The Bagpiper’s Ghost (4 page)

“It's near midnight,” the dog said. “We'd best hurry.”

Jennifer suddenly wondered what was so darned important about midnight, why the dog was chivying them through the empty streets.

As if
—she thought suddenly—
we are sheep and he the sheepdog heading us toward the fold
. It was an uncomfortable thought.

“How do you know it's near midnight?” asked Peter. “You don't wear a watch.”

“Got ears, haven't I?” the dog said. “Got eyes.”

“Got tongue, will travel,” Peter added under his breath.

“I heard that, ye coof!” said the dog.

“Oh, for Pete's sake!” Jennifer said.

Nevertheless, they hurried.

By the time they were at the castle, the church bell was striking midnight.

This time, the dog seemed almost unworried about the sound of the bells. And yet he had been so worried about them at noon.
Or
, Jennifer thought,
worried about something else
.

She was just about ready to say something, when Peter, who had been fiddling with the latch on the wrought-iron gate, finally got it open on the third stroke of the hour.

“Come on in, you guys,” he said.

The three of them went inside, the dog careful not to touch the gate because cold iron is harmful to magical creatures. Peter closed the gate after them, checking the latch twice to be sure.

“So no one going by will wonder why it's wide-open,” he told them.

Jennifer nodded. “Good idea.”
Though
, she thought,
we didn't pass a soul coming here. So why should we worry about anyone coming along now?

She started toward the gravestones, Peter by her side.

The fifth stroke had just rung, a long, low, mournful sound.

When Jennifer looked back, the dog was standing by the gate, only a few steps in.

“Come on,” said Jennifer. “We need you with us.”

“Someone has to guard the way for ye,” the dog said. But there were tremors running up and down his back, like little worms beneath the skin.

“Who's the bawtie now?” Peter crowed.

“No one calls me a bawtie!” the dog answered. He marched over to them, rather stiffly, in time to the sixth and seventh tollings of the bell. The whites of his eyes were showing, and the ruff of his back was way up. “But dinna put the blame on me if somebody's needed at that gate later on.”

“No one's blaming you for anything,” Peter said.

But Jennifer was not letting the dog off that easily. “Except for tricking us into coming out here.”

“No tricks. No tricks” the dog cried. He stood suddenly on his hind legs and turned around three times. Then he dropped down again on all fours and repeated, “No tricks from me!”

During the long tolls, they covered the east side of the graveyard. With the exception of the church bells, the place was quiet.

“Silent as a tomb,” said Jennifer, then bit her lip at the unfortunate phrase.

But when they turned the corner and headed down the west side, the dog suddenly sat down on his haunches and raised his muzzle to the sky.

“Don't you dare—” Jennifer warned him.

But her warning came too late. An awful sound—part whine, part howl, part pulsating sob—suddenly filled the air and seemed to go on and on.

Only it wasn't the dog doing the crying. He was silent, his jaws closed.

“Look,” Peter said, pointing. “She comes.” There was a strange triumph in his voice.

As Jennifer followed his pointing finger, she saw a white shimmering mist gathering above one of the horizontal gravestones, just at the stroke of twelve. Slowly it shaped itself into human form: a woman wearing a long, old-fashioned white dress, white gloves, white hat and veil. She had her black mouth open and she was sobbing loudly.

“The Lady in White,” Peter whispered. Even in the half-light, Jennifer could see he was flushed, and his face, for a moment, was almost unrecognizable with his excitement.

“Mary MacFadden,” Jennifer whispered back. She'd recognized the stone above which the ghost hovered.

The weeping ghost and the bell stopped at the same time, so the sound of Mary MacFadden's name seemed magnified in the sudden stillness. In fact, her name seemed to crystallize as it left Jennifer's mouth, hanging in the air before Jennifer like an icicle off the lip of a statue.

The ghost turned, pointed a long white finger at them, opened her shadow mouth again, and screamed. It was an awful sound, full of anger, fear, loathing, horror—and something else.

Longing?
Jennifer thought, shivering, and not—she guessed—from the cold.

The dog, though, evidently had no such thoughts. He flung himself away from Peter with such strength, the leash left a rope burn on Peter's palm.

