

She turned to go, and I slid off the tomb, landing on the Lady Sarah's slab.

"Maisri," I said. She turned back to look at me, eyes black as the shadows among the tombs.

"Aye?"

"What do you see, Maisri?" I asked, and stood waiting, facing her, hands dropped to my sides.

She stared at me hard, above and below, behind and beside. At last she smiled faintly, nodding.

"I see naught but you, lady," she said softly. "There's only you."

She turned and disappeared down the path between the trees, leaving me among the blowing flakes of snow.

Doom, or save. That I cannot do. For I have no power beyond that of knowledge, no ability to bend others to my will, no way to stop them doing what they will. There is only me.

I shook the snow from the folds of my cloak, and turned to follow Maisri down the path, sharing her bitter knowledge that there was only me. And I was not enough.

Old Simon's manner was much as usual over the course of the next two or three weeks, but I imagined that Maisri had kept her intention of telling him about her visions. While he had seemed on the verge of summoning the tacksmen and tenants to march, suddenly he backed off, saying that there was no hurry, after all. This shilly-shallying infuriated Young Simon, who was champing at the bit to go to war and cover himself with glory.

"It's not a matter of urgency," Old Simon said, for the dozenth time. He lifted an oatcake, sniffed at it, and set it down again. "Perhaps we'll do best to wait for the spring planting, after all."

"They could be in London before spring!" Young Simon glowered across the dinner table at his father and reached for the butter. "If ye will not go yourself, then let me take the men to join His Highness!"

Lord Lovat grunted. "You've the Devil's own impatience," he said, "but not half his judgment. Will ye never learn to wait?"

"The time for waiting's long since past!" Simon burst out. "The Camerons, the MacDonalds, the MacGillivrays—they've all been there since the first. Are we to come meachin' along at the finish, to find ourselves beggars, and taking second place to Clanranald and Glengarry? Fat chance you'll have of a dukedom then!"

Lovat had a wide, expressive mouth; even in old age, it retained some trace of humor and sensuality. Neither was visible at the moment. He pressed his lips tight together, surveying his heir without enthusiasm.

"Marry in haste, repent at leisure," he said. "And it's more true when choosing a laird than a lass. A woman can be got rid of."

Young Simon snorted and looked at Jamie for support. Over the last two months, his initial suspicious hostility had faded into a reluctant respect for his bastard relative's obvious expertise in the art of war.

"Jamie says…" he began.

"I ken well enough what he says," Old Simon interrupted. "He's said it often enough. I shall make up my own mind in my own time. But bear it in mind, lad—when it comes to declaring yourself in a war, there's little to be lost by waiting."

"Waiting to see who wins," Jamie murmured, studiously wiping his plate with a bit of bread. The old man looked up sharply, but evidently decided to ignore this contribution.

"Ye gave your word to the Stuarts," Young Simon continued stubbornly, paying no heed to his father's displeasure. "Ye dinna mean to break it, surely? What will people say of your honor?"

"The same things they said in '15," his father calmly replied. "Most of those who ‘said things' then are dead, bankrupt, or paupers in France. But I am still here."

"But…" Young Simon was red in the face, the usual result of this sort of conversation with his father.

"That will do," the old Earl interrupted sharply. He shook his head as he glared at his son, lips tight with disapproval. "Christ. Sometimes I could wish that Brian hadna died. He may have been a fool, too, but at least he knew when to stop talking."

Both Young Simon and Jamie flushed with anger, but after a wary glance at each other, turned their attentions to their food.

"And what are you looking at?" Lord Lovat growled, catching my eye on him as he turned away from his son.

"You," I said bluntly. "You don't look at all well." He didn't, even for a man in his seventies. No more than middle-height, slumped and broadened by age, he was normally still a solid-looking man, giving the impression that his barrel chest and rounded paunch were firm and healthy under his linen. Lately he had begun to look flabby, though, as if he had shrunk a bit within his skin. The wrinkled bags beneath his eyes were darkened, and his skin had a sickly pallor to it.

"Mphm," he grunted. "And why not? I get nay rest when I sleep, nor comfort when I'm awake. No wonder if I dinna look like a bridegroom."

"Oh, but ye do, Father," said Young Simon maliciously, seeing a chance to get a bit of his own back. "One at the end of his honeymoon, wi' all the juice sapped out of him."

"Simon!" said Lady Frances. Still, there was a ripple of laughter around the table at this, and even Lord Lovat's mouth twitched slightly.

"Aye?" he said. "Well, I'd sooner suffer soreness from that cause, I'll tell ye, lad." He shifted uncomfortably in his seat, and pushed away the platter of boiled turnips being offered. He reached for his wineglass, raised it to his nose for a sniff, then morosely put it down again.

"It's ill-mannered to stare," he remarked coldly to me. "Or perhaps the English have different standards of politeness?"

I flushed slightly, but didn't drop my eyes. "I was just wondering—you don't have an appetite, and you don't drink. What other symptoms have you?"