“Ow,”
Peter cried, bending over to catch hold of the end of the leash. “Come back, ye daftie.”

But the dog was too quick. In twenty steps he bounded to the closed gate and frantically wriggled underneath its lowest bar, yelping as the cold iron burned a thin stripe down his back. Then he galloped down the road toward the cottage, leaving the children alone in Fairburn Castle cemetery with the angry, ghostly Lady in White.

Six

Bagpiper's Ghost

“What do we do now?” Jennifer asked, trying to get her hands to stop shaking. Her stomach seemed to have made its way to her throat. Yet, somehow, her voice was remarkably calm.

Finding a ghost had sounded like an exciting idea when they'd first talked about it, a way of letting Peter share some of the magic that seemed to infest this part of Scotland. Then when she had had second thoughts, the excitement of the idea had given way to fear.

Now it was just plain scary.

“Follow the dog's lead?” Jennifer answered her own question. “Let's get out of here. The dog seems to know something about her that we don't.”

She pointed at the ghost, who was drifting closer and closer to them, the tatters of her long white dress looking more and more like a shroud the nearer she came. Her face was dead white, and her features were made of shadows. Yet as awful as she was, she was beautiful. Jennifer felt sorry for her.

“Shouldn't we find out what she wants first?” asked Peter in a calm, sensible voice.

“What she
wants?
” Jennifer's hands trembled like an old woman with a palsy. Since she couldn't stop her hands from shaking, she put them palms down on Peter's shoulders, to steady herself. When she felt how rigid his shoulders were, as if he was working hard at holding himself together, in a funny way that made her feel better. He was as scared as she was.

“What her
purpose
is,” Peter said slowly, pushing each word out carefully. “Like the dog said. Remember? A ghost remains here on earth for a purpose.”

Jennifer remembered. And she tried to be brave. Really she did. But with the ghost only five gravestones away, she no longer cared about any purpose—other than to get out of there and head for the ironwork gate.

She turned and ran.

Peter passed her in six steps and was at the gate before she was. He was about to fling it open, when he stopped short and Jennifer crashed into his back.

“What do you think you're—” Jennifer began.

He pointed.

On the street right outside the gate stood a very tall, and very dirty, bearded man carrying a large set of bagpipes. He wore a kilt of no discernible color, a soiled shirt, and a piece of tartan slung over one shoulder. His long socks were pulled all the way up his shins. The handle of a dagger stuck out of the top of his right sock. There was a sword in a sheath hanging from his belt.

“Who is he?” whispered Jennifer into her brother's ear.

But before Peter could answer her, the piper set the tip of the chanter to his mouth and began to blow.

After the first awful groanings, the bagpipes wheezed into life, and the piper began a tune they both recognized—from one of their mother's recordings. It went on and on.

“It's ‘Ye'll Tak the High Road.'” Jennifer whispered the words of the song as their mother had taught them. “‘Ye'll tak the High Road and I'll tak the Low Road.' Peter—can we stop him? He'll wake the entire town.”

“Wake the toon?” Peter whispered back. Then he cleared his throat several times as if something were caught there. “Good. We need all the help we can get with that thing back there.” He glanced for a moment behind Jennifer at the ghost, who was slowly drifting toward them, then turned his attention back to the piper.

The powerful piping continued, and yet not one single light had come on in the nearby houses.

Just then Jennifer felt something deadly cold pass by her shoulder.
Winter in summer
, she thought. When she turned her head to see what it was, she found the Lady in White standing right beside her. The cold was pouring off her like an air-conditioning unit. Jennifer was too frightened to make a sound, not even to warn Peter, who still stared, as if entranced, at the piper.

“What do you want?” Jennifer said slowly, quietly, almost mouthing the words.

But the Lady in White didn't seem to notice her. Like Peter, she had eyes only for the piper.

“Iain …” the Lady in White cried in a voice thin as air. She held out a trembling, translucent hand. “Iain, luv, ye've come hame to me.”

The piper's fingers stopped moving, though the pipes still groaned out a few notes by themselves. He lifted his mouth away from the chanter, smiled sadly, then reached a hand toward her. “Mary MacFadden, I've come hame. But too late, too late, dear heart,” he cried.

“Never too late,” returned her answer, as soft as the air between them.

Their hands quivered on either side of the fence, but it was clear that neither of them dared pass the barrier of the ironwork gate.

“Peter,” Jennifer cried, “
he's
a ghost, too.”

Peter didn't move.

Jennifer added, “The dog was right. That's their
purpose
. To be together. But they can't cross cold iron. It will burn them. Open the gate for them, Peter. Open the gate.”

As if only now realizing his sister was behind him, Peter turned around and glared at her, his eyes wide and shining in the half-light of the Scottish midnight.

Jennifer had never seen him look like this, not even the time she'd accidentally broken his precious CD player.

He's mad
, she thought.

Not furious mad.

Crazy mad.

“Awa!” he shouted at her, his voice deep as a man's. “Awa, sister. There's nae a thing here fer ye noo.”

“Peter?” Jennifer cried.
“Peter?”

Peter stared at her, uncomprehending, eyes wild. His mouth had twisted into an unfamiliar grimace. Deep lines suddenly appeared on either side of his nose, sloping downward, as if he were more accustomed to frowning than smiling, as if he'd suddenly put on twenty heavy years.

Jennifer knew with sudden, awful certainty that what was standing in front of her was no longer entirely her brother.
But who is he?
she wondered.

“And who are ye, lass, standing betwixt me and my ain?” not-Peter asked. He pushed her aside, saying, “Oot, oot the way.” Then he addressed the ghost beside her. “Act the lady ye are, Mary MacFadden.”

“No lady, brother, but a woman in luv.”

“Luv? Hah!” Peter laughed, but not in his usual light way. This was a hard, stony laugh, as if the one doing it was unused to humor. “How oft hae I told ye, a common soldier like Iain McGregor is nae fer ye. He's but a mere impoverished Catholic mischant.”

The Lady in White knelt before him. “The heart has nae religion, brother.”

“Then train the heart, woman,” Peter said, folding his arms over his chest. “Yer a MacFadden. And the MacFaddens dinna marry McGregors.”

“Why not?” Jennifer asked, but no one seemed to know she was there.

“He is a man wi'oot honor,” Peter continued. “McGregor may have wooed ye, but he never luved ye. If he had, he wouldna gone off to pipe a tune for that Italian upstart wi'oot writing ye a word o' farewell.”

It was Peter speaking but they were not Peter's words. Not with that accent. Not with that information. Jennifer knew this, but she didn't know what to do about it, so she turned and went up to the ghost of Mary MacFadden, who had thrown her white hands over her white face and was weeping as if her heart was breaking.

“Don't let him talk to you that way,” Jennifer whispered. “You don't have to stand for it.”

As if Jennifer's permission was all she'd been needing, Mary MacFadden took her hands away from her face. “Bonnie Prince Charlie is nae Italian upstart, brother, but the son o' our king from across the sea. And Iain was a patriot to go to his aid, though it cost him his life at Culloden.”

From beyond the gate, the piper's mouth gaped open. He made a sound like a man hit in the stomach. “Cost me my life?”

Mary MacFadden glanced over at him.

The piper put his hand out and cried, “Nae dead at Culloden, sweetheart. Nae dead.”

When she didn't answer, he cried out again, “And did ye nae get the message I left ye by yer brother himself?” He looked at her with eyes full of love. “Ye ken I canna write.”

Mary MacFadden turned to Peter. “Did ye lie to me, then, Andrew? Did ye tell me an untruth? That's a sin, Andrew MacFadden. The Lord doesna luv a sinner. And ye the kirk's ain minister.”

Peter's face got dark, heavy. His mouth twisted as if the words he said were pushing out through a screw hole. He raised his hand as if to strike her. “Nae sin, sister. Merely an omission. It was fer yer ain sake.”

Jennifer could scarcely believe her brother would say any such thing. She had to remind herself that he was this Andrew MacFadden now, not Peter. He was speaking like an eighteenth-century man, not a boy in the twenty-first